Friedrich Engels once said: “Bourgeois society stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regression into barbarism.” What does “regression into barbarism” mean to our lofty [Western] civilization? Until now, we have all probably read and repeated these words thoughtlessly, without suspecting their fearsome seriousness. A look around us at this moment shows what […]
Category Archives: serious stuff
2.8 days
Wednesday, February 25, 2026
Low-Earth orbit is just 2.8 days from disaster Solar storms create a rapidly changing atmospheric environment that requires constant, real time monitoring and control. If that real time control is lost, the paper suggests there may be only a few days to restore it before the entire system collapses. via /r/collapse
Games
Friday, January 30, 2026
According to [Johann] Huizinga [in Homo Ludens], games have certain common features. First, they are clearly bounded in time and space, and thereby framed off from ordinary life. There is a field, a board, a starting pistol, a finish line. Within that time/space, certain people are designated as players. There are also rules, which define […]
Homo Sacer
Tuesday, November 25, 2025
Epstein: A marxist perspective Thus, the assumption that “the world is run by pedophiles” is mistaken because it confuses cause and effect. It is not pedophilia that makes one powerful, but power that generates those distorted forms of desire that express themselves in mistreatment and exploitation. via reddit Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and […]
Eigenvalue knows the score
Saturday, November 1, 2025
Thomas Pynchon Is Angry […] one detects a writer who has finally lost patience with Americans’ persistent failure to understand the obvious consequences of their own country’s actions. via Reddit i read Gravity’s Rainbow last year. Pynchon’s relevance is so profound as to be deafening. i have V and Lot 49 on the shelves, i […]
Why do people listen to this shit?
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
The Hatred of Podcasting Shows like this have a flow that the listener doesn’t actually participate in—the hosts have gone home, you’re the only one in the room, and it’s a dead conversation that’s already happened—but, given the intimacy of how the product is consumed, can get the same psychic impression. On your commute, while […]
Go home, Tilly
Saturday, October 18, 2025
Dear Tilly Norwood: Some Blunt Advice, Actress to “Actress,” From Betty Gilpin Tilly, you can not look up and become half of someone. Because you are no one.
Scared
Thursday, September 11, 2025
THE SPECTACLE MADE FLESH What I want to talk about is about the reaction to the assassination. The hit did something I haven’t seen before. It spooked the political influencers. They are scared. Many of them spent last night issuing lengthy, serious statements on X about the gravity of the situation. Some of them are […]
Another quote
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
I get high, I get fucked up … what the hell’s wrong with getting fucked up? There must be something wrong with the system if so many people have to get fucked up. Ozzy Osbourne, interview in Sounds magazine, 1978 (via Adam Curtis, Shifty)
A long quote, true as can be
Wednesday, August 20, 2025
The further down the hill she goes the more subdued and shadowy her mood becomes, as though Bath Street were an emotional gradient. She’s thinking about history’s celebrated victims, thinking of the holocaust, the blight of slavery, female suppression and the persecution of sexual minorities. She can recall her own Spare Rib days in the […]
