Buck Hardcastle
Bio
Served in the Peace Corps in Ukraine, 2005-07.
Viscount of Hyrkania and private cartographer to the house of Beifong.
Stories (86/0)
These "Useful Idiots" Probably Aren't Compromised by Russia.
"Useful idiot" is a term apocryphally coined by Vladimir Lenin to describe Americans who would support communist causes without really understanding them. There seems to be a few useful idiots running around America today, siding with Russia over Ukraine in the current war. It's spurned chatter that maybe Russia is paying some of them off or has blackmail material on them, classic Soviet style kompromat. I don't have proof this is untrue, and I wouldn't be entirely shocked if one of the people below is compromised, but I doubt that's the core issue here. The thing is, when they see an authoritarian launch a war of choice on an peaceful democracy, they side with the authoritarian because that's where their sympathies lie. They are anti-democratic authoritarians.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in The Swamp
Why Sanctions on Russia Matter
Vladimir Putin is a delusional, narcissistic psychopath. Having power is a kind of degenerative disease: the longer you have it, the more it rots your mind and disconnects you from the lived experience of ordinary people. Putin has been the President or Prime Minister of Russia since 1999.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in The Swamp
My Time in Ukraine
Like many Americans, I had been hoping Russia's build up of military forces along the Ukrainian border would turn out to be a bluff. I was heartbroken when they invaded. For me Ukraine is not some abstract place, I lived there for over two years.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in Wander
Do Women Have To Be Naked To Get Into SLAM?
In 1989 an art collective known as the Guerrilla Girls put up ads on buses calling attention to a survey that found that at the NY Metropolitan Museum less than five percent of the artists in the modern galleries were women. Meanwhile eighty-five percent of the nudes in those galleries were female. They presumably limited themselves to the modern galleries as representation would be even poorer in classical art.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in FYI
A Gross Simplification of the NFT Market: What You Need to Know Now
At recent family dinner my mother told me she couldn't understand how these NFT's could be worth so much money. I told her actually she did understand: These hyperlinks to ugly cartoon apes seem like they should be worthless, because they are worthless. It's a scam.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in The Chain
5 Historical figures that school “forgot” to tell you were socialists
Schools have a lot to cover, they can't do it all. I'm sure that its a perfectly innocent mistake that they just keep neglecting to mention these important people were dyed in the wool socialists.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in FYI
The Lost Swimsuit Girls
After an analysis of swimsuit lists and then a list of babes missing from those lists, it seemed I wasn't quite done. I kept thinking "Oh, I should have included her." and "How could I not include her?" So apparently this is just what I do now.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in Styled
Most Underrated Bikini Babes
There are numerous lists out there of the most iconic swimsuits of all time, in fact I recently did an analysis of them. It seems likely that there is some plagiarism going on as many of the lists are so similar. And is the one of the most iconic swimsuit scenes in film history really from Die Another Day?
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in Geeks
Transtime
Levinson didn’t see why the physics department needed to have a social media presence at all. Their new device, the Magnetic Absolute Laser Collider Organon Linear Machine, or MALCOLM, would create a flashy light show that was incidental to its actual function. The department chair thought it would spur interest. Levinson had already explained why streaming its first ever use was hubris, it was more likely to be a damp squib than work properly. The best case scenario would be some fleeting praise from science websites.
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in Fiction
Are a Jaguar's Spots the Code of Life?
Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986) was an Argentinean writer with a style that defies categorization. He would write about the collections of non-existent libraries. He would give an elaborate review of a copy of a book as though it was an original text. A reoccurring theme was labyrinths and the potential for discovery within. "Writing that is multi-layered, self-referential, elusive, and allusive is now frequently labeled Borgesian." (William Gibson).
By Buck Hardcastleabout a year ago in Earth
