Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

Werner Twertzog

Those who remember the past are condemned to be ridiculed, threatened, and exiled, if not murdered.

My guess: some pasts more than others.

Yogurt seems benign, but it is full of anger.

Let's exchange anecdotes.

Descaling an automated coffee maker is a religious rite. If one makes a single mistake, the ritual must begin again.

Let's exchange anecdotes.

For sale. Epistemology. Never believed.

Or, as likely as not, never understood.

God gave Moses two sets of tablets. My doctor has given me six.

Unless, of course, it's not the same thing at all.

And then I said, "No, Andy, in the future, given expected global population growth, everyone will be famous for only a fraction of second."

Let me guess: you'll settle for that.

[iambiguous]

Colin Wilson from The Outsider

The outsider is not sure who he is. He has found an “I”, but it is not his true “I”. His main business is to find his way back to himself.

And then there are Outsiders like me.

Ask the Outsider what he ultimately wants, and he will admit he doesn't know. Why? Because he wants it instinctively, and it is not always possible to tell what your instincts are driving towards.

Yo, gib! Something like this?

These men are in prison: that is the Outsider’s verdict. They are quite contented in prison—caged animals who have never known freedom; but it is prison all the same.

What some of us call objectivists.

The Outsider is in prison too: nearly every Outsider in this book has told us so in a different language; but he knows it. His desire is to escape. But a prison-break is not an easy matter; you must know all about your prison, otherwise you might spend years in tunnelling, like the Abbe in The Count of Monte Cristo, and only find yourself in the next cell.

Me? Tunneling from Christianity to Marxism.

The Outsider is always unhappy, but he is the agent that ensures happiness for millions of ‘Insiders’.

Like you. Not that you will ever really understand why.

There is in Shaw, as in Gurdjieff and Nietzsche, a recognition of the immense effort of Will that is necessary to express even a little freedom, that places them beside Pascal and St. Augustine as religious thinkers. Their view is saved from pessimism only by its mystical recognition of the possibilities of pure Will, freed from the entanglements of automatism.

Well, obviously.

[iambiguous]

Existential Comics

Philosophy should be safe, legal, and rare.

Rare. That works now here, right?

Whenever the government does anything to tangibly make people's lives easier, it is always a terrible day for people who's main political ideal seems to be "everyone should suffer forever.

Like student debt forgiveness: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... arguments/

Capitalists need increasingly educated workers to manage technologically advance businesses, but they also need the working class to be as uneducated as possible.

No, really. The dumb bastards flocking to Trump for example.

You want me to put my trust in God? The guy who created spiders? I don't think so.

For you, it might be something else. Pinheads, for example.

...history has shown that without dumbasses on board you will never reach the critical mass needed to affect change...

Fascism, for instance.

Under communism, you'll just have to log on to one damn service to watch all your shows.

The government?

[iambiguous]

Jim Holt

The total absence of humor from the Bible, Alfred North Whitehead once observed, is one of the most singular things in all literature.

Unless of course the whole thing is a joke.

It has even been conjectured that the human mind plays a critical role in the self-causing mechanism. Although we seem to be a negligible part of the cosmos, it is our consciousness that gives reality to it as a whole. On this picture, sometimes called the “participatory universe,” reality is a self-sustaining causal loop: the world creates us, and we in turn create the world.

Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.

Our mild anxiety about the precariousness of being may give way to confidence in a world that turns out to be coherent, luminous, and intellectually secure. Or it might yield to cosmic terror when we realize that the whole show is a mere ontological soap bubble that could pop into nothingness at any moment, without the slightest warning. And our present sense of the potential reach of human thought may give way to a newfound humility at its limits, or to a newfound wonder at its leaps and bounds—or a bit of both.

Go ahead, fit yourself in there somewhere.

I would earnestly warn you against trying to find out the reason for and explanation of everything. . . . To try and find out the reason for everything is very dangerous and leads to nothing but disappointment and dissatisfaction, unsettling your mind and in the end making you miserable.

See, I told you.

Consistency is the virtue of small minds, and Spinoza had a great mind—he was inconsistent all over the place.

Did he know that?

Instead of being an inert object, nothingness would appear to be a dynamic thing, a sort of annihilating force.

Pick one:
1] the good news
2] the bad news

[Humusk1]

1- “You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching, love like you’ll never be hurt, sing like there’s nobody listening, and live like it’s heaven on earth.” —William W. Purkey

2- “Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”―Neil Gaiman

3- “Everything you can imagine is real.”―Pablo Picasso

4- “When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.” ―Helen Keller

5- “Do one thing every day that scares you.” ―Eleanor Roosevelt

6- "Life is a Gift and Giving is our Lifestyle" - Rizwan Khan (TheNewsInsides)

[iambiguous]

Bart D. Ehrman

In one of my earlier books, Misquoting Jesus, I discuss the fact that we do not have the original copy of Luke, or Mark, or Paul’s writings, or any of the early Christian texts that make up the New Testament.

Not to worry, God does.

The Christian religion is founded on the belief that Jesus was raised from the dead. And it appears virtually certain that it was Mary Magdalene of all people, an otherwise unknown Galilean Jewish woman of means, who first propounded this belief. It is not at all farfetched to claim that Mary was the founder of Christianity.

Let's run this by Immanuel Can. And her.

...pastors don’t want to make waves; or they don’t think their congregations are “ready” to hear what scholars are saying...

Gasp!

The end of time will not bring a salvation of the flesh; it will bring a deliverance from the flesh.

Either way, let's synchronize our watches.

Abductive reasoning is neither deductive nor inductive. Abductive reasoning, even when done properly, doesn’t lead to a certain conclusion, as deductive reasoning does; nor even necessarily to a probable conclusion, as inductive reasoning does; but rather to the most plausible conclusion, meaning the likeliest explanation for the observations.

Ah, of course, the abductive dasein factor.

If salvation could come by belonging to the covenantal community of the chosen people, or by keeping the Law of Moses, there would be no reason for God’s messiah to have suffered an excruciating death. Following the law thus must have no bearing on how a person stands in a right relationship with God.

Yeah, how do you explain that?

[iambiguous]

God

If you ever want to talk, I'm right here ignoring you.

I know, I know: not your God.

Think of the world you're leaving behind for the children you should really stop having.

Anyone here not stopped yet?

At least you're biodegradable.

Anyone here not biodegradable?

At the end of the day, it’s 11:59pm.

Or, for you grunts, 23:59.

Anyone who says 'God is love' is unfamiliar with My work.

Cue His mysterious ways?

The same people who doubt I can appear on Twitter have no trouble believing My son can appear on a piece of French toast.

Uh, go figure?

[iambiguous]

Jean-Paul Sartre, from Nausea

I suppose it is out of laziness that the world is the same day after day. Today it seemed to want to change. And then anything, anything could happen.

Back then, World War II for example.

This is what I thought: for the most banal even to become an adventure, you must (and this is enough) begin to recount it. This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell.

He wondered which one he was doing here...

I felt myself in a solitude so frightful that I contemplated suicide. What held me back was the idea that no one, absolutely no one, would be moved by my death, that I would be even more alone in death than in life.

Twice myself.

You must be like me; you must suffer in rhythm.

Anyone here want to synchronize theirs with mine?

Through the lack of attaching myself to words, my thoughts remain nebulous most of the time. They sketch vague, pleasant shapes and then are swallowed up; I forget them almost immediately.

Or here only attaching yourself to words. So that the rest of us can immediately forget them.

People who live in society have learnt how to see themselves, in mirrors, as they appear to their friends. I have no friends...

Me neither. Well, not counting all of my friends here.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Every One Of Man’s Priorities Unrecognizable To Grandfather

All the way to the grave no doubt.

Drugs Win Drug War

All the way to the grave no doubt.

New Texas Law Requires Gun Buyers To Show Proof Of Mental Illness

Well, they are Texans.

Experts Advise Against Throwing Laptop Across Office Even Though It Will Feel Incredible

Next up: aiming them at the experts.

Domino’s Surprises Customer With Nice Steak Dinner

That ever happen to you?

God Still Waiting For Humans To Discover Easter Egg Feature Hidden In Cows

Let's tackle this.

[Pattern-chaser]

"If we will only allow that, as we progress, we remain unsure, we will leave opportunities for alternatives. We will not become enthusiastic for the fact, the knowledge, the absolute truth of the day, but remain always uncertain … In order to make progress, one must leave the door to the unknown ajar."

― Richard P. Feynman

[iambiguous]

Harlan Ellison

Who wants a library full of books you've already read?

For some, that is their library.
Me? I'm down to just a handful now.

In my ugly, elitist opinion we are not all entitled to voice our opinions, we are entitled to pass along our informed opinions.

Next up: our distinction or theirs.

Possibly the only dismaying aspect of excellence is that it makes living in a world of mediocrity an ongoing prospect of living hell.

Let's pause to recall when it was not a living hell here.

Writing a novel is like going a great distance to take a small shit.

Next up: writing Ulysses.

The only thing worth writing about is people. People. Human beings. Men and women whose individuality must be created, line by line, insight by insight.

For example, starting with yourself.

And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshipers of the sun's passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don't keep the schedule tight.

Said the Ticktockman.

AM said it with the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball. AM said it with the bubbling thickness of my lungs filling with phlegm, drowning me from within. AM said it with the shriek of babies being ground beneath blue-hot rollers. AM said it with the taste of maggoty pork. AM touched me in every way I had ever been touched, and devised new ways, at his leisure, there inside my mind.

The Allied Mastercomputer. Post apocalyptically of course.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

School District Waives Sex-Ed Curriculum For Students Who Look Like They Know What’s Up

Anyone look like that here?

More Realistic Meat Substitute Made From Soy Raised In Brutally Cruel Conditions

Yo, vegans!

Grandmother’s Passing Helps Emotionally Prepare Child For When Pet Hamster Dies

As God intended no doubt.

Aging Mother Knows Any Wrong Move Could Be Taken For Telltale Sign Of Dementia

Like, for example, posting here.

Kotex Introduces New Expedition Tampons With Very Long String For Easily Tracing Way Back Home

Okay, how long is yours?

‘When Did I Eat Asparagus?’ Thinks Man Excreting Whole Asparagus Stalk From Urethra

Who would have thought that was even possible!

[iambiguous]

Sabine Hossenfelder

There are other reasons we use math in physics. Besides keeping us honest, math is also the most economical and unambiguous terminology that we know of. Language is malleable; it depends on context and interpretation. But math doesn’t care about culture or history. If a thousand people read a book, they read a thousand different books. But if a thousand people read an equation, they read the same equation.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

For the most part, physicists and mathematicians have settled on a fine division of labour in which the former complain about the finickiness of the latter, and the latter complain about the sloppiness of the former.

Let's resolve this.

When asked to judge the promise of a newly invented but untested theory, physicist draw on the concepts of naturalness simplicity or elegance and beauty. These hidden rules are ubiquitous in the foundations of physics. They are invaluable. And in utter conflict with the scientific mandate of objectivity.

And then there's what we pursue here.

In physics, theories are made of math. We don’t use math because we want to scare away those not familiar with differential geometry and graded Lie algebras; we use it because we are fools. Math keeps us honest—it prevents us from lying to ourselves and to each other. You can be wrong with math, but you can’t lie.

Next up: in philosophy...

Theoretical physicists used to explain what was observed. Now they try to explain why they can't explain what was not observed.

Yo, Rummy!

...if you quote this, you can be the first person to quote someone quoting someone quoting himself quoting someone...

My guess: and so on.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Biden Unveils Student Loan Forgiveness Plan Requiring Taxpayers To Be Dragged Into Street And Killed Like Dogs

Next up: the pinheads here confirm it.

27-Year-Old Lies About Every Single Aspect Of His Life To Keep Parents From Worrying

Damn, why didn't I think of that?!

Boss Wants Friendly, Relaxed Company Culture In Place By Friday

Or what you might ask.

Bedtime Story From Fucking Bible Again

The Old Fucking Testament to boot.

Laid-Back Company Allows Employees To Work From Home After 6 P.M.

Or certainly after midnight.

Giuliani Insists Breaking The Law Not A Crime

A ruling class things let's call it.

[iambiguous]

Margaret Atwood from The Handmaid's Tale

But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Trust me: not all pain.

Better never means better for everyone...It always means worse, for some.

See, I told you.

We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom. We lived in the gaps between the stories.

Until one day...boom!

A rat in a maze is free to go anywhere, as long as it stays inside the maze.

Of course some rats wouldn't have it any other way.

You can only be jealous of someone who has something you think you ought to have yourself.

Okay, but then what?

There is more than one kind of freedom, said Aunt Lydia. Freedom to and freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from. Don't underrate it.

1] freedom to be pinheads
2] freedom from being around pinheads