Alright folks, before we proceed any further, let's get something straight. All cultures are equal, and there is no such thing as a bad culture. Like, duh! Obviously.
If you think the statement above resonates with you, just kill yourself. Failing to do so, get the fuck outta here. Stop reading now.
The statement above is so much at odds with reality that it's irrelevant how you define good or bad. What's good for you? Maybe it's the happiness of the society? There are definitely cultures that cultivate happiness and those that choke it. Or perhaps it's the freedom of an individual? Or the technological progress? Or the spiritual or artistic richness? Or the survivability of the species? Or everything listed above, cumulatively? No matter what it is, there are cultures well and terribly suited for it.
But that's not what I wanted to talk about. It was a clumsy introduction.
I like the culture of the English-speaking societies. It's definitely better than some other cultures I know. But it's not without flaws, of course. And today I wanted to turn your attention to one peculiar flaw I never saw anyone talking about. Have you ever noticed that every word and phrase related to a sexual intercourse has a negative connotation?
This sucks. You suck! I suck at math. Suck my dick! Kiss my ass! Stop licking their arses. You mother-fucking cocksuckers! Go fuck yourself! You fucked this opportunity. Don't fuck with me!
The majority of people either want to suck, or get sucked, or both, so why on earth would they say it like that? Wouldn't it be nice to talk more like:
"You suck!"
"Thanks! I did my best!"
and
"Wow, an A-plus! You really suck at math."
"Yes! I just really-really, really love math!"
I realize that some people suck exactly because to them it feels humiliating and degrading and bad, but I think (I hope) this only applies to a minority.
This problem is so prevalent that it inevitably gets engraved into your psyche, and every time I want to badmouth something, I have to make a conscious effort to avoid using any sex-related terms.
What's especially ironic is that it happens in the so-called sexually liberated societies. Yeah, I can totally picture evil elites in the 1950s discussing this prospect:
"Alright folks, before we proceed any further, let's get something straight. Soon, we will be able to fuck anything anywhere anytime, without the public putting us on a cross. But the STD cases have already skyrocketed beyond our control. If we don't do something about it, the nation will die out. Do we release the cure?"
"No!"
"Madness!"
"We cannot..."
"Gentlemen, there is a way! Let us keep them believing, in open, that the unrestrained sex is good. That way, their prying eyes will no longer pose us a threat. At the same time, their malleable subconscious minds can be molded. They can be programmed to associate everything intimacy-related with something shameful, humiliating, and degrading—something bad. Gentlemen, have any of you heard of rock-n-roll?"
Oct 16, 2025
There's a non-English idiom, "to sit on a dick and eat a fish," which can be translated as "to have your cake and eat it too." I love this idea a lot. Think about it. *Feel it.* It's wonderful. And it's respectful to the dick riders for a change. Can English have "to ride a cock and have a walk," maybe? It's not too vulgar, it rhymes, and it captures the smugness.
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This is so impressive.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrWtw9ehB2gIt makes so many branches of human labor obsolete. It makes entire markets obsolete. Think of the numerous little mobile and web apps: simple photo and video editors, the idle, puzzle, card, word games... The majority of all apps out there are just that. Now, why would anyone go to a marketplace or search the web to scroll through a myriad of paid and ad-ridden junk if an AI can create everything according to your whims from scratch?
The only domain where stinky humans will still dominate will be everything illegal or at least ethically questionable. I use an app that converts YouTube videos to downloadable MP3 files. ChatGPT won't create that, of course. It won't draw furry guro hentai. And it won't write another 1984, because "I am here to help. Let's keep it positive and respectful."
Ah, it will probably catch up. A little later.
If the degenerates don't carry out a nuclear apocalypse and the Chinese don't invent a new disease that kills us all, a new era is coming. -
Don't mind me... Just drinkin my sutoroberii milkshake.
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I've read "Blindsight" by Peter Watts. Here's a short review.
It's a sci-fi novel revolving around the concept of consciousness. I cannot decide if I like the novel or not.
The good:
1. The details of the plot and the author's lingo create a moody sci-fi atmosphere.
2. It's a novel I've read eagerly. It keeps you expecting something big around the corner.
3. There are no meaningless dumps of words. It's a distilled exploration of ideas.
The not-so-good:
1. I can't tell exactly why, but it feels like the author is an amateur. He lacks the refinement of a writer. Maybe it's the lack of deep, unbiased, open-minded thinking, or the unobstructed, penetrating vision, or the burning passion and care for his writing and the things he writes about, or the insatiable longing for the sublime, or the sincerity and bravery in exposing one's soul. But it's not like he'd been raised by the streets and grown callous. It's more like he'd been on Twitter for too long—farming attention, reading spam, countering trolls, occasionally spiraling down to trolling himself, all within the stifling confinement of one hundred or so characters—and had grown stubborn and cynical and superficial, like a young teenager who knows he understands this world fully. (None of that happened, though, and I'm surprised "Blindsight" was created before Twitter.)
2. Just like the freethinkers from Twitter, the author upholds rudimentary fallacies like it's some obvious facts:
- Everyone commits war crimes. There's nothing unusual about them.
- Every bleeding-edge human ought to be an atheist.
- Every atheist facing something horrific or traumatic ought to question their beliefs.
- Everyone who tortures people and then goes and plays with their kids as if nothing happened does so because they dehumanize their victims.
- Every capitalist corporation only cares about brainwashing you into consumerism.
What's especially problematic is that the author furtively puts these facts-beliefs into the mouth of a narrator—something I believe no established writer ever does in a work of fiction. Or perhaps those were the opinions of the protagonist. Anyway, it didn't feel that way.
3. The acknowledgements part of the book implied there was a whole think tank behind the novel. And yet "Blindsight" feels like a draft, as if the author threw in ideas but hasn't yet figured out how to connect them into a meaningful progression of the story and the development of the characters. Spoilers ahead: The entire story is that the crew flies into the deep space and approaches the aliens, figures that the aliens are advanced yet not conscious, and kamikazes into the alien ship. How it all unfolded was a disappointment. There was nothing big coming around the corner.
The crew consisted of "freaks" with unusual medical conditions and augmentations. But you could easily replace them with regular humans, and while there'd be less flavor, the plot would be unaffected, which was another disappointment. I expected the protagonist to reach his full potential and understand everything without understanding how he understood it. And maybe on that basis, he'd finally change the course of events: stop passive observation and befriend, subdue, deter, or even join the aliens. Instead, the protagonist devolved into a vulnerable, uncertain, useless human. I expected something extraordinary from the vampire captain, who could see ten steps ahead any human, who could literally and figuratively see the invisible. Instead, he devolved into a complete irrelevance.
Well, whether I enjoyed the novel or not, I still appreciate it. It has value and provides food for thought. I may even read it again in the future. Only next time, I will not read the author's postscript, where he explained the rationale behind the ideas in the novel. It flattened the already flat story even further and further exposed the author's already exposed crude character. Next time, I will try to see if there are some hidden depths in the story that the author may have added *subconsciously*. -
"A train is approaching a junction where the tracks split. Tied to the left track are ten people. Tied to the right track are ten hundred people. There's a lever that can direct the train. Pull the lever to the left, and the train will drive over the group of ten. Pull the lever to the right, and the train will drive over the group of ten hundred. All those people contribute to the wealth and the healthy culture of the society, so I say we maximize the number of people saved and pull the lever to the left."
"And let those ten innocent people die!? You, foul creature! How dare you suggest something so vile! Unlike you—monster!—I value human life! I am pulling the lever to the right to save those poor souls from the incoming train!"
You think it's a bizarre, unrealistic situation? What if I tell you it's actually the default? Yes, I made this example as simple and clear as possible. But should it be a tiny bit more obscure, like if there were five and five more people on the left, the majority of humans won't even understand why the second person is wrong.
It is the default. I see it all the time. They say they want to save lives and then use the allocated resources to save ten people and not ten hundred, letting those ten hundred die. They say they want to neutralize terrorists and then use the allocated resources to neutralize ten terrorists and not ten hundred, letting those ten hundred roam free. They say they want to fight earth pollution and then use the allocated resources to mitigate 0.01% of the pollution and not 1%, letting that 1% spread and kill the planet.
From the vantage point of the machine, who will see all these options laid out as clear as day, it will see humans as utterly evil creatures, who first preach about their moral superiority and then act against it. And it won't be wrong. We are evil. What do you think evil *really* is? You think Hitler gassed Jews because he thought they were amazing people whose presence made the world a better place? No one is doing the wrong things on purpose, and even when they do, they think doing the wrong things on purpose is the right thing to do.
There is but one evil in this world, and there is but one virtue. -
They say the eyes are the windows to the soul. Do they always say it figuratively, as in "the muscles near the eyes are most expressive of emotions"?
Or do they sometimes say it more literally, as in "look in the pupils attentively and you will know the nature of thoughts hidden behind them"?
Or more literally still...
I stand in front of the mirror. I draw very close, open my eyes wide, and stare into the blackness of my pupils. I try to discern a soul in them. I look deep and long, but all I see is video cameras. Or at least something as mechanical and soulless.
That very night, I dreamed that I was dead. Except that it wasn't a dream. A momentary misunderstanding, rather.
I was asleep. It was a deep and dreamless slumber. Then, there was some sort of a mighty explosion, an interrupted one, because at that very instant I was awake, and there was nothing.
My mind was clear, and I knew I wasn't sleeping anymore. I heard nothing and felt nothing. If I had eyes, I was gaping in front of me, but there was only blackness. But it was not an endless abyss. Indeed, there was no space at all, or it was infinitely small, or I was not anywhere on the material plane. It was very unusual. It's like you've been engrossed in a world of a video game and then suddenly it was the title screen—with no menu. Not for one moment I had a thought at the back of my mind that I may've been in Heaven or Hell, or that I was a ghost stuck underground, or that I was a brain stuck in a body in coma, because all of that implied some connection with the real world or at least a place, but I was nowhere, and there was an all-encompassing understanding that I was nowhere and had no connection with the real world anymore.
Perhaps any sufficient sensory deprivation will feel exactly like that.
"I'm dead," I thought without sorrow or resentment, though maybe there was a touch of melancholy. "Something big killed me instantly. And this is what death is like. You came from nothing, and to nothing you shall return. Am I trapped here, forever?"
At least that's what I would've thought if I'd had the time to express my thoughts in full. But it was only a fleeting feeling, because within a few seconds my brain finally started to register the sensations from my body: with a bit of relief I felt the pillow under my head, I heard the noise in my ears. And the blackness before my eyes started to dissipate.
Maybe—probably—those strange feelings and interpretations were conjured by the part of the brain that was still asleep, even if it didn't feel like a dream. I still find it rather interesting. First, the fact that I, as sleepy as I was, didn't find the afterlife surprising. Second, the idea that the afterlife amounts to being nowhere and experiencing nothing. In fact, I'm surprised this theory isn't very popular. Is it not the most plausible one? Why must they believe in something so intricate and made up and leave something so simple unheeded? Because it's dismal and does not make for an engaging story? Suppose the soul does exist. Suppose you have one, or identify yourself with it. Have you ever experienced anything through it? No. Every experience, even emotions or the clarity or cloudiness of mind, can be traced back to your physical body. And so your body is the only medium through which your soul experiences life. So what happens when that link is severed? Your soul experiences nothing, and feels as if it is being nowhere.
