Meduza.io

На медузе хорошее описание ИГИЛ (ISIS), из которого понятно, как легко попасть из Турции на территорию ИГИЛ в Сирии и обратно.

Две полу-случайные мысли по ассоциации со статьей:
- как быстро бывшему главному редактору ленты.ру с командой удалось сделать полезный сетевой ресурс.
- юридическое требование к российским СМИ упоминать по отношению к ИГИЛ "запрещенная в России организация" по структуре похожа на такое же обязательное религиозное требование к мусульманам упоминать при имени Пророка "да благословит его Аллах".

Deep thought of the Day

The irritation of doubt is the only immediate motive for the struggle to attain belief. ... as soon as a firm belief is reached we are entirely satisfied, whether the belief be true or false.
- Charles S. Peirce.

The difference between North America and continental Europe

Intellectually, in response to social challenges of the 19-20th centuries Europe adopted the Kant-Hegel-Marx (KHM) philosophical toolkit. In Russia Lenin took it to the extreme, with disastrous consequences for the country.
By contrast, in the US intellectuals rejected the KHM line of thinking and developed their own philosophy - Pragmatism. This probably saved America from strong socialist and communist political movements. Also, the first world war strengthened the society's resistance to German ideas. I wonder if there's a way to show it with some data.

(no subject)

A non-chaotic environment provides an advantage to a reasoning being. In such an environment reasoning is good; therefore, a non-chaotic environment has the potential for a being with a system of values. If we discover beings with a value system, it means that their environment is non-chaotic. Given the value system, we can try to figure out non-chaotic factors in the environment.