Quote of the day

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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Franz Kafka from The Trial

The books we need are of the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that makes us suffer like the death of someone we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, lost in a forest remote from all human habitation.


Next up: the posts we need.

But I’m not guilty, said K. there’s been a mistake. How is it even possible for someone to be guilty? We’re all human beings here, one like the other. That is true, said the priest, but that is how the guilty speak.

Going back to, say, original sin?

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.

Fast forward to January, 2025 in America. MAGA controls Congress, the White House and the Supreme Court. And you're a liberal.

You must not pay too much attention to opinions. The written word is unalterable, and opinions are often only an expression of despair.

I know that mine are. And who pays attention to them here?

I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.

The Deep State, let's call it.

Before the Law stands a doorkeeper on guard. To this doorkeeper there comes a man from the country who begs for admittance to the Law. But the doorkeeper says that he cannot admit the man at the moment. The man, on reflection, asks if he will be allowed, then, to enter later. 'It is possible,' answers the doorkeeper, 'but not at this moment.' Since the door leading into the Law stands open as usual and the doorkeeper steps to one side, the man bends down to peer through the entrance. When the doorkeeper sees that, he laughs and says: 'If you are so strongly tempted, try to get in without my permission. But note that I am powerful. And I am only the lowest doorkeeper. From hall to hall keepers stand at every door, one more powerful than the other. Even the third of these has an aspect that even I cannot bear to look at.' These are difficulties which the man from the country has not expected to meet, the Law, he thinks, should be accessible to every man and at all times, but when he looks more closely at the doorkeeper in his furred robe, with his huge pointed nose and long, thin, Tartar beard, he decides that he had better wait until he gets permission to enter. The doorkeeper gives him a stool and lets him sit down at the side of the door. There he sits waiting for days and years. He makes many attempts to be allowed in and wearies the doorkeeper with his importunity. The doorkeeper often engages him in brief conversation, asking him about his home and about other matters, but the questions are put quite impersonally, as great men put questions, and always conclude with the statement that the man cannot be allowed to enter yet. The man, who has equipped himself with many things for his journey, parts with all he has, however valuable, in the hope of bribing the doorkeeper. The doorkeeper accepts it all, saying, however, as he takes each gift: 'I take this only to keep you from feeling that you have left something undone.' During all these long years the man watches the doorkeeper almost incessantly. He forgets about the other doorkeepers, and this one seems to him the only barrier between himself and the Law. In the first years he curses his evil fate aloud; later, as he grows old, he only mutters to himself. He grows childish, and since in his prolonged watch he has learned to know even the fleas in the doorkeeper's fur collar, he begs the very fleas to help him and to persuade the doorkeeper to change his mind. Finally his eyes grow dim and he does not know whether the world is really darkening around him or whether his eyes are only deceiving him. But in the darkness he can now perceive a radiance that streams immortally from the door of the Law. Now his life is drawing to a close. Before he dies, all that he has experienced during the whole time of his sojourn condenses in his mind into one question, which he has never yet put to the doorkeeper. He beckons the doorkeeper, since he can no longer raise his stiffening body. The doorkeeper has to bend far down to hear him, for the difference in size between them has increased very much to the man's disadvantage. 'What do you want to know now?' asks the doorkeeper, 'you are insatiable.' 'Everyone strives to attain the Law,' answers the man, 'how does it come about, then, that in all these years no one has come seeking admittance but me?' The doorkeeper perceives that the man is at the end of his strength and that his hearing is failing, so he bellows in his ear: 'No one but you could gain admittance through this door, since this door was intended only for you. I am now going to shut it.

And before you die? What would your "one question" be?
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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henry quirk wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 9:28 pm
Walker wrote: Sat Nov 05, 2022 8:32 am Note to others ... :lol:

What is one to make of an asshole who can't distinguish one daily quote, from one daily list of quotes, even after being advised?
You're mis-categorizing him, W. He's no asshole. I'm an asshole. Him, he's just a garden-variety narcissist (fractured me, torn me, nihilistic me, etc). Even these posts, deriding him, feed him.

Put him in your penalty box and forget about him.
Can we quote you on that, henry? 8)

Oh, and back to IC putting you in the mother of all penalty boxes -- Hell -- for all of eternity. Yet no penalty box for him?

Shall we call it, "fulminating fanatic meat minds of the world unite!"

Besides, the far more mystifying question here is this: why six quotes at a time? Why not five or seven? Or ten? Heck, even I don't have an answer for that.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Man Was Himself For 27 Minutes Today


Next up: the other 1,413 minutes.

Patriot Honored To Be Lied To By His Country

Of course: the MAGA imbeciles.

Herschel Walker Claims He’s Honorary Confederate Soldier

And before that an honorary Confederate slave.

Adidas Attempts To Make Amends With Jewish Community By Signing Woody Allen

Next up: Mia Farrow.

Researchers No Closer To Understanding What The Fuck You’re Talking About

And, no, incredibly enough, not just the pinheads.

Brutal Reality Check Turns Three

And now at least twice as brutal.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jean-Luc Godard

The most fantastic thing you could film is people reading. I don't see why no one's done it...The movie you'd make would be a lot more interesting than most of them.


They'd be naked of course.

Change nothing so that everything will be different.

Actually, it's not as easy as it sounds.

I always feel that a man and a woman, who do not like the same films, will eventually divorce.

Sure. But how do you explain them getting married in the first place?

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

Of course, we know it's philosophy.

Art’s despair: its desperate attempt to create the imperishable from what perishes, from words, sounds, stones, colors, so that the space formed might outlast time. Although the mighty build halls, filling them with torches and music, surrounding themselves with bodies and more bodies, and faces and more faces… that too was but a kind of sleep.

Uh, don't over think it?

Art and theory of art, at one and the same time.

Thanks, but no thanks.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jean-Luc Godard

The most fantastic thing you could film is people reading. I don't see why no one's done it...The movie you'd make would be a lot more interesting than most of them.


They'd be naked of course.

Change nothing so that everything will be different.

Actually, it's not as easy as it sounds.

I always feel that a man and a woman, who do not like the same films, will eventually divorce.

Sure. But how do you explain them getting married in the first place?

Cinema is the most beautiful fraud in the world.

Of course, we know it's philosophy.

Art’s despair: its desperate attempt to create the imperishable from what perishes, from words, sounds, stones, colors, so that the space formed might outlast time. Although the mighty build halls, filling them with torches and music, surrounding themselves with bodies and more bodies, and faces and more faces… that too was but a kind of sleep.

Uh, don't over think it?

Art and theory of art, at one and the same time.

Thanks, but no thanks.
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iambiguous
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Man Can’t Remember What He Ran Into Burning Building For


Don't you just hate when that happens to you?

Texas Launches Outreach Program To Provide Troubled Teens With Assault Rifles

And tons of ammunition.

It’s Ageist To Suggest A Corpse Can’t Be A Great Leader

Don't we have one now, he quipped.

School Board Reminds Attendees To Limit Comments To 60 Slurs Or Less

Not counting the exceptions, of course.

N-Word Use On Twitter Jumps 500% After Elon Musk Takeover

Let's explain why.

U.S. Citizenry Admits It Could Kind Of Go For Charismatic Authoritarian Dictator

Starting tomorrow here.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Eric Hoffer

An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.


The pinheads!!!

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

The pinheads!!!

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many.

So [today especially] don't forget to vote!

It is startling to realize how much unbelief is necessary to make belief possible.

Or, here, how little?

We feel free when we escape, even if it be from the frying pan into the fire.

Okay, but for how long?

The feeling of being hurried is not usually the result of living a full life and having no time. It is on the contrary born of a vague fear that we are wasting our life. When we do not do the one thing we ought to do, we have no time for anything else--we are the busiest people in the world.

The American dream, let's call it.
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Re: Quote of the day

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The Onion

Child Forced Into Pumpkin Costume Feels First Twinge Of Rage That Will One Day Make Him Mass Shooter


Cue Benjamin Button!

Just Once, Dachshund Would Love To Dress Up As Something Other Than Hot Dog

Let's think of something.

Twitter Adds ‘Context’ Label To Clarify When Tweets Make Elon Musk Sad

Next up: No more Onion on Twitter.

BREAKING: Onion Lotto Jackpot Up To 9 Bucks

Ten by now.

Conservative Man Will Be Furious If They Ever Make Dora The Explorer Less Hot

You tell me.

Skydiver With Malfunctioning Parachute Does One Last Scan For Trampoline

I guess we'll never know.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Alvin Plantinga

The existence of God is neither precluded nor rendered improbable by the existence of evil.


On the other hand, no God, no Judgment Day.

Is it a fact that those who believe in a Heavenly Father do so because or partly because their earthly fathers were inadequate?

Two words:
1] immortality
2] salvation


Most of us form estimates of our intelligence, wisdom, and moral fiber that are considerably higher than an objective estimate would warrant; no doubt 90 percent of us think ourselves well above average along these lines.

Of course, for the God world pinheads among us, it's closer to 110%.

De jure objections are arguments of claims to the effect that Christian belief, whether or not true, is at any rate unjustifiable, or rationally unjustified, or irrational, or not intellectually respectable, or contrary to sound morality, or without sufficient evidence, or in some other way rationally unacceptable, not up to snuff from an intellectual point of view.

Next up: the de facto God.

Dawkins claims that the living world came to be by way of unguided evolution: “the Evidence of Evolution,” he says, “Reveals a Universe Without Design.” What he actually argues, however, is that there is a Darwinian series for contemporary life forms. As we have seen, this argument is inconclusive; but even if it were air-tight it wouldn’t show, of course, that the living world, let alone the entire universe, is without design.

You know, going back to a definitve explanation of existence itself.

The believer, says Aquinas, has sufficient motive for believing, for he is moved by the authority of divine teaching confirmed by miracles and, what is more, by the inward instigation of the divine invitation.

:lol:
Among other things, of course.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Sean Carroll

One increasingly hears rumors of a reconciliation between science and religion. In major news magazines as well as at academic conferences, the claim is made that that belief in the success of science in describing the workings of the world is no longer thought to be in conflict with faith in God. I would like to argue against this trend, in favor of a more old-fashioned point of view that is still more characteristic of most scientists, who tend to disbelieve in any religious component to the workings of the universe.


Not counting your God, right?

The universe is not a miracle. It simply is, unguided and unsustained, manifesting the patterns of nature with scrupulous regularity.

Unless of course it is a miracle. If we count your God, right?

The ancient Greeks, according to Pirsig, saw the future as something that came upon them from behind their backs, with the past receding away before their eyes.

My guess: not all of them.

If our lives are brief and undirected, at least we can take pride in our mutual courage as we struggle to understand things much greater than ourselves.

My guess: not all of us.

Human beings are not nearly as coolly rational as we like to think we are. Having set up comfortable planets of belief, we become resistant to altering them, and develop cognitive biases that prevent us from seeing the world with perfect clarity.

See, didn't I tell you?!

Nothingness, after all, is simpler than any one particular existing thing ever could be; there is only one nothing, and many kinds of something.

You know, whatever that actually means.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Werner Twertzog

Was American identity politics always already fascist?


Among other things, of course.

I cast pearls before swine.
And shit before kings.


And Trump, of course.

David Brooks shall be among the elect, as we all know, but his transgressions--expedient lies, self-deceptions, denied dissonance--forgivable, for what is not, truly?--as we all know--must be sanded away in the friction of the pilgrimage road of opinion journalism.

Especially now that Mark Shields is gone.

No, Paul Simon, if that is your real name, the words of the prophets are written in light on tablets of titanium.

They sure as shit are not written here, right?

You have little fear by following me. But you do not have nothing to fear.

He reminds us of this from time to time. Let's hazard a guess as to why.

Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, looked exactly like Lou Ferrigno, as we all know.

He means Franco Columbu of course.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Emil M. Cioran from The Trouble with Being Born

It is not worth the bother of killing yourself, since you always kill yourself too late.


Just what we need...another optimist.

What do I do from morning to night?
I endure myself.


Well, he used to.

The same feeling of not belonging, of futility, wherever I go: I pretend interest in what matters nothing to me...

A good a reason as any to come here, right?

A zoologist who observed gorillas in their native habitat was amazed by the uniformity of their life and their vast idleness. Hours and hours without doing anything. Was boredom unknown to them? This is indeed a question raised by a human, a busy ape. Far from fleeing monotony, animals crave it, and what they most dread is to see it end. For it ends, only to be replaced by fear, the cause of all activity. Inaction is divine; yet it is against inaction that man has rebelled. Man alone, in nature, is incapable of enduring monotony, man alone wants something to happen at all costs — something, anything...

Women too I'm guessing.

Sometimes I wish I were a cannibal – less for the pleasure of eating someone than for the pleasure of vomiting him.

Top that!!!

When people come to me saying they want to kill themselves, I tell them, “What’s your rush? You can kill yourself any time you like. So calm down. Suicide is a positive act.” And they do calm down.

No, really.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Existential Comics

I don't think people realize how cruel it is to tell people to "learn to code". You are basically saying that if you want a comfortable life you have to start saying things like "I think a regex will work here..."
Is that the kind of world you want to live in?


You tell me. And, while you're at it, explain crypto currency. Better than the folks at NOVA did.

Yes, in America workers are always two steps away from being homeless, but they are also two steps away from being four steps away from being homeless, so it is all worth it.

That's the spirit!

In retrospect, how embarrassing is it for the world that England conquered like every other country? Probably the most embarrassing fact about the world, to be honest.

Yo Maia! Yo Magsj!

I don't think enough Americans realize how much better the world would be if they just shut the fuck about how others countries should be run.

Anyone here realize it?

The conservative definition of "free speech" is when evil billionaires get to decide what you can say. The liberal definition of "free speech" is when good billionaires get to decide what you can say.

Any good or evil billionaires here?
Not counting Lotto winners of course.


Some people are confused how Elon Musk, who by all appearances is a moron, became the richest person alive. They think he must be some kind of secret genius. Allow me to explain: the world is stupid.

Yep, that's always worked for me.
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Re: Quote of the day

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Albert Camus from The Stranger

You always get exaggerated notions about things you don't know anything about.


Here, for example, philosophy.

Thus, I always began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant, of course, I was to die. Sooner than others, obviously. 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten-- since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.

Human existence philosophically, let's call it.

I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed.

And, for some, coming here of course.

To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.

Not always, he suggested.

The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action.

Wow, he thought, so that's what I am! And then he pulled the trigger.

On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man.

So, would that matter to you?
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Re: Quote of the day

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Jan Mieszkowski

September 26th is Martin Heidegger's birthday. The other 364 days of the year are Being-toward-Death Day.


Or 365 days on leap years.

Philosophy begins
Plato: in confusion
Aristotle: in wonder
Kierkegaard: in dread
Derrida: in a typo


Next up: philosophy ends.
Hint: here


On Sunday we reflect on
Schopenhauer: the death of reason
Nietzsche: the death of God
Beckett: the death of life
Camus: the high price of cigarettes


Let's pick one and see where it goes.

"Nothing can vanish as irretrievably as a morning." Walter Benjamin

If only every one of them, right?

Twitter before Elon Musk.
Twitter after Elon Musk.


Hint: Slavoj Žižek

Scientists at Princeton University have reconstructed this 3D model of how Adam, the first human being created by God, might have looked.

Hint: Slavoj Žižek
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