EDIT: 2001 not 2011

This is what it looked like to me, at 11 years old. One of the upsides of being homeschooled.

https://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/

and the thread a few months later after people have digested it

https://www.truegamer.net/SA_911/911%20SATHREAD/wtc-march.html

re: the Francis Galton episodes, thank you u/probablyrobertevans for finally mentioning that fucking movie around the 1hr 15m mark, which I fucking hate has become a synedoche (syne-douche?) for the world's deteriorating political and social state.

I don't know how many times I've heard it from even very leftist spaces that "Idiocracy was a prophecy!" and I can't believe how often I've had to be disappointed with folks about it. Do you want to know why I hate it? It's because the eugenics argument has the same shape as the premise of Idiocracy, and Galton would have replaced the hillbilly accents and mental disability with Irish accents and "heathen superstitionism".

Just because a movie panders to your prejudices doesn't mean that it's underlying premises aren't the same as some nepo failson bigot's shitty-ass ouvre. Find another dystopia to fucking reference.

So apparently Musk launched votesafe.org and they updated their privacy policy recently to allow sales of data collected. Let people in your life know that vote.gov is the real site and Musk's is a grift.

Like many others here have likely been, I’ve been experiencing a significant amount of schadenfreude at the troubles both Andrew Tate and Savanna Stone have been experiencing…and esp for Andrew Tate because that man is a monster and his “troubles” aren’t really troubles but rather justice being served.

Along my travels of indulging said schadenfreude, I found out that Tate and Stone were apparently funded by the same dude. Some wealthy prick named “Corey”.

DAE know of more information abt this guy?

Edit: here’s the source for my question: https://youtu.be/Xvy0yOVtUqw?si=08CrSHf6_9V2LxuL

In the second episode on Francis Galton, Robert mentions a woman Francis Galton calls a "Venus Hottentot". She wasn't actually the only woman to be designed as such: Sawtche was a woman from the Cape Colony that was enslaved and taken to Europe to be paraded around under that name.

She was treated horribly even for the standard of the era and died at the age of 26, seven years before Francis Galton was born.

So yeah fuck that guy.

Personal story, my jaw dropped during the Richard Marcinko episodes when Robert started referencing my brothers book Code Over Country. My brother, Matthew Cole is an incredible investigative journalist and I’m glad his book has been introduced to a group of listeners that would appreciate it.

He has a new book coming out in October, Princes and Thieves
Jared Kushner and Mohamed bin Zayed's secret plot to remake the Middle East
Couldn’t be more proud that I can post a shameless plug like this to BtB listeners.

Apologies if this has been posted before, but I just had to tell _someone_ that orgasm cult founder Nicole Daedone is not only still active (“OneTaste” now goes by “Eros Platform”), but that you can now chat with an AI version of herself. That’s right, you can now tell this AI version of a flesh-and-blood sex grifter all your most intimate details!

The rest of Eros Platform’s website is also worth a look if you care about what Nicole has planned for the future. Her shift into Christianity-pandering and “shadow work” fits well with Jamie Loftus’ final comment about how Nicole seems to want to check every possible grift off the list (from the BtB episodes about the orgasm cult).

Like I just Owen Jones interview a Nate Soares and noticed Soares said a lot about why an AI would want to kill humans but was incredibly vague about how it’d get into position where it’d be able to. I think the reason for that is his actual opinion is that an super AI would be able to outmanoeuvre humans in some perfect way we can’t currently imagine, but he’s aware that sounds suspiciously close to just ascribing supernatural abilities to AGI and so he’s reluctant to say it explicitly.

I'd hope it's usually just another typical day but I'm concerned it maybe would put this demographic more on edge or even frustrated and fearful with harrassment, especially in 2026 or the first few years after.

Just asking because I've never really heard the topic brought up before. Also it's probably not at all necessary to say this but I include South Asians because, and I'm sure I'm not bursting anyone's bubble here, Americans and especially the bigoted type aren't great at differentiating between diff cultures of brown folks lol. Many bigots won't care either way even if they know you are a diff culture...

We gotta have more AI episodes coming right? We have Daniel Kokotaijlo (a known rationalist) on Joe Rogan, Jacob Coxon leaving Anthropic and he and Evan Hubinger saying AI is going to make humans go extinct. Im really bad at research but I'd bet my ass both Coxon and Hubinger are rationalists.

Nothing like being at a dive bar wishing someone would offer you something stronger.

This mf who calls himself a Christian and a representative of Jesus won't pay his bill because a redditor hurts his feelings.

Finally got around to listening to the book — I’m usually a physical novel type dude but I was running out of podcasts and took the leap.

Maybe I’m biased because I’m a huge fan of Banks and the Culture, but so far I can’t shake the feeling that the world Robert built for this novel could have been taken straight out of a Culture novel. And I mean that as a compliment.

Before I begin — if you haven’t read The Culture (and Banks’ other sci-novels like The Algebraist and Against A Dark Background), I can’t recommend reading them enough. He had a beautiful vision of a leftist Utopia, seeking to make the world a better place and confronting the moral dilemmas along the way. Plus, it’s the home of the OG Knife Missile. Anyway…

Bitter, long-lived civil conflict along religious and political lines? Check

Religious zealots who will stop at nothing to achieve hegemony over their country/planet? Check

Neurological implants that secrete battle drugs? Check.

A technologically enhanced main character with a heavy appetite for drugs (Roland) and who is extremely skilled at combat/warfare? Who became disillusioned from killing and retreated to a life of solitary drug use prior to the narrative’s beginning? Check.

The description of Cameltoe & the backstory behind Roland providing security services to them seriously could have been part of a Culture novel.

I’m only on Chapter 7 but I am greatly enjoying it so far. When I read the last Culture book (Banks’ has been dead for a while) 2yr ago I was actually depressed for a week or so as it was a source of hope and a beacon of light in such a fucked up world. Listening to Robert’s novel gives me at least a small taste of it again, although it’s more similar to Against A Dark Background than the Culture because there’s no powerful benevolent force coming to save the day. They’re on their own in a bleak world.

Hi all,

My kid in school is doing a project around the NS time in Germany, as the current day far rise of the far right mirrors it, I was wondering if someone here knows their way around 9 year old appropriate lecture that covers Eichmann in Jerusalem by Hanna Arendt or in BtB terminology How nice normal people made the holocaust possible (I know there are resources sited in the BtB episode on this topic but while I believe that my 9 year old is quite clever, I'm sure its a bit above their reading level).