baltakatei

Ah, the new medication doomies.

So stinky.

I think the cognitive reset that psychedelics can awaken come in basically two varieties: delusions of grandeur or empathy. Elon Musk has benefitted from privilege, luck, and the immunity to consequences that comes from being a figurehead leader for people who expect him to make the right noises to support their cause. This lucky run has fueled his fantasy of making humans an interplanetary species like in his Iain M. Banks science fiction novels that he uses to name his SpaceX vehicles.

In Elon Musk's case, engineers at Tesla and SpaceX have shared his technocratic vision up until he tried to adopt Trump's Maga base away from Trump (e.g. with his fascist Nazi salute). Engineers of solar panels, self-driving cars, and space vehicles have to have a minimum level of empathy to deal with the stresses of working in teams to overcome difficult problems; most probably genuinely want to help humanity by expanding capitalism to asteroid mining and Mars colonies; the Maga mob, though, have much more grounded ambitions of restoring their socioeconomic dominance over cultures not their own. Attempting to curry favor with both at the same time only works if your leadership inspiring improvements in solar panel, self-driving car, and space technology dominate news stories with success after success, building and maintaining momentum beyond what Trump can disrupt with his own media stunts like the tariff posturing. But Trump has succeeded in making the Maga faction feel victimized and dominated the news cycle so far in 2025.

Elon and Trump are both salesmen, but the latter only has to break things to get attention. So, I am not surprised that Elon finds solace in mind-altering drugs to comfort himself from the realization that his support base simply is smaller than Trump's.

Is it sold already wet within their packaging?

If it were water soluble, it would have already dissolved before you opened the packaging.

I wish that worm had finished the job.

Speak for yourself. Gestures to children triggering their own gag reflex for fun and profit

OP's article is 3 months old, being dated 2025-02-11.

I'm pretty sure no one knows my blog and wiki exist, but it sure is popular, getting multiple hits per second 24/7 in a tangle of wiki articles I autogenerated to tell me trivia like whether the Great Fire of London started on a Sunday or Thursday.

What if it was reaaaaally fluffy down?

Frieren reminds me of my readings about the 19th century Texas Rangers (see Cult of Glory (2020) by Doug J. Swanson) and how Native Americans were literally seen as vermin to be exterminated, even if they assisted in exterminating other indigenous. In real life, a lack of communication and 15th century epidemics divided indigenous peoples who could have otherwise defended their sovereignty; once indigenous children learned the conquering host people's language (English) and affirmative action applied to close egregious wealth gaps, indigenous people have proved to be ordinary people with another skin color (evidence: me, a member of the Navajo Nation). Frieren, in contrast, portrays a demon child as being irredeemably evil even though they learn the host language and are given second chances and extra attention (by the Himmel); the author implies there is some cognitive divide due to demons being solitary creatures who raise and teach themselves from a very early age (presumably much earlier than the failed experiment Himmel performed); however, that subtlety isn't emphasized and demons are more akin to starfish aliens than people.

Overall, I think provoking controversy and discussion around this point is valuable because it invites people to debate the nature of Otherness. In which ways can a person be different enough before they stop being people? What exactly are the differences between “person” and “beast”? Is focusing on those differences the root cause of genocide? Do we hesitate to relax the requirements to be considered a person because we dislike the economic consequences? (e.g. the horror of teaching factory farmed animals to speak)

I personally consider demons in Frieren analogous to indigenous before colonizing powers, albeit sustained by their long life spans and tendency to independently discover powerful technology (magic). I doubt the author is thinking very hard along these lines, and so fear they will fall back on tried and true story patterns in which animalistic heathens are purged to make way for civilization. But I hope to be surprised.

Relevant quote from Anathem (2008) by Neal Stephenson:

“You say of course there are criminals, but if you look at a particular person, how do you know whether or not he is a criminal? Are criminals branded? Tattooed? Locked up? Who decides who is and isn’t a criminal? Does a woman with shaved eyebrows say ‘you are a criminal’ and ring a silver bell? Or is it rather a man in a wig who strikes a block of wood with a hammer? Do you thrust the accused through a doughnut-shaped magnet? Or use a forked stick that twitches when it is brought near evil? Does an Emperor hand down the decision from his throne written in vermilion ink and sealed with black wax, or is it rather that the accused must walk barefoot across a griddle? Perhaps there is ubiquitous moving picture [technology]—what you’d call [video cameras]—that know all, but their secrets may only be unlocked by a court of eunuchs each of whom has memorized part of a long number. Or perhaps a mob shows up and throws rocks at the suspect until he’s dead.”