We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
At the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, it appears they have finally managed to achieve a meaningful breakthrough.
What just happened?
Researchers at the NIF have announced that, for the first time, they have managed to do just that. The team used 2.1MJ of energy to heat the fuel with lasers, releasing 2.5MJ of energy.
Is that a lot of energy?
No, not really. The difference – 0.4MJ – is about 0.1kWh. That’s about enough energy to boil a kettle to make a few cups of tea.
The first flight at Kitty Hawk was about 180 feet, but it proved it would be done.
Such vignettes capture the core dysfunctionality of Twitter: Everyone thinks the place would be great, if only we could be rid of all those other guys. For doctrinaire progressives, the preferred means for doing so has always been top-down censorship (or, if you prefer, “community standards”). But that dream has now been crushed: Even if Musk doesn’t eliminate content moderation altogether, he’s never going to give the Jonah Simms crowd anything near the bubble-wrapped social-media experience they want. That’s why these goodbye-cruel-Twitter threads have such a glum, self-pitying quality to them. It’s one thing to put up with dissenting opinions. It’s another thing to know that you’ll always have to put up with them.
My latest purchase is an English jug produced in 1847 commemorating the repeal of the iniquitous Corn Laws, reminding us that the struggle against an overmighty state is nothing new.
As far as Hancock was concerned, anyone who fundamentally disagreed with his approach [to Covid] was mad and dangerous and needed to be shut down. His account shows how quickly the suppression of genuine medical misinformation – a worthy endeavour during a public health crisis – morphed into an aggressive government-driven campaign to smear and silence those who criticised the response. Aided by the Cabinet Office, the Department of Health harnessed the full power of the state to crush individuals and groups whose views were seen as a threat to public acceptance of official messages and policy. As early as January 2020, Hancock reveals that his special adviser was speaking to Twitter about ‘tweaking their algorithms’. Later he personally texted his old coalition colleague Nick Clegg, now a big cheese at Facebook, to enlist his help. The former Lib Dem deputy prime minister was happy to oblige.
Such was the fear of ‘anti-vaxxers’ that the Cabinet Office used a team hitherto dedicated to tackling Isis propaganda to curb their influence. The zero-tolerance approach extended to dissenting doctors and academics. The eminent scientists behind the so-called Barrington Declaration, which argued that public health efforts should focus on protecting the most vulnerable while allowing the general population to build up natural immunity to the virus, were widely vilified: Hancock genuinely considered their views a threat to public health.
[…]
Hancock, Whitty and Johnson knew full well that non-medical face masks do very little to prevent transmission of the virus. People were made to wear them anyway because Dominic Cummings was fixated with them; because Nicola Sturgeon liked them; and above all because they were symbolic of the public health emergency.
– Isabel Oakeshott, laying out a damning narrative of the government’s response to Covid. Strangely, the linked article’s very feeble final paragraph seems at odds with the listed litany of woe Matt Hancock and his ilk were responsible for.
When I first read of the storm-in-a-teacup story of an 83 year old royal aide, Lady Susan Hussey, asking some black woman who runs a charity, Ngozi Fulani “where are you actually from?”… I thought it seemed rather a crass line of questioning in this day and age. Indeed, cringeworthy was the term that came to mind.
But then I saw a picture of Ngozi Fulani (if ever there was a Liverpudlian sounding name… previously known as Marlene Headley) dressed like an extra on the set of some Black Panther movie, suddenly the entire encounter started to look entirely different.
Turns out the woman was cosplaying as an African and yet took umbrage when someone consequently assumed she was African (pro-tip Susan, actual Africans rarely dress like that which should have been a giveaway). The moment Ngozi Fulani started flouncing around announcing how upset she was at such ‘racism’, the response should have been to tell her to grow the hell up and make damn sure she never gets invited to any official functions in the future.
The Autumn Statement was a tragic miscalculation, the final failure of a project to undo the gravest mistakes of the New Labour era and shift the UK in a more dynamic, more conservative direction. Lacking any meaningful plan for economic growth, and postponing many of the most difficult decisions on spending until after the next election, the Statement passed the costs of a ballooning state onto the productive parts of the economy when disposable incomes are collapsing. It was a victory for the Treasury technocrats who have resisted every attempt to move the UK away from Brownite orthodoxy.
Kazakh expat Azamat Junisbai has some very interesting observations seeking to explain wide support in Russia for the war against Ukraine.
Russian society famously underwent extreme upheavals in the 20th century. Revolutions, World Wars, emergence and collapse of the USSR – the dizzying magnitude of change and disruption is hard to exaggerate. Yet, amidst all the turmoil, one part of the Russian worldview persisted.
The remarkably stable and enduring phenomenon transcending different historical periods and regime types is the self-conception of Russia as a great power that brings good to those around it and Russian people as bearers of superior culture and morality. Deeply internalized, the idea of its own benevolence has long permeated and shaped Russian society. In this narrative, unlike the old European powers guilty of ruthless colonial conquest, Russia is a selfless bringer of culture, prosperity, and order.
The view of Russia as a big brother bestowing its blessings on the lesser people around it is ubiquitous among Russians of all political persuasions. In this narrative, Russia’s neighbours are perpetually indebted to it. The relationship is always unequal.
The word “gift” features prominently. The gifts include Russian language, literature, music, and art. But also science and, even, modernity itself. Naturally, in this worldview, Russians are superior and those on the receiving end of Russia’s largesse are expected to be grateful.
Russia’s view of Central Asians is unabashedly and unapologetically racist, of the “we taught you how to piss standing up” variety. Russia’s long-standing view of Ukrainians is more complex but equally pernicious and condescending.
There is an unintentionally insightful article on Unherd by Will Lloyd called Meet Britain’s radical New Right, written from a predictably wet Tory perspective. We are told conservatives with what are fairly conventional conservative views are radical, and moreover new. And that tells us much about orthodox high status opinion in the UK.
I should have stopped reading at “Brexit has failed”.
For most voters, Brexit was about sovereignty according to Ashcroft exit poll, meaning Westminster has nowhere to hide. So, pace Will Lloyd & Nigel Farage alike, we at least got that, mission accomplished. Brexit wasn’t what you thought it was and it still isn’t. What comes next is not ‘Brexit’, it’s just politics; there is no undoing Brexit this side of perpetual civil war.
Much as the author sneers at the Right (whatever that means when not talking about France circa 1790), Jeremy Hunt’s “Conservative” Party is not small-c conservative in any shape, way, or form. The Tories have driven a stake through their own heart, ending any pretence of being a ‘broad church’, because if they were, Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng would still be in Downing Street in spite of straying from the Blue Blairite orthodoxy. Hell, they were defenestrated in no small part for trying to put the top rate of tax back to where it was for 12 years under the last Labour government. That’s radical apparently.
If you want less tax; even slightly less state control of anything at all; no taking the knee; no eco-pandering to the Net Zero cult; an energy policy that allows fracking and expanding North Sea production rather than one that could have been written by Vladimir Putin; no talk of ‘reparations’ (climate or otherwise), why would anyone who wants those things vote Tory? No reason, and they won’t.
The party membership voted for Truss but they got Sunak anyway. Okay, message received, everyone now knows what the party nomenklatura & apparatchiks think of the rank-and-file party membership. The members might as well have voted for Larry the Cat as party leader for all the difference it made, at least he’s still in Downing Street.
Voting Tory in last general election was essential when the alternative was Corbyn, the most odious mainstream politician since Oswald Mosley (for some of the same reasons). But Keir Starmer is just another dreary Blairite, he’s Jeremy Hunt without the unfortunate China connections. Then the choice is vote for Blue Blairites who likes high taxes and ruinous green policies, or Red Blairites who likes high taxes, ruinous green policies, and don’t know what a woman is. On the plus side, Labour have Diane Abbott, who can take over Boris’ role providing comic relief.
So, I will be voting Reform UK, because at this point, I couldn’t care less which flavour of technocratic Blairite is in Downing Street. Jeremy Hunt and his ilk can get stuffed. Sure, Labour will get in and it won’t be pretty unless ginger growlers are your thing. But perhaps, just perhaps, utterly burning the Tories to the ground might let something better emerge from the ashes.
Will Lloyd no doubt thinks that’s crazy talk, given that without any detectable irony he wrote of this ‘radical new right’:
“Do not expect them to sculpt a future of fair dealing, pragmatism, patience, moderation or high intelligence”
Imagine thinking the soaking wet dunderheads running the Tory Party as of late 2022 represent even a single one of those presumed virtues. It’s not called the Stupid Party for nothing.
Remember, remember, the Fifth of November
Gunpowder treason and plot
I see no reason why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot
Interesting how the significance of those words changed over the years to be less about the Gunpowder Plot of 5 November 1605, and more about attitudes towards contemporary politics.
More about notions like “V” than the actual historical Guy Fawkes.
The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Powered by WordPress & Atahualpa
