IGX

I just saw that Paul Harrell has died of cancer. He announced his illness a while back and many of us were hoping he would beat it. Not to be. For those unfamiliar with him, he had the best firearms videos I've seen. They were about so much more than guns, though. Paul provided insight, experience, ...

I was wrong. The cops managed to lock down the place without beating up too many people or kicking off riots. And the hordes that I thought would show up didn't. It probably helped that they didn't let anything get organized too close to the convention. The MSM was sooo wanting there to be something...

It's early Monday morning. How much mayhem do you guys expect at the DNC?

What did you think of Lessons for Living ? I keep stopping because of the woo. Then I say I'll give it another shot and there's more of it. I might get the hard copy so I can get through it faster. I don't like that Stutz presents his ideas as fact without evidence or solid reasoning. His Part X is...

The Tools , by Phil Stutz and Barry Michels. Psychiatrist Phil Stutz doesn't believe in the model of conventional therapy, where patients talk and talk and get little useful feedback from the therapist. Stutz wants his patients to do things to effect change. He has created a number of thought exerc...

I read some of Every Man for Himself but threw in the towel. Herzog's jumped the shark. He used to be an entertaining storyteller but in Every Man he wants to boast, settle scores, justify himself, and signal that he believes the currently-approved Right Things. Plus there's a lot of tedious extrane...

The documentary is a definite miss. I wanted to give it a fair chance so I slogged through it but Jonah Hill was really tedious throughout and the constant music was distracting and annoying. I don't have a positive impression of Stutz's work so far but I'll try the books.

Conquest of the Useless , by Werner Herzog. A man awakens in the jungle discovering he has been half eaten by a crocodile. The bats agree to negotiate with the crocodile and the animal releases him in exchange for the promise of more ouzo. The monkeys are outraged at this transaction. A movie is be...

Based on your rec I'm listening to the audiobook while I do stuff. There's also a doc called Stutz on the man and his work. He's got at least two other books, The Tools, and Coming Alive, which might be interesting.

In HS I liked it a lot but I'm not sure it works that well for someone much older than that. I liked his depictions of the South, or aspects of parts of it, and much of the book is well written, although PC does overwrite a fair bit. The story, and storytelling, are both melodramatic and probably wo...

I look forward to getting your take on it. I've been wanting to read it ever since it was mentioned in The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy.

Considering the Court waited until the last day of the term to hear oral argument I'm not surprised at the result. I also thought I detected more snark than usual between justices in opinions leading up to Trump . But the reasoning was Orwellian, and the high handed tone taken by the majority reads ...

On the Nature of the Universe by Lucretius. Penguin Classics, Ronald Latham translation. This is one of those books that people nod and say they've heard of and have never read and never will. Pert of the problem I had with previous attempts at reading it was the translation. Latham explains in the...

The Fifth Risk , by Michael Lewis. However bad I think the Trump administration was, every time I read anything I realize it was way worse than I thought. Hopefully none of you are dumb enough to think that any criticism of Trump must come from politically motivated leftists but in case anyone want...

The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. As I sit here I feel unable to express what this book means to me, since I'm tired, depressed, and don't really have the energy to write this review at 4 A.M.. But I think of Thomas a Kempis in a little nook, writing his with a quill by candlelight, and ...

The thing that put me off AH isn't that he thinks he's an expert on everything but that he speaks like no one besides him has ever read anything or knows anything. He explains the simplest concepts like he's talking to extremely dumb and ignorant people, and what he's saying is something that he alo...

He does have a certain take on things. I don't know to what extent that colors his analysis of the details. I haven't read enough on this or listened to enough different voices to be able to assess people's credibility that well, or to filter analysis from bias or personal agendas. My take on Dr. Br...

Justin Bronk just did another interview where he talks about the difficulties of incorporating F-16s into Ukraine's AF.

TL,dw; It will be a longish, hard process but they're needed in order for Ukraine to continue to have air power at all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R31hMWs25UI

Gene wrote: ↑Sun Feb 25, 2024 8:18 pm Can we credit Zelenski with knowing what the UAF needs to win?

I credit him with knowing how to get buy-in from the U.S., partly due to the supply/maintenance infrastructure you cite.

All that needs saying about Ukraina.... Zelenski asked for F16s in March of 2022. So far nothing but training and promises. I work with ethnic and native born Ukrainians. They don't strike me as being so stupid as to require many years to train how to use something. It doesn't take that long to get...

They are fighting for their lives but they didn't all become Audie Murphy on Feb 24. A lot of them are still as corrupt as ever and I do think that some of them (not the front line guys) might be selling weapons on the side. They are doing a lot of damage to Russia so good on them. If I believed tha...

Eight trillion dollars have been spent on the GWOT. Two trillion on Afghanistan and for what? My view is that the purpose of America's wars is to make money for the insiders and consolidate their power. I don't think Biden & Co. actually care about Ukraine. We've been doling out just enough aid,...

That's what I used dzogchen for. I had a lot of powerful realizations as a byproduct and stopped for a while to let my psychology catch up.

I think 99% of self reflection is not only narcissistic self indulgence, but illusory. Sudden painful realizations are real enough, like when someone (me) sees how wrong he's been and/or just how shitty someone is, but the kind of ponderings most people write about are self aggrandizing self decepti...