the inconceivable middlepage

"You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance,..."

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 08:09:20 -0400

“You love the accidental. A smile from a pretty girl in an interesting situation, a stolen glance, that is what you are hunting for, that is a motif for your aimless fantasy. You who always pride yourself on being an observateur must, in return, put up with becoming an object of observation. Ah, you are a strange fellow, one moment a child, the next an old man; one moment you are thinking most earnestly about the most important scholarly problems, how you will devote your life to them, and the next you are a lovesick fool.”

- Søren Kierkegaard, “Either/Or” (via ohfairies)

hrsvt: the knife raging lung

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:53:13 -0400

hrsvt:

the knife raging lung

crystallizations: Invitation to an Arena night club party. The...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:48:54 -0400

crystallizations:

Invitation to an Arena night club party. The capsule was placed in water and the invitation appeared. Arena was open from 1983 to 1987.

gnoth: this is one of the most beautiful song i’ve ever listend...

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:12:32 -0400

gnoth:

this is one of the most beautiful song i’ve ever listend to.

"In a forbidden recess of the cave, there’s a footprint of an eight-year-old boy next to the..."

Sun, 31 Mar 2013 20:26:59 -0400

“In a forbidden recess of the cave, there’s a footprint of an eight-year-old boy next to the footprint of a wolf. Did a hungry wolf stalk the boy? Or did they walk together as friends? Or were their tracks made thousands of years apart? We’ll never know.”

- Werner Herzog (via acidambedo)

"We drink liquor out of the skulls of Brahmins; our sacred fires are fed with the brains and lungs of..."

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:56:20 -0400

“We drink liquor out of the skulls of Brahmins; our sacred fires are fed with the brains and lungs of men mixed up with their flesh…I stop the course of the planets in the heavens; I submerge the earth in water, with its mountains and cities, and I again drink up the waters in a moment…He who resembles the gods, whose crest is the lunar orb, and who with delight embraces women as beautiful as Parvati, feels supreme bliss.”

- Portion of a speech given by a Kapalika (“skull-wearer”) ascetic in the Prabodha Chandrodaya, performed in 1065 (via savage-america)

kaajoo: World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned Places Italian product...

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 19:51:31 -0400

kaajoo:

World’s Most Beautiful Abandoned Places

Italian product manager and web designer Francesco Mugnai recently added a collection of images to his blog touting some of the most beautiful images of abandoned spots and modern ruins that he’d ever seen. The images Mugnai has captured come from empty castles, shuttered power plants, and dilapidated churches around the world. From a sunken yacht in Antarctica to a forever-closed amusement park in Japan, these images all make up a sort of anti-phoenix; rather than rising as new from the ashes, these husks remain preserved in decomposition, forcing viewers to confront the strange beauty of ruination.

ramblingsofasciencestudent: Why do I love cells? Because they...

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 21:54:36 -0500

ramblingsofasciencestudent:

Why do I love cells? Because they have all of this going on. The fact that they can function without everything going awry is so cool.

Seriously, how amazing is this?

(Large version: here)

mpdrolet: Games Primates Play, Darwin’s Devic Dadu Shin

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:43:26 -0500

mpdrolet:

Games Primates Play, Darwin’s Devic

Dadu Shin

thingslikestuff: “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”

Fri, 08 Mar 2013 20:38:23 -0500

thingslikestuff:

“the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog”

pathandpuddle: Dee Beale’s Hares by bred2make on Flickr.

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 18:23:11 -0500

pathandpuddle:

Dee Beale’s Hares by bred2make on Flickr.

chasingafterjackals: thedailywhat: Nice App of the Day:...

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 00:15:10 -0500

chasingafterjackals:

thedailywhat:

Nice App of the Day: God.js

Over the past weekend, 60 artists and hackers gathered in Brooklyn for Art Hack Day, from which came God.js, a programming language that acts like scripture as users browse the web. Developed by Will Brand, Ramsey Nasser and Ivan Safrin, a user can enter in scripts, er, scriptures, that the program will obey. If a doctrine is violated too much, your higher power will scold you, resulting in a range of punishments including two dozen tabs full of animated GIF hellfire.

Hat tip goes to The Verge.

If you go to GitHub, the readme says: “New Gods Through Computer Science.”

I’m halfway through freaking out.

side-project interest… far future?

this question is really real. anyone with a phd on tumblr: im being rejected from my preferred doctorate programs, what can i do in the time before I reapply that can make my application more attractive? (im also applying to masters programs but im less enthusiastic about them + money is really tight. im trying to get a phd in philosophy.)

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 18:22:26 -0500

I opted to do a master’s first, which really pushed me to reexamine my desire for a phd. As much as I thought I knew about the whole situation, I was still incredibly naive, and knowing what I know now, I would not recommend anyone to graduate school in the humanities unless you come from money and wish to have a few interesting experiences. Sure, you can feasibly make it, slog through grad school, undercut and connive your way to employment. But the rate of success is pretty low, the drive required is very high, and most of all the amount of pain you’ll have to go through is pretty excruciating. I understand that most people I’ve told this to won’t heed my advice, and to be honest, I didn’t heed it when I heard it either. I get the draw and at least some of what you’re going through. But I’d like to be another warning voice.

That said, the standard advice I got, then saw from within my department, was to read relevant books, learn/improve language skills, travel for research/do research, volunteer in a relevant area. If you’re nearby a major uni that has something even remotely related, waste your time ingratiating yourself with the people there. Go to conferences and and act confident, but still humble and deferential Always have your narrative prepared that show you’re not at the mercy of admittance committees. Remember this is the last vestige of an ancient institution that is very people-centric. Its all built on human relationships and personal connections; exploit this and pull strings where possible. Make them want you.

Above all have a plan ready and make as if prepared to execute it no matter the circumstances, such that you’ll conduct your research and they’ll miss out on it if you’re not there. Whatever the level, have it ready to roll on day 1: your thesis/dissertation plotted out, the reading list for your quals/comps broken up into semesters and already chipped away at. Don’t be cutely curious about a lot of subjects; be intensely driven to accomplish very limited goals with concrete results. Be in communication with a specific faculty target and get their inside info: how many students admitted etc but especially, do they, specifically, need more students under them. Sell yourself to this person and convince them that they want you to be their student.

The business model has crept into the humanities at an alarming rate, and most programs are primarily concerned with staying profitable. They want students who will generate income for them while leaving them relatively free to pursue their own careers. Faculty are pulled in many directions at once but got where they are by being utterly ruthless.They don’t want to waste time holding someone’s hand, and they don’t want to get preached at by an underling. Learn to be their lapdog at times, and their bulldog at others: a sycophant who will appear to be a initiate. Show yourself as both pliant and headstrong; a delicate, paradoxical mix of a personality that you have craft just right for every person to appeal to them on a personal level. Don’t trust to personal affinity for success (for instance, a professor I strongly agreed with, whose research ran parallel to my own, and whose life story mirrored my own chose not sit in my committee because he was busy and merely being a committee member, rather than a chair, wasn’t good enough for his CV). Anyway, more and more programs are forcing students to earn MA because those are money-generating. Students have minimal impact on the faculty and must take a slew of courses. To forego the MA, you need to prove that you’re at or above the MA level. Read the theses of the programs and see if you’re capable of showing them (in 10pgs) that you’re at that level or better.

To be honest, getting an MA with a thesis is a good idea because its a low-commitment taste and will force you to grow your research skills. Once you’re through with your shit thesis (no offense) your dissertation will be a little less shit, and then the book might be even less shit, allowing you to maybe, one day, write an ok book! Who knows, right?

If you think I’m being overly cynical, well, the truth is this is only the tip of the iceberg. I wouldn’t recommend it grad school, and I almost wouldn’t recommend higher ed in general. Its a shit career, unless you’re at the top of the shit pile and heaping shit down onto your subordinates. Disavow yourself of any romanticism, and try to understand that you’re probably naive. I know I am still am, and that my personal knowledge has undone some, but certainly not all of my naivety.

Good luck and may the force be with you.

thestateae: “Drones, of course, are also a technology that...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:26:44 -0500

thestateae:

“Drones, of course, are also a technology that allows us to connect across distances. It’s just that what they’re used to connect is missile to flesh.” (via technology, literature, and empathy: a complication | THE STATE)

breaking thru to the real

theculturecreative: Kintsukuroi “To repair with gold’; The...

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 19:14:00 -0500

theculturecreative:

Kintsukuroi

“To repair with gold’; The Japanese art of repairing pottery with gold lacquer, and understanding that the piece is more beautiful for having been broken.

classictrek: Tonight’s Viewing. ssk-analogmedium: 314 Whom...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 01:26:04 -0500

classictrek:

Tonight’s Viewing.

ssk-analogmedium:

314 Whom Gods Destroy 01 - 09 (by Mr. Scradam)

fuck. it.: response to greater sullivan on marx, nature and technology

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 20:38:00 -0500

fuck. it.: response to greater sullivan on marx, nature and technology:

sublimehysteric:

Marx does appear to hold the notion, in volume one of Capital, that an infinite amount of labor upon the earth renders an infinite amount of resources. In this regard he implicitly champions the power of labor but also warns against its capitalist exploitation since nature can ‘absorb’ an infinite amount of labor thereby making the workers toil theoretically infinite (here Marx notes the capitalist tendency to continuously prolong the work day). Marx’s view of nature and technology is in a fairly Hegelian mode: they are coextensive or exist in a dialetical relationship. Technology defines nature (its use and value) and man’s relationship to it. Nature produces the limitations that technology must necessarily overcome since man exists and is defined by nature. Technology, when it is coordinated by the bourgeoisie always transcends these limits for the sake of opening new markets for capital. After capital reaches a certain stage of development, the limits of technology are technologically imposed: increased demand for clothing produces an increased demand for cotton, this in turn produces advances in mechanized agriculture and agro-chemistry for growing and harvesting more cotton which results in a necessity for mechanically or chemically improved means of production like bleaching, dyeing, and spinning, and so on. Its a grim cycle. For Marx, technology harnesses science and scientific minds for capital. In this way we have a linear progression of technological development: doing more faster. The increased disposable wealth of the bourgeoisie produces a demand for innovation of consumer goods: here you have the rise of luxury commodities for the capitalist class (think of technological innovation for consumer goods like touch-screen cellphones or sports cars, its not real technological innovation just more consumable sundry). Technology not only reigns in scientific advances, it makes a segment of the working class work harder and puts another segment of it out of work (simply, machines replace workers). Thus technology, as long as it is controlled by capitalists, will never help the environment unless it poses itself as an external limit to growth, i.e., unless it is completely necessary for the survival of the current status quo of class relations or can be helped in a way that is profitable. I don’t think Marx would be optimistic that technology could solve environmental problems. I personally think the idea that technology can solve our environment woes is a capitalist mythology. It is in Marx’s imagery of capitalist desolation that he implicitly emerges as somewhat environmentalist; there are lavish depictions of the depleted English country side, descriptions of the horrific smells and smog that amounts to waste in cities, contamination of water and pollution, etc. This destruction is part and parcel with the arrival of industrial capitalism which conceives of nature as its private property and a free ‘fixed capital’ investment that can absorb labor. So here I think Marx’s analysis can be useful to an environmentalist: the geo-spatial composition of capitalism, i.e. the way it conceives of space and distributes people and assets across it and for what purpose could be profoundly interesting to an environmentalist. Further, how a subject ‘reproduces’ himself, i.e., how they attain their means of subsistence to live, to what degree their means of subsistence is coordinated by the capitalist means of production, and to what degree the means of production defines what is socially ‘necessary’ for a subject to reproduce themselves can all be translated into a more critical version of the analysis of the environmental ‘impact’ of a consumer as it relates to their standard of living. This is to say, the problem is not the amount of people, its their distribution and their consumption (people in India are ‘distributed’ differently in their space and have a different means of subsistence than Americans, for instance). A French urban planner (can’t remember his name) proposed that people should live in cities arranged like Medieval towns so that they can share heat and lower the environmental impact of transportation by living close to their work. Zoning residential spaces on top of commercial spaces means that people can access their means of subsistence easily without cars. The spacial organization of daily life can do a lot to reduce environmental impact. Re-evaluating what is necessary to reproduce a human in Marxist terms could change the logic used to distribute people and property. Of course, changing the economic order and its use of space, technology, and the rationality of distributing people is preferable to me. The potential of Marxifying environmentalism to make it virulent and revolutionary is intriguing. But for real, environmentalists trying to reduce the population are just capitalist apologists. Fuck em’.

I know your post is a bit one-off, so apologies for asking for clarifications. And to make myself clear, because this medium seems so often to cloud intended tone: I’m asking for my benefit not to challenge.

What do you mean by environmentalism/ist? Do you mean radical environmentalism of the Earth First! variant or hybrid-consuming and whole foods-shopping bourgeois variant or homesteading types like the Nearings? It strikes me that you are referring to both one of the above as well as some kind of ecologically-minded social thought.

Not to be trite, what do consider of John Bellamy Foster’s work with Marx and ecology? Or even, Carolyn Merchant? I just think some of your thoughts have been pretty well addressed, though not exhausted. Of particular note is the metabolic rift concept, which should presage ecology. Again, apologies if this is ‘old hat’.

Onward: I don’t think technological advancements are linear; if anything it is more parabolic, but in effect I would consider it more as a punctuated equilibrium where moments of tension are resolved by innovation (although also created by them, as you mention).

Your references to population seems to point to Malthus, who obviously had a great effect on Marx. I think that—if we choose to—we can boil down Malthus to the useful proposition that the earth has finite resources that can only support a finite population (from which carrying capacity arises, but to which need be appended technology). The contrast from your interpretation extends from taking a longue durée approach—throughout the course of human evolution. Marx (almost certainly due at least to a lack of material) ignores pre-feudal societies. When looked at in this longer sense, technology and technological innovation take on greater significations, and the concept of nature as such is challenged. The environment is a product of human use and selection; the human is also a natural part of the environment (apologies if this, too, is something not new to you, but it is a central point that is often glossed over). So through the broad-spectrum revolution to horticulture and pastoralism to industrial agriculture, humans have modified technology to alter carrying capacity. I feel Marx addresses this in The German Ideology, going so far as to pivot the discussion of mode of production on population and placing a fundamental importance to the distinctions between ‘town’ and ‘country’ (and whilst I’ve not read it, this would be a good place to point to Raymond Williams’s The Town and The Country; as well as Henri Lefebvre’s oeuvre and the geographers like Soja who took his work on).

[I’m losing myself quickly here so:] Capitalism’s innovation in this field is precisely to posit infinite growth, a capability borne from the deterritorialization of capital. Infinite growth lays the foundation for infinite consumption. To claim that technology can address problems of need and sustenance is not incorrect; rather, it addresses the symptom without its root. If I’ve correctly read your statement, are you not making the same mistake? If we cannot purchase our way into sustainability, can we also not invent our way into it? Why are there cities if not because growth demanded them? It is growth itself that we must face, including population. Population needs to be addressed (rather than reduced…) and cannot continue to force radical alterations in technology. In theory we could ‘fit’ trillions of humans upon the earth, if we made the habited regions so concentrated that current NYC were to look like eastern Wyoming and we managed a tyrannical grip on the biological factors of our food like weather and pests and genetic content (or rather, if we reduced nature to technology). We are approaching this with blinders on, slowly stumbling into an easily foreseen future because we fail to address the core issue: that the earth is finite; no matter how much use value can rendered from it, eventually it is finite.

"To depict is to refer not from a language to a referent, but from one code to another. Thus realism..."

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:40:36 -0500

“To depict is to refer not from a language to a referent, but from one code to another. Thus realism consists not in copying the real but in copying a (depicted) copy…Through secondary mimesis copies what is already a copy.”

- Roland Barthes, S/Z (via heteroglossia)

Photo

Thu, 14 Feb 2013 18:39:46 -0500

reqbat: #streetart #montreal The best street art I...

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 22:05:15 -0500

reqbat:

#streetart #montreal

The best street art I experienced in Montreal was walking by a low brick building, not dissimilar in appearance from the one pictured, and hearing loud and pleasurable-sounding sex noises at around 2pm. The experience caused an aesthetic moment that pierced my awareness and forced me to reevaluate the place and time. Like being sent into some fragment of illo tempore, a primal sense flooding over the empty street. I had to resist the slight urge to complete the scene by visual confirmation, and instead allowed myself endless speculation about the scene I’d stumbled upon.