Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/03/09/ibm-at-auschwitz-2.html
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From Kickstarter to Killstarter. What a piece of work.
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Why must these human turds taint every part of Tolkien?
Also - just remember Petey - come the revolution you’re working towards- you’re the next Ernst Röhm.
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Seriously. Isn’t there a lawsuit or a sack of doorknobs we could use to stop these guys from using LOTR?
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I was just thinking, Tolkein offers the perfect vision of a world in which only ten guys have names, and thousands obey their every command, and destiny is a thing.
Tolkein was not a Democrat.
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I have talked with Palmer in the pre-Oculus Kickstarter era, even supported the crowdfunding campaign because we all believed that VR was ripe for a revolution (and it was).
However, seeing how Palmer has changed since, especially once he got the windfall from the Oculus sale to Facebook, I am regretting my involvement with any of this, never mind how tiny it was.
Palmer is an intelligent guy but he is being both dangerously naive if he thinks AI on drones won’t be used for bad things (as if we didn’t have enough history to show otherwise) and it is quite obvious that any scruples he may have had are gone, when he is playing this sort of game corruption game to obtain military contracts (don’t tell me that Pentagon would award a big contract to a totally unknown startup with no previous history or references unless there was a massive lobbying for it …).
And we aren’t even talking about his personal views and the whole alt-right BS he got involved in.
It really pains me to see an otherwise brilliant guy to fall this low. I guess money spoils people.
Sad.
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I honestly think Tolkien’s worldview and ideals would be more congruent with the values of some one on the far right than with some one like me. It’s… beautiful world-building but it’s not a world I would want to live in if I stripped away the fantasy. At it’s core, it’s a myth for people who don’t believe what I do about how the world works and who value things which I actually think are dangerous and destructive.
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Anduril Industries, Palantir Technologies. What’s next? Ëarendil Communications? Glaurung Medical? Iluvathar Consultants?
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Melkor Investments and Sauron Security. As far as I know these aren’t Thiel, and he’s probably pretty chapped about it.
edit: fixed the Sauron link. Thanks @Auld_Lang_Syne!
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That’s a pretty standard reading of Tolkien by people who want to hate him, but can’t be bothered to actually read anything by him.
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Those who have actually read any of Tolkien’s works know that just about any character in his stories has about two or three, often more different names. And that there are hundreds upon hundreds of characters.
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All those nameless hobbits at The Birthday Party was rather jarring, right? /s
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Just saying I like the eloquence of beating someone horrible with a sack of doorknobs
He is not naive. He is setting the stage for the broadest possible audience of investors. The best way to attract lots of investors with wallets vomiting cash is to convince them everything will be hunky-dory. The only way to do that when developing weapons is to paint the world without color or even shades of gray.
In other words, he’s a greedy sociopath.
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Tolkien was basically a kind of odd-ball monarchist and anti-industrial pastoralist…
I love his stories but he’s a prime example of why celebrity doesn’t equal expertise in government.
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Thanks for that. Particularly…
“I imagine the fish out of water is the only fish to have an inkling of water.”
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Oh, I had totally forgotten about this asshole - he just completely got pushed out of my head. I blame the Trump administration, who are bringing new, important assholes to my attention on a regular basis, leaving me with diminished head-space to remember all the previous assholes I learned about.
I guess this is about what I expected from him - this and perhaps funding more overt neo-Nazi groups and the discovery of his involvement with a sex-trafficking scheme.
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Mr president, we must not allow a killer robot gap!
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Have you read ‘The Last Ringbearer’? An reinterpretation of LoTR, which is described as mere propaganda written by the victors. Here Gandalf and the elves are the villains, scared of the early industrial revolution in Mordor and quite willing to commit genocide to keep the world in a primitive state ruled by magic. Aragon is a bandit promised power by the elves, in exchange for bringing Gondor into the war. (Boromir chose the wrong travelling companion) and so on.
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