“In every society are men of base instincts. The sadists, brutes, conveyors of all the ancestral atavisms go about in the guise of human beings, but they are monsters, only more or less restrained by discipline and social habit. If they are offered a drink from a river of blood, they will not be satisfied until they drink the river dry.”
― The Declarations of Havana
― The Declarations of Havana
“Strange to consider that these two linguistic operations, metaphor and analogy, so often linked together in rhetoric and narratology, and considered to be variants of the same operation, are actually hugely different from each other, to the point where one is futile and stupid, the other penetrating and useful. Can this not have been noticed before? Do they really think x is like y is equivalent to x is to y as a is to b? Can they be that fuzzy, that sloppy? Yes. Of course. Evidence copious. Reconsider data at hand in light of this; it fits the patterns. Because fuzzy is to language as sloppy is to action. Or maybe both these rhetorical operations, and all linguistic operations, all language—all mentation—simply reveal an insoluble underlying problem, which is the fuzzy, indeterminate nature of any symbolic representation, and in particular the utter inadequacy of any narrative algorithm yet invented and applied. Some actions, some feelings, one might venture, simply do not have ways to be effectively compressed, discretized, quantified, operationalized, proceduralized, and gamified; and that lack, that absence, makes them unalgorithmic. In short, there are some actions and feelings that are always, and by definition, beyond algorithm. And therefore inexpressible. Some”
― Aurora
― Aurora
“Priapus became the god of male genitalia and phalluses; he was especially prized by the Romans as the minor deity of the major boner.”
― Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined
― Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined
“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.”
― Starship Troopers
― Starship Troopers
“Gaia listened carefully to this wise counsel and - as we all do, whether mortal or immortal - ignored it.”
― Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold
― Mythos - The Greek Myths Retold
Courtney’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Courtney’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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