a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Roger Penrose

We have a closed circle of consistency here: the laws of physics produce complex systems, and these complex systems lead to consciousness, which then produces mathematics, which can then encode in a succinct and inspiring way the very underlying laws of physics that gave rise to it.[/b]

Or as closed as some can think up.

There are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature’s actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained ‘fine structure constant’ … governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions.

Let’s connect the dots between that and “I”.

Quantum mechanics makes absolutely no sense.

Let’s connect the dots between that and “I”.

…our present picture of physical reality, particularly in relation to the nature of time, is due for a grand shake up…

Cue Ecmandu?

With thought comprising a non-computational element, computers can never do what we human beings can.

What the hell, let’s all agree that settles it and move on.

Do not be afraid to skip equations. I do this frequently myself.

Right, like we’d know the ones to skip.

[b]Dan Savage

I always kind of divided the gay guys I met up into two groups when I first started coming out. There were the guys who thought there was something fundamentally wrong with them and hated themselves and were so burdened with shame and internalized homophobia. It just really paralyzed and shredded them. And then there were guys like me who thought, “I’m fine, everybody else is crazy. My church is sick and the family’s crazy, but me? I’m fine.” [/b]

So, how does this comport with your experience?

I waver between a cop-out agnostic and principled atheism.

You know, whatever that does.

A certain tiny percentage of everyone is gay.

Not counting those who are less than zero.

One man’s piss-soaked sadomasochistic orgy is another man’s poetic ecstasy.

Let’s call it conflicting goods.

I’m an agnosto-theist. I cross myself on airplanes. I pray when I’m sick. When you’re sick I’ll keep you in my thoughts; when I’m sick, I’m entreating a higher power.

You know, when no one is watching.

I wouldn’t say that holidays are manufactured by corporations, but they’re certainly exploited and mined by them.

Could that actually be true?

[b]tiny nietzsche

a selfie made out of dust and a broken heart[/b]

I know: been there, done that.

respect my ambiguity

he died doing what he loved, returning fire into a hurricane

My guess: the steroids.

oh fuck. I’m the abyss

And trust me: Not just here.

girl with the crayon tattoo

In production they tell me.

fatalism is killing me

Well, that’s only natural.

[b]Pythagoras

Numbers have a way of taking a man by the hand and leading him down the path of reason. [/b]

If only in the either/or world.

As long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other.

They will kill each other anyway.

If you have a wounded heart, touch it as little as you would an injured eye. There are only two remedies for the suffering of the soul: hope and patience.

Them and opioids.

Know thyself and thou wilt know the universe.

It is better to be silent, than to dispute with the Ignorant.

Me, I prefer to torment them myself.

If you’re asked: What is the silence? Respond: It is the first stone of the Wisdom’s temple.

Would you like to know my response?

[b]Wanda Sykes

I’m a black, gay woman. I think the only way to make the GOP hate me more is if I sent them a video of me rolling around on a pile of welfare checks. [/b]

Let’s confirm that.

If you don’t believe in same-sex marriage, then don’t marry somebody of the same sex.

Right, like that’s the way it will ever work.

As soon as you say ‘I do,’ you’ll discover that marriage is like a car. Both of you might be sitting in the front seat, but only one of you is driving.

I ended up in the trunk myself.

I don’t like the saying keep your friends close and enemies closer. I want my enemy on a different planet.

Not counting Pluto of course.

I don’t understand why people really get upset about something that doesn’t affect them at all.

It’s probably in the Bible.

I hope his kidneys fail, how about that? He needs a waterboarding, that’s what he needs.

Pick one:
1] Rush Limbaugh
2] Rush Limbaugh
3] Rush Limbaugh

[b]so sad today

i’m hungry but not sure if i deserve to exist: the musical[/b]

What, another one?

nothing makes me more tired than doing literally anything

Not much that doesn’t cover.

recovering from being alone by being alone

Right, like there’s any other way.

look, i hate myself as much as the next guy

A bad mood let’s call it.

my gift to humanity is not having kids

I once thought that would be mine. You know, whatever that means.

if you need me i’ll be in the bathtub for the rest of my life

In fact, I’m imagining that right now.

[b]Daniel Silva

Do unto others before they have a chance to do unto you.[/b]

But only good things of course.

…there was nothing more dangerous, he thought, than a patient man.

Let’s come up with examples.

The strongman and the “corporate state”—by another name, fascism—are all the rage. Western-style democracy and the global institutions that created an unprecedented period of peace in Europe are suddenly out of vogue.

At least until we elect Bernie Elizabeth.

We dare to fight back, and the terrorists accuse us of being the real terrorists.
It’s their secret weapon, Mikhail. Get used to it.

Next up: The kernal of truth.

…there was once a time when human beings did not feel the need to share their every waking moment with hundreds of millions, even billions, of complete and utter strangers. If one went to a shopping mall to purchase an article of clothing, one did not post minute-by-minute details on a social networking site; and if one made a fool of oneself at a party, one did not leave a photographic record of the sorry episode in a digital scrapbook that would survive for all eternity. But now, in the era of lost inhibition, it seemed no detail of life was too mundane or humiliating to share. In the online age, it was more important to live out loud than to live with dignity. Internet followers were more treasured than flesh-and-blood friends, for they held the illusive promise of celebrity, even immortality. Were Descartes alive today, he might have written: I tweet, therefore I am.

Or: I post therefore I am.

She believed that “British cuisine” was an oxymoron.

Ouch?

[b]Oswald Spengler

At the beginning a man was wealthy because he was powerful — now he is powerful because he has money.[/b]

And, every once in a while [these days], a woman.

One cannot learn how to be creative by reading Marx. Either one is creative or one is not.

What the hell does reading Marx have to with that, he wondered.

Scientists are wont to assume that myths and God-ideas are creations of primitive man, and that as spiritual culture “advances”, this myth-forming power is shed. In reality it is the exact opposite, … this ability of a soul to fill its world with shapes, traits and symbols - like and consistent amongst themselves - belongs most definitely not to the world-age of the primitives but exclusively to the springtimes of great Cultures. Every myth of the great style stands at the beginning of an awakening spirituality. It is the first formative act of that spirituality. Nowhere else is it to be found. There - it must be.

So, what do you think…maybe?

Suddenly all those individuals who yesterday felt that “we” meant only their families, their professions, or perhaps their communities, become men of the nation. Their emotions and thoughts, their egos, that “something” within them, all are transformed: they have become historical.

And then, as likely as not, for the reactionaries, it all gets divided into races.

In place of a true-type people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman…

Any true-types here perchance?

That there is, besides a necessity of cause and effect — which I may call the logic of space — another necessity, an organic necessity in life, that of Destiny — the logic of time — is a fact of the deepest inward certainty.

When it’s not the deepest inward mystery. But point taken.

[b]Philosopnhy Tweets

“No one is more hated than he who speaks the truth.” Plato[/b]

This may well be the very first “general description”.

“One of the most misleading representational techniques in our language is the use of the word ‘I’.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

And that’s before you get to my “I”.

“Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.” Ludwig Wittgenstein

So, what’s your take on that, Mr. Objectivist?

"Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.” Plato

In that precise order, one suspects.

"A wise man speaks because he has something to say; a fool because he has to say something.” Plato

A fool like me, right? And then over and over and over and over again.
On the other hand, I’m onto you too.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” Carl Gustav Jung

Fortunately for us, however, that can mean practically anything.

[b]Bob Dylan

I started writing songs after I heard Hank Williams. [/b]

Next up: I started writing songs after I heard Bob Dylan.

I find C major to be the key of strength, but also the key of regret. E major is the key of confidence. A-flat major is the key of renunciation.

Anyone here know if that’s actually true?

The Duke John Wayne was a massive figure. He looked like a heavy piece of hauled lumber, and it didn’t seem like any man could stand shoulder to shoulder with him.

Of course, others formed different opinions: youtu.be/xMUGDWvA9CI

Well, you always know who you are. I just don’t know who I’m gonna become.

Would you like me to explain that to you?

every pleasure’s got an edge of pain
pay your ticket and don’t complain

Or, if you can, sneak the fuck in.

Some formulas are too complex and I don’t want anything to do with them.

And, most times, science being the least of it.

[b]Blake Crouch

If you go in with fear, fear is what you’ll find.[/b]

Right, like we’re always able to control these things.

If memory is unreliable, if the past and the present can simply change without warning, then fact and truth will cease to exist. How do we live in a world like that?

Tell him, Mr. Objectivist.

When your world falls apart, cling to the familiar.

Unless that makes it worse.

Like standing on a beach as the tide sucks the sand beneath my feet back out to sea, I can feel my native world, and the reality that supports it, pulling away. I wonder: If I don’t fight hard enough against it, will this reality slowly click in and carry me off?

Sure. But only if you’re lucky. Like, for example, I was.

In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies.

Let’s note some.

So we all embark wondering what lies over the horizon, what’s around the next bend. And isn’t that, in the end, what drives us?

Crazy for example.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” Bodhidharma[/b]

In other words, after the bills are all paid.

“Leisure is the mother of philosophy” Thomas Hobbes

No, really, think about that.

"There are three types of lies – lies, damn lies, and statistics.” Benjamin Disraeli.

Always important to bring this back around.

"I have heard that one can conquer the empire on horseback, but one cannot govern it on horseback.” Kublai Khan

You know, back then.

“If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?” Voltaire

Our own for example

"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.” Hypatia of Alexandria

Clearly with exceptions!!!
[size=50]Right, Kids?[/size]

[b]Fiona Apple

If I respect myself and believe in what I’m doing, no one can touch me. [/b]

I’ll need to know what she’s doing of course.

Home is where my habits have a habitat.

My recliner in particular, he noted.

I don’t care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.

Or, here: I don’t care how people remember my posts. I do them for my own reasons.

You can live your whole life in your brain and not experience what’s around you. You go crazy that way.

Not counting me of course.

I stand by everything I’ve ever said, apologies included.

Can you say that?

Because for whatever reason, even though I want to stay home all the time and be left alone, I want to tell the world who I am now.

Sounds a lot like me, he thought.

[b]Neal Stephenson

Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we’re in competition with those guys, and people notice these things. What a fucking rat race that is.[/b]

Okay, but at least it’s our rat race.

They made data a controlled substance.

And we know who they are, right?

Unless you are as smart as Johann Karl Friedrich Gauss, savvy as a half-blind Calcutta bootblack, tough as General William Tecumseh Sherman, rich as the Queen of England, emotionally resilient as a Red Sox fan, and as generally able to take care of yourself as the average nuclear missile submarine commander, you should never have been allowed near this document.

What’s that make Don Trump then?

You have responsibilities, now, Bob. You must lose this naive understanding of violence! You are embarrassin’ me in front of the lads! You can’t play by their rules or they’ll win unfailingly! You don’t engage in courtly play-fightin’ with one such as this. You get a great friggin’ tree-branch and keep hittin’ him with it until he dies.

Good advice for the Democrats too, isn’t it?

There are only two industries. This has always been true…There is the industry of things, and the industry of entertainment…After people have the things they need to live, everything else is entertainment. Everything.

Or, as I call them, distractions.

What would the engineer say, after you had explained your problem and enumerated all of the dissatisfactions in your life? He would probably tell you that life is a very hard and complicated thing; that no interface can change that; that anyone who believes otherwise is a sucker; and that if you don’t like having choices made for you, you should start making your own.

For, among other reasons, all practical purposes.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.” Nietzsche[/b]

Unless, of course, you go full blown insane.

“Droll thing life is – that mysterious arrangement of merciless logic for a futile purpose. The most you can hope from it is some knowledge of yourself – that comes too late – a crop of inextinguishable regrets.” Joseph Conrad

You know, being optimistic.

“No sane person should believe that something is subjective merely because it cannot be settled beyond controversy.” Hilary Putnam

We’ll need a context of course.

“Science is wonderful at destroying metaphysical answers, but incapable of providing substitute ones. Science takes away foundations without providing a replacement.” Hilary Putnam

Though [more to the point] not for lack of trying.

“Power is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. The success of power is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanisms.” Michel Foucault

Sounds like the “deep state” to me.

“I don’t want to know exactly what I am. The main interest in is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.” Michel Foucault

Don’t actually expect to pin this down though.

[b]Miles Davis

It takes a long time to sound like yourself. [/b]

So don’t fuck it up.

Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.

That’s probably not as easy, or, sure, as hard as it sounds.

Music is the framework around the silence.

When it’s not the other way around.

Do not fear mistakes. There are none.

For example, in a wholly determined universe.

You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four.

Or the wrong four and call them right.

If you’re not nervous then you’re not paying attention.

On the other hand, how nervous?

[b]Isabelle Huppert

Sometimes over the years, you know, things come to surface. [/b]

And, as we all know by now, for better or worse.

We all pretend to be very strong, and then in a fraction, you can just break down…

Or you can actually be very strong, and then in a fraction, it casn all just brak down.

Am I an intellectual? I don’t think so. Less than people sometimes think, I have to say. But more than some others think.

Any intellectuals here?

For me, making films is like being on vacation, it’s a nice walk. But theatre is like mountaineering. You never know whether you’re going to fall off or make it to the top.

My guess: for obvious reasons.

When I hear myself, I don’t know how I sound.

He wondered: Had he ever heard himself?

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it’s exactly the same with acting.

Like that actually means something. But point taken.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don’t know is what what they do does.” Michel Foucault[/b]

Here for example.

“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.” Joseph Conrad

And surely there are no exceptions.

“No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one’s existence—that which makes its truth, its meaning—its subtle and penetrating essence. It is impossible. We live, as we dream–alone.” Joseph Conrad

Or, perhaps, highly improbable.

“The truth may be stretched thin, but it never breaks, and it always surfaces above lies, as oil floats on water.” Miguel de Cervantes

If not in the real world.

"The disease of men is that they neglect their own fields and go to weed the fields of others.” Mencius

And they ours.

"Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” William James

And how dreadful that can be!

[b]Annie Lennox

You know, I would say that songwriting is something about the expression of the heart, the intellect and the soul. [/b]

On the other hand, what else is there?

You have to face things, have faith in what you do and go for it. Think, ‘What’s the worst that could happen?’

Actually, you might not want to go there.

We’re not interested to know the real heroes. We’re really more interested in the villains, actually, and they seem to thrive, and it continues to be business as usual.

Call this the “mass shooting” syndrome.

You have to be quite grounded, and I don’t know what that is.

So, what would you tell her?

One realizes after a long time that, actually, we are contradictory, all of us.

Or, for some of us, by the time we’re in our teens.

Money is a good thing and it’s obviously useful, but to work only for money or fame would never interest me.

Not that it hurts to already have them. But, sure, she’s almost certainly being sincere.

[b]Andrew Sullivan

In academia, left-liberalism is so entrenched its advocates’ debating skills have gone rusty. When you’ve been talking to yourself for decades and imposing speech codes on everyone else, your ability to argue coherently - let alone entertainingly - inevitably wanes.[/b]

Probably true, right?

Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.

Possibly true, right?

A mind is a wonderful thing to change.

Repeatedly if need be.

Homophobia: the fear that another man will treat you like you treat women.

So, does that shoe fit you?

What I love about the Internet and what I try to do on the issues is insist upon the ability to have bad taste if one wants.

Unless of course you’re trolling.

Don’t fool yourself that you’re blogging when you’re really just putting stuff up online.

Stuff? What the fuck is that?