what i'm reading:§
freud on shit and money§
...[W]herever archaic modes of thought have predominated or persist— in the ancient civilizations, in myths, fairy tales and superstitions, in unconscious thinking, in dreams, and in neuroses— money is brought into the most intimate relationship with dirt... ...even according to ancient Babylonian doctrine gold is 'the faeces of Hell' (Mammon = ilu manman). ...It is possible that the contrast between the most precious substance known to men and the most worthless, which they reject as waste matter, ('refuse') has led to this specific identification of gold with faeces
—"Character and Anal Eroticism", The Freud Reader p. 296-297, edited by Peter Gay
Yeah
what i'm listening to:§
james K - "Play"§
Very excited after all this time to finally have the james K album announced. "Scorpio" and "Blinkmoth (July Mix)" are instant trip hop classics. "Play" has overwhelming CFCF - Memoryland vibes which are kind of played out at this point but I'm not complaining.
what i'm watching:§
The Net: The UnaBomber, LSD, and The Internet (2003)§
this is what my brain looks like kinda. This was mentioned on Weird Studies in an episode where they're talking about the influence of 60s psychedelics on culture. I kind of already knew the counterculture-MKUltra-internet through-line. They didn't even touch the Manhattan Project and Vannevar Bush. but I really liked the oppressive, conspiratorial atmosphere; the discordant, noisy soundtrack; and the letters from Ted Kaczynski. Very yucky, very Adam Curtis.
28 Days Later (2002) and Shaun of the Dead (2004)§
I didn't intentionally watch 2 British Zombie movies. Maybe it's synchronicity.
28 Days Later was alright. Shaun of the Dead is great except for the part where the white British man says the n-word.
I liked the soundtrack choices in each of them, and I think that has something to do with their British-ness. There was something very Disco Elysium/British Sea Power about the soundtrack to early scene of 28 Days where the guy is just wandering abandoned London.
something i liked:§
personal information management§
Maybe I'm having a reactionary impulse to the A.I. mania (see something i hated below), but I want to be intentional with learning and note-taking now. I paid for a year of Obsidian Sync and now I have to like, actually start thinking about how I take notes and ingest information. I would say it's fun but that's just too sad a confession.
something i hated:§
teachers on AI in school§
404 Media - Teachers Are Not OK School fucking sucks. I was a weird nerdy kid who liked learning about shit but I always put the minimum of effort in because it sucks. The structure of public schooling does not inspire kids to be interested in the things they're being taught. If you're on a certain track you just get railroaded into college because 'what else am I supposed to do?' and drown in debt. Because of some freak circumstances I dropped out of a 4 year school for community college and paid off my debt with [REDACTED] and got a full-time job with benefits with no degree. It's only at this point of relative comfort that I'm actually interested in stuff and self-motivated to learn new skills.
This is the corollary to my "what i liked" topic. I did good at school with the minimum of effort and so I never had to think about taking good notes or studying. Now I have things I'm interested in— philosophy, computer science, math, critical theory— and I want to take notes and do research and write essays. That didn't come from my public school education.
I'm going to drop this apocryphal Slavoj Zizek quote that I can't find a source for:
...that AI will be the death of learning & so on; to this, I say NO! My student brings me their essay, which has been written by AI, & I plug it into my grading AI, & we are free! While the 'learning' happens, our superego satisfied, we are free now to learn whatever we want
a picture:§
