I had Grok collate my updated draft notes for a screenplay/novel hybrid that I’m creating called Disastrous Amateurism. And the Grok synthesis is really fascinating to me. It didn’t change the tone or direction of anything but helped to sharpen my conception of everything. I’ve shared it below, largely unedited save for the addition of…
Tag: violence
Everywhere, Nowhere, and Now Here
Excerpted from Second Power Last month I attended the Nowhere Summit in Ecuador with several friends, old and new. Alex Petkas provides a good description of the event here: Technological, political, and societal change are happening at an alarming rate. There are huge, asymmetric opportunities for network-institution builders that simply did not exist 5 years…
WEEKEND LINKS: overpriced office fauna, the service of vultures, new realms of horror
Bidenihilism: “As Eric Hoffer observed in 1951, ‘Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.’” Catholicism is About Swords: “…many Catholics have risen from their dazed shock and have seen the Big Lie burying the truth of God. They have recognized that the Faith is…
𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀: aestheticized violence, life as a work of art, undiluted trust
Aesthetic Violence: “The Left seeks to demonstrate that it can hurt you; this is what encourages lockstep compliance. If this claim is not contested, then the extant Leftist narrative prevails. This was the situation in 2020 when COVID locked much of the country in their homes and riots broke out in the wake of the death…
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….
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…
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…
weekend links: the bone orchard, war as divination, punishing wickedness
Don’t Waste a Good Crisis: “If you want to know what might come next, read the memoir of ‘White’ Russian general Pyotr Wrangel, Always with Honor, about the Russian Civil War. I’m not joking.” Godzilla: “A highlight of Heisei period Godzilla movies is Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah. It’s mostly a highlight for being completely bonkers Japanese nationalism. The…
w҇e҇e҇k҇e҇n҇d҇ ҇l҇i҇n҇k҇s҇: the violence of heaven, history’s new surprises, the chthonic swamp
Jupiter Rising: “It is not that the public is in some deep slumber or guided hypnosis, but that they are so deeply humiliated and abused that they don’t even know who they are anymore. Many Americans don’t even know their own fathers, let alone contemplate or internalize the triumphs of their ancestors.” The Cionci Thesis:…
weekend links: death cults, wilderness, eternal tension
Beyond Thaumatophobia 3: The End of the Age of Reason: “[My father, a] lifelong materialist…was startled one day to hear his mother’s voice from the ground floor of his house, calling his boyhood nickname. That was a bit of a surprise, since she was 300 miles away at the time. Startled, he went to look,…
Terra Damnata
What follows is a list of stray words and quotes that I highlighted for my own reasons while reading Blood Meridian a couple years ago. I’m sharing them because their aesthetic value is inherently high but also because, in aggregate their strangeness and desolate aesthetics are enhanced. They also act like luminol on my brain…