RadixJournal - The Center of the Universe

00:00:00.000 Hey, Rebecca, what's doing well? Yeah, someone noticed my allergies. It's not springtime yet.

00:00:08.340 There's still snow out here, so it's not quite pollen season or anything, but I'm taking care

00:00:14.240 of a cat. My cat allergies have gotten a lot better. I guess by better, I mean I'm not totally

00:00:22.640 losing it due to the presence of a cat. I guess my immune system does it adjust in some way.

00:00:29.580 The allergy is an over-immune system in many ways. Having allergies is a sign of health,

00:00:37.560 is it not? Your immune system is going into overdrive, fighting off something that it

00:00:43.200 doesn't need to fight off. But I used to have just really terrible cat allergies in the sense that I

00:00:50.360 couldn't even function around a cat. I remember visiting someone's house one time in Texas,

00:00:58.060 I believe, which was lucky in terms of the location due to what I'll describe. But

00:01:04.840 he had a cat and I didn't know it and I just could not sleep. I felt like my throat was cramping up to

00:01:12.020 the point that I might suffocate. And so I just went and slept outside. I just grabbed a blanket and slept

00:01:18.080 on the grass to get away from the cat. But I've been taking Claritin and that's helped. That has

00:01:25.100 certainly helped. But cats are weird. There is something just strange about a cat. Cats aren't

00:01:31.540 fully domesticated in the way that dogs are. Because I think I think dogs genuinely love humans more than

00:01:41.560 other dogs. And it's not like a dog won't get excited when it sees another dog and he'll want to go

00:01:47.560 sniff its butt and pal around and maybe fake bite and things like that. But they seem to have a just

00:01:57.160 genuine attachment to their owners that I think can only be called love. I don't think cats are quite

00:02:03.640 like that. Cats. It is like you have a wild animal in your home. But this animal is so small that it has

00:02:13.340 strategized as such, which is that I'll let this giant animal feed me and I won't pick a fight with

00:02:23.080 the giant animal. But if I were bigger, I would eat that son of a bitch. I think that's how cats think. 1.00

00:02:30.940 You're thinking of Williams syndrome. This actually exists in humans. People with Williams syndrome,

00:02:38.060 they have a dog-like face. They smile more. They're just to their detriment. They're not

00:02:43.940 functional, but they're just really nice and they act like puppies. What is the name of that syndrome

00:02:49.100 again? Williams syndrome, if I recall correctly. Williams, yeah. Williams syndrome. Okay. Interesting.

00:02:56.200 Let me just look that up. So they basically have a dog attitude is what you're saying is that? Yes.

00:03:03.820 Yeah. As someone mentioned in the chat. So they're just millennials. They're just here to help and

00:03:07.940 be quirky and service. Yeah. Yes, it is true. I yeah, it is. I think the dog thing is real,

00:03:16.860 though. I don't know what you would call it. If not love genuine happiness to see you when you get

00:03:23.220 home. And now you could just say, oh, it's some strategy to get fed or something, which,

00:03:29.300 of course, it is on some level. But I don't know. I think it's a little bit more than that.

00:03:34.900 Pax? So what would you make of the idea of a cat and a dog loving each other's company? What would

00:03:41.500 that mean? Cats and dogs. What was the line from Ghostbusters? Cats and dogs living together. Total

00:03:48.440 chaos. Total chaos. Yeah. I think it can definitely happen. Is it love, though? Have

00:03:54.200 you seen this? Like they snuggle up together or share food or help each other out? I think

00:04:01.200 cats and dogs are it depends on the individual. But I've seen affection from both. Yeah. But

00:04:07.680 I don't know. I think dogs understand hierarchy. Like they will look at a person and think,

00:04:14.380 yeah, that's a different species. But I love it nonetheless. I think a cat. They've done studies

00:04:20.360 where a cat looks at a person and just sees like a large cat. Kind of like this and equal. How did

00:04:26.560 they do that? I've seen that image of like what you look like to a cat and you basically look like a

00:04:33.620 cat. But how would you do that? You can't put a video camera inside their brain. And you obviously

00:04:41.200 could. But that's the video camera looking at the brain. You can't get inside its mind. Let's say

00:04:47.240 I don't know how they do that. But it's interesting. I think it's also interesting to think about the

00:04:53.260 polymorphisms between like large cats like lions, tigers, and then you compare them with small cats.

00:05:00.240 And then you've got dogs where you've got like wild dogs that roam in Africa. And then you've got

00:05:05.220 like the wolf, which look very kind of similar to a husky. Yeah. I've also heard that like a small

00:05:12.640 cat. There's supposedly small cats in Africa that have like a huge chase to kill ratio. So they have

00:05:19.040 a higher kill ratio than even like lions and cheetahs and things like this. They're very successful.

00:05:25.680 Wow. Cats are supposedly like little weapons of mass destruction. 0.95

00:05:30.560 They definitely are. This cat I'm referring to. I'm not sure she could totally survive on her own.

00:05:38.880 I'm not positive, but I think she would come close in the sense that she's always finding little rodents

00:05:44.780 and then torturing the rodents. So she'll bring in a mouse and like sadistically play with it for two 1.00

00:05:52.520 hours before finally killing and eating it. My mother also said that one time this cat like

00:06:00.540 there was like a little bird in the house and the cat like caught the bird in midair. I still can't

00:06:06.420 even believe it myself. Like I don't know. You have to have a, it's not IQ in the way that we think of

00:06:13.680 it of like, can you, are you a good legal problem solver? Can you solve math equations or whatever?

00:06:20.960 It's a sort of like IQ of the nervous system. It's a kill IQ where you can do something that I don't

00:06:26.160 think any human could do. I mean, catch a bird in mid flight and then have, and then eat it like

00:06:32.620 within a few minutes. It's pretty remarkable when you think about it. That is a, uh, quite an evil

00:06:38.620 being. I don't know what to say, but no, I've, I've always liked dogs. I've never quite understood

00:06:45.460 cats and I've probably had a sort of bigotry against cats due to my allergies where, you know,

00:06:53.940 it's, it's almost like plavlovian. You walk in and there's this cat and my, and I feel like I'm

00:06:59.120 about to suffocate and my eyes are running and yeah. I'm curious. Have you ever been around a

00:07:04.540 sphinx cat before? What is that exactly? I suppose that is the short haired cat, almost bald looking

00:07:11.900 Dr. Dr. Evil. Oh, okay. I've, I don't think I've ever been around one now. What are they like?

00:07:19.240 Oh, I don't know. I was just curious if, if people with cat allergies have been around short

00:07:23.880 hair varieties and had the same issue. Yeah. Richard, you might be interested in wolf dogs.

00:07:28.880 Are you familiar with that? Are they like hybrids? Yes. Uh, there's a whole market for them. If you 1.00

00:07:35.160 have a big old backyard, it could be someone to look into. They're actually healthier than they're,

00:07:41.260 they've got fewer diseases than dogs and wolves. Interesting. But like that you get that hybrid 0.92

00:07:47.160 vigor sometimes actually between species. It's interesting. What? Yeah. When the species are

00:07:52.060 inbred, you do get hybrid vigor, but they're not necessarily more fit in the sense that if you put

00:07:57.140 the wolf dog in a wolf pack, well, they're not aggressive enough. They're not high T enough.

00:08:01.880 If you put them in a, in a dog environment, they're just going to eat your couch and they might bite you 0.98

00:08:06.640 and you're going to have to kill it. Anyway, just a little thought on dogs and cats. There is a joke

00:08:13.360 I've heard, which is that when you feed a dog, the dog looks up with you, looks up at you and thinks

00:08:21.640 you are God. And then when you feed a cat, she thinks to herself, I am God. And I mean, maybe a little

00:08:30.340 bit over, maybe a little bit exaggerated, but I think that is sort of true about dogs and cats. I, there

00:08:37.280 was this one time I remember where, I mean, luckily this is during the summer, but I, it was late and I

00:08:43.120 let my dog Zeus out in just this little backyard that I have here at this place, not big enough for

00:08:49.480 a wolf dog. And I, it was late and I just like lay, I laid down and I just fell asleep. And so I, I am not

00:08:57.980 proud of this fact, but I left him out all night. And so I woke up and I usually, I, I'm usually awakened

00:09:04.820 by Zeus who wants breakfast and is ready to go for the day and so on. Uh, and I was like, where's

00:09:11.560 Zeus, where's Zeus. And then I look out and he's there by the door, like lying down by the door.

00:09:16.260 And then when I let him in, he was like, Oh, great. Thanks for letting me in. He's like, I love you.

00:09:22.180 That was really a great thing you did to let me inside. I was like, thought he would be mad or something.

00:09:28.200 He had a right to be mad, but there's basically like zero resentment or so on. He's happy about

00:09:35.680 being let in. He, he doesn't think that you did something wrong. I don't know. It's interesting,

00:09:41.140 but we are just vamping on and on about dogs and cats. This is going to be a casual one today

00:09:47.940 already is. I actually want to interview this person. I thought we could do it on today,

00:09:54.940 Tuesday, but I think we might have to delay it until next Tuesday, but I will check back in with

00:09:59.600 him. There's just a little bit of a misunderstanding. I think we can cover some war stuff, but to be

00:10:07.800 honest, I think I would rather cover some kind of meta war stuff, to be honest, because that's

00:10:15.660 something that, you know, we can do that's unique. I think in terms of getting updates on the war,

00:10:23.900 I think there are a lot more kind of mainstream outlets doing that. And so I don't really think

00:10:30.200 we need to do that, but I've tried to understand what Trump is up to. And if you listen to his exact

00:10:39.420 words, I don't think you can reach any sort of definitive conclusion. Because if we go back

00:10:48.680 a few months, we had this notion put forward by J.D. Vance and company, which is that Donald Trump's

00:10:57.600 not going to get us into any foreign forever war. We don't want the IATO to have a nuclear weapon. And

00:11:05.360 so Trump puts America first and he strikes and he strikes hard, but it was a sort of strategic strike.

00:11:11.120 And it was a strike in the tradition of humanitarian intervention on the one hand and the war on

00:11:18.440 terror on the other, where it's sort of a police action that the United States can do at will that

00:11:25.780 is not considered an act of war, is not usually voted on by Congress as such. And we kind of get

00:11:35.540 away with it. And there certainly was like a dovetailing of the logic of the global war on terror

00:11:45.340 and the humanitarian interventionism put forward by someone like Samantha Power. Now, these types of

00:11:52.480 people will, that is terror warriors and humanitarians, will disagree on occasion, but they disagree on

00:12:01.700 occasion, sometimes in important ways. But I don't think there's a philosophical or first principle

00:12:07.060 disagreement between these two. I remember actually when I was a graduate student at Duke and I was

00:12:15.340 teaching, I was TAing, I should say, a course on, it was called Genocide. And no, it wasn't a how-to

00:12:23.200 course or a do-it-yourself. It was not that. Do it, you know, DIY genocide course. It was not that.

00:12:30.380 So it was basically a kind of Samantha Power course. We actually read Samantha Power's book.

00:12:37.640 I'm forgetting the title of it now. I think it's out of print. But she wrote it in the late 90s,

00:12:42.600 before 9-11. And it was more of a sort of guilt trip about the West or America in particular for

00:12:53.080 not stopping genocide. So there's sort of a history of these catastrophes. And that included the Armenian

00:12:59.240 genocide and even Stalinism and the Great Purge and the Great Famine and all sorts of wicked things 0.54

00:13:08.040 that he did. And the Holocaust, obviously, and a history of the development of the concept of

00:13:14.720 genocide, little Greek and Latin mix, an attempt to destroy a group of people or a race. And even how 0.97

00:13:24.900 that could be applied more broadly, where even if not a single person dies, the destruction of an

00:13:32.960 indigenous culture is a kind of genocide. And that's very interesting that they would put it that

00:13:39.740 way. For a couple of reasons, it presupposes that there's a kind of homogeneous ethno culture that's

00:13:48.900 real and maybe even eternal and so on. So that there is a kind of Irishness at the heart of the

00:13:56.960 Irish. And I don't know, closing down the pubs and preventing any acoustical renderings of

00:14:06.400 mornin' m'lady when the blue moon rises over Ireland. I'm just making up things at this point.

00:14:11.880 That preventing the performance of those works would amount to a genocide. And so it's very

00:14:19.680 interesting because you hear a lot of that rhetoric coming from the far right and even the center right

00:14:27.460 of, you know, remember we are dealing with, what's his name? Forgetting his name at the moment.

00:14:35.260 He has a Claremont Institute degree or connections. And he was talking about how white culture

00:14:41.860 is under attack. He was sort of making a genocide argument. And he was making this argument that

00:14:47.000 presupposes that there's some like whiteness there, but he couldn't, of course, describe it.

00:14:52.540 Jeremy Carl. Yes, thanks for coming up with that. I've already forgotten him. But so it was basically

00:14:58.800 a guilt trip about how.

00:14:59.980 How.

RadixJournal - March 11, 2026

The Center of the Universe

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