I thought it was good for men ‘to talk about their feelings’?
What surprised me was how the interviewer stated his remarks have offended people of colour.
How on earth could his remarks be interpreted as a racial slur or blight on black people? His point was clearly to acknowledge his own deep psychological suffering and tribal angst in that era of his life. That took courage in my book.
In effect, his openness about this issue may prevent or dissuade the next person who is out for blood when they or someone close to them has become the victim of violence.
Instead, the ‘modern’ left pigeon-holed Liam’s reflections into their collectivist ‘group identity’ narrative. His individuality; remorse; intended message; and of course the actual victim are really of little or no consequence.
I remember a time when the ‘left’ would be lining up to give someone like that a medal. Now the the ‘modern left’ want him publicly shamed and his career effectively terminated.
Below is Joe Rogan & Sam Harris’ take on the Liam Neeson Controversy:
I am an avid viewer of science lectures especially those relating to cosmology, the origins of the universe and quantum mechanics. I found the above lecture by Sean Carroll engrossing and challenging; so much so, I felt compelled to write excerpts in an attempt to internalize the information.
Most of what is written below is verbatim, however some of the lecture is partially redacted to be more reader-friendly:
Not every piece of The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is overwhelming in its size. This canister is where all the protons come from. The protons come from hydrogen which are shaken up to extract electrons and then fill up the LHC. There are 100’s of trillions of protons in the LHC at any one moment. This canister has enough protons in it to power the LHC for tens of billions of years. Effectively, the protons are smashed together and usually a whole bunch of particles we already know about are detected. The overwhelming majority of data is discarded. A trigger is used to look for interesting events. So there is a lot of effort put into isolating the signal from all the noise.
The Higgs Boson when immediately created instantly decays. The lifetime of a Higgs Boson is a Zeptosecond. You never see the Higgs Boson in the detector. They instantly decay into something else. And because it’s quantum mechanics you don’t know what it’s going to decay into, you can only discuss the probability. You are looking for an excess number of events of a certain type. Trying to find the Higgs Boson is not like looking for a needle in a haystack, rather it’s analogous to looking for ‘hay’ in a haystack. You are looking for the statistical deviation from the predictable number of produced particles. It’s like trying to verify that there are a few more haystalks of a certain fixed length than you would ordinarily see given the statistics of haystacks.
Quantum Fields
What nature is made up of is fields. Quantum field theory is the central organising principle of modern physics. Quantum field theory is the reconciliation of special relativity with quantum mechanics. It is the best idea we have of understanding the world at a fundamental level. It might not be true. There might be better approximations, but it’s the best understanding we have now. There is absolutely no experiment which has ever been done on earth that even hints that Quantum field theory is not correct. A field doesn’t have a location. It exists everywhere. Particles have a location; and fields fill space.
The Iron filings in the image trace out the lines of the magnetic field. In between the magnet and the metal there is a field stretching out which you don’t see. The field is being affected by the magnet and the metal and they are being drawn to one another.
How does this ‘laser pointer’ know to fall down. It’s because there is a gravitational field. There is a field at every point in space such as the electric field, neutrino field, the up quark field. Quantum field theory tells you that everything is a wave in a field and when we observe vibrating fields we see particles. What ‘we’ see when we look at the world is much less than what there is. What there really is; are waves. But when we look at it we see particles.
Creating the Higg’s Boson anew
By colliding particles together you are not releasing Higgs Bosons. You are creating Higgs Boson’s anew for the very first time. How are we doing that? The quarks and gluons inside your proton are really vibrating waves and when they collide at high energy they start another vibrating wave and that wave becomes the Higgs Boson. A good example of the way this works is if you play a piano sufficiently loudly and there is another piano sitting next to you, the sound waves can reach the strings of the adjoining piano and they will begin to vibrate and resonate. So the fields between the strings are connected to one another. So that is the world as we understand right now. It contains a bunch of fields interacting with one another and transferring their energies back and forth.
The gluons are the particles of the strong nuclear force that hold the quarks together. They merge together to make a top quark which then emits a Higgs Boson and then decays into bottom quarks and bottom anti-quarks. What is really happening here is; these waves in the gluon field set up a wave in the top quark field which converts into a wave in the Higgs Boson field that in turn converts into the waves of the bottom quark field. So now we have been able to complete the standard model of particle physics.
There are only 2 kinds of fields in nature: Fermions (such as electrons or quarks) and Bosons. They are matter fields and force fields respectively. The matter fields are the Fermions which have the simple property that they only vibrate a ‘fixed’ amount. Converted into ‘particle language’ this means: you can only have one particle in a given place at any one time. The reason this podium is solid and doesn’t collapse in on itself is because the electrons in the atoms that make up the plastic molecules in this podium ‘take up space’ because they are Fermions. The Bosons fields can oscillate widely. So in particle language you can pile Bosons on top of each other. Bosonic fields describe forces acting on and between the Fermions such as Gravitons. So these 2 kinds of particles make up everything we have ever observed in any experiment ever done.
So why do we need the Higg’s Boson in the standard model?
Without the Higgs field the standard model would make no sense. What makes the Higgs field a different field to any other? Consider this scenario: So you go out into empty space in the interstellar vacuum where there is no radiation and no dark matter and you effectively make the minimum amount of energy you can have in a cubic centimeter of that empty space.
All the fields are set to zero. So if you have a magnetic field it has zero energy. If it’s not zero then it has to have some positive amount of energy. You need to put energy in, for the field value to increase. The difference between Higgs and other fields is it wants to be nonzero even in empty space, even at its lower energy configuration. If you were a particle traversing between galaxies you would be moving through the Higgs field. You would not be moving through the other fields because they are close to zero. Essentially, the Higgs field is everywhere and surrounds us all the time. The Higgs Boson particle is a little vibration in the Higgs field and it effects the behaviour of all other particles that are moving through it.
What would a Universe without the Higgs field be like?
There’s a big difference between a universe without a Higgs field and one with it. Without the Higgs field elementary particles (like electrons and quarks) would be mass-less and move at the speed of light like other mass-less particles: photons and gravitons. Fortunately, electrons don’t move at the speed of light otherwise they would never get stuck to a nucleus and form an atom. The electron encounters the Higgs field as it moves through space which gives it some inertia and mass. Essentially the Higgs field makes particles of nature slow down; join together and form complex structures like you and me. So without the Higgs there would be no chemistry, no life. An atom forms when an electron joins up with a nucleus and in turn the atoms join together to make molecules. With the Higgs we have a complete theory of the everyday world.
Food for thought
We do know that there are no new parts of nature that we haven’t already found which could exert a substantial influence over our everyday lives. There are no new particles of forces that could be relevant for everyday life that science hasn’t already found. Could there be new forces of nature? Yes, but they would have to interact with protons, neutrons and electrons. So they would be very weak; weaker than a gravity and short range; like shorter than an atom.
Mandy was certainly a trip to the bottom of the pit. If ever there was a movie which will assuredly become a cult classic, it’s Mandy. Also, if there is such a genre as art-house supernatural horror, then Mandy would certainly feel right at home.
I went in expecting an above average horror-revenge flick, but by the time the credits rolled I realised Mandy had far exceeded my expectations and was groundbreaking in what it achieved as a cinematic piece of art. Oh and by the way; lay off any previews if you haven’t seen it. Watch it roar (misspelling and pun intended).
Viewing Mandy, for me at least, was like having a psychedelic experience. The movie’s imagery consistently reflects an other worldliness; a lucid dreaming state that is set to one of the best music scores I’ve heard in a long time. And I don’t even like Death Metal, but in this movie it was superbly propounded.
Not that Mandy is without it’s shortcomings such as an underwhelming and ‘slow’ first third, but that is soon forgotten by the waves of extraordinary scenes which follow. The tempo and unfolding of story is not unlike The Shining.
Now for Nicolas Cage: I never really dug his output perhaps since Adaptation, but he risks everything here and it pays huge dividends. You will remember his crazy eyes in ‘Face-off’, well he shits all over that in this performance. Mandy highlights just how in control he is of his craft. He truly embraces this like he is the last man.
Overall, it’s a very underappreciated movie from what was arguably a relatively lackluster year in cinema…2018. I think Mandy will become one of those unheralded gems and be embraced by cine-files for years to come.
The light shines
through everything
The light is true,
the lessons learned
His song of you and me
When I was at the bottom
of the pit...----From the movie script 'Mandy'
Then I came to realise, the Intellectual Dark Web really doesn’t seem to be finding much traction. Obviously each constituent has their own fan base and all are gaining in popularity, but people seem to be reticent about embracing the IDW concept. Look at these numbers for instance:
The above video on the IDW from rebel wisdom just over 23,000.
So the IDW as a virtual constituency is a comparatively small renegade. Joe Rogan viewers remain loyal to him and Sam Harris to him and so on. But it’s unlikely Sam Harris fans are also Jordan admirers and vice versa. But there appears to be a lack of engagement and conversation between fan bases; a real parting of the waters as it were.
The numbers don’t lie and for someone who cherishes liberty over authoritarianism, and the importance of freedom of speech; the lack of IDW traction on the broader virtual landscape is surprising and frankly concerning.
Brian cox is an English physicist who serves as professor of particle physics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester. Brian Cox is one of the best speakers when it comes to communicating science to the average Joe (no pun intended). This was probably the best Joe Rogan ‘science-related’ podcast I have seen. I didn’t think Sean Carroll’s first podcast on JR could be topped, but it just might have been here.
This was extremely informative even for someone who actively watches science communicators in these mediums. I also liked Joe a lot here. They got right in the middle of things and managed to have a really fluid conversation from beginning to end. Brian is truly a gift to us.
Police are being deployed by Humberside Police in the UK to call up social media users to ask them to explain their thinking behind their controversial posts/likes.
He added: “Although none of the tweets were criminal, I said to Mr Miller that the limerick is the kind of thing that upsets the transgender community. I warned him that if it escalates we will have to take further action. If someone comes forward and says: ‘I’m the victim of a hate incident and it’s really upsetting me’, then we have to investigate”.
After Mr Miller questioned why the complainant was being described as a “victim” if no crime had been committed, the officer told him: “We need to check your thinking”.
What the hell is happening? People being called up by coppers because they liked or retweeted a limerick. You have got to be kidding me.
While I do not share Mr Miller’s proclivity to retweet or ‘like’ content of this nature, I do find it alarming that police resources are being used to curb someone for liking or retweeting content which another might find offensive.
The power the authoritarian-left is beginning to wield on western democracies is very concerning.
When this broke I ignored it wondering how it was even considered news. But the event caused such a grand commotion online I felt compelled to dig a little deeper. I am still perplexed how it was perceived in the mainstream media and in threads all over social media. Now the dust has settled ‘a little’ and we understand a lot more about what actually happened based on the longer unedited videos which surfaced; the instant emotional responses as expressed in many media articles and comments online did not in any way represent the truth. People made this into an identitarian-morality play. They placed all of their anger and vitriol on the face of a 16 year old kid. One comment I just read on this blogger’s page is just a small example of where people took this:
They’re lucky he didn’t snap and go back to his days in the Nam, cracking their spindly high school heads. What a disgrace those boys showed
The 16 year old is just a kid with a red trump supporter hat on. Reactions like these are totally illogical and asinine. Did smirking at an elderly native American deserve to be news? I am not even sure he was smirking as much as just standing proudly and smiling in front of the Native American gentlemen. This was covered as bigger news than day 31 of the Government shutdown and people waiting on breadlines etc. That is more disturbing than anything that occurred at this event. People must insist on truth and facts and not on holding people accountable based on their blinkered ideological thinking. This is a microscopic example of what is happening on the authoritarian-left these days and it’s genuinely scary. The Joe Rogan video with Bari Weiss podcast unpacks all of this. Also Jimmy Dore did pretty well here as well if you want someone on the left who can be honest.
I remember my school-friend Gary spending countless school hours drawing cartoons of his school friends’ families. He had a peculiar flair for exploiting their features, and did it in such a way that you had to admire his artistry and wit. I have kept one of his drawings for old time’s sake. When I look at it every now and then, I can’t help chuckling. I’m Matthew by the way.
He nailed my family, he really did… right down to the trailer wheels on my bike. You see, I wasn’t a very good cyclist and Gary was an excellent cyclist and frankly his bike shat all over mine.
This two-part short about The Evergreen Scandal is associated with a feature-length documentary I’m working on about The Grievance Studies Affair, following Peter Boghossian, Helen Pluckrose and James Lindsay. – Mike Nayna
This is an extraordinary video. One quote from a young white lady really struck me, ‘I refuse to let whiteness consume me. I’m going to say that explicitly – ‘whiteness’. I refuse for my mother, her mother, my grandfather, their ancestors….’
The meeting with the canoe analogy was like a scene from a Dystopian novel. The chanting and level of delusion was astounding.
‘More resistant, a more violent kind of action and also prayer…3 different political strategies’
Observation Blogger 