the emperor’s new clothes

[Murphy]

Plumber anecdote

A bloke my brother knows went out on a plumbers round, last house of the day. Couple lead him to the toilet reported as blocked. When he opened the door he realised they’d just kept shitting in the bog and it has started to pile up over the seat. Very awkward glances then he lost it. “You filthy cunts could’ve slopped out with buckets” and left

”they must’ve been stood on the rim firing em down all week“ was the capstone

 

[IdleRich]

Your time's directed to certain things and it creates markets for the things you don't have time to do yourself. No idea whether it's deliberate, but it's certainly to the benefit of the current system

Yes, that's what I mean I think, I'm lucky in that most days I don't need to be in a certain place at a certain time and I'm juggling kids and deadlines etc so I probably ought to at least see if I can save myself some money. But if things were different then of course, I wouldn't feel lazy for not investigating it myself.
The value of time varies of course. I remember my friend buying some beatdigger comp done by Andy Votel and on the back he is going on about how people are lazy and wasteful and lacking in the hunger that led to him being the number one person in the world. And it expounds on that saying that you've just spent twenty quid on this record, but, if you were like him and got up at 5am every Saturday and Sunday and went to boot fairs where you looked through every record stall, then, after twenty or thirty years, you would have every single tune on the compilation and you would most likely have saved yourself almost a tenner.

 

[Clinamenic]

happy to assist with arabic naming conventions - do a thread?

there are equivalents of most of what we think of as biblical character's names - our weird english versions - in arabic, as used by arabic speaking christians as well as muslims, since islam incorporates & upgrades old fashioned stuff like xtianity and judaism - why ride the donkey when you could ride toyota after all

Totally. Perhaps a brief expose of figures you think are worth highlighting, or concepts, whatever. Two that I've watched lectures on:

Ahmed ibn Ali al Buni, a mystic if I recall, discourse on some applied Islamic metaphysics

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, I believe an optician (edit: maybe not actually) who had theories preceding their western equivalent. Also the namesake of the word algorithm if I'm not mistaken.

Had to google the latter's name. Once I'm more familiar with the names I'll have an easier time committing their profiles to memory.

 

[sufi]

version mentioned plato's cave earlier - then deleted
but also the tale of the seven sleepers of ephesus

like the emperors new clothes inside out?

 

[sufi]

Totally. Perhaps a brief expose of figures you think are worth highlighting, or concepts, whatever. Two that I've watched lectures on:

Ahmed ibn Ali al Buni, a mystic if I recall, discourse on some applied Islamic metaphysics

Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, I believe an optician (edit: maybe not actually) who had theories preceding their western equivalent. Also the namesake of the word algorithm if I'm not mistaken.

Had to google the latter's name. Once I'm more familiar with the names I'll have an easier time committing their profiles to memory.

i don't know much about them lot beyond what you will find in wikipedia, certainly not about the conceptual side of things, im afraid

 

[sufi]

optics was big in those days of course.
as in english, arabic language uses the same word for lens as for lentil https://en.bab.la/dictionary/arabic-english/عدس
i don't think that is in wikipedia

 

[sufi]

i don't know much about them lot beyond what you will find in wikipedia, certainly not about the conceptual side of things, im afraid

what i know of al-buni is that he's on the esoteric/occult side, the source for islamic charms that are still used, employing the magical power of the quran - the word, sigils, angels' names and so on

i've been enjoying recently:

Dala'il al-Khayrat - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(Arabic: دلائل الخيرات وشوارق الأنوار في ذكر الصلاة على النبي المختار‎, lit. 'Waymarks of Benefits and the Brilliant Burst of Lights in the Remembrance of Blessings on the Chosen Prophet'), usually shortened to Dala'il al-Khayrat,

by Al Jazuli of Marrakesh - also medieval and sufistic, but more lyrical and devotional, and less likely to end up in hellfires and damnation

 

[sufi]

what i know of al-buni is that he's on the esoteric/occult side, flirting with sorcery and djinns, the source for islamic charms that are still used, employing the magical power of the quran - the word, sigils, angels' names and so on

i've been enjoying recently

Dala'il al-Khayrat - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(Arabic: دلائل الخيرات وشوارق الأنوار في ذكر الصلاة على النبي المختار‎, lit. 'Waymarks of Benefits and the Brilliant Burst of Lights in the Remembrance of Blessings on the Chosen Prophet'), usually shortened to Dala'il al-Khayrat,

by Al Jazuli of Marrakesh - also medieval and sufistic, but more lyrical and devotional, and less likely to end up in hellfires and damnation

some gorgeous manuscripts of dalail khayrat scanned on internat archive:

Dalāʼil al-khayrāt wa shawāriq al-anwār fī dhikr al-ṣalāh ʻalá al-nabī al-mukhtār. [دلائل الخيرات و شوارق الانوار في ذكر الصلوة على النبي المختار] : Jazūlī, Muḥammad ibn Sulaymān, 1404-1465 جزولي، محمد بن سليمان، : Free Download, Borrow

Special Collections, BV 201. 1700. Small, lacunose copy of the prayer book with the text in a circular border; pages missing at the end with one loose bifolium...

archive.org

probably you'll find lots of albuni spellbooks on there too

 

[Clinamenic]

optics was big in those days of course.
as in english, arabic language uses the same word for lens as for lentil https://en.bab.la/dictionary/arabic-english/عدس
i don't think that is in wikipedia

Think it has something to do with the shape? Convex on both sides?

 

[IdleRich]

I randomly read this novel a year or two back

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarkand_(novel)

It features (at least) two major figures as characters; Omar Khayyam who is most known for his collection called The Rubaiyat - although this doesn't tell the whole story as a) I understand that many parts of the Rubaiyat are of dubious provenance as at various periods over-enthusiastic scholars hoovered up almost anything they could find and allocated it to him and b) he was also an accomplished mathematician who, among other things, developed his own method for solving a certain class of cubic equation (a full general solution requires imaginary numbers and did not come along for another five hundred years or so I think); and Hassan i-Sabbah, the schemer and mystic who invented assassins. If I remember correctly, this book avoids some of the more lurid and magical bits of his story and the extraordinary success of his assassins guild is put down to the fact that, unlike all previous paid killers they were willing to die during their mission, a kind of quantum leap in methodology for the time I guess.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I randomly read this novel a year or two back

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samarkand_(novel)

It features (at least) two major figures as characters; Omar Khayyam who is most known for his collection called The Rubaiyat - although this doesn't tell the whole story as a) I understand that many parts of the Rubaiyat are of dubious provenance as at various periods over-enthusiastic scholars hoovered up almost anything they could find and allocated it to him and b) he was also an accomplished mathematician who, among other things, developed his own method for solving a certain class of cubic equation (a full general solution requires imaginary numbers and did not come along for another five hundred years or so I think); and Hassan i-Sabbah, the schemer and mystic who invented assassins. If I remember correctly, this book avoids some of the more lurid and magical bits of his story and the extraordinary success of his assassins guild is put down to the fact that, unlike all previous paid killers they were willing to die during their mission, a kind of quantum leap in methodology for the time I guess.

Have you read this, Rich?

Alamut (Bartol novel) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It's been on my to-read list for years, but I really must get round to buying a copy.

I think I remember you telling me about the general premise (the men being drugged with a huge dose of hashish, so that they "die", and then reawaken in "paradise" - a gorgeous walled garden with hot naked girls all over the shop, basically - and become these fearless, fanatical fighters because they they've died already and come back as avenging spirits and therefore can't be killed again) but couldn't remember whether you'd read the novel or had just read about it, or come across the idea somewhere else.

 

[luka]

Think it has something to do with the shape? Convex on both sides?

lenticular - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

en.wiktionary.org

 

[Corpsey]

Everybody longs to feel powerful and abhors being made to feel powerless, which is ironically one of the things Kafka wrote about. Dawkins arrogance is reminsicent of that possessed by the authoritarian figures in Kafka. The hardy, healthy, certain, brutal people.

Watch out Corpsey, slipping into pretentious mode here hard

"abhors", "of that"

Do I adopt this way of typing because I have the concept of Kafka in my head? Am I desperate in this mode to prove I'm not thick?

 

[luka]

i wouldnt think of it like that or think that you always need to inhabit the same role with the same diction all the time we all naturally lurch from lad to pseud from senstivie pansy to bruiser and our language changes as each personna takes hold. my sound of my voice, my cadences, my diction etc all change as i go into serious thoughtful mode or whatever. its very normal and shouldnt be policed or be a cause of neurosis

 

[luka]

theyre all micro-roles we occupy to the hilt for as long as we feel the situation demands it, always frantically changing from one costume to the next. its very fun and dynamic and disorientating.

 

[poetix]

Nevertheless, I had schoolmates who could grasp maths very quickly that I wouldn't have grasped without lonnnng and patient explanation. Their brains had developed differently to mine.

(In the same way that some people are naturally good at sport, and not just because they're big or strong. They have quicker mental reflexes.)

And without that quick understanding, without the feeling of competence/power that gives you, there isn't much to get excited about.

So I can sympathise with Dawkins reaction here, actually. You don't understand something, you're either going to take that as a humbling experience or insist defiantly on your right to call the whole thing boring or stupid or a complete con.

I think this is key to the "natural talent or perseverence?" argument that constantly circulates. People tend to persevere with things where effort pays off. I've spent countless hours playing the guitar because quite early on I discovered that it was a good fit for my ability to learn: progress came fast, and opened up exciting pathways for further progress. If getting initial traction feels unreasonably hard, and you can't see where to take it next, then you're quite reasonably going to go "this is not for me", and I think there's an objective sense in which that judgement is probably correct most of the time. Sometimes it isn't - you just need to try a different tack, and things will open up much more naturally. Or, after really really grinding joylessly for ages to reach a certain level of capability, then you find that things start to become easier and it becomes a pleasurable and self-motivating activity. But we have limited time to devote to learning new things, and the "I'm getting nowhere with this" signal is a useful one in navigating our own priorities and aptitudes.

Some of the most interesting things I've tried to learn, having said that, have been right on the threshold. I took several runs through the opening chapters of a book on topos theory, each time getting a little further into it before I reached the point where my ability to understand what was going on deserted me. I just had a feeling that there was a path through, and wanted to see if I could find it. I deserted the book in its later chapters because it was demonstrating applications in areas I didn't care about, not being a mathematician, but had the feeling that at least I'd learned how to get there if ever the need arose.

 

[Corpsey]

i wouldnt think of it like that or think that you always need to inhabit the same role with the same diction all the time we all naturally lurch from lad to pseud from senstivie pansy to bruiser and our language changes as each personna takes hold. my sound of my voice, my cadences, my diction etc all change as i go into serious thoughtful mode or whatever. its very normal and shouldnt be policed or be a cause of neurosis

Hmm I dunno I think it's a definite tone I've (half) picked up from books.

"Abhors" works there but "hates" would be just as good and make me sound less like I'm constipatedly straining to be Nietzsche.*


*according to my spellcheck, 'constipatedly' isn't a word. But it should be.

 

[luka]

yes, of course, you pick up every tone from somewhere. some from books some from television some from your peers

 

[luka]

none of them belong to you. all of them are masks that you pick and put down where appropriate.

 

[Corpsey]

I don't notice this falsity in you but maybe that's cos I've got the inside line on my own falsity