“The Emperor Has No Brain”

Stupidity has power because it ignores rules built on reason. But even the reptile brain has limits. Otherwise reptiles would still rule the world…

Ofri Ilani in #Haaretz uses a Stanisław Lem story to explain something analysts keep refusing to say plainly: the world is run by an idiot.

In Lem’s “Idiota” (in “A Perfect Vacuum”; OM), parents of a severely disabled infant convince themselves he is a superior being, freed from language, morality, and limits. They build a cult around interpreting his drool as metaphysical insight. Eventually they abandon reason entirely to imitate him.

Ilani observes correctly that this is exactly what Israeli public opinion does with #Trump. And not only Israel. The “best analysts” at Foreign Policy and Foreign Affairs do it too. They can’t admit the conclusion because it means accepting an arbitrary, absurd world. So they manufacture strategy where there is none.

[…] But at a certain point the stupidity just screams to the heavens. You have no choice but to acknowledge it – unless you belong to a particularly fanatical cult of believers. And the war against #Iran is one of those moments. This is simply a stupid, absurd, and destructive war. There is no point looking for any hidden logic in it.

He concluded: Napoleon also smashed the old order violently, but claimed to replace it with Reason. Trump replaces it with stupidity and ignorance. Supporting Trump is therefore explicitly nihilistic – not a political position, simply the desire to watch the world burn.

Hebrew: https://www.haaretz.co.il/magazine/underthesun/2026-04-08/ty-article/.highlight/0000019d-670a-db3c-a3df-ef8fbe7d0000 or https://archive.ph/JAI5R

Don’t forget about #Gaza and the #EpsteinFiles #uspol #bookstadon

Finally got my hands on Karen Hao's Empire of AI book and am so far enjoying it one hour in. It should be an excellent bookend to my nonfiction selections all touching on AI so far this year.

#Bookstadon

If you've ever wondered what cattle might be raised in the clouds of a gas giant, and what sort of person might what to eke out that kind of living on the galactic frontier, Gas Giant Gambit was written for you!
Available now!
https://esraye.com/gas-giant-gambit/

#bookstadon #scifi #books #sciencefiction #spacewestern

#APalaceNeartheWind by #AiJiang is featured in yesterday's #newbooks video on youtube!

full video: https://twp.ai/E6HXII
buy the books: https://twp.ai/4ix2uA
all links in bio

#bookstadon

#TheSubtleArtofFoldingSpace by @john_chu is featured in today's #newbooks haul on youtube!

full video: https://twp.ai/9PcI25
buy the books: https://twp.ai/4ix2q1
all links in bio!

#bookstadon

The MC of my scifi/WWI epic Shallow Trenches/Open Skies was majoring in electrical engineering at West Point when the US entered World War I in 1917.
What better person for him idolize than Nikola Tesla?

#nikolatesla #scifi #sciencefiction #bookstadon #wardenclyffe #books #writing

#page42

"Finally, in 1976 a Japanese typewriter manufacturer, Astor, produced a magnificent live steam gauge 1 Schools class locomotive which for all the world reflected how Bing might have made gauge 1 locomotives has the firm survived to the 1970s"

From page 45 (pages 42-44 all contain photos) of The World of Model Trains, ISBN 0-89009-218-4

This #train #book contains absolutely lovely photos and scans of old catalogues from the earliest days of #modelrailways as well as a really complete history of the #modelrailroading #hobby

#bookstadon #page42

New #Books in Conversation: Portal Fiction. It's a popular subgenre, especially in Fae writing. Check out my thoughts
#booktube #bookstodon #bookstadon

https://youtu.be/rgrcxqeZyB4

Over the past couple of years I've been seeing the question of is it possible to read Manga for the blind and visually impaired, and for those topics we would mostly get a no for the response.
regardless I've been thinking and I may have a proposal to get this done but first, I think it's important to give just a small bit on my proposal.
The entire proposal for Manga accessibility will be around the specs of the .html format with text stripped and the image preserved, and all the info that's needed will be in the required element be it image descriptions or what ever, this way sighted people can still read the document.
I've been trying to get people on this idea for a long time and had posted the proposal to Reddit, but so far it's been a wash, but at least it'll give you an idea of what I'm trying to do.
Posted is a link to the proposed standard, and I really hope you give this a good read before responding as what I'm about to ask is very important to us getting this standard off the ground!

https://www.reddit.com/r/manga/comments/1kv5764/disc_a_call_to_make_a_community_for_manga_to_be/

Now that you're back from all that, I've been giving the idea to my brother and he's agreed to be the important man of the project and help move it forward in his free time, but he needs to know how we as blind people like our images for Manga to be described.
I've been trying to tell him that it should be different for every image where context is needed, but he wants to know in the event that I may have been generalising for my people.
He also wants an answer to something. If my people do want to read Manga, why hasn't there been demand or some effort for it to now?
He does tell me that it's probably that not much people want to as I like to think they do, but I have to tell him that for those who do they might not know how to go about it. He'll see these posts and he's a fully sighted man, so let him know you're here!
As for me I'm not a programmer and what I can do for my people is quite short on that end, but if you love anime and or Manga and you have ideas about what format should be used or what format is more integrated with accessibility APIs please do let me know!
Back then we may had not much to tell our people on this matter, but now that a proposed standard is being made and effort is being pushed, now all blind people who love Manga and would want to read it let me hear it!
#Manga #manga #Accessibility #accessibility #Blind #blind #Dissability #Books #books #bookstadon

Got a lot coming down the pipe in April. Some of it is new. Some of it I have been waiting on for months.
Suffer the anticipations of April with me.

https://esraye.com/2026/04/07/writing-news-april-anticipation/

#amwriting #writer #books #scifi #bookstadon