Bear in mind that a lot of our 100 billion neurons are tightly focused on running us meat machines, not in thinking or generating consciousness, whatever that is. C. elegans (a nematode) has exactly 959 somatic cells of which 302 are neurons. Not a lot with which to generate consciousness, on top of running the tiny piece of meat.

A bumblebee clocks in with a million neurons. If 302 neurons can run a nematode, maybe a million are enough to run a bumblebee with a little left over for consciousness. A cockroach also has a million neurons.

It seems to me that consciousness requires a number of neurons well above the number needed to keep the animal alive. I don't think C. elegans has enough neurons; a bumblebee, on the other hand, can learn to do a few things not related to life support -- like "play" a very simple game. On up the ladder re many animals with billions of brain cells. A dog has 530 million cortical neurons--gray matter. Humans have about 16 billion cortical (gray matter) cells.

It seems like Fido has a better chance at consciousness than the cockroach or bumblebee had before you stepped on them.

One of the things the Wagner Group shows is that sending mercenaries abroad is safe and effective when used as directed, but having them within a day's drive of the capitol is hazardous.

Prigozhin would do well not to trust Vladimir & Company, including Lukashenko, with his life. He's likely to be dead meat sooner rather than later. I wouldn't expect too much kindness were I a Wagner soldier, either. Charges dismissed? Probably not. I'm pretty sure the empire will strike back, as soon as they get their act together.

All of my Moscow agents retired, so I don't have any inside information. But my guess is that Russia will not have regime change this week, or next.

I take American right wing militia types seriously. They are quite capable of causing real damage, and have done so at various times and places.

I certainly don't know what all happened in Russia behind the scenes and off the screen. Time will tell, maybe soon, maybe not.

How do commentators here compare the January 6 insurrection in the US capitol building with Prigozhin's coup attempt (if that's what it was)? Granted, Prigozhin and the Wagner Group had a lot more hardware than the Proud Boys could dream of, but in both cases, an attack on the center of power occurred.

According to Peter Turchin, [End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration] the USA is about due for a period of social disintegration. "The lessons of world history are clear, Turchin argues: When the equilibrium between ruling elites and the majority tips too far in favor of elites, political instability is all but inevitable. As income inequality surges and prosperity flows disproportionately into the hands of the elites, the common people suffer."

I don't know whether Russia as it is currently constituted is eligible for the kind of severe instability of which Turchin writes. The two episodes of past US instability climaxed in the Civil War, and then in the Great Depression. We are, he thinks, heading for a third crisis period.

The USSR collapsed 32 years ago. Has Russia inherited or developed enough new internal conflicts to tear itself apart? There are obviously significant conflicts, but are they sufficient for Prigozhin's coup to trigger an implosion. One thing Russia seems to be sharing with the USA is "the wealth pump" whereby the elites get richer and working people are immiserated.

Here's a picture from Sunday of "a barrier" blocking a street leading to Red Square. I don't know... It just doesn't look like an adequate barrier to block a determined skate boarder, let alone the Wagner Group. Were they so confident the barrier wasn't needed or was this the best they could do on short notice?

reason (b) a reasonable belief that the person's tie colour clashed with their socks. — unenlightened

As director John Waters showed, conclusively, in his epic film "Serial Mom", the immorality for wearing white high heels after September 1, or wearing clashing tie and socks, is a capital crime.

It seems to me that would be true only if men's lives are somehow better than women's. Is that true? — T Clark

The answer, of course, is NO, it is not true.

Over the last 50 years, real wages have been cut and inflation has reduced purchasing power at significant levels. Neither men nor women are exempt from falling income and rising costs of living. More and more families live on the precarious edge of poverty, having to work more hours in second or third jobs to avoid falling into the pit of poverty.

The realities of class overrun our educated chatter about sex, gender, men (masculinity), and women (femininity). Educated, professional workers are just not in the same boat as blue-collar / gray collar workers. I've been both. The latter is definitely more pleasant than the latter.

Battling "Patriarchy" is a war against the distorted shadows on the wall of the academic cave. Success or failure will have no consequences.

A line from an old song by Count Basie: "Brother, you can't go to jail for what you're thinking."

Behavior is observable; thoughts are not. I don't know what you (or anyone else) is thinking. I can't account for all of my own thoughts completely, given that some of them are not conscious. I can, of course, judge the moral quality of my deliberate thoughts, and I do, but I am a very biased judge. Some thoughts are dismissed out of hand as aberrations for which I am not really responsible.

First person accounts of what I, you, or anybody else is thinking are no more reliable than eye-witness accounts (given our capacities for self-deception).

One of the levers of monotheism is that (we presume) god is able to read our thoughts -- everything from the urges of the Id to the most elaborate plans for murder. The believer is taught to monitor his thoughts because god can read his mind, and will hold his thoughts as evidence for and against him. Internalizing the omniscient god is both somewhat effective and somewhat terrible. (I know this from first hand experience.)

I fall back on behavior: is this behavior good or is it bad or somewhere in-between? Was this an isolated, possibly impulsive, act, or was it part of a series of connected actions? An accountant might make an accidental error which costs the company money. That's one thing. An accountant might also systematically rob the company of several million dollars. That's not an accident.

@Baden A focus on masculine aggression and competitiveness ignores the extensive cooperative behaviors that are required to maintain a functioning complex society--cooperation exhibited by men and women separately and in combination. Cooperation and competitiveness are not exclusive -- tune into any team sport broadcast, or just observe the vast array of cooperative activities going on all the time.

Granted, humans are not universally cooperative, either on a macro scale or a very granular micro scale--the source of wars and domestic disputes about household chores.

Personally, I just don't find categorisation behaviour by the masculine~feminine spectrum of supposed traits to be particularly useful when living my life. — apokrisis

I don't either. By the time a child can benefit from reading about the masculine-feminine spectrum his or her location on any M-F spectrum is firmly in place and isn't going to change on the basis of a psychologist's construct.

The same thing goes for Kinsey's homosexual - heterosexual distribution scale. It has diagnostic value for someone who finds that what they want to do and what they are doing is at variance--like a person whose behavior is entirely heterosexual, but whose fantasies are entirely homosexual. Very screwed up. The spectrum is real, and most adults who are reasonably self-aware, pretty much already know what they are and would like to be doing.

How men treat women, how people treat other people, is not a political question, no matter how much political ideologues try to make it one. — T Clark

How people treat each other is a personal, family, social, moral and ethical question, certainly. But I don't see how it can NOT be a political question as well. Jim Crow laws involved white people treating black people very, very badly. People who hate homosexuals tend to discriminate against them. Women could not vote (in this country) until the 20th century. How have these wrongs been ameliorated? Through political action, because what people can get away with or for what they are punished for doing is determined through political processes. Women weren't granted the vote through religious means. The Civil Rights efforts by blacks were nothing if not political. Homosexuals resisting police bar raids was entirely political.

That said, I don't understand why Apokrisis' post was so caustic.

What is a real man? — Moliere

This has been a conflicted issue for me, more earlier in life than later. I didn't fit. First, I was seriously visually impaired from birth, which has been a life-long limiting factor. (I didn't hear about partially blind, partially deaf E. O. Wilson till it was way too late for him to be a model.). Second, I am gay. This isn't an impairment, but it can require extra psychic labor to locate define and locate one's self in community.

I did have good models of manhood: my father especially, and there were uncles and family friends. My father was a steady long-time worker in the post office, and a produce gardener. He had grown up on an Iowa farm when horses were still essential, and he had a lot of general skills. He was always even tempered--something I didn't become till late in life. He supported a large family of wife and 7 children. He smoked but didn't drink. He was very active in church and small-town community life. A good man.

I wanted to be "a good man" too, but with different parameters than my father's. I often found myself up against the status quo, and resisted. Successful resistance, and if not resistance then strong criticism of the status quo was a significant piece of manliness. I was a SJW before the term was coined. As a consequence, my worklife was not particularly peaceful, nor highly remunerative. A lot of the leftists and gay activists that I admired were resisters, criticizers, and in general trouble makers for the establishment. They were "real men".

On the other hand, I consider pleasure in art, film, literature, and music also a significant part of manliness, as long as it isn't too academic, too 'fussy', too rationalized. Brandon Taylor, author of The Late Americans, excoriates the academic, fussy, feminist, POMO climate he depicts in the University of Iowa's Writers' Program through a gay student frustrated with the artificiality of it all.

Ready-to-go sexuality is also a feature of manhood. Of course I realize that there are various restrictions, boundaries, limitations, and degrees of decorum that we (try to) respect, but I expect men will be sexual when and where it is possible, and that this is a good thing.

I don't consider my definition of manhood applicable to all men. Manhood varies from the refined to the rough.

Here's refined gay Cole Porter's take on the rough man from his 1929 musical, 50 Million Frenchmen:

Find me a primitive man,
Built on a primitive plan.
Someone with vigor and vim.
I don't mean a kind that belongs to a club,
But the kind that has a club that belongs to him.
I could be the personal slave
Of someone just out of a cave.
The only man who'll ever win me
Has gotta wake up the gypsy in me,
Find me a primitive man.

https://careersmart.org.uk... — Hanover

I have spent many hours mulling over lists like this, trying to realistically locate myself in jobs I could do and jobs I wanted to do -- or, in roles I wanted to occupy.

I've known too many people who do or do not live up to the cliches across the sex line to think sex is very determinative of one's traits or abilities. — Moliere

Most of us know particular men and women who are not typical of men and women - in general. Take 1 million women and 1 million men and there will be significant differences.

I'll need a link. — Hanover

Don't we all? This is a famous ad, a Clio winner, a classic.

I'll drink to that.

Deficiencies in services for the elderly, the disables, the mentally ill, the chronically (physically) ill, the poor, the addicted, unemployed, etc. are a feature of neoliberal economics. Eliminate or privatize public services; if the private sector can't make a profit in social service, well, too bad for the customers.

Really, it's entirely their fault. If they had worked harder, saved more money, had not used the products of some Fortunate 500 companies, if they had been more disciplined, studied harder, eaten healthier food - which they couldn't afford, and exercised more - which they were too tired from work to do, they wouldn't have all these problems. So fuck the who lot of whining cry babies!

Antagonism "between trans folk and those with disabilities" is, here, in the mind of the beholder.

I don't believe any and all requests for accommodations from disabled persons are justifiable (in terms of expense and disruption) and the same goes for accommodations for trans people. As I said, if a bathroom or locker room can be neutered with a change in signage, fine. If it takes a large construction project to produce a neutered bathroom or locker room, then... maybe one or two trans people don't get one.

It's ridiculous to frame this discussion as a fight between trans and disabled folk. — Banno

The reason for mentioning disability is that I am aware of the substantial cost for building out additional bathrooms that weren't in the original floor plan. If a building has a bathroom that can be neutered (changing the signage) that's not a cost issue. If building out is required, then cost is an issue,

I wouldn't have the Emancipation Proclamation as a holiday because it only freed slaves in states that opposed the union. Many northern states continued having slaves until the 13th amendment. — TiredThinker

Well, to be honest, I don't give a rat's ass for the Juneteenth celebration -- it just isn't part of my heritage. Ditto for the Emancipation Proclamation, or VE or VJ Day. Some people in Minnesota celebrate Syttende Mai the 17 of May (Norwegian Constitution Day), Svenskarnas Dag (Scandinavian Midsummer Festival), Cinco De Mayo (5th of May) or Deutsche Tage (German Days) in June. These aren't important to me, and they aren't general enough to be national holidays.

That's the problem I see in Juneteenth -- it's not a general celebratory event for all black people--mainly southern Texans, let alone everyone else. Ditto for Kwanzaa.

All that said, people can and will do their own thing with celebrations, and that's fine. I would just as soon that Gay Pride Day be a gay event, and not a city-wide, state-wide, or nation-wide party.

This is to say the Proclamation was a strategic manuever. — Hanover

I was taught in 7th grade history that the Civil War was about slavery, which is why Lincoln "freed the slaves". With several more history classes, and some reading over the last few decades, I would agree that it was a strategic maneuver. It wasn't a foredrawn conclusion that the Union would win the war, after all, any more than it's a foredrawn conclusion that Ukraine will win its war.

That's not exactly a democratic success story. — frank

History is full of inconsistencies, contradictions, great and shabby compromises, falsehoods, truth, and more. A lot of pieces in the American Experience were/are not democratic success stories. Maybe, possibly, perhaps the greatest success in the American Experience is the story that we are the very model of the perfect democracy. Everything about slavery flew in the face of our ideals, but democratic processes allowed for the formal institutionalization of slavery.

Or, why not a holiday for the Emancipation Proclamation which was the news to arrive late in Galveston. Lots of notable black people to commemorate.

We need more holy days with time off. How about Joe Hill's birthday, or Eugene Debs death day, or several union holidays? Let's celebrate Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Phil Ochs, Bread and Roses Day?

One of the criticisms we can make of the Cis understanding of the issue is that we often seem to think trans, or being gay for that matter, is a lifestyle choice and people can stop 'doing it' just like they should say 'no' to drugs, etc, etc — Tom Storm

I presume that being trans, like being gay or straight, is NOT a choice. The style in which one lives out his or her sexuality, however, is a choice, moderated by circumstances. As a gay man, I could elect to wear black leather and chains or corduroy suits. I could choose to be sexually promiscuous, sexually abstemious, or something in between. I could solicit sex from inappropriate people (like students, clients, choir boys, etc.) or not. There are all sorts of things that I could do as a matter of lifestyle choice. The same goes for heterosexuals. And the same goes for trans people.

here are, however, costs associated with any given choice. Sexually promiscuous men are likely to experience more infections and if they are reckless, are likely to get arrested or worse. Trans people have to elect their lifestyle options in light of their (social and material) environment, just like everybody else does. Society is no more obligated to accept all trans lifestyle choices, any more than they are obligated to accept all gay or strait lifestyle choices.

Accepting lifestyle choices is not the same thing as accepting someone's right to exist.

You raise an important issue.

1 in 7 Americans have a disability that interferes with ordinary life activities. Even so, advocates and legislators have been working on accommodations for people with disabilities for over 50 years. The ADA federal bill was passed in 1990. There are still plenty of barriers which disabled people encounter, though a lot of progress has been made over the last 50+ years.

Transseuxuals / transgendered people have been present for the last 50+ years, but have become an organized advocacy group much more recently. In addition, the age at which some persons declare themselves to be trans has fallen into the years of childhood.

Perhaps there are as many as 1/2 of 1% trans people. What counts as "trans" varies. Some people's 'trans' status seems to be ideational and emotional. They may not alter their appearance at all. Conversely, some people require a change of costume, change in circulating hormones, and a radical restructuring of their anatomy.

Thousands of cities, businesses, and building owners have discovered that making the required accommodations for physical disability are quite expensive. Creating a fully accessible bathroom can run into many thousands of dollars. Eliminating steps into a building can require a lot of construction work. Establishing systems and facilities for the hearing and visually impaired, to cite another example, requires considerable institutional effort and commitment

My point is this: providing gender neutral accommodations--toilets, locker rooms, and so on is not a trivial expense, and the number of beneficiaries doesn't justify the required spending, especially when we have not met all the very definite needs of 60 million disabled Americans.

It's interesting that no one ever raises the issue of female to trans-male. No one seems to care and perhaps this says something about attitudes to women more generally.
— @Tom Storm — Hanover

I raised that very issue in my post above.

(1) those of sexual orientation "woman" and (2) those of gender orientation "woman." — Hanover

The term "sexual/gender orientation" doesn't help discriminate between one kind of "woman" and another kind. Would "sexually" or "chromosomally" defined and "gender defined" be better? Or just say, "real woman" and "fake woman" (real man and fake man).

You have written about the difficulty of defining "woman" because, apparently, "new categories of woman" have been created/floated/tried. In your view, is it equally difficult to define "man"? An XX woman, born with breasts, ovaries, uterus, and vagina (BOUV) could have her distinctive BOUV organs removed, and replaced with testosterone injections, a penis like fleshy tube, and a skin pouch with plastic testicles. A beard and body hair might grow. Some changes in musculature might occur, depending on age and activity level. Is this person a 'real man' or a 'disfigured woman'?

Is the issue charged because some sort of (apparently disguised) female-like potentially predatory person could use a woman's toilet, and this would be very disturbing to 'real women'? And on the other hand, men wouldn't be disturbed by a (apparently disguised) male-like person, predatory or not, using a man's toilet?

But then one might ask, are F to M transsexuals at risk of attack while using men's toilets? I suppose it would depend on the toilet. A F to M could safely urinate in the toilets of the Campaign of Human Rights, but maybe the toilet at Tea Party HQ, or a really rough biker bar would not be a good place to test things out. Is anyone safe in a Tea Party toilet?

End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration by Peter Turchin. It's about the problem of immiserated masses, over-production of elites, and the conflict this has led to again and again in different societies. Just published yesterday.

I enjoy reading books which eloquently and elegantly describe how cancer works, or how historical processes are the meat grinder of civilizations -- including ours. "Ah. So that's how one dies of cancer; or how a country goes down the tubes." At least I don't have to worry about being one of surplus elite.

There is gradual impoverishment of the masses and an an overpopulated elite establishment -- too much money, too much education, too much desire for power, etc. and nowhere near enough slots into which all the low level, mid level, and high level elite can fit. The Upshot? On the one hand, upheaval among the fucked over as they attempt to cope with ever diminishing returns for ever greater effort. On the other hand the elite fuckers resort to vicious tactics to grab power. It's a game of musical chairs in which the number of chairs is fixed and the number of chair seekers is enlarged every round. Competition quickly loses any polite formalities.

Donald Trump Silvio Berlusconi, and Boris Johnson are three disgusting examples of the rash extremes chair contenders are willing to resort to.

See End Times: Elites, Counter-Elites, and the Path of Political Disintegration By Peter Turchin. Just published today so haven't had time to steal his ideas.

It's funny how these sorts of discussions always go from UFOs to people who are UFoS. — wonderer1

No, given the topic, it's INEVITABLE!

Ufologist -- that's UFO-ologist, not Urologist.

Greer was born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1955. He claims he saw an unidentified flying object at close range when he was eight years old. He claims he saw another UFO when he was 35. Greer was trained as a Transcendental Meditation teacher and served as director of a meditation organization. He received a B.S. degree in biology from Appalachian State University in 1982 and an M.D. degree from the James H. Quillen College of Medicine of East Tennessee State University in 1987. He received his Virginia medical license in 1989 and worked as an emergency room physician, and in 1998 retired as a physician in favor of his ufology activities.

Fortunately he is retired from medicine. He should see a gastroenterologist ASAP since he is probably full of shit. That can be cured with a quart of potassium citrate and a large toilet.

if I'm being frank — Noble Dust

Stop pretending that you are frank, and don't call me Shirley, either.

I guess, but the guys who attacked the capital on Jan-6 organized on-line. I think the internet helped Trump get elected. Maybe some of it seeps into real life? — frank

The antecedents of the "proud boys" existed and operated before the internet: Militias, Ted kaczynski (the 'unibomber), Timothy McVeigh (blew up Oklahoma City federal courthouse in 1995), the Baader Meinhoff gang, aka the Red Army Faxtion--1980s in Germany, Dwight Armstrong, who blew up a mathematics building at the University of Wisconsin in 1970, or the John Birch Society, Barry Goldwater, and Ronald Reagan (right wing crazies), et al.

But it is certainly true that the Internet is now an essential tool for organizing and distributing information. Hey, in 1976 I was doing some organizing in the gay community and I had to put up posters on telephone poles and barroom bulletin boards!

Frequency illusion is related to memory. Now that you know about something, it appears to pop up more often. In reality, your new favorite song may have always been around. But because it's on your mind, you might start to notice it everywhere and, in turn, think that it's somehow become more popular.

The Internet feeds the 'frequency illusion' by magnifying bits of social detritus. Some dweeb "influencer" said something, it got posted on twitter then retweeted 10,000 times, and before long it's a movement. The better established mass media sucks up the inflated detritus and what was crap last week become official this week.

Then there are lots of topics that may get mentioned on the Internet and social media that do not follow this pattern. The problems of the chronically poor, organized labor, the uninsured, people just released from prison, and so on don't seem to make it through the various social media and mass media 'filters' to become movements.

The Internet helped elect Donald Trump because there was a real constituency--the older white well established right wing Republicans and the newer right wing of many working class whites. Bernie Sanders was able to attract outsized attention because there was a real constituency for a sort-of socialist elder among younger liberal/progressive voters, but not enough of them.

Hey, where am I getting all this? From the Internet, social media, mass media, public television, etc.

The point is that profit-making, as a European profession, did not pop into existence in the 1800s. — frank

A medieval history scholar said we know more about ancient societies (2000 - 3000 years ago) than we do about medieval society. That was several decades ago and historians have made progress, but whenever I read medieval history I am usually very surprised by what all was going on. It most definitely was not 'the dark ages'.

I was playing with the idea that to the extent that there is any leftism in America, it's a pose, like a poster of Che Guevara makes your meaningless life more worthwhile. — frank

I plead guilty (but the statute of limitations has expired). Back in the late 60s, a poster of Che, maybe Mao or Lenin, seemed meaningful. Now I'd call it virtue signaling. For roughly a year (1969-70) I received leftist instruction from a roommate who had been involved in Trotskyist groups at the U of I in Champaign Urbana. I picked up some of the names, and some of the lingo.

In the 1980s I had a real encounter with union organizing by participating in the Hormel Strike support group. The Hormel strikers lost, despite the heroic efforts of the support group to be supportive (tongue in cheek). But that was my first close encounter, at age 40 with an actual strike by actual blue-collar workers. They were all replaced at lower wages and worse working conditions. By that time I had become "a leftist" (sic).

Without the power of labor unions, American leftists just strayed off into nowhere. — frank

This is perceptive. Without workers leftists are irrelevant. To be more precise, there is a reciprocal relationship between workers consciously struggling for their own interests and the larger picture provided by Marxism. Leftists who do not have a workers' consciousness can not be leaders or advisers in any especially meaningful way. Lots of leftists do not, in fact, have such consciousness -- not because we are fakes and hypocrites, but because our education and experience has taught us to think of ourselves as professionals and managers--even if we are still clock-punching workers doing white collar service labor. Workers who do not see the larger picture are at a major disadvantage.

Just trying to figure the world out. Why all the angst toward "wokeness" and elitists? — frank

It's insubstantial social media chatter seeping into real life. Were one so inclined, one could do a history of social media trends, fads, and obsessions: Who started it on what platform; how it spread through various channels; where did it begin to be referenced as important; and so on. I think one would find that the hot issue of the moment (or year) owes little to real life, though it may have an effect on real life. Memes such as "the 2020 election was stolen" are UNTRUE, but have turned out to be quite powerful and/or destructive. "Stop the Steal", "Lock Her Up", "Sleepy Joe" and so on. "Racist", "homophobic", or "Transphobic" become clubs to bludgeon opponents (even though racism, and so on, are real).

In a word, "It's epiphenomenal". (Maybe that's the right word...)

I avoid paying much attention to all that crap.

As the forerunners of capitalists appeared, it was out of the serf class. — frank

Sure, because in the early medieval period there weren't any capitalists. The local Lord had the income of land rent (from peasants, yeomen, etc.) so didn't need to invest. The peasants, on the other hand, had very few assets above and beyond a strong back. With luck, opportunity, and hard work, a peasant could break into a micro business of some sort and then begin accumulating some cash, sort of like Luther's father. Or, the progress from peasant to capitalist might take a few generations.

We should distinguish here between "capitalists" and "industrialists". Early capitalists engaged in quite a few different businesses. Mines, factories, and the like were still small operations, This changed in the late 1700s into the early 1800s as steam power enabled bigger, heavier industry as such to exist. llllll

Luther's father started out a peasant, true, but he fairly quickly succeeded in being a miner, then a mine owner, then a business man (doing what, don't know. Probably something associated with mining. A man on the make. Sonny boy Martin was supposed to become a lawyer to assist his family in achieving further success, but instead went into a monastery where nobody would ever hear of him again, but he turned out to be quite successful as a change agent.

Moors? Moors? Bank of France in 1855? Darimon the Obscure? In what context are you writing, thinking?

Yeah, not many have had the chance to notice us. — ssu

Or, they have noticed us the same way we have noticed that some stars have planets in the 'goldilocks zone". We know almost nothing about these planets (so far). We have detected some planets because as they orbit around their stars, they ever so slightly reduce the amount of light reaching us, and this is repeated at regular intervals.

Somewhere else in the galaxy (and beyond), astronomers are adding planets to their Oracle databases. We might be an entry if their telescopes were turned our way, one night. We'll just be one more speck on a photo receptor.

They had one thing in common with the old aristocrats: they hated capitalists and capitalism — frank

If they both hated capitalism, their reasons for doing so were quite different. Laborers were toiling in the 'dark, satanic mills' [William Blake's term]; long hours, dangerous working conditions; low pay; hard work. Aristocrats may have disdained the capitalists rapidly accumulating wealth, but they probably also envied it. Land-rent based aristocrats weren't poor, of course.

The Left (socialists, Marxists, communists, anarchists (IWW), et al did indeed help workers organize, unionize, and resist capitalists' exploitation. I don't see a parallel between aristocrats and leftists or workers. What are you reaching for in making that comparison?

You are right that labor and the left were steamrolled by global capitalism, Neo-liberalism, and governments. Capital and law enforcement (for example the FBI) despised the Left and after WWII finished off what remained of the once-muscular left. Post WWII economic expansion lifted incomes for many workers, as did VA, FHA, and related programs for home loans and college education. By the 1970s the expansion was over. Over the last 50 years, as you noted, the working class (>80% of American families) has gradually lost economic ground through stagnant wages, de-industrialization (or off-shoring), automation, and steady inflation.

Academic leftists are perhaps somewhat analogous to a superannuated aristocracy. Most of them have just about zero connection with working class organizing or working class life. Struggling to explicate post-modern understanding within English Departments (et al) could just as well be taking place on Mars as at the local University. Some academics have risen from the ranks of the working class, but my guess is that most of them have been launched from the more favored middle class of professional families (or better).

In summary: Yes, the psychic back road between the European (or any) Aristocracy and Leftists is indeed VERY OBSCURE.

AI comes to mind first. It's a new and potentially dire threat, depending on who deploys it for what purposes and whether or not it has big OFF switches. One problem with AI is that it seems to be distributed over a lot of servers -- a world of server farms. How does one bust up 100 server farms? (well, maybe a big electro magnetic pulse would do it, but one needs a nuclear weapon to create a really big EMP,. That may be tried at some point, but it won't be a Luddite project.

One could just go after the ruling and wealth owning class who are likely to own and use AI. The problem with that is there are a lot of them. Rounding them up would be a pain.

One could smash the machines -- assembly plants, refineries, computers, telecommunications, etc. That stuff is sitting out in plain sight. A future act or war which any number of nations could manage is cutting undersea cables which tie the system together.

Workers of the world could unite and withhold their labor until the present system collapses. The tricky part (after getting a couple billion people to go out on strike at the same time) is building a society fit for human beings.

In a science fiction story, the aliens showed up on earth to announce that the Galactic Authority was evicting humans from earth. Why? We weren't making adequate use of the sun's energy. Since we were not, they had a list of others who would (Dyson spheres, that sort of thing). They graciously shipped a batch of humans off to a not very nice planet, where we could either sink or swim. This crappy planet's sun was way past its prime. Good enough for us.

An astrophysicist on the radio today said that one part of our alien-knowledge problem is that when pictures are taken of alleged alien vessels, it's almost always by 1 camera. Multiple camera angles are needed to judge distance, actual speed, and direction. A single camera shot just can't reveal too much.

There was a conference on UFOs and SETI back in the 1970s. Ashley Montague was one of the speakers. He addressed a question about confronting "superior civilizations". He noted that Europeans among others, had encountered "superior civilizations on earth" a number of times, and the first thing we did was was wipe them out. He wasn't sanguine about our ability to benefit from an alien "superior civilization" (whether they were gravel-seeking or not).

"Flying saucers" apparently were not employed by visiting aliens until the 1940s and 1950s, at least on American territory. What they used before then, don't know, and why they chose to fly around in rather flat disks without a whole lot of usable space, don't know. Maybe the aliens are pancake shaped, or maybe the flying saucers are the ACTUAL aliens, and not just their mode of transport.

Another question is did the aliens travel from Z343X, 5 light years away, in a flying saucer, or were the saucers in a very large, boxy, commodious mother ship?

It would be quite impressive if we heard accounts of strange dish-like ships in the sky over France in 1817, for example. As far as I know, stories about extra-terrestrials got seriously under way during the later years of the 19th century. H G Wells wrote the book between 1895 and 1898 and Orson Wells and CBS scared the bejesus out of Americans with its War of the Worlds broadcast on October 30th of 1938 (even though they said, several times, "This is NOT a true story!"

QUESTION FOR EVERYBODY:

Do you wish that UFOs, Alien Abductions, and Alien Visits were, in fact, REAL, meaning our planet has been visited by aliens from another star system, and that aliens may be present on our planet right now?

Or, do you fear that UFO stories may actually be true, and it frightens you greatly?

Or, do you think this is all malarky?