Benjamin Blake Speed Watkins 🇺🇸🇺🇦🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

In case you missed it, here is the recent debate I had on creation vs. evolution. I'll be releasing it soon as an episode of @RealAtheology too.

@matt_olma I’m more committed to (and enraptured by) the sublimity of the mind-body problem as such than I am to any particular solution, I think.

@matt_olma I think there is something to the view, but, like all the different views about the mind-body problem, it still leaves me unsatisfied. A part of me doesn’t want to dissolve the mystery—I don’t want to know how the trick is done because I want to believe it’s not really a trick.

Never ask a woman her age, a man his salary, or an illusionist which part of consciousness the illusion is

@matt_olma That’s the really hard part. That’s where the controversy is so thick.

@matt_olma I think it is, rightly, more controversial than that. It’s not enough to say that Mary doesn’t learn any new information. The illusionist needs to tell a story. It’s not enough to say that the illusion was a magic trick. The magician needs to tell a story about how it’s done.

@matt_olma When I think about what sort of thing my conscious experience is, I can have an intuition that Mary learns something, that my qualia could be inverted, or that philosophical zombies are possible—but that intuition, that “seeming,” is the illusion. It’s like the pain *in* my toe.

@matt_olma My experience of a pain in my toe is not an illusion, I really am feeling a pain that is in my toe, but I do not have any direct experience of that pain *as an event in my brain.* In fact, my experience misleads me about what sort of event that pain is—as something *in* my toe.

Sam Neill with a great ‘fart story, and Jeff Goldblum with a great ‘fart story’ put-down. RIP SAM (1947-2026)

Starting tomorrow, folks! The full series will be here: therestishistory.com

Set a reminder for my upcoming Space! x.com/i/spaces/1RKZz…

Tom Holland (the actor) meets Tom Holland (the historian) to talk about THE ODYSSEY in a new episode of The Rest Is History podcast.

I also wouldn’t turn down an Olympia SM7 or a machine with script font or any other fancy typeface.

My portable/ultra-portable typewriter collection is nearly complete. I’m missing x5 machines: (1) Corona 4 bank (2) Olivetti Lettera 22 (3) Olivetti Lettera 32 (4) a red Royal Quiet Deluxe (5) a second gen Hermes 3000 Message me if you know anyone with one of these machines.

Some recent finds. I’ve cleaned and serviced each into nearly perfect working order. The only issue remaining is that the Corona 3 needs a new platen to consistently roll paper. Smith-Corona Silent “flattop” Olivetti Studio 44 Corona 3 “folding” Smith Corona Sterling 5-Series

Rose does excellent work here. In 2009, Philip Roth predicted a post-literate society. When he claimed that novels “wouldn’t be able to compete with the Screen,” he was dismissed as a Doomer. Turns out, he was accurately diagnosing the illness.

Today in fun philosophy facts: The British philosopher Derek Parfit always wore the exact same thing—gray pants with a white shirt and red tie—to avoid having to waste time picking out clothes. He also drank room temperature instant coffee to avoid wasting time boiling water.

How often will you ever see anything like ths, 4 sister barques under sail together: