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Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2023 4:29 pm
by iambiguous
The Onion
Older Bigot Didn’t Need Social Media Algorithm To Start Down Path Of White Supremacy
Instead, he attained Enlightenment here: https://knowthyself.forumotion.net/t2021p450-race
Union Lets Tom Cruise Act During Strike From Fear Of What He’ll Do When He Can’t Make Movies
Isn't he that pinhead Scientologist?
Things To Never Say To Someone Who Loves Pickleball
Pickleball! The name itself!!
Man Honestly Better Off For Having Turned Self Over To Algorithms
AI algorithms to boot.
Midol Introduces New Leather Strap To Bite Down On During Menstrual Cramps
How's that working out for you?
FDA Crackdown Forces Colgate To Remove Nicotine From Toothpaste
Come on, Crest too.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2023 7:55 pm
by iambiguous
Stupidity...
“When we see that almost everything men devote their lives to attain, sparing no effort and encountering a thousand toils and dangers in the process, has, in the end, no further object than to raise themselves in the estimation of others; when we see that not only offices, titles, decorations, but also wealth, nay, even knowledge and art, are striven for only to obtain, as the ultimate goal of all effort, greater respect from one's fellowmen...is not this a lamentable proof of the extent to which human folly can go?” Arthur Schopenhauer
Ah, of course, the pedants. Here in particular.
"You can make your superhero a psychopath, you can draw gut-splattering violence, and you can call it a 'graphic novel,' but comic books are still incredibly stupid.” Bill Watterson
Next up: those idiotic comic book movies.
“I am so stupid, so easily fooled. It's really almost funny. If I could lift a finger I would gladly kill myself.” Will Christopher Baer
I know, I know: you too.
“Inhumanity is the keynote of stupidity in power.” Alexander Berkman
Hard to Trump that, right?
“When the Washington Post telephoned me at home on Valentine's Day 1989 to ask my opinion about the Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah, I felt at once that here was something that completely committed me. It was, if I can phrase it like this, a matter of everything I hated versus everything I loved. In the hate column: dictatorship, religion, stupidity, demagogy, censorship, bullying, and intimidation. In the love column: literature, irony, humor, the individual, and the defense of free expression. Plus, of course, friendship—though I like to think that my reaction would have been the same if I hadn't known Salman at all. To re-state the premise of the argument again: the theocratic head of a foreign despotism offers money in his own name in order to suborn the murder of a civilian citizen of another country, for the offense of writing a work of fiction. No more root-and-branch challenge to the values of the Enlightenment (on the bicentennial of the fall of the Bastille) or to the First Amendment to the Constitution, could be imagined. President George H.W. Bush, when asked to comment, could only say grudgingly that, as far as he could see, no American interests were involved…” Christopher Hitchens
W? Like father, like son. Plus Iraq.
“Remember, when you are dead, you do not know you are dead. It is only painful for others. The same applies when you are stupid.” Ricky Gervais
Yo, Mr. Pinhead! You're up!!
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2023 11:46 pm
by iambiguous
Michael Polanyi
We do not accept a religion because it offers us certain rewards. The only thing that a religion can offer us is to be just what it, in itself, is: a greater meaning in ourselves, in our lives, and in our grasp of the nature of things...a religion exists for us only if, like a piece of poetry, it carries us away. It is not in any sense a 'hypothesis.
Or what I call "the psychology of objectivism".
We know more than we can tell.
For example, tell that to the pinheads.
Christianity sedulously fosters, and in a sense permanently satisfies, man's craving for mental dissatisfaction by offering him the comfort of a crucified God.
Didn't I tell you!
...as human beings, we must inevitably see the universe from a centre lying within ourselves and speak about it in terms of a human language shaped by the exigencies of human intercourse. Any attempt rigorously to eliminate our human perspective from our picture of the world must lead to absurdity.
And, no doubt, there are countless alien civilizations out there in much the same predicament.
Personal Knowledge. The two words may seem to contradict each other: for true knowledge is deemed impersonal, universally established, objective. But the seeming contradiction is resolved by modifying the conception of knowing.
For example, sticking a God, the God, my God in there.
To try to reform all the power structures at once would leave us with no power structure to use in our project. In any case, we will be able to see that absolute moral renewal could be attempted only by an absolute power and that a tyrannous force such as this must destroy the whole moral life of man, not renew it.
Trust me: God or No God.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2023 3:15 pm
by iambiguous
Jostein Gaarder from Sophie's World
It's not a silly question if you can't answer it.
Next up: the particularly silly answers.
Life is both sad and solemn. We are led into a wonderful world, we meet one another here, greet each other - and wander together for a brief moment. Then we lose each other and disappear as suddenly and unreasonably as we arrived.
Of course, he's only paraphrasing Samuel Beckett.
A state that does not educate and train women is like a man who only trains his right arm.
Next up: training and educating the transgenders.
Superstitious. What a strange word. If you believed in Christianity or Islam, it was called "faith". But if you believed in astrology or Friday the thirteenth it was superstition!
Yeah, what about that?
A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little.
Well, not counting all of the philosophers aka pinheads here who know everything.
The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a persons needs.
Or, more to the point, in relation to a person's wants.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2023 6:04 pm
by iambiguous
Jeanette Winterson from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit
Everyone who tells a story tells it differently, just to remind us that everybody sees it differently. Some people say there are true things to be found, some people say all kinds of things can be proved. I don't believe them. The only thing for certain is how complicated it all is, like string full of knots. It's all there but hard to find the beginning and impossible to fathom the end. The best you can do is admire the cat's cradle, and maybe knot it up a bit more.
Take that, Mr. Pinhead!
No emotion is the final one.
All the way up to the grave let's say.
Everyone thinks their own situation most tragic. I am no exception.
How about at least in the top ten?
Of course, people will laugh at you, but people laugh at a great many things so there is no need to take it personally.
How's that working out for you?
...to change something you do not understand is the true nature of evil.
Not much that doesn't include. Historically as it were.
I didn’t want to tell the story of myself, but someone I called myself. If you read yourself as fiction, it’s rather more liberating than reading yourself as fact.
Or scarier.
Right, Mr. Objectivist?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2023 9:25 pm
by iambiguous
David James Duncan
“Sinner” and “saint” are waves of differing size and magnitude on the surface of the same sea. Each is a natural outcome of forces in the universe; each is governed by time and causation. Nobody is utterly lost, and nobody need despair.
Or, sure, particles of differing size and magnitude.
But any gathering of eight human beings has an astounding potential for complication.
Yep, even virtually.
That telephones can connect us in seconds to any creature on earth foolhardy enough to lift its own chunk of plastic is wonderful. But it’s also terrible, given what a lot of people think and feel about each other. That’s why, until they’re equipped with some sort of flush or filter or waste-disposal system for the billions of words that ought not to be spoken, I’ll not trust the things.
Next up: email.
Peter didn’t want to change the world: he wanted to fully comprehend it.
Mission impossible, let's call it.
And onto the screen pops a couple of housewives who start having a poop fit when they see how clean their new dish soap got the dinner plates.
Ah, another rendition of this:
"When I'm watchin' my TV
And a man comes on and tells me
How white my shirts can be
But, he can't be a man 'cause he doesn't smoke
The same cigarettes as me"
When experience flies into realms that language cannot touch, honesty demands beyond-language.
Right, and what might that be?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2023 6:58 pm
by iambiguous
Cynicism...
“Rich men have dreams. Poor men die to make them come true.” Glen Cook
Let's pretend to change that.
“Life is such unutterable hell, solely because it is sometimes beautiful." T.H. White
So they tell me.
“No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up.” Lily Tomlin
Anyone here ever manage to?
“The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.” Tom Wait
What, even here?
“You wouldn't know it, from some of the things I've said over the years, but I like people...I do...I like people, but I like them in short bursts. I don't like people for extended periods of time. I'm all right with them for a little while, but once you get past around a minute, minute-and-a-half, I gotta get the fuck outta there.” George Carlin
Next up: short bursts here.
“Nobody is driven by abstractions like 'seeking truth.'" Michael Crichton
Okay, tell that to the "serious philosophers" here.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2023 9:42 pm
by iambiguous
Jerzy Kosiński
When I saw them in Africa, I thought these birds were the greatest fliers of all. Hardly beating their wings, they fly for hours, swooping upwards on air currents with no sign of physical effort. But when they land, they pitch forward on their stubby legs without stopping. They skid along on their bellies, their necks straining to absorb the shock of the landing. Their beaks dig into the sand and they collide with anything in their path. Quite often they break their wings or beaks or spines and remain for the rest of their lives in the scrubby thickets not far from where they crash. The crippled birds sit there blind, paralyzed or in shock, and struggle slowly back and forth to their nests. Some hop on one leg, some drag their crippled wings behind them like broken umbrellas. I wonder whether they ever envy their brothers soaring in the air or if they're glad to be grounded and past their trial.
Then, of course, the equvalent of that here.
My cynicism continuously undermines her faith in her own ability to master her moods.
Next up: her cynicism.
The native calls the baobab 'the devil tree' because he claims that the devil, getting tangled in its branches, punished by the tree by reversing it. To the native, the roots are branches now, and the branches are roots. To ensure that there would be no more baobabs, the devil destroyed all the young ones.
You tell me: https://www.google.com/search?q=baobab+ ... =625&dpr=1
As a boy I got the idea that death was an animal which lay curled inside waiting to swallow us.
Of course ideas are a dime a dozen. And not just about death.
I deserve no punishment at all for being who I am.
Besides, first they have to catch you.
Perhaps the world would soon become one vast incinerator for burning people.
How soon though?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 1:40 am
by iambiguous
Hernan Diaz from Trust
God is the most uninteresting answer to the most interesting questions.
Amen to that.
Most of us prefer to believe we are the active subjects of our victories but only the passive objects of our defeats. We triumph, but it is not really we who fail - we are ruined by forces beyond our control.
Not that it isn't true, of course.
...the closer one is to a source of power, the quieter it gets. Authority and money surround themselves with silence, and one can measure the reach of someone’s influence by the thickness of the hush enveloping them.
Well, not counting all the times when money doesn't talk, it screams.
Reality is a fiction with an unlimited budget.
It would have to be that way, wouldn't it.
Nothing more private than pain. It can only involve one. But who? Who is “I” in “I hurt”? The one who inflicts the pain or the one who suffers it? And does “hurt” refer to the inflicting or the suffering?
My guess: we'll need a context.
I have no country. I don’t want one. The root of all evil, the cause of every war—god and country.
Them and the military industrial complex.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 6:08 pm
by iambiguous
Carrie Fisher from Postcards from the Edge
Karl Marx: "Religion is the opiate of the masses."
Carrie Fisher: "I did masses of opiates religiously."
Of course that was before Harry met Sally.
I shot through my twenties like a luminous thread through a dark needle, blazing toward my destination: Nowhere.
Along with, among others, John Lennon?
You know how I always seem to be struggling, even when the situation doesn't call for it?
Who doesn't?
Life is a cruel, horrible joke and I am the punch line.
Who isn't?
Look, he said, I don't think we should continue this discussion. I don't like this side of you.
I'm not a box, she said I don't have sides. This is it. One side fits all. This is it.
Yeah, but he still has a point though.
From here on out, there's just reality. I think that's what maturity is: a stoic response to endless reality. But then, what do I know?
Just out of curiosity, what does she know now?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 7:58 pm
by iambiguous
James A. Lindsay
The philosophy of religion is a type of academic puffery centrally concerned with pretending theism is worth taking seriously on its own terms.
Academic puffery like this, for example.
Atheists are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists.
Indeed. "In the absense of God all things are permitted." And how can that not be terrifying? But then this part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
Among the advantages of anchoring on a perfect, eternal “God” is simplifying the process of ethical reasoning by essentially eliminating the ongoing requirement to assess and modify one’s own ethics.
Indeed. But then this part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
To lay it more bare, look at how the varying faiths interpret the same evidence. Fundamentalist Christians have interpreted earthquakes as punishment from God for giving homosexuals a chance at equal treatment before the law. Fundamentalist Muslims have interpreted earthquakes as warnings from Allah for women dressing immodestly. Some more liberal believers have interpreted these events as having been caused or allowed to happen so as to teach people personal lessons of strength or compassion.
Indeed. And not just earthquakes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events
In other words, Critical Race Theory, like all Critical Theories, like all Marxian Theories, is ultimately religious in nature.
Okay, but what does that tell us about religion then?
Like other totalitarians in a long line preceding them, Critical Race Theorists are interested in ordering the world according to the vision contained in their Theory.
Not unlike Christian totalitarians and their Bibles?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Sun Jul 30, 2023 11:34 pm
by iambiguous
Pessimism...
“What a relief, what an unburdening to have closed the book on humankind.” Thomas Ligotti
Not to worry. Your turn will come.
“Perhaps I am doomed to retrace my steps under the illusion that I am exploring, doomed to try and learn what I should simply recognize, learning a mere fraction of what I’ve forgotten.” André Breton
Next up: perhaps not.
“Nature has a funny way of deceiving. The weak always think they’ve got a chance at survival. But the world burns in the end, and all things fade to ash.” Jesse Nolan Bailey
Yo, Maia! You're up!!
“Some day the piercing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our terrifying position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly age into the peace and safety of a new dark age.” H.P. Lovecraft
Of course: MAGA!
“In its clinical studies and research, TMT indicates that the mainspring of human behavior is thanatophobia, and that this fear determines the entire landscape of our lives. To subdue our death anxiety, we have trumped up a world to deceive ourselves into believing that we will persist—if only symbolically—beyond the breakdown of our bodies. We know this fabricated world because we see it around us every day, and to perpetuate our sanity we apotheosize it as the best world in the world. Housing the most cyclopean fabrications are houses of worship where some people go to get a whiff of meaning, which to such people means only one thing—immortality. In heaven or hell or reincarnated life forms, we must go on and on—us without end.” Thomas Ligotti
No, really.
“We must be cautious of those who attempt to shame us for our blessings.” Angel Moreira
Trust me: not always.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 5:07 pm
by iambiguous
Louise Erdrich from The Night Watchman
Don’t you want to be a U.S. citizen?
What? said Thomas. We are citizens.
Vote? You already can vote?
Sure, back in 1924 we got the vote. After the black man, after the women. But we got the vote.
Native Americans. And now, nearly a century later...
The average man is proof the average woman can take a joke, he said.
Of course, he's only paraphrasing, well, you know who.
You cannot feel time grind against you. Time is nothing but everything, not the seconds, minutes, hours, days, years. Yet this substanceless substance, this bending and shaping, this warping, this is the way we understand our world.
Time in a nutshell: https://youtu.be/zhRzORqNa0E
Thomas mulled over the detailed report. The good news is we’re poor enough to require that the government keep, and even improve upon, the status quo. The bad news is we’re just plain poor. The good news is that the county, the state, and our neighbors in off-reservation towns do not want us on their hands. The bad news is this isn’t just because we’re poor. They don’t like us.
Hey, they don't call it "manifest destiny" for nothing.
...if you should ever doubt that a series of dry words in a government document can shatter spirits and demolish lives, let this book erase that doubt. Conversely, if you should be of the conviction that we are powerless to change those dry words, let this book give you heart.
The first part, sure.
She gave him a look that would've shaved his face if he had whiskers.
I'm imagining it right now, VT.
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Mon Jul 31, 2023 8:06 pm
by iambiguous
Paul Reubens
Had we gone to trial, we had ready an expert from the Masters and Johnson Institute who was going to testify that in 30 years of research on masturbation the institute had never found one person who masturbated with his or her non-dominant hand. I'm right-handed, and the police report said I was jerking off with my left hand. That would have been the end of the case right there, proof it couldn't have been me.
That's good enough for me.
The public may think I'm weird. They may think I'm crazy or anything that anyone wants to think about me. That's all fine. As long as one of the things you're not thinking about me is that I'm a pedophile. Because that's not true.
That's good enough for me.
The moment that I realized my name was going to be said in the same sentence as children and sex, that's really intense. That's something I knew from that very moment, whatever happens past that point, something's out there in the air that is really bad.
Yep, that's how it works alright.
There are things about me you wouldn’t understand, things you couldn’t understand, things you shouldn’t understand.
Not many of us that isn't true of.
Pee-wee just kind of popped out one day, pretty much fully fleshed-out and fully formed.
This and that bicycle.
I just feel in a lot of ways black people are so much looser and cooler. Just as a culture, it’s so much more real.
Woke?
Re: Quote of the day
Posted: Tue Aug 01, 2023 2:03 pm
by iambiguous
Stupidity...
“For at least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols” Aldous Huxley
How about this: If the shoe fits?
“It is only because of their stupidity that they are able to be so sure of themselves.” Franz Kafka
How about this: If the shoe fits?
“So this is where all the vapid talk about the 'soul' of the universe is actually headed. Once the hard-won principles of reason and science have been discredited, the world will not pass into the hands of credulous herbivores who keep crystals by their sides and swoon over the poems of Khalil Gibran. The 'vacuum' will be invaded instead by determined fundamentalists of every stripe who already know the truth by means of revelation and who actually seek real and serious power in the here and now. One thinks of the painstaking, cloud-dispelling labor of British scientists from Isaac Newton to Joseph Priestley to Charles Darwin to Ernest Rutherford to Alan Turing and Francis Crick, much of it built upon the shoulders of Galileo and Copernicus, only to see it casually slandered by a moral and intellectual weakling from the usurping House of Hanover. An awful embarrassment awaits the British if they do not declare for a republic based on verifiable laws and principles, both political and scientific.” Christopher Hitchens
As for America, and at the very least, double it.
“And here I was thinking you were a bit slow, what with so much asking and not knowing anything.” Carlos Ruiz Zafón
I was never fooled myself.
“Smart people have the brains, but stupid people have the balls” Ana
Right, and look where that's got us.
"For someone who's smarter than a supercomputer, sometimes you're a real idiot.” Gordon Korman
What we call a pinhead here.