patrick.net

There is a standard Irish which is taught in schools and used in official documents.

I threw a good five years into learning Irish, even studying a bit on Inisheer (Irish: Inis Oírr). The three main dialects are mutually intelligible and people converse across them all the time. The fourth dialect is Scottish Gaelic, which is not really a separate language from Irish, though the Scots would like to think so. It's further removed, but I've read that any Irish speaker needs only about a week to get a pretty good understanding of Scottish. I can get parts of it myself.

The Irish colonized Scotland about the same time that the Angles and Saxons were moving into England, like 700 AD. This is why Scottish Gaelic exists. The Irish brought it there.

Someone left this book out on the street nearby for free with other household items for anyone to pick up, so I've been reading it at night before going to sleep. I've been interested in Locke since learning that he was one of the inspirations for the American founding fathers. He even repeatedly refers to "Life, liberty, and estate", which is not exactly the same as the Constitution, but close.

His English is pretty long, twisty, and verbose, but then he was writing in about 1690. I have to read some things several times, but I can mostly get it.

This edition copyright 1937, printed in 1952.

Patrick says

And this cartoon came out decades ago.

Sort of finished the Locke, Berkeley, and Hume book above. Their English is so verbose and twisty that it was too painful to really read it all. Glad I tried though, because I got an impression of all three of them into my head. Locke was totally one of the founders of the US whether he knew it or not. The Constitution is clearly quoting him at times.

Found another interesting book at a free bookshelf around here, so I've started that now:



Heard about Plutarch many times, so it will be interesting to read his little biographies of many people of ancient history. He's said to be very entertaining.

Patrick says

Found another interesting book at a free bookshelf around here, so I've started that now:

Wait until you get into the Livia conspiracy or is that in Cassius Dio?

You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast

AmericanKulak says

You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast

@AmericanKulak

Do you mean this one? https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

Patrick says

AmericanKulak says

You'll LOVE The History of Rome podcast

AmericanKulak

Do you mean this one? https://thehistoryofrome.typepad.com/

That's the one. Then you can start the History of Byzantium podcast after that, which should cover you for QUITE a while.

Thanks @AmericanKulak

I finally started listening to them and they are very good.

It's nice that they are just mp3 files, so I can download them and listen to them later without a connection.

Patrick says

Heard about Plutarch many times, so it will be interesting to read his little biographies of many people of ancient history. He's said to be very entertaining.

https://yuribezmenov.substack.com/p/cost-of-glory-podcast-alex-petkas-interview

“Fill your souls with Plutarch, and dare to believe in yourselves when you have faith in his heroes. With a hundred people raised in such an unmodern way, that is, people who have become mature and familiar with the heroic, one could permanently silence the entire noisy pseudo-education of this age.” - Friedrich Nietzsche

Started reading the Arabian Nights tales. The whole book centers around a king who kills the girl he sleeps with every morning so she won't have a chance to cheat on him. Seems like patnetters have more in common with Arabs than many of you might think.

NuttBoxer says

Started reading the Arabian Nights tales. The whole book centers around a king who kills the girl he sleeps with every morning so she won't have a chance to cheat on him. Seems like patnetters have more in common with Arabs than many of you might think.

Shhhh!

Well, when he comes across Scheherazade, she keeps him entertained and he keeps letting her live.

Yes, but the opinion of women as whoring sluts who can't keep their legs closed, especially around black slaves is not subtle..

Lol, yes, I noticed that when I read 1001 Nights.

Re-reading Richard Grant's American Nomad. My family is definitely Scotch Irish. My friends have teased me that I dye my beard red. My surname has a town in Virginia. My great grandfathers were moonshiners, and one of them married a Cherokee. Name originally derives from Norse, who invaded England, especially in the north, where the Scotch Irish descended from. I hate the government, distrust authority, get surely when I drink, and married a Mexican. Her people are of course a combination of Spaniards(some of the earliest explorers), and Indians(earliest inhabitants). We've never lived in a house longer than 4 years, and for me that holds true for my entire life. I'm a domesticated version of the book's focus, living most of my life in the area most suited to travel.

Grant mentions many of the people he interviewed for his book are Scotch Irish, and still have the same traits as their ancestors. Governments have been kicking us for at least 600 years, but it never gets through, and they never stop under-estimating us. You think we're sitting out what's coming, think again...

I didn't know Nuttboxer was a Scandinavian name. Sven Nuttboxer does have a nice ring to it.

Floki Testikelboxer is probably more like it.

Norse, and the name changed a bit from there to England.

https://patrick.net/post/1322462/2019-02-18-political-humor-thread?start=36197#comment-2058179

Patrick says

Book is no different than a phone unless it's non fiction.

In fact, I would say a fiction book is WORSE than social media. Fiction presents complete disassociation from reality, and entirely in imagination. There are real people in social media, none in a fiction book.

We've had a huge step up in propaganda in my lifetime, they will keep ramping it up, until they can't ramp it up anymore. Our "news media" no longer works, so they moved to social media. Just like people skipped ship from CNN, MSNBC, etc I think they will do the same with Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, but these companies will just lie about engagement and viewership.

Re-reading The Franklin Cover-Up. This was written over 20 years before anyone had even heard of Epstein. But all the trails are there. Pedophilia, central government, CIA, drugs, blackmail, Satanism, money laundering by the deep state. These elements are so interwoven, and repeated, the only logical conclusion one can draw is that they were always designed to work together.

I'm reading Epictetus' Discourses.

He had a good insight on why internet debate usually ends in a brick wall.

Co-authored by McCain? Published by NeoCons International?

I'm reading Cicero's "On Duties" and found him objecting to early forms of communism and wealth redistribution:

https://genius.com/Marcus-tullius-cicero-on-duties-de-officiis-book-ii-annotated

Philippus, during his tribunate, when he proposed the agrarian law (which he readily suffered to be rejected, behaving in the matter with great moderation), while in defending the measure he said many things adapted to cajole the people, did mischief by the ill-meant statement that there were not in the city two thousand men that had any property. It was a criminal utterance, tending to an equal division of property, than which what more ruinous policy can there be? Indeed, states and municipalities were established chiefly to insure the undisturbed possession of private property; for though under the guidance of Nature men were brought together, still it was with the hope of guardianship for their property that they sought the defence of cities. ...

Those, therefore, who desire to be popular, and with that view either attempt agrarian measures,1 that the occupants of the public domains may be driven from their homes, or advocate the remission of debts,2 are undermining the foundations of the state, — in the first place, harmony, which cannot exist when money is taken from some and debts are cancelled for others; in the next place, equity, which is utterly destroyed, if hindrances are laid in the way of men’s keeping their own property. For, as I said above, this belongs to the very idea of a state and a city, that the protection of every man’s property should be certain and not a subject of solicitude. Moreover, by measures thus ruinous to the state men do not gain the favor that they anticipate. He from whom property is taken becomes their enemy. He to whom it is given conceals his desire to receive it, and especially in the case of debt cancelled, hides his joy, lest he may be suspected of having been insolvent. On the other hand, he who is wronged remembers it, and keeps his grievance in full sight.1 Nor if those to whom property is wrongfully given are more numerous than those from whom it has been unjustly taken, are they therefore possessed of more influence; for these matters are determined, not by number, but by weight. ...

https://www.anarchonomicon.com/p/book-club-a-prophecy-of-the-3rd-millennium

The reason RW Young Men are so isolated and alone is any other generation they'd be able to form In-Person single sex, ethnic-exclusive ideological clubs and built intensive social trust that way.

In the 1850s or early 1900s they could form ideological militia regiments.

but today they face Fed threat.

This posed a great challenge:

How can radical right wing young men network without minorities and chicks ruining it?

How can they build trust that they aren't feds?

How can they avoid Rico Charges and government suspicion?

One man found the answer.

In what way in the modern world can networks of young men pour endless hours into Maoist Struggle Sessions, demonstrations of loyalty, ideological radicalization, wargaming of tactics and weapons, physically demanding group outings, and political purification... All without attracting the interests of Feds or Women? All without being observable by the NSA? All while actually interacting with their fellow human beings IN PERSON?

It was an impossible question... With the most extraordinary of answers.

Book Club.

it was on the tip of everybody's mouth... That legend just gave it a name.

Right now in hundreds, maybe thousands, of cells across America, young men are attaining the classical educations the longhouse, cathedral, synagogue, and bathhouse would deny them, whilst attaining a level of radicalization hitherto unknown in the history of religion and ideology.

All by following their trademark rules under threat of death.

The First Rule:
You do not talk about book club.

The Second Rule:
You do not text or message about book club

The Third Rule:
You do not bring your phone to book club.

The Fourth Rule:
You do not fail to do the reading.

The Fifth Rule:
If it's your first night at book club, you have to do a dramatic reading.

With these 5 simple rules, hell was unleashed.

Already Book Club cells are acting as mercenary hitmen for the cartels and have networked into special operations groups from Special Operations Forces, to the Chemical Biological Incident Response Force, to the French Foreign Legion, to Wagner Group...

Already Ukrainian conscripts have met their end when behind them a voice whispered:

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori"

But these are not the stories that are most keenly whispered through the Book Club rumor network.

The stories they love most are the stories of loyalty.

A young member of Book Club in Minnesota fell afoul of his fellows. Whilst reading Caesar's Gallic War's for the second time ("great books must not only be read, they must be reread" Book Club Maxim XIX), the young member misspoke mistaking the Helvetii and Belgae. This provoked the accusation that he had not done the reading, and panicking, aiming to prove he had done so he confused the Germanic Suebi with the Cimbri from Plutarch's life of Marius.

This not only seemingly confirmed his failure, but that he had failed to read the gallic wars even the first time...

For this grave offense they beat him within an inch of his life and ditched him on the streets of St Paul's Near George Floyd square. however he survived, and when roused by the doctors and questioned by police this delirious 17 year old stuck to his training and remained loyal. He insisted that he had been set upon by two black Tim Walz supporters in "I'm with Her" shirts. That as they attacked his "Privileged Cracker ass" they kept saying "This is IVF country”... and that when he came to he had a Coat Hanger around his neck... And just kept screaming and screaming in flashback to the abortion a teacher tried to persuade his mother to have.

The police got nothing. And that 17 year old was allowed to return next week this time making no mistakes when asked about the finer details of the circumvallation performed by Caesar at Alesia.

Others are not so lucky. One fed claimed to have done all the readings. Claimed to be a loyal member, but after rumors of him speaking with mysterious sunglasses wearing normies surfaced, something had to be done.

Taken on "book club tour" he was led to the desert where he believed they were digging up a dead drop weapons cache. Whilst digging he was asked for his opinion whether he thought it right or wrong that Napoleon had failed to break the siege at Borodino and free Massena and his men, instead opting for a strategic opening that may have won the campaign...

The suspect answered that he thought it wrong to leave Massena and his men starving in Borodino when they had so loyally held out against all odds.

Wrong answer.

Napoleon had left Massena starving in GENOA! In Italy. Borodino was a battle in Russia.

It was the second time he was mistaken that day. He thought he'd been digging a weapons cache. In reality he'd been digging a grave.

Through such whispered stories has it become a truism in Book Club:

Feds can't read.

Whether the high pace of reading book club demands is simply incompatible with full time federal work, or whether the raw hours of attention required is incompatible with leading a double life and trying to relax on downtime... Or if it simply is true that the Feds hire only 115 IQ midwits incapable of true deep reading and understanding of 130 IQ classical texts...

Either way, the iron rule remains the same:

Feds can't read.

And in the bloody logic of book club this implies the Aristotelian inference:

Those who don't read are Feds.

It takes an iron resolve and a mind like a titanium safe to make it in Book Club... but for that rare breed amongst even them who would rise to leadership, who would be entrusted with knowledge beyond the tightly air-gapped cell network of individual book clubs, for those who would join the overlapping network of Centurions... The standards are even higher.

In One rumoured election ceremony, after gaining support amongst his brother readers.... A candidate, without prior notice, was stripped naked and observed for physical imperfection and/or body fat percentage above 12% (it is said candidates cut aggressively in anticipation of selection), he then submitted to having makeup placed over his face like some Egyptian whore and was given only a bathrobe and a wooden Gladius, thus this Pseudo Gio Scotti was booted out of a car a few blocks from a Hells Angels clubhouse.

His mission?

To return the 200 miles to book club before sunrise with one of the hell's Angels full-patch vests without getting captured, hospitalized, or receiving any assistance not taken via threat, fraud, theft, or force.

He succeeded.

This is what these people consider a joke.

What the ultimate goal of book club is, what they aim to achieve... It is said one can only truly understand that once one has memorized the campaigns of Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, and Generalfeldmarschall von Moltke the Elder, and become fluent in Greek, Latin, Anglo-Norman French, and 19th Century German.

Some argue their goal is Chaos itself, that once they have become the Classically Educated men they aspire to be, only unending war itself could truly be their home country, that peace could only disappoint such Gods of the battlefield. That should they conquer the world their fun could only continue by fighting yet more conquests against each other.

But who could dream up such madness? Who begat the first book club? Who taught the first apostles of the codex and raised the first centurions?

People are always asking me if I know Alexander Trajan Augustus Barbarossa Trump the 3rd...