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The Yakuza boss Chūji was like a Robin Hood figure in the 1830s-1840s japan, as a yakuza boss leader unable to be controlled by the shogun, constantly evading capture, and a symbol of rebellion. He helped the starving poor, but was still a ruthless criminal. He was captured and killed in 1851 by japanese style crucifixion.

Early samurai era yakuza gangs would carry around decapitated heads and show them to enemies as an intimidation tactic

Poe was a pretty good literary critic: “Men admire but are wearied with the ‘Paradise Lost’ for platitude follows platitude, inevitably, at regular interspaces (the depressions between the waves of excitement) until the poem (which, properly considered, is a succession of brief poems), having been brought to an end, we discover that the sums of our pleasure and of displeasure have been very nearly equal.

“For, humanly speaking, death is the last of things, and humanly speaking, there is only hope as long as there is life. But as Christianity views it, death is by no means the last of all things, is indeed only a minor event within that which is all, an eternal life…”

“A person always acquires courage in this way: when one fears a greater danger, a person always has the courage to confront a lesser one…”

“William Wilson” is very similar to “The Double” by Dostoyevsky. In both stories, a doppelganger rival intrudes on the protagonist’s life and ruins it.

In “The Man That was Used Up” Edgar Allen Poe invents a cyborg, cyberpunk-esque, of a man who has so many essential body parts replaced after he was severely mutilated in a fight with Indians.

Finished the Fall of the House of Usher, excellent

Americanization of european culture following the first world war, and discussion of economic collapses throughout europe

Understanding the mystical, the mysteries of religion, cannot be put into words. There, showing rather than saying helps communicate the mystical.

The limits of language show the limits of thought.

What can be thought, can be said. What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what must not be said must be consigned to silence.

Wittgensteins first work tractato logicus philosophicus is aimed to solve the problems of philosophy by understanding how language works

Ch 1 intro on his life done