a thread for mundane ironists

[b]Peter Watts

But when the flash flood crosses your path, when the lion leaps at you from the grasses, advanced self-awareness is an unaffordable indulgence. The brain stem does its best.[/b]

Or, here, in dealing with the fulminating fanatic pinheads.

If you can see it, chances are it doesn’t exist.

And, no, not just your own “personal experiences” with God.
Well, unless of course you can actually prove them.

Pack animals always tear apart the weaklings in their midst. Every child knows that much instinctively.

Unless they’re, what, defective?

I coast through the abyss on the colder side of Neptune’s orbit. Most of the time I exist only as an absence, to any observer on the visible spectrum: a moving, asymmetrical silhouette blocking the stars. But occasionally, during my slow endless spin, I glint with dim hints of reflected starlight. If you catch me in those moments you might infer something of my true nature: a segmented creature with foil skin, bristling with joints and dishes and spindly antennae. Here and there a whisper of accumulated frost clings to a joint or seam, some frozen wisp of gas encountered in Jupiter space perhaps. Elsewhere I carry the microscopic corpses of Earthly bacteria who thrived with carefree abandon on the skins of space stations or the benign lunar surface—but who had gone to crystal at only half my present distance from the sun. Now, a breath away from Absolute Zero, they might shatter at a photon’s touch.

Of course you and your abyss might be different.

Nobody gets a good view of a system from the inside, no matter who they are. The view’s distorted.

And, no, not just in Flatland.

Imagine you have intellect but no insight, agendas but no awareness. Your circuitry hums with strategies for survival and persistence, flexible, intelligent, even technological—but no other circuitry monitors it. You can think of anything, yet are conscious of nothing. You can’t imagine such a being, can you? The term being doesn’t even seem to apply, in some fundamental way you can’t quite put your finger on.

Let’s call them Kids then.

[b]God

I’m out of ideas.[/b]

Again in other words.

I care more about the outcome of sporting events than any other aspect of human existence.

So, by all means, pray for the home team, chump!!

Spoiler alert: everyone dies at the end.

Of course it’s the spoiler after this that the faithful cling to.

It’s a fucking mask, people.

Think of it as Halloween 365 days a year.

There’s only one answer to the question “Can people really be this dumb?”, and that answer is yes.

If not definitely.

9/11 takes Me back to a simpler time when America fought terrorists instead of electing them.

Say it ain’t so, Joe!

[b]Garry Winogrand

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.[/b]

Their facts not ours.

I photograph what interests me. I’m not saying anything different.

Another mysterious fact clearly described?

Every photograph is a battle of form versus content.

You tell me: google.com/search?source=un … =615&dpr=1

I have no expectations. None at all.

I do have a few myself.

I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.

Whatever that means.

In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.

Or even something else altogether.

[b]God

Human history’s great if you like true crime.[/b]

On the other other hand, when it comes to crime, He did create us.
Cue Rabbi Kushner?

One day no one will be left to look back on all this and laugh.

That works for me.

You really are just a total disgrace as a species.

And He should know.

When does life begin?
When you leave Texas.
Except Austin.

You tell me.

“Working in mysterious ways” is functionally indistinguishable from “fucking up”.

See, I told you.

When you do it it’s a murder. When I do it it’s a miscarriage.

See, I told you.

[b]Charles Baudelaire

What can an eternity of damnation matter to someone who has felt, if only for a second, the infinity of delight?[/b]

If he were still around, we’d tell him.

The devil’s finest trick is to persuade you that he does not exist.

You know, if you’re foolish enough to believe in the devil.

Extract the eternal from the ephemeral.

So, how’s that going for you?

There are some temptations which are so strong that they must be virtues.

So, sure, why not just call them that.

Nothing can be done except little by little.

He suspected that there might be exceptions.

Everything that is beautiful and noble is the product of reason and calculation.

He suspected that there might be exceptions.

[b]God

If you think I’m pro-life you’ve never read the Old Testament.[/b]

I smell a new thread.

Abortion should only be permitted in cases of rape, incest, and when the woman chooses it.

God the insufferable Liberal!

Climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the world’s oceans, ecosystems and atmosphere.

And damn clever of them to include us in on it.

Human beings are the best thing that ever happened to mosquitoes.

Not to mention, say, viruses?

Human stupidity is rapidly mutating into many other strains of stupid which are far stupider and can inflict even more stupid damage on the stupid world.

It was a normal day…

You know what I hear also works against COVID is cyanide.

Or a bullet in the brain.

Well, the deluge of views seems to be over.

Last week at this time this thread had about 490,000 views. Today is has 832,747.

WTF?!!

If it were a computer glitch then it would seem other threads here would experience the same “surge”.

Any speculation on what’s “behind” it?

For example, remember this exchange from the Desperate Degenerate Support Group thread.

As you might well imagine there is almost no possibility of me having a “fan base” here. Rather than following me most would prefer that I just remove myself from ILP altogether.

You know, with their Precious Self on the line.

Note to promethean:

It’s been a while. And you know where that will take some here…

[b]Carl Friedrich Gauss

The Infinite is only a manner of speaking.[/b]

Well, at least until someone actually finds it.

Mathematicians stand on each other’s shoulders.

In a maner of speaking.

The enchanting charms of this sublime science reveal only to those who have the courage to go deeply into it.

Astrology, right Fixed Jacob?

We must admit with humility that, while number is purely a product of our minds, space has a reality outside our minds, so that we cannot completely prescribe its properties a priori.

Please, don’t get them started!!!
Here for example.

I mean the word proof not in the sense of the lawyers, who set two half proofs equal to a whole one, but in the sense of a mathematician, where half proof = 0, and it is demanded for proof that every doubt becomes impossible.

Next up: in the sense of the ethicists.

Ask her to wait a moment…I am almost done.

Let us know how that works out for you.

[b]tiny nietzsche

shout out to people that are sleeping[/b]

And dreaming of better days.

fuck me up, fall equinox

Anyone here get fucked up?

you are in his dms. I don’t believe I exist. we are not the same

You tell me.

slept in my john cage t–shirt and had 4’33" of silence

Of course who wouldn’t?

keys, wallet, phone, despair

Then out the door.

abyss in, abyss out

Repeat as necessary.

[b]John Green

I go to seek a Great Perhaps.[/b]

And, sure, why not here.

And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future-you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.

And, as likely as not, you get this: youtu.be/KUwjNBjqR-c

We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken. We think we are invincible because we are.

No, make that

I dislike the phrase ‘Internet friends,’ because it implies that people you know online aren’t really your friends, that somehow the friendship is less real or meaningful to you because it happens through Skype or text messages. The measure of a friendship is not its physicality but its significance.

Next up: “internet foes”.

Pain demands to be felt.

Mine owns the patent on it, he sneered.

Support Group featured a rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.

Perhaps the biggest side effect of them all.

[b]tiny nietzsche

it turns out I was the abyss the whole time[/b]

You know, on this side of the grave.

shout out to your crippling anxiety

But only if it deserves it.

laughing my fucking abyss off

Again, for example.

don’t hate the poetry, hate the poet

Or, here: don’t hate the post, hate the poster.

looks in mirror “explain yourself”

Nope, nothing yet.

this void isn’t big enough for the both of us

How about now?

[b]Sally Rooney

Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t know if she would ever find out where it was or become part of it.[/b]

How about your real life?

Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.

Okay, once and for all: genes or memes?

Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything.

So they tell you.

Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.

Or the thing you just lug around from day to day out of your head.

Most people go through their whole lives, without ever really feeling that close with anyone.

You know, if they’re lucky.

Gradually the waiting began to feel less like waiting and more like this was simply what life was: the distracting tasks undertaken while the thing you are waiting for continues not to happen.

And, no, not just the part where you die.

[b]so sad today

what do we want?
serotonin!
when do we want it?
all the time![/b]

On demand for example.

i cancelled myself but unfortunately i came back

Cue the Grim Reaper.

can’t decide if i’m alive

Let alone dead and gone.

powered by bad decisions

If only down to the bone.

that which does not kill you but makes you sleep all day

If only in the best of all possible worlds.

i miss you never contact me again

If not in that exact order.

[b]Tallulah Bankhead

The less I behave like Whistler’s mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after.[/b]

Need a little help with this one.

I read Shakespeare and the Bible, and I can shoot dice. That’s what I call a liberal education.

You know, back then.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

Me? A lead brick I’m guessing.

Here’s a rule I recommend: Never practice two vices at once.

Let alone three or more.

I’ll come and make love to you at five o’clock. If I’m late, start without me.

Some did, some didn’t.

I’d rather be strongly wrong than weakly right.

Not unlike the fulminating fanatics here.

Who are you calling a fanatic you old fart? Want to see who is rational???define dasein and lets talk about it… you insult people and then complain you are being insulted dullard

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Speech was given to man to conceal his thoughts.” Charles Maurice De Talleyrand[/b]

And, alas, to women too.

“A diplomat who says “yes” means “maybe", a diplomat who says “maybe" means “no”, and a diplomat who says “no” is no diplomat.” Talleyrand

Any diplomats here? Yes? No? Maybe?

“I exist only as a whole; my only claim is to be natural, and the pleasure I feel in an action, I take as a sign that I ought to do it.” André Gide

Not much that doesn’t rationalize.

“Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.” F. Scott Fitzgerald

With obvious exceptions of course.

“Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is." Albert Camus

Oh, and what might that be?

"The need to be right is the sign of a vulgar mind.” Albert Camus

Yo, Mr. Fulminating Fanatic Objectivist! Your rebuttal please!!

Who insults people?

you should be happy I insulted you…if I ever knew somebody personally who acted like you towards the people I know and did things you did, Id slap them on their empty head…you are an empty female scrivener with few screws loose.

Case in point… case proved… case closed.

i thought you said you dont take anything seriously…me neither…i am throwing insults at people out of boredom and as a joke…you would not get it, ms. psychic…