thanks ND and it’s all cool :cool: — Jamal

Earnestly, @Jamal: Thank you for this.

Jokingly: "it's all cool". What the hell kind of phrase is that?

Are the English people the English people?

Are the English people the English people? — Noble Dust

That’s one of the defining characteristics, yes.

At my new job, people aren't very forthcoming. I have to dig for info. I'm kind of burnt out on that whole digging thing.

I don’t know what you mean ND. What’s digging for info got to do with the varieties of Brit?

EDIT: It’s either that I’m bad at conversation and thus find it hard to follow what you are saying, or you’ve had too much wine and are beginning to spout gibberish. Either way, it’s all cool, as they say.

Apparently lacking the courage of a 'deliberate loser', I'd missed by calling ...

https://psyche.co/ideas/learning-to-be-a-loser-a-philosophers-case-for-doing-nothing?utm_source=Psyche+Magazine&utm_campaign=78d8097442-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2023_06_23&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-a9a3bdf830-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D&fbclid=IwAR3cNftEpT4EMUxsrNGL5tokEGxsPY6vgQdmDvVzK-qJWTgnLLW7h9rEQv8

:death: :flower:

If It helps at all, the Irish people are the Irish people except when they're the British people, which most of them are most definitely not and even less so English. Most of the British people who are Irish people have no such issues though, including the English who are Irish.

An impressive army of therapists, wellbeing coaches, yoga instructors, self-help experts, entertainers, educators, entrepreneurs and other charitable souls is deployed to make sure that we don’t ever stumble upon the dark side of existence, let alone look the void in the face, as Cioran used to. This is problematic even when it comes to us through the mediation of art or literature. The great books that explore the abyss of the human soul (the mediocre ones never go there) now come with ‘trigger warnings’. Inhaling serious literature is apparently as dangerous as smoking. Granted, this sugarcoating industry has turned life in modern society into a highly artificial affair and largely a mockery, but most people don’t seem to mind. For mindlessness is another important dimension of modern life.

Reminds me of Fahrenheit 451.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
by Edgar Allan Poe

I like that one.

:up:

I really like this reflection from the opening:

I feared I should not be able to write, from mere memory, a statement so minute and connected as to have the appearance of that truth it would really possess....

Suggests that the truth of events is so complex that we are essentially always "fictionalizing" in order to represent reality.

:up:

Seems to be saying that although what he writes is true, he can't give it verisimilitude. I don't know if he goes on to conclude that he has to fill in the gaps of memory with his inventions, or it's just Poe's narrative trick of saying "you're not going to believe this but I swear it's true."

narrative trick of saying "you're not going to believe this but I swear it's true." — Jamal

manufacturing credibility

Thus giving it the excitement of a true story, while we all know it's not true.

After Dark, Haruki Murakami

Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon

Massive props to you dude. That book, after it very rough first 240 pages, just goes nuts. Utterly crazy, fun and brilliant!

Defending the Holy Land: A Critical Analysis of Israel's Security and Foreign Policy
By Zeev Maoz

Anticipations, The Open Conspiracy, The New World Order
by H. G. Wells

Seems that H.G. Wells wrote a lot of futurist social commentary. I love digging for gems.

edit: Well, fudge that. Impossible to get a usable kindle edition of the collected works. The man just wrote too much I guess.

this instead

Island Nights' Entertainments
by Robert Louis Stevenson

Pragmatism
by William James

A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy
Wing-Tsit Chan, Translator

Pre-Confucianism to Neo-Rationalism. Should be...enlightening.

Amrita, Banana Yoshimoto

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

My least favorite Murakami so far.

Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, Robert Sapolsky

Strong argument against free will.

Just got my sweaty paws on Paul Auster's new book Baumgartner.

South of the Border, West of the Sun, Haruki Murakami

My least favorite Murakami so far. — praxis

I admit that it is not one of his best works, but I think it is emotional how both friends get along. They don't have brothers, and in that period and the social context of Japan, it was very rare, so they were considered 'freaks'. It is lovely how they become friends listening to Nat King Cole: 'Pretend you are happy when you are not, it is not so hard to do

But, it is sad how some people who are important in your childhood end up disappearing because of random causes. For example, because of changing the school or house. And then, you no longer see them no more. When I was a kid, I experienced a similar situation to this story. I was friends with a girl in my class who didn't have siblings, like me. We became very good friends the first day playing Pokemon. But one day, their parents decided to go to Gran Canaria to start a new business, and I never saw her again in my life. I remember her name: Alejandra. I wonder if she remembers me as well, and I guess this is what Murakami wanted to tell in this novel with its respective characters.

On the other hand, it is important to note that this book is a 'spin-off' from 'the wind-up bird chronicle'. Murakami decided to write it in another novel about those characters when he corrected the draft of 'the wind-up bird chronicle'.

:smile:

'Pretend you are happy when you are not, it is not so hard to do — javi2541997

"Lookin' good, but feelin' bad is mighty hard to do" Fats Waller

Galactic Patrol
E.E. "Doc" Smith

Rhymes and Legends, Bécquer

Academic Skepticism in Hume and Kant: A Ciceronian Critique of Metaphysics by Catalina González Quintero (Author)

The book is divided into three parts i.e. Scepticism in the ancient Greek times, Humes' Scepticism and Kant's Scepticism. It is clearly written, and looks at the methodologies and details of the Scepticisms from different angles, which is interesting.

The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories
H.P. Lovecraft

The Gambler, Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Currently finishing: the Iliad.
Though I like to think I understand well where it comes from and why it is the way it is; to a modern reader like me, it feels sluggish at times (catalogue of ships!) and I hate when the plot is interrupted by a needless metaphor like when the sailor seeing the island from afar has to take a detour to avoid his ship from sinking into the sand bank that separates the great ocean from the shore.

Institutio Oratoria by Quintilianus.
I am in for the grammar and philology, but I guess I will take the pedagogy as well.