Mark Granza

The digital divide has reversed. Digital is cheap, ubiquitous, often fake. Physical is the premium product now.

When a human being dances, he’s reaching up toward something sublime, letting the music draw his natural form upward into grace. Even if it’s a pop song like Billie Jean, even if it’s a desperately troubled human like Michael Jackson. When he stumbles, the eye reads the fall as a fall from grace—just like we can’t help but read death as something unnatural tugging a soul that was made for life down into the dust. When a robot dances, even if it dances amusingly and well, it’s being prodded into an uncanny mimicry of something that’s not congruent with its matter, like an amputated limb galvanized by electricity into a sudden jolt of movement. When it falls, we see its true nature: inert, lifeless, mere stuff. The intuition tracks what the eye alone can’t see, which is why you’ll notice no one has the impulse to get up and help the robot the way they might a man. It’s the difference between raw matter being pushed up from below against gravity, and spirit reaching down to draw matter up into the dance. Also it’s freaking hilarious.

lmao this is unbelievable

@shortmagsmle Honor Among Mutuals

Never blackpill

I like Will because he's the only tech bro who outgrew being a tech bro and is now genuinely trying to transcend tech by returning to basic Christianity instead of LARPing Promethean mythology.

This is an incredibly exciting project. Felix is the real deal. Reminds me of a young British Michael Mann.

Here's a presentation of his project: concessionfilm.com

Friends are doing cool things. If you enjoyed @0xAlaric's recent doc on the Darien Gap, check out @felixemackenzie. Felix is a very talented British filmmaker who'll soon be leaving for the DRC as part of pre-production for a film about the contest for critical minerals between the US and China. Think Denis Villeneuve's Sicario, but set in Africa and featuring real people instead of actors. Link below.

@felixemackenzie It’s called we get some real shit done

@markgranza Full steam ahead

My Jungian phase is over. Not because he’s wrong, he’s literally right about everything, but because I’ve had enough introspection for a lifetime. Back on track, Machiavelli style. Trust the plan.

Your default assumption when consuming ~anything online now should be that said thing is somehow marketing. Entire celebrity careers have now been invented via ‘clipping’ and similar bizarre methods of rapidly diffusing attention. Clavicular is an obvious example, another would be “Lil Mabu” - the rapper son of a NY hedge fund billionaire who used fake controversy to go viral on tiktok. It’s no longer just that however; there are legions of TikTok videos being posted now bemoaning Hinge and similar popular dating apps that are entirely posted to advertise bizarre alternate dating apps (“Cuffed” and “The League”) There are TikTok spam bots that reply to posts about dating that blow up encouraging girls to read random books called shit like “Why He Picks Her.” They bot likes and reply comments to make it look legit. Remember how many meme accounts used to (maybe they still do, I’ve blocked them all) post photos of OnlyFans girls getting “owned”? All of those are sophisticated advertisements. They’re bought and paid for. And this is without even getting into things like reddit stories that are clearly made up fetish garbage. The internet is saturated with sophisticated paid content. Don’t be a memetic victim.

@ScottMGreer Called it the day he was killed, tbh. The performative tears by 90% of the right, “grief in the content economy”, were the precursor.

Charlie Kirk has gone from a beloved martyr to a running joke for normies and a source for endless conspiracy theories on the Right. The claims the Left had "awakened a giant" after his murder turned out to be wrong.

Jung once said that the first part of life is dedicated to forming a healthy main character syndrome, and that the second part is about looking inward and letting go of it.

@walterkirn Epic.

I recently had the privilege of meeting one of my greatest literary heroes, David Mamet, for the first time. Of course we talked about the drama. I ventured a theory about his own plays, that they are all about deception. Awfully simplistic. But he humored me. Then he came out with a rule I'll never forget, and one which every dramatist should take to heart: "All plays, really, are about deception. And when the lie is revealed, the play is over." Gold.

We’ve got a situation

SEARCHING FOR PYRAMIDS IN THE DARIEN GAP FULL DOCUMENTARY

@Lady_Astor ❤️

@markgranza 🤗

Catholicism is in steep institutional decline. It also seems to have increasing public salience. I try to make sense of this dynamic in @firstthingsmag firstthings.com/our-strange-ca…

"A complete man must be an artist, a warrior, and a philosopher.” — Cellini