A great description of pretty much every Smiths' song. If you miss the funniness, melodrama, and kitch, rooted in the implied author's ironic distance from their own youth, you miss the song entirely. Applies to the Violent Femmes, too.
Pleased to realize the Pogues' Dirty Old Town plagiarizes Hank Williams' Lost Highway. Annoyed to realize Ballad of the Green Berets does too.
Curious bit of philosophical history: a young Nietzsche and his (awful) sister ran into Mazzini on a trip to the Italian Alps, and they spent a day traveling with him. From Sue Prideaux's biography:
Good list of donation and volunteer links here: bsky.app/profile/leec...
Springfield (eating the dogs / cats) Ohio desperately needs your help with ICE.
Ohio Gov Mike DeWine said it will be “the next Minneapolis” as 15,000 Haitians (1/4th of the entire city) will have their TPS status prematurely revoked Weds Feb 4th.
Here are links to donate and volunteer directly: 1/
Minneapolis is 2.6mil people.
Springfield is 60,000 with 15,000 of that population under threat of deportation (1/4th of the whole city.)
Springfield is 26 square miles. 1000 ICE agents is 40 agents per mile.
People are terrified. We need all the help we can get.
If the differences can't be resolved, strategic voting is "wrong" in the sense that it's based on a false belief and not in fact "strategic": trying to change the core ethical framework of millions of voters is far less pragmatic than politically forcing a small number of politicians to the left.
"If we'd stepped onto the precipitous slide to fascism at a point further up the slide, we wouldn't be so far down the slide right now" is both absolutely true and absolutely beside the point.
bsky.app/profile/lite...
In this respect, our feckless universities mirror our feckless opposition party, both thoroughly corrupted by a phony spirit of seriousness. Taking a position is seen as a pathology, an embarrassing failure to serious personhood, defined as continually adjusting to, rather than adjusting, reality.
True education is the constant disruption of ataraxia.
Although cowardice, bullshit, and cynicism motivated Texas A&M's Plato censorship, they've accidentally arrived at true ancient skepticism: absolute suspension of judgment entails absolute moral conformism. Being truly neutral or non-ideological requires accepting the status quo as default.
Right? Apparently Cobain, the Pixies, the Breeders, Husker Du, Sonic Youth, the Relacements, the Cure, the Feelies, the Melvins, Nick Cave, the Meat Puppies, Galaxie 500, and Siouxsie presumably all recorded Beatles covers because they hated them.
Nietzsche's The Gay Science, aphorism 334: "One must learn to love."
For 2,000 years one could reasonably argue either “democracy has never worked” or “true democracy has never been tried.” (One still can.)
Lenin's philosophical writing is so embarrassing. After claiming there's no differences between Berkeley, Fichte, and Mach (who tries to move materialism out of the 18th century), he goes out of his way to argue Hegel isn't *really* an idealist. The word "absolute" didn't give you a clue, buddy?
we must add a supplement in order to distinguish genuine kindness from the super- ficial variety which is nothing but lack of strength, and which is injurious to the capacity for happiness. What we have here is a special case of a general kind of disposition which exists whenever a man easily gives in to impulses of the moment, without, so to speak, first consulting the other impulses. In such a case the single dispositions are but loosely joined to- gether, as it were; they can be excited separately, with- out the others thereby coming into play. The unity which constitutes a strong character is lacking. In a strong character it is as if the inclinations were all directed from one fixed center.
What appears here in a single example holds univer- sally. The content of the moral precepts that hold in a community, and that are taken over completely into the moral consciousness of its members, depends en- tirely upon its living conditions, upon its size and strength, its relation to the surrounding world, its civilization, customs, and religious ideas. I forego the introduction of further evidence, and refer to Wester- marck's Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, and to Spencer's Data of Ethics, which contain rich mate- rial. We see in the dependence of moral valuations upon the states of human society a sure indication that the content of morality is actually determined by so- ciety.
These functions constitute something elevated and great in men in the double sense that their power in the psychic life is enormous, and that they are the source of very intense joys. Moments in which one becomes aware of their activity are moments of exalted feeling. Apart from certain exceptions, every vehement psychic process, every deployment of power, and lively activity is pleasant.
we should understand better why a human life can attain its highest value only by pass- ing through the extremes. A life such as the modest poet Morike prayed for: Wollest mit Freuden Und wollest mit Leiden Mich nicht uberschuttenl dock in der Mitten Liegt holdes Bescheiden. . . .* could not be truly great, not because it lacked the deep- est suffering, but because of the absence of the greatest joys, the path t
More Nietzschean moments in Schlick's moral theory.
we must add a supplement in order to distinguish genuine kindness from the super- ficial variety which is nothing but lack of strength, and which is injurious to the capacity for happiness. What we have here is a special case of a general kind of disposition which exists whenever a man easily gives in to impulses of the moment, without, so to speak, first consulting the other impulses. In such a case the single dispositions are but loosely joined to- gether, as it were; they can be excited separately, with- out the others thereby coming into play. The unity which constitutes a strong character is lacking. In a strong character it is as if the inclinations were all directed from one fixed center.
What appears here in a single example holds univer- sally. The content of the moral precepts that hold in a community, and that are taken over completely into the moral consciousness of its members, depends en- tirely upon its living conditions, upon its size and strength, its relation to the surrounding world, its civilization, customs, and religious ideas. I forego the introduction of further evidence, and refer to Wester- marck's Origin and Development of Moral Ideas, and to Spencer's Data of Ethics, which contain rich mate- rial. We see in the dependence of moral valuations upon the states of human society a sure indication that the content of morality is actually determined by so- ciety.
These functions constitute something elevated and great in men in the double sense that their power in the psychic life is enormous, and that they are the source of very intense joys. Moments in which one becomes aware of their activity are moments of exalted feeling. Apart from certain exceptions, every vehement psychic process, every deployment of power, and lively activity is pleasant.
we should understand better why a human life can attain its highest value only by pass- ing through the extremes. A life such as the modest poet Morike prayed for: Wollest mit Freuden Und wollest mit Leiden Mich nicht uberschuttenl dock in der Mitten Liegt holdes Bescheiden. . . .* could not be truly great, not because it lacked the deep- est suffering, but because of the absence of the greatest joys, the path t
More Nietzschean moments in Schlick's moral theory.
I’d completely forgotten that Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna) made an album cover in the style of the old Vintage edition of Nietzsche’s The Gay Science.
Schlick thinks of Wissenschaft as, ideally, a kind of game, in so far as it is an activity primarily undertaken for its own sake, and which can be pleasurable without being guided by practical interests (see also Mormann 2010, 269–272). This is how Schlick interprets Nietzsche’s notion of “joyful wisdom”, the joy involved in the game of pursuing truth.
Secondly, perhaps the most important aspect of Schlick’s lectures is the way in which it presents Nietzsche’s relation to positivism. Schlick divides Nietzsche’s work into three phases: (i) an early metaphysical phase under the influence of Schopenhauer and Wagner, (ii) an anti-metaphysical positivist phase, and (iii) a phase in which he is concerned with the development of an approach to values within positivist strictures. Schlick is careful to argue that the third phase in Nietzsche’s development is still compatible with positivism, and that the late Nietzsche is not a metaphysician.
Schlick summarily rejects the claim that Nietzsche’s thought had heavily influenced the development of German culture and politics before 1914. It suffices for Schlick (2013a, 79) to note that few political or military leaders in Germany had even heard of Nietzsche before the British press informed them of his influence on them. Even if some German policy-makers did hear of Nietzsche, they were by no means enthusiastic about his work.27 Furthermore, Schlick connects this first claim to the second one, insofar as he doubts that Nietzsche’s work has been widely understood in Germany.
Looks like Schlick may even get Nietzsche right in a number of ways!
3. The Concept of Will ...a primitive psychology under the influence of the idea of substance treats the matter as if the choice or decision in the conflict of motives were made by a special power, the "will," which, watching the struggle from without, intervenes and bestows the prize... Experience fails to disclose any such substratum which stands behind the appearances... No, there is present no "act of will" that, added to the oscillation of the ends-in-view, and the final triumph of one of them, decides which shall triumph; but the whole process that we have described is itself the act of will.
Amusing to learn how much Moritz Schlick's "Problem of Ethics" cribs from Nietzsche's moral psychology. (A quick search reveals that Schlick was even a confessed admirer!)
1/ I'm excited to share that Franz Knappik’s and my Cambridge Element on Hegel and Colonialism is finally out – open access below! We trace how Hegel defends European colonial rule, including transatlantic slavery, and how that defence runs through his entire philosophical system.
Thread below ⬇️
Over 2 million people across Italy have rallied in more than 100 cities for a one-day general strike.
The ruling itself is remarkable, but it closes with something I've never seen: a 12-page assessment of Trump himself as an ignorant bully, braggart and threat to free speech and the republic writ-large. storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
BREAKING: WE WON!!!
💥 💥 💥
Federal Judge William G. Young ruled today in our lawsuit against the Trump administration that the policy of arresting, detaining, & deporting noncitizen students & faculty members for their pro-Palestinian advocacy violates the 1st Amendment.
Full ruling here:
Yes, I was surprised by the many Brainard and Jim Thompson references, then I learned both were from Oklahoma, where it's set and director Sterlin Harjo is from. His other show, the superb Reservation Dogs, is also set in Oklahoma.
To be clear: this entire “we’ve got to run more pro-lifers” insanity is because literally a week ago polling showed that Democrats would prefer politicians like AOC and Mamdani over Jefferies and Schumer by, let me emphasize this, a 20 point fucking margin.
www.politico.com/news/2025/09...
"In a landmark study, OpenAI researchers reveal that large language models will always produce plausible but false outputs, even with perfect data, due to fundamental statistical and computational limits."
www.computerworld.com/article/4059...
