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Harold and George Destroy the World

tomclancy.info

171–180 of 322 posts

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possibly things are worse, but here’s an argument that we’ve gotten unrealistically ambitious about universal education through college: What People Want From Our Schools Has Never Been Accomplished, Anywhere, Ever https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/what-people-want-from-o...

College and school are super suboptimal at dispensing education. We keep smart kids co-mingled with disruptive kids and bullies. We need to do what Asian countries do - entrance exams at every level. We don't let kids excel at their interest area. Math and science, obviously, but we lack programs for entrepreneurship and leadership that might be better for kids that aren't STEM-focused. Something like a scouts-type p…

The college degree system is just so bad that I’d say it’s a farce but no one should be laughing.

They’ve managed to con us into believing that first every teenager should decide what their “true passion” is, then if it’s not white collar they should be pressured to change their answer until it is, then they should take out $100,000+ in loans to live on a pretty campus for four years and hopefully mostly pay attention to the classes, and then they graduate and are greeted with the reality that half the majors offered are primarily academic pursuits with the employment possibilities mostly just being the colleges themselves. It’s a recipe for making an entire generation of nihilists (GenZ), who have a right to feel completely bamboozled and ripped off. I blame their late Gen-X parents for teaching them these fairytales in the first place.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US was promoting the United Nations and waging a Cold War, and wanted to pretend that it would never do anything proactive or aggressive. That is, it was propaganda Many other countries similarly changed the name of their respective ministries, reflecting the ideal (if not the fact) that war should not be pursued for gain or used to resolve international controversies. Actions trail behind ideals; ideals are se…

The millions of deaths are still happening, they just aren't our boys so we were all cool with it.

They haven’t, though. In the decades that followed World War 2, creation of the UN etc, the number of people dying in warfare and civilian death due to war dropped dramatically.

No, it wasn’t zero. But there was still a notable drop. I don’t think it’s coincidence that blowing up this world order has only become a cause now that those who suffered the horrors of WW2 have died.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#173
post #48
post #35

What’s childish is thinking that calling the Department of War by a euphemism changes what it is and always has been. The Department of “Defense” killed a bunch of people Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and countless minor actions. These bubbles of civilization we enjoy are built on adults killing a bunch of people, as necessary, to establish the order that allows more childish people to build social media…

if it was my idea I would call it the department of death.

renaming the DOD to DOW war is like renaming your company .ai . it will create a press release, but the result product is unchanged.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#174

At the risk of sounding very old:in partial response to the nonsense starting around the 2015/2016 era I decided it was a good time to start mining the cultural vault and catch up on classic movies and books (especially) that I’d always been meaning to get around to, and kind of immersed myself in it more and more over time. Lots of older science fiction, fantasy, and just random movies I’d heard of but never got aro…

Exactly my sentiment. Someone else ITT mentioned Everything Everywhere as a thought provoking, good movie. Does anyone actually believe that movie will be discussed in ten years? Because I know The Godfather still will be.

Cultural media output is absolutely in decline, and I think only someone not well-read could think otherwise about literature, and likewise for other media.

It's not now a situation of cream having not yet risen. I don't believe there are myriad hidden gems anymore. Bodies who are meant to discern the cream are coming up empty. The Oscars are full of bad movies now. Pulitzer prizes in literature are awarded to poor works. Hugo and Nebula books are horrendous. We have lost the culture of the literary, and it is very obvious to anyone well read. What's worse is the large majority of people don't even know what well-read is; they have consumed a critical mass of slop sci-fi airport novels and think this is somehow equivalent expertise to absorbing the classics.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#175
post #25
post #16

The effects of Idiocracy are much worse than we appreciate. I believe it's hidden in part by technology (as a cognitive crutch) and part by top skilled immigration (people previously suppressed in their undeveloped countries). And education is much, much worse almost everywhere by leaning more to memorization and catering to the lowest common denominator. Student A is bad at math and good at language, student B is th…

Education is a weird field with perhaps a few thousand years of very good unimplemented ideas. Imagine training an llm by putting it in a room with other untrained LLMs? All that knowledge is sure to rubb of!

What would you recommend I read if I wanted to learn more about a few thousand years of very good unimplemented ideas?

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#176
post #13

I have genuinely put a lot of thought into this lately. I have the sensation like older media was more expressive and thoughtful, there's at least more... interesting flavors there generally... I am happy to ponder and willingly accept this is probably just my perception. I have a couple of theories. The creators of the media are becoming more and more my age. Do they have nothing interesting to say to me as our expe…

I wonder how much this is just a sampling bias. Older media has been repeatedly filtered over time, so you don't see all the bland, derivative ripoffs that were abundant at the time. Likewise, interesting and forward-thinking work produced today may not be widely appreciated for many years - consider that Van Gogh's work was largely ignored during his lifetime.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All fights between my children stem from resource contention.

Some kids will hoard, steal, and spit mouthfuls of milk on the other kids toys even when resources are plentiful. They can go far in this world.

Sounds like Donald

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#178

That's mistakenly conflating two concepts: the media propaganda in a more general sense of the word (like the pentagon reviewing movie scripts for war propaganda) and the underlying material and ideological reasons for US foreign policy (see natural resources, petrodollar, etc.). It would be a severe mistake to think the current conflict is somehow detached from the "grand chessboard" type of neoconservative thought…

The word "profound" is a bit overused when it comes to movies. I agree that The Battle of Algiers is an excellent film, one of the best ever made even. One Battle After Another is also excellent but it is not really political in the way the TBoA is. It uses a political setting very effectively in a chase thriller. A movie like The Parallax View is a better comparison. That movie used the post-60s paranoia very effectively in a great suspense thriller.

Re: Harold and George Destroy the World

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current preferred name is Department of Defense. Ask anyone who isn’t incompetence aligned.

That's the official name. The preferred one by the government is Dept of War. [1] As the original poster said: > If you're going to call people stupid or immature for making certain decisions, maybe take a couple minutes to find out who made the decisions, and/or what the history of those and similar changes has been. [1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/09/fact-sheet-pr...

Well I think the operative question here is “preferred by who?”. The current government prefers it. Voters do not. None of us are obligated to indulge the “secondary title” nonsense in an executive order clearly designed to sidestep the actual legal process for a name change.
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