a thread for mundane ironists

[b]God

Please reply to this tweet with a single Bible verse condemning abortion.
Go ahead.
I’ve got all eternity.[/b]

Next up: the Bible and miscarriages.

Finally, abortion is once again a decision solely between a woman and her state and local governments.

Finally something at least.

The world’s richest man is nuts.

You know, “for all practical purposes”.

You are unsustainable as a species, so that’s good.

Though, sure, not for you perhaps.

Wishing a Happy Confederate Memorial Day to all the dumb-ass backwoods MAGA-hat-wearing anti-American racists out there.

In other words, all the pinheads here.

Those who do not remember the past are about 90% of the population.

You know, being optimistic.

[b]Vaclav Smil

Life’s great dichotomy is between autotrophs, organisms that can nourish themselves, and heterotrophs, or life forms that must feed on other organisms.[/b]

Which one are you? And prove it.

China’s ruling party, as firmly in control of the government as ever, attracts foreign companies and enormous direct investment by guaranteeing the stability of a police state and by supplying a docile workforce that labors with minimum rights, commonly for extended hours under severe discipline, and is housed in substandard conditions

That sound you hear is Donald Trump drooling.

For every dollar invested in vaccination, $16 is expected to be saved in healthcare costs and the lost wages and lost productivity caused by illness and death.

The Great Hoax lives on!!

Unfortunately, motor vehicles are also responsible for 1.25 million accidental deaths every year…and more than ten times as many serious injuries.

Yawn.
Right?

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is about the scientific equivalent of: “Have you read a work of Shakespeare’s?

Just for the record: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_la … modynamics
Next up: what is a calorie?

…despite the decline in consumer spending brought on by the greatest economic downturn since World War II, the difference between jobs in manufacturing and in retail had reached nearly three million workers, a depressing reality of a failing economy where most new opportunities were low-paid, part-time positions to sell Chinese apparel and electronics bought on credit.

At least until they invade Taiwan.

[b]tiny nietzsche

I scheduled some time this afternoon to cry[/b]

Of course: Jane Craig

making small talk into the void

You know, to piss the void off.

trolls who want bots
who like bots to be trolls
who do bots like they’re trolls
who do trolls like they’re bots

With or without a “condition”.

I got my penis caught in the television

Hmm, didn’t even know that was possible.

not enough people fucking themselves

Hmm, didn’t even know that was possible.

looking for drugs in all the wrong places

Like the medicine cabinet.

[b]Joe Abercrombie

A man sleeps through most of his life, even when awake.[/b]

Talk about “human all too human”.

Killing a man by accident had made her a villain. Killing another on purpose had made her a hero. But all she could do was frown at the body as they dragged it out, and feel there was something very odd in all this.

Odd is a good place to start.

Monza never had understood why getting out a tit or two made for a better painting. But painters seemed to think it did, so tits is what you got.

Next up: Monza’s ass.

“A man who gives all his thought to doing good, but no thought to the consequences …” Father Yarvi lifted his withered hand and pressed its one crooked finger into Brand’s chest. “That is a dangerous man.”

And, no, not just the pinheads.

‘In the valleys where I was born they say it is God’s sword, dropped from the heavens.’
‘Don’t you?’ asked Flood.
Whirrun rubbed some dirt from the crosspiece with his thumb. ‘I used too.’
‘Now?’
‘God makes things, no? God is a farmer. A craftsman. A midwife. God gives things life.’ He tipped his head back and looked up at the sky. ‘What would God want with a sword’?

The New Testament God in other words.

The Inquisitor waited for silence. Do you believe in anything?
Not if I can help it. Belief alone is nothing to be proud of, Inquisitor. Belief without evidence is the very hallmark of the savage.

Well, not counting the Christian God of course.

[b]so sad today

due to personal reasons i need online attention from strangers[/b]

The new normal let’s call it.

want to be more asleep

But still not be dead.

pretending to ignore negative thoughts

Trust me: this takes practice.

send nudes of your aura

Or sext her.

nude u click on and it becomes a real person

Now we’re talking!

i “stay informed” by talking to a tree

A mighty oak of course.

[b]sad socrates

Religion is itself a sin.[/b]

Amen.

If you’re happy and you know it you have forgotten that you know nothing

Apparently.

Time is a flat latte.

You know, among other things.

Being empty inside makes it easier to move.

On the other hand…

Stop trying to misunderstand me

Either that or get better at it.

Let me tell you an ancient story: things are fucked.

If only [so far] back to the Big Bang.

[b]Thomas Ligotti

…this heartbreaking sadness I suffer every minute of the day and night, this killing sadness that feels as if it will never leave me no matter where I go or what I do or whom I may ever know.[/b]

Yes, that’s still going around.

At times I have been rendered breathless by the impeccable chaoticism, the absolutely perfect nonsense of some spectacle taking place outside myself, or, on the other hand, some spectacle of equally senseless outrageousness taking place within me.

18 dead children in the latest “spectacle”.

Lucifer’s last words in heaven may have been “Non serviam,” but none has served the Almighty so dutifully, since His sideshow in the clouds would never draw any customers if it were not for the main attraction of the devil’s hell on earth.

Yeah, what’s about that?

Hearken well: “None of us wants to hear spoken the exact anxieties we keep locked up inside ourselves. Smother that urge to go spreading news of your pain and nightmares around town. Bury your dead but don’t leave a trace. And be sure to get on with things or we will get on without you.”

Anyone here not hearkening well?

The dismembered limbs of dolls and puppets are strewn about everywhere. Posters, signs, billboards, and leaflets of various sorts are scattered around like playing cards, their bright words disarranged into nonsense. Countless other objects, devices, and leftover goods stock the room, more than one could possibly take notice of. But they are all, in some way, like those which have been described. One wonders, then, how they could add up to such an atmosphere of…isn’t repose the word? Yes, but a certain kind of repose: the repose of ruin.

The repose of ruin. Feel free to use it yourself.

Since Buddhism’s only objective is attaining enlightenment, that high road to nirvana (see below), it is at one with other religions in pitching a brighter future for believers in deliverance from the woes of this world. One problem: Human beings are rarely so sensitive to the woes of this world that they feel a pressing need to reject all cravings for the pleasures of this world, as Buddhism would have them do. And it seems that any amount of pleasure is pleasure enough to get us to keep the faith that being alive is all right for everyone, or almost everyone, and will certainly be all right for any children we cause to be delivered into this world.

Lesson learned?

[b]Bart D. Ehrman

The authors of Job and Ecclesiastes explicitly state that there is no afterlife.[/b]

Hmm, is this something we should worry about?

In the American South, where I live, Christianity is very much about the Bible. Most Christians come from churches that preach the Bible, teach the Bible, adhere (they claim) to the Bible. It is almost “common sense” among many Christians in this part of the world that if you don’t believe in the Bible you cannot be a Christian. Most Christians in other parts of the world—in fact, the vast majority of Christians throughout the history of the church—would find that common sense to be nonsense.

On the other hand, it is the word of God some insist.

Only in the latest of our Gospels, John, a Gospel that shows considerably more theological sophistication than the others, does Jesus indicate that he is divine. I had come to realize that none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about himself. And surely if Jesus had really spent his days in Galilee and then Jerusalem calling himself God, all of our sources would be eager to report it. To put it differently, if Jesus claimed he was divine, it seemed very strange indeed that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all failed to say anything about it. Did they just forget to mention that part? I had come to realize that Jesus’ divinity was part of John’s theology, not a part of Jesus’ own teaching.

Yeah, what about that?

All we would need to do would be to read the Bible and accept what it says as what really happened. That, of course, is the approach to the Bible that fundamentalists take. And that’s one reason why you will not find fundamentalists at the forefront of critical scholarship.

Well, that and them being pinheads.

What if we have to figure out how to live and what to believe on our own, without setting the Bible up as a false idol—or an oracle that gives is a direct line of communication with the Almighty?

You could always think like I do.

I should point out that the Gospels do not indicate on which day Jesus was raised. The women go to the tomb on the third day, and they find it empty. But none of the Gospels indicates that Jesus arose that morning before the women showed up. He could just as well have arisen the day before or even the day before that—just an hour, say, after he had been buried. The Gospels simply don’t say.

I’ll bet she knows.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see.” Leonardo da Vinci[/b]

Or four if you count the pinheads. They see not only for themselves but for everyone.

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci[

My guess: you can take this too far.

“Circumstances rule men; men do not rule circumstances.” Herodotus

My guess: It is probably an unimaginably complex combination of both.

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” Socrates

Come on, if he knows this that’s something.

“We are like chameleons, we take our hue and the color of our moral character, from those who are around us.” John Locke

See, I told you.

“There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse.” David Hume

Your context or mine?

[b]Laurie Anderson

I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.[/b]

Right, whatever that means.

It’s good to take a longer view and think, what would I really like to do if I had no limitations whatsoever?

You know, “in your head”.

Computers are so deeply stupid. What bother me most when they talk about technology is they don’t realize how much more exciting their minds are. That machine is stupid. And boring. It does just a few things and then it’ll crash. People think, ‘I am on the Net, I am in touch with the world’. Wrong! The point is how we work, not how machines work.

About what you’d expect from her kind, right? Though, by all means, point taken.

Literature is the safe and traditional vehicle through which we learn about the world and pass on values from on generation to the next. Books save lives.

Mein Kampf?

The main thing that attracts me to Buddhism is probably what attracts every artist to being an artist - that it’s a godlike thing. You are the ultimate authority. There is no other ultimate authority.

Hey, whatever works I always say. However silly it might actually be.

Freedon is a scary thing. Most people don’t want it.

Cue the objectivists. Where “freedom” is reduced down to “my way or the highway”.

& you’re the most objectivist-ive of anyone on ILP…

…there’s no escaping the options. Everyone has a way. All those ways end up somewhere. In alignment, or nihil.

__
…and yet she continued to bemoan, at her own behest, but nothing she ever said was certainly ever said in jest.

Irony abounding, Madame.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Art is never finished, only abandoned.” Leonardo da Vinci[/b]

Actually, mine was finished and then some.

“When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.” David Hume

Say no more, Mr. Pinhead!

“Every man’s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.” Ernest Hemingway

Like, in the end, tumbling over into the abyss that is oblivion, any of that actually matters.

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” Ernest Hemingway

It would have to that way, wouldn’t it?

“Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.” Ernest Hemingway

Even rarer for me.

“There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering all the rest are merely games.” Ernest Hemingway

Let’s file this one under, “one man’s opinion”.

That’s damsel in distress to you, mighty mouse.

[b]Steven Pinker

Can reason lead us in directions that are good or decent or moral? After all, you pointed out that reason is just a means to an end, and the end depends on the reasoner’s passions. Reason can lay out a road map to peace and harmony if the reasoner wants peace and harmony, but it can also lay out a road map to conflict and strife if the reasoner delights in conflict and strife. Can reason force the reasoner to want less cruelty and waste?[/b]

Among other things, nope.

Parker Brothers tried to introduce a German version of Risk, the board game in which players try to dominate a map of the world, the German government tried to censor it. Eventually the rules were rewritten so that players were “liberating” rather than conquering their opponents’ territories.

Word games let’s call it.

We are verbivores, a species that lives on words, and the meaning and use of language are bound to be among the major things we ponder, share, and dispute.

Wow, even here?

As educational standards decline and pop culture disseminates the inarticulate ravings and unintelligible patois of surfers, jocks, and valley girls, we are turning into a nation of functioning illiterates. English itself will steadily decay unless we get back to basics and start to respect our language again.

Idiocracy!!! youtu.be/sP2tUW0HDHA

James Payne notes a perverse sign of progress. Today’s Holocaust deniers at least feel compelled to deny that the Holocaust took place. In earlier centuries the perpetrators of genocide and their sympathizers boasted about it.

Progress!

Golden Arches theory: no two countries with a McDonald’s have ever fought in a war.

Tell that to the Ukrainians.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the company of intelligent women.” Leo Tolstoy[/b]

Yo! Any intelligent women here!!
For an old man.

“The world is, of course, nothing but our conception of it.” Anton Chekhov

Wow, really, really smart people actually believe things like this.

“You must trust and believe in people or life becomes impossible.” Anton Chekhov

In a word: Shit…

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.” Anton Chekhov

And, as with some philosophers, not necessarily the easy questions.

“Any idiot can face a crisis; it’s this day-to-day living that wears you out.” Anton Chekhov

Needless to say: some more that others.

“A word aptly uttered or written cannot be cut away by an axe.” Nikolai Gogol

Here though they can be “foed” away.

[b]Yuval Noah Harari

Today, the richest 1 percent own half the world’s wealth. Even more alarmingly, the richest one hundred people together own more than the poorest four billion.[/b]

Ah, of course, the best of all possible worlds.

Whenever politicians start talking in mystical terms, beware. They might be trying to disguise and excuse real suffering by wrapping it up in big incomprehensible words. Be particularly careful about the following four words: sacrifice, eternity, purity, redemption.

Though, sure, your four words might be different.

If the future of humanity is decided in your absence, because you are too busy feeding and clothing your kids, you and they will not be exempt from the consequences.

Nope, no getting around that. At least not for the overwhelming preponderance of us.

They were too familiar to ignore, but too different to tolerate.

Your context or mine?

It is much harder to struggle against irrelevance than against exploitation.

What, even here?

As Nietzsche put it, if you have a why to live, you can bear almost any how. A meaningful life can be extremely satisfying even in the midst of hardship, whereas a meaningless life is a terrible ordeal no matter how comfortable it is.

Then there’s my take on that.

[b]Philosophy Tweets

“If you are afraid of loneliness, don’t marry.” Anton Chekhov[/b]

Discuss.

“However stupid a fools words may be, they are sometimes enough to confound an intelligent man.” Nikolai Gogol

With or without a “condition”.

“It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.” Haruki Murakami

If not a tome.

“To disagree with three-fourths of the British public on all points is one of the first elements of sanity.” Oscar Wilde

It’s over 90% here in America.

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi

Trust me: not all the time.

“Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.” Aristophanes

Tell us about it!!!

[b]Emile M. Cioran

Our works, whatever they may be, derive from our incapacity to kill or to kill ourselves.[/b]

You know, among other things.

So long as man is protected by madness - he functions - and flourishes.

Got at least one of them here.

The source of our actions resides in an unconscious propensity to regard ourselves as the center, the cause, and the conclusion of time.

Or, for some here, anything but unconscious.

To have committed every crime but that of being a father.

Me? That one too.

One can experience loneliness in two ways: by feeling lonely in the world or by feeling the loneliness of the world.

Other worlds too no doubt.

Ideas come as you walk, Nietzsche said. Walking dissipates thoughts, Shankara taught.

My guess: they can’t both be right.

[b]Werner Twertzog

It is not true that I raised Lotte Eisner from the dead by reversing the rotation of the earth, despite what you have been told.[/b]

Was anyone here told that?

Salaries equal the quantity of evil one can spread.

And, no, not just in Silicon Valley.

Are academics creatively barren, inherently, or does their profession make them so?

Yes.

“Shark Week” is ridiculous.
The real threat is bears.

Of course, as we all know, he’s prejudiced.

The despised, lonely, deranged, and criminally insane can become great artists, as we all know.

No way great philosophers though. Well, not counting them and her.

Dear America: Technology and religion will make your autocracy more insidious, dangerous, and terrifying than anything you can imagine. History repeats itself, mercilessly.

All the way to the bank, for example.