Comments on: Freedom is Slavery, or how and why everything costs

By: A few notes on the PHP debacle; and the impeding unfuture of the web « The Tar Pit

Sat, 31 Oct 2026 20:27:05 +0000

[...] Which brings me to the second part of this article, which I'll commence by remarking that web sites are today the most economically-efficient means of maintaining a public presence. Let me be clear: by "web site" I do not mean "Facebook page", "YouTube channel", "LinkedIn page", "Twitter profile" or whatever. Although all of these are technically web sites, they're way too loaded with extra baggage to compete with an actual plain HTML web site, and your presence there depends on your "agreeing to the terms and conditions". [...]

By: Pray tell, what are they going to do with all them serfs lying about? « The Tar Pit

Sun, 09 Aug 2026 16:14:27 +0000

[...] now you'd think that I should be sick and tired of explaining this shit over and over again. But hell, let's do it once more! words are cheap, and who knows, maybe this time [...]

By: Against the direction in Romanian culture today, translated and annotated « The Tar Pit

Sun, 28 May 2023 14:18:13 +0000

[...] way I'm not convinced by this argumentum ad populum. The common folk can't just "take freedom" without paying for the responsibilities that it entails. The so-called social contract was always [...]

By: spyked

spyked — Fri, 30 Sep 2022 15:51:18 +0000

While this may make a decent satire piece, it misses the main point of "freedom", that is, that the definition from Merriam-Webster is bullshit. Freedom is undefinable in the absence of a context which implicitly presupposes constraints, and from this perspective, absolute freedom constrains absolutely.

As with all dichotomies, the freedom-constraint relationship should be looked at clearly, and given the last couple of decades (or rather: centuries), with a special look towards disentangling it from all the bullshit that befell modernism. Surely, this is slowly becoming apparent even to the dumber among "us", but for some I fear it may be too late.

By: On intellectual feudalism « The Tar Pit

On intellectual feudalism « The Tar Pit — Sun, 18 Sep 2022 16:19:34 +0000

[...] that I maintain with my own two hands, on my own time and dime. Freedom costs -- everything in life costs and there's no other way to go about it, but sure, feel free to search that elixir while the world [...]

By: Ion Ghica, Letters to Vasile Alecsandri: From the time of Caragea [iii] « The Tar Pit

Sun, 01 May 2022 16:49:33 +0000

[...] What, you thought the job of sharing comes for free? Nothing comes for free. ↩ [...]

By: A cursory look at the infamous TRB "wedge" bug « The Tar Pit

A cursory look at the infamous TRB "wedge" bug « The Tar Pit — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:52:46 +0000

[...] Why do "they" do this? So that "they", in effect, own you. [...]

By: A declaration of war on the HTTP of Shit « The Tar Pit

A declaration of war on the HTTP of Shit « The Tar Pit — Wed, 14 Oct 2020 06:26:43 +0000

[...] the proverbial dirt as well. The interface will perhaps not look so fancy as it does now, but alas, everything costs. I will however make sure that the blog looks and acts decently in lynx, w3m, Dillo and maybe [...]

By: Greenspan's Assault on Integrity, annotated « The Tar Pit

Greenspan's Assault on Integrity, annotated « The Tar Pit — Fri, 11 Oct 2019 11:07:14 +0000

[...] three basic constituents of any and every totalitarian state: a bureaucracy to "make the policies" (freedom is slavery), a circus to keep people distracted while gathering intelligentia in the field (ignorance is [...]