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i read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas recently on recommendation from a fantastic YouTuber named Shaun who has made many video essays from a leftist perspective criticizing right-wing ideology, thoroughly analyzing historic events using dialectical materialism, and recently put out an informative and heartfelt video about Palestine.
TOWWAFO is a short read (only five pages) but i have not been able to stop thinking about the questions it raises and the way it relates to being American in the modern age, with all the knowledge we have of the horrors of imperialism and American intervention in the name of capitalism. i highly recommend reading it and meditating on its implications.
âThe trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain. If you can't lick 'em, join 'em. If it hurts, repeat it. But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else.â - Ursula K. LeGuin, The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas
Feb 29, 2024
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What can I say about this that hasnât already been said?
Having grown up on Twitter and seeing first hand the rise of the right wing conspiracy theory movement, to the point the app became miserable and unusable, understanding the specifics of how this happened was fascinating and I couldnât put it down.
The chapters on Israel/Palestine and the history of the âJewish questionâ was really important to read and I havenât been able to stop discussing it with people at every opportunity. Naomiâs account of her time in Palestine, dealing with the IDF is really shocking if ultimately unsurprising.
I really feel like this is one of the most essential reads of the 21st century.
Sep 10, 2024
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if you want to feel hopeful and unified with other humans
Empire of Pain - Patrick Radden Keene - if you want to feel the opposite of hope about the nature of humans - very interesting and important to learn about how the greed of the Sackler family, doctors, legislators and more contributed to the opioid crisis
Outline - Rachel Cusk - basically just a story of a woman having conversations with people about the human condition
Nov 27, 2024
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Firs tthing- walter Ben-ya-meen. If u bring him up in conversation and say ben ja min ur gonna look like an idiot apparently. But its funny bc its not like people say Valter Benyameen. They say walter. Go figure.
Anyways this text is So Great. im definitely late to the game to this contexts of frankfurt dialectics, post war philosophy manifestos, yada yada but this one is so powerful and formative esp if ur an artist or visual creator that is Woke. Its one of his more accessible writings, and he is also a very important person to kno if u r even remotely into literature/philosophie/art/design/criticism etc.
Benyameen talks about this loss/absence of human experience post war/industrual revolution whcih i think is rlly the root of all this floptok based retard gang xiaohongshu on the extreme side, but even at its most tame (yet this is more insidious/barbaric in the bad way as Benyameen puts it) all of these miu miu shoe unboxing, day in the life of a big city transplant, clean consumerism we are witness to online. It is rlly this central idea of experience that hit home for me, and the resulting idea of barbarism which fr opened my third eye and put words to the feelings of trying to contextualize our days of Today. Im also totally going to start using the word barbarian to describe creatives and intellectuals and world leaders haha. Be the Good Barbarian.
dm me if u want my annotated copy i culd keep going but arent these meant to be kept short idk<3
Jan 20, 2024
Top Recs from @ellego0ds
nobody at your bullshit email job is going to perish if you are away from your computer for fifteen minutes. donât clock out. get paid to be in the sun. relish in every moment that you have no Slack messages to answer and do something that counteracts the soul-crushing pain of staring at a screen all day. whether you rest your eyes, read a chapter of a book, walk around your block - whatever it is, steal time because your employer probably isnât paying you well enough to merit staring into the Outlook abyss for eight hours.
Jan 30, 2024
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BONUS FEATURES! NO WORRYING ABOUT IF YOUâRE PAYING FOR THE RIGHT STREAMING SERVICE! WILL NEVER BE RETROACTIVELY ALTERED! itâs beautiful
Jan 27, 2024
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first T shotz tomorrow đ„ł
Jan 26, 2024