Austin, TX: “What Austin does have is a lot of smart white people.” Ballard’s Sextet: “…mannequins are human beings from whom all transitional time has been eroded, they have been reduced to the essence of their own geometries.” Batshit Crazy America: ” It is the way of Homo sapiens that moral codes derive generally from the supervision…
The Passion of the Christ
I watched The Passion of the Christ for the first time ever on Good Friday this year. I think it’s worth watching and many parts are very well done but I do think Mel Gibson went too far with the blood, the gore and the violence, which apparently has been a recurring criticism of the…
▇ █ WEEKEND LINKS █ ▇: Imitative Passion; Debasement; Mob Rule; Wolves
12 Things I Learned from Rene Girard: “By desiring the same thing as our neighbor, we are drawn into inevitable conflict. Mimetic desire turns into mimetic rivalry—in everything from love to war. That’s the reason for the injunction against ‘coveting your neighbor’s wife.’ Girard claims this is emblematic of how mimetic impulses destroy a community….
ஜ۩۞۩ஜ WEEKEND LINKS ஜ۩۞۩ஜ: Cat Gardens; the Temperature of Truth; Baying for Blood
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…
₩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,…
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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…