a thread for mundane ironists

[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.

[b]Tori Amos

So close to touching freedom, then I hear the guards call my name.[/b]

And we all know who they work for.

My father has a pragmatic mind. He marched with Dr King in the 60s, and he’s very much for women’s rights.

The pragmatic dasein. Or, sure, the idealist.

Women must understand that simply attacking or hating men is just another form of disempowerment. A woman has to realize that when she makes a man crawl it doesn’t give her power.

Come on, sometimes it does.

Things go wrong all the time; you can’t be precious about it.

How would one be precious about it?

Do we soon forget the things we cannot see?

No more than the things we can’t hear.

I do believe that we all are, fundamentally, divided creatures. Emotions split from intellect, spirit from flesh and far too often sexuality is disconnected from what we feel, and are, as total human beings. But how, for example, can anyone have an understanding of the virgin if they don’t also have an understanding of the prostitute, the saint and sinner in one body?

Trust me: there’s divided and there’s fractured and fragmented.

[b]Neal Stephenson

It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn’t have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn’t have to decide. She just had to pass on the news.[/b]

As likely as not, right?

…people too busy leading their lives to worry about extending their life expectancy.

And, no, not just the ubermen.

She considered hypothesis 3 to be quite unlikely, since she didn’t feel the least bit psychopathic, but included it in the list out of respect for the scientific method.

Always best to take science into account.

Our cultures used to be almost hereditary, but now we choose them from a menu as various as the food court of a suburban shopping mall.

Lifestyles we call them. Though not all from the suburbs.

Sometimes, if you want to live and breathe tomorrow, you have to dive into the black depths today, and that is a leap of faith - faith in your U-boat, and your crew - beside which the saints’ religious epiphanies amount to nothing.

Of course you’ll likely go to Hell.

You’re going to fly a radioactive ice ball the size of the Death Star back here just as the shit is hitting the fan—then what?

Or here: You’re going to respond to a post from Ecmandu — then what? :wink:

[b]Miles Davis

A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I’m still doing it. [/b]

Any legends here?

I don’t care if a dude is purple with green breath as long as he can swing.

Any swingers here?

The only reason to write a new song is because you’re tired of the old ones.

That and to sell more records.

Don’t be afraid of mistakes…there are none.

Unless you’re, say, an engineer.

I’m not messing around with nobody’s woman. If I want a woman I go get her - you know what I mean?

You know, like Shaft.

I always listen for what I can leave out.

Something the Kids might consider doing here, he thought.

[b]Kelley Armstrong

The guy can make me feel stupid even when he’s telling me I don’t have to let him make me feel stupid. [/b]

So, how stupid is that?

Life experience. I can talk it up, vow to broaden my horizons, but I’m still limited to the experiences with my life. How can a person understand an experience that lies completely outside her own? She can see it, feel it, imagine what it would be like to live it, but it’s no different from seeing a movie on a screen and saying, “Thank God that’s not me”.

My point exactly. Or as exactly as it can be.

That’s what being crazy was, wasn’t it? You thought you were fine.

Indeed, and we’ve got a few of them here. :wink:

Dearly departed, scarcely lamented, deeply demented.

That works for me.

That’s what we all want, isn’t it? Power without price.

You know, just once before we die.

If you say ‘we’re in this together,’ I’m going to hurl.

Hurl then.

[b]Sad Socrates

I am feeling my best depression.[/b]

So far in other words.

Death is the old normal.

On the other hand, nothing has changed.

There are better ways to die than living.

How about the other way around?

Please don’t confuse me with myself.

After all, I never do.

Only rocks can be sexy.

He means boulders of course.

[b]How to Exist in the 21st Century:

  1. Look at your government
  2. Now cry[/b]

Or, sure, :laughing: .

[b]Morgan Spurlock

To strip yourself from a lot of the things around you that make you comfortable is a really challenging thing that most of us don’t do or don’t get a chance to do.[/b]

First, Mr. Objectivist, why would you ever want to? Right?

I was starting to become impotent through this diet and couldn’t perform. How many people who are taking the little blue pill, if they started to change what they are eating most of the time, could change the way their sex life is?

Hey, why take chances, he thought.

The food is absolutely atrocious, and parents have no idea. Parents are giving their kids three dollars and saying, ‘Okay, see you later. Go off to school and have a good lunch.’

The food industrial complex let’s call it.

I think people need to see on both sides. Seeing how the people in the Palestinian Territories can’t move around - it’s a maze now, with the wall, the road blocks and everything else. It takes you hours to get from one person’s house to your job or to a friend or even to the hospital if someone’s hurt. Then you go into Israel and see in Tel Aviv, where they have 12-18 bomb threats a day, which are real. It completely disrupts their life. Or Sderot where bombs are falling daily from the sky fired by Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

Right. Both sides here are in exactly the same boat.

In the U.S., we’ve given corporations all the powers and freedoms of an individual but with none of the responsibility. Corporations need to be giving back to their communities just as much as they’re taking away.

It’s less what we give and more what we let them take.

I couldn’t open up a magazine, you couldn’t read a newspaper, you couldn’t turn on the TV without hearing about the obesity epidemic in America.

We are rather remiss about it here though.

[b]Margaret Atwood from The Testaments

Totalitarianisms may crumble from within, as they fail to keep the promises that brought them to power; or they may be attacked from without; or both. There are no sure-fire formulas, since very little in history is inevitable.[/b]

Aside perhaps from that.

I was the age at which parents suddenly transform from people who know everything into people who know nothing.

The children of course have their own rendition.

How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot.

Well, up until Trump.

…underlings given sudden power frequently become the worst abusers of it.

Let’s file this one under “revenge is mine!”

No one wants to die, said Becka. But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.

Yep, I’m closing in on that alright.

How can I have behaved so badly, so cruelly, so stupidly? you will ask. You yourself would never have done such things! But you yourself will never have had to.

No, actually think about it this time.

[b]tiny nietzsche

a chicken in every porno[/b]

No roosters please.

day 57: we had promised not to eat the young

Situational ethics, right?

we can be backwards, just for one day

Or, for others, all the way to the grave.

mean something to somebody else

Let us know if it’s you.

robots killing humans while repeatedly saying “it isn’t personal”

Well, it isn’t, right?

postmodernism is in retrograde

Not around here it ain’t.

[b]Robert M. Pirsig

You look at where you’re going and where you are and it never makes much sense, but then you look back at where you’ve been and a pattern seems to emerge. And if you project forward from that pattern, then sometimes you can come up with something.[/b]

Needless to say, for better or for worse.

The TV scientist who mutters sadly, “The experiment is a failure; we have failed to achieve what we had hoped for,” is suffering mainly from a bad script writer. An experiment is never a failure solely because it fails to achieve predicted results. An experiment is a failure only when it also fails adequately to test the hypothesis in question, when the data it produces don’t prove anything one way or another.

Let’s just split the difference, okay?

Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.

Wow, what does that say about philosophers then?

One of the most moral acts is to create a space in which life can move forward.

Well, until one bumps into another’s moral space.

When a shepherd goes to kill a wolf, and takes his dog to see the sport, he should take care to avoid mistakes. The dog has certain relationships to the wolf the shepherd may have forgotten.

Of course it never works that way in reality. Though, here, sure, I’m only guessing.

[b]I like the word ‘gumption’ because it’s so homely and so forlorn and so out of style it looks as if it needs a friend and isn’t likely to reject anyone who comes along. I like it also because it describes exactly what happens to someone who connects with Quality. He gets filled with gumption.

A person filled with gumption doesn’t sit around dissipating and stewing about things. He’s at the front of the train of his own awareness, watching to see what’s up the track and meeting it when it comes. That’s gumption.

If you’re going to repair a motorcycle, an adequate supply of gumption is the first and most important tool. If you haven’t got that you might as well gather up all the other tools and put them away, because they won’t do you any good.[/b]

Can a philosopoher even have gumption?

[b]tiny nietzsche

happy birthday camus! got a smoke?[/b]

How about a new novel?

a scar is born

Psychologically. The worst kind.

is it unethical to feed leftover chicken to your chickens?

Watch them complain, right?

to do list:
dishes
laundry
stare listlessly into space

Not necessarily in that order of course.

the abyss has announced that it is now the ABYSS

Next up: the ABYSS!

so many bad cults right now. cult leaders need to step up their game

Or here: so many bad objectivists right now. objectivist posters need to step up their game