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If you have spent any amount of time around dissident politics, you have probably heard several references to “autism,” with various people and things frequently described as autistic. This can either be positive or negative.

Positive references to autism often have to do with pattern recognition, mastery of a subject, or wholesome anime. For example, the anonymous users of 4Chan frequently do intelligence work that surpasses what the woke alphabet agencies can do, and this is lauded as autism. (more…)

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One of the most fascinating phenomena in the world are cargo cults: new religions that emerged on the islands dotting the Pacific Ocean after the departure of Japanese and American forces which had occupied them during the Second World War. In these cults, the adherents would emulate the actions of airstrip ground crews in order to conjure cargo airplanes and attain precious cargo. (more…)

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Who are the greatest underachievers in music history? A few names come to mind. Of course, you have The Sex Pistols, who became a national cultural phenomenon in Britain and then broke up after one album. The Stone Roses are also strong contenders for the cup. Their earth-shattering 1989 debut album regularly shows up on Greatest Albums Ever lists (in 2000, NME placed it #1). When their sophomore effort finally emerged five years later in an entirely changed musical landscape, The Roses had transformed into banal Led Zeppelin clones before imploding with a most undignified whimper. (more…)

Frederic Remington, The Puncher, 1895.

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As I understand it, most people would strongly prefer that others approve of them even if it means being untrue to themselves — and that’s something I’ll never understand about most people.

It seems that most people would rather be liked by others than be okay with themselves, and that’s something I strongly dislike about most people and think is not okay at all. (more…)

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“But I don’t want to go among mad people,” Alice remarked.

“Oh, you can’t help that,” said the Cat: “we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”

“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.

“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.” (more…)

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A Vice article published on Tuesday has reignited the debate over whether racism (or “pathological bias,” to use the clinical term proposed by psychiatrists) should be considered a mental illness and included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In turn, I would like to raise the question of whether pathological xenophilia should be considered a mental illness. (more…)

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On a recent trip to California, I got to spend some time in Ojai, a small, rustic town, high in the mountains, north of LA. Ojai is known as an enclave of a certain type of California “cool.” Its inhabitants are the kind of people who dislike the stress of LA but don’t want to be too far away from it, (more…)

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Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist, has made some clickbait headlines by saying that alt-rightists are “screamers and crazy people who have Hitler iconography in their Twitter timelines” and “childless single men who masturbate to anime.” He followed up this painfully rehearsed line by staring dead into the camera, shaking with anxiety, (more…)

The Uffington White Horse, Oxfordshire

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Peter Shaffer’s 1973 play, Equus, is arguably the most pagan work of art created in the 20th century. Ostensibly an extended dialogue between a mentally ill boy and his psychiatrist, Shaffer’s play goes far beyond the realms of psychoanalysis and begins to stir the surface of an incipient numinous awakening. (more…)