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https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1354880986866208769

Elon Musk is apparently working the phones with the FAA right now to try and secure approval for the 10km attempt.

I have no idea what happens next, but they're preparing to load propellant into Starship SN9.

Elon Musk Lashes Out at FAA for Scrubbing Starship Launch

https://twitter.com/SciGuySpace/status/1354888136376070147

In its policy paper for the Biden administration the Coalition for Deep Space, which is funded largely by legacy aerospace firms, appears to not believe that Starship exists.

Methane vent at 20:32 UTC.
Engine chill at 20:40 UTC. Launch possible within 12 minutes?
Condensation on SN9 at 20:46 UTC.
Depressurization at 20:51 UTC.
21:53 UTC: NO launch today.

Alexei Navalny: Millions watch jailed critic's 'Putin palace' film

A video investigation by Russia's leading opposition figure that claims President Vladimir Putin spent illicit funds on an extravagant Black Sea palace has reached more than 20 million people within a day of publication.

Alexei Navalny's team released it after he was jailed on his return to Moscow.

The investigation alleges the property cost £1bn ($1.37bn) and was paid for "with the largest bribe in history".

The Kremlin denies the property belongs to the president.

Claims that federal officials were guarding a vast palace complex on the Black Sea coast were "pure nonsense", spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

The Navalny investigation describes the property as 39 times the size of Monaco.

Russia detains Navalny aides as protests go viral

For a long time the Russian authorities made out that Alexei Navalny was irrelevant. Just a blogger. With a tiny following. No threat whatsoever.

Recent events suggest the opposite. First Mr Navalny was targeted with a nerve agent, allegedly by a secret group of FSB state security hitmen. Instead of investigating the poisoning, Russia is investigating him: on his return from Germany the Kremlin critic was arrested.

Having put Mr Navalny behind bars, the authorities are putting pressure on his supporters. The Kremlin's greatest fear is of a Ukraine-style revolution in Russia that would sweep away those in power.

There's no indication that such a scenario is imminent. But with economic problems growing, the Kremlin will worry that Mr Navalny could act as a lightning rod for protest sentiment. That explains the police crackdown on Navalny allies ahead of Saturday's potential protests.

Plus, this is getting personal. Mr Navalny's video about "Putin's Palace" on the Black Sea was designed to cause maximum embarrassment to the Russian president.

Thousands of suspicious accounts target Russian opposition figures linked to Alexey Navalny on Instagram

Alexei Navalny exposes Instagram of Putin’s alleged love child

Biden seeks extension of START nuclear treaty with Russia

Looks like his YouTube channel exploded (relatively speaking). Quadrupled subscriber count in under 2 weeks.

Installing Debian Linux 2.1 From 1999 Was A Painful Experience ...

Brexit finally got done at 23:00 GMT on 31st December 2020 when the UK's Withdrawal Agreement with the EU finally expired. A "trade deal" between the UK and EU was agreed on 24th December. The Alt-Wrong finally got their prize of freedom, democracy and British sovereignty.

What did they actually win? Chaos at the ports, thousands of tonnes of fish that can't be sold, tariffs, duties, and all sorts of things which were once Project Fear and the undemocratic, treasonous lies of the Liberal Metropolitan Elite, Socialists, Marxists, quislings, traitors, lefties and people who hate their country. Socialism, Marxism, EUSSR, Venezuela, toilet paper!

We are on the third week of this glorious new future of sunlit uplands with no downsides, only upsides with much more to look forward to. And Donald Trump is going to give us a fantastic trade deal with the USA straight away.

Over at the Guardian, Polly Toynbee has an excellent summary entitled Brexiters are waking up to the damage they've done.

As Brexiters turn on each other, Brexit politics move fast. Until now the Tories planned to move on, only reviving “Brexit done” triumphalism to re-arouse the captured red wall at the election: Labour just wanted to bury the whole issue.

The Westminster system has failed us (the UK). We are now looking at Irish Reunification and Scottish Independence. Gibraltar has already got its own deal where it gets to join Schengen.

We have Taken Back Control(TM).

This is not so much a philosophy journal, it is more an acknowledgement of a bizarre phenomenon, serendipity, or the coincidence of the absurd.

Marx says somewhere, that Hegel says somewhere, that everything in history occurs twice, the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. Seems this would be funny, if it were not so true. Our example: the recent rebellion by insane people in the United States of America. Tea Party? As Colorado Gun-nut Congresswoman Lauren Boebert said, "It's 1776!" just before she tweeted the location of the Speaker of the House to the rioters. She needs a better calendar app on her Glock. But it is not so much that, it is the details that cinch the insight. I refer, of course to the guy with the horn-head-dress, Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, who also goes by Jake Angeli. And what, pray tell, is our serendipity? Behold, from Yahoo (appropriately) News:

One of the men arrested after last week's violent attack on the U.S. Capitol was kicked out of the Navy two years into his enlistment for refusing to take a required vaccine.

Jacob Anthony Angeli Chansley, a 33-year-old Navy veteran from Arizona who was arrested and charged after last week's siege at the U.S. Capitol, refused to take the anthrax vaccine while in the Navy, ending his two-year career, a Navy official confirmed to Military.com. Task and Purpose first reported the circumstances that led the Navy to boot Chansley from the ranks.

Chansley, who also goes by Jake Angeli, was arrested Saturday and charged with knowingly entering or remaining in a restricted building without lawful authority, the Department of Justice announced this weekend. Chansley was photographed among supporters of President Donald Trump who carried out a violent takeover of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. He was shirtless, wearing a horned fur headdress and red, white and blue face paint.

Of course, being anti-vax does not go over well in the US Military, as not being antifa does not go over well. But I have noticed a large proportion of seriously insane veterans involved in the recent insurrection by Trump supporters. I put it down to exposure to chemical weapons, or moral damage, but in this case, the similarities are uncanny. What was the "Angeli Shaman's MOS?

Chansley served as a Navy supply clerk seaman apprentice from 2005 to 2007. Navy officials declined to provide further details about his career, including what kind of discharge he received from the military, citing privacy concerns.

Do we know anyone else, who was a Navy supply clerk, and who's discharge records have not been released? (Possibly because they do not exist?). Yes, it is our own traitor, Runaway1956. Haven't seen him be antivax, ever, but fits the rest of the profile. So Runaway was the tragedy, and Jacob is the farce? But they both are supporting the Trump attempt to overthrow the US Constitution. Coincidence, you say? I don't think so!

Oh, and poor Jake Angeli is allegedly starving in detention, since the Feds will not serve him pure organic food. Oh, and did I mention he is a QAnon crazy? Even more serendipity!

From an article in the Guardian about French bean plants:

“We see these signatures of complex behaviour, the one and only difference being is that it’s not neural-based, as it is in humans,” Calvo said. “This isn’t just adaptive behaviour, it’s anticipatory, goal-directed, flexible behaviour.”

Should we start running now?

ADATA to launch 64 GB DDR5-8400 RAM modules for Intel's upcoming Alder Lake-S CPUs in 2H 2021

Back in 2018, the first generation of DDR5 modules for the consumer PC markets were believed to debut with 5200 MT/s data rates and gradually increase speeds up to 8400 MT/s as the standard matured. However, ADATA is already testing 8400 MT/s modules and we could see these speeds offered with the first gen products in late 2021. Of course, the price points for these high-speed modules would be considerably higher than the current DDR4-3200 or even the DDR4-4800 standards, so most users may settle for the DDR5-5200 modules at first.

Capacities will also be increased, as ADATA is considering including up to 64 GB per single module. The DDR5 increased speeds and capacities should be able to ramp up performance scaling with the number of CPU cores, and thus reduce bandwidth-based performance limitations.

Also at Tom's Hardware and Wccftech.

It seems likely that these would also be compatible with AMD's Zen 4, or Zen 3+ on AM5. But for now, RAM speeds will be improving way past the JEDEC official limit (although latencies could still suck) and capacity will be doubling and probably quadrupling later. The internal ECC features could improve the reliability of consumer devices.

National security law: Hong Kong rounds up 53 pro-democracy activists

More than 50 of Hong Kong's most prominent pro-democracy activists and politicians have been arrested in the biggest crackdown since China imposed a draconian security law last year.

About 1,000 police took part in morning raids on 72 premises across the city.

Those held helped run an unofficial "primary" to pick opposition candidates ahead of postponed 2020 elections.

They are accused of trying to "overthrow" the government. Activists say the new law aims to quash dissent.

China's government imposed the legislation on the semi-autonomous territory in June, saying it was necessary to curb months of sometimes violent pro-democracy protests.

Beijing defended Wednesday's arrests, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying saying they were needed to stop "external forces and individuals [colluding] to undermine China's stability and security".

But the crackdown appeared to confirm the fears of many who warned about the reach of the law, with Amnesty International saying the arrests are "the starkest demonstration yet of how the national security law has been weaponised to punish anyone who dares to challenge the establishment".

Previously: One Million People Protest a Proposed Extradition Law in Hong Kong; Gov't Acquiesces, for Now
Hong Kong Heating Up Again?
Hong Kong Archery
China Passes Hong Kong Security Law
Pro-Democracy Books Pulled in Hong Kong
Hong Kong Pro-Democracy Legislators Resign En Masse

Nothing for Soylentils: On Nihilism

Recent journal talk has brought things on SN to a head. It is time we had a talk about absolutes again, about truth, and justice, and beauty, all the big things. Mostly it is khallow, again, but fustakrakchich as well, that have been spouting some pretty, philosophically, fascist stuff. Perhaps it is time we had "the talk". The talk about Nothing.

What makes philosophy itself so confusing, and so reviled by the, um, less intellectually curious, is that it deals with foundations. And it deals with foundations by questioning them. For the edices that stand upon these foundations, this is tantamount to sabotage, and indeed it is. Perhaps everything we know is wrong? Maybe Plato's "Allegory of the Cave" or the Wachoski (former) Brothers Matrix, are true representations of our "reality", and we are actually living in a dream world. Of course, the real question, is what happens when we wake up from that world of appearences? Is there a world of reality, like Plato's True Sun, waiting to blind us with the blazing truth of reality? Or, is it possible that behind the world of appearence, there is nothing, or worse a crappy hovercraft with the same old slop everyday that is supposed to taste like Tasty Wheat? And more bad Matrix movies? *shudder*

We are here right now to understand the relation between the two paths. Not so much as the red pill vs. the blue pill, but the red pill versus no pill. It is one thing to reveal that experienced reality is not really all that real, we all know that to a certain extent, but we expect the shimmering water of a mirage to become a solid roadway by the time we get to it. It is another to find onself hurtling through empty space, when the pavement ends. But either of these is an exercise in sublation. We take what we see, and we subsume it under a larger understanding, erasing its significance as mere phenomena. And this sublation may be the real point, regardless of what we use to do it.

Now the point came up in a journal by acid andy, purportedly attempting to get away from politics. He cited a very common worldview, what is some times called "Realism" or in political science, Realpolitik, the idea that everyone is selfishly motivated:

"We want Tribe X to get more money, power and/or freedom, at the expense of Tribe Y."

[cite] I pointed out that this is a common presumption by certain political views. And of course, there was a response.

Here is khallow's scathing obvious rebuttal, such as it is:

"We want Tribe X to get more money, power and/or freedom, at the expense of Tribe Y."

This, in a nutshell, is the Libertarian/Republican/Fascist view of human nature.

Or in other words, your view. Ideological nihilism only says something about you.

Followed by my response:

Oh, noes! I have "touched" khallow! You are so deep into the nihilism you cannot see outside it?

Nihilism trouble appeared in a comment by by fustakrakich (#1080231):

Why do you hate nihilism?

To which I replied,

Nothing there to hate! Why do you think there is? Are you empty inside, Fusta?

And thus it begins.

So our question is, what is "nihilism", and why does aristarchus hate it so? What provoked all this talking about nothing was my original comment on acid andy's "Tribe X" comment.

This, in a nutshell, is the Libertarian/Republican/Fascist view of human nature. Was just reading an interesting review of the alt-right fascination with the fascism inherent in Dune, over a the The L. A. Review of Books [lareviewofbooks.org], how the inferior races are incapable of delayed gratification, and so we need aryan heroes to rule over the rest of us.

As you can see, the nihilism originates with khallow, which is strangely appropriate. And he is not wrong. Nihilism, as a philosophical position, has a long and varied history, but is often connected to eras of dissolution and disillusionment. Thus the Dune reference: the failing Empire calls forth a super-hero? But this is predicated on a recognition that the values of the past are corrupt, decadent, and in a word, not real. And this is the real kicker: if those values were not real, then no values can be real, and the only thing that matters is power. Relativism is the first step, fascism is the end result. But the use of state power to enforce values that the enforcers themselves admit are unreal never ends well. But this leads us to the connection between "standing up for values" and nihilism.

Nihilism, as most sources will tell you, is from Latin "nihil", or "nothing". English has the word "nil" remaining, as well as the related name of everyone's favorite dev/null. So Nihilism is the view that Nothing is, or to put it more correctly, "there is nothing". (Either of these, as existential claims, are problematic, as you can see.) Often this "nothing" is divided up into different types, political nihilism, moral nihilism, epistemological nihilism, and so forth, but really what it all comes down to is the idea that there is nothing. This may seem strange to many, but, if you seriously consider reality, it is vastly over-rated. I mean, what evidence do we even have that reality exists, outside of our own experience? It is a live possibility that everything we think we know and experience is wrong. And the real question is, how do we prove it is not. I like the call the the "possibility that we are Massively mistaken" hypothesis. And it scares the crap out of some people.

So, maybe there is nothing. It is possible. The real question, however, is why would anyone ever maintain that? What is to be gained by "nothing"? As they say, "Nothing ventured, nothing gained!". As a negative, one purpose of nihilism is to counter something-ism. "Something-ism" is what the Hellenistic Greek Pyrhonnists referred to as "Dogmatism". "Dogma" derives from "doxa", or opinon, but the Latin word "doceō", to teach, gives the meaning of dogma in English: a teaching. The Stoics were of the opinion that reality is real, and that the proper discipline could lead to actual knowledge of reality. If you are going to teach (being a "doctor") you had better have something to teach, even if you have to make it up! It was the claim to access to the ultimate reality, to the objective truth, that riled up the Skeptics, and caused them to come up with a counter-program.

So what do you do with someone that is convinced they have a handle on the truth? Well, you have to disabuse them of that notion. The Skeptics did this by developing argument forms, called "Tropes", that were aimed at countering Stoic claims to knowledge. Their point was not to prove the Stoic claims false, but to show that a counter-position was equally plausible, leading to a draw, an ἐποχή ("epoche"), a suspension of belief, or a recision of a the truth claim. But this brings us to the crux.

        "Realists", used loosely as a term of deparagement for those who think there is an objective, extra-experiential reality, are bothered as much by sceptics as they are by nihilists. In the inaugural episode of Neil de Grasse-Tyson's resurrected "Cosmos" series, he goes right to the issue. Copernicus basically discorvered that the Ptolemaic model of the universe was clunky, and that a Heliocentric model was much easier mathematically. To which I said, "duh!!" I do that a lot. But it was not until Italians read Copernicus's book that trouble began. And, the trouble ended up not being so astronomical in origin, as philosophical. Giordano Bruno read not only Copernicus, but also Lucretius, a text that was on the Index Librorum Prohibitoum, De rerum natura, or "The Nature of Things. Now Lucretius work was neither sceptic nor Stoic, it was instead, materialistic. The Greek atomist school is pre-Socratic, and as Lucretius lays out, denies the divine, the supernatural, the post-biotic existence of persons. So here is our first irony: The church sought to ban the consideration that physical reality might be all there is.

        Now we are at the heart of the matter, so to speak. Scepticism opened up a range of doubt, materialism went whole hog with a non-metaphysical theory, but that is not the point. The point is, nihilism. Materialism has many advantages, in terms of scientific exploration, and technological development, but it promotes, or even asserts, a partial nihilism. What exists, exists, but it has no reason to, existence is meaningless. Now, scepticism is not so sure about this, being, after all, skeptical. Religion, then, is opposed to both the admission of doubt, and the assertion of a reality that doubts those things that religion claims to know. In other words, the Church was afraid of the possibility of nihilism.

        The skeptics, after all, are not so worried about nihilism. You tell me that the chair I am about to sit down on is only a figment of my mind, that perception is no indication of reality. As a sceptic, I say, maybe, maybe no, the only important thing is that when I sit, I sit. But the nihilist says, but how do you know the chair exists outside of your perception of the chair? We could be in a Matrix-like virtual construct! And the sceptic says, "Yeah, maybe, so what? As long as I can sit down." It is, however, much worse for the realist. They say, "But, you are sitting on a chair! How is that possible, unless there is an objectively existing chair that existed underneath your preception of the chair, and in fact both the cause of your perception, and your not falling on your arse?" To which the sceptic responds, "Maybe, maybe not." See? This is the problem. Do not try to sit on the chair, because obviously that is impossible. Instead, try to realize the truth, there is no chair.

Ok, who is more the moron, the "realist" or the nihilist? On the one hand, both of them claim knowledge of ultimate reality in a way that is demonstrably impossible for humans. On the other, the claim that something exists is something more a positive claim that saying that nothing exists. At least with "nothing" you are either totally wrong, or totally right, right? So the Realists, like the Stoic Dogmatists, are the ones with more exposure. And this is where I suggest that they are actually the greater Nihilists? This will take a moment to explain.

        Realists claim that some reality exists. They claim this "reality" has certain characteristics. And from these characteristics, they derive policy. Not all that different than the program of the Stoics. But, at a certain level, these claims are groundless, based on pure supposition. Take for example, our beloved khallow. He knows that the world works on greed and accumulation of wealth. Ergo, redistribution or social justice programs are doomed to fail. Of course, true by definition, an example of petitio principii, but the point is, by being so locked up in unestablished assumptions about reality, this is tantamount to a nihilism. If my ontological presuppostions are accepted, my policy prevails. If not then some other set of equally ungrounded presuppostions will prevail, and then they will be right, because they have won. Yes, culture wars. Not a matter of who is right, but only of who wins. And that, of course, is nihilism pure an simple. If your presuppostions are losing, you burn it all down, since that is all there is.

So, I call upon my fellow soylentils, ponder the nature of reality, and the utility of denying the existence of anything at all, and the perfidy of claiming to know what reality really is. In Greek we call this "ὕβρις", overweening pride, and we follow it with the observation that, Whom the Gods would destroy, they first drive MAGA"

More original source, and links!

Fusta gets accused of nihilistic centrism! Oh, the huge Manatees! https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=40886&page=1&cid=1082923#commentwrap

Nihilism, by Nolen Gertz in Aeon, 27 February 2020.

Race Consciousness: Fascism and Frank Herbert’s “Dune”, By Jordan S. Carroll

And, Breaking!! New Resource: Three Therapies for the Affective Nihilist: Talking to Kaitlyn Creasy, By Andy Fitch at the LA Review of Books, 12/26/2020, if anyone needs more Nietzsche.

I have a telescope and I haven't used it for years due to lack of space. It's been neatly away in its box. I thought I would get it out for looking at this Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.

On Sunday I decided to get the telescope built and do a test run. I was trying to cook a roast chicken dinner and put up the telescope at the same time. By the time I got it outside, the planets were getting very low on the horizon but after a few minutes I managed to get Jupiter and Saturn just as they went behind a tree, so I had to look at them in between the branches.

The next day it rained all day and the sky was completely overcast so I missed the real event.