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,…
Tag: reality
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…
weekend links: winter solstice, holograms, furnace of the desert sun
Everything Everywhere All At Once: “In the seventh century in what is now Scotland but at the time was known as Northumbria, there lived a man named Cuthbert. Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. He was a bishop, a hermit, and a monk, back in the time before clerical careerism when one person could indeed be all of…
weekend links: besieged underdogs, the city of man, something is coming
American Alchemy: “Dante placed betrayers in the lowest circle of Hell, yet ours proudly enjoy their time alongside Satan himself chastising the rest of us. ” Circe, Odysseus, and the Disclosure of Hermes: “Without a knowledge of natures – and especially, as Socrates would emphasize, the nature of man – man can be enchanted, politically and…
ШЭԐԞЭИD LЇЙҚS: Engines of Wrath, Human Violence, De-Extinction, and the Lost Wilds of Earth
AI Pluralism: “We’ve seen in real life, in both legacy institutions and AI, that institutions tend to be captured by ideologies far more irrational, delusional, misinformed, and power-hungry than the average person. The technical details of AI make it so that it is asymmetrically easy to fight for AI to be open to customization and…
wEeKeNd LiNkS
Suddenly, On Halloween (Wrath of Gnon) Why don’t I know any of my neighbors? Why are the young couple down the street not around anymore? When did they move out? They seemed so nice. The Reality War (The Upheaval) Maybe now you are willing to believe that a good portion of our world’s political strife…
w҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉k҈҉҈҉e҈҉҈҉n҈҉҈҉d҈҉҈҉ ҈҉҈҉l҈҉҈҉i҈҉҈҉n҈҉҈҉k҈҉҈҉s҈҉҈҉
The Putney Spoons Interviews: Malcom Kyeyune – Knowing Me, Knowing Kyeyune (Fisted by Foucault) There’s a scene in the old Jurassic Park movie that is pretty instructive… After the hacker Dennis Nedry basically knocks out the entire computer system necessary to run the park in order to disable the security and cameras so he can…
Lost and Found in the Cartographical Matrix
I’ve been thinking about “place” a lot lately. Thinking about “place” led to me write this blog post, which got me digging through the great book Applied Ballardianism again, and a chapter called “Cartographies of the Infinite,” where author Simon Sellars contemplates whether future cities can be “tuned to produce a kind of stereoscopic urbanism.”…
w̴e̶e̴k̶e̵n̸d̵ ̸l̶i̴n̸k̴s̶
#1: A General Theory of Collaboration: “Anyone who reads Vaclav Havel’s Power of the Powerless will be struck by Havel’s portrait of Czechoslovakia forty years ago—with its voluntary window-slogans; its endless parade of crusades; its inexorable machinery of human cancellation. Havel had the right strategy for the subjects of the total state. First, they must…
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A weekly compendium of links. An Interface Theory of Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon: “Interface Theory’s creator, Dr. Donald Hoffman has suggested that phenomenon like synaesthesia may be instances of evolution at work, a kind of real time tinkering of the interface to see what works and what doesn’t via mutation. In that light, it’s not hard…
Pandemic Inventory
Seems like a lot of people are taking inventory of their pandemic experiences, so I will too. (As someone on Twitter recently joked, citing Garrison Keillor: Nothing happened to me, and now I’m going to tell you about it.) Like millions of others, I spend a lot of time alone these days. Don’t my lonely…