On Lying Long

Two truths I found today (April 10 2026):
1) Stewart Brand is a liar, cheat, and/or imbecile.

At the Interval cafe and listed on the website, there is heavy emphasis on this timeline of 20,000 years as “the Long Now.” And yet:
a) he shows linear time with no mention of Jesus Christ, who broke us open to linear time and
b) he mentions Ise Shrine of Japan as 4BCE, but makes no mention of the 10000+ years of Japanese civilization before this, including pottery dated to 14000 BCE.

Why mention the shrine, but not the wider culture. Is he lying? Does he just not know?

Either way, how can an organization established to think longterm not acknowledge two of the most important data points of longterm civilizational thinking in history without entirely failing in its stated mission?

2) Curtis Yarvin is a liar, cheat, and/or imbecile.
Curtis talks about formal rule-based systems and “formalism”, and yet it occurred to me this week that he makes zero reference to Leo Strauss. That means his entire work must be viewed with suspicion. How can someone who is writing in the area of political philosophy specifically about open rule-set systems, and who even cites that he is repackaging other older thinkers, make zero reference to Strauss (a famous political philosopher who advocated for layers of hidden meanings in political works, so that only a select few can see the truth)? One possibility is that he is making mention, but only by using a technique of Straussian writing — to mention several other thinkers but NOT the thinker that you are actually referring to. Either way, the result is the same.

And today, while re-reviewing his essay on formalism, I see he states the key problem that formalism addresses is violence. And yet there’s no reference to Girard (or even Hobbes!) or others who have done much more detailed work on violence and political systems for far longer. Is he an idiot? Or is he intentionally being deceptive in not referencing other key works?

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We can all learn from their failures.