Category Archives: Media & Entertainment

Sigma Male

Posted on by

I had never heard to term “sigma male” before coming across it in a review of David Fincher’s new movie “The Killer” by Max Read. According to Mr. Read, “sigma philosophies include social asceticism, dorm-room Nietzscheanism, weird resentment, boorish self-justification.”

Or, more simply, “If you don’t have any friends, and people don’t really want to talk to you? You might just be a Sigma Male.”

Wikipedia gives the term a more positive spin:

Sigma male is an internet slang term to describe masculine men. The term gained prominence within Internet culture during the late 2010s and early 2020s, and has inspired numerous memes, graffitis and videos. It is used to denote a male who is equally dominant to an alpha male, but exists outside the alpha-beta male hierarchy as a “lone wolf”. In the manosphere, it is regarded as the “rarest” kind of male.

Fincher is best known for the movies Se7en, Gone Girl, Zodiac, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, and The Social Network. All pretty dark. The Killer is available on Netflix.

 

Bertrand Russell: Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)

Posted on by

This post is more about YouTube than Bertrand Russell, or Christianity for that matter. The lecture above was first delivered on March 6, 1927 to the National Secular Society, South London Branch, at Battersea Town Hall.  

I’ve heard of Bertrand Russell most of my adult life but don’t think I knew more than he was a philosopher and mathematician. The Wikipedia entry above probably has as much information as I would have gotten in an undergraduate course. And the lecture above (36 minutes) was fascinating.

I’ve been posting videos to YouTube almost since the beginning (February 2005. I uploaded my first video in February of 2006). And, like most people, I’ve spent a fair amount of time watching videos there. More and more, it’s the first place I look for how to do something. And learn something. Yes, there’s no shortage of junk but the more YouTube (and Google) learn about my interests, the more interesting and useful videos fill my stream.

While network and cable news gives us endless talking heads and pundits in 3 to 5 minutes “packages,” YouTube has few constraints. For better or worse, it has become my primary source for news.

Flickr Batch Organizer

Posted on by

Flickr launched in February, 2004. I created an account and started uploading photos in March, 2005. So I guess I’m a long-time user. My primary photo repository is the Photos app on my MacBook (mirrored in my iCloud account): 2,449 photos. I make some effort to only save “keepers.” Flickr is where I post photos I’d like to share with the world. All under Creative Commons license for unrestricted use. I have about 2,500 photos in my photostream organized into albums and collections.

This 12 minute video (I know, too long) is a very cursory explanation of how I use Flickr’s Batch Organizer to manage photos.

1946 Jeep CJ2A

Posted on by

I spent a couple of hours at the Jeep Reunion that took place in Fulton, MO on Friday and Saturday (I’ll share a few photos in a separate post). The highlight for me was the Latimer Family Jeep, a 1946 CJ2A.

The Jeep has been handed down to C. J. Latimer who was at the reunion with his father, step-father and grandmother. It was purchased by C. J.’s great grandfather in 1946 for use on the family farm near Marshall, MO.

A local businessman opened a Willys distributorship just after the war and the Latimer Jeep was the first one sold in Saline County. C. J.’s great grandfather purchased the Jeep for $150 and it arrived in a crate, ready for assembly!

The Latimer Jeep has an extension to the tub that was sold as a dealer accessory for agricultural use. According to family history, Great grandpa Latimer had to sign an affidavit that the Jeep would be used for agriculture. And when it was time to put up hay, the Jeep could be put in low gear and great grandpa Latimer could walk along beside the Jeep loading bales of hay.

C.J’s great-grandfather added a glove compartment but the Jeep is –for the most part– unchanged since it was purchased almost 80 years ago. The only hands that used and worked on the Jeep were C. J’s grandfather and great grandfather.

C. J. plans to get the Jeep drivable but plans no other changes.

The Unconscious

Posted on by

“My thesis then, is as follows: in addition to our immediate consciousness, which is of a thoroughly personal nature and which we believe to be the only empirical psyche (even if we tack on the personal unconscious as an appendix), there exists a second psychic system of a collective, universal, and impersonal nature which is identical in all individuals. This collective unconscious does not develop individually but is inherited. It consists of pre-existent forms, the archetypes, which can only become conscious secondarily and which give definite form to certain psychic contents.”

— From a lecture titled The Concept of the Collective Unconscious delivered by Carl Jung on October 19, 1936, to the Abernethian Society at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital in London.

“Nothing You See is Real”

Posted on by


Wikipedia: “Donald David Hoffman is an American cognitive psychologist and popular science author. He is a professor in the Department of Cognitive Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, with joint appointments in the Department of Philosophy, the Department of Logic and Philosophy of Science, and the School of Computer Science. Hoffman studies consciousness, visual perception and evolutionary psychology using mathematical models and psychophysical experiments.”

Based on years of meditation and lots of reading on the subject of consciousness, I actually get this.