Quote of the day

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Randall Munroe

In the Clarendon Library at Oxford University sits a battery-powered bell that has been ringing since the year 1840. The bell “rings” so quietly it’s almost inaudible, using only a tiny amount of charge with every motion of the clapper. Nobody knows exactly what kind of batteries it uses because nobody wants to take it apart to figure it out.

Your turn to Google it.

The lesson: If the optimist says the glass is half full, and the pessimist says the glass is half empty, the physicist ducks.

Learned?

Horned lizards shoot jets of blood from their eyes for distances of up to 5 feet. I don’t know why they do this because whenever I reach the phrase “shoot jets of blood from their eyes” in an article I just stop there and stare at it until I need to lie down.

Who wouldn't, right?

While researching this answer, I managed to lock up my copy of Mathematica several times on balloon-related differential equations, and subsequently got my IP address banned from Wolfram|Alpha for making too many requests. The ban-appeal form asked me to explain what task I was performing that necessitated so many queries. I wrote, “Calculating how many rental helium tanks you’d have to carry with you in order to inflate a balloon large enough to act as a parachute and slow your fall from a jet aircraft."

Could happen to anyone.

Without us, Earth’s geology will grind on. Winds and rain and blowing sand will dissolve and bury the artifacts of our civilization. Human-caused climate change will probably delay the start of the next glaciation, but we haven’t ended the cycle of ice ages. Eventually, the glaciers will advance again. A million years from now, few human artifacts will remain.

Yo, Maia!

By choosing the right words, you can take an idea that's happening in your head and try to make an idea like it happen in someone else's.

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Philosophy Tweets

"That awkward moment when you finish a math problem and your answer isn’t even one of the choices." Ritu Ghatourey

For example...?

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is." John von Neumann

Just out of curiosity, is this true?

"Go down deep enough into anything and you will find mathematics." Dean Schlicter

Not counting the morality of abortion of course.

"The believer is happy. The doubter is wise." Edgar Allan Poe.

Remember when that was still too close to call?

...I think that our own unique and distinctive personality blends with the wind, with the footsteps in the street, with the noises around the corner, and with the silence of memory, which is the great producer of ghosts." Octavio Paz

Pick one:
1] pure poetry
2] complete nonsense.

“Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'Here are our monsters,' without immediately turning the monsters into pets.” Jacques Derrida

Well, postmodern, deconstructed monsters anyway.

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Colin Wilson from The Outsider

For the Outsider, the world into which he has been born is always a world without values. Compared to his own appetite for a purpose and a direction, the way most men live is not living at all; it is drifting. This is the Outsider’s wretchedness, for all men have a herd instinct that leads them to believe that what the majority does must be right. Unless he can evolve a set of values that will correspond to his own higher intensity of purpose, he may as well throw himself under a bus, for he will always be an outcast and a misfit.

No, really.

In The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky gives accounts of the criminals he met in Siberia; and there is about all these men, mostly murderers, that slight element of the more-than-human that instantly grips the reader’s interest (in contrast with the all-too-human characters of most modern novelists, who produce acute intellectual constipation after fifty pages). At the same time, the criminal, in choosing crime (if he chooses it, and doesn’t just drift into it from laziness), has made the voluntary descent into the dark world which places him a step nearer the resolution of good and evil that the saint achieves. Salvation through sin recurs constantly in Dostoevsky’s work.

The Hannibal Lector Syndrome let's call it.

...he has explored life from end to end and found it all hollow, when actually he is only constipated with his own worthless-ness. He fails to apply his intellect to the question, Why do all living things prefer life to death?

Me? Sure, go ahead, flip the coin.

Tolstoy has found a parable that brings home to the full the Outsider’s attitude to other men: he cites an Eastern fable of a man who clings to a shrub on the side of a pit to escape an enraged beast at the top and a dragon at the bottom. Two mice gnaw at the roots of his shrub. Yet while hanging, waiting for death, he notices some drops of honey on the leaves of the shrub, and reaches out and licks them. This is man, suspended between the possibilities of violent accidental death and inevitable natural death, diseases accelerating them, yet still eating, drinking, laughing at Fernandel in the cinema. This is the man who calls the Outsider morbid because he lacks appetite for the honey!

Exactly!

Nijinsky was badgered by the Outsider’s greatest enemy, human triviality. There was a ballet season in New York, with Nijinsky’s own company and a new Nijinsky ballet, and endless difficulties and annoyances to be overcome. Nijinsky had no business ability; his temperament was almost completely introverted, contemplative; these endless, unimportant demands by the outside world were an immense strain.

Any trivialities here?

The Outsider is he who cannot accept life as it is, who cannot consider his own existence or anyone else’s necessary. He sees ‘too deep and too much’.

She too.
But then she left.

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Philosophy Tweets

"He has the most who is most content with the least." Diogenes

Okay, but the most and the least of what?

"Few people have the imagination for reality." Johann Goethe

And I'm guessing you're one of them.

"The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing." Oscar Wilde

Okay, but who would have expected that here?

"Learning never exhausts the mind." Leonardo da Vinci

How idiotic is that?
Well, not counting his mind of course.

"As the world is weary of me so am I of it." John Knox

I hear that.

"You cannot antagonize and influence at the same time." John Knox

Like that will ever stop us.

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Albert Camus from The Stranger

I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.

Here, let's start with the pinheads.

I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.

Next up: the brutal indifference parts.

I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.

Me? I'll take my chances if you can convince me of yours

Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.

Except to the overwhelming majority of us where it does.

If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.

Anyone here ever not been there?

Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?
Yes, I said.

What balls!

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Nein

Yes, we'll say, summer. It used to be for love. Then it was rebranded for global anxiety.

Also, Fall, Winter and Spring.

It’s not the heat. It’s the late capitalism.

And getting later all the time.

Signs that Twitter is adversely affecting your mental health:
1. You’re on Twitter.
2. You’re okay with that.

That's before Elon Musk takes over of course.

A gentle reminder that autumn is for the poets. Fall is for the rest of us.

Tell that to the leaves.

Friday. Everybody’s favorite end of history.

Monday. The start of the next one.

You say you want a revolution. But you’d love a weekend.

Or settle for one.

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Matt Haig

She realised that she hadn’t tried to end her life because she was miserable, but because she had managed to convince herself that there was no way out of her misery.

Not a small distinction though, is it?

It is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself.

Not a small distinction though, is it?

So long as there are still books on the shelves, you are never trapped. Every book is a potential escape.

Until, one day, they aren't.

Every second of every day we are entering a new universe. And we spend so much time wishing our lives were different, comparing ourselves to other people and to other versions of ourselves, when really most lives contain degrees of good and degrees of bad.

Most lives, sure. But not necessarily your life now.

At the beginning of a game, there are no variations. There is only one way to set up a board. There are nine million variations after the first six moves. And after eight moves there are two hundred and eighty-eight billion different positions. And those possibilities keep growing. There are more possible ways to play a game of chess than the amount of atoms in the observable universe. So it gets very messy. And there is no right way to play; there are many ways. In chess, as in life, possibility is the basis of everything. Every hope, every dream, every regret, every moment of living.

Of course the game of life is unimaginably more complex, isn't it? Just ask Benjamin Button. Or, here, me.

Life is frightening, and it is frightening for a reason, and the reason is that it doesn’t matter which branch of a life we get to live, we are always the same rotten tree. I wanted to be many things in my life. All kinds of things. But if your life is rotten, it will be rotten no matter what you do.

Just what we need, another optimist.

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Werner Twertzog

I promise not to read any of the books you are writing about me.

Just out of curiosity, anyone here writing any books about me?

Undoubtedly, as we all know. The virulence of contagion among chickens outstrips even their sublime stupidity.

Well, as we all know now.

Dystopian. Protean. Chansonnier of urban hellscapes. Farewell.

Coolio, as it turns out.

Hell is other people.
Hell is being alone.
Everything is Hell.
—J. Jonah Jameson

Then double it.

Money and power do not bring happiness. Nothing brings happiness.

Me, I'll take my chances with money and power.

Do not panic.
And read Gilgamesh.

This guy...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilgamesh
...of course.

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Sylvia Plath from The Bell Jar

I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn’t say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.

Been there, done that.

Do you know what a poem is, Esther?
No, what? I would say.
A piece of dust.
Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.
And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were made of nothing so much as dust, and I couldn't see that doctoring all that dust was a bit better than writing poems people would remember and repeat to themselves when they were unhappy or sick or couldn't sleep.

Dust to dust let's call it. And in a poem, if you prefer.

I guess I should have reacted the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

Or not dully at all, of course.

I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one.

Until, one day, she thought of one.

I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.

Ah, of course, the real world.

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

And if no one is?

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The Onion

Area Man Outraged His Private Information Being Collected By Someone Other Than Advertisers

Ah, the government.

Sight Of Coworkers' Stupid Fucking Faces Endured Yet Again

Fortunately, we don't have to see the stupid fucking faces of, say, the meat minds here.

Jordan Peterson Disgusted By Society Celebrating 2,560-Pound Minnesota Pumpkin

Just out of curiosity, was the pumpkin male or female?

Sean Hannity Plays Voicemail From His Dad Calling Him A Piece Of Shit To Demonstrate Healthy Father–Son Relationship

No, really: https://youtu.be/2PVvd6eAmjQ

After Careful Deliberation, Baby Goes With Homosexuality

You know, in a free will world.

Cop Still Shooting Unarmed Civilian He Pulled Over Last Night

Black of course.

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Jean-Paul Sartre, from Nausea

We have so much difficulty imagining nothingness.

The one before we were born more or less than the one after we die?

My memories are like coins in the devil's purse: when you open it you find only dead leaves.

Among other things: what the fuck does that mean?!

Once they have slept together they will have to find something else to veil the enormous absurdity of their existence.

Uh, sports? the arts? a hobby?
They don't call them distractions for nothing.

This is what fools people: a man is always a teller of tales, he lives surrounded by his stories and the stories of others, he sees everything that happens to him through them; and he tries to live his life as if he were recounting it.

Talk about distractions!!

I am beginning to believe that nothing can ever be proved.

Including that of course.

Then time started flowing again and the emptiness grew larger.

Then this part: "as it must to all men, death came to Antoine Roquentin."
[Sartre too]

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The Onion

Area Teen Smoking Like He's Been To Fucking War Or Something

Not counting Grenada of course.

Conductor Fatigue Blamed In Massive Model Train Crash

Fortunately, no fatalities.

Who Said It: Kanye West Or An Instruction Manual For The Cuisinart CRC-400 Electric Rice Cooker?

No, seriously. And they mean Ye of course.

Computer Scientists Say AI’s Underdeveloped Ethics Have Yet To Move Beyond Libertarian Phase

Let alone the moral nihilist phase.

Study Finds Over Half Of Blind Americans With Walking Sticks Covert Assassins

Sounds about right.

Conservative Man Proudly Frightened Of Everything

And he's here of course.

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Fyodor Dostoevsky from The Brothers Karamazov

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.

Fuck that, he thought.

I love mankind, he said, but I find to my amazement that the more I love mankind as a whole, the less I love man in particular.

Next up: I hate mankind.

The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.

I know! Philosophy!!

The world says: You have needs -- satisfy them. You have as much right as the rich and the mighty. Don't hesitate to satisfy your needs; indeed, expand your needs and demand more. This is the worldly doctrine of today. And they believe that this is freedom. The result for the rich is isolation and suicide, for the poor, envy and murder.

You know, back then, there. Today, here? Let's just say it's a bit more problematic.

I think the devil doesn't exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

That actually makes sense.

Besides, nowadays, almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous, and are miserable because of it.

Next up: Our nowadays. Where almost no one is.

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The Onion

Nation’s Indigenous People Confirm They Don’t Need Special Holiday, Just Large Swaths Of Land Returned Immediately

Pragmatists let's call them.

Progressive Alabama School District Teaches Students That Every Race The Master Race In Own Way

Clever, eh?

Local Teen Invents Masturbation

Actually, the same teen who invented fucking.

Man Needs Emotional Support Only A Woman Can Feign

That's you, right?

Friends, Family Admit They Expected Man’s Mental Breakdown To Look Completely Different

A body count for one thing.

Child Who Just Lost Balloon Begins Lifelong Battle With Depression

After all, it could be anything.

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Barbara Ehrenreich

You still don't like the idea of gay marriage? Then, as my friend the economist Julianne Malveaux says: Don't marry a gay person. Case closed, problem solved.

No way! What about the kids?!!!

Morality, as far as I could see, originates in atheism and the realization that no higher power is coming along to feed the hungry or lift the fallen. Mercy is left entirely to us.

I know...what if that's true?!!

But Jesus makes his appearance here only as a corpse; the living man, the wine-guzzling vagrant and precocious socialist, is never once mentioned, nor anything he ever had to say. Christ crucified rules, and it may be that the true business of modern Christianity is to crucify him again and again so that he can never get a word out of his mouth.

Let's run this by IC. And her of course.

You can turn away the Mexicans, the African-Americans, the teenagers and other suspect groups, but there's no fence high enough to keep out the repo man.

Ah, capitalism.

Some economists argue that the apparent paradox rests on an illusion: there is no real 'labor shortage,' only a shortage of people willing to work at the wages currently being offered. You might as well talk about a 'Lexus shortage' — which there is, in a sense, for anyone unwilling to pay $40,000 for a car.

Another Commie!!

I couldn't help noticing that the existential space in which a friend had earnestly advised me to 'confront my mortality' bore a striking resemblance to the mall.

Now, of course, it's amazon.com