a thread for mundane ironists

[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…

[b]Jordan Ellenberg

…we’re not actually people at all, but simulations running on an ultracomputer built by other people.[/b]

And then it’s that all the way down to God.

The thesis of the book, he writes in response, when correctly interpreted, is essentially trivial. . . . To ‘prove’ such a mathematical result by a costly and prolonged numerical study of many kinds of business profit and expense ratios is analogous to proving the multiplication table by arranging elephants in rows and columns, and then doing the same for numerous other kinds of animals. The performance, though perhaps entertaining, and having a certain pedagogical value, is not an important contribution either to zoölogy or mathematics.

Next up: the thesis of your post, Mr. Pinhead.

What you learn after a long time in math–and I think the lesson applies much more broadly–is that there’s always somebody ahead of you, whether they’re right there in class with you or not.

With possible exceptions like, say, Sculptor, pood and obsrvr524.
Go ahead, ask them.

What can I say? Mathematics is a way not to be wrong, but it isn’t a way not to be wrong about everything.

Tell that to, well, you know who.

A scientist can hardly encounter anything more desirable than, just as a work is completed, to have its foundation give way.

On the other hand, define “desirable”?

It’s not always wrong to be wrong.

Just as it’s not always safe to be right.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.” Tchaikovsky[/b]

I know that I would be.

“Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Abraham Lincoln

Of course: imagine his reaction to Trump.

“No man has a good enough memory to make a successful liar.” Abraham Lincoln

Right, like some aren’t still considerably better at it than others.

“A friend is one who has the same enemies as you have.” Abraham Lincoln

And here of course that will likely be me.

“The fishermen know that the sea is dangerous and the storm terrible, but they have never found these dangers sufficient reason for remaining ashore.” Vincent Van Gogh

Besides, there are bills to be paid.

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” Vincent Van Gogh

And, as I recall, an ear.

[b]Eugene Ionesco

Good men make good rhinoceroses, unfortunately.[/b]

Also, both being very close to extinction.

That’s how we stay young these days: murder and suicide.

You wouldn’t think so, would you?

I’ve always been suspicious of collective truths.

The pinheads in other words.

I long for solitude and yet I cannot stand it.

I can never get enough of it myself.

When I was born, I was almost fourteen years old. That’s why I was able to understand more easily than most what it was all about.

I was nearly 20 myself. And half way around the world.

I am, it seems, an avant-garde dramatist. It would even seem obvious since I am present here at discussions on the avant-garde theatre. It is all entirely official. But what does the term avant-garde mean?

Yo, pood! Define it for us.

People like you have no worldviews and opinions. You are just weak and gob up whatever it is that everybody else is gobbing up around you to make your life easier. If you had few cells active, you would realise that the ideology you adopted in Vietnam was just a logic of a defeated loser and an apologism for a spectacular and dangerous defeat of a nation that surrendered a belief in its superiority and let itself be beaten by its gravest and most deadly enemy in its history which threatened its existence completely. Cowards find this moralistic and pretentious bullshit seductive because it excuses them from standing firmly and bravely and putting their necks on the line for their community and civilization. Wait until the Chinese get braver, your superior military and economy and civilisational superiority wont save you if there wont be men to fight for it, using its superior potential. You are welcoming the idea that your sons and daughters will become bastards and slaves and are actually anticipating this. Go hug a tree and get high under tents, thats what your generation is good for.
To clarify something…I am not talking about China USA war or anything like that…the situation is even worse…it is an active and silent competition for the resources and opportunities of two, closely intimate and inter-reliant giants…so if Americans wont wake up, there wont even be a shake to wake them up because this competition will be fought quietly and day-to-day and will rely not on military but on the active participation of both economies and their participants in a multitude of tiny struggles, with two governments attempting to outmaneuver the other, whilst being reliant on each other and this puts the indifferent, democratic autocratic rulers at a disadvantage because liberal democracies are selfish from top-down and are almost completely dominated by blind capital seeking. In a democracy, the middle class needs to have a national awareness and be patriotic and religious, otherwise, the ship will sail wherever the profit blows and the dull and barbaric working mass will be swayed by the ultra-rich like Trump and other charlatans who actually have the power and connection to seriously incentivise selfish and personal profit seeking and vastly outweigh the benefit of sacrificing this advantage to serve the nation as a whole as a selfless and patriotic leader.

Compare how USA fought WW2 to how it fought in Vietnam…all this constant talk of implementing democracies…is like getting ready to get into a knife fight and telling others and yourself, you are doing it to help them…so that when you get cut, you can run away and tell everybody you did your best to help them and they just would not listen…logic of cowards and queers. If USA had fought in the middle-east as it did in Europe, the wars would be over in months and then you would simply contain the rebels with minimal military investment whilst stabilizing the country by taking it over slowly. Visit the Hadrians wall in Britain and read about Romans and how they dealt with elusive rebels…you protect the roads and cities, you block exit points from the mountains and you set up watch-points with an ability to quickly communicate and reinforce themselves and you starve the rebels for years tens of years whilst raiding them mercilessly and ceaselessly…how Romans did for hundreds of years…whats wrong???Romans had no modern technology and faced barbaric Germanics and managed to control half the world yet America cant contain illiterate bandits hiding in mountains the size of what???half Texas???pathetic…

[b]Philosopohy Tweets

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.” Hannah Arendt[/b]

I’ll bet that’s still true.

“The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any." Hannah Arendt

Yo, Mr. Objectivist! Object please.

“What is most difficult is to love the world as it is, with all the evil and suffering in it.” Hannah Arendt

If not impossible.

“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.” Hannah Arendt

Let’s explain that.

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” George Orwell

Not unlike the Coalition of Truth.

“All the papers that matter live off their advertisements, and the advertisers exercise an indirect censorship over news.” George Orwell

How about CNN, MSNBC and FOX NEWS?
Same thing?

[b]Mircea Eliade

If we pay no attention to it, time does not exist.[/b]

Only now, thanks to him, it does.

Light does not come from light, but from darkness.

Next up [of course]: what darkness comes from.

The great cosmic illusion is a hierophany… One is devoured by Time, not because one lives in Time, but because one believes in its reality, and therefore forgets or despises eternity.

All the way to the grave, for example.

As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth.

Fuck it, he thought, that’s close enough.

It would be frightening to think that in all the Cosmos, which is so harmonious, so complete and equal to itself, that only human life is happening randomly, that only one’s destiny lacks meaning.

Of course it doesn’t frighten pood in the least. It’s even possible that nothing does.

For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.

We’ve got quite a few of “those” here, don’t we?
And, no, not all of them are pinheads.