Does the iPhone X prove the Unabomber was right?

That’s much better than the dogs pooping little bits of Lego joke I was hashing out.

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Premium Mediocrity would be linking to the unabomber manifesto’s wikipedia page.

Mine is Sublime Incompetence.

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Is there actually a “tiny house movement” or is there just a “reality show about tiny house movement”?

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Nothing “proves” anything. Proof is when one stops thinking under the false pretense that they have found conclusive answers, rather than always evaluating the current evidence and updating one’s models of the world.

In 21st century ontology, they’re the same thing.

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i mean, it’s in the name, right?

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“diarrhea-hot take from a suddenly and insanely woke normie” - that was a tough line to read and not retch.

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There were peoole who over-looked Kazinsky’s bloody mayhem saying that soon after he got his manifesto published. So this guy is about 20 years behind the curve.

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A discount code would really put it over the top.

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A psychologist I knew once said to me (this was not meant as fully serious) that you can forget all the different classifications of mental diseases; there are two kinds of people with mental health problems: those that take it out on themselves and those that take it out on others. Obviously Kaczynski was deeply disturbed by his experience of the world (undoubtedly at least in part because the world is a disturbing place with plenty of things to be disturbed about). It’s sad he made other people suffer because of that.

But the Unabomber is best known for bombing. If someone is going to say “the Unabomber was right” they are deliberately saying that it is a good idea to blow people up. They don’t believe that, but they are saying it, and they know they are saying it. Screw that clickbait nonsense.

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I think he’s not made his case that not having a cell phone sets you apart from society. I’ll agree that lost of people really don’t have a choice to not have a car, but not many people are actually required to have a cell phone. And if you are required to have one for work, you aren’t required to spend every minute on it.

People want smart phones because they are a gateway to limitless interesting and useful things. We are not yet at a point where you must have a cell phone or a smart phone. And the inroduction of the iPhone X changes virtually nothing.

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I’d say that having a phone on you isn’t 100% necessary yet, if someone has at least a landline they should be able to function. Not having a debit or credit card however can make one’s life much harder, especially the credit card because then you don’t have a credit history. And not having a credit history (or bad credit) can make someone’s life infinitely harder.

Lack of access to reliable transportation can also make someone’s life hell. I would know from experience as i’ve spent the last 10 years or so without a car, thankfully its something i recently managed to change.

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Last year, I was in the audience at MIT Media Lab when Joi Ito asked if there was anyone without a cell phone. I was the only person who raised his hand. I have a cell phone now, a dumb phone, that I keep in my backpack because all the pay phones have gone away. It is rarely used. Still have a landline but most of the people who call me are wrong numbers.

On the other hand, I’ve had a home-brew solar backpack, commercial solar lights sewed by hand to the backpack, for over a decade now. The latest iteration, the third, cost less than $20 bucks for a white LED light with mini-USB output and a flashing red LED. I’m surprised that nobody at MIT or Harvard or Boston seems to have anything like it. Also surprised that none of the bike shops around town seem to carry such solar bike lights.

Technology is at least a two-edged sword.

Technology is like a shovel: You can use it to brush your teeth or you can use it to bash your own face in.

There. That’s my manifesto. Nobody need break a fingernail over it.

I held out for the longest time in getting a cell phone because i really did not want to be reachable at all times. I broke down and got a dumb phone which i carried for ages, and upgraded to smart phones a few years ago.

Having a phone on me i can completely live without but i certainly do find it useful when in boring situations. I hardly ever use it as a phone as i dislike having to call or text people. It’s really a glorified internet machine.

Well, actually… :laughing: if you could find the audio of the unibomber manifesto being read by Exene Cervenka, over calliope music, with your affiliate link of course, that would be peak BB.

I am being serious. Somewhere, in my digital horde hoard, I have a short clip of just that very thing, so it exists. I’d been looking for it for a long time, but I stopped searching in a fit of paranoia over what my search profile must have looked like.

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What?? Write better, please.

People on the left complain about the center, liberals and libertarians and whatnot, accommodating fascism out of an active commitment to principles of civility that tend to mediate whatever extremes are in play – a commitment that becomes grotesque when the “extremes” move from the once-cosy fringes of political normality to, say, “anti-fascism vs. white supremacy.”

But “the unabomber was right” is a reminder that this casting of the problem has limits. Kaczynski’s opinions were off the chart, yet they enchant serious thinkers alarmed by trivial discomforts. Sighed at for checking my tweets again at brunch! The center falls not to ideology but fatalistic indifference to anything beyond its comforts.

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It’s easy to romanticize the lives of ancient people while ignoring the perils and hardships they faced.

No. You need to lead a privileged life in a industrialised society without having an education, nor having any personal experience outside of your comfort zone of editorials, blogs and comment sections.

For everyone else, it is quite hard.

I wish the Unabomber had written this article because it needs more brevity and it makes me wish I died before I was done

I’m sure the Unabomber would have helped you with that.

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