kind of on a pause over here like i said before but u know i have to post since its in my blood so just gonna keep things in this thread until my full triumphant return
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the “experts” have finally pushed me too far
about to see owenius (tiny owen) on the babyscan screen. i have some to refer to this experience as the natalophony. not sure if they will adopt this term.
interesting linguistic phenomenon related to pregnancy baby stuff is that whenever one needs to refer to the baby’s sex, everyone, universally, uses the term gender. this isnt ideological, its an instinctual recoiling from combining the words “sex” and “baby”. everyone does this.
theoretically these are the last moments wherein i do not know if this creature is boy or girl. very surprisingly, i truly dont feel strongly either way. figured id really want it to go one way or the other but im totally neutral.
been surrounded by women for the last few years so thematically it would make more sense if its a girl. people ask what i think it is, i say that if my life were a story (which it is, mythopoetic symbolic life analysis mindset) it would make more sense if it were a girl.
i am going to make a large image of the saint that tamed the dragon and yoked it to harvest wheat to hang in the kids room. i will implant this deep into its tiny tiny brain
launching owen cyclops lifestyle brand to cover some baby expenses. stylesheet:
shoes: two fish
home: partially submerged hut by the lake with dial up internet
activities: standing nose deep in the water at sunrise and sunset dispensing advice to local teenagers and lost hikers
the rift in the lake dwelling community between people that wear two fish strapped to their feet like sandals vs people who put their feet into the fish’s mouth as though it were a sneaker or boot is, potentially, unhealable
i moved from the baptist county to the catholic county. now there are virgin mary sculptures on lawns and generally standing around. i am attempting to train my dog to instinctually sit in front of, looking at, the larger ones, instead of just passing them by.
getting coffee (rare, its always burnt at “places”, wife wanted “a muffin” [also rare, pregnancy madness takes hold]), a cashieress asks where i moved from, remarks “its more friendly here”. “ha yeah i guess”, i say. “maybe its the catholic baptist thing”, she says, laughing. mfw
shju buy one of these glash coffee maykers, its chaped like an hourglass wish a french name, ju obtain ah lineen filter, ok, this rooins your life you see because, now shu can no longer enjoy zis thing that chu loved, ze coffee, jish ruins yoor ability to publicly consume coffee
before zis fancy coffee mechanishm you had no problem consuming coffee at theesh normal places wish normal people. it was quite fun, shu liked it but now wonsh you have bin eshposed to this coffee maker u only taste the burnt nayshur of the coffee, you rooin thish thing you loved
thees is a ideeology of soshial isholation manifesting in ze coffee, reeally, [sniff] you were better off een ignorance, drinking ze burnt coffee from zeez little payper cups knoweeng nothing about sush refined mechanishms but ju rooined it wish your deezire for progress, you did
okay i, really i completely disagree, okay. when i see man, refining himself and his tools, with some higher ideal in mind, really, thats what civilization is all about. you cant shrink away from that. we have to pursue greatness. when you shrink away from that bad things happen.
i dont think any of us really, truly, want to live in a world where we just accept drinking the burnt coffee because its convenient. okay. thats just fear talking. we want to live in a world where we pursue greatness - no matter the cost. okay. theres going to be come costs there
so yes, alright, maybe now you cant enjoy the coffee in the paper cups with ur friend. i get it. thats rough okay. i get it. ive been there. but at the end of the day, u look in the mirror, you know that you didnt shrink away from your duty, and that, thats better than the coffee
i know i can google it but as im moving and revamping my op im wondering if i should get a substack, i trust you guys more than normal internet, whats the deal, ive never looked at it
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in the 1977 film ‘wizards’, one of the oddest movies ive seen, the earth is split between two opposing forces: one side uses technology, and one side has forbidden technology and instead uses magic. i thought this was an interesting lens to view the present AI discussion through.
the term “magic” gained its present english meaning at a time when our society was entirely religious. so, obviously, socially dominant religion with its hierarchy, history, and institutions used the term magic to denote what was outside it: witches, the occult, and such things.
however, we no longer live in that world. today, if we remove the baggage from the word magic, we have to be slightly honest and admit that talking to superhuman beings, items with supraphysical holy influence, casting out demons - this is all “magical”, as opposed to scientific.
jordan peterson’s ’clean up your room’ became a huge joke but no one ever mentioned that his second step was to try to make the room beautiful, because that involves committing to something, putting yourself out there, and engaging with beauty on your own terms as an individual.
to make an aesthetic statement in the form of creating something, like decorating a room, is to engage with the fear the above person describes. because you have nowhere to hide. someone is going to come to your room and say, “you picked that painting?”, and, you did. thats it.
really as much as im not a devotee of the guy the whole set up was pretty good. because once you make something beautiful, its like cleaning one thing in a dirty room. everything else that isn’t beautiful suddenly stands out as extremely not beautiful, then you have to fix that.
a long time ago i was reading this on the subway. old guy taps me. i take my headphones off. he says, "whats that book?". i say "its... a history of magic". he says, "does he say magic comes from God?". i said "uh... yeah, actually". he says "good." then just stood there quietly
this happened at the utica avenue subway station in crown heights which i frequented for some time. a few other interesting things happened there. once another guy started talking to me. he was black, and told me he had been privately studying with a rabbi for like a decade
...
apparently he was privately studying history and judaism with a rabbi, alone, and the rabbi had selected him for this process. i asked a lot of questions and the guy did not seem insane, and seemed to know some things that validated his story, but, i could not make sense of it.
the movie ‘jesus camp’ is the movie i’ve watched the most in my life. in a way, that makes it my favorite movie. at this point, i’ve probably seen it hundreds of times. there are times working at my desk where i’d put it on every day. admittedly, bizarre behavior. so, why?
[…]
if youre unfamiliar, the film documents a bunch of kids who are taken to an evangelical / charismatic summer camp. it’s meant to portray them as somewhat extreme: a small window into this dark undercurrent of american religious life, where kids are … brainwashed, basically.
i think this movie has followed me around for most of my life because ive seen it from every perspective. initially, i was teenager atheist who had the perspective of the film: that this was all basically evil
later i turned my back on that perspective entirely, and saw it again
one of my favorite stories about america is from a guy who moved to west virginia to be a pastor. someone organized a garbage truck route to come through an extremely rural neighborhood, at a time when this cost some money. a nominal fee was passed over to the residents.
[…]
it was a trivial amount of money, but the residents there were so incensed that someone would do this without asking them and then stick them with the bill that they stopped doing anything at all with their trash, and just threw it outside until the plan was called off.
[…]
later, this pastor, who was there for this, wanted to pave the road leading up to their also extremely rural church. wanting to avoid any conflict, he called a meeting and laid out his plan: a truck will come, and dump gravel along the now dirt road, at minimal cost.