Cȯsꭑọ ∴ ọꭑƨȯƆ @cosmiccitizen@schelling.pt

There is something really amazing here about the anti-title theatricality that happen in social media these days. I have to speak gnomically because a lot of these performances are wedged really expertly between cherished social practices. But it is fascinating if you know what to watch.

The strongest knock you can make against this stuff is that it's unoriginal. SO FUCKING WHAT. Nobody cares that all of the synthpop of the 80s was downstream from Kraftwerk. A sound is not a patentable invention. This isn't science, it's a scene.

The second-strongest knock you can make against this is that it's all bro-y, the kind of stuff you'd hear blasting out of a frat house while guys named Trevor smoke salvia inside. Again, SO FUCKING WHAT. That's not considered a knock against other art

We went through a genuine indie sonic aesthetic in the 2010s (a bunch of Vampire Weekend / MGMT soundalikes) and nobody wants to honor it at the level of, like, 80s synthpop or 90s grunge.

I would call this genre something like "hipster runoff," inspired by the eponymous publication and by this line in a review of Reptar's Body Faucet:
>an acoustic reggae cover in a crack den. … Afrobeat-tinged equivalent of landfill indie
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2012/jun/28/reptar-body-faucet-review

It is impossible to overstate how much humans have benefited from having other animal societies to observe: ants, bees, dogs, dolphins, whales, apes, etc.

Can you imagine what a mindfuck it would be to be the only social species on the planet asking, "Maaaybe this is why our society is the way it is, but we have no way to get out of it so idk."

That Tao Lin essay on autism is one of the most thought-provoking thing I've read in years. I can't really get it off my mind, and I read it when it first came out.

Look upon your polis and fall in love with her.

@niplav I would simply analyze the object into its constituent parts, evaluate them each independently, and then calculate the aggregate evaluation based on the weighted average of the parts.

Gorgias: problematic fav

I just realized the protagonist in "Mean Girls" has a name that's pronounced like "Katie" but it's commonly mispronounced as if she were named "Catty," as in cruel, vindictive, etc.

The alternative is the mindset that you follow polite protocol to the letter in order to have the standing to lecture everyone.

The contrast between the moralism and the smugness, somehow, is actually the worst part of it. The moralism says "I am scrupulous in my treatment of others" but the smugness says "I am waiting for the opportunity to be cruel to someone for the sake of a distant and inhuman principle."

What is this pattern of reaction-formation? How does a person end up like this?

Contrary to the Nietzscheans, I think I really really really do depend on the kindness and generosity of others, but I am also vertiginously close to acknowledging that those people don't owe me shit.
You know what all those polite terms are there for? "Dear X," "Please," "Thank you." They reflect the reality that I have no control over you, that I NEED you to uphold some basic human dignities, and I am frankly reduced to pleading with you to alter your self-conduct in many cases.

I have immediate disgust for people who think that they have the right to speak new orders to strangers, first and before anything else, in the patter of a kindergarten teacher.

I'd rather throw in my lot with the Nietzscheans than with people who are think they get to lecture anyone and everyone about their peccadilloes with a "Dear people," "It only takes a few seconds," and a "Thanks!" because at least the Nietzscheans realize I am not a masterless puppet but rather that I am self-mastering

@donni Painfully self-ironizing about my awareness of the difference

"It is a law of nature for the greater to dominate over the lesser"
THEN DO IT
BECOME GREATER, NOBLER, FREER THAN YOUR RIVALS

Athens lost the Civil War the instant that it ceded its moral superiority over the slavers. This is how you produce Thucydides in a culture that was worthy of Pericles. This is how you become dominated by Philip II when your culture was worthy of being liberated by Socrates.

I'm writing a bunch of examples of counter-arguments that can be provided from different perspectives, and while I think that an assholish personality is required for each of these perspectives, they each have an admirable degree of internal logic.

If Athens had supported the helot rebellion like the Spartans feared, they would have suffered no additional negative consequences (the Spartans reacted as if the Athenians were intent to support the helots), Athens would have won the Peloponnesian War in advance by ethical means, and the unrivaled democratic empire would have been an uncompromised example to history.