the message that people should take away from sandwich guy is that getting blackout and picking fights with cops always ends well. I am a lawyer* and this is legal advice** *this is disputed by the bar, whose legitimacy I do not recognize **for the court of life, before which all are plaintiffs

Obsessed w this. 😍 anthonymoser.github.io/writing/ai/h...

One of my unsupported hot takes is that the loneliness crisis is caused in part by people not being bored enough. In most of my classes the students all stare at their phones until class begins. We’ve lost the precious boredom of eventually actually being bored enough to engage with others.

You know all those "strong men build" hustle guys have never actually read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations deeply because it's basically an old man who is at the apex of his world's social order constantly complaining about how none of it makes him happy and it's all meaningless

I think one of the hardest things for decent people to understand is that sometimes folks just plain enjoy cruelty. You can not reason them out of this. There is no winning them over. So long as the permission structure to be cruel is in place, they will delight in cruelty.

I am a man who it’s difficult to get to know. I’m reserved, actually an introvert, find social interactions exhausting even when they’re fun, and am generally quite uptight. Fortunately, I also frequently say the wrong things.

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works and let me know if you have any questions! 🤗

i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times

Write,' said that voice, and the prophet answered, 'For whom.' The voice spoke, 'For the dead, for those you love in past generations,' "Will they read it.)' 'Yes, for they return as posterity.' [As quoted by Kierkegaard in his notebooks from the late 1830's.]

im sorry you cant have food but we gave all our money to one guy who “invented” 2 day shipping and another thats promising robot butlers so you can see how our hands are tied

inbox is full of work and reminders and tasks and not even one tiny treat. I object.

Me in bed, about to sleep: I'm going to write eight books tomorrow, smash my goals, fix everything I need to fix, seize the day, TAKE OVER THE WORLD! Me the next morning: shit... here we go again

you never know if it might be your last monday morning so make sure you disdain it properly

my woke take is that entirely too many people feel entitled to the benefits of a social contract while not feeling bound by the responsibilities of said contract

Sorry I'm cranky, I need to stare into the void for an hour.

Happy "practicing politics the right way" day to those who celebrate.

*sigh*

My brother sends me this every time I tell him about a theory reading

cry havoc and let slip the frogs of war

Recurring gripe of mine, but there’s less genre media than I’d like that’s neither “The monster is actually a metaphor for the trauma of late stage capitalism” nor “but the one thing the demons of hell haven’t counted on is Capt. ShootMan KillDude, USMC”, like I want more middlebrow, c’mon

a friend of mine in antifa told me that antifa's headquarters is SHEIN and if the company fell the whole network would fall

The number of grad school essays I wrote on my knees on the train on the way to grad school...

Abusive people don’t want to just physically hurt you, they want to psychologically break you. Thats why the harms doled out are reframed as the righteous meting out of justice. We need to be clear that that’s what this White House is up to. www.whitehouse.gov/articles/202...

From my new piece on Trump as the pre-WW2 world trying to claw its way out of its very fresh grave: catvalente.substack.com/p/brother-ca...

Reading the Hobbit to my daughter. Every passage is like: "The goblins were upon them! Gandalf did something magic and there was a cloud of smoke or some such. Who cares? Anyway the important thing is..." ::several pages on goblin anthropology::

Nature and the environment permeate the language viscerally. Irish predates English by a millennium. Its early writing system, Ogham, written vertically as a series of lines and strokes, has an alphabet based on trees.​ The Irish language is a joy. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

My cat, an idiot: Those ornaments look exactly like my toys. Why can’t I play with them? Me, pinnacle of animals: That felt frog wearing a top hat is to celebrate The Lord

Real talk, this is why genAI is definitionally incapable of producing anything creative or innovative: it's simply not messy enough. 🧵

Absolutely glorious!

Maybe fairy tales did us dirty by starting near the end... Trapped girls have stories that start just before some prince gets interested. There were long, dark years before that happened, and those matter, too. It's easy to feel helpless rn, but consider: maybe you're the prince.

American Protestantism is a dead-eyed, grinning husk with nothing animating it but hysterical fear of death and a sadistic desire to inflict punishment.

I am immune to weaponized nostalgia because I did not enjoy my childhood, follow me for more tips

MrBeast nearly burning a man to death and EA buckling under the leveraged buyout from hell are the exact same problem expressed differently. The rich will burn everything if it makes them a single extra dollar or feel one emotion, and they must be stopped

of all the dumb shit that sucks these days, the dumbest and pettiest shit that sucks is the way people fetishize debate. i would like to revert to the old roughly agreed-upon cultural understanding that debate club is for boring friendless nerds

The real generational divide is people who refuse to watch a video if it could be an article versus people who refuse to read an article if it could be a video

With alt text because this made me cry 😭

‘Guy so smart he can figure things out from first principles without domain knowledge’ is a type of guy that technically does exist, in the sense that guys who have in real gunfights done action hero John wick tier shit also technically exist, and that there is a >99% chance you aren’t one.

Chotiner: so youre saying you have a "WIP"? Me: yeah, and Im really excited about it! Chotiner: and how has that worked out for you historically? Me: well... I mean... Ive got ADHD, so you know how it is, but... Chotiner: but you feel good about this one? Youre fully engaged? Me: well, yeah...

Things were better when computer was in room. Now everywhere is computer. This is bad. Computer should never have escaped room.

It’s official: the United Nations Commission of Inquiry concludes Israel is committing genocide. The UN body calls on nations to stop sending weapons to Israel, ensure people within their jurisdiction aren’t aiding or inciting the genocide, and hold those who are accountable.

It’s so important to not let yourself become bitter or disheartened or cynical. To not let the news of the world break your spirit. Because I’m already doing that. It’s my thing. Find your own, stop copying me.

People don't understand that civil conflict looks like your neighbors dragging you out of bed in the middle of the night and executing you in your living room simply because they're suspicious you might be a political enemy, and it really shows sometimes.

The big reason I'm trying to hammer "civil conflict/political violence" here is because I've spent a substantial chunk of the last five years looking at mass graves. I want a society where people aren't plotting to kill their neighbors and throw them into one. That's where all this can lead.

“In the afterlife, we’ll sit around talking about the good old days, when we wished that we were dead.” - Samuel Beckett

🎯 Two centuries ago, a former European colony decided to catch up with Europe. It succeeded so well that the United States of America became a monster, in which the taints, the sickness and the inhumanity of Europe have grown to appalling dimensions. - Frantz Fanon