Quote of the day

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Woman Pushing Stroller Just Assumes Everyone Going To Move Out Of Her Way On Highway

Like this guy: https://youtu.be/HeJhwg9nbko

L’Oréal Unveils Metal Box For Locking Self Inside To Hide From Insecurities

Nope, didn't work at all for me.

Sophisticated High Schooler Soaks Tampon In Negroni

Uh, you tell me?

‘Jeopardy!’ Bans Obsessive Weirdos Who Ruin The Fun By Preparing Way Too Much For Show

That doesn't seem fair. You know, if it's true.

Trump Denies Storing Documents In Bathroom: ‘Just Because A Room Has A Toilet Doesn’t Make It A Bathroom’

Yeah, you liberals, what about that?!

Psychotic Break Really Helping Man Come Out Of Shell

Hey, whatever works, right?

[iambiguous]

Truman Capote from In Cold Blood

Once a thing is set to happen, all you can do is hope it won't. Or will-depending. As long as you live, there’s always something waiting, and even if it’s bad, and you know it's bad, what can you do? You can’t stop living.

Of course, that's not always true.

I've tried to believe, but I don't, I can't, and there's no use pretending.

And, trust me, not just in God.

There’s got to be something wrong with us. To do what we did.

Or here: There’s got to be something wrong with me. To post what I do.

The enemy was anyone who was someone he wanted to be or who had anything he wanted to have.

The dreaded sociopaths let's call them.
In a No God world.

There is considerable hypocrisy in conventionalism. Any thinking person is aware of this paradox; but in dealing with conventional people it is advantageous to treat them as though they were not hypocrites. It isn't a question of faithfulness to your own concepts; it is a matter of compromise so that you can remain an individual without the constant threat of conventional pressures.

And then this part: Sometimes you have options, sometimes you don't.

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.

Until, brutally, cruelly it did.

[iambiguous]

J.D. Salinger from The Catcher in the Rye

I hate actors. They never act like people. They just think they do.

Next up: those here who act like philosophers.
Or think they do.

Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first one who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior.

Next up: those here who actually aren't.

You can hit my father over the head with a chair and he won't wake up, but my mother, all you have to do to my mother is cough somewhere in Siberia and she'll hear you.

Come on, Siberia? But point taken. Right, Mom?

Lawyers are alright, I guess — but it doesn't appeal to me, I said. I mean they're alright if they go around saving innocent guys' lives all the time, and like that, but you don't do that kind of stuff if you're a lawyer. All you do is make a lot of dough and play golf and play bridge and buy cars and drink Martinis and look like a hot-shot. And besides, even if you did go around saving guys' lives and all, how would you know if you did it because you really wanted to save guys' lives, or because you did it because what you really wanted to do was be a terrific lawyer, with everybody slapping you on the back and congratulating you in court when the goddam trial was over, the reporters and everybody, the way it is in the dirty movies? How would you know you weren't being a phony? The trouble is you wouldn't.

Yo, Carleas!

I felt like praying or something, when I was in bed, but I couldn't do it. I can't always pray when I feel like it. In the first place, I'm sort of an atheist. I like Jesus and all, but I don't care too much for most of the other stuff in the Bible. Take the Disciples, for instance. They annoy the hell out of me, if you want to know the truth. They were all right after Jesus was dead and all, but while He was alive, they were about as much use to Him as a hole in the head. All they did was keep letting Him down.

Someone run this by, well, you know.

When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go.

What if this is the human condition in a nutshell?

[iambiguous]

David Foster Wallace from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

When a solipsist dies ... everything goes with him.

Not unlike all the rest of us.

It's that he persists in the bizarre, adolescent belief that getting to have sex with whomever one wants whenever one wants to is a cure for human despair.

Next up: why 9 out of 10 men disagree.

Aren't there parts of ourselves that are just better left unfed?

For some here, starting with their brains.

It never once occurs to him, though, that the reason he's so unhappy is that he's an asshole.

Don't look at me...I never fail to remind him.

The thrust here is that Dostoevsky wrote fiction about the stuff that's really important. He wrote fiction about identity, moral value, death, will, sexual vs. spiritual love, greed, freedom, obsession, reason, faith, suicide. And he did it without ever reducing his characters to mouthpieces or his books to tracts. His concern was always what it is to be a human being---that is, how to be an actual person, someone whose life is informed by values and principles, instead of just an especially shrewd kind of self-preserving animal.

Next up: the thrust of Mr. Pinhead here.

This is so stupid it practically drools.

Pick a thread: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

[iambiguous]

Mary Karr from The Liars' Club

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

Next up: a dysfunctional philosophy forum.

Sure the world breeds monsters, but kindness grows just as wild...

Nope, not around here.

Daddy said a Republican was somebody who couldn’t enjoy eating unless he knew somebody else was hungry.

Starving even.

I loved the idea that looking at a painting or listening to a concerto could make you somehow "transcend" the day-in, day-out bullshit that grinds you down: how in one instant of pure attention you could draw something inside that made you forever larger.

Wow, like coming here!

At some point the talk got heated, and Paolo called Mother a strumpet, for which Daddy was said to have stomped a serious mudhole in Paolo's ass.

Imagine if he flat out called her a whore.

A pool game mixes ritual with geometry.

Not many things that can be said about.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Troubling Report Finds Millions Of Americans Forced To Make Ends Meet By Getting Up And Going To Work Every Day

And twice on Sunday.

Prison Officials Find Beautiful Present Left For Them In Unabomber’s Cell

You'll never guess what it was.

Dumbass Gets Head Stuck In T-Shirt

Pinhead trying to help gets stuck in there with him.

God Still Little Pissed Off Every Time Human Takes Bite From Apple

As well He should be, right?

Report: Ants Having Some Kind Of Party Inside Crack In Pavement

Why else would they be there?

New Study Finds Only Way To Reverse Climate Change Is If Every Person On Earth Shares Single Chevy Volt

Let's calculate: will it be big enough?

[iambiguous]

Theodore J. Kaczynski

There is goоd reason to believe that primitive mаn suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern mаn is.

My guess: we'll never really know.

Modern leftish philosophers tend to dismiss reason, science, objective reality and to insist that everything is culturally relative. More importantly, the leftist hates science and rationality because they classify certain beliefs as true (i.e., successful, superior) and other beliefs as false (i.e., failed, inferior). The leftist’s feelings of inferiority run so deep that he cannot tolerate any classification of some things as successful or superior and other things as failed or inferior. This also underlies the rejection by many leftists of the concept of mental illness and of the utility of IQ tests. Leftists are antagonistic to genetic explanations of human abilities or behavior because such explanations tend to make some persons appear superior or inferior to others. Leftists prefer to give society the credit or blame for an individual’s ability or lack of it. Thus if a person is “inferior” it is not his fault, but society’s, because he has not been brought up properly.

The fool!

A surrogate activity is an activity that is directed toward an artificial goal that the individual pursues for the sake of the “fulfillment” that he gets from pursuing the goal, not because he needs to attain the goal itself. For instance, there is no practical motive for building enormous muscles, hitting a little ball into a hole or acquiring a complete series of postage stamps. Yet many people in our society devote themselves with passion to bodybuilding, golf or stamp-collecting.

Next up: Ted on what we do here.

The System has played a trick on today’s would-be revolutionaries and rebels. The trick is so cute that if it had been consciously planned one would have to admire it for its almost mathematical elegance.

Uh, it co-opted them?

It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.

Uh, drain the swamp?

In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very modest effort needed to hold a job. The only requirements are a moderate amount of intelligence and, most of all, simple OBEDIENCE.

Wage-slaves let's call them.

[iambiguous]

Michio Kaku from Physics of the Impossible

The Higgs boson, physicists believe, originally started out as a tachyon. In the false vacuum, none of the subatomic particles had any mass. But its presence destabilized the vacuum, and the universe made a transition to a new vacuum, in which the Higgs boson turned into an ordinary particle.

Let's file this [for most of us] under, "if he says so".

Tachyons at first seem to violate causality, but physicists believe that their true purpose was to set off the big bang and hence they are not observable anymore.

Let's file this [for most of us] under, "whatever that means".

Imagine fish swimming in a shallow pond. they might never suspect the presence of a third dimension, because their eyes point to the side, and they can only swim forward and backward, left and right. A third dimension to them might appear impossible. But then imagine it rains on the pond. Although they cannot see the third dimension, they can clearly see the shadows of the ripples on the surface of the pond. In the same way, Kaluza's theory explained the light as ripples traveling on the fifth dimension.

Next up: fish in Flatland.

Feynman once wrote, quantum mechanics describes nature as absurd from the point of view of common sense...So I hope you can accept nature as She is---absurd.

Well, at least that explains the pinheads here.

Einstein wrote, “Quantum mechanics calls for a great deal of respect. But some inner voice tells me that this is not the true Jacob. The theory offers a lot, but it hardly brings us any closer to the Old Man’s secret. For my part, at least, I am convinced that He doesn’t throw dice.”

Uh, the true Jacob?
https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/w ... an.810337/

Theories have four stages of acceptance:
1. this is worthless nonsense;
2. this is interesting, but perverse;
3. this is true, but quite unimportant;
4. I always said so.
J. B. S. HALDANE

Though [for some] not necessarily in that order.

[iambiguous]

Charles Bukowski from Factotum

My ambition is handicapped by laziness.

Don't get me started.

I was a man who thrived on solitude; without it I was like another man without food or water. Each day without solitude weakened me. I took no pride in my solitude; but I was dependent on it. The darkness of the room was like sunlight to me.

Don't get me started.

How in the hell could a man enjoy being awakened at 8:30 a.m. by an alarm clock, leap out of bed, dress, force-feed, shit, piss, brush teeth and hair, and fight traffic to get to a place where essentially you made lots of money for somebody else and were asked to be grateful for the opportunity to do so?

Capitalism let's call it.

Nothing is worse than to finish a good shit, then reach over and find the toilet paper container empty. Even the most horrible human being on earth deserves to wipe his ass.

Ridiculous, of course, but point taken.

For each Joan of Arc there is a Hitler perched at the other end of the teeter-totter.

Or the sliding board.

I drank for some time, three or four days. I couldn't get myself to read the want ads. The thought of sitting in front of a man behind a desk and telling him that I wanted a job, that I was qualified for a job, was too much for me. Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn't have you by the throat.

What, that never happened to you?

[iambiguous]

Jennette McCurdy from I'm Glad My Mom Died

Mom didn’t get better. But I will.

Of course here what goes around comes around. For all of us eventually.

She wanted this. And I wanted her to have it. I wanted her to be happy. But now that I have it, I realize that she’s happy and I’m not. Her happiness came at the cost of mine.

Happens all the time though, doesn't it? For all of us eventually.

One of the more excruciating emotional disconnects for me is when someone says something they think is poignant and I receive it as complete bullshit.

Then...to tell or not to tell them?

And if my entire life and point of view and identity have been built on a false foundation, confronting that false foundation would mean destroying and rebuilding a new foundation from the ground up. I have no idea how to go about doing this.

Next up: my own take on that.

I'm allowed to hate someone else's dream, even if it's my reality.

Allowed to? More like required to.

I’m done being a good sport. I resent being a good sport. If I wasn’t such a good sport to begin with, I wouldn’t be in this predicament in the first place. I wouldn’t be on this shitty show saying these shitty lines on this shitty set with this shitty hairstyle.

Any good sports here?

[iambiguous]

Pessimism...

“There is not much to be got anywhere in the world. It is filled with misery and pain; if a man escapes these, boredeom lies in wait for him at every corner. Nay more; it is evil which generally has the upper hand, and folly that makes the most noise. Fate is cruel and mankind pitiable.” Arthur Schopenhauer

That's him being optimistic.

“The best consolation in misfortune or affliction of any kind will be the thought of other people who are in a still worse plight than yourself..." Arthur Schopenhauer

Now that's more like.

“Sometimes a pessimist is only an optimist with extra information.” Idries Shah

In other words, fully informed.

“The only value of this world lay in its power - at certain times - to suggest another world.” Thomas Ligotti

You know the one.

“Though nihilism has been relentlessly criticized for overemphasizing the dark side of human experience, it might be equally true that this overemphasis represents a needed counterbalance to shallow optimism and arrogant confidence in human power. Nihilism reminds us that we are not gods, and that despite all of the accomplishments and wonders of civilization, humans cannot alter the fact that they possess only a finite amount of mastery and control over their own destinies.” John Marmysz

See, I told you.

“We're all free and equal to die like dogs.” Peter Weiss

Or, for some, like cockroaches.

[iambiguous]

Vladimir Nabokov from Lolita

I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze
I cannot get out, said the starling

Though not just starlings of course.

Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.

Pick one, gentlemen:
1] genes more than memes
2] memes more than genes

For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm.

And, sure, if it incldes a fetching nymphet, all the better.

My Carmen, I said (I used to call her that sometimes) we shall leave this raw sore town as soon as you get out of bed.
... Because, really, I continued, there is no point in staying here.
There is no point in staying anywhere, said Lolita.

Oh, there's a point alright.

We hasten to alienate the very fates we intended to woo.

He wondered if he ever had.

Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C. Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Anyone for ping pong?

[iambiguous]

Cormac McCarthy from The Passenger

Beauty makes promises that beauty can't keep.

What did it promise you?

History is a collection of paper. A few fading recollections. After a while what is not written never happened.

Not that it didn't happen of course.

It’s just that sometimes I think I would have found my life pretty funny if I hadnt had to live it.

Ha, Ha?

So how bad is the world?
How bad. The world's truth constitutes a vision so terrifying as to beggar the prophecies of the bleakest seer who ever walked it. Once you accept that then the idea that all of this will one day be ground to powder and blown into the void becomes not a prophecy but a promise. So allow me in turn to ask you this question: When we and all our works are gone together with every memory of them and every machine in which such memory could be encoded and stored and the Earth is not even a cinder, for whom then will this be a tragedy? Where would such a being be found? And by whom?

And now? Rest in peace as they say.

People will go to strange lengths to avoid the suffering they have coming.

More to the point, can they pull it off?

The truth is that everyone is under arrest. Or soon will be. They don't have to restrict your movements. They just have to know where you are.

How? Well, they know everything.

[iambiguous]

The Onion

Friend Attempting To Provide Comfort Has No Clue What The Fuck She’s Talking About

Like that has will ever stop her.
Or him for that matter.

Man Who Has Never Seen Horseshoe Crab Before Understandably Freaking The Fuck Out

Let's explain why.

Scientists: ‘Don’t Get Mad, But We Accidentally Found The Cure For Homosexuality’

Someone run this by Satyr.

Trump Identified As Suspect In Police Lineup Of Former Presidents

Can anyone here name them all?

Crypto Leaders Call For Infusion Of 20 Million Dopes To Stabilize Market

Must be a million of them here alone.

Trump Secretly Hopeful That If He Goes To Prison He Can Meet The Joker

Well, Joker 2 is "in development". So, he can meet Lady Gaga too.

[iambiguous]

Carl Sagan from Cosmos

Cosmos is a Greek word for the order of the universe. It is, in a way, the opposite of Chaos. It implies the deep interconnectedness of all things. It conveys awe for the intricate and subtle way in which the universe is put together.

The Big Bang...and pinheads?

The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.

Though it can seem like 25,000 or more.

We humans look rather different from a tree. Without a doubt we perceive the world differently than a tree does. But down deep, at the molecular heart of life, the trees and we are essentially identical.

A weeping willow works for me.

The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality.

Right, metaphors...

The total amount of energy from outside the solar system ever received by all the radio telescopes on the planet Earth is less than the energy of a single snowflake striking the ground.

Uh, huh?

The study of the galaxies reveals a universal order and beauty. It also shows us chaotic violence on a scale hitherto undreamed of. That we live in a universe which permits life is remarkable. That we live in one which destroys galaxies and stars and worlds is also remarkable. The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent to the concerns of such puny creatures as we.

And you can take that all the way to the grave.