Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance
Release Date: 08/13/2024
Your Book Review: Silver Age Marvel Comics
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Finalist #9 in the Book Review Contest You are a serious person with serious interests. The last comic book you read was more likely by Bryan Caplan than Jonathan Hickman. You would prefer to be reading high quality book reviews on AstralCodexTen. You believe ACX book reviews are usually more insightful than the books themselves, and a far more efficient use of your time. But even book reviews take time to process, and there are a lot of book reviews to read. Why spend your valuable time reading an 11,000 word review of superhero comic books? That is the first question I aim to answer in this...
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Why Does Ozempic Cure All Diseases?
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Fine, the title is an exaggeration. But only a small one. GLP-1 receptor agonist medications like Ozempic are already FDA-approved to treat diabetes and obesity. But an increasing body of research finds they’re also effective against , , , , and . There’s a pattern in fake scammy alternative medicine. People get excited about some new herb. They invent a laundry list of effects: it improves heart health, softens menopause, increases energy, deepens sleep, clears up your skin. This is how you know it’s a fraud. Real medicine works by mimicking natural biochemical signals. Why would...
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Your Book Review: How the War Was Won
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] To a first approximation, there are a million books about World War II. Why should you care about How the War Was Won (hereinafter “HtWWW”) by Phillips Payson O’Brien? It provides a new, transformative view of the conflict by focusing on production of key goods and what affected...
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Highlights From The Comments On Nietzsche
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[original post ] Table Of Contents I. Comments About Master And Slave Morality II. Comments By People Named In The Post III. Comments Making Specific Points About One Of The Thinkers In The Post IV. Other Comments
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Altruism And Vitalism As Fellow Travelers
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
Some commenters on accused me of misunderstanding the Nietzschean objection to altruism. We hate altruism, they said, not because we’re “bad and cruel”, but because we instead support vitalism. Vitalism is a moral system that maximizes life, glory and strength, instead of maximizing happiness. Altruism is bad because it throws resources into helping sick (maybe even dysgenic) people, thus sapping our life, glory, and strength. In (linked in the original post, discussed at length in the comments), Walt Bismarck compares the ultimate fate of altruism to WALL-E: a world where morbidly...
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Your Book Review: Two Arms and a Head
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked] Content warning: body horror, existential devastation, suicide. This book is an infohazard that will permanently alter your view of paraplegia. The Death of a Newly-Paraplegic Philosopher For me, paraplegia and life itself are not compatible. This is not life, it is something else. In...
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Matt Yglesias Considered As The Nietzschean Superman
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
I. Bentham’s Bulldog Blogger “Bentham’s Bulldog” recently wrote . Nietzsche’s concept of “slave morality” (he writes) is just a dysphemism for the usual morality where you’re not bad and cruel. Right-wing edgelords use “rejection of slave morality” as a justification for badness and cruelty: When people object to slave morality, they are just objecting to morality. They are objecting to the notion that you should care about others and doing the right thing, even when doing so doesn’t materially benefit you. Now, one can consistently object to those things, but it...
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Your Book Review: Real Raw News
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[This is one of the finalists in the 2024 book review contest, written by an ACX reader who will remain anonymous until after voting is done. I’ll be posting about one of these a week for several months. When you’ve read them all, I’ll ask you to vote for a favorite, so remember which ones you liked]
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Links for July 2024
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
[I haven’t independently verified each link. On average, commenters will end up spotting evidence that around two or three of the links in each links post are wrong or misleading. I correct these as I see them, and will highlight important corrections later, but I can’t guarantee I will have caught them all by the time you read this.]
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Some Practical Considerations Before Descending Into An Orgy Of Vengeance
Astral Codex Ten Podcast
The “LibsOfTikTok” Twitter account found a random Home Depot employee who said she wished the Trump assassin hadn’t missed. Her followers mass-called Home Depot . Moral of the story: despite everything, there’s apparently still a norm against assassinating politicians. But some on the right interpreted this as meaning something more. A sudden vibe shift, or impending Trump victory, has handed conservatives the levers of cancel culture! This sparked a right-wing blogosphere debate: should they be magnanimous in victory, or descend into an orgy of vengeance?
info_outlineThe “LibsOfTikTok” Twitter account found a random Home Depot employee who said she wished the Trump assassin hadn’t missed. Her followers mass-called Home Depot and got the employee fired.
Moral of the story: despite everything, there’s apparently still a norm against assassinating politicians. But some on the right interpreted this as meaning something more. A sudden vibe shift, or impending Trump victory, has handed conservatives the levers of cancel culture! This sparked a right-wing blogosphere debate: should they be magnanimous in victory, or descend into an orgy of vengeance?
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/some-practical-considerations-before