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I came across this hilarious video making fun of Chris Langan and thought you'd appreciate it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57IN9sBhYyg

I am okay, though I never really know what my dad is thinking.

I don't know if you saw—I'm not entirely sure if MAL notifies users who get quoted, or only users one replies to, but I answered your question about string theory over on that science thread.

Ted never needed to be a profound political thinker. Meusnier gets too caught up in books and credentials, and loses sight of why someone like him would becomes an icon in the first place; and as you've said, he appeals to a sort of detachment from society, on which many who reject the establishment resonate with. While I think his ideal world is entirely apocolyptuc, I can at least understand why he's so popular.



I would like to ask if you would extend the same sympathies towards the manosphere, incels, or other individuals that feel disenfranchised with society?



Why do you thank me for condemning it, if you do not share the same sentiment? If the murder was just, then would I not be morally reprehensible for condemning it?

The reason I condemn it is not just because "murder is bad" (I notice you omit this word when speaking about Thompson), but also, it's particularly egregious, because it sets a precedent that makes the world objectively a far worse place. When being productive, and providing valuable services is marked as being evil, worthy of contempt or death, because one feels as though they have a moral claim to the labor and property of others (Luigi was never insured by United), is an utterly abhorrent, Marxian ethic that leads to nothing but conflict and aggression.

I hate this framing that healthcare is a separate entity from the economy, because it's not. While it's true that most conservative politicians ignore the underlying issues regarding healthcare (i mentioned them in the thread). Left wing politicians in the US, ala. Bernie Sanders wish to monopolize the health care system under the government. While the right wing politicians have absolutely no answers to the real problems of the health care system, the alternative is so much worse! I live in Canada, and our healthcare system is always running at maximum capacity, and it's getting worse and worse over time. It's only somewhat sustainable since we have a population smaller than the size of California, but increased immigration is making this more strenuous without freeing up the necessary resources in order to combat this new demand.

Treating health care as a separate entity to the economy has led to many of the problems that are being faced currently. And while I agree with you that right wing conservative politicians do not have the answers, they are at least closer than the socialists are. I can guarentee you, if every hospital and insurance policy was provided by the government in the US, it would collapse. At that point, only black market healthcare would be the option.

As for the unibomber, he was not a left winger. He was an individualist anarcho-primitivist. He openly rejected left-wing collectivism as a distraction from his ideal world. This is not much different than neo-reactionaries who wish to "Revolt against the modern world". So, while it's true that his views could be interpreted through either lens, it largely misses his overall point. I personally think it's an apocalyptic doctrine, one which, to bring it back to health care, would be utterly disastrous in practice, since primitivism has no means for economies of scale needed to provide healthcare services in the first place.

I have not forgotten about you, though I may have to tsundere at this most recent message. Meanwhile, I wanted to share (if I haven't already) a very postmodernist story: "The Balloon," by Donald Barthelme. It is said (and I believe he said it himself) that it is what inspired David Foster Wallace to write. It also inspired me to write, though this latter statement means rather little.

Oh, and I should say:

AAAAAAA! Definitely don't watch Infinite Jest!

You have inspired me, onii-chan:

I'm not sure "post-postmodernism" means anything other than exactly the kind of performativity (this time in academia) Lyotard attacked in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. If you look at the Wikipedia page, you'll see that the reference for the part that says postmodernists don't believe in truth is marked with the superscript "failed verification." If the postmodernists truly didn't believe in truth, all those "objective truth" defenders who slander them so would be the ultimate verification of precisely what the postmodernists were saying: We make systems that confer authority, and often certainty, to rather dubious notions. So when Baudrillard says,


he is gesturing at the notion of the nonexistence of evil: What capitalism tells us is objective, good, the realest thing ever, is actually nothing—at bottom a manifestation of a contradiction. When your whole world is founded on a contradiction, it really is nonexistent, because what does exist is emphatically not what you think exists. And the unreal delusions most people believe in are depressing enough that it's more than understandable the postmodernists respond to it with hilarious exaggerations, in order to mock those delusions and prevent their ideas from becoming assimilated by the capitalist mechanism. Anybody who thinks a philosopher hilarious enough to say his most important question is, "Why is there nothing, rather than something?" doesn't believe in truth is blind, ignorant, and worst of all, hates fun. Derrida did not write his "No Apocalypse, Not Now" pleading for the world not to destroy itself because he believed there is no truth and nothing matters. The postmodernists scoffed at our paltry excuses for higher notions in the same way the Old Testament prophets railed against the idols made of wood people worshiped as gods. Nietzsche was not a nihilist; rather, he preached against the nihilism he saw coming in capitalism and a Christianity eaten by it.

Thus David Foster Wallace is not post-postmodernist, but precisely postmodernist—in particular in that he employs postmodern irony: His characters all know they live in a simulation everyone, themselves included, insists is real, and simultaneously laugh, suffer, and laugh at what their unreal situation forces them through. They long for the real in a world weighed down by unreality. What the postmodernists do is say, "If something is real, it's definitely not that, because that is awful. And look—I can show you precisely how that thing you think is real is just a socio-historical fiction developed to give some bully an advantage." Hence Baudrillard's "nihilism." The biggest such fake thing is "objectivity": "Objective" just means "approved by rich 'Enlightened' anti-Catholic bigots and the social class they were able to elevate over the past few centuries." Science has never required such "objectivity" to function, and it is no less dedicated to truth without it. (Perhaps second is the "free" market, a thing that only exists because governments wrote laws forcing society to let rich people buy and sell every aspect of humanity.)

It is rightly said—and due to Lyotard—that postmodernism is incredulity towards the metanarrative. In no way does this preclude the existence of truth. It rather condemns our stories of the truth, especially when such stories involve "Enlightenment" and "progress." For these postmodernism was anticipated long ago, in ancient Babylon:

I was going to say that the face looks like it's from Shimoneta, and was somewhat proud I was able to recognize it just from the art style, but then I realized the collar kind of made it obvious. Yes, I'll be over with relatives for Thanksgiving and Christmas, so any rendezvous shall have to be some other time.

As for The Princess Bride, I know it's something that was on TV when I was a kid, and you're like seven years younger than I am so maybe it was on TV for you as well; it's more of a meme than a good movie, but it is fun nonetheless. So it is something in my cultural consciousness, though I think that was the first time I ever made a The Princess Bride reference. Also that clip reminded me I like what I've seen of Wallace Shawn; his Wikipedia page makes him seem like a wholesome fellow.

Infinite Jest is a giant stew of a novel, which is why I didn't mind digesting it slowly over a thousand years, but I think it's the kind of thing that it's better not to bother with unless you really want to read it. I do, which is why I think I'm going to start it over; but if I were to recommend a book I'm not sure that'd be my first choice.

It's a The Princess Bride reference.

Meanwhile, I am a little disappointed that the Sicilian over on the solipsism thread hasn't responded. Admittedly, I deliberately didn't address several of his arguments, as they really weren't worth addressing since they ignored what I was saying, but: I really can't see that I missed anything in his arguments. Can you?

It is great, although—DFW's "This Is Water" speech is far shorter and more accessible. I think I shall have to start Infinite Jest over; I got through a third of it over a few years—it's actually not a problem to read it that slowly, because it's more about human pathology than its plot—but I do think at this point I've forgotten too much to just jump back in. It will get five stars on Goodreads once I finish, but for now I trust Professor Integralist Juggernaut.

F.R. Leavis founded literary magazine The Criterion in the 1920s; loop diagrams are the first truly monstrous calculations you see in quantum field theory.

And unfortunately, the narrator for the version of The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life talks in this sped-up Captain Kirk cadence, but with a British accent; something about it—maybe the constant, oscillating pitch changes—makes it more difficult to process the meaning of what's being said.

Tsundereloose is pretty good; I'm not sure I ever explained the origin of auroraloose: I just took it off Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh and replaced "Leigh" with "loose," for no reason I can think of other than that both began with "L." (Also, though I don't bother anybody about it because it's pure idiosyncrasy and I don't actually care that nobody else does it, auroraloose is not capitalized.) I sometimes replace "loose" with other words, such that my imgur account (which I made so as to post images here) is auroralinear, so if you come across auroraleavis or auroraloopdiagram somewhere online, it's probably me. I shall have to think of different prefixes to "loose" now, though.

As to The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, it's hard to process as an audiobook. Also the beginning is kind of annoying, because it's a bunch of positivist philosophy of science from the beginning of the 20th century that I don't at all agree with.

Also, I should say: I almost went for The Autobiography of Malcolm X for my next audiobook to listen to; but I went with The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life by Emile Durkheim.

Well, geez and fuck. You're certainly part of the world.