Addy Joy > Recent Status Updates

confused abt “surplus” def: “collector fund of spiral energies exceeding those to required to reproduce a given form of life and to replenish what is used up in the course of living it.” Am i dumb

« …pawns, reduced to figuring out how they can get what they need in the interstices while feeding the beast. »

capitalism: enclosed commons and private property held by small minority of high « class » individuals, which created the demand for labor - free labor by the majority

NAc activity spikes after seeing surprising images, which is interesting cus this must mean that there is something inherently rewarding in the brain about seeing something unexpected - which also makes it more memorable - despite the fact there is no actual reward received, and the suprising and common pictures should be equally (externally) rewarding

DMN + hippocampus for creative thinking bc DMN is for schemes and hippocampus for details

perfect pitch and planum temporale

making up random non existent features

object recognition deficits

Talking about the first patient (whom the book is titled after) I am wondering what area may be implicated - perhaps the fusiform face area since the patient cannot recognize faces, only facial features

so far i’m really loving this book. the introduction seems to be setting up for a conversation on the intersections of war and plagues, and how these relate to how we conceptualize death - something we look at very differently when it’s about someone else and not ourselves!

So far i’ve finished the Metamorphosis and The Penal Colony - the latter I like more, and now onto the Hunger Artist. Overall, I really enjoy Kafka’s writing style and his ability to give attention towards small movements and details that most authors never consider putting into their words. Kafka is a weird guy and I don’t understand all the meanings in each story, but you’re not always supposed to

impressionism = impressions of outer world on the human senses
expressionism = outward expression of internal sensations

Graham Allison’s “Thucydides’ Trap”

covid “seems to be changing how humans think the world should be organized. … A quarter of a century ago, American scholars could claim with storage faces that liberal democracy had demonstrated once and for all that it was superior to all other ways of organizing society. Not anymore.”

so it seems like what the high-income counties do is only allow for vaccine production by the pharmaceutical companies that will sell to them and only them… this happened with the UK and Germany for covid. Strangely, in the early 2000s wealthy nations blocked the production of ARVs for HIV-AIDS …??????? what

“Just as the bottle was the quickest way to get out of Manchester in the early nineteenth century, the fastest way to escape the North American version of Shit Life Syndrome in the early twenty-first century is alcohol, crystal meth, or fentanyl.”

based on previous patterns of public health cuts in the UK by prime minister M. Thatcher, i am sure that the law changes and funding cuts in the United States are going to result in several thousand extra deaths in the coming years

“de-industrialisation” in places like Blackpool, England

First sub-saharan Africa was devastated by the impacts of colonialism, then by having an untested approach to improving public health thrusted upon them - an approach focused on medicine and tech, rather than fixing the roots of the problem - this is a profound example of how low-income countries have been absolutely kicked by the big world leaders time and time again.