damsel, here I am
come and rub upon my belly with your guava jelly
This Week’s Posts
Monday, February 14th - I Want a Political Movement That's...
A little rundown of who I am (and who I’ve always been) politically.
Tuesday, February 15th - Let's Get You Started with... Sludge
Me trying to get you to listen to music I compare to sewage.
Thursday, February 16th - Are You Sure You Want to Say That White People Are the Lone Agents in Human Affairs, the Main Characters, the Sole Movers of History?
The return of my concern with the way we talk about people of color and agency.
Friday, February 18th - Could Be a Tough Time for the "All-Digital Middle" in Media (subscriber only)
If you can’t offer prestige or freedom, it’s going to be hard to keep talent.
Plus we finished up the latest book club. had a subscriber-only video, and a subscriber-only open thread.
From the Archives
Song of the Week
The ultimate Righteous Brothers, I’d say - takes the good parts of “Bring Back That Loving Feeling” and takes them to 11.
NFL Picks of the Week
Sadly, I bet the Bengals moneyline, so I lost. But I recommend the Bengals +4 here, so we won! And that brings us to a nice, round .500 for the year. Can’t wait for next season. For the record I ended up being up a few hundred dollars for the small portion of the season online betting was available to me, even having lost on my Super Bowl bet.
Win-Loss-Push: 17-17-0
Book Recommendation
On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense, Friedrich Nietzsche, 1873
Once upon a time, in some out-of-the-way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing. That was the most arrogant and mendacious minute of ‘world history,’ but nevertheless, it was only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths, the star cooled and congealed, and the clever beasts had to die. One might invent such a fable, and yet he still would not have adequately illustrated how miserable, how shadowy and transient, how aimless and arbitrary the human intellect looks within nature. There were eternities during which it did not exist. And when it is all over with the human intellect, nothing will have happened.
All hope for humanity lies in individuals. I do believe in the power and value of the romantic ideal, and in human happiness, and grace. That said, I think we are born in fear of death, we live in fear of death, and we will die in sheer terror, and those who believe in a human consciousness capable of accurately rendering the world around them do so in denial of death.
Incidentally - it’s hard for me to imagine a more fundamentally morally troubling figure than Nietzsche, among those who have been widely read and digested. It’s truly bizarre to me that people want to banish Heidegger to the realm of the forbidden books, but keep Nietzsche around. Nietzsche out-Nazis the Nazis; Nietzsche feels towards most everyone the way anti-Black racists feel towards Black people. That near universality of his derision is not somehow an excuse for that derision. It makes it all the worse. Nietzsche is a brilliant, necessary monster, one of the worst in the history of the intellect, and this book of his is essential.
Comment of the Week
An anecdote I've returned to in my head so many times I think it might just have replaced all my other opinions about current capitalism: A few years ago I had a job interview for a state government lawyer position. One of their interview questions was how I handled “self-care” when work was very stressful. I told them that I worked best when I had a strict work/home balance - I'd stay late at work if needed, work the 14-hour day on a big case deadline, etc., but in order to function I needed work to be work and home to be home, and to leave work at the office whenever I finally left. They straight-up told me that I was supposed to say something like “yoga on lunch break” or “taking a bath.” Then implied that I'd told them I didn't intend to work more than the bare minimum.
Message taken! "Self-care" only counts if it's stuff you're buying. Embodiment through consumption! - Sarah
That’s it for tonight. If you follow the Book Club you’ll get my first post on The Buried Book tonight. Domani.
A few years back, my company had tons of "mindfulness" crap. They would bring in visiting lecturers on it. They had a meditation room. They had us put our name on a "mood elevator." Leaders would regularly mention maintaining their mindfulness. I think I'll make a post about it.
I think it's a combination of 1) compa it's wanting to pretend their being helpful when they're not and 2) a genuine grift on the part of corporate consultants.
You're the master of well-crafted ambivalence: "This guy sucks galactically, you have to read him!"
About Kat's book - I confess I liked it, glued moles and all, because she won me over with a very direct reference to one of my favorite songs ever, John Darnielle's "No Children", that uncovers large chunks of the book as a novelization of that song. I like Rosenfield's non-fiction writing in general and, once I picked up that thread, I was no longer reading a novel but being a fellow fan, playing along with her nifty little exercise.