• fossilesqueOPM
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    6 days ago

    Why do you think that company is called Palantir lmao. I wish I wasn’t joking, but it is this stupid if you poke around a bit at the neoreactionary obsessions with LOTR.

    • naom3 [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Wait, the neoreactionaries actually want to be like Isengard and not like, based trad gondor or something like that? I kinda figured it was just called palantir cause they thought it was a cool reference and cause peter thiel is just naturally sinister like that

      • Riffraffintheroom [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        The metaverse is named after a VR program in Snow Crash, in which it is a tool that an evil corporation wants to use to brainwash and enslave all of humanity except for some very rich people. My take is that these dweebs will take any power fantasy they can get, and being the powerful evil organization is a lot easier to actually live out than being the lone hacker with a samurai sword or hobbit or whatever who stops them.

        • NOPper@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          5 days ago

          The Metaverse in Snow Crash was largely built and maintained by hacker culture though, and later leveraged as a platform for distribution more then a direct tool for control. Metaverse would still be agood reference for smaller projects like Resonite then evil corpo plot.

      • fossilesqueOPM
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        5 days ago

        https://archive.is/20240501163147/https://www.economist.com/business/2021/09/25/peter-thiel-scourge-of-silicon-valley#selection-1056.0-1056.2

        All this takes tech investing beyond Silicon Valley into new realms, some of them menacing to many observers. That will not worry Mr Thiel. Palantir is named after a “seeing stone” most often used by Sauron, ruler of J.R.R. Tolkien’s evil empire of Mordor in “The Lord of the Rings”. Evidently Mr Thiel, ever the contrarian, does not view Mordor as harshly as most Tolkien fans do. As he once told a friend: “I’d rather be seen as evil than incompetent.”

        If you want a taste of this tech brainrot: https://er4hn.info/blog/2022.08.09-orc_selfidentity/

        It’s a thing.