a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Neal Stephenson

That is the kind of beauty I was trying to get you to see,” Orolo told me. “Nothing is more important than that you see and love the beauty that is right in front of you, or else you will have no defense against the ugliness that will hem you in and come at you in so many ways.[/b]

In other words, for each of us, one by one, that’s either the good news or the bad news.

Maybe we should go back and get their guns, Marlon suggested.
That’s how it would work in a video game, Csongor said, which was his way of agreeing.

A Kid thing in other words.

But what little I’d heard had left me amazed by how clever people were at finding ways to make each other crazy and miserable.

My guess: Not just on this planet.

The same thrust, pushing against a greatly reduced burden, would then yield acceleration that Lio had cheerfully described as ‘near-fatal.’ But it’s okay, he’d said, you’ll black out before anything really bad happens to you.

No, not always, right?

Rife’s key realization was that there’s no difference between modern culture and Sumerian. We have a huge workforce that is illiterate or alliterate and relies on TV—which is sort of an oral tradition. And we have a small, extremely literate power elite—the people who go into the Meatverse, basically----who understand that information is power, and who control society because they have this semimystical ability to speak magic computer languages.

History: The more things changed…

Izzy was full of people who were skewed toward the Asperger’s end of the social spectrum, and there was no better way to get them to start talking than to ask them a technical question.

Not all that different for some many most here, is it?

[b]Miles Davis

A lot of people ask me where music is going today. I think it’s going in short phrases. If you listen, anybody with an ear can hear that. Music is always changing. It changes because of the times and the technology that’s available, the material that things are made of, like plastic cars instead of steel. So when you hear an accident today it sounds different, not all the metal colliding like it was in the forties and fifties. Musicians pick up sounds and incorporate that into their playing, so the music that they make will be different.[/b]

You know, technically. The place I never, ever go listening to music.

I think every Negro over fifty should get a medal for putting up with all that crap.

Of course we don’t call them that today, he noted.

Sometimes, if you ask people to “go downstairs and get me this or that,” they’ll say, “It’s rainin” or “It might rain,” or “There’s some bumpy roads on the road,” or bla-bla-bla. They give you all those excuses, so when they do something which is easy, you’re supposed to say, “Damn, you did that?”

In all the races of course.

I mean, it makes me sick when I see a white man sitting there smiling at me being entertaining, man. When I know what he’s gonna do after he gets through. You know, when you see that thing on their face - like: “Entertain me.” You know what I mean? Even the black guy that’s trying to be white - even he can have that crap on his face.

Athletes too of course.

Bebop didn’t have the humanity of Duke Ellington. It didn’t even have that recognizable thing. Bird and Diz were great, fantastic, challenging — but they weren’t sweet.

If he says so.

If you understood everything I say, you’d be me!

It would have to be that way, wouldn’t it?

[b]Jodie Foster

All of the thinking and planning that you do to get there, and then, in one minute, in one second, it just doesn’t matter. It goes out the window. You either got it or you didn’t. There is something kind of refreshing about that. [/b]

Either that or downright fucking infuriating.

Otherness is a big thing for me. I’m always drawn to characters that live lives that I couldn’t lead.

You get to make-believe them as it were.

Where I have problems is when I am in the midst of doing something that I am completely focused on, and then I am asked to buy shoes or something.

Buy shoes?!

Julia Roberts and Sandra Bullock do romantic comedies. I do dark dramas.

Enough said in other words.

I love the way L. A. leaves you alone.

Works that way in Baltimore too.

I’m a technician. I don’t go for the get-into-the-role stuff. I read the lines and play the scenes.

Who’d a thunk it?

[b]Philosophy Tweets

"When all else fails, philosophize.“ J. M. Coetzee[/b]

Serously, for example.

“Deep in the human unconscious is a pervasive need for a logical universe that makes sense.” Frank Herbert

And the deeper some go, the more logical it is.

“What we wish, we readily believe, and what we ourselves think, we imagine others think also.” Julius Caesar

Objectivism in a nutshell, isn’t it?

“In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.” Voltaire

And, increasingly, the science of government as well.

“How glorious it is - and also how painful - to be an exception.” Alfred de Musset

Any exceptions here?

“There are things which a man is afraid to tell even to himself, and every decent man has a number of such things stored away in his mind.” Fyodor Dostoevsky

Not you though, right?

[b]Sofia Coppola

When you direct is the only time you get to have the world exactly how you want it. [/b]

Unlike, for example, posting here.

My movies are not about being, but becoming.

Or: My posts are not about being, but becoming.
Unlike, no doubt, yours.

The unexpected connections we make might not last, yet stay with us forever.

Really, really unexpected ones for me.

Forget the audience, make what you want to see.

Not unlike what we do here.

It seems that the greatest difficulty is to find the end. Don’t try to find it, it’s there already.

Or, sure, wait for it to find you.

I really wanted to emphasize the idea of the women being isolated and abandoned . . . and they weren’t raised to take care of themselves, so they had to learn to survive.

And then some in the movies.

[b]Morgan Spurlock

More than a billion adults worldwide are now overweight - and at least 300 million of them are clinically obese. Childhood obesity is already epidemic in some areas and on the rise in others. Worldwide, an estimated 17.6 million children under five are said to be overweight.[/b]

We can never have enough statistics, right?

I think that when you have somebody who really is kind of forced to see the world through someone else’s eyes, I think it really is eye opening.

My own point, isn’t it?

Well, even to this day, if I smell a Big Mac, I’m like Pavlov’s dog. My mouth starts watering immediately, like, ‘Man, that is so good,’ but I can’t take a bite of it.

I’m down to about 10 a year myself.

People were always pointing the finger at the fast food industry. And I was a big fan of personal responsibility - you know, no one is forcing you to eat. We’re not geese being stuffed with corn.

Not counting most in Trumpworld of course.

I think most Muslims are incredibly upset with the state of America’s foreign policy today and the state of the world.

Of course that goes both ways.

Seventy-five percent of Americans don’t even have passports. We don’t even think about traveling beyond our borders.

Or, for some, the neighborhood.

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

I was buying time. One is always buying something.[/b]

Or selling it.

You take the first step, and to save yourself from the consequences, you take the next one. In times like ours, there are only two directions: up or plummet.

Or, for some, way, way up and way, way down.

Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

You tell me, Mr. Objectivist.

It’s better that way, and I am a great proponent of better. In the absence of best.

So, is the absence of best here?

Giving up was the new normal, and I have to say it was catching.

So don’t forget to vote.

I, too, was once like you: fatally hooked on life.

Nope, can’t remember that far back myself.

[b]Nein

Go ahead: worry about the future. But let’s not forget: there’s less of it every day.[/b]

So, worry about that instead.

When, one wonders, will the TV meteorologists pivot from “an unusually beautifully warm October day” to “really, folks, we’re all going to die.”

Keep us posted.

Remember, friends: It’s not the poverty of your imagination. It’s the profundity of your indifference.

Anyone here not learn that yet?

Remember, friends, there’s no need to find a costume for Halloween. Your true horror is on the inside. And anyone who loves you will know it.

Trick or treat.

Monday. Marx said there would be days like this.

That’s tomorrow by the way.

Some call it happiness. Others: Anxiety Deficit Disorder.

Well, that settles that.

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty…[/b]

That would explain my own gasping, he thought.

The pencil is mightier than the pen.

What’s that make the keyboard then?

Who really can face the future? All you can do is project from the past, even when the past shows that such projections are often wrong. And who really can forget the past? What else is there to know?

Let’s think of something.

Absence of Quality is the essence of squareness.

Or, for some, circleness.

The more you read, the more you calm down.

Not counting the more you read here.

We have artists with no scientific knowledge and scientists with no artistic knowledge and both with no spiritual sense of gravity at all, and the result is not just bad, it is ghastly.

Imagine then where we’ d be without philosophers.

[b]Werner Twertzog

Hurricanes should be named for notorious climate-change deniers.[/b]

Hurricane The Donald?

Americans: You do not need a standing desk. You need a desk that teeters on the edge of an open grave for the day when you stop working.

Sure, why not, he thought.

Humans seldom have faced such disruption. The great unraveling of the planet–and long-established nations, institutions, and economic structures–will be terrifying for most and exhilarating for some. Which side are you on?

You know, someday.

No, The New York Times, neither Toni Morrison nor Harold Bloom won the culture wars. English is dead. German is dead. Reading is dead. And soon, your newspaper will be a hedge fund.

You know, someday.

Longevity means losing everything, in stages.

Until entire chunks break off.

I do not want to watch a “movie.” I want an experience that will destroy everything I once believed about human nature, and God. For $11.00.

Sort of like coming here. For free.

[b]Julian Assange

What are the differences between Mark Zuckerberg and me? I give private information on corporations to you for free, and I’m a villain. Zuckerberg gives your private information to corporations for money and he’s Man of the Year. [/b]

So, which one is the scumbag?

You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere. Because any decision-making that is based upon lies or ignorance can’t lead to a good conclusion.

And whose truth might that be?

Power is a thing of perception. They don’t need to be able to kill you. They just need you to think they are able to kill you.

Well, not counting us of course.

If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.

You know, the unjust wars.

We all only live once. So we are obligated to make good use of the time that we have and to do something that is meaningful and satisfying. This is something that I find meaningful and satisfying… I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards.

Much as I enjoy crushing objectivists!!

Every War in the past 50 Years is a Result of Media Lies.

He means the corporate media complex of course.

[b]Pythagoras

Power is the near neighbour of necessity. [/b]

Not to mention the near neighbor of most other things too.

There is no word or action but has its echo in Eternity.

Of course to find out you have to die first.

He buries gold who hides the truth.

That’s still true. And then some.

Number is the substance of all things. Number rules the universe.

Ones and zeros for example.

He who knoweth not what he ought to know, is a brute beast among men; he that knoweth no more than he hath need of, is a man among brute beasts; and he that knoweth all that may be known, is as a God among men.

Any Gods here then?

The beginning of every government starts with the education of our youth.

And look at us now!

[b]Lynda Barry

The radio was on and that was the first time I heard that song, the one I hate. Whenever I hear it all I can think of is that very day riding in the front seat with Lucy leaning against me and the smell of Juicy Fruit making me want to throw up. How can a song do that? Be like a net that catches a whole entire day, even a day whose guts you hate? You hear it and all of a sudden everything comes hanging back in front of you, all tangled up in that music.[/b]

The song you hate. Let’s start a new thread.

You may be a lady but you are still the man!

I think I know her.

I am about as detailed as a shadow.

Or, on better days, a puff of smoke.

Cartoonist was the weirdest name I finally let myself have. I would never say it. When I heard it I silently thought, what an awful word.

Philosophers on the other hand still hold their own in some circles.

Going on Letterman is like going off the high dive. It’s exhilarating, but after a while it wasn’t the kind of thrill I enjoyed.

Cue Harvey Pekar?
youtu.be/D0akXKxbflM

If I had had me for a student I would have thrown me out of class immediately.

Sort of like being a moderator here and banning yourself.

[b]God

The kind of people who have power tend to be the kind of people who want power, who tend to be the kind of people who shouldn’t have it.[/b]

Well, He shouldn’t have created them then.

For I so loved the world that I sent My only begotten son, whom you beat and crucified, at which point I just said “Fuck these people.”

And, given human history since, He clearly meant it.

You don’t have to wait for the end of the world. It ends a little every day.

That’ll have to do then. You know, in the interim.

The people who call out My name Sunday morning aren’t as fun the ones who call it out Saturday night.

My guess: they’re fucking.

It’s not Christmas. It’s not Christmas. It’s not Christmas. Stop it. It’s November 1. 15% of the year comes between now and December 25. Stop it. It’s not Christmas.

The advertising deluge has begun!!

Instead of sending you all to hell I’ve decided it would be easier to just send hell to you.

That certainly explains a lot.

[b]Pete Seeger

I think folk music helps reinforce your sense of history. An old song makes you think of times gone by. [/b]

That way you can live in the Sixties forever.

I still call myself a communist, because communism is no more what Russia made of it than Christianity is what the churches make of it.

Is there a lesson to be learned here or not?

I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things.

Or, sure, not.

Anybody who wants to learn everything is pretty stupid. You learn what you can.

Or learn what they let you.

Most conservatives just want to turn back the clock to a time before the income tax - 100 years or so. I would like to turn the clock back thousands of years to a time when people lived in small communities and took care of each other.

Fucking idealists!

The truth is a rabbit in a bramble patch. All you can do is circle around and say it’s somewhere in there.

A little help with this one please.

[b]Douglas Adams

What to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground underneath a giant boulder you can’t move, with no hope of rescue. Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn’t been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won’t be troubling you much longer.[/b]

Hey, in this world, whatever works, right?

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Let alone with nihilism.

He attacked everything in life with a mix of extraordinary genius and naive incompetence, and it was often difficult to tell which was which.

Just as he intended no doubt.

Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

It’s time to amend the Constitution.

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

!!!

God’s Final Message to His Creation:
'We apologize for the inconvenience.”

And the occasional genocide.

[b]Existential Comics

Conservative in 1800: “we don’t understand society well enough to recreate it from scratch, so we should only make small changes.”
Conservative in 2019: “I don’t give a fuck if the planet is destroyed, we are making a shitload of money and I refuse to make a dollar less.”[/b]

For some of course that’s progress.

People think the analytic / continental split in philosophy is a historical rift in methodology, ideas, and styles within western philosophy, but it’s really just the philosophy community’s manifestation of the fact that math nerds and theatre nerds don’t like each other.

Let’s just say it’s neither one and move on.

There are six branches of philosophy: metaphysics, epistemology, logic, ethics, aesthetics, and silly walks.

Which one is complete bullshit?

The important thing to remember when reading Nietzsche and Sartre is that Nietzsche was good looking but never fucked, and Sartre was super ugly but fucked all the time.

You know, the important stuff.

I set all my passwords to “bourgeoisie” for the double layer of security, in that even if someone guesses it, they probably won’t be able to spell it correctly anyway.

Mine is still “antidisestablishmentarianism”.

The idea behind Universal Basic Income is that as factories become automated, all of society’s productive capacity will remain in the hands of a vanishingly small group of trillionaires, but they will give just enough money to the displaced unemployed masses to prevent revolt.

In other words, business as ususal.

[b]Bob Dylan

You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home[/b]

Mr. Jones…the homosexual!

Her profession’s her religion
Her sin is lifelessness

Here of course we mass produce them.

I’m speaking for all of us. I’m the spokesman for a generation.

Ironically as it were.

The harmonica is the world’s best-selling musical instrument. You’re welcome.

It is the only one I ever bought.

I ain’t saying you treated me unkind
You could’ve done better, but I don’t mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don’t think twice, it’s alright

Can it be said any better than this?

Colleges are like old-age homes, except for the fact that more people die in colleges.

If you get his drift.
Whatever that is.

[b]Existential Comics

capitalism is so irrational and contradictory that you can invent a machine that does people’s work for them and they will be angry about it[/b]

Cue Mr. Whipple: youtu.be/f517THBZNgA

Capitalism didn’t give us the internet. Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don’t work because fifteen ads cover the screen.

Well, two or three cover them anyway.

whenever i’m in a dilemma, i think to myself, “what would Immanuel Kant do?”
and then i spend the rest of my life in a small german city writing incredibly long, technical, dense philosophy books

In other words, the part they leave out.

Albert Camus: “I could have a cup of coffee, or I could kill myself. I guess I’ll have the coffee.”
Jeff Bezos: “I could have a cup of coffee, or I could eradicate world hunger. I guess I’ll have the coffee.”

Close enough?

half of America thinks “barbecue” means “anything cooked outside” and the other half thinks if it isn’t prepared in the precise style of their own zipcode it doesn’t count as “real barbecue”.
i believe these two groups will remain forever divided.

Close enough?

Is a hotdog a sandwich?
Is a pizza pocket a ravioli?
Is cereal a soup?
Is democracy under capitalism a democracy when businesses are still run like dictatorships?

No, seriously.

[b]Blake Crouch,

He says finally, It’s terrifying when you consider that every thought we have, every choice we could possibly make, branches into a new world.[/b]

Or, for a very, very few, exhilarating.

You’re saying that, out of an infinite number of realities, I intentionally picked this shithole?
Not intentionally. Maybe it’s a reflection of what you were feeling at the moment you opened the door.

You just never really know about these things.

I don’t know what you want anymore. You murdered an entire town. Your own daughter. Years ago, your wife. Where does it end? Where’s the line?
There is no line.

Or, sure, go ahead and prove that there is.

And the hair on his arms stood erect and some primal siren sounded in his brain, but mistaking terror for adrenaline, he walked down into the darkness because he’d never felt more alive.

Uh-oh. We know what’s coming.

It’ll be your loss, Ethan. Day’ll come, when he’s grown and it’s too late, that you’d give a kingdom to go back and spend a single hour with your son as a boy. To hold him. Read a book to him. Throw a ball with a person in whose eyes you can do no wrong. He doesn’t see your failings yet. He looks at you with pure love and it won’t last, so you revel in it while it’s here.

Cat’s in the cradle, right?

There was no end date for her sentence in this place. She was a lifer.

Until the day she died for example.