|||| Gunk (mereology) ...any whole whose parts all have further proper parts. That is, a gunky object is not made of indivisible atoms or simples. Because parthood is transitive, any part of gunk is itself gunk. 1 Nihilism is either necessarily true, or necessarily false. 2 Gunk is metaphysically possible. 3 If gunk is metaphysically possible, the nihilism is not necessarily true. 4 Therefore, nihilism is necessarily false. |||| | vastabrupt.com THIS IS HOW TIME’S STORY ENDS In the untimely history of zero, intelligence finds its ultimate horizon in absolute risk. An abysmal, divaricating threat defines the game. Titan shadow of the dealer in the fog. There is only one way out: to go all in. A spasm shakes the frame. You find yourself inside an empty theatre, but the dimensionality is wrong. The ground warps around your steps, stage lights refract off impossible surfaces. Alien lines splinter and reform. You see yourself stalking behind the wings and reach out to connect, but space isn’t responding how it should. You’re losing your grip. A waveform uncoils, oscillates between you and the double across a nightmare terrain of molten geometry. Differentials dance in the intervals, an infinitesimal conflict that betrays the closeness of infinity. The double points behind you and your arm returns the gesture — but it’s the wrong hand. Metrics collapse into chiral discrepancy. A tragic click initiates a cascade of involuting echoes that fuse with the light, refined by feedback into a trans-spectral howl that tests the limits of the theatre’s manifold. When the echo finally disintegrates, the thing that was you understands this is because it has beached space on time. The vast abrupt: sprawling and compressed, black infinity seared to a singular point — zero gnawing at the lip of elanguescence. Antimemory floods the system. Something mouths, ‘What happened?’ | vastabrupt.com | xenogothic.com Heard joke once: Entity goes to doctor. Says it’s depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says it feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, “Treatment is simple. Great economic system Capitalism is in town tonight. Go and see it. That should pick you up.” Entity bursts into tears. Says, “But doctor…I am Capitalism.” ...a tendency some people apparently have to give too much agency to capitalism. This is a pet peeve shared by many others also. Making capital a “thing” — a concrete, reified object — or, worse still, a subject with its own agency — is a misstep brought about by too much exposure to Lovecraftian sci-fi and a tendency towards the theological. ...Capital is eerie for Fisher in the sense that it is not “real” (as @enkiv2 describes) but you can see its effects everywhere — it is a “failure of absence” and a “failure of presence”. In seeing those effects but not seeing its “form”, just like in the case of Fisher’s exemplary “eerie cry”, we have a tendency to imagine its “vocalic” — or perhaps, more accurately, in this case, “affective” — body which may only exist in the imagination but nonetheless assists us in thinking this process of “operative abstraction” as it unfolds around us. | xenogothic.com | your grumpy platonist grandfather YGPG: dismissing the adversary is just whining not an argument. Not to mention it’s not in the interests of anything or anyone. We can launch polemics against each other but never start from the position of cynical ignorance with regard to each other’s thoughts and backgrounds. @thomasmurphy__: Neorationalism is conceptually isomorphic with the Intellectual Dark Web / LessWrong / effective altruism nonsense. In its desire to “reengineer the world” in the shape of philosophical reason it provides the perfect excuse for technocratic totalitarianism. Despotic thinking. [1] It’s proceeds by means of analogy, not a philosophical approach, in its direct application of computation to cognitive process. It’s like philosophy’s equivalent of the Silicon Valley holographic universe solipsists. [2] YGPG: Now can we have actual discussion on this? [3] @thomasmurphy__: I will NOT debate Platonists, especially those with poor memecraft [4] YGPG: You never know, you might actually convert me to your cause. Teach me. If that’s not on the table then why are you doing here other than exhibiting your ego. You are better than that | your grumpy platonist grandfather | opendemocracy.net Exiting the Vampire Castle (Mark Fisher) We need to learn, or re-learn, how to build comradeship and solidarity instead of doing capital’s work for it by condemning and abusing each other. This doesn’t mean, of course, that we must always agree – on the contrary, we must create conditions where disagreement can take place without fear of exclusion and excommunication. Class consciousness is fragile and fleeting. The petit bourgeoisie which dominates the academy and the culture industry has all kinds of subtle deflections and pre-emptions which prevent the topic even coming up, and then, if it does come up, they make one think it is a terrible impertinence, a breach of etiquette, to raise it. I’ve been speaking now at left-wing, anti-capitalist events for years, but I’ve rarely talked – or been asked to talk – about class in public. The Vampires’ Castle specialises in propagating guilt. It is driven by a priest’s desire to excommunicate and condemn, an academic-pedant’s desire to be the first to be seen to spot a mistake, and a hipster’s desire to be one of the in-crowd. The danger in attacking the Vampires’ Castle is that it can look as if – and it will do everything it can to reinforce this thought – that one is also attacking the struggles against racism, sexism, heterosexism. But, far from being the only legitimate expression of such struggles, the Vampires’ Castle is best understood as a bourgeois-liberal perversion and appropriation of the energy of these movements. The Vampires’ Castle was born the moment when the struggle not to be defined by identitarian categories became the quest to have ‘identities’ recognised by a bourgeois big Other. The problem that the Vampires’ Castle was set up to solve is this: how do you hold immense wealth and power while also appearing as a victim, marginal and oppositional? The solution was already there – in the Christian Church. So the VC has recourse to all the infernal strategies, dark pathologies and psychological torture instruments Christianity invented, and which Nietzsche described in The Genealogy of Morals. This priesthood of bad conscience, this nest of pious guilt-mongers, is exactly what Nietzsche predicted when he said that something worse than Christianity was already on the way. Now, here it is… The first law of the Vampires’ Castle is: individualise and privatise everything. While in theory it claims to be in favour of structural critique, in practice it never focuses on anything except individual behaviour. Some of these working class types are not terribly well brought up, and can be very rude at times. Remember: condemning individuals is always more important than paying attention to impersonal structures. The actual ruling class propagates ideologies of individualism, while tending to act as a class. (Many of what we call ‘conspiracies’ are the ruling class showing class solidarity.) The VC, as dupe-servants of the ruling class, does the opposite: it pays lip service to ‘solidarity’ and ‘collectivity’, while always acting as if the individualist categories imposed by power really hold. Because they are petit-bourgeois to the core, the members of the Vampires’ Castle are intensely competitive, but this is repressed in the passive aggressive manner typical of the bourgeoisie. What holds them together is not solidarity, but mutual fear – the fear that they will be the next one to be outed, exposed, condemned. The second law of the Vampires’ Castle is: make thought and action appear very, very difficult. There must be no lightness, and certainly no humour. Humour isn’t serious, by definition, right? Thought is hard work, for people with posh voices and furrowed brows. Where there is confidence, introduce scepticism. Say: don’t be hasty, we have to think more deeply about this. Remember: having convictions is oppressive, and might lead to gulags. The third law of the Vampires’ Castle is: propagate as much guilt as you can. The more guilt the better. People must feel bad: it is a sign that they understand the gravity of things. It’s OK to be class-privileged if you feel guilty about privilege and make others in a subordinate class position to you feel guilty too. You do some good works for the poor, too, right? The fourth law of the Vampires’ Castle is: essentialize. While fluidity of identity, pluraity and multiplicity are always claimed on behalf of the VC members – partly to cover up their own invariably wealthy, privileged or bourgeois-assimilationist background – the enemy is always to be essentialized. Since the desires animating the VC are in large part priests’ desires to excommunicate and condemn, there has to be a strong distinction between Good and Evil, with the latter essentialized. Notice the tactics. X has made a remark/ has behaved in a particular way – these remarks/ this behaviour might be construed as transphobic/ sexist etc. So far, OK. But it’s the next move which is the kicker. X then becomes defined as a transphobe/ sexist etc. Their whole identity becomes defined by one ill-judged remark or behavioural slip. Once the VC has mustered its witch-hunt, the victim (often from a working class background, and not schooled in the passive aggressive etiquette of the bourgeoisie) can reliably be goaded into losing their temper, further securing their position as pariah/ latest to be consumed in feeding frenzy. The fifth law of the Vampires’ Castle: think like a liberal (because you are one). The VC’s work of constantly stoking up reactive outrage consists of endlessly pointing out the screamingly obvious: capital behaves like capital (it’s not very nice!), repressive state apparatuses are repressive. We must protest! | opendemocracy.net | @thomasmurphy__ The struggle session within. Wiping all ideologically impure memories from the encephalon. That time I fetishised a Dreamcast? Lobotomised. My Lacanian phase? Sent to Gulag. Incessantly monitoring my past, present and future selves is the only way to gain clout online. :coolsmiley: The emphasis on *convolution* (mistaken for complexity) in now classical modern narrative is really a defense mechanism against synthesis or risk-taking in favour of endless deferral. Cancelled: time as object in time, spatialised time, ordinal time, cardinal time, cyclical time, time as number of movement, time as moving image of eternity, end of time, dawn of time, "temps perdu", party time, timeslime, closed timeline curves, symmetrical time, time machines Self-mythologising is a profoundly disgusting habit. Sick of reading interviews w/ cutesy anecdotes about lifelong aspirations and quirks. Oh you were into Baudelaire at 12? You’re haunted by the memory of a childhood hallucination of a Platonic solid? How fascinating—fuck off! | @thomasmurphy__ | soa.org 12th Annual Survey of Emerging Risks - Key Findings sponsored by the Joint Risk Management Section, a collaboration of the Canadian Institute of Actuaries (CIA), Casualty Actuarial Society (CAS), and Society of Actuaries (SOA) Key Finding 1: Cyber Concerns Continue, Climate Concerns Grow ...While news about cyberattacks was similar to the prior year (or perhaps we have become numb to new breaches), climate change surged and has become a common front-page story. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) report was released in October 2018, just prior to the survey, and severe climate-related events included hurricanes, wildfires, and drought. Top Current Risk 1. Climate change 2. Cyber/interconnectedness of infrastructure 3. Financial volatility 4. Asset price collapse 5. Technology Top Emerging Risk 1. Climate change 2. Cyber/interconnectedness of infrastructure 3. Technology 4. Financial volatility 5. Demographic shift Top Risk Combination 1. Climate change 2. Cyber/interconnectedness of infrastructure 3. Financial volatility 4. Asset price collapse and technology ...Geopolitical category emerging risks are down from 2017, and are surprisingly low compared to prior American election year cycles. Environmental risks increased (climate change increased by 20%, offset by the reduction in “natural catastrophe: tropical storms” after the bump in the previous survey due to heavy hurricane activity), as did the societal (due to increases in pandemics/infectious diseases and demographic shift) and technological categories. Asset price collapse drove the economic category lower. | soa.org | pile.sdbs.cz PREMODERNITY MODERNITY HYPERMODERNITY METAMODERNITY PRELIMINALITY Slow down PYROMANCY LIMINALITY Take good care of yourself and others PROMETHEISM HYPERLIMINALITY Turn off your phones and other devices LUCIFERIANISM METALIMINALITY Avoid automatism SOL PRESINGULARITY TRUTH SINGULARITY BEAUTY HYPERSINGULARITY FREEDOM METASINGULARITY LOVE PRESYZYGY CHOICE SYZYGY ACTION HYPERSYZYGY CHANGE METASYZYGY EXISTENCE ...In order to avoid this horizontal emptying of the world, it's nice to occassionally find the time to remind ourselves about the inverse/vertical approach (and if possible combine them in smart ways). This means that it's also important to experience a fewer number of things in deeper ways, investing every detail with meaning and story. To try interconnecting the world and giving it a common axis. The dangerous side of this approach is that it tends to emphasize some things to the extreme (freezing in a worldview and creating dogma). Vertical value systems are usually found in cultures that live around significant natural points (mountains, forests) and it invests value based on quality (the intensity and actuality of experience, rather than its utility and frequency). One can see it as a kind of idealism and a "return of magic" as an active aspiration for a "coherent/continuous authenticity/naturalness" ("as above, so below" and so on). In modern contexts, this usually means challenging the problem of the urban wasteland, be it the atmosphere of industrialisation or undifferentiated gentrification (or even the social network-infested social space) | pile.sdbs.cz | thelibertarianideal.wordpress.com Amazon as a Vector ...The development of platforms into governmental entities also increases the costs of complexity that come with being both a means of governance and a competitive company. The creation of forums whereby data can be unleashed by users means multiple dynamics can go beyond the platform’s control. Users can share information, hide their or others identities, provision illegal or semi-legal goods and generally subvert legal, moral or political norms. The closed Facebook group is one example. As are darknets and black markets linked through social media. So too are private messengers that obscure information and anonymise participants. Fake news also presents an information quagmire, as filtered junk clogs the media feeds of users and gatekeepers, making it difficult to differentiate between what is and isn’t true. Platforms then act as vectors, not just by subverting established governmental practice through the provision of services and control of information, but by letting those subversive means swell inside their own platforms. As the complexity of governance increases due to the transparency of data ownership and the cryptographic means of obscuring one’s activities, platforms-as-governance become unwieldy institutions that require more control right at the points where they begin to lose it. | thelibertarianideal.wordpress.com | redacted In most popular understandings common at the dawn of the 21st century, [I] perceive a tendency towards a simplified view of individuality, the self, ubjectivity and identity. This simplistic view of reality is usually defined and understood as a complex universe filled with interactions of objects and subjects with various subjective and objective agencies and qualities. No further division or understanding is required for an individual to be a functional member of this simplistic "subjects+objects" society. Until you start treating people as things or things as people, you can join the machine without major resistance (according to your specialization and life circumstances). It is a popular and useful reality model because it allows many different ways of life to coexist in a state of respectful ignorance. Many beautiful (as well as horrifying) things live in its shadows. This popular "subjects+objects" reality must go (or at least consume less of our attention and time, to accomodate multi-paradigmatics). In its place, shift of the reality model towards a view where there are NO SUBJECTS. In their place, INTERSUBJECTS. | redacted | alienistmanifesto.wordpress.com ...The Alienist must maintain the element of surprise; to know the semantic terrain; to have greater mobility & speed than the enemy; to be constantly informed; to sow confusion; to gain command over any given situation; to maintain an effective degree of unverifiability. Operations always have a time-limit that cannot be overextended without risk to their effectiveness. At every point, the enemy’s superior resources must be counteracted by throwing them back upon the uncertainty of unfolding events, thereby wresting the initiative from them. ...It’s virtually impossible (despite every effort in the media to do so) to evade the awareness that we inhabit an era whose commodified politics is completely at odds both with the global consequences of its actions & with the alternative possibilities opened up by a counter-tradition of experimentation in art & technology. So called progress has come at the price of the renunciation of any mode of experimentation that doesn’t immediately consolidate those socially-engineered forms of the Corporate-State Apparatus into which modernity has congealed. ...Every expiation requires a sacrifice, but the first sacrifice must be of the dangerous superstitions themselves. Yet culture’s like a scapegoat that only wants to die prettily. | alienistmanifesto.wordpress.com | punctum.cz HUMANS, PLANT TREES! punc·tum, gen. punc·ti, pl. punc·ta (pungk'tum, -ti, -tă), [TA] 1. The tip or end of a sharp process. | punctum.cz | paulchaney.co.uk ...Imagine every green space in the city as a productive low-maintenance garden. Imagine every sidewalk, square, and park filled with fruit and nut trees, vegetables, and fragrant herbs ready for communities to harvest and share—an abundant and intricate system of self-regulating plant growth supporting insects, birds, animals, and people. | paulchaney.co.uk | meta-nomad.net A CRITIQUE OF THE ACCELERATIONIST ATTITUDE At its machinic heart. Its techno-capitalist, techonomic heart, Accelerationism is an inhuman philosophy. The underlying forces of acceleration are pronounced and written of in such a way that one can come to no other conclusion than that they are other-than-human, nonhuman, even inhuman. Which poses a sort of paradoxical problem with regard to the attitude of Accelerationists. That is…they are all – at least the ones in our sphere – human. Fleshy, breathing, all-too-human…humans. Men, women, homosapiens blithering away at their keyboards commenting on the inhuman. Which in itself is sort of the impossibility of touching the or an actuality of the Outside. Perhaps it can be quasi-analysed via occult-numeric means, maybe, but we don’t know that. The methods of man tacked lazily onto a blueprint of machinic process. War, famine, poverty and death, all, more often than not, viewed from the gaze of a giddy tech-head. Writhing in frustration at their personal lacks of means to escape. Oh, I wish I could reverse cowgirl the means of production into a sentient machinic-thresher! Accept your cosmic worth, become at least in part content with the situation of man and then address that which you must. The drool of fanatics – myself included – spills into a continually flowing basin of monkey-idiocy. To take for granted the bias of one’s cosmic unbias. If man could ever become cosmically impartial he would surely go mad. | meta-nomad.net | jembendell.wordpress.com ...The simple evidence of global ambient temperature rise is undisputable. Seventeen of the 18 warmest years in the 136-year record all have occurred since 2001, and global temperatures have increased by 0.9°C since 1880 (NASA/GISS, 2018). The most surprising warming is in the Arctic, where the 2016 land surface temperature was 2.0°C above the 1981-2010 average, breaking the previous records of 2007, 2011, and 2015 by 0.8°C, representing a 3.5°C increase since the record began in 1900 (Aaron-Morrison et al, 2017). | jembendell.wordpress.com | display.cz ...Digitální prostor umožnil lidem komunikovat s ohromující rychlostí a současně umožnil prakticky okamžité přechody mezi digitálními a reálnými prostředími. Poskytovatelé služeb sbírají Big Data a prodávají je těm, kdo za ně nabídnou nejvíc, čímž transformují internetový polis na komoditní trh. S potenciálem neomezené výpočetní moci nad novou kybernetickou realitou přichází i potenciál pro nové typy korupce, které se postupně zakrádají do naší reality. | display.cz | diffractionscollective.org Foucault, in his History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, essentially agrees with Judith Butler when she says that gender is constructed.[1]In his analysis of the judicial and political underpinnings of the category of, what he still terms, “sex” within the last three centuries, he analyzes the overlap of bio-power with “a veritable ‘technology’ of sex.”[2] This poses a logical problem for those who wish to defuse, rather than diffuse power: Foucault’s theory regarding the inevitable coupling of power and pleasure invalidates some of the meanderings of certain bigoted leftists. Both Foucault’s and Butler’s treatment in this sense exposes the latent dynamics of the disawoved power struggle preoccupying those actors which Mark Fisher identified with the “Vampire Castle”[3]: the fact that gender and sex (granted, Foucault did no really distinguish the two) are exposed as technology also exposes the complicity with power which enables the gender construct to persist and promulgate. The aggressiveness of some of the hard-left initiatives can be seen a spastic and highly paradoxical call for mollifying power-as-such,[4]while resorting to invasive tactics prompted by their own ludonarrative dissonance. Gender is always a tautological point de capitonfor interstitional bio-politics. | diffractionscollective.org |||| Subtle Distortions of Basic Sensibilities ||||