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…
Tag: war
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…
w e e k e n d LINKS: Deathless Fame/Something Eerie at the Edge of Vision, Crisis
Ancient Pain: “[Anthony] Hecht’s influence on the lyrics of Steely Dan may be his most widely appreciated legacy today, given how few Americans read poetry anymore. The influence is obvious. Hecht was a formalist with a wry sense of humor. His poems are disciplined, articulate, and clever, always anchored to a moment, a place, and…
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…
𝙬𝙚𝙚𝙠𝙚𝙣𝙙 𝙡𝙞𝙣𝙠𝙨: guerrilla information wars, liminal places, Helen of Troy
Israel’s Monsters: “What is at work here is the same matrix of nihilism now at work everywhere, and underneath everything, from blasé celebrations of war crimes, to crazed calls for genocide, to preening statements of affected indifference and delusional arrogance and empty rhetoric and hollow gestures. But perhaps what we are also witnessing is the…
ẅ̷̷̢̟͇͈̒ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊k̶̸͙̭̹͆͟ę̷̵̧̖̫̗̆̊n̷̶̯͉̊̽̐ͦ͘d̸̡̩͍̔ͥ͜ ḻ̸͈ͧ͑̓̓̀͡i̵͓͙̱͚̎͟n̷̶̯͉̊̽̐ͦ͘k̶̸͙̭̹͆͟s̩͙͖̋͛͟: Hyper-Dimensional Perception, When Duty & Instinct are Incompatible, and the Neo-Medieval World Order
Cancel the Election: “Democracy isn’t pretty; make sure the old whore’s syphilis scars are on full display as she gracelessly expires.” Concrete and Glass: “Do you want to know why [JG] Ballard’s late 1960s and 1970s output is based? Because it’s all about unstoppable civilisational decline, and the chances of thriving, despite everything, in the…
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,…
Tuesday Links: A Dragon with its Wings Ripped Off, Noetic Gnosticism, and the Brood of the Abyss
AI and the Return of Creative Elitism: “We’ve found a way to automate the parrots, and in doing so we will dash the dreams of mediocre thinkers everywhere who had been prospering under an illusion that they were creative. It will end the glut of mediocre art by finally, thankfully, making the chaff redundant so…
A Second Round of Weekend Links: Wild Christianity, Ultraterrestrials, and Mercenary Farms
A Wild Christianity: “Anthony Bloom once wrote that the Desert Fathers and their kind retreated in order to seek an ‘ardent and active solitude’: “These men leave everything because they have understood that in torment, disorder and purely earthly seeking they will not find the answer to the problems of their contemporaries . . ….
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****
How David Bowie Used William S. Burroughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unforgettable Lyrics: Bowie says, “if you put three or four dissociated ideas together and create awkward relationships with them, the unconscious intelligence that comes from those pairings is really quite startling sometimes, quite provocative.” Prudence in Hell 044: All models are wrong and…