For the Love of Cats in Turkey: “According to Turkish historian Ekrem Buğra Ekinci, cats’ abilities to control rodents made them an ‘indispensable part’ of households during the time of the Ottoman Empire. Written accounts from the 16th century report the existence of cat hospitals and gardens in and around Constantinople (present-day Istanbul), where…
Author: tundranaut
₩ɆɆ₭Ɇ₦Đ Ⱡł₦₭₴: Erased by Time; Strange Contagions; Collapse
Citizen Disposal: “Mimetic theory teaches us, and neuroscience and studies on human imitation have confirmed, that all desire is mediated. There is no way to desire without emulating some other. In his 2017 book Strange Contagion, Lee Daniel Kravetz explores the phenomenon of social contagions, noting especially the terrible fact that suicide itself is contagious…Social contagions,…
▁ ▂ ▄ ▅ ▆ ▇ █ WEEKEND LINKS █ ▇ ▆ ▅ ▄ ▂ ▁
Alaska: “Alaska was, and is, the Last Frontier. The entire territory is one giant snow globe, something to shake up and peer into, oohing and aahing at its beauty, before retiring to the humdrum of everyday life. In many ways it’s a blessing that the settlement effort stopped – the land’s natural bounty remained unsullied….
w꙲꙲e꙲꙲e꙲꙲k꙲꙲e꙲꙲n꙲꙲d꙲꙲ ꙲꙲l꙲꙲i꙲꙲n꙲꙲k꙲꙲s꙲꙲: the Portents of Spring; King Rex; Ritualistic Death
Comes Thermidor: “America is headed for its own Thermidorian Reaction. It’ll end up being called something else, of course, because it is a different time, place, and set of circumstances. But it feels close, doesn’t it? Everybody I know or correspond with mentions this feeling that something is going to blow in our country, and…
▒▓█ w̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞k̳̿͟͞e̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞d̳̿͟͞ ̳̿͟͞l̳̿͟͞i̳̿͟͞n̳̿͟͞k̳̿͟͞s̳̿͟͞ █▓▒░ philosophical automatisms, pervasive untruths, the value of marginal & discarded information
Bitcoin and Philosophy: “Bitcoin seizes philosophical attention because it is already doing philosophy – or what philosophy is still (on ever rarer occasions) expected to do – and at multiple levels. It tells the truth. Bitcoin is not only a recognizable philosophical statement, but also, and more importantly, a philosophical automatism, a synthetic philosophical machine.[6]…
Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, author of “The Gulag Archipelago” The most terrifying force of death comes from the hands of Men who wanted to be left alone. They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love. They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of…
WEEKEND LINKS: Breaking Points, Nightmares, Lying
Aging is No Blessing: “Twentieth-century science doubled the life expectancy of Homo sapiens, but our health still declines at nearly the same age today as it did in 300 BC. We’ve learned to keep chronically ill adults alive, and made some welcome progress in maintaining health. But in 2024, we’re about as likely to develop the diseases of aging—like cancers—if…
Weekend Links: Harmonic & Permanent; Joy as Armor; the Distant Hellish Hum of a Leaf Blower
Field Notes: “I saw Depression’s physical form. She whom the Greeks called Oizys and the Romans Miseria, Misery. At the time I had no idea The Ancients had such a goddess and I had never thought to personify my distress and yet…There she was. Black as her mother Night. When I saw her I wanted to kill…
Weekend Links: Bulletproof Happiness; Excellence; Plutarch
Just returned from a pretty incredible trip to the Wagon Box Inn in the Wyoming wilderness. Below are some photos from my wanderings. And of course, here are some weekend links, including pieces by three friends who were out there in the Wyoming wilderness with me. (We made the plunge into an icy creek at…
ẅ̴͍é̷̞̲͐e̵̺̊͜ķ̷̥́̃e̸͎̣̼͂n̴̬̄d̸̡̈́ ̴̯̲̠̈́̾ĺ̸̯͎̯̈́i̷̻̼̚n̸̰̲̽̈̍k̴̖͆̊s̴̤̓̄: Pastoral Beauty; Entropy; Overkill
Beauty Is Not Just in the Eye of the Beholder: “It exists at the intersection of biological, cultural, and individual factors. It is much more malleable than we think. And what we find beautiful is broader than what is publicly expressed.” How Nature Became the Environment: “…while [Aldo] Leopold sought for balance between the lethal…
ẅ̴͍é̷̞̲͐e̵̺̊͜ķ̷̥́̃e̸͎̣̼͂n̴̬̄d̸̡̈́ ̴̯̲̠̈́̾ĺ̸̯͎̯̈́i̷̻̼̚n̸̰̲̽̈̍k̴̖͆̊s̴̤̓̄: Psychopathology; Mirror Worlds; Criminality
Against Inevitability, Toward “Psychological Decentralization”: “‘The Psychopathology of Time and Life’ is a remarkable essay falling at the point where Marshall McLuhan is turning from a career in teaching poetry and literature to a career in studying media and becoming a kind of ‘anti-environmental activist’ in terms of the invisible shaping environment which is what…
ẅ̴͍é̷̞̲͐e̵̺̊͜ķ̷̥́̃e̸͎̣̼͂n̴̬̄d̸̡̈́ ̴̯̲̠̈́̾ĺ̸̯͎̯̈́i̷̻̼̚n̸̰̲̽̈̍k̴̖͆̊s̴̤̓̄: How to Stop Worrying; Rebellions Against God; Machines to Replace God
Atheists in Space: “[Oswald] Spengler believed that even as the 20th century began, all of the theoretical edifices constructed by the West to replace its old sacred order — which mainly manifested as political ideologies — had failed. Beginning in the 21st century, he predicted, the grandchildren of the revolutionaries and the rationalists, adrift in…