This thread does a pretty good job breaking down what the Bilstein suspension options are for a Frontier, particularly my Nismo.

via Fast Company https://www.fastcompany.com

[张经纬]深入历史深处的人类学——评巴菲尔德《危险的边疆》 “长时段”的视野 《新唐书·南蛮传》的“赞”最后总结到，“《易》曰：‘丧牛于易。’有国者知戒西北之虞，而不知患生于无备。汉亡于董卓，而兵兆于冀州；唐亡于黄巢，而祸基于桂林。《易》之意深矣！”《南蛮传...

"The U.S. Supreme Court today ruled that the government needs to obtain a court-ordered warrant to gather location data on mobile device users. The decision is a major development for privacy rights, but experts say it may have limited bearing on the selling of real-time customer location data by the wireless carriers to third-party companies."

Having said all of this, I would then note that among the many other things which are influenced by both genes and surroundings are the broad types of governmental forms (specifically, the three “classical” types of monarchic, aristocratic, and democratic) which tend to be “inhering” traits of the peoples who exhibit them. Several months ago, I touched on this in a post which could be thought of as a “case study,” in this case the specific question of why medieval and renaissance republicanism seems to have been limited to high-IQ Germanic populations. Why do cultures – and I’m going to bring the focus specifically to European, European-derived, and near-kin Indo-European populations – exhibit preferences for one type over the others? Are there cultural reasons which may predispose a nation in a certain governmental direction?

Let me first note the three general types of societies which a culture may exhibit, in broad terms, within the larger unit of a civilisation (such as, e.g., Western civilisation or Indian civilisation, etc.).

First, you have what I call core groups. These are groups which, as the name suggests, inhabit central areas within their larger civilisational setting, often hailing from the urheimat of their clade, or from areas which were settled early on in cases of migration. They tend to be more centralised in their cultural and social organisation, and may tend toward the baroque, or even decadence.

Second, you have marcher groups. These cultures exist on the edges of their clade’s contiguous settled areas, facing outward toward alien groups. As a result, they are often more heavily militarised, exhibiting forms of organisation which tends towards enhancing military preparedness and effectiveness.

Third, you have pioneer groups. These cultures usually develop when a clade is undergoing an expansion phase into new lands, and involves a great degree of decentralisation and political experimentation. These groups tend towards greater levels of “rugged individualism” as they find themselves thrown upon their own resources for survival and expansion.

I believe that we can see some tendencies (keeping in mind that they’re just tendencies) that each type of society has toward the governmental forms they prefer. Core groups will tend towards monarchy, marcher groups toward aristocracy, and pioneer groups toward democracy. We should also note that groups can change their configuration over time as their environment changes. Likewise, within a political unit, we can also discern that subgroups of the dominant culture may begin to diverge because of varied roles.

...

The important thing to note is that even though we live in a world which is much smaller due to globalisation, the existence of marcher (and even pioneer) nations has not ended. Despite the high degree of world development, not every state and not every nation within the various states are necessarily core societies whose culture/genetic complex would tolerate absolutist authority systems. There are still fracture areas between civilisations and clades which will militate toward aristocratic systems entailing personal loyalty and distributed military power. It is always possible in the future that (depending on how bad any Great Reset event might end up being) situations involving rapid expansion and the formation of (relatively) more democratic pioneer-type societies may still occur. One of the goals for neoreaction is to seek to bring order to the chaos. This order will demand greater authority for rulers. Even in democratic-tending populations, the foolish errors of universal suffrage, egalitarianism, and mass society must avoid repetition. Yet, those who would desire absolute monarchy may have to suffer the existence of aristocratic republics and feudal organisations. Nevertheless, the goal should always be to keep the momentum moving away from the democratisation and egalitarianism we currently see and towards more orderly, stable, and hierarchical governing systems.

via Pinboard (jasonquinlan) https://pinboard.in/u:jasonquinlan/public/

via Pinboard (jasonquinlan) https://pinboard.in/u:jasonquinlan/public/

GitHub is where people build software. More than 27 million people use GitHub to discover, fork, and contribute to over 80 million projects.

John Dee (13 July 1527 – 1608 or 1609) was an English mathematician, astronomer, astrologer, occult philosopher,[5] and advisor to Queen Elizabeth I. He devoted much of his life to the study of alchemy, divination, and Hermetic philosophy. He was also an advocate of England's imperial expansion into a "British Empire", a term he is generally credited with coining.[6]

Dee straddled the worlds of modern science and magic just as the former was emerging. One of the most learned men of his age, he had been invited to lecture on the geometry of Euclid at the University of Paris while still in his early twenties. Dee was an ardent promoter of mathematics and a respected astronomer, as well as a leading expert in navigation, having trained many of those who would conduct England's voyages of discovery.

Simultaneously with these efforts, Dee immersed himself in the worlds of magic, astrology and Hermetic philosophy. He devoted much time and effort in the last thirty years or so of his life to attempting to commune with angels in order to learn the universal language of creation and bring about the pre-apocalyptic unity of mankind. However, Robert Hooke suggested in the chapter Of Dr. Dee's Book of Spirits, that John Dee made use of Trithemian steganography, to conceal his communication with Elizabeth I.[7] A student of the Renaissance Neo-Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, Dee did not draw distinctions between his mathematical research and his investigations into Hermetic magic, angel summoning and divination. Instead he considered all of his activities to constitute different facets of the same quest: the search for a transcendent understanding of the divine forms which underlie the visible world, which Dee called "pure verities".

In his lifetime, Dee amassed one of the largest libraries in England. His high status as a scholar also allowed him to play a role in Elizabethan politics. He served as an occasional advisor and tutor to Elizabeth I and nurtured relationships with her ministers Francis Walsingham and William Cecil. Dee also tutored and enjoyed patronage relationships with Sir Philip Sidney, his uncle Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, and Edward Dyer. He also enjoyed patronage from Sir Christopher Hatton.

https://twitter.com/Logo_Daedalus/status/985203144044040192
https://archive.is/h7ibQ
mind meld

Leave Me Alone! Misanthropic Writings from the Anti-Social Edge