All my articles on Spinoza's use of optics and the influences lens grinding & instrument-making had on his philosophy. This is an incredibly understudied (and aside from a few caricatures almost completely theoretically overlooked) aspect of his Life & thought. kvond.wordpress.com/spinozas-foc...

The automatic Google "AI" summary links (to "real" sources) are to tiktok videos. I have to watch a video if I want to see the factual/conceptual source of the repackaged information?

This is the other work I do. A philosophy of the body, of temporal poem-making, documenting it as it fades from existence. www.patreon.com/posts/149925...

The essential role of metaphor and Imagination within Spinoza's metaphysics. kvond.wordpress.com/2008/12/12/s...

Unparalleled Western. Think about it often. Not only the spectacular ending scene, but all of the human, the social critique, their oddly existential "love affair"...but mostly, the sound of those wooden floors.

How "math" works in Spinoza's metaphysics. kvond.wordpress.com/2009/09/25/s...

I think there is room for this foundation within Spinoza's metaphysics (which also has been interpretively pressed too far towards "production").

Just sayin'.

Was reminded of this old @milesphoebes.bsky.social joke

Our 3 go-to Christmas movies now. Happiest Season Spirited Daddy's Home 2 We've left some of the Old School dependables behind, these give the most X-mas pop right now...though did throw in Alien last night, to...you know.

if they had just shown it on 60 Minutes nobody would have seen it

Academic Philosophers work in a textile industry...their work, their job is to produce & proliferate texts (& more text producers). What is to come of the work when so many others produce texts (of counterfeit imprimatur) & soon texts will be produced & proliferate thru automation at mad rates?

I think the Ontological Argument for God is subtly a bit like an Ontological Argument for Coherence. Because the Religious tradition considers coherence to flow from God itself, its very perpetual possibility-activity proves its existence. We moderns, on the other hand, do not link God and Coherence

Watched Vertigo in 4K for the first time, blown away of course, but also so, so struck by how much it (likely) directly influenced Ridley Scott's Blade Runner. I bet Roy Batty's white-blonde hair came from Kim Novak. I've never realized how close these films are, despite BR being my favorite film.

several philosophical words would likely be improved if the prefix was replaced by "dia". Diacept, diacrescence, diastance, diathesis, diaduce, etc, etc.

Cixous, probably the author who most erupts with brilliances when I read her again, and who most slips from my mind for handfuls of years and decades of time. Just unparalleled.

As Wittgenstein argued...there is no such thing as a Private Language.

Crazy to say, but back when special effects were believable BECAUSE they felt unreal...and unreality that was equal to the irreality of film itself, extending the dream.

Intimacy and Extimacy.

"Love stands opposed to death – it alone, and not reason, is stronger than death. Only love, and not reason, yields kind thoughts." —Thomas Mann

This is the truth challenge of Spinoza. Is suddenly stooping down to help a stranger who has fallen the same level, the same force of "cause" as being struck by a car yourself? Are you equally compelled? Thrown to toward the ground twice?

Waiting for the "turn" to happen (2 episodes). Right now Rhea Seehorn is incredibly one-note, an "Internet Karen" of outrage, serving an interesting allegory for our times - very hard to watch in contrast w/ her BCS subtle character building. It IS full of potential ideas. Want to see where it goes.

Spinoza made the most beautiful Rubik's Cube such that you can turn every side and make it fit. I wonder what a time-traveling Baruch would say to all the articulate but speculative/amazing things we do with him.

a big Del Toro fan...but this film. Ugh. No. Isaac (who I also enjoy) completely non-engaging in his flourished melodrama. Elordi, a beautiful guy in white paint (come on master of visual design, a male "Nebula"?). Very disappointed in the core of this film. Mia Goth held her part/s down tho.

In Philosophy it is possible to take skepticism quite seriously.

A great deal of politics, and certainly all of ethics (& morality) is anchored in the perceived, imagined "enjoyment of others", and if it is appropriate. What is it that the "other" is enjoying?

Spinoza's panpsychism equation is pretty simple. 1. To think is to act. 2. To exist is to act. 3. To exist is to think. 4. All things think.

Spinoza chuckles with mirth from his place in Eternity.

Liberation. You can have it both ways. You can see that coffee is a work performance drug that got so twisted into the culture that Labor Unions bargained and won worker stimulant "coffee breaks"... And there is nothing in the world like a first cup of coffee. Nothing.

"The Conformist cost only seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars" Last night watched this again, this time in 4K. The above...wow. Not sure how I feel about it this time. Lacked unity for me, but visually spectacular.

Bought this in hardback and its sitting on the shelf. I went into a deep dive into epic Sci-fi after falling into the Murderbot books, a genre I loved when a teen/young adult. Lots of books lined up now, but this one feels further back. My wife kind of told me the whole plot & I'm not sure.

A very, very insightful Graeber lecture/essay, was glad to be directed toward it! (But, at least in my view the Spencer "compatibility" reading of Graeber is just off and misses Graeber's fundamental point.)

The problem with the Turing Test is that people are really, really...really dumb.

"my mobility is angry to get out" wow. Tim!

wow, just watched this 2x in a row, on back to back nights. What a film in 4K. Metaphysical, social critique with profound cinematic expression. Just huge 70's film making. ...or, as my wife praised it" "The Predator" for intellectuals.

Why GPT chat is not just another writing (thinking) tool? Thinking weaves the strands. Tools can help find strands, order them, treat and prepare them. When tools start to weave them...thinking becomes lost.

The hell site hosted this very, very good rundown of what Fascism IS. x.com/1zzyzyx1/sta...

"Philosophers conceive the affects by which we’re torn as vices, which men fall into by their own fault." <<< this seems to be the Archmedian point for Spinoza, the lever of "fault" (and therefore blame).

on one of my favorite people I've met on the Internet...who feels like she is still with me.

I've just been musing that somehow I always (unconsciously) "pictured" Spinoza's Substance as "up there" or "out there", but then it struck me in a weird, emotional way that as someone literate in Latin, it was "SUB" stance, that which stands under, the firmness beneath...

He was kinda good...like.

in full makeup.

We're practicing a on one day, off one day digital fast. If you want to really see how crazy "reality tv" politics is right now, do that. Outrage stories blow in and out so fast after a day away it feels like you've missed weeks. It's just pump, pump, pump.

Just watched Once Upon A Time In The West in 4K for the first time...just...wow. Top 10 film experience for me maybe. Blown away.

I get that the news cycle is packed right now, but I just heard from a colleague at the Smithsonian that this is fully a GIANT SQUID BEING EATEN BY A SPERM WHALE and it’s possibly the first ever confirmed video according to a friend at NOAA 10 YEAR OLD ME IS LOSING HER MIND (a thread 🧵)

Our Wizard of Oz.

My guess. The Mark Zuckerberg character puts the eye-alien into his own head...and he becomes Elon Musk.

Not very far from Spinoza.

I think we are all getting to the point of realizing social media is itself Malware.

This is largely true. But wisdom consists in knowing that each time you "breakdown" the problem into a subproblem you are performing and translation...a distortion (...and that this is often very hard to keep track of, both individually, but also in sum).