Robert Stark and co-host Pilleater interview Dan D’Argenio. Dan is a two time Android: Netrunner World Champion from 2014 to 2015. He writes on stimhack, post videos on youtube, and plays Netrunner almost all the time.
Topics:
Dan’s interest in Android: Netrunner, his success in the game
The origins of Netrunner, the game compared to Magic: The Gathering
The collectible card game culture of Netrunner, the structure of the tournament scene
The Living card game vs. The CCG format, the value of cards and collecting
Cyberpunk vs. Vaporwave aesthetics, Runner vs. Corporation, Philadelphia cyberpunk aesthetics
The influences of anime, cyberpunk, vaporwave, in Netrunner
The philosophy behind cyberpunk and vaporwave, consumerism, internet culture
Cards in Netrunner related to Cyberpunk, Tron, Blade Runner, Akira, Ghost in The Shell
Fuckbois using Data Leak Reversal Controversy
Netrunner Cube and drafting cards
Competitive players vs. Casual players
The art of Android: Netrunner
The meta-game, Netrunner culture, playing Netrunner at cool places
Netrunner deck builders, Stimhack, Dan’s streaming and decks
Music while playing Netrunner, burn-out while playing Netrunner
Getting new players into Netrunner
Dan’s shirtless tees, Philadelphia’s weather other hobbies then Netrunner
Robert Stark, joined with Rabbit, and Alex von Goldstein talk about his recent trip to the SF Bay Area
Topics include:
Robert’s departing point Santa Barbara, which is a nice laid back coastal town, but under the cultural influence of LA Robert Stark’s podcast with Bay Area Guy about his last trip to SF
Robert met up with Bay Area Guy and Anatoly Karlin in Berkeley
How like Robert, Alex, and Rabbit, Bay Area Guy and Anatoly Karlin exist on the periphery of the Alt-Right(ex.The Radical Center, Alt Left)
The Cultural Leftist legacy of Berkeley, and how Anatoly Karlin spoke at Richard Spencer’s event at UC Berkeley
How places that are politically correct often produce interesting dissident thinkers
How Berkeley is on a scale similar to European cities(ex. small, compact, dense and walkable)
How transplants often adopt the stereotypes of cities
Demographic trends in the Bay Area, how the traditional white middle class is being pushed out, but also working class Blacks and Hispanics are being priced out through gentrification
Asian culture and immigration in the Bay Area, and Asian Majority Cities, including Daly City, where Robert stayed
The seedy Tenderloin District, urban grittiness, and how it reminded Robert of the film Taxi Driver
The film Dirty Harry
The BART(Bay Area Rapid Transit) System, which has a 70’s futurist aesthetic, and has had issue with crime
The film Fruitvale Station about a Police incident on BART in Oakland
The 70’s futurist Embarcadero Center, designed by architect John Portman, and the importance of having urban oasis’s
How the Silicon Valley is a bland suburban region, which demonstrates that technology has limitation without culture and aesthetics The Shortage Of Women In Silicon Valley
How the area where the tech elite lives has wilderness preserves, in contrast with their support for mass immigration How the Bay Area has done a better job at Wilderness Conservation than Southern California
Robert’s observation’s about where to build in the Bay Area in response to his interview with Laura Foote Clark of Grow SF
How San Francisco has it’s own unique Aesthetic, and is the most scenic American City
How San Francisco is on a high level aesthetically, but the dominant culture is consumerism mixed in with some cultural leftist views
Robert stayed in Walnut Creek, which is a mid-century car oriented suburb in the process of being retrofited into a walkablle New Urbanist community
Walnut Creek aslo has BART access, and owns more open space per capita than any other community in California 80’s Vaporwave Architecture in Walnut Creek, how historic preservation has neglected 80’s Kitsch, and the occultist origins of Kek in California 80’s culture
Nearby Lafayette, which is an idyllic semi rural town, with quick BART access to the city(the best of both worlds for those who can afford it) The San Francisco Bay Area Renters’ Federation lawsuit against Lafayette, and the debate regarding development and diversity
Whether the Bay Area should be it’s own separate country, state, or broken up into a bunch of small independent city states
Robert Stark and co-host Alex von Goldstein talk to Paul Bingham about Aleister Crowley
Topics include:
Today Aleister Crowley exists either as an icon of occultism, used by subcultures, derided by others, but few are familiar with his political and philosophical ideas
Kerry Bolton’s series on Aleister Crowley as a Political Theorist, Part 1 and Part 2 Political Platform based on Crowley’s ideas Julius Evola on Crowley James J. O’Meara’s reivew of Richard B. Spence’s book Secret Agent 666
Crowley’s religion Thelema
Crowley’s fascination with power structures
Crowley transcended politics and did not fit into either traditionalism or the left
Crowley did not fit into the left for rejecting egalitarianism and mass democracy, and the right for rejecting free markets and traditional morality
Crowley’s Aristocratic individualism, and his belief in an Aristocracy of the creative class Wyndham Lewis‘s book The Art of Being Ruled, which like Crowley advocated the rule of the creative class
Crowley viewed the masses as spiritualy inferior
Crowley saw capitalism as degrading genuine cultural elitism
Crowley rejecting Marxism, but supported a social safety net to free up the creative class
Crowley’s value of leisure
Crowley came to the same conclusions about economics as the Distributist and Social creditors, who were Traditional Catholics
Distributism and Social Credit are the economic systems most compatable with Aristocratic Individualism Homo economicus
Crowley’s critique of democracy
Crowley’s environmentalism
Crowley’s interest in Mountaineering
Crowley tested the limits of human nature and practiced what he wrote about
The futurist philosophy is about testing what works
Crowley’s view of the future was that things will collapse and a new brighter future will emerge
Crowley’s erotic poetry series White Stains, and how he practiced the sexual acts he wrote about
Crowley used sexual experimentation to further his intellectual state, but did not advocate it for the masses
Why the individual must have freedom to exist within their own personal boundaries
Crowley’s advocacy of youth colonies, how the elites practice youth camps, and the importance of controlling youth
How male bonding and inter generational relationships are stigmatized for the masses
How Crowley often took the passive role in sexual acts with both men and women
Paul’s point that most people are either sexually dominant or submissive, but that being a switch is a uniquely Anglo trait
Crowley as the original Troll
Paul’s point that if Crowley were alive today he would be disinterested in western politics
Our upcoming show with Paul on Italian Futurism, and how Crowley, Wyndham Lewis, and the futurist had similar ideas, but were fiercely independent from one another
The origins of Hipster Culture
How in the late 90’s and early 2000’s there were Hipster, Douchebag, and Hip Hop Subcultures
How the original Hipsters were Arty and pretentious, but latter became part of mainstream pop culture, incorporating trashy elements of the latter two groups
Alex’s observation that Hipsters adopted other subcultures out of irony, but latter appropriated them(irony vs. post irony)
The Truth Will Live’s comment that Hipster Culture emerged as a reaction to 90’s Hip Hop Culture
How the original Hipsters were implicitly white, and into things such as environmentalism and anti-consumerism, similar to Rabbit’s Alternative Left
How SJW’s hijacked Hipster Culture
The Truth Will Live tells a story about when she was a feminist, and how she lost interest when she heard feminist apologizing for Third World cultures treatment of women Intersectionality
90’s Zine Culture
Experimental Noise and Drone Techno Music
The Truth Will Live’s observation that the Punk Scene was often explicitly white
The Truth Will Live’s observation that the more women enter a subculture the more politically correct it becomes
90’s Brit Pop
How Right Wing figure such as Gavin McInnes came out of the Hipster scene, and many Hipsters are now joining the Alt Right Taki Theodoracopulos, and how being wealthy enables one to express controversial opinions
How political correctness is an ideology of upper middle class strivers, who are trying to prove their status
How even within dissident subcultures there is still pressure to conform to the norms of those groups
Social Sexual Mores
Making the case for traditional mores from s secular scientific standpoint
The Truth Will Live’s Donald Trump story from work
Robert Stark, Rabbit, and Alex von Goldstein talk to writer and social critic, James Howard Kunstler
Topics include:
The history of suburbia
James’ theory of history that things happen because they seem like a good idea at the time
How our auto oriented petroleum based society is unsustainable
How bad urban planing has negative psychological and cultural implications
The role of zoning laws, and how zoning can both encourage and prevent suburban sprawl
The future of suburbia, how some will be retrofitted into walkalble communities, while others will be abandoned
The New Urbanist Movement
Mass immigration and overpopulation
Why James does not view skyscrapers and hyper density as viable alternatives to suburbia
Robert’s point that tall structures can have aesthetic value, and how James acknowledges that the early wave of skyscrapers(ex. Singer Building, Woolworth Building, Manhattan Municipal Building) were beautiful structures but historical flukes
How European cities provide the ideal model for urbanism
Examples of sustainable American cities include Portland, Oregon, Charleston, South Carolina, and Savannah, Georgia
Mass Transit, and why James favors investing in existing rail infrastrusture over new high speed rail
The Streetcar suburb, and how they provide a model for New Urbanism
James’ point that even with alternative energy and technological innovation, we still have to downsize and localize our society and economy
How peak oil will lead to economic and political decentralization
How Peak Oil will make Globalization unsustainable
The future of China and the Arab Gulf States
Pre-War Japan as the best example of an advanced civilization without industrialization
The scarcity of water in the future, and how the inland water system will regain it’s value Historic Preservation, how the movement was started in the 1960’s in response to the demolition of Pennsylvania Station in NYC, and the debate about what should be preserved
Rabbit makes the case for mid century modern
Capital scarcities in the future, and how mass development is dependent upon the financial system
James’ four book series set in a post economic collapse America, the World Made by Hand
Robert Stark and co-host Rabbit interview Scott Jackisch. Scott is an IT consultant located in Oakland, CA. He blogs at The Oakland Futurist and runs the East Bay Futurists meetup.
Topics include:
Scott’s interest in futurism and science fiction writers including Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, and William Gibson
Scott’s futurist meetup and how there is a strong interest in futurism in the San Francisco Bay Area
How in the modern era people are isolated, and how meetups can fill in that void, and create new communities
How the meetup itself is not political, but rather an open discussion on futurism
The different political factions within futurism including liberals, libertarians, and Neoreactionaries
Scott’s critique of Neoreaction, how his main disagreement is over their rejections of progress, but can sympathize with their reaction to extreme political correctness
Rabbit’s point that he got interested in Neoreaction because the idea of people being able to form their own societies appealed to him, but was turned off by the extreme traditional views
Scott’s political views, and how he is basically a Centrist and Pragmatist
Why Scott accepts Realpolitik, which is a system of politics or principles based on practical rather than moral or ideological considerations
Transhumanism
Scott’s series The Robot Lord Scenario, which he plans on turning into a novel
Trends in warfare, how the invention of the gun leveled the playing field, but that automative weapons will enforce inequality
Daniel Suarez’s novel Kill Decision
Economic automation and it’s implications
Economics, whether capitalism is necessary for innovation, and how a functional economic needs both capitalism and socialism
The Bay Area’s housing crisis, NIMBYism, and where to build new housing
Vertical Living and urban agriculture
Retro Futurism, dystopian and utopian visions of the future
How science fiction writers can provide narratives for engineers to build their visions(ex. Elon Musk and the Culture series)
The role of sociopaths in society, and how power generally gets concentrated by sociopaths
From a realpolitiks perspective how do you take power away from people in power that are causing harm?
Scott’s message for people to listen to each other instead of demonizing the other side
Robert Stark and co-host Alex von Goldstein interview Keith Preston about his book Thinkers Against Modernity
Topics include:
How the book is an examination of thinkers critical of modernity from a value neutral perspective
How Keith is influenced by the intellectual tradition of the enlightenment, yet finds value in traditionalist critiques of modernity
Julius Evola as the purest critique of modernity
How the Right tends to have a pessimistic view of the present and idealizes a particular era of the past(ex. Julius Evola the 8th Century BC, Nietzsche the Sophist era in Ancient Greece, Traditional Catholics the Middle Ages, and mainstream conservatives the 1950’s or Reagan Era)
Defining characteristic of the Right include rejection of social change, egalitarianism, and universalism, and a fixed view of human nature
Nietzsche’s point that ideologies become new religions, and how the modern politically correct left is a new moralistic religion rather than genuine liberalism or Marxism
Aleister Crowley’s aristocratic individualism, and his view that capitalism and mass democracy degraded a genuine cultural elitism
The Distributist G.K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc, their views on the distribution of capital, and their critic of capitalism as degrading traditional values
Carl Schmidt’s view that democracy was incompatible with liberal individualism
How Carl Schmidt subscribed to the realist school of though and viewed the United States as having an ideologically driven foreign policy
The United States as a nation founded on Classical Liberalism and the Enlightenment
The European New Right, how it was founded in the late 1960’s as a counter to the New Left, fusing aspects of the New Left with the conservative revolution of the interwar period
How the New Right tried to appeal to the left on issues such as anti-globalization, anti-consumerism, anti-imperialism, and environmentalism
The New Right’s critique of political correctness, feminism, and mass immigration as being products of capitalism Noam Chomsky on capitalism and anti-racism
The American Alternative Right, how it is influenced by the European New Right, and how it is different
Guillaume Faye’s Archeo-Futurism and futurist thought on the right
Robert and Rabbit’s recent trip to Las Vegas
How Las Vegas epitomizes capitalism and commercialism at it’s fullest
How Las Vegas demonstrates how capitalism is both a force for creation and destruction
How Las Vegas lacks any historic preservation
How despite it’s flaws Las Vegas offers an otherworldly fantasy experience
The Resort Fees
The ethics of Gambling
The political and demographic landscape of Las Vegas and Nevada
How Las Vegas lacks any significant SWPL presence
How Las Vegas attracts the trashiest of pop culture
Douche Bag culture, it’s different subsets, and how it’s absorbing hipster culture
The Aesthetics of Las Vegas Casinos, Robert and Rabbit’s favorites, and conceptual casino designs
The different era’s of Las Vegas, including Vintage Las Vegas, the themed resorts of the 90’s, and the newer casinos
The Las Vegas monorail
Whether Las Vegas resorts are a model for urban living
