Not to sound like a curmudgeon, but when I was a teenager, I took the train to go to the record store to find rare stuff. Spotify is way more convenient, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to get out and to feel like you’re hunting, to feel like you’re living your life. I’m going to the movies, I’m going to this show. What streaming has done—it’s very convenient, but it’s taken the feeling of going hunting and turned it into we’re all just being fed. We’re all farm animals that are just being fed, and we’re being fed content. You can just stay home. Just stay home. We’ll just feed it to you. No wonder everyone’s depressed.
Clipping
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clippings > Content feeds have turned us from hunters into farm animals
[https://slate.com/culture/2024/10/me-movie-don-hertzfeldt-arcade-fire-taylor-swift.html]
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clippings > Marxist take on pornography
For the millionth time: You don’t get to jerk off to filmed rape under socialism.
Every socialist state that ever existed has banned porn.
Yes, porn is coercive as every form of wage labor is. But it is not just any wage labor, but labor involved in the social production of art - in this case reactionary art.
Why is it reactionary? Its ideological content is. It objectifies - or more precisely, commodifies (primarily female) bodies. It dehumanizes women. It is the reason why you have white people going around fetishizing Asian women.
Porn fits into the capitalist superstructure which reproduces the institutions of patriarchy, and by extension, of capitalism itself. It has no place in a socialist society. The suppression of pornography then isn’t simply the suppression of commodity production, it would be similar to the suppression of any other reactionary cultural product (music, films, etc…).
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
Most humans were not malicious, only drastically misguided and desperate in their loneliness. They learned at some point that there was an eccentric core to their personality and that it was possible no one else shared their own brand of eccentricity. They put up screens around that core to shield from embarrassment and shame. For all the pompous forms in which writers and musicians have described it, love was surely that moment when the screens might come down in front of another human, if only for a moment, and freely give them a long, unfettered look into the true middle where the fear and anguish lives.
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books > fifth:science (Exurb1a)
In all things, across all avenues, a choice must be made: whether to follow love, truth, or power. That choice will consume the chooser. If he follows only love then his wellbeing will be constantly at the mercy of another, though his highs will be sublime. If he follows truth then it will be a lonely journey, but potentially a noble one. If he should follow power though, not only will he come to know a desperate and revolting loneliness, but he will also never experience even a drop of satisfaction in anything.
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clippings > A feeling of loving connection is something you can produce yourself by giving
[https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/giving]
Then there are people who are actually generous—they are committed to serving others. But they see it as a sacrifice: it is painful to give, and this pain is, in a sense, what makes it valuable. “I will give of my time and energy and potential so that my baby can grow. Shouldering responsibility makes my life feel meaningful, and I want it to be hard at times; that makes me feel good about myself.”
But what people who see giving as an act of potency realize is that this feeling of a loving connection is something you can produce yourself. If a feeling of connection to the world and other people is a kind of wealth, it is a wealth you don’t need to inherit or earn. It is more like you are the federal reserve and you can just print that stuff.
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clippings > We live in imaginary worlds
[https://www.afterbabel.com/p/we-live-in-imaginary-worlds]
I’m not just talking about Gen Z. Adults also live in imaginary worlds. We now have adults who invest more time into their imaginary worlds and reputations than their real ones. Adults imagining they are “socializing” all day when they haven’t left the house. Adults editing their pictures, creating imaginary versions of the selves they pretend to be. Adults arguing with versions of people they have imagined in their heads. Adults ignoring their children to have fun with hallucinations.
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web > Mind is not reducible to computation, nor to structure
[https://www.theintrinsicperspective.com/p/what-do-you-think-about-consciousness/comment/76234098]
In research I go with via negativa (no-go theorems):
Proof based on Computer Science that mind is not reducible to computation:
Proof based on physics that mind is not reducible to structure:
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web > Atheism can't equip us for a civilizational war
[https://unherd.com/2023/11/why-i-am-now-a-christian/]
The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
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web > The brief era of the Rock Star
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42069675]
There was a brief period in history when Being In A Band was a big deal. That’s bracketed by, perhaps, the British Invasion and Myspace Music. Before that, musicians were low-paid background music systems. After that, anybody could do it at garage-band level. In between was the brief era of the Rock Star. The nostalgia here is for that era.
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web > Actualism practice as the best defense against anxiety
Level 1
Achieve feeling good as the default baseline mood. Whenever feeling bad, first get back to feeling good.
- To do this, notice your ongoing habit of feeding the feeling (including attempts to ‘change’ it), and cease doing that. Cease everything but (simply) be aware of the feeling.
- When you do this, the body’s native intelligence will automatically see the feeling to be silly, and you are back to feeling good.
[Richard]: ‘The ego – or even the soul as pure spirit – is not to be confused with will. The bodily needs are what motivates will – and will is nothing more grand than the nerve-organising data-correlating ability of the body – and it is will that is essential in order to operate and function … not an identity. Will is an organising process, an activity of the brain that correlates all the information and data that streams through the bodily senses. Will is not a ‘thing’, a subjectively substantial passionate ‘object’, like the identity is. Will, freed of the encumbrance of the ego and soul – which are born out of instinctual fear and aggression and nurture and desire – can operate smoothly, with actual sagacity. The operation of this freed will, is called intelligence. This intelligence is the body’s native intelligence … and has naught to do with any disembodied ‘Intelligence behind the Universe’ It is a joy to be me going about my business with freed-will in this wonderful physical world’. (page 76, Article 10; ‘Richard’s Journal’; Second Edition ©2004 The Actual Freedom Trust). –AFT, Vineeto@Discourse, @sridca