Insident Pitt

@RogueScholarPr Religion is not to be evaluated on pragmatic grounds

Judaism and Islam both allow lying to outsiders, while Christianity produces people like Kant who argue that it’s immoral to lie to a murderer about where his intended victim is hiding. Hard not to see that as a weakness

@DevinGoure Have an actual argument or just poseur innuendo?

So I unblocked this guy because some people said he’s worth taking seriously but he seems like a total idiot? Am I missing something? Is he doing some kind of performance art?

@samswoora Sounds like you need a boyfriend homie

Being a dad is like - earn money to provide but not too much money that ur a workaholic, be a good dad spend time with kid to give mom a break, be a good partner, do the chores that need to get done, don’t get too fat, remember to text your friends every few months

@ArthurKolchak Italo Calvino or someone said that a property of every work of genius is that it transcends and confronts all our expectations. Genius is indigestible!

A lot of classic literary works are like this. Moby-Dick is a much *weirder* book than the simplified thumbnail sketch of the basic plot in circulation in the wider culture would have you believe (it tends to present the events as a simple moral parable about the dangers of obsession and revenge).

@TuttReal Didnt some Irish guy hack translations

It's remarkable how long it takes for Lacan to be translated, at least in academic format, into English. I remember talking to Zizek more than a decade ago and he told me The Logic of Fantasy is the most important seminar for his work. This is available late June 2026.

@dyingscribe Much to think about

An (actually) clever woman loving you means a lot because she's THOUGHT about that shit and she still feels that way

@drumm_colin You get dirty and the pig likes it!

Oh boy Drumm. Can't we all just ignore? Just hum to ourselves till he goes away?

@Plinz This is the most midwit take in the world

I think it was a mistake for our culture to dismiss religion, instead of understanding and redesigning it with rational epistemology. Religion defines the intentionality and structure of the superorganism. Without seeing the shape of the superstructure, we cannot derive ethics.

@drumm_colin @kleeposting Did you ever read psychoanalysis and the question of a weltanschaaung? Seemed to give a similar argument. The Tsars were done when dynamite was invented, etc.

@kleeposting Any follow up on this? You cant just drop it when we hit the texts man.

Marx's problem is just that he's too productivist: he thinks producing stuff is the dominant imperative of social processes. But actually "production" isn't what matters, "control" is. So what matters about technology is how it can be controlled or how it enables control.

@RavenLynClemens Love the early simpsons, it's so much grittier

the families

@marcportermagee Creating knowledge is a fucked up turn of phrase

Yale has changed its mission statement, rolling back the language that was adopted in 2016

@spumdonor Cartoons have always been grotesque, that's the whole point

We've had about 30 years of "It's funny because it looks bad on purpose" animated TV shows, if you mark the beginning from South Park, but showrunners are still really impressed with themselves for doing it

@47fucb4r8c69323 I will say we're living in a golden age of porn. It's never been as well made as it is now. But consequently all other fields of human endeavor deteriorate and turn to shit. As Plato said, lust is a tyrannical drone that reigns over the soul if you let it. To do so is a bad deal.

@47fucb4r8c69323 You also have to account for how extreme it is for millennials and zoomers and how it additionally concrete melts their minds and alienates and separates human beings. In many cases it straight up is child abuse. The average age for seeing hardcore stuff these days is 10.

Seeing Paula post about porn over the last few days has made me think enough about this issue to decide on a stance. I do not think porn is intrinsically bad (nothing is unless axiomatically or semantically forced), but it is definitely high risk low reward socially. That is, porn availability has the reward of satiating young men and runs the risk of perverting their desires in ways that can harm themselves and others. That satiation is kind of insufficient for the risk. But porn can be used responsibly by a regular sex haver. I only watch porn and masturbate when I'm really hungover, which happens like once a year these days (my heavy drinking days are behind me). That seems healthy or at least not damaging to anyone. But some of the porn out there is grotesque and damaging, although I want actual quantitative data before we start talking about changing laws. I hate restricting freedom. There is, however, a part of the porn world that needs the most focus and gets the least, partly because they're not white people and Americans are weird about this shit: Japanese loli porn. Some of that stuff is straight up fantasizing about violently raping prepubescent children and some of the actresses are small enough that they can convincingly play the part. If this lowers incidence of child abuse, then wonderful, but I somehow doubt that is the case (would like to see studies). If it doesn't lower said incidence, this is a rare case where I might support extending censorship laws. It goes against my principles, and I am a flexible person.

@PaulaSeeksTruth @47fucb4r8c69323 To argue that it's bad based on its social consequences implies that if we could engineer some form of it that had no negative consequences, we could expose kids to sexual material ad libidum. It's better to just settle that it's evil in itself. Sex is deeper than just biology.

@47fucb4r8c69323 really need to focus on fast is that children grow up with it. Average age of exposure is 11 now, some start much younger, and a lot of the porn available is violent, degrading, dehumanizing. It's already changing how young people have sex (see rise in strangulation).

@drumm_colin It's the terminus of a bunch of people being persuaded to believe that studying really hard and getting all the answers on the quiz right is a good substitute for judgment or virtue

@drumm_colin Academia is full of pussies is why

What class in undergrad did all these people take that makes them think that "theories can't be true or false"? Is this sociology or something

@localcheetowife @WyattDuncan Corny gen Xers and millennials

@WyattDuncan This guy actually makes me so mad lol who is this for

got curious about balloon guy and looked up to see what happened to him. turns out he’s still doing his thing! no change or progression whatsoever. like it’s eternally 2016 over there

@47fucb4r8c69323 What's your line

I don't mean to be a dick but I am paid a ridiculous amount of money by extremely rich and intelligent people because I am really fucking good at what I do.