The Princess And The Trolls –The Changeling, By John Bauer, 1913.

Yvan Feusi - Media Overdose

I am proposing something more like a founding myth for an aspect of the way our minds are set up.  I am sitting in a coffee shop full of predators. They eat animal flesh, they have the binocular vision typical of animals that need to focus on and assess prey from afar, from a still vantage point. They manipulate one another expertly - they manipulate millions, organizing each other into tribes, cities, armies, nations. They use each other. They might have any of a thousand reasons for saying something, other than the truth. And yet, they are the most compassionate animals ever seen. One reason for an animal to evolve a capacity to think about other animals is in order to benefit from cooperation within a herd. There is (also) a very different reason evolution would favor a faculty for understanding other animals: to prey on them. If you want to hunt and eat other agents, it helps to be able to predict their behavior - so you model it. Humans are... an animal with these twin drives. The ability to receive signals from a member of the herd empathetically, and the ability to model the behavior of another agent predatorily. Being modeled explicitly as a system with inputs, outputs, and predictable behavior can creep people out. This contributes to the strong negative responses to attempts to learn social skills by building an explicit model of social interactions. Acting, not quickly and spontaneously, but slowly, deliberately, thinking about a problem for a long time before making a move. It seems like the sort of thing a person would do - not to someone they wanted to cooperate with - but someone they wanted to eat. It feels like having a single set of eyes, close together with binocular predator vision, silently watching you. A solo predator and a herd animal, inextricably connected together, in our more reflective moments not always sure we can trust ourselves even to be good to our friends, not sure we can trust others to be what they say they are, and yet, something in this unusual combination lets us fake it, lets us approximate what it might be, to be a mind that truly loves another.

Benjamin R. Hoffman ‘The Predator in the Herd’

btw, the molotov cocktail got named that by Finns who used them when fighting back against the Soviet Union’s imperialist invasion of their country, as a mocking reference to Vyacheslav Molotov’s propaganda about said invasion (“we’re not bombing them, we’re just flying in food deliveries because they’re starving!”)

so i’m not gonna stop y'all from making molotov cocktail jokes, but you’d better not turn around and post soviet apologia afterwards. respect the cocktail’s history

Joanna Karpowicz „7 AM, Poland”, 42 x 29,7 cm, acrylic on paper, 2024 (from artist's fb page)

"Mäletan, kuidas sa mõne aasta eest südametäiega pahvatasid metsaraiumise kohta: see on ju riiklik laastamine! Ja veel enam jäi hinge kõrvulukustav vaikus, mis peale seda mõtteruumis maad võttis. Ei tõtanud keegi noid sõnu parandama ega ümber lükkama, las vana mees räägib, maailm veereb edasi, uued uudised tulevad ja ebamugavus lahtub, piinlik apsakas ununeb. Aga see, mis oli varjul nende sõnade taga, jäi. See pilt, kuhu osutas sinu tõstetud sõrm. Vaadake seda maad, milline häbi! See, mida riik on teinud oma loodusega, ei ole olnud väärikas. Eesti loodusega on läinud samamoodi, nagu läks indiaanlastega. Selle maa loodus on lõputute seadusemuudatuste, arengukavade ja töötubade kaudu viimaks ikkagi inimeste käest välja petetud, nende hinge on väärkoheldud, väärikust alandatud. Eesti Loodus elab edasi reservaadis, see on ilus, seda saab imetleda, sealt metsaande korjata, piltegi teha, seminare ja töötubasid korraldada. Aga midagi on muutunud, lõplikult. Midagi väga olulist on surnud – eks sõnastagem see. Mis see siis on? Pihta on saanud loodus, aga ka usk elu põhiväärtustesse. Usk Eesti looduse kaitsesse on kokku kukkunud. Selle asemele on tulnud teadmine, kui odav on riik, kui alandlik ja hirmunud, kui lihtne on teda raha ja ähvardustega üles osta, panna tegema seda, mida ta mingil juhul teha ei tohiks. Riik on samm-sammult taganenud raha surve ees. Riik on kaotanud väärikuse. See on kõige hullem asi, mis saab juhtuda. Loodus annab riigile väärikuse. Loodus on riigi südametunnistus. Ühiskonda ei iseloomusta mitte see, mida ta loob, vaid see, mida ta keeldub hävitamast. Nii on arvanud Ameerika looduskaitsja John C. Sawhill."

- Valdur Mikita Järelhüüe Fred Jüssile "Head teed sulle, kotkas"

Mice Studying, Kyosai Kawanabe

Apple Trees, Sunset, Eragny, 1896, Camille Pissarro

Medium: oil,canvas

original artwork for Agalloch, by Fursy Teyssier of Les Discrets

untitled by hannahelisabeth on Flickr.

What I really object to... is that there is a rhetoric out there of trying to convince people that they’re insufficient and that everything should be the private property of a small number of people for this reason when in fact, if it was really the case that those few people were so important, and great, and powerful, they wouldn’t need to have all this rhetoric to convince other people of it. People would just see it, they would get it. If there were really a few X-Men floating around, it would be manifest to everyone. In fact, those X-Men wouldn’t even need everyone else. They would do the Atlas Shrugged thing like go off, do whatever you want, and have no connection to the outside world. If you’re really that great, just do it, and stop bitching, and trying to convince everybody else that they’re inadequate, and stupid, and useless, and that you’re the elite. Fine. That doesn’t bother anyone if you want to go do that, but don’t take as private property all the stuff that was produced in this society that we created. Go off on your own with nothing into the forest and build this great Atlantis that you’re capable of doing, and that no one else can do. Great. Honestly, if there were a bunch of X-Men, they would do that. They wouldn’t bother with everyone else. They’d just go off into outer space and do their own thing. That’s not what’s actually going on. What’s actually going on is that there’s this elite of people who’s trying to use rhetoric to dominate others, and to take the collective work that others have done, and expropriate it to themselves. I think that’s nonsense.

Glen Weyl Radical Institutional Rerforms Podcast on 80,000 Hours