In zoology, you’re not supposed to anthropomorphosize animal behavior. For example, a dog doesn’t “laugh”, it “vocalises”. The idea is that you keep a bit of daylight between human emotions and animal emotions, because they’re not the same thing.

But people are fine with anthropormophisizing other things. We talk about nations, states, churches, backyard mud wrestling federations, etc as if they’re people. Reagan described the USSR as an “evil empire”. Can an empire be evil? Any more than an empire can have a favourite basketball team?

(All adjectives are behavioral. “Evil empire” = “an empire that does evil things”)

Ayn Rand once said “don’t ask me about my family, my childhood, my friends or my feelings. Ask me about the things I think.” But the things she thought were caused by her family, her childhood, her friends, and her feelings. There isn’t some “Ayn Rand” homunculus issuing orders from on high. It seems to me more likely that Rand’s feeling of free will emerged from lots of little incidents, both inside her mind and in the world outside, and they composited to form her personality. And if they created her personality, maybe they deserve the credit or blame for her actions.

Like Rand, The Soviet Union was a very large emergent froth coming from many subunits, which themselves were made up of many subunits, etc. What level of the apparatus bears the mark of Cain? Which level is “evil”? When talking about, say, a massive artificial famine like Holodomor, who do you blame?

The USSR itself? No, it only acted the way it did because of the smaller gears ticking inside. The NKVD, or the People’s Commissariat of Land Cultivation? No, same problem.

What about the minions who enacted the policies? Were they to blame? They would have claimed they were following orders.

So we can blame Stalin. He was the irreducible evil. Hopefully he won’t claim that he acted ideologically, otherwise blame for the Ukrainian famine gets passed back to Vladimir Lenin, then to Karl Marx, then to Adam Smith, then to John Ball, then to Jesus (and then to…). But hey, at least we’ve found the ultimate source of the Holodomor…

…No, we we haven’t. We’re still horsefucked. A nation is very complicated and elaborate, and if we’re withholding judgement on the USSR for this reason, we need to realise that  Joseph Stalin’s mind was even more  complicated and elaborate. There were 100 billion neurons in his brain. Each hemisphere had 400 to 500 distinct brain areas. His genome encompassed 20,000 genes, 84% of which were expressed in the brain. He was an incredibly sophisticated thinking machine.

Even if we understood a normal person’s brain, I don’t think we could have understood Stalin’s. Everyone who knew him or his works commented on how unusual he seemed, how cold and cruel. No more a human being than HAL9000. Adolf Hitler, although he owned a dog, strikes me as a stereotypical “cat person” – anxious, neurotic, sensitive, and artistically-minded. Benito Mussolini is more like a stereotypical “dog person” – a gregarious backslapping Il Duce, prone to self-aggrandisement and egotism. Stalin strikes me as a person who would have brooked no pets at all. Although maybe he considered Lavrentiy Beria a kind of pet.

So what in this confusing mare’s nest can we “blame”? Stalin’s neurons? They have to fire together in elaborate Hebbian patterns, and no one neuron is responsible for anything. His genes? All behavioural traits are heavily polygenic, there wasn’t any one “evil gene” in Stalin’s mind. And these genes were gifts from his parents, so we’re almost back to blaming cavemen again. “What caused the Holodomor?” It seems the answer might be…everything.

Homer Simpson’s method for getting out of trouble is to say “It was like that when I got here”, and so is mine.

“The last sound on the worthless earth will be two human beings trying to launch a homemade spaceship and already quarreling about where they are going next.” – William Faulkner

“Say what you will about pre-modern European society, no peasant was under any pathetic illusion the monarch would enjoy a beer with them” – @Trilburne

“Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.” – Noam Chomsky

“I read War and Peace in 20 minutes. It’s about Russia.” – Woody Allen on speed-readers

“Practice doesn’t make perfect, practice makes permanent.” -Unknown

“What would your good do if evil didn’t exist, and what would the earth look like if all the shadows disappeared? After all, shadows are cast by things and people. Here is the shadow of my sword. But shadows also come from trees and living beings. Do you want to strip the earth of all trees and living things just because of your fantasy of enjoying naked light? You’re stupid.” – Mikhail Bulgakov

“You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style” – Vladimir Nabokov

“If a mosquito has a soul, it is mostly evil. So I don’t have too many qualms about putting a mosquito out of its misery. I’m a little more respectful of ants.” – Douglas Hofstadter

“Hey Hef, how do you get so many bitches?” “Well, for starters, I don’t call them bitches” – Hugh Hefner

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.” -Arthur Schopenhauer

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.” – Antoine de Saint

“My father is the jailhouse. My father is your system… I am only what you made me. I am only a reflection of you.” – Charles Manson

“There is no such thing as a former KGB man.” – Vladimir Putin

From his snowbound manse in Portland, Maine, Stephen King has unleashed his most horrifying work yet. A terrifying look at man’s inner heart, a raw and beating extrusion of pure horror.

I refer, of course, to his Twitter account, which is just the drizzling shits.

Imagine a hacky 1930s vaudeville comic with buck teeth, a spinning bow-tie, and a lapel flower that squirts water. Imagine “topical” humor that was growing only slightly musty in the early years of the Bush presidency. Imagine forwards from your grandma that are forwards from her grandma. Welcome to the Stephen King twitter feed.

The handful of pity retweets/favs renew one’s faith in humanity. Some people are taking a stand against this abomination. But there’s no time to relax, the assault has only just begun.

His jokes are best read with a trombone player supply the “waah waah waah” at each punch line.

What the fuck is this happy horseshit? I want to take the Twitter social media platform to a rape crisis center of some kind, whispering reassurances in its ear. “Everything will be OK. You’re being very brave right now. Just remember…it’s not your fault.”

Just annoying.

Shut up.

I had a small Mogutu-style breakdown when I saw this. How’s this funny or clever? He just took a famous quote and changed it so it’s about Twitter. Yeah, and Gandhi would be like “be the RT you wish to see in the world.” Scary funny!

But there’s more! Are you a fan of low-effort dumbfuck political pandering? Especially of the left-wing variety? Stevie’s got you covered, my friend.

Somewhere, there is a politburo meeting in secret. They are compiling evidence, and building a case. Their thesis is nothing more than this: Twitter must be destroyed.

Obviously, if they rise to power they’ll close Twitter, bulldoze the corporate headquarters, imprison everyone involve, and grind the hard drives into a fine metal powder. But what will happen to the people who use Twitter? They’re the real problem. Final solution: lobotomies all around. They’ll insert a sharp metal rod under your eyelid, gently (or not) insert it past the sphenoid structure, and sever your frontal brain lobe. Not too far, though, or it might be fatal, and we still need people to drive lorries and empty rubbish bins and things. I’m not saying I support this plan. All I’m saying is that it’s real, it’s happening, and right now @StephenKing’s tweets are in the prosecution’s brief.

Is it too much to ask for some entertaining cornball, such as “The man in black created a Twitter account, and the gunslinger followed”?