http://ranprieur.com/#9a417fe513f58988c3b5b1e84cfc57397194a79b 2024-11-15T15:10:36Z Ran Prieur http://ranprieur.com/ ranprieur@gmail.com http://ranprieur.com/#45be3ccd168161aa1b106e83656659aacb38a094 2024-11-15T15:10:36Z November 15. Quick note on travel. It's amazing how it distorts time, and this is somewhat related to money. If you have a few thousand dollars, you can spend it on a month of routine living that feels like a week, or a week of travel that feels like a month. I'm sure there are ways to get the same effect for free.


Quick note on AI. I'm traveling without my laptop, and drafting posts on my phone, which suggests the next word. Occasionally it's better than the word I had in mind, so I'll use it.

AI will never replace human creativity, because creativity is less about the product and more about the experience of making choices. But it can help by giving us more stuff to choose from.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#604470e2c1d10e0ec0a0df424bc5623f432eb102 2024-11-10T22:20:47Z November 10. Just spent a couple hours hanging out with Shane, an Irish leftist. He says everyone he knows is happy that Trump won. Not that they like Trump, but that since he took over the Republican party, the Democrats are the standard bearers for terrible American foreign policy.

He also made an interesting point, that while no Trumpers would ever identify as Communist, they want something similar: for a centralized state to make sure there are lots of manufacturing jobs.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#aa713cc2b245c88ec4c3a046e0c17b539d0d494e 2024-11-07T19:50:59Z November 7, 2024. Columbus, on meeting the Arawaks, famously wrote that they were such saps that "with fifty men we could subjugate them all." That must be how Trump feels right now. While the Dems are trying really hard and failing, he's like, I can't believe how easy it is to rule these soft and guileless people.

Trump is on a different karmic level. I don't mean that metaphorically, nor do I mean the popular concept of karma as a metaphysical enforcer of our own ideas about reward and punishment. Karma is an alien amoral system loosely related to human morality, with levels we do not understand. I don't know how one person can play life on single player cheat mode, while other players have to share the same world, but that's what it looks like.

Trump is Voldemort, and there is no Harry Potter, only a wide variety of Muggles including two unfortunate categories: Muggles who don't know that magic is real, and Muggles who seek power over others by allying themselves with a powerful wizard who doesn't care about them.

Of all the weird things that Trump's followers believe, the weirdest is that he will keep them safe. Sure, now they're safe from nonexistent dog eating immigrants. But it's the Dems who are so desperately safe that they are fatally un-fun, while Trump is clearly bringing the Apocalypse.

I wouldn't take that myth too literally, but I expect something recognizably similar, and I keep thinking of the Neil Young line: Look around while the clown who is sick does the trick of disaster.

]]> http://ranprieur.com/#b53382a45b6845ccf6b9124309b481d550dc94a2 2024-11-01T13:50:15Z November 1. I'll be traveling for the next two weeks and posting lightly. This is one of the best songs of 2024, and fitting: Sam Abbo - Doomsday

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