I highly recommend this piece on the history of comedy in America, focusing on what the 2016 election revealed about what has been our regime since television stand-up. Here's a great quote on tall tales.
In telling a tall tale, you both fulfill and puncture the American dream: You demonstrate that anybody, no matter how humble their origins, can grow up to fake anything.Weird, Wild Stuff
If I had to give a theme to what I looked at over the last two weeks, I would say "weird stuff."
First of all, I listened to a Terrence McKenna talk about Fennegans Wake. After investigating a little further, for example I noodled around a bit on this annotated online addition, I have decided that it won't be a reading project for me in the foreseeable future. However, because I have a true love of all free things on the internet (free as in speech and free as in beer), I want to point out this project of the Wake set to music, free to listen to, free to download.
Secondly, I read all of Time Cube, at least all of it that was available on the mirror site. May Gene Ray, Time Cube's creator, rest in peace. I was inspired to look at all of it after reading Scott Alexander's "steel man" of Time Cube. What's a round-up without something by Scott Alexander?
And here's something else weird to listen to. Apparently, the group is from Oklahoma (what a land of weirdos, eh?) I stumbled upon it by seeing a (quite good) reading of the Wake posted on YouTube.
Thread on programming, managing, and autism. Money quote:
Well, programming is not easy to teach to neurotypicals, lots of teachers can attest to it. Most neurotypicals feel that the computer has a mind, intention, and should get the gist of what they typed and should not require them to be that literal and precise.I also really like this point.
Comment on turning the mental illnesses caused by modern life into pathologies.
Aphorisms/Shorts
The old internet was the greatest tool for life's conventional warfare. Internet 2.0, or whatever marketing label you want to give it, is guerrilla warfare against the human psyche.
More important than being interested is working on cool projects. With a project in focus interesting things come to you and find a more joyful place.
Collapse Reddit is the end game of loving news and internalizing its ideology of fear.
The rush to revolution is always a prisoner's dilemma.
Interesting: you have to watch for the danger of social media most when it is truly interesting.
