Alaska Question

 On British Smuggling, The Hays Code, and Art Under Tariffs One reason I started this blog was that I occasionally go down random rabbit holes on specific topics for other projects, and there's nothing else to show for the byproduct of my research. One recent topic I dove into was the history of smuggling along the British coast. I didn't think it all that interesting on its own to write about. Then the tariffs came, and my research suddenly felt very relevant. My deep dive took several turns, and while there are plenty of names and dates I could recite about who was smuggling what, the more interesting parts included poetry by Kippling and a Hitchcock film, but I'm getting ahead of things. For starters, there was a lot of smuggling in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. It was practically its own industry. Up and down the coast, there were secret bays and hidden cellars where gangs moved contraband. Why? Tariffs. Taxes were paid on imported goods, so if someone could b...

 On The Final Meeting of the Roman Senate Nobody knows when the Roman Senate had their final meeting. The Roman Senate was once the most powerful governing body in the world, or at least it was according to the Romans. Then Rome became an Empire. The Senate didn't go away when that happened, but its power diminished. It continued to decline as the power of the Emperor grew. The Empire fell to the Goths, and the Senate, still in existence, continued to dwindle. However, even then it didn't go away entirely. By the early Middle Ages, the once mighty Senate of Rome, the very one that once dominated the known world, was little more than a social club. That's right, the organization that was a direct continuation from the days of the republic continued to meet and have opinions, but those opinions were meaningless when it came to setting policy. The ruling Emperor didn't even live in Rome anymore, and territory in Italy was being passed around to various states like the Lomb...

 On MAGA, Thought-Terminating Cliches, Cults, and the Real Meaning of "TDS" I recently had a very negative interaction with a MAGA supporter online, the details of which I won't go into here but are all still public on my Facebook page. Rather than focus on the hatred the person had toward my Jewish ancestors and myself, I want to focus on something he kept repeating, and something I've seen repeated recently by MAGA supports about anything critical of them, trump, or nazis. Funny how they already lump all those things together even if not relevant to the conversation topic. They write, or rather shout by typing in all caps, "trump derangement syndrome is real." The phrase is sometimes shortened to TDS, though that will always be The Daily Show to me, and The Daily Show is very, very real. If you want a more detailed explanation of the phrase, see its Wikipedia page here:  Trump derangement syndrome - Wikipedia . The short version is that it's used to di...

 On Felon 47 Being the New Pharaoh Akhenaten It's easy to make parallels of trump to Hitler and other evil dictators of the modern world as many have, but what about the ancient world? There are plenty of terrible kings of old that he can be compared to, but perhaps the one most associated with extreme change opposed by their subjects is Akhenaten, an ancient Egyptian Pharaoh that ruled from roughly 1353 to 1336 or 1351 to 1334 BCE. Already you can tell what we know about the guy is fuzzy. Some of that was intentional on the part of the ancient Egyptians who were slightly less ancient than him. Akhenaten is known for making quite a few changes in Egypt during his reign. He abandoned their traditional polytheism that was welcoming of lots of gods and instead forced a monotheistic worship of a god called Aten onto his people. He even changed his name from Amenhotep IV to Akhenaten, which meant "One Who is Effective for the Aten." Worshipers of other gods were persecuted und...

 On TikTok Getting the Ban I've never used TikTok. For me, social media is about following just people I'm interested in following, usually because I know them in real life or I like their work and not a means unto itself. I do use Instagram and every once in a while I get sucked into their TikTok knockoff, Reels. I've heard it's not as good as the real Made in China thing, but I get the idea. Lots of short bursts of dopamine. Creators eking out a living. The argument for banning the platform is that it's foreign and could be used against us. I don't dismiss that one out of hand. A social media platform being used against a group of people to further the interests of those who control it is a legitimate threat and should be dealt with. However, that applies to all social media platforms. The TikTok ban only serves to help their competitors like Musk and Zuckerberg. It does little to address the underlying problem. A few large companies have monopolized the socia...

 On Patriotism vs Nationalism: There was an old Reddit post I can't find anymore where someone outlined the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I'll do my best to summarize and expand on that here. The post defined it as two ways you can love someone or something. One is healthy, wanting the best for them, and the other is abusive, wanting it to never change. Patriotism was loving your country like you loved someone you wanted the best for. You want them to grow and become the best they can be. You celebrate when they accomplish things and when they change to overcome problems they've faced. This requires being able to acknowledge the problems they face and mistakes they've made in the past. Nationalism is loving your nation like you love someone who you don't want to change. You're afraid they won't be the same person you fell in love with. So instead of acknowledging their flaws, you deny those flaws even exist. To a nationalist, they must be pe...

 On quality of life: This Reddit post was recently linked in the Best Of subreddit on Americans and their total disregard for quality of life: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/1hqy2p0/uncomfortable_discussion_end_of_life_and_futile/m4totaj/ If you don't want to bother reading it, it's about how Americans don't consider how well their life is lived, they just work and suffer through it. All things are given monetary value and anything that doesn't create value is therefore valueless. It reminded me of brutalist architecture, where function is put above all else, and nothing is decorated. Perhaps there's more to brutalism than I'm giving it credit, but so much of what our lives revolve around is creating value for ourselves and others. But then there's art. Art, to be art, has no inherent value. It's words on a page or paint on a canvas. Sure there's business around it, but the value is not something you can weigh, count, or exchange. It has ...