Racing Turtles

Law school is just seminary

✅ #1 route to elite status among people without a rebellious streak

✅ Curriculum revolves around the classical trivium of "political speechifying," "brown-nosing your superiors," and "hidebound bureaucratic box-ticking"

✅ Join your colleagues in pretending a random assemblage of old texts that make absolutely no coherent sense on their face are not only very sensible but also reveal the truth of the universe

✅ Talk as much as possible about how you're only here to make the world a better place, then graduate and avoid doing this at all costs

✅ Career hierarchy where the sillier your outfit gets the cooler and more powerful you are

the basic emotional condition of capitalism is anxiety, fueled by insecurity. one of the most common, yet most effective, rhetorical moves used by the apologists of capital is to present this motive force as aspiration, rather than terror - that is, to disingenuously figure the motion of the system as a running-to, instead of a running-from. it is like if the camera were only ever positioned behind indiana jones, following him as he “aspires” to reach the exit of the cave, not once turning around to reveal the colossal stone sphere just inches from crushing him

consciousness is a gift but it is has tricked us into thinking that we can simply will ourselves into higher or otherwise more improved versions of our person through endless introspection. all other creatures in the animal kingdom recognize that change only comes from action…..when a lizard feels sick, they’ll lay in the sun because they know sunlight manufactures much needed nutrients. there is very limited action -> reaction in the darkness of your skull unless it’s in some way informed by the things happening around you, and “growth” being isolated in this way can only serve to endlessly recontextualize thoughts, memories and feelings to the point where they are rendered irrelevant to the reality they were based in. I wrote this paragraph largely just to deliver that lizard fact.

i have constructed a diagram i think is relevant

there’s a convergent evolution between bad dragon dildos and Masculine Products for Men (this website sells old-timey shaving equipment) where the copy for both of them reads like austin powers saying “do i make you horny, baby”

you’re not a capitalist. a capitalist is a person who owns or manages capital. the word for a person who neither owns nor manages capital but who believes in capitalism is ‘sucker’

It’s always funny to me how الله‎ is translated as “Allah” instead of “God” so that intentionally or not (and I suspect more intentionally than not) it ends up sounding like Muslims worship some other, alternative monotheistic God of Abraham. A different one.

Anyway what I actually think we should do is just start doing this for every language. Have news stories talk about how Notre Dame is a cathedral where French Catholics pray to their god, Dieu. There’s a schism between the Russian and Ukrainian churches even though they both worship Bog. Etc.

the British God and the American Gawd

It’s actually Gahd in the midwest

That’s a hilarious concept I’m on board

the basic emotional condition of capitalism is anxiety, fueled by insecurity. one of the most common, yet most effective, rhetorical moves used by the apologists of capital is to present this motive force as aspiration, rather than terror - that is, to disingenuously figure the motion of the system as a running-to, instead of a running-from. it is like if the camera were only ever positioned behind indiana jones, following him as he “aspires” to reach the exit of the cave, not once turning around to reveal the colossal stone sphere just inches from crushing him

For me the worst concern trolling of the last couple days has been "they burned down a [half-built] affordable housing complex." If Minneapolis is anything like Columbus the city has defined "affordable" to mean $1000/month rent and the whole thing is just a tax break scheme for a well-connected local developer

Also, all new-build mid-rises are made of literal matchsticks

It wasn’t even an “affordable housing complex” it was a handful of affordable housing units in a luxury unit complex. I’m sure the reason it got burned down was because it wasn’t built for the people who live there to use it, but rather to help price them out.

they’re batting 1000 as far as i’m concerned

The thing about how horrifyingly, lethally hot this summer is (across basically the entire northern hemisphere) is that yes, it is, and yet if I live for another 60 years maybe 40 of them are going to be hotter than this one. Maybe even that’s optimistic. Any acknowledgement of how bad it is right now is inseparable from the realisation that it not only can be worse, but absolutely will be worse.

I’m not saying anyone should be panicking, but I am saying that as a society, as a planet, we ought to be pouring resources into finding ways to keep people alive under these unprecedented conditions; it’s going to be one of the major public health and civil engineering challenges of this century, and we can see it coming. Yet instead, because capitalism, what we are in effect doing is pouring resources into finding ways to make these conditions worse.

That’s not acceptable.

The thing about Those White People Baby Names is the way they so poetically express the tension between individuality and rigid conformity. These parents all want to name their child something unique, because they value the concept of uniqueness, yet simultaneously they abhor it in practice… ergo, 30 different spelling variations on the most normative possible names. This homogeneity-masquerading-as-diversity is inseparable from capitalist consumer culture and in fact is directly analogous to the experience of walking into a grocery store and being asked to “choose” between 50 varieties of toothpaste with the same exact ingredients, 12 brands of laundry detergent, etc.

why is the only #relatable media for people trying to navigate their 20s about rich self absorbed idiots who live in new york

guess who makes tv shows