Post #1480512
2026-04-21 02:55 UTC
Replies (14)
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@JoshuaACNewman@xeno.glyphpress.com 2026-04-21 03:50
@angusm@mastodon.social I think the Kings of Men also had them, then fell to the Palantìr’s master, right?
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@AngelCelt@ieji.de 2026-04-21 03:51
@angusm@mastodon.social You shouldn't understand the world through low resolution platitudes, actually.
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@Kowalski@chaos.social 2026-04-21 04:26
@angusm@mastodon.social Thiel is the only one read the Bible and decided to follow Satan.
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@mxchara@seattle.pink 2026-04-21 04:33
@angusm@mastodon.social yes. the more daring Tolkien borrowers have pounced on "Nazgul" and "Morgoth" as trade-names, but those belong to the sub-umbral and sub-sub-umbral regions of capitalism from what I've seen. Palantir is definitely the shiniest of the trinkets which the technocrats have plundered from Tolkien's legendarium. Multiple governments have embraced it, haven't they?
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@koh_kun@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 05:00
@angusm@mastodon.social Denethor, the scum who made me grossed out by cherry tomatoes.
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@ljrbw@xn--baw-joa.social 2026-04-21 06:07
@angusm@mastodon.social and we all know what happened to Numénor, where the Palantíri of Middle-Earth originated from😬
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@leeloo@c.im 2026-04-21 08:43
@angusm@mastodon.social Cirdan the Shipwright also had one, but it ran on a different network than the others.
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@maswan@mastodon.acc.sunet.se 2026-04-21 09:09
@angusm@mastodon.social And we shouldn't forget the small detail that Saruman and Denethor were both turned to those paths by Sauron through the mechanism of palantir usage.
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@franciscos@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 09:37
@angusm@mastodon.social You are right. But I suspect the subject of this conversation is exactly why they chose to name the company like this. As a distraction. Palantir, and Thiel, are a menace to free societies and humanity because they advocate for the end of democracies and the end to privacy. And they put effort and money into those goals. They are a serious menace because of what they do, today, in practice. Not because of some fiction title.
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@Captain_Jack_Sparrow@mastodon.world 2026-04-21 09:40
@angusm@mastodon.social Who TF was Denethor? Don't remember him in LOTR
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@darthnull@infosec.exchange 2026-04-21 12:42
@angusm@mastodon.social But let’s remember that the palantiri were not themselves evil. They were created by the elves, perhaps even Fëanor himself, as a way to communicate over large distances. Over time, most of them were lost, until all that remained were two controlled by evil demigods, and a third used by a human who thought he could hold his own against the other two. It’s not an analogy for evil. It’s an analogy for social media turning evil in the presence of dominating evil will, alongside a failure of federation. (Though really, it was used by the company to say they’re basically a panopticon, which clearly signalled evil intent. But I kinda like the failed social media analogy. :) )
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@camethedawnxp@mastodon.social 2026-04-21 14:28
. @angusm@mastodon.social and sauron and co. would still be morally better than thiel, imo.
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@electropict@mastodon.scot 2026-04-21 15:42
@angusm@mastodon.social Also that things you use to watch the world may also be used to watch you.
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@SteveFoerster@social.vivaldi.net 2026-04-22 14:33
@angusm@mastodon.social You'd think that a character whose name anagrams to "The Reptile" and who founds a surveillance company named after the evil crystal balls from Lord of the Rings, would be a James Bond villain, not one in real life. #peterthiel