11 Comments
Jul 2·edited Jul 2Liked by Cedar Sanderson

Yep, and burn me if you want for mess-quoting, none the less, A Man's a Man and he includes a' That .

One major difference, comparing long ago primitive societies, those before the start of this century with today's masses.

Mass communication, transportation, obligation, etc.

Mass hysteria, for example has probably always been with us but, localized and diluted, reductio ad absurdum (1518 dancing mania in Alsace?) , by surrounding (Hör zu, sieh dir, er, Hey looks at those crazies over there in Alsace...) can dos 'cause we gotta do or starve and die.

Today, as there's only one society, civilization, ours, and we freely share such even if we have to bomb nonbelievers into acceptance of it. A society which masses this and that to the masses. So today, hysteria, mass hysteria is no longer localized. Welcome to the age of ̶A̶q̶u̶a̶r̶i̶u̶s̶ ̶ Mass Psychosis.

On the bright side cultures moved on past periods of mass hysteria. Ours is bigger it'll be harder and take longer. Javier Milei's chain saw making things right again in Argentina . We may need some D13 bulldozers.

Dangit young lady, your essays often throw me off on strange tangents! -grin-

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Strange Tangents would be a great blog name! And thank you, I'm glad they do.

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Or a grand name for a 30,000 short story collection. ;-)

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Jul 3Liked by Cedar Sanderson

Thanks -- my sort of book, but a pity about the ebook price. I'll watch for a sale.

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Yeah, sadly textbook pricing is a thing even on a thirty-year-old book.

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Jul 3Liked by Cedar Sanderson

Added to the reading list. May I recommend the textbook "Like It Was, Like it is" and the essay collection "Ship of Fools"? I am rereading the former in chunks: It is a collection of interesting primary source documents beginning with Sumer. The other (also a good bath room bookshelf title) is about the limits if anthropological knowledge from a career anthropologist fed up with his peers. Very entertaining and includes stories from his fieldwork.

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Oh. I wonder if the author has that elsewhere? Castalia House doesn’t pay their authors and as you might guess I feel rather strongly about authors being paid.

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No worries. I just checked in with Markku and Vox Day. Mr. Hallpike IS getting paid, so you can purchase that one guilt-free. Note, however, thanks to the usual de-platforming efforts of ++UngoodBadthinkers, Castalia lost access to its Amazon store, and its credit-card processor. They are catching up on payments with the most trivial amounts coming last. During the period they gave access to all the paid subscriptions free, so everyone got a little over a month of services with no charge. Class act, and brave: Viva Castalia!

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Jul 3·edited Jul 3Author

I'm glad he is promised payment at some vague unknown point in the future. However, Castalia has a trend of not paying authors and causing them to have to claw back their rights, having lost untold amounts of money for their work with no accounting for where it went. I'm not surprised they are having problems with Amazon, given how fast and loose Castalia plays with other people's IP.

I do not support them, and will not.

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I'll check it out.

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Jul 3·edited Jul 3Liked by Cedar Sanderson

Also, I have no other place to put this, so here is a short autogyro explainer for an author who needs to create a lowtech aerial escape. I am giving it to my writer as well.

https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1972:_Autogyros

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