Quotulatiousness

September 29, 2025

Powderkeg Britain

Filed under: Britain, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

The ever-expanding anti-immigration protests in Britain are an unmissable flashing red alert to the British government … which seems determined to ignore it and continue to plough ahead with their MOAR immigrants policies despite the anger of the public. Spaceman Spiff characterizes it as a revolt:

Multi-ethnic and multicultural societies do not function in the way homogenous nations do. People of radically different origins, culture and beliefs often trigger conflict as incompatible aptitudes, temperaments and worldviews operate within a shared territory.

Artificial situations like this do not naturally harmonize, despite the rhetoric. Instead, competition for resources emerges. Power sharing between rival groups is fantasy. Life is winner takes all.

This can be disconcerting as reality asserts itself and the cost of large-scale migration becomes obvious.

Some in Britain already understand the dangers we now face at home. Others are waking up and looking for answers as their world declines. They are the ones who will grasp at anything to reset society.

Racists and hatemongers

Critics of mass immigration in Britain are often branded as racists and hatemongers.

We see blanket condemnation from establishment figures for even mild observations about the effects of this deeply unpopular policy.

The noticers of reality are derided as far-right extremists even when they are evidently normal people exhausted with unwanted demographic change.

The approved media and political spokespersons insist those who make observations have become radicalized by extremist writers and thinkers. Little more needs to be added. The labels do much of the work; Nazi, fascist, racist.

It doesn’t matter that many who are critical of mass immigration are not extremists calling for violence. They are just normal people who notice what is happening.

One of the unfortunate things the noticers recognize is mixing distinct cultures inside a single geographical area might be dangerous. They sometimes read material based on government statistics that tells them mass immigration infers almost no benefits on the host nation while extracting potentially catastrophic costs.

To ordinary people that sounds like something worth discussing to determine if it is true.

Normal people are revolting

Western countries have endured unexpected demographic shifts in recent years.

The only acceptable view is this is always a net positive. We are told group differences do not exist except in the minds of racists. Foreigners are already very like us and any deviation from our norms are superficial or unworthy of comment.

It is therefore all the more shocking when this is proven wrong. From dress and manners to dietary habits, to the treatment of women and children, the world beyond our borders is quite alien when seen up close.

London’s vibrantly diverse bus riders

All this alienness was once elsewhere with oceans to protect us. Now it is here in our midst.

This is becoming obvious and is at odds with all we have been told. What we see does not match the harmonious melting pot we were sold.

Inevitably this encourages people to seek out information.

Bomber Command 1943 – Reap What You Sow – The Bomber War Episode 6.

HardThrasher
Published 26 Sep 2025

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series covering Bomber Command in 1943 — this is the background and build up, the aircraft, the founding of pathfidner force and the mechanics behind the mass use of incendiaries

References from the video below

i Battle of the Beams, Tom Whipple, Penguin, 2003, p.209
ii The Battle of the Beams, Whipple, Penguin, 2003, p.213
iii The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.345
iv The Pathfinders, Will Iredale, Penguin, 2021, p.116 and on
v The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.238
vi See Caliban Rising’s excellent video on statistical deaths for Bomber Command
vii B12/36, The British Aircraft Specifications File, Meekcoms & Morgan, Air-Britain, 1994, p.228
viii The Bombing War, Overy, Penguin, 2012, p.290-91
ix The Pathfinders, Will Iredale, Penguin, 2021 p.74
x Proceedings of the Royal Air Force Historical Society, Issue No 6, Sept 1989, p.22
xi The Pathfinders, Iredale, Penguin, 2021, p.75
xii The Pathfinders, Iredale, Penguin, 2021, 2021 p.79
xiii https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid… – yes, yes I know, a Wiki reference.
xiv Interview 1977 for the RAF Centre for Air Power Studies (CASPS) – • RAF CASPS Historic Interview | Group Capta…
xv Pathfinder, Goodall, 1988 pp. 102, 158, 205

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Screen addiction – “No drug cartel makes as much money as the screen-and-app companies”

Filed under: Health, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Ted Gioia on the eight things about screen addiction that David Foster Wallace tried to warn us about before he took his own life in 2008:

Those same youngsters are now showing up on college campuses, and we can begin to gauge the societal impact of a screen-driven life. It ain’t pretty.

So this is a good time to revisit what Wallace tried to warn us about thirty years ago. He was ahead of his time in the worst possible way, experiencing firsthand all the debilitating symptoms that now plague millions.

That’s why his writings feel so eerily contemporary. They read like commentaries on what’s happening right now.

Of course, Wallace knew very little about the Internet — he deliberately avoided it. He also refused to own a television. He understood how susceptible he was to screen addiction, and took drastic steps to reduce his exposure to all screens.

But he wrote about it — most tellingly in his huge novel Infinite Jest. The title refers to a film that is so addictive that people who watch it can’t stop. They literally watch it to death. It’s an infinite diversion, much like the endless scrolls on today’s social media apps.

He returned to the topic in his final book The Pale King, and also discussed it in interviews and essays. I’ve read through all of these including more than thirty interviews with the author. These allow me to put together a point-by-point summary of what Wallace tried to tell us.

We ignore his warnings at great risk.

(1) Screen technology will cause a crisis of loneliness, especially among young people.
In almost every interview, Wallace eventually talks about loneliness. It was a looming crisis, he insisted. But he was one of the first to link this to the ways we divert ourselves via screens. […]

(2) This will lead to widespread depression.
Wallace also knew this firsthand. He suffered intensely from depression. His inability to find a suitable treatment led to his suicide in 2008. […]

(3) This will also happen at a larger scale. Society will grow more fragmented and disconnected.
As each person falls into an isolated relationship with a screen, larger communities begin to fray. Wallace anticipated a “new vision of the U.S.A. as an atomized mass of watchers and appearers”. […]

(4) Screen technology promises to liberate us, but the reality is that it controls us for the benefit of others.
The most dangerous part of the screen entertainment is the illusion that it serves us. But the reality is that we actually serve tech platforms and their advertisers. […]

(5) The people who control the technology work to hide their purposes and goals.
“They’re trying to lock us tighter into certain conventions, in this case habits of consumption,” Wallace told Larry McCaffery in 1993. “This is McLuhan right? ‘The medium is the message’ and all that? But notice that TV’s mediated message is never that the medium is the message.” […]

(6) Our survival will depend on our ability to remain independent of these forces.
If we abandon ourselves completely to the tech (as many now do), we become pawns in the corporate agenda to monetize us — at a tremendous cost in loneliness, depression, and social disconnection. […]

(7) We don’t have many tools, but kindness and compassion will be the starting point.
We need to replace irony, sarcasm, and cynicism — which have contributed to our self-debasement — with softer, gentler attitudes. Cynicism is useful in criticizing, but is impotent when we need to build something better. Irony only destroys, never builds. […]

(8) Art can help us heal.
He wrote his big books with the hope that they would help us find a way back to a more caring and connected world — but connected via people, not screens. […]

The Galactic Empire and a (Revised) Generic Model of “Fascism”

Feral Historian
Published 29 Sept 2023

While we can classify significantly different regimes as “communist” based on their key similarities, we don’t have the same taxonomy for “fascism” as a political category. The term is either used so broadly it becomes meaningless, or defined so narrowly that it’s only relevant to Mussolini’s Italian Fascism.

But we can identify three key factors that, when all are present together, result in a system we can define as “fascist” in a sense that’s both historically based and general enough to be useful for analysis. In addition to laying out a simple model defining fascism, this video also dives into some history of Fascism and National Socialism, mixed with the kind of sci-fi analysis you’ve come to expect here.

00:00 Intro
00:35 Palp, Dolf, and Communists
04:05 Old Republic vs Weimar Republic
04:55 Party and State
08:57 Three-Point “Fascist Minimum”
09:24 “Third Way” Economics
15:12 Totalitarianism
19:19 Unifying Myth
22:53 Umberto Eco
24:46 Franco
26:25 Closing Miscellany

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QotD: Mal Reynolds in Serenity

Filed under: Liberty, Media, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 01:00

I’m not trying to make a polemic and it’s definitely not a partisan film in the sense that Mal is, if not a Republican, certainly a libertarian, he’s certainly a less-government kinda guy. He’s the opposite of me in many ways.

Joss Whedon, quoted by Malene Arpe in “Just don’t call Joss Whedon a genius”, Toronto Star, 2005-09-24.

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