Beyond Reason: The Top Ten

sus

sus

Moderator
IdleRich said:
Sorry, help me understand here, you want me to write an in-depth review of your post above, concentrating on the specific criteria you mention.

By... why do you want a post reviewed? And why that one particularly? On those criteria, and why me? What's going on?
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Don't need an in-depth review just a 15-point scale, following the scoring system enumerated.
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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Clinamenic said:
Yeah to me its a semantics issue, IE you can define nature in such a way that it encompasses all of reality, and the only things that fall "outside" it are hypothetical alternatives to reality. You could also define it such that 'artificial' is a subset of 'natural' and the distinction becomes one of specificity rather than of mutual exclusion.
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I agree but these subsidiary terms have a habit of mistakenly acquiring a life of their own cf sex and gender. It is for this reason it's important to confirm their proper status on a regular basis.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think what people really want to gesture at is constraint and contingency

How strong are the biological constraints on our expressions of sex & gender? Versus how historically contingent? And then, by extension, how many degrees of freedom do we have moving forward
 
sus

sus

Moderator
I think that's a really really hard question to answer, and I agree the problem becomes clearer if you banish "nature vs artifice" as a framing, but I don't think "it's all nature" actually helps us answer that underlying question, once we've posed it
 
sus

sus

Moderator
sus said:
@luka what do you make of it?
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Luka has been playing hard to get ever since I asked him to take me on as his apprentice. He said yes and I've been arranging my London living plans summer 2024 but I think he's getting cold feet. He's wondering whether he'll have to hole up in a bathtub for all of August to avoid me
 
mixed_biscuits

mixed_biscuits

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sus said:
This is true in a meaningful sense but I think there is a load-bearing distinction people are drawing upon, when they try to contrast nature with society, and I think you need to replace it with a better distinction if you're gonna toss the old one out
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Easy: just describe human behaviour in the same way that David Attenborough would describe animal behaviour. Attenborough would take about ant and bee society, for instance, but at no point would he consider either to be pushing or transgressing the boundaries of nature.
 
sus

sus

Moderator
Well okay, but David Attenborough doesn't have to spend his life as an incel labor drone toiling for his queen, if he did he'd probably have stronger opinions
 
Murphy

Murphy

cat malogen
Bath was quite nice today, t-shirt warm and endless blue skies

Definitely a @sus gaff architecturally, add little stalls selling lavender honey and vegan pate. One of the cunts who works with HughFearnleyfuckface had a plot and a few photos of HughFearnleyff dotted round, just in case you were in any doubt of HFff associations

Bath university has a pukka campus overall, felt like Steptoe averting the perv gaze. Got offered heroin for £5 a bag in town, saw a bonnet porn tour of American ladies all trying to look like Jane Austen. Went to eat at a certain establishment but colleagues stated it looked “too Covidey”, which is a new one for description so went to a chippy instead (cheap cunts)

Been to Bath Gus? It’s like Bristol but without so many patchouli soaked out-and-out crusties, like Palo Alto but with a hot spring even the Romans were wary of pillaging or renaming

Given fatigue, I’d score this post 10 for coherence, 15 for detail and 20 for finding this while google imaging for something to disturb your sensibilities

Amazon product ASIN B0C18SLPPD

IMG_1199.jpeg
 
Corpsey.

Corpsey.

Well-known member
Re: Sexual Personae, the parts where shes talking about specific artifacts are great. This is on the bust of nefertiti


"Nefertiti’s head is so massive it threatens to snap the neck like a stalk. She is like a papyrus blossom swaying on its river reed. The head is swollen to the point of deformity. She seems futuristic, with the enlarged cerebrum foreseen as the destiny of our species. The crown is filled like a funnel with a rain of hierarchic energy, flooding the fragile brain-pan and violently pushing the face forward like the prow of a ship. Nefertiti is like the Winged Victory of Samothrace, garments plastered back by the wind of history. As cargo, Nefertiti carries her own excess of thought. She is weighed down by Apollonian wakefulness, a sun that never sets. Egypt invented the pillar, which Greece would refine. With her slim aristocratic neck, Nefertiti is a pillar, a caryatid. She bears the burden of state upon her head, rafters of the temple of the sun. The golden brow-band is a ritual bridle, squeezing, constricting, limiting. Nefertiti presides from the temenos of power, a sacred precinct she can never leave."



Queen-Nefertiti-Statue.jpg
 
sus

sus

Moderator
@linebaugh what a waste, she could've written like that her entire career, we could've gotten books on The Avengers, instead she spent all her life-force on talk shows trying to win a culture war, prematurely aged a decade
 
Corpsey.

Corpsey.

Well-known member
I assume suspended said he thinks I would like it cause its pynchonesque. Not just because its about scientists gone mad but also because its an intense associative exercise- the way hes able to weave all these disparate facts across disciplines in one essay is really entertaining, particuatly the first essay that intertwines 300 years of art history and chemical warfare.
 
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