From briveal@X (https://fixupx.com/brivael/status/2107397619525763534):
Translated from French by Google
In 50 years, history books will say that Elon Musk won a war that nobody knew we were losing.
A war that began 100 years ago, in an Italian prison cell.
In 1926, Mussolini had a 35-year-old Sardinian intellectual arrested. At the trial, the prosecutor reportedly said: "We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years."
His name was Antonio Gramsci.
His mind never stopped working. In prison, he filled thousands of pages that became one of the most influential political texts of the 20th century. I think we are now witnessing the moment when his theory collapses.
Let me explain.
Gramsci asked himself a simple question: Why did the communist revolution succeed in Russia but fail everywhere else in the West?
His answer: in the West, power is not solely held by the state, the police, and the army. It is held by culture. By what people find normal, obvious, "common sense." He calls this cultural hegemony.
So, to seize power, you mustn't first take the palace. You must first take minds. The schools. The universities. The newspapers. The theater. Publishing. The courts. This is "positional warfare": a slow conquest, institution by institution. When culture has shifted, politics will follow naturally.
Forty years later, the German activist Rudi Dutschke would make it a slogan: the long march through the institutions.
For decades, we lived with an enigma that no one could really explain.
Why are almost all artists left-wing? Actors, singers, teachers, journalists, a good portion of the judiciary. Why could a country vote right-wing election after election and still have its culture speak with one voice?
The response we received was: "It's because educated people are left-wing."
I believe the answer is simpler. Gramsci wrote the recipe, and it was applied. When you control who gets the grant, the position, the good review, the prize, the invitation to appear on the show, you control what becomes "culture".
The same enigma existed on a global scale.
Why did so many developing countries, particularly in Latin America, keep electing socialist or radical left-wing governments? Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Kirchner's Argentina, Petro's Colombia. The economy was collapsing, cartels were thriving, chaos reigned. And yet the same vote kept coming.
My conviction: poverty was not an accident of the system. It was an electorate. And around it, there was a whole ecosystem of NGOs, "independent" media and "civil society" programs, largely financed by Western money.
Then, in early 2025, something happened that no one had ever dared to do.
Elon and Doge opened the books at USAID, an agency virtually untouchable since 1961, with tens of billions of dollars in funding annually. The vast majority of its programs were cut, and the agency was absorbed by the State Department.
The tap has been turned off.
And look what has happened since.
Bolivia: The MAS loses power after almost twenty years. Ecuador: Noboa re-elected. Honduras: The right wing regains control of the country. Chile: Kast elected. Argentina: Milei wins the midterm elections by a wide margin.
And two days ago, Brazil.
Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible, having been sentenced to 27 years in prison. The left thought it had closed the chapter. Lula, 80, was seeking a fourth term against a country that was considered to have his support.
On Sunday, his son Flávio came out on top in the first round. More than 47% compared to nearly 45% for Lula. Lula himself acknowledged the result as "unexpected".
The largest country in Latin America is one step away from a second round of voting.
The biggest right turn on the continent in decades.
Coincidence? I don't think so. When funding disappears, the narrative loses its speakers.
There remains one last true bastion: Europe.
Translated from French by Google
In 50 years, history books will say that Elon Musk won a war that nobody knew we were losing.
A war that began 100 years ago, in an Italian prison cell.
In 1926, Mussolini had a 35-year-old Sardinian intellectual arrested. At the trial, the prosecutor reportedly said: "We must prevent this brain from functioning for twenty years."
His name was Antonio Gramsci.
His mind never stopped working. In prison, he filled thousands of pages that became one of the most influential political texts of the 20th century. I think we are now witnessing the moment when his theory collapses.
Let me explain.
Gramsci asked himself a simple question: Why did the communist revolution succeed in Russia but fail everywhere else in the West?
His answer: in the West, power is not solely held by the state, the police, and the army. It is held by culture. By what people find normal, obvious, "common sense." He calls this cultural hegemony.
So, to seize power, you mustn't first take the palace. You must first take minds. The schools. The universities. The newspapers. The theater. Publishing. The courts. This is "positional warfare": a slow conquest, institution by institution. When culture has shifted, politics will follow naturally.
Forty years later, the German activist Rudi Dutschke would make it a slogan: the long march through the institutions.
For decades, we lived with an enigma that no one could really explain.
Why are almost all artists left-wing? Actors, singers, teachers, journalists, a good portion of the judiciary. Why could a country vote right-wing election after election and still have its culture speak with one voice?
The response we received was: "It's because educated people are left-wing."
I believe the answer is simpler. Gramsci wrote the recipe, and it was applied. When you control who gets the grant, the position, the good review, the prize, the invitation to appear on the show, you control what becomes "culture".
The same enigma existed on a global scale.
Why did so many developing countries, particularly in Latin America, keep electing socialist or radical left-wing governments? Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Kirchner's Argentina, Petro's Colombia. The economy was collapsing, cartels were thriving, chaos reigned. And yet the same vote kept coming.
My conviction: poverty was not an accident of the system. It was an electorate. And around it, there was a whole ecosystem of NGOs, "independent" media and "civil society" programs, largely financed by Western money.
Then, in early 2025, something happened that no one had ever dared to do.
Elon and Doge opened the books at USAID, an agency virtually untouchable since 1961, with tens of billions of dollars in funding annually. The vast majority of its programs were cut, and the agency was absorbed by the State Department.
The tap has been turned off.
And look what has happened since.
Bolivia: The MAS loses power after almost twenty years. Ecuador: Noboa re-elected. Honduras: The right wing regains control of the country. Chile: Kast elected. Argentina: Milei wins the midterm elections by a wide margin.
And two days ago, Brazil.
Jair Bolsonaro is ineligible, having been sentenced to 27 years in prison. The left thought it had closed the chapter. Lula, 80, was seeking a fourth term against a country that was considered to have his support.
On Sunday, his son Flávio came out on top in the first round. More than 47% compared to nearly 45% for Lula. Lula himself acknowledged the result as "unexpected".
The largest country in Latin America is one step away from a second round of voting.
The biggest right turn on the continent in decades.
Coincidence? I don't think so. When funding disappears, the narrative loses its speakers.
There remains one last true bastion: Europe.
Brussels funds its own NGO networks with an opacity that even the European Court of Auditors has highlighted. Large foundations like Soros's Open Society Foundation. Supranational entities that produce regulations without ever facing a voter.
It is the last stronghold of cultural hegemony. And it is beginning to crack.
I am convinced that all of this is going to collapse, and faster than we think.
Gramsci was right on one essential point: culture precedes politics. But he forgot that it works both ways. When an artificial culture loses its life support, the truth beneath it rises to the surface.
What comes next, I believe, is a renaissance. A culture that begins to love beauty, ambition, science, and the civilization that gave birth to it.
And in history books, it will be remembered that it all began when a man decided to look at the accounts.
It took someone rich enough to be independent, crazy enough to take on the challenge, and free enough to withstand the hatred that would follow.
Thank you, Elon.
https://fixupx.com/brivael/status/2107397619525763534
It is the last stronghold of cultural hegemony. And it is beginning to crack.
I am convinced that all of this is going to collapse, and faster than we think.
Gramsci was right on one essential point: culture precedes politics. But he forgot that it works both ways. When an artificial culture loses its life support, the truth beneath it rises to the surface.
What comes next, I believe, is a renaissance. A culture that begins to love beauty, ambition, science, and the civilization that gave birth to it.
And in history books, it will be remembered that it all began when a man decided to look at the accounts.
It took someone rich enough to be independent, crazy enough to take on the challenge, and free enough to withstand the hatred that would follow.
Thank you, Elon.
https://fixupx.com/brivael/status/2107397619525763534
🧵 Thread • FixupX
Brivael Le Pogam (@brivael)
Dans 50 ans, les livres d'histoire diront qu'Elon Musk a gagné une guerre que personne ne savait qu'on était en train de perdre.
Une guerre commencée il y a 100 ans, dans une cellule de prison italienne.
En 1926, Mussolini fait arrêter un intellectuel sarde…
Une guerre commencée il y a 100 ans, dans une cellule de prison italienne.
En 1926, Mussolini fait arrêter un intellectuel sarde…
Forwarded from The General
BREAKING: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Iran has lost control of the Strait of Hormuz, with oil flows returning to pre-conflict levels.
@GeneralMCNews
@GeneralMCNews
Note: The fact that LLMs (Large Language Models) work as well as they do actually serves as a very compelling vindication of the thesis that animal intelligence significantly depends—at least in part—on neural networks, and that our implementation of neural networks using transistors and program logic reifies a phenomenon that strongly contributes to how biological neural networks actually function.
Forwarded from The General
BREAKING: The FCC is weighing a proposal that could allow political campaigns to use AI-generated robocalls to reach cellphones without prior consent ahead of the midterms.
@GeneralMCNews
@GeneralMCNews
Forwarded from BioClandestine
Did you guys hear about the 3,860 cases of endemic plague, with 423 deaths, over the course of 2019-2025?
Of course you didn’t, because it was happening in the DR Congo, Madagascar, and Kenya, Biden was in office, and the MSM didn’t freak out about it.
Did you know that here in the US, specifically the southwest, we see about 5 cases of plague per year? Did you ever see a media headline about that? Nope.
But there isn’t even a single confirmed case of plague in Russia, yet every headline in America is “Russian plague”.
Best case scenario, the US/Western MSM are just piling on this narrative because it’s Russia and they hate Russia, and it’s an extension of the Trump/Russia collusion narrative.
Worst case scenario, the Deep State are going to try to pull another Covid, and blame it on Russia this time. It’s almost as if they are laying the ground work to manufacture another biological event, and Russia is their next boogeyman.
Of course you didn’t, because it was happening in the DR Congo, Madagascar, and Kenya, Biden was in office, and the MSM didn’t freak out about it.
Did you know that here in the US, specifically the southwest, we see about 5 cases of plague per year? Did you ever see a media headline about that? Nope.
But there isn’t even a single confirmed case of plague in Russia, yet every headline in America is “Russian plague”.
Best case scenario, the US/Western MSM are just piling on this narrative because it’s Russia and they hate Russia, and it’s an extension of the Trump/Russia collusion narrative.
Worst case scenario, the Deep State are going to try to pull another Covid, and blame it on Russia this time. It’s almost as if they are laying the ground work to manufacture another biological event, and Russia is their next boogeyman.
❤1
Note: The US is the only country in the world that taxes its citizens no matter where they live in the world. Also, the richer you are, the easier it is to have multiple passports (from different issuing countries,) and also to go where the US cannot legally extradite you nor impound you assets held in foreign locations.
The ultra-rich can easily make themselves immune to US tax laws. And they do.
https://fixupx.com/Handre/status/2108097190396661960/2108097190396661960
The ultra-rich can easily make themselves immune to US tax laws. And they do.
https://fixupx.com/Handre/status/2108097190396661960/2108097190396661960
Forwarded from Grumpy's Rabbit Hole
Krysztof's critique absolutely nails ONE of the reasons that modern AI falls short. But only one: The map is not the territory is probably the shortest, most pithy way to provide an executive summary.
There are other reasons. One of those that is crucially important can be comprehended by deeply analyzing how LLMs work, based on a perspective inspired by The Laws of Form (G. Spencer-Brown.)
https://fixupx.com/kristof_poland/status/2107896530959028266
There are other reasons. One of those that is crucially important can be comprehended by deeply analyzing how LLMs work, based on a perspective inspired by The Laws of Form (G. Spencer-Brown.)
https://fixupx.com/kristof_poland/status/2107896530959028266
"Farmers are accused of not caring about animals by people who have never once had to look their dinner in the eye."
https://fixupx.com/SamaHoole/status/2108474886200963477
https://fixupx.com/SamaHoole/status/2108474886200963477