M > Recent Status Updates

First chapter is an overview and it’s depressing how things either haven’t changed at all or have gotten worse. As a dork who started working out a year ago, my Instagram ads have gone from “uhhh here’s a lamp” to:
- FEELING TIRED? YOU NEED TESTOSTERONE REPLACEMENT!!!
- SUBSCRIBE TO OUR ANTI-BALDING DRUGS
- IS YOUR COCK HARD ENOUGH? BUY THIS DRUG
- WRINKLES??? RETINOL TIME!!!!!!!!
I just wanna grill!

FIONA APPLE REFERENCE

(That’s all for now)

Mrs Dashwood is hilariously evil

Also shout out Rosamund Pike for reading this aloud to me while I clean the bathroom

After a long period of having no idea what was happening in Pleasure and Necessity, I think I get it: self-consciousness seeks gratification and power and it doesn't mind using underhanded tricks to get it. But others have wills of their own. Actions have consequences. Because self-consciousness can't have it all, it comes to see itself as having nothing. No agency, no will—a puppet of necessity. Many such cases!

They prescribed me the Pleasure and Necessity section at therapy (DBT of course) and now I’m cured. The only problem is I keep smirking and saying “how charming” to my scientist friends when they talk about their work and I think they’re going to stage an intervention…

NEVER:
- Ask a MAN his SALARY
- Ask a WOMAN her AGE
- Ask IMMANUEL KANT whether THE EMPIRICAL SYNTHESIS OF THE WORLD SERIES CAN BE ABSOLUTELY DETERMINED THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF TRANSCENDENTAL CONCEPTS
(why is this section so damn long???)

“Now it is indeed very illuminating they I cannot cognize as an object itself that which I must presuppose in order to cognize an object at all…”
DESTROYED

A section on the “paralogisms of pure reason” begins by demolishing any rational *proof* the human soul exists. He denies our (postulated) “real selves” are objects of intuition. At one point he gets in a pretty good (though veiled) Newton’s Cradle analogy for the human mind. This would be edge of your seat stuff in anyone else’s hands, but Kant knows how to show you a bad time. 10/10 BANGER

Short primer on the history of the sport and then straight into some terminology. Something to think about while I’m getting punched in the face and thrown around the mats this evening.

“Within the framework of Marx's analysis, the form of social domination that characterizes capitalism is not ultimately a function of private property, of the ownership by the capitalists of the surplus product and the means of production; rather, it is grounded in the value form of wealth itself, a form of social wealth that confronts living labor (the workers) as a structurally alien and dominant power.”

That’s ‘Hegel, Marx and the Comprehension of Capitalism’ down. Exactly how Hegel’s methodology shaped that of Marx in his “critique of economic categories” is quite a bit clearer now.

First chapter down. A real mixed bag. Jennerite ecological skepticism is a cool concept but seems better suited to a pessimistic outlook rather than the “utopian socialism” of the authors. Their treatment of Malthus is so perfunctory they shouldn’t have bothered bringing him up.

Also, please stop trying to make the End of History happen. It's not going to happen.

First chapter down. A real mixed bag. Jennerite ecological criticism is a cool concept but seems better suited to a pessimistic outlook rather than the “utopian socialism” of the authors. Their treatment of Malthus is so perfunctory they shouldn’t have bothered bringing him up.

“The Lords of Trade and Plantations, in 1676, opposed the use of the word ‘servitude’ as a mark of bondage and slavery, and suggested ‘service’ instead. The institution was not affected by the change.”

Imagine thinking you can cure your melancholy without shitting at least once a day… smh

“The income of the bondholders is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade of the greatest ‘trading’ country in the world. This is the essence of imperialism and imperialist parisitism... The world has become divided into a handful of usurer states on the one side, and a vast majority of debtor states on the other.”

Critique of Marxist euro-universalist teleology complete; now for an excavation of the roots of black radicalism.

“Would not Harriet be the very creature described? Hazel eyes excepted, two years might make her all her her wished.”

OH NO NOT AGAIN

“The quarter of an hour quite convinced her that Mrs. Elton was a vain woman, but extremely well satisfied with herself, and thinking much of her own importance.”

THE AUDACITY

Emma is, and I cannot stress this enough, an absolute creature

Regarding paragraph 282:

What? What did you say? What?

Claims like "In the absence of eternal plenitude... ethical decisions really matter." are simply thrown about without justification. In most writers, this wouldn't be noteworthy, but Moynihan once wrote it was the duty of the spine to destroy the universe. Sigh.

First thoughts: either Spinal Catastrophism has been written off as an “Evil Book”, or X-Risk’s opening pages are written in a spirit of incredible mendacity. We’ve gone from “down with the spine!” to “A quattordecillion spines! Until the stars burn out!”