[FRIAM] non-sycophancy

Wed Oct 8 13:16:40 EDT 2025

It’s not all bad.

Sometimes, over the fog of nonsense that crowds most of the broadcast channels, there are explainers who know what they are talking about and make useful observations.

I think I mentioned Sarah Taber some years ago as someone who comes well-reputed.  I don’t try to follow her (or anybody else) regularly, but this popped up on my feed, and sounds realistic:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=badGHJLDpP8
Why Farmers Voted For Trump
youtube.com

For me, one useful little bit of clarity on who’s out there, and how they are making their choices.

Eric

> On Oct 7, 2025, at 16:28, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I can't get the phrase "tone deaf" out of my head:
> 
> AmEx "There's nothing like platinum"
> https://youtu.be/KjYyG4FgmPQ?si=XukUoeky00YT_cs5
> 
> Battlefield 6 Trailer
> https://youtu.be/LqWVp3p-FPk?si=VCbhrJ1xdZBRl3ba
> 
> Andrew Tate Car Collection
> https://youtu.be/DDSlF3iI2-s?si=pGAzZJfUCjbXiTD7
> 
> Maybe it's just me. But these things all seem wildly outside the zeitgeist. And that's in spite of my disgust, registered here, with people like Sabine Hossenfelder for her blatant shift to the grift or Lex Fridman's self-aggrandizing sycophancy (https://youtu.be/Z1Ua1hVRtdE?si=e5-SJeSPI11svpqV).
> 
> But I guess it's an obvious next step after the hustle culture we've forced ourselves into. Success is measured by your accumulation of status symbols, shame be damned. There are some glimmers, though. E.g.
> 
> ICE List
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2ficelist.is%2f&c=E,1,QANFi6FQr9QcCSo11t5g_ffDhED7dVTWyJDjJB0ZjDcRFXHLSrNfrtF2jC6SpBxMoZnTdB6u9EWa3eHzFyqIpKFOrshXRcXWkYoD5-ZTdxWa&typo=1
> 
> The Reckoning
> https://www.youtube.com/@PFthereckoning
> 
> DDoSecrets
> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fddosecrets.com%2f&c=E,1,pfIZjkK9sn_mYQUuM8ZrBmRVVRRIfxs7KJTHf0YPsAbLNbkHalceJ5qUElLk6XQ-6JA2wUOVMQbrnpqT6mKqr4hMoQVSBTHgnY3DeC0HPg4,&typo=1
> 
> The purpose, though, is not to decrement the status but to hone in on whatever "accountability" might mean now. How can we, each of us, understand what it means?
> 
> 
> On 10/7/25 12:27 PM, Santafe wrote:
>> Yeah.  Nice.
>> I just got back in the country a few days ago, and got to experience the White-Nationalist ICE recruiting ads that I gather started fairly recently.  Like recruiting ads for war criminals, or those who hope for the chance to be.  I guess they are being run everywhere, as a quick google search shows local news reports from a bunch of cities in many states.
>> The impressive thing is how belligerently, flamboyantly trashy it all is.  It's like, anything anybody ever considered low, degraded, or depraved, they scent-roll in, just to binge on their ressentiment.  If I were trying to think of ways to mock somebody for being stupid and ugly, I would never have the imagination to put together the scripts they use.
>> It almost feels superfluous to spend time thinking about how to deal with the people in various offices, when they are ballasted by a sector of the public that thinks this is what they have wanted for so long and can finally have.  Unless one could figure out how to rehabilitate that disease to any kind of state of health, it’s very hard to see what, short of a heavy collapse that just clobbers the whole country, will thump them hard enough to push them back into whatever corner they came bursting out of, and let the rest of the public get coordinated enough to re-establish some agency over how the country operates.    Not that the “rest of the public” knows what to do; the status quo ante was the python squeeze that got us into this whole mess, and we can’t be aspiring to go back to that.  But something short of the whole country’s pouring gasoline on itself and setting itself on fire would be nice.
>> I have thought, too, that americans are going to get to experience something that many of my Russian friends have known most or all their lives: how do you go about trying to be a good and decent person, in a country with a uniformly bad government (corrupt, cynical, and murderous with no mitigating benevolences toward anybody) that you don’t see work for yourself to change?
>> Eric
>>> On Oct 7, 2025, at 14:48, glen <gepropella at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>> https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fweval.org%2fanalysis%2fsycophancy-probe%2fad51e9a522f01e98%2f2025-09-04T17-50-49-741Z&c=E,1,RyTKGFwr1wjARn9k5vTd-WC-XLWBsqDCtuIl7B4-zdfEGde94UyemTKPbutU21Znk5UHrObUvCB4noUNqNJfjZgpEjXEqVt8KlXtEncB9g,,&typo=1
>>> 
>>> If only we could find the political will to amend the Constitution with something like this. Or at least add it to Senate advice and consent.
>>> 
> 
> -- 
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