Nilsi

You’re absolutely correct - there are indeed women who are drawn to such displays of tackiness; precisely the same women who viewed Donald Trump as their daddy and rewarded him with their votes. It’s truly admirable how you’ve taken up the cause of defending the self-respect of these women, whom are desperate enough to embrace this aesthetic. As for the guy with the Gunna profile picture (a choice I struggle to imagine a more tasteless representation of one’s identity), at least he manages to get some pussy - albeit women of questionable taste and desperation. Meanwhile, those cringe ass climbing shoes you’re rocking guarantee you’ll remain firmly outside of any such dynamic.

No joke, man. Though I’d file her under “guilty pleasure,” I’ve listened to that album more times than I care to admit.

Nice meme. No one puts their thoughts to the test like I do. I literally risk my life for this shit, so don’t fucking @ me.

Yes, but avoid moralizing causality. Look to Trump to grasp the essence of karma - not as some moral law of the universe, nor as a divine judgment doled out by a righteous god. Karma, in this sense, is not about punishment or reward but the mechanics of action and consequence. Trump is the quintessential New Ager, fixated on positive thinking and manifestation. His singular focus is on being rich and famous, and that’s exactly what he achieves. He gets what he wants because he’s the master of causality.

Ok boomer.

The main battleline here, I think, is best drawn between two unlikely adversaries: Gilles Deleuze and Peter Sloterdijk. I suspect that you, like Sloterdijk, nonetheless harbor a Parmenidean Urinstinkt that inclines you to reject postmodernism, by which I mean the dynamic, self-amplifying chaos of positive feedback loops. I’m not trying to evoke Nick Land here, but in some ways, he has been a great interpreter of the runaway intensification central to Deleuze’s vision, where repetition destabilizes rather than stabilizes, propelling difference into ever-greater, ever-more-dangerous becomings. This is precisely what Sloterdijk’s instinct for spheres and immunological enclosures resists - a Heraclitean cosmos of flux and strife that ruthlessly denies the comforting illusion of unity, such as that provided by tradition and mythology.

I just threw up in my mouth. This might earn you a few nods from 13-year-old boys who think you're cool, but no woman with an ounce of self-respect will find this tacky ass shit remotely attractive.

Teleological models of development are the ultimate symptom of a dying modernity. They distill the modern obsession with rational, universal progress narratives into something so abstract and incorporeal that it’s completely severed from any real, embodied culture - little more than intellectual vapor. Every time I hear someone like Kamala Harris speak, I can’t help but wonder: what fantasyland do these people inhabit? How can they still parrot Enlightenment optimism with absolutely zero self-awareness or irony? And really, how does anyone in 2024 use the word universal with a straight face? The defining feature of this moment in history is radical multipolarity, yet some cling to these grand Enlightenment fantasies like a child clinging to its mother’s breast. A universal map of human development? Are you joking? Have you ever met humans? Postmodern late-stage capitalism, supercharged by AI, has made one thing abundantly clear: human nature thrives on runaway self-creation. Call it positive feedback or the death drive - this isn’t natural evolution’s steady march of negative feedback loops and universal equilibria. Darwin and Schopenhauer may be forgiven for such naïve notions, but not a contemporary. The comforting illusion of the mother’s womb that is the Parmenidean cosmos of unity may offer solace, but to truly make sense of the contemporary world, we must return to the Heraclitean vision of cosmic strife and war. And I mean this as much metaphysically as culturally.

Share songs that are close to perfection; ideal; archetypal.

Bloomsbury released a top-tier print edition of Stanislavski's original trilogy in its Revelations series - one of the best-curated publishing collections out there. Highly recommend checking it out!

Gotta love a dose of pure 80's nostalgia.

I always saw myself as an artist without a craft - until I discovered Stanislavski's Method. It gave me the philosophy and tools to see my character as a work of art - to understand it, dominate it, shape it, and unleash it with unrestrained imagination. As a thinker, Stanislavski is criminally underrated beyond the world of professional acting.

One of the most audacious political minds of the 20th century; the uncompromising Anti-Hegelian historian of our age - this is the kind of raw, unfiltered thought you can’t afford to ignore.

Well then, surprised you shall be, because isn’t it the fundamental lesson of psychoanalysis that what you dismiss as “gibberish” is precisely where the communication actually happens? And someone obsessively disregarding the unconscious as mere noise? That’s what we call a hysteric.

Lovely.

I want to be very clear here: I’m saying this - as fits the topic of this thread - as a good historian, not a metaphysician; though, admittedly, I’m not entirely convinced the two can be disentangled so easily. I always hate it when Hegel comes back to bite me in the ass, but I suppose such is the fate of the eternal philosopher; or as Derrida so eloquently put it: “A specter is always a revenant. One cannot control its comings and goings because it begins by coming back. The paradox of spectrality, the specter or the revenant, the ‘thing’ begins by coming back. The spirit of Marx [and by extension Hegel], in a certain sense, is still to come and thus it remains to come. It is never simply a ghost but always already a revenant.”

Cigarettes, booze, cocaine - anything that makes you thank the bearded man in the sky for blessing you with this beautiful body to revel in his grand, fucked-up world.

"In this country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the women." – Tony Montana. Of course, we might also add drugs. Drugs really help. Alternatively, you could try being a Marxist - that’ll get you some pussy too.

Without a phone? Robbing a gas station sounds like your best bet at that point.

I think you might be on the spectrum. That’s like claiming Shakespeare was conceptually confused, as if all his depth could be reduced to a string of dry, rational analytic propositions.

I’ve always thought Morrissey was a whiny loser, oozing an unmistakable castration complex. This is precisely why I adore Lou Reed so much: even in his most decadent moments, there’s always an undercurrent of the heroic.

High on life.