and I'll tell you something else about #time while I'm at it.

certain persons in this society have a unique privilege: they're able to *reset* time—effectively, because they inhabit a society that permits them to slice away their own pasts and forget they never happened.

(1/x)
I admit that's on my mind because of "Disco Elysium", which puts the player in the head of a detective who's melted down so completely from booze and burnout that they suffer total amnesia. that's not a new conceit exactly, but DE explores it with a certain thoroughness.

(2/x)
in particular, "Disco Elysium" reminds you very completely of how even a complete amnesiac like Harry du Bois can still keep up some approximation of ordinary social function because he's locked into a social role that's rigidly defined and constrained and *supported*.

(3/x)
Harry's got a sober partner with Job's patience and far more competence at paperwork and social routines, and someone whose _esprit de corps_ is total; Lt. Kitsuragi may think that Harry's a disaster, but he's still duty-bound to prop him up in public, and keep him moving.

(4/x)
what have I just described?

I've described how @jack Dorsey could keep going as @Twitter #CEO no matter how many times he steamed or starved his brain into submission—zeroing himself out, as best he could, then staggering back to his routines after a break.

(5/x)
if @mtaibbi or @elonmusk go on a drug bender, they're surrounded by people who will pick them up, dust them off, and push them in needed directions. Max Renn from "Videodrome", who swapped places with @RealJamesWoods (not so real these days) a while back, was the same way.

(6/x)
(do you suppose Cronenberg knew what he'd done? seems a bit unlikely. well anyway)

this is the chief luxury that the elites have over us. not just @elonmusk or @mtaibbi or @pmarca or @JeffDean or anyone I could tweet at, but basically...everyone in the upper classes.

(7/x)
they can hit "pause" (or even "rewind") on their lives, to an extent that we people on the pavement are not allowed. we're hammered over and over with deadlines and time limits. the comfortable people, the leisure class...they get to take as much time as they like.

(8/x)
that's why "Anglo-Saxon" folks do so well on the @OfficialSAT and all the other meaningless corporate tests that @charlesmurray and @EPoe187 and other complete dunces use in some feeble attempt to prove their genetic superiority over the rest of humanity: it's about #time.

(9/x)
rich people get to take the tests more often; they get *more time* in which they can polish up their grades. that's it. that's all. that's the secret to @charlesmurray's "The Bell Curve" (@ID_AA_Carmack you ever heard of this trash book? @fchollet, you read it at all.)

(10/x)
(you don't need to answer that question, @ID_AA_Carmack)

~Chara of Pnictogen

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More from @KrisAtLarge

Jan 22
oh right. I was going to say something about "God"—the being whom right-wing Christians seem to worship, the "God" who seems like so much *smaller* a thing than a truly omnipotent Creator—and how He's a demonstrably loyal friend to authoritarians and bloodstained tyrants.

(1/x)
#Christianity was permanently warped by its growth medium—the authoritarian and bureaucratic structures of Roman rule. Rome was a harsh and brutal state; "Western civilization", #Christian civilization, continues to imitate the tyrannical Roman model to this very day.

(2/x)
not once has "the West" ever lost its fondness for rule by absolute monarchy. right-wing blowhards like @DouthatNYT and @MattWalshBlog reflexively fall at the feet of every military strongman or corporate dictator or @GOP politician in whom they sense Great Man potential.

(3/x)
Read 32 tweets
Jan 22
okay, time to wind down.

incidentally we've been watching the 2006 documentary film "Jesus Camp" intermittently today. we've only watched forty minutes so far; it's upsetting material. right-wing #Christianity is an upsetting thing to deal with; just ask the *victims*.

(1/x)
@dalepartridge, whom I've given special attention this day (the feast day of St. Agnes—but that's just a coincidence; also it's #NationalHuggingDay) might be attempting to console himself with imagining that I'm a mere vengeful *victim* of right-wing Christianity. I'm not.

(2/x)
I'm an apostate #Catholic whose personal experience of Catholicism was in fact rather mild and not without its positive qualities...though there was also a lot of sadness and disappointment. I wanted to reach out to God. I reached out and felt...a void. mournful emptiness.

(3/x)
Read 14 tweets
Jan 22
we've played this music a few times a day, routinely, for a long while now. Kajiura Yuki's theme music for #FateZero: "Back to Zero". it's one of my favorite pieces.

we've used it for grounding ourselves—it is, after all, right there in the name.



(1/x)
"Fate/Zero" is fiction. our present-day world may have magic in it, for surely magic is as eternal as anything that's woven into the Beatific Vision; magic, I tell myself in hope, can never completely die. but it has no magic like that of the mages of the "Fate/" universe.

(2/x)
it is perhaps well that this is so. one of the lessons of the "Fate/" universe ought to be that humanity perhaps ought *not* to have magic, because magical crimes are truly nightmarish in scope and scale. a little handful of mages almost bring about the end of the world...

(3/x)
Read 17 tweets
Jan 22
so let's talk a bit more about this "God".

"God" falls easily from the lips of the world's worst human beings. @MattWalshBlog thirsts to impregnate children, and perhaps has actually done that—and he's a "man of God". his child rapist friend @joshduggar—a "man of God".

(1/x)
@dalepartridge is a grifter, a confidence trickster, a squalid grasping man of #business consumed by avarice and pride—but, a "man of God". @laurenboebert habitually embezzles public money for her private use—but she's "faithful" to "God".

it's an astonishing phenomenon.

(2/x)
clearly "God" is something different from what @dalepartridge &c. all pretend He's about, i.e. infinite everything. all power, all knowledge, all love, etc. etc. etc.

in fact this "God" is defined by the *absence of definite qualities*. omnipotence is void, featureless.

(3/x)
Read 23 tweets
Jan 21
this may alarm some of my readers, so I feel like I ought to explain and qualify my words somewhat.

it is my considered opinion that a *certain conception of God* must be laid to rest. I've loosely termed this conception of God "the #Christian God", but that's tricky...

(1/x)
...since #Christianity is such a fearfully atomized and scattered assortment of different cults, all of them centered in some way on the #Bible and the spiritual event known to Christians as the Incarnation, that the very word "#Christian" no longer has a certain meaning.

(2/x)
it cannot be denied, however, that there is a #Christian mainstream in Western society; its American manifestation is particularly noisy, very well-funded from money trickling down from wealthy capitalists like the Koch Brothers, and fascıstic in its political inclination.

(3/x)
Read 24 tweets
Jan 21
and really this is what the failure of #capitalism boils down to: capitalists hate *equilibrium*. a healthy planet full of life is a physical system—one of profound complexity, but still, a system in dynamic equilibrium, maintaining an approximately steady state over time.

(1/x)
"steady state", in economic terms, would mean a #business that continues to provide approximately the same services or products over time to a steady clientele—not a *constant* number of clients but one that varies up and down with time, oscillating about a steady average.

(2/x)
and this #business would continue over time to charge about the same for its products or services, and the profit rakeoff going towards workforce and #management pay would also remain about the same. this approximately stable state would be a business at equilibrium.

(3/x)
Read 14 tweets

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