I feel like the thing most missing from my education was the emotional quality of things. Like how WW1 was a hideous shock that made lots of smart people become bleak and nihilistic af; I feel like I only started contemplating that stuff in my late 20s. Tho... I did read abt it..
I guess an interesting thing about getting older is I accumulate all this additional context for making sense of things, which makes me rethink and reevaluate all sorts of things that were formerly kinda vague
the Black Death feels marginally less abstract & distant after covid
and think about how if the Black Death was much worse than corona - people would’ve felt forsaken by God. Like really imagine the atmosphere. This is why we say “bless you” to people who sneeze, bc mfs would sneeze and go straight to hell, don’t past go don’t collect $200
This person, Teoalida, is an incredible example of a modern autodidact renaissance man, existing quietly. As long as people like Teoalida exist, I cannot in good conscience claim that label for myself. You think I'm prolific? I'm like a little baby compared to Teoalida
Gertrude Stein (1874–1946) was born to a wealthy family, raised in Oakland CA. Both her parents died by the time she was 17. At Radcliffe College, she was a student of William James, who called her brilliant and encouraged her to go to med school. She got bored and flunked out
"She had spent many of her evenings not applying herself to her studies, but taking long walks and attending the opera." 😍
Her uncorseted physical appearance and eccentric mode of dress aroused comment and she was described as "Big and floppy and sandaled and not caring a damn"
In 1902 her brother Leo (left) left for London hoping to pursue an art career, and Gertrude followed – and a year later they relocated to Paris.
Here Gertrude would host a weekly Saturday night salon that attained legendary status, which is the reason I'm making this thread
one of my talking points is "I believe philosophy departments should be 50% staffed by children" – and a common response is that people think I'm doing a sort of silly and cute joke bit to make people laugh. but I am not. I am being absolutely serious
every single one of these things should be treated with the same respect and reverence we give any prestigious "thought leader". And I don't mean this in a "humor the children" way. I mean that they have important and valuable perspectives to contribute
the handful of ppl that we call geniuses are typically those who have protected the wild spirit of their inner-child-self into adulthood, fending off good-intentioned domestication
I believe we could have 1000x more geniuses if we took children seriously
almost every mention of Brian Eno's Scenius idea links to either Kevin Kelly's 2008 post, Bruce Sterling's repost of that on Wired, or a quote of Eno speaking in Sydney in 2009.
looking at 20 years of blogposts and writing about scenes and scenius, and I think, funnily, everybody who's written about this is so eager to emphasize the the group over the role of the individual, that they seem to gloss over the role that "scene managers" play
Pericles' lover Aspasia hosted the house parties that Socrates hung out at