my rule is that if theres anything very epic + old that should be kept in some type of archive (but isnt) i will obtain it. originally it was just a ‘christian material culture’ archive but then i expanded a little into history (mostly civil war stuff, because i kept finding it)
lets take a look at a few things before i get into work today
i literally just found these and you can also
i think this is 1840s
this was way more than my average price (35) but someone was staying at my house and bought it for me
no date but maybe 1850s ie pre-civil war polyglot bible
i think this is really cool
if anything is over 100 years old and christian and not really expensive ill just get it at this point
1870s, a book called ‘satan in society’
this one is kind of a personal flex if you know my interests
basically this is the christian science book, but its from the early 1900s so it was published when she (mary baker eddy) was still alive:
these are just the ‘archival’ books i keep on a separate shelf away from the normal books
basically the trick is, im just telling you guys because realistically if people like us dont find these theyll just sit there forever or get damaged or get thrown away:
you want to go to places where women are looking at furniture and old clothes, that just so happen to have some books. like, think - if someones grandparents die and they just take their stuff somewhere to sell, that kind of place. i usually dont go to specifically book places.
alright im supposed to be working but just a little PSA that people like us should be finding and archiving this stuff
this ones not that old (mid 1900s?) but its sick, check it out:
its great. do it. go rescue the books
i will say one unexpected thing is that reading them just feels really cool
i have a ~500 page book of some relatively niche state … information (biography) from 1870 and holding it and reading it all the way through just felt really epic. same with the others.
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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.