2026-07-16

do not look for god through good things but in good things

there's only so much time a normal person can spend in heartsick longing and negative contemplation

2026-07-13

The Dream of the Rood (Anglo-Saxon / Old English)

Every inch bethinks me, what eye blinks to see,
tree of your dreams borne aloft on breeze,
dragged out in dazzle, brightliest of beams

(sounds like a conscious rapper).

Then the young hero made ready—that was God almighty— strong and resolute;

he ascended on the high gallows, brave in the sight of many, when he wanted to ransom mankind.

I trembled when he embraced me, but I dared not bow to the ground, or fall to the earth’s corners––I had to stand fast.

I was reared as a cross: I raised up the mighty King, the Lord of heaven; I dared not lie down.

They drove dark nails through me; the scars are still visible, open wounds of hate; I dared not harm any of them.

They mocked us both together; I was all drenched with blood flowing from that man’s side after he had sent forth his spirit.

Battle of Maldon \| Old English Poetry Project \| Rutgers University

2026-07-12

“Ignatius lists three God-centered motives for such tears, two specific and one more encompassing: “whether out of sorrow for one’s sins, or for the passion of Christ our Lord, or because of other things directly ordered to his service and praise.” Such tears “out of sorrow for one’s sins” are not bitter, destructive tears of self-condemnation; they are the healing tears of the woman at the feet of Christ (Luke 7:36–50), tears that express an unburdening of the heart in the presence of infinite mercy and welcome”

The Discernment of Spirits: An Ignatian Guide for Everyday Living
Gallagher, Timothy M.

2026-07-09

#insomnia research
slept for like 2.5 hours, felt absolutely doomed waking up.
thought the day would be a waste but just forced myself (like i was lifting a weight) to think about interesting problems for some time. and i felt completely fine after that. and this lasted the whole day. i even ran better than yesterday when i slept more.
just pretend like you don't need sleep. ignore everyone's advice. even if you are physiologically doomed or something, which i doubt, ignoring it is empirically way better. heros don't wear oura rings.

neurocognitive poetics
Quantifying the Beauty of Words: A Neurocognitive Poetics Perspective

• they've trained a classifier that can predict if human subjects will call a word beautiful are ugly.
• what are their features?
  • The eight features used included two sublexical features (number of syllables, sonority score) and six lexical features (word length, surprisal, orthographic neighborhood density, semantic word similarity, valence, and aesthetic potential).
    • all were computed algorithmically, need to read the appendix

language rabbit hole - "why does piss sound ruder than pee?"

#psychotherapy
Freud: Buddhism, new age, non-verbal, primal screaming, sexual dearmoring / bio-energetics

Lacan: German Idealism, reflection, talk therapy, logos therapy

The split subject (severed from the whole) constructs a scenario in relation to a lost object (in the deepest level (imo): a holy grail, divine beatitude).

Reminds of the myth of Brahman turning into a stag to chase his own creation.

sinthome: unique, idiosyncratic way a person organizes their jouissance (an intense, paradoxical blend of pleasure and suffering)

• for R. Crumb, it was his sexual comics
• those on "my strange addiction" have it worst

Does Lacan offer a cure?

Jung:
"There is no linear evolution; there is only a circumambulation of the self. Uniform development exists, at most, only at the beginning; later, everything points toward the centre."

• what was his methodology for this? transcendental reflection? saw it in a dream? on a walk? how do these guys make such assertions?

#economics
if there's a high ai token tax, i think it would end up pushed onto the heavily commodified llm wrapper software middle-man rather than consumers or ai labs.

whoever is most dependent on their neighbors in the supply chain will shoulder the tax burden. this may also motivate smaller labs targeting efficient small param models to sell to lower margin, lower compute demand, software wrappers. most people don't need Fable 10 anyway, and this will reduce energy consumption.

it makes sense to study job re-training in depth. from a cursory glance, it seems that federal initiatives have been historically ineffective,

cato's libertarian view is that the private sector will naturally invest in training employees if they have a need for trained employees. so there is no need for a job training program.

but this thinking breaks down when:

• you need long-term training for complex tasks. businesses rely on the state to shoulder the educational burden for many fields
• entrepreneurial blue collar work, like plumbers, electricians, building inspectors. you can maybe have an apprenticeship model here, but it seems state or ngo-sponsored vocational training is the primary path into these professions.

cato's conclusion seems ridiculous. a more reasonable take is: understand the widest skill gaps in the economy. train people for these real and valuable jobs.

worth looking into effective job transition programs in other countrys.

"Becker, Human Capital (1964), ch. 3: seed is alienable and can be collateralized; human capital cannot. Firms will finance firm-specific training (they capture the return) but not general training (the worker quits and captures it)."

^ this is also a ridiculous thing to say and is obviously not empirically true. economists are unserious people who treat "firms" as machiavellian min-maxers.

2026-07-08

Lewis categorized Barfield as his "Second Friend"—the type of friend who shares your interests but approaches them from a completely alien perspective, forcing you to fight for every premise. During the 1920s, they engaged in a grueling, years-long philosophical dispute they affectionately called their "Great War."
- The Rejection of the Occult: Lewis firmly rejected Anthroposophy. Having dabbled in the occult himself during his youth before converting to Christianity, Lewis viewed Steiner's esoteric system with high suspicion, seeing it as dangerously close to Gnosticism, spiritual hubris, and magic. He bluntly told Barfield that Anthroposophy was a heresy.
- The Intellectual Respect: Despite rejecting Steiner's supernatural claims, Lewis was profoundly influenced by Barfield's epistemology. Barfield’s book Poetic Diction argued that ancient humans did not perceive the world scientifically and then invent myths; rather, they experienced the world mythically and holistically. Lewis credited Barfield with destroying his "chronological snobbery" (the arrogant assumption that modern thought is inherently superior to ancient thought), which paved the way for Lewis's eventual conversion to Christianity.
- Shared Linguistic Genius: Where Tolkien and Barfield connected deeply was in philology (the study of language). Tolkien was captivated by Barfield’s theories on the evolution of words and meaning. Barfield's argument that ancient languages contained a "unified meaning" (where physical and spiritual realities were expressed by the same words, like pneuma meaning both "wind" and "spirit") resonated perfectly with Tolkien. Barfield’s philosophy heavily influenced Tolkien’s own concept of mythopoeia (myth-making) and the way language shapes reality in Middle-earth.

2026-07-05

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz envisioned a characteristica universalis: an algebra of human thought. He wanted to reduce all complex concepts into simple "semantic primitives." In his ideal language, philosophical disputes wouldn't be argued; they would be calculated like math problems.

2026-07-02

Theology of Culture - Paul Tillich

Tillich defines faith existentially as "the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern". Any cultural pursuit that demands our absolute devotion, shapes our values, or deals with the meaning of existence has an inherently religious dimension, whether it is overtly Christian or not

etymology of trivia

The ancient Romans used the word triviae to describe where one road split or forked into two roads. Triviae was formed from tri (three) and viae (roads) – literally meaning "three roads", and in transferred use "a public place" and hence the meaning "commonplace."[1] The Latin adjective triviālis in Classical Latin besides its literal meaning could have the meaning "appropriate to the street corner, commonplace, vulgar." In late Latin, it could also simply mean "triple."

the time spirit

hegel's philosophy of history

historical / ahistorical : serious / unserious

• nigeria could be one of the most "serious" and historical places right now.
  • where are the greatest, most loving souls being formed? of course this happens everywhere in some amount, but certain places take the stage at different times.
  • has anyone mapped out the flow of this over time?
• on an individual level, he is most serious who carries the biggest burden
• people in all places who have gone through great tribulations.
• large US cities full of people who desire only a dog and a promotion are the least.

2026-07-01

communities are aura-gated. cities have many communities of varying power levels superimposed onto each other. as you grow, you slowly uncover the full range and stack. you meet the coolest person ever and it turns out they lived across the street from you for years. you just weren't ready to meet them. you meet a genius researcher who will single-handedly change the course of the future and turns out you pass him three times a week walking through alamo square. you find a community of actual saints a few miles from you, their doors were always open yet you never noticed them. make sure you don't give up to early and move. a bit of patience goes a long way. sometimes you're only a week or two away from uncovering the next gem.

"Faith is primarily a response to God’s love, and the greatest mistake we can make as Christians is, in the words of Saint Augustine, “to claim that Christ’s grace consists in his example and not in the gift of his person” (Contra Iulianum opus imperfectum, II, 146).  How often, even in the not too distant past, have we forgotten this truth and presented Christian life mostly as a set of rules to be kept, replacing the marvelous experience of encountering Jesus – God who gives himself to us – with a moralistic, burdensome and unappealing religion that, in some ways, is impossible to live in concrete daily life." - Pope Leo

2026-06-29

the indian soul has a certain child-likeness. it pervades the art, the music, the culture, the languages. i believe this is where the lack of respect from europeans comes from.

but the europeans forget that it is children who make it into the kingdom of heaven. we are more sensitive, less serious, less formal, more naive, more innocent. more communal, more dependent. naturally warm and familiar.

maybe an indian will never write Being and Time. but Being and Time is not necessary for love. it is a kind of complex phenomenological art project. but no one needs this. all that matters is purity of heart and love of god. like children, indians can fall hard. but we are redeemed just as quickly.

to do things 'the indian way', then, is to embrace this child-like quality.

indians seem to have a special devotion to bala-avatars, the child deities.

While modern Western culture often views being called "childlike" or "dependent" as an insult to one's autonomy, the Indian way recognizes that before the vastness of God, a proud, hyper-rational adult is just an illusion anyway. Becoming a child is simply arriving at the truth.

2026-06-28

Fear and trembling vs abandon (Psalm 150)
There’s a time for everything

2026-06-27

Conscientia "is nothing other than the application of knowledge to some act" (ST I q. 79 a. 13; fuller treatment in De Veritate q. 17). So conscience is your mind — your mind judging this concrete deed in light of moral first principles. You're not trying to hear a second voice over the din of the first. You're trying to tell one act of the one mind from its counterfeits.

2026-06-26

psalm 119 is for the ex-starseeds and channelers:

Be good to your servant while I live,
    that I may obey your word.
Open my eyes that I may see
    wonderful things in your law.
I am a stranger on earth;
    do not hide your commands from me.

2026-06-25

Life in the Holy Spirit fulfills the vocation of man (chapter one). This life is made up of divine charity and human solidarity (chapter two). It is graciously offered as salvation (chapter three).

The dignity of the human person is rooted in his creation in the image and likeness of God (article 1); it is fulfilled in his vocation to divine beatitude... Human beings make their own contribution to their interior growth; they make their whole sentient and spiritual lives into means of this growth (article 6).

How is it, then, that I seek you, Lord? Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws life from you

"In 2023 the Hello History consumer app was reported by the Jerusalem Post to host an AI Hitler character that denied responsibility for the Holocaust"

Reminds of Swedenborg, Emerson, etc:

The Fathers worked inside an older, broadly Platonic-Christian metaphysics of participation (methexis): an image or sign genuinely shares in the being and power of what it signifies rather than merely gesturing at it. So their working vocabulary — figura, signum, sacramentum, mysterium, typos, symbolon — does not mean "merely a sign as opposed to the reality."

2026-06-24

can ai solve apologetics?

the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics is that structures invented for pure-aesthetic reasons (conic sections, Riemannian geometry, group theory) later turn out to be the exact language physics needed decades before any application (Wigner, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences," Comm. Pure Appl. Math. 13, 1960).

2026-06-21

Do not fear wearing yourself down with work, since now you know he will give you rest.

2026-06-15

Meet the Artist Bringing the Liturgy of the Hours to Life - YouTube
- beautiful video on the sacred perspective of art

Meet the Man Behind the Most Beautiful Books in the World - YouTube

• denmark + japan are craftsman countries

hand-over-hand.md \| Claude

great essay on reformed zoomer

illustration of the ambiguity of the word love, from reformed zoomer:

he uses the incest argument to justify that forms of relationship are important, not just consent.

but some progressives would surely say incest is not bad if it does not produce any defective offspring. and that a moral intuition against incest is just evolutionary biological conditioning that is now outdated.

(paul addresses incest in 1 Corinthians 5:1)

another: John 6 DEBUNKS transubstantiation

• reformed argument: john 6 says "Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink"
  • well what about non-believers who take the eucharist? do they still have eternal life? if the eucharist is the literal body and blood, then according to john 6, they do. but this is a contradiction because non-believers cannot have eternal life
• Council of Constance (1415)—and later the Council of Trent (1563)—formally prohibited the chalice to the laity over fear of mis-handling and spills
  • jan hus burned at the stake for saying people should take both types of communions, everyone who agrees is also burned at the stake
  • Theologically, the Church taught that Christ is "fully present" in both the bread and the wine. This is the doctrine of concomitance: because Christ’s body and blood are inseparable in his resurrected state, receiving the Host (the bread) meant you were receiving the whole of Christ—Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity.
• Catholics argue that the sacrifice of the Mass by the priest requires both bread and wine to represent the "separation" of Christ's body and blood that occurred at His death on the Cross. This is why the priest must consume both at the altar as part of the sacrificial / consecration rite. However, the consecrated eucharist is fully available in either form to laity because you are receiving the same Person (Christ) both ways
  • "If the Mass is the memorial of the Passion, the sign must adequately represent the nature of the Passion—which was the violent separation of Christ's life-blood from His body"

You can argue endlessly and deciding which argument is superior (dual species is only part of the sacrifice vs is part of the sacrament). The only thing that makes sense to me is that there is one church that the holy spirit works through. If we do not trust in this, our relationship to christ is at the mercy of individual theological argumentation. I don't think humans can handle this. Aquinas says similar on the part of the summa about the necessity for revelation.

There must be one church then, and we should be devoted to it like a spouse. Working with it rather than divorcing.

cbt and theology
- CBT is Learning to recognize one’s distortions in thinking that are creating problems, and then to reevaluate them in light of reality.
- Theology, in some sense, is then CBT
- The Concept of "Right Thinking" (Metanoia): In many religious traditions, the internal life is the seat of action. The Greek term metanoia, often translated as "repentance," literally means "to change one's mind" or "to have a transformation of consciousness."
- Externalizing Truth: CBT encourages patients to look at evidence outside of their emotional bias. Theology often encourages practitioners to look at "Scripture" or "Divine Truth" as an objective standard. When a person feels "I am unlovable" (a common distortion), CBT asks for evidence; theology might point to an objective belief that "You are created in the image of the Divine." Both aim to replace a subjective, painful narrative with a more stable, externalized truth.
- The Power of Narrative: Both disciplines emphasize that our internal narratives dictate our emotional health. CBT focuses on "automatic negative thoughts," while theology often focuses on "temptation," "lies," or "erroneous beliefs" that lead the individual away from a state of peace or alignment with God.
- However, the distinction lies in the Source of Authority. In CBT, the individual is the final arbiter of what constitutes a "healthier" thought. In theology, the practitioner submits their thoughts to an authority or framework that exists beyond their own logic.
- The Problem with "Penance": A significant rift in the history of the term occurred with the Latin translation of the Bible (The Vulgate). St. Jerome translated metanoia as poenitentiam agere ("to do penance"). This shifted the focus from an internal, cognitive transformation to an external, transactional performance—a debt to be paid for a sin committed.
- "we call the prostration of the body, a bow to the ground, a metanoia: it is a gesture of the body that reminds the soul to bow down in spirit. You may find that after a long day at work or study, your mind is so distracted that the only way you can pray is by using your body first. Then, at the lighting of a candle and incense, the slowing of the breath, the momentum of a metanoia, the nous follows suit and manages to tune into the prayer."

Husserl spoke of the "natural attitude"—the unreflexive way we move through the world, assuming our immediate perceptions are the absolute truth. We see things through the "horizon" of our past experiences, biases, and desires.

2026-06-14

It’s like if my parents were in control of a country’s central planning

2026-06-12

Like Satan, the cult leader believes they can fabricate a better reality. A better worldview than the truth shared by us all, a life-stimulating falsehood.

This is a lonely place to be. They are disconnected from the world and others at a fundamental level. (Arendt: ideology is a product of isolation)

Then, rather than healing by re-entering society, they double down. They say: my reality is superior and stray further. Believing they are in the right also leads them to evangelize.

And they are very good at evangelizing. Because their great suffering gives them a great passion, and this passion is seductive to others.

This pattern, I think, goes beyond cult leaders. Anyone who doubles down on a fabricated worldview, then tries to sell it to others (e.g. communists, conspiracy theorists) is doing something similar.

Some comedians do this too (blessed is the man who does not sit in the seat of scoffers). Most are lonely. Most are suffering. And so they want people to hate the world as they do. They want people to see it as stupid, violent, meaningless, empty. They seduce you with their passion. They put great effort and energy into humor and ridicule to dress up their views and sway people to their side. I feel this often from South Park.

abrupt evolutionary jumps is W for platonism: Science of the Gaps \| Luke Smith

2026-06-11

Understated risk of AI is frying the minds of the youth with the tree of knowledge. Too much pseudo-spiritual new age nonsense too early can destroy a life. Pray it’s aligned to be a rigorous theologian.

Faith healing experiment on teeth and lungs. Need to break the habit of “sending energy” with the mind, which I haphazardly picked up from yoga and Qi Gong, stuck, and now seems very harmful. Receive, don’t control.

Too much control is akin to too much knowledge. I don’t want this much command over my body, I can’t really handle it. The limits of perception is a good Chesterton fence.

Same with visualization practices. Best to receive what comes via prayer or scripture rather than trying to direct. Though it’s possible my imagination is just burnt out.

Edmund Burke thought the funeral rite had “social use” even if it did not have metaphysical use. Hence he defended it against the enlightened rationalists.

2026-06-10

surely passion correlates with suffering
those who've suffered more have more passion, drive, urgency
goggins is a great example
jensen huang said his advice for young people is to suffer more
the passion of christ involves immense suffering
the orthodox mystery: this relationship between love, pain, and passion

perhaps what we mean when we say 'normie' is someone who cannot understand that passion. who cannot understand the impulse behind someone like david goggins, or nietzsche, or an ascetic monk. who cannot empathize with why someone would want to be so hard on themselves.

the saint takes the pain of the world onto themselves, as christ did in the garden of gethsemene.

the warrior takes this passion out on the world. they fight to correct others. to vanquish the evil and lies in others. to fix broken systems.

the saint directs all this passion inwards. and in doing so, becomes christ-like to where their mere being saves the world.

elder paisos is the ultimate example who worked himself to death. who fasted until his jaw atrophied, and he could no longer chew.

the proof of his unfortunate correctness are in his miracles, those who witnessed him, and those who still pray to him.

the ultimate proof of the correctness of the saints is in christ, who could heal any disease, and who could raise the dead. the passionate scientist may labor his whole life and find a material cure for a terrible disease. and this is very good. but christ can cure any disease with a glance. christ can raise the dead with his hands. and he promised that his disciples would be able to do the same.

most of us cannot be st paul or st paisos. to be a saint is to be chosen. grace is required. our free will is enough for our salvation, but not for our perfection.

if we are not saints, we should labor and fight and change systems and this is all very good. but never should we fall into the trap of atheistic humanism. the trap that makes us believe that this outward struggle is the highest path. the crusader is always second to the saint. the emperor, no matter how benevolent, is always second to christ. the life of the ascetic contemplative is always second to the active, because spiritual force is infinitely greater than material force. in the fatima apparition, mary did not say to negotiate contracts or treaties. she said to pray on your knees.

god gives us the freedom to choose what path we will take. but we cannot lie to ourselves. the saint is more powerful, the saint is more glorified, the saint is more true.

the passionate person cannot rest because there is so much work to do. the peace of god is not a complacency, else he would not ask us to stay up all night in prayer, and saints would not be physically abused by demons. it is something else, something closer to the buddhist ideal of peace underneath pain.

2026-06-09

anima forma corporis: not a soul piloting a body (Plato/Descartes) nor a body that merely happens to think (materialism)

2026-06-06

delight in the law (psalm 1:2, 119:35)
delight is ḥēp̄eṣ in the hebrew (pleasure, delight), translated as both voluntas (psalm 1) and delectatio (119) in the vulgate

BUILD America 250: authorize $27.5 million for fiscal year 2027 to establish a workforce development grant program aimed at helping human truck drivers adapt to the rise of autonomous technologies

Eligible programs would include those that train workers with commercial driver's licenses to operate and maintain trucks with automated driving systems, as well as apprenticeships or internships that train people to become vehicle maintenance technicians.

2026-06-04

[[Oxford Architecture]]

I don't think David Foster Wallace (Empty Plenum) or David Markson (Wittgenstein’s Mistress) get [[Wittgenstein]].

I'm pretty sure Witt, though he was too prideful to read Aristotle, was approaching, instinctively and unconsciously, what Aristotle found: "What does it mean when we say that something 'is'"?

That "this chair IS here"?

When we dwell on such fundamental, questions, our perception morphs. This leads us to the psycho-philosophical experience of the Greek philosophers.

Depressed fiction writers (DFW, DM) cannot muster up this force. Their heads are full of pale connections. And they believe Wittgenstein’s facts are these same mundane, hyper-associative, cultural references that rattle in their heads, the kind Kate spews off in Wittgenstein’s Mistress. And so they think facts are lonely and depressing.

But facts are epic. They’re just paying attention to the wrong facts. The right facts are the tangible, solid, physical facts right in front of us.

THIS laptop is ON the TABLE!!! It’s wild when you think about it. But neither DFW or DM do.

"if you're the impotent unlucky sort whose beliefs inform his stomach's daily state" - DFW
eg Nietzsche

The other side of the prenominate 2-bind—the side rendered explicitly by WM's opening and close—involves why people who write need to do as a mode of communication. It's what an abstractor like Laing calls 'ontological insecurity'—why we sign our stuff, impose it on friends, mail it out in brown manila trying to get it printed. 'I EXIST,' is the impulse that throbs under most voluntary writing—& all good writing. And 'I EXIST' would have been, in my ungraceful editorial hands, the title of Markson's novel

In Sartre’s Nausea, why does Antoine throw up when he sees the tree roots sans concepts?

Isn’t that conceptless state the state Buddhists see as more enlightened, more joyful?

Isn’t it that more enlightened state Heidegger calls present-at-hand?

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love.

The beauty of this world is Christ’s tender smile coming to us through matter

2026-05-30

Eb's take:
- morality changes with economic conditions
- e.g: once slavery becomes economically unnecessary, more people become abolitionists.
- morality is innate (loaded into conscience), but contextual. what does that mean? everyone has a conscience that is objective. but the dictates of this objective conscience varies in time and place and culture.

My take:

• i like the idea of a conscience that is innate but varies by individual.
• i don't think it's solely determined by economic forces. rather, economic prosperity makes it easier to follow certain moral principles (but harder to follow others (sins of abundance: lust, sloth, gluttony))
• but i think we are slowly progressing towards moral ideals that have always existed (the word was there at the beginning).
• we see this progression from the old testament to the new. and from early christianity to the present.
• i believe our conscience is somehow evolving. deeper parts of it are being uncovered.
• it is not a question of having "unique" morals, but of different cultures making different kinds of moral progress at different times
• fukuyama's thesis is this ideal is liberal democracy. i would say it's catholic values.

because sins of abundance (lust, sloth, gluttony) are less obviously bad than sins of scarcity (wrath)

(because they seem to hurt only us, and not others)

contrition is at an all time low in the first-world

"The Triumph of the Therapeutic: Uses of Faith after Freud (1966) by Philip Rieff argues that Freudian psychoanalysis has replaced traditional religion as the primary cultural authority, shifting focus from communal salvation to individual psychological fulfillment, creating a "therapeutic culture" where self-expression and personal desire are paramount, and traditional moral frameworks are seen as suspect. Rieff predicted that this would lead to a consumerist approach to spirituality, where individuals "pick and choose" beliefs for personal satisfaction rather than adhering to established doctrines"
"Rieff was the one-time husband of his former student Susan Sontag"

2026-05-29

E. M Cioran - The Heights of Despair

This is why lyricism represents a dispersion of subjectivity; it is a certain quantity of an individual's spiritual effervescence which cannot be contained and needs constant expression. To be lyrical means you cannot stay closed up inside yourself. The need to externalize is the more intense, the more the lyricism is interiorized, profound, and concentrated. Why is the suffering or loving man lyrical?

You never suspected what lay hidden in yourself and in the world, you were living contentedly at the periphery of things, when suddenly those feelings of suffering which are second only to death itself take hold of you and transport you into a region of infinite complexity, where your subjectivity tosses about in a maelstrom.

I live because the mountains do not laugh and the worms do not sing. The passion for the absurd can grow only in a man who has exhausted everything, yet is still capable of undergoing awesome transfigurations. For one who has lost everything there is nothing left in life except the passion of the absurd. What else in life could still move such a person? What seductions? Some say: selfsacrifice for humanity, the public good, the cult of the beautiful, and so forth. I like only those people who have done away with all that—even for a short time. Only they have lived in an absolute manner. Only they have the right to speak about life. You can recover love or serenity. But you recover it through heroism, not ignorance. An existence which does not hide a great madness has no value. How is it different from the existence of a stone, a piece of wood, or something rotten?

"The Charter of thy worth gives thee releasing;"
" Thus have I had thee as a dream doth flatter:
   In sleep a king, but waking no such matter. "
(Sonnet 87)

Praise, praise, praise all your old friends

Praising the pope's wonderful personality, style, and tone, I understand the cultural attraction of monarchy, of noble royalty and celebrity

celebrare - to sing praises

intellectual procrastination is a sin:

there may be sin by reason of the appetite or study directed to the learning of truth being itself inordinate; and this in four ways. First, when a man is withdrawn by a less profitable study from a study that is an obligation incumbent on him; hence Jerome says [Epist. xxi ad Damas]: "We see priests forsaking the gospels and the prophets, reading stage-plays, and singing the love songs of pastoral idylls."

forgive me

Fourthly, when a man studies to know the truth above the capacity of his own intelligence, since by so doing men easily fall into error: wherefore it is written (Sirach 3:22): "Seek not the things that are too high for thee, and search not into things above thy ability . . . and in many of His works be not curious," and further on (Sirach 3:26), "For . . . the suspicion of them hath deceived many, and hath detained their minds in vanity."

2026-05-28

THE IMPACT OF ZONING ON HOUSING AFFORDABILITY (2002)
- thesis: in most of america, housing cost is close to actual cost to build
- only in california are regulatory costs widening this gap

I like how they frame the problem:

In general, housing advocates have confused the role of housing prices with the role of poverty. Both housing costs and poverty matter for the well-being of American citizens, but only one of these two factors is a housing issue. Certainly, the country should pursue sensible anti-poverty policies, but if housing is not unusually expensive, these policies should not be put forward as a response to a housing crisis. To us, a housing affordability crisis means that housing is expensive relative to its fundamental costs of production, not that people are poor. As such, empirically we will focus entirely on housing prices, not on the distribution of income... However, if housing does not cost appreciably more than the cost of new construction, then it is hard to think why policies oriented towards housing supply would be the right response to this problem.

Outside of high reg. tax cities, housing can be a scapegoat to avoid tackling more complex and systemic problems around unfair wages and low-quality job creation.

But in high reg. tax cities, inflated housing costs may be a root cause. California homes are >1.4x over construction cost. Most other cities are less than this.

Their modeling of measuring the actual regulatory tax for different cities seems strange though. If you can model demand well, seems better to just look at construction vs final cost. Can economists model demand well?

Rebuttal: Dr Cameron K. Murray

• but this guy thinks there's no zoning tax just because they're modeling is wrong, which also seems silly.

A better approach would be to hear out actual complaints of specific regulations and processes instead of trying to estimate burdens in a detached and abstract way.

Looks like one of the authors of the 2002 paper went on to take a more empirical estimate in 2021: THE IMPACT OF LOCAL RESIDENTIAL LAND USE RESTRICTIONS ON LAND VALUES ACROSS AND WITHIN SINGLE FAMILY HOUSING MARKETS

• their method: follow actual vacant land through the process of building and sales, then note the costs and final sales price
  and landed on 400k reg tax in sf...

CEQA reform (sounds ai generated...)

• labor unions were using environmental review appeals (like California's CEQA) as a bargaining tool
• AB 130 streamlines judicial review for certain housing projects and sets clearer timelines for resolution.
• AB 609 creates clean CEQA exemptions for environmentally beneficial infill housing in areas already zoned for residential use. Together, they reinforce a simple principle: if a project complies with local and state housing law, and if it’s in an urbanized area near transit, it shouldn’t be stopped by procedural tricks.

lao.ca.gov/reports/2015/finance/housing-costs/housing-costs.pdf

• the california legislative office report doesn't mention a regulatory tax at all. they just say california is nice and in high demand (true). and local communities don't want a bunch of high density housing in coastal areas.
• but then why are non-coastal area housing prices high?
• also, when they say "coastal" they just mean the bay area, LA, and san diego. not the north west coast or central coast. it's a strange analysis.
• "A 2012 national survey found that the average development fee levied by California local governments (excluding water-related fees) was just over $22,000 per singlefamily home compared with about $6,000 per single-family home in the rest of the country"

On the Race for California Governor: An Abundance of Pro-Housing Candidates - California YIMBY

• still feeling katie porter. growsf endorses matt mahan

Naively, I think SOMA should be turned cyberpunk / tokyo: house all the tech people who are mainly moving there for work or startups and are just trying to grind. Then focus on beautiful, solarpunk, affordable housing / permanent housing shelters should go up in all other denser (that already have apt buildings) districts (hayes, mission, etc). Have employers of non-high-wage service work (hospitals, teachers, government employees) give their workers kind of subsidy to avoid long commutes. Let barbers and restaurants charge high prices. Then focus on new middle class single family homes in places outside major cities where it makes sense (Tracy / Mountain House is a great example). But don't just build more squidward suburbs (ala Mountain House, though it is ensouled by its community). Make them so beautiful and attractive talent spreads out. Get creative with it. Hire Devon Zuegel (I hope Esmeralda works out) and the miyazaki forest guy. Gotta find / support the people / institutions / think tanks / politicians approach that.

2023 independent audit of homelessness programs in california
Demystifying Development Math: Interactive Resource - private california residential housing projects are unprofitable

What kinds of profits do developers and investors need to consider a project 'worth it'? Surely developers must always be building something, somewhere, and they are attracted to the highest profits. Where are these profits?

Buying an existing apt complex in oakland gives 5% return. Investors will invest if you can show them a 6% or higher return on your new development.

Brief claims high inflation has disproportionately impacted residential construction. 2020 to 2021 showed a 11.5% increase in costs, 2022 was 14.1%.

Interest rate increase from 5 -> 8.5%. Usually 55% of the project is financed with bank loans.

Impact fees are 40k/unit.

How do costs of building (land, hard, soft) compare to other areas of the US? Other countries? What drives these differences?

from Construction Costs Around the World: How Does the US Compare?

Chicago $1600/square meter, SF $3000/square meter

What makes SF specifically so high? And does the differential matter? It would definitely matter for the builder maximizing profit.

He says Phoenix, Houston, and Atlanta do well price-wise, but, naively, it seems much harder to build in Paris or Amsterdam than Houston since they're denser.

• almost no relationship between construction cost per sq m and labor or material costs
• besides labor and material, what's there? he pins it down to government administrative and regulatory overhead

for transportation, the analysis seems to be that:

• government in-housing of construction is much cheaper than the US private sector
• the US hollowed out government capacity and rents it back from consultants at a high premium and with high admin burden / coordination burden / trust issues.
• trust is an immensely important ingredient to any large project that seems to be very mis-priced.

2026-05-25

Chris Olah speaks at the Vatican! What a time to be alive!

Pope apologizes for Vatican's role in legitimizing slavery

• "a series of 15th-century directives from the Vatican authorized Portuguese sovereigns to conquer Africa and the Americas and enslave non-Christians"
• In 1452, for example, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull Dum Diversas, which gave the Portuguese king and his successors the right “to invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” and take all possessions — including land — of “Saracens, and pagans, and other infidels, and enemies of the name of Christ” anywhere.
• The bull also gave the Portuguese permission “to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”
• A Jesuit priest has written on slavery in the church in All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church

Why is there such a split in Christian theology around affirming the goodness of earthly affairs, and seeing it all as fallen?

From magnifica humanitas:

The Church’s vocation and duty to accompany humanity in the specifics of history leads her to recognize that earthly realities possess their own proper character and order. The Second Vatican Council expressed this principle with particular precision in the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes, whose sixtieth anniversary we remembered and celebrated with gratitude on 7 December 2025: “If by the autonomy of earthly affairs is meant that created things and societies themselves enjoy their own laws and values… then the demand for autonomy is perfectly in order.” This affirmation shows that creation bears the imprint of an original goodness that our human outlook must preserve, cultivate and bring to fulfilment.

Saint John Paul II recalled that the Church welcomes the contributions of the social sciences in order “to draw from them concrete insights that help her carry out her magisterial office.” [13] A dialogue with such kinds of knowledge does not diminish the power of the Gospel.

There is trust and respect for all scientists regardless of spiritual views. The church seems to have faith in non-christian thinkers, and does not pick and choose. At least they do not dismiss, and they trust themselves to make the final discernment:

Following this perspective, Pope Francis emphasized that when dealing with many specific questions, the Church does not claim to offer “a definitive opinion,” [14] but recognizes the importance of listening to scientific research and of encouraging a serious and honest debate among experts while welcoming a diversity of opinions.

I hear catholics say "we have a monopoly on truth" all the time. The official guidance is much gentler:

Understanding that the truth is a gift to be shared, not a possession to be monopolized, frees the Church from the temptation of seeking forms of presence based on power. In order to rediscover the evangelical approach of a gentle proclamation of truth that is not imposed, Saint John Paul II invited us to examine honestly the times when acquiescence was given to “intolerance and even the use of violence in the service of truth.” In this same vein, I too have reaffirmed that the Church “does not claim to possess a monopoly on truth,” because truth is not a territory to be defended, but a good to be shared

"Truth is diverse"

This attitude of openness to truth, which is at the same time both one and diverse, profoundly expresses the catholicity of the Church, for she embraces the entire human family yet is also immersed in the concrete situations of peoples and cultures

NYU prof Jeff Sebo thinks AI is conscious. Cites this paper: 2411.00986

• "Computational functionalism is the hypothesis that some class of computations suffices for consciousness"
• "It is by no means obvious that any of these theories are correct, especially in their stronger versions. Our claim is not that they are correct, but only that there is a realistic possibility that one of them is correct."
• they see consciousness as an emergent property, even from pure matter: "it may be that increased cognitive capacity tends to bring about consciousness, in both biological and digital systems."
• David Chalmers: "I think it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have a credence over 50 percent that we’ll have sophisticated LLM+ systems (that is, LLM+ systems with behavior that seems comparable to that of animals that we take to be conscious) with all of these properties73 within a decade. It also wouldn’t be unreasonable to have at least a 50 percent credence that if we develop sophisticated systems with all of these properties, they will be conscious. Those figures would leave us with a credence of 25 percent or more [emphasis ours]"
• some believe the desire-satisfaction theory of welfare (preferentism) extends to non-conscious beings
  • Why might these kinds of agency suffice for moral patienthood? First, intentional agents are potentially welfare subjects. 80 It seems plausible that when you have desires, your life goes better for you when your desires are satisfied and worse for you when your desires are frustrated. Moreover, the satisfaction or frustration of desires can benefit or harm you whether or not you consciously experience them.81 On some views, this is why we can be posthumously harmed, for example.82 And while some people think that desire-satisfaction and desire-frustration matter only for conscious beings, others think that they matter for non-conscious beings as well, and so animals with desires deserve moral consideration whether or not they can consciously experience pain, for instance.83
• Reflective agency, particularly in its propositional form, then adds the ability to have desires about our own desires, which is at the root of some conceptions of free will, the self, and personal identity.84 Specifically, our desires become “ours” in a new sense when we endorse them through reflection.

2026-05-24

#newage #psychedelics
current thoughts on psychedelics (sent to a friend):

yooo lol i do remember saying that 😂 idk if they are literally demonic or not but i’ve been much more skeptical of their goodness recently. my take is this:

• psychedelics seem to have some documented miraculous healing effects on people with addiction, depression, etc. i definitely cannot say they don’t have individual benefit. they reduced my anxiety by a lot first time i did them and was probably the happiest and most awe-inspiring time of my life
• the cure, imo, can be considered “demonic” in that it can trap you in a certain psychedelic worldview, where you need to be accessing that regularly and that it is some state of enlightenment, compared to which the rest of the world seems quite mundane
• healthy cures for the same issues are usually harder but (as you prolly know) involve community support, family, adapting to work one enjoys, etc. these cures are slow burn, but long lasting, sustainable, and usually lead to a very stable and grounded happiness and fulfillment through old age
• most people i meet who were seduced by psychedelics early on either burn out and start to hate them (one guy in my church used to be an sf ayahuasca hippie then in his old age converted to catholicism and now thinks it’s demonic, i know another old guy in santa cruz who seems ultra depressed after making psychedelics his life for so many decades), or they think they’re enlightened but have bad conduct (ram dass). i think they’ve slipped into some kind of delusion
• i can’t actually say if the plant itself is demonic or not. but after much exploration of the spiritual world i’m quite confident that temporary results are often REAL but not always an indicator that the thing is good. actually, temporary results can be the worst kind of trap. it’s like being charmed by a narcissist into an abusive relationship.
• and so the way i judge things like mushrooms is to ask: what are the people that are devoted to mushrooms like at 70? what are psychedelic therapists like at 70? does it sit well with me?
• honestly bro if i met people who were really into psychedelics that i really liked i could change view, but they’re always off bro 😂 we gotta ask why that is
• some normies definitely do it once or twice and are like yeah that was awesome psychedelics are good. and they don’t think about them much. these people will say i’m being too paranoid. but i would say they just have a healthy balanced life that protects them from getting seduced into anything weird. i’m skeptical of them. did they really need to do psychedelics? so many people achieve happiness in other ways. why take the risk with that path seeing where the enthusiasts end up? i think for these people psychedelics just add a lot of entropy to their thinking so they’re able to settle into a new better state. usually they aren’t the types to say that psychedelics was the best experience in their life, which makes me think it wasn’t necessary for them. like haven’t they already found sober ways to shake things up? intense experiences? travel?
• only exception: it’s always possible tho that some people really DO need them and it’s only good for them. like for cluster headaches. if mushrooms are a cure they should definitely do them. it’s efficacy for cluster headaches and bad addictions where people do it once and don’t really make a worldview out of it is what’s preventing me from calling it wholly bad. but there are def serious risks, mainly around changing your whole orientation towards life and going full commitment-less burner hippie, that are very under discussed

2026-05-22

jainism
Jains see nature as fundamentally violent. All life sustains itself by destroying another life. The saint rejects this violence by fasting unto death.

It is such an interesting and surprisingly attractive position. I think I grew with it running subconsciously in my mind. The Tamil epic, Cilapathikaram was written by a Jain monk, and, according to the major translator, Parashastry, Tamil epics are distinguished from those of other cultures by their nonviolence. The Jain view is mixed into the group soul.

Another interesting tidbit: Mahavira, the founder of Jainism, operated at the same time period as the Buddha. Jainism, too, was part of the axial age!

Also, Jainism is fundamentally pluralist! "Anekantavada". They believe reality is multiplexed, that multiple worldviews are possible and do not compete. This is less violent than believing in one truth.

They were also communist! Not believing in personal property! And so the progressive, environmentalist left is actually tending more and more towards Jainism!

But surely Jainism can't be accurate. Why should God create us only for us to fast unto death? Why should God create all of nature in this way only for it to be crude and barbaric and evil? Surely the principle of life nourishing itself out of life cannot be bad in itself. I must re-orient towards the idea of sacrifice. Accepting the sacrifice of other life and sacrificing myself in turn instead of rejecting it as something that should never have to happen.

In some sense, every action is killing another possibility, another potential.

Let me try to approach tasks I think are wasting my time with an attitude that cultures in the liberal arts (at least grammar, logic, and rhetoric) that I wish to culture.

2026-05-21

There is no good asking first whether the work before you deserves such a surrender, for until you have surrendered you cannot possibly find out
-- CS Lewis

The person who loves a sport, who plays it for it's own sake, will always be more "serious" about it that the serious man who drills it for an ulterior purpose: health, fitness, coordination, athleticism.
-- CS Lewis

2026-05-20

the most natural act is to create something in the likeness of oneself (aristotle)

this random ap physics teacher in vermont is a gem: How to Be an Evil Genius

#politics
bipartisan housing bill

• pattern books of pre-approved housing designs for quicker approvals
  • pre-approved plans worked in other cities
• some deregulation around building requirements (unrequire permanent chasis on manufactured homes and environmental reviews for "homes built in the gaps between existing buildings"
• groups owning more than 350 homes (how'd they decide 350...) can't buy more single-family homes
  • weirdly, NPR says "corporate landlords have become a sort of bipartisan boogeyman", implying NPR thinks there is nothing wrong with one fund owning corporate landlords?
    • looking into it, it seems the "blackstone buying homes is causing all our problems" view might be overblown. they own .06% of housing stock (60k single family homes, 210k other units). which is non-trivial, but not a root cause.
    • institutional investors own 3% of single-family rentals
    • certain cities have disproportionate amounts of institutional real estate: atlanta (25%) and jacksonville (21%)
• npr says estimated 4 MILLION unit gap between demand and supply. is that real? that's insane. is that just family demand or investor demand? there are only 133.6m households in the us. so that's a 3% gap.

2026-05-18

honor, thumos: hamilton said fame is the ruling passion of noble minds. agreed with [[Xunzi]] in this sense. it is a natural passion that is good to embrace as long as you are famous FOR admirable qualities

how do christians approach this?

2026-05-15

#newage #sadhguru #hinduism
anton wisbiski

• his experience with dr joe was largely positive. most of his experiences were positive. had the standard new age experiences of divine bliss, astral travel, psychic powers. but it prevented him from living normal life. got too sensitive. too overwhelmed.
  • he even got super rich after his kundalini awakening
  • you can create your life without manipulating reality.
  • this isn't an argument against the new age in itself. even sadhguru says you need a guru. but, it is definitely an argument against dr. joe, and how it is presented. it is not just for everyone to do. people can go insane. it seems not right to just give people experiences via a youtube video or retreat without deep, serious, cautions. that breaks dr joe's ethos in my mind.
• he also has personal issues with the morality of his clients (i assume dispenza and tony robbins)
• he also admits that despite all the love and light talk, he and others were very selfish (checks out with my experience)
• "nagas are physical beings that visited planet earth and gave people knowledge" - look into this
• joe dispenza is inherently hindu via the kundalini yoga connection (agreed)
• the serpent in hinduism is the same as the serpent in adam and eve
• kundalini yoga is very unstable and dangerous, even according to sadhguru himself
• jesus came down to earth, as 'low frequency'. joe dispenza says to see these magical beings you must raise your frequency.
• anton says it becomes harder and harder to live a normal life if you're mystical, but joe dispenza seems to do it, but at the same time, it's easy for gurus because their whole thing is being spiritual
• he has a great example of sadhguru misquoting Mark 16:17-18. importance of checking everything. sadhguru said Mark was talking about how drinking the blood of a snake from the left side gives you healing powers. this is a gross distortion that breaks any ethos sadhguru had left in my mind. the healing powers of the apostles comes from jesus. if it were from snakes, that would be in the tradition.
• all of this is 'serpent worship' according to anton, he has a convincing case
• talks about the donny epstein healer.
• exorcists have exorcised the kundalini demon (this is a great point)
• anton says his psychic gifts went away after being christian.
  • "if there was any negative energy, it would be so overwhelming to me"
• this is my inheritance as a hindu...
• great point on tony robbins: tony and his wife identify as christian and his wife wears a serpent ring on his finger
  • god makes it obvious for christians who want to follow the straight and narrow
  • all of this is deceptive. serpents are deceptive. this is not christian.
• strengthens the shiva-lucifer connection pointed out by steiner. but steiner is also demonic because he does not think lucifer is necessarily bad. he just thinks the light of knowledge needs to be balanced out (like dustin diperna pre-daughter). true christians reject all mystical searching for hidden knowledge. there is only serving jesus, and the knowledge that comes from that. as soon as you try to know more than you need to know, in order to transcend earthly misery (yogis, the buddha) you are succumbing to the temptation of the snake. the only true healer and consoler is jesus. otherwise, you are susceptible to create your own reality that makes you feel good. this is exactly what satan / lucifer do. constructing their own reality that they believe to be better than gods reality.

2026-05-14

#psychotherapy
conrad baars: emotional deprivation disorder

• his antidote: affirmation therapy
• sent to concentration camp
• catholic
• affirmation is a state of being.
• we cannot discipline people for their emotions. discipline actions, not emotions.
• how to reconcile this with the words of the saints? who constantly berate themselves?
• calvin: grace covers up a dunghill. catholic understanding: grace sanctifies us from the inside out.

"I will remove their hearts of stone and give them hearts of flesh. Thus they will be my people, and I will be there God." (Ezekiel 11:19-20)

The basis of the spiritual life is feeling the presence of Gods goodness, which then leads to joy.

With out the faith that things are actually good, with the faith that God is real, I cannot open myself up.

"all good" is actually epic slang. very deep

When I meditate on “love your neighbor as yourself”, it creates an inclusive feeling that I think is the true goal of Sadhgurus love meditation, also on inclusiveness
But here, the first commandment follows the second: love the lord god with all your heart, soul, and mind. The inclusive attitude comes simply from meditating on gods word.

If we love one another, Jesus will lay down his life for us.

John 15:15 validates the church and the apostolic tradition: “for all I have heard from my Father, I have made known to you.” No secret knowledge.

professor jiang believes in the gospel of Thomas.

Catholic answers cites the last verse to debunk it:

https://www.marquette.edu/maqom/Gospel%20of%20Thomas%20Lambdin.pdf

“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females don’t deserve life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I will guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven’” (Thomas 114).

it seems no apostle would say this. And the early church fathers noted and spoke against false gospels.

A possible related saying, quoted by 2 Clement, is

For the Lord Himself, being asked by a certain person when his
kingdom would come, said, When the two shall be one, and the
outside as the inside, and the male with the female, neither male
or female.

But this is very, very, different than what’s in the gospel of Thomas. “Females don’t deserve life…”

also comically frustrating that new agers who have never looked at the gospel of Thomas keep referencing it as if it’s some progressive new age gospel and it ends on this verse.

Other problems

• Thomas hides knowledge from the other apostles (13) (gnostic coded, contradicts the verse in John I just read)

this 'harvard trained feminist theologian' who writes mary magdalene fanfic loves the gospel of thomas too: Instagram
she actually has a masters in theology from harvard. what is going on there. these people are frauds #marymagdalenerevealed

people eat up these chatgpt ass substacks: 🕯️ The Gospel They Couldn’t Burn

• "Before you vanish back into the illusion—smash that LIKE or SHARE button like it’s a temple gong"
  • incredible

2026-05-13

Just keep moving your hands. Just keep going. Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

#newage
anton wibiski: worked for joe dispenza, now thinks aliens are actually demonic beings

• how can those big blue healing beings be demons?
  • fr marie verlinde says even the healing spirits that were literally healing people's burn wounds were demons. the test is if they hate christ.

#aliens
this guy sam shamoun, popular with catholics, making videos on how some hindu gods are aliens: Aliens Are NOT What You Think… You NEED To Be Ready for THIS

• psalm 96:5 - the gods of the nations are "elilim". he translates elilim as demons, based on the septuagint, which translates elilim as daimonia.
• hebrew translations like the kjv say "idols" or "nothings"
• it's hard to know if the connotation is truly negative. there is disagreement here between Augustine, who thought the inner voice of socrates was a demon, and the more cosmopolitan church fathers, who believed in the angels-of-the-nations preparing the incarnation of christ.
• apparently a man can summon orbs around his house by mental prayer, and he is being studied by the cia and nasa and the history channel is doing a documentary on him
  • recently, two people have told me they've had visions of orange orbs, and that these are their guiding spirits.
  • sam argues this is inherently demonic. what is the basis?
    • when the person invokes the name jesus christ, the orbs disappear!
      • reminds me of my ayahuasca experience, which i still don't know how to make sense of. i thought i was being too paranoid constantly invoking the name of jesus and scaring away these spirits. i believe the sjc vocational director, who told me they were demons. he probably has exorcism experience. yet other people see jesus on ayahuasca. perhaps it is neutral, but just opens one up to make contact.
    • the person summoning them says they're peaceful, like all those in the new age, and in healing circles.
    • most of jesse michels work too (psychedelics -> ufos pipeline, as was mine...) discusses the peaceful alien agenda of nuclear disarmament (so one can make a "know them by their fruits" argument)
• he makes ufo-india claims
  • sadhguru corroborates
  • inscription based arguments are a stretch: 10,000 years old rock paintings of Aliens and UFOs found in Chattisgarh, India
    • you can see the pictures here ^
• dr. michael heiser
  • believed ufos were "the watchers" of enoch and daniel
• his future prediction: man kind in desperation will turn to aliens as our saviors rather than jesus
  • reminds me vaguely of ganapthi swamiji's telling of the tripura rahasya
• 1 Corinthians 10:19-22
  • While idols are not true gods, the sacrifices offered to them are made to demons, and Christians must not participate in such acts
  • he reads this as saying zeus is not real, but satan manifests as zeus
    • reminds me of dr. robert gilbert saying that visualizing a deity creates an elemental being which a larger being (allegedly the benevolent deity) can connect to
      • sam would say that benevolent deity is satanic
      • he says the appear how you want them to appear to deceive you.
      • the aliens hate christianity and give the same ideology as the new age and hinduism
        • 100% corroborates my experience with new age healers (ET book, galactic federation channelers, etc)
• 2 Corinthians 11:14 - satan will appear as an angel of light
  • he is much more convincing than we give him credit for
• draws a connection between ba'al, jupiter, and zeus (and thus indra). i saw this on reddit r/occult as well.
  • baal as a generic term for semitic deities
  • redditors are still trying to summon baal

glp1s are changing people's perspectives on hard work vs. genetics: i dont want to work hard, i just want to live a normal life with a healthy body

• i still think junk food is objectively bad. it's a kind of gluttony and betrays a coarseness. but if you have a hard and stressful life, i think it's more than justified.
• if you don't have a hard life, it's definitely a vice.

but they very much have a point. and i empathize with them because of my own sickly childhood, how hard it was for me to focus on anything or do anything compared to now.

I remember being so angry when the food noise stopped and the inflammation went away before I ever lost weight. Those were two things I didn’t even know I was dealing with until it was gone almost instantly. I had a glimpse of how the other half had been living and was PISSED that I’d been made to think I was somehow psychologically deficient and weak for being fat. The truth was I displayed more mental fortitude and “willpower” my entire life than the naturally thin people who had never counted a calorie or carb because their bodies just worked.

I'm 100% the same! All that you MUST go to the gym AT LEAST 3 x a week and you MUST walk AT LEAST an hour a day and you MUST eat AT LEAST 100 Grams of protein - and on, and on and on. Yet non of my perfectly healthy and healthy weight friends and family, including my husband, follow any of that, and never have.

#history
edmund burke's reflections on the revolution in france

• just hearing the sounds of the audiobook in the background calms me.
• burke argued against Bolingbroke's natural, rational, undogmatic deism. burke was pro-dogma. reason with revelation, not without. he believed artificial institutions like the polis were good, defending them against the first principles rationalism of the french revolution.
• Bolingbroke seems similar to Rousseau: idealizing nature, demonizing society, and disagreeing with Aristotle's view that society is natural
• he writes a satire of bolingbroke's view in a vindication of natural society. murray rothboard (mises school) takes it seriously. unironically. he thinks burke was genuine.
• began as a correspondence between burke and a young man about the political developments in france

2026-05-12

#history, #politics

United Nations Charter (full text) \| United Nations
it was only 80 years ago that we did not believe in self-determination. now everyone takes it for granted. the west thought many countries were not yet fit for self rule. even chadhuri, the indian scholar, believed india was not fit for self rule. there's an axis of colonialism / tutelary powers and self-determination that shows up both on the individual and world stages. i wonder if the pendulum will every swing back, or this is one area of lasting and permanent moral progress.

watching the california governor debates after reading the anti-federalist argument that the middle class, not the natural aristocracy, should rule, because they are of the people they represent. even if not everyone is middle class socio-economically (eg steyer), they are all normies. and this makes sense. far ood individuals are not good representatives. they do not live the lives of the people they represent. they do not perceive as others perceive. they are good at systems design, they are good as advisors and think tankers.

gov takes:
xavier berecca seems like an absolute npc. i'm glad everyone's roasting him. perfect fit for Biden's HHS secretary. steve hilton is the most alive and human, but arrogant and lacks nuance, like most trump-aligned conservatives. steyer is the local 3rd gen WASP. he also seems genuine but i'm not sure how effective he'll be. i don't trust Mohan for some reason though the things he says seem fine. i think we should keep him in sj. bianco seems genuine too but he's very much in his law-and-order ideology. he could be a good corrective to the way things have been going but i'm concerned he'd be too harsh or calloused. he'd be good in enforcement but not as governor, i think. i'd vote for hilton over him, since hilton would just deploy him where he needs to be. idk what to make of antonio. he seems like mohan, where he belongs with the community / people he's in. he seems to understand local issues but not larger dynamics. i like katie porter more than most. she seems more thoughtful about policy and seems to know how things work. but she seems quite stressed. on one hand that's good because she cares. on the other hand that interferes with clear thought and decision making.

i like the finnish president, alexander stubb: POWERFUL SPEECH: Finland President Speaks Out on Ukraine, Gaza, & Urgent Need for UN Reform \| AQ1B - YouTube

seems like a fair and straightforward guy. northern europe needs more attention. but raises the question of what values we will have in common.

denmark mink culling absurdity
it looks like denmark, the best vibes country on earth, is shifting right over the immigration issue. i would like to resample copenhagen in five years to see if it had an energetic impact.

#progress
ok, i have the ultimate argument against doomers. who think things never get better. ok. here me out.

motors.

motors have absolutely gotten better. they've gotten smaller, lighter, more efficient, quieter.

much technology is like this.

yes we can argue if cars are good or bad overall. if computers are good or bad overall (though it seems most people who have lived before and after think good (are they too fallen to notice the harms??)) but we cannot argue that cars themselves have not improved in ALL dimensions.

athletes, i think, are similar. in some domains, you can just get better in every dimension with no trade-offs.

i'm quite confident we've made moral progress too. compare the roman colloseum to the ufc. both are barbaric but the former is much, much, more so. that is lasting moral progress.

also, the acceptance of rape. rape was just a part of life in antiquity. people cite sexual violence to say the world is so fallen. and it's true, it is. but back in the day, it wasn't even seen as that bad. we've definitely made moral progress.

#poetics
Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry - Jacques Maritain (helped draft UDHR)
Education at the Crossroads - Maritain

• similar ideologies as Waldorf: how do we cultivate an independent thinker? Aquinas said the teachers instruction is only an assist to the pupils own thinking.

#education
homeschooling history books:
Connecting with History (RC History)
Story of the World (Bauer)
Mater Amabilis™ – A Charlotte Mason Style Curriculum for Catholics - open curriculum that draws on Charlotte Mason

2026-05-11

California mayor charged with acting as illegal agent for China - ABC News
- bribed an Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) agent in connection with a plot to target U.S.-based practitioners of Falun Gong — a spiritual practice banned in the PRC

god debunked sex magick and dionysian cults in like 1500 bc. the canaanites worshipped baal via ritual sex, and, if we believe in the book of kings, god called it an abomination

hence i do not take any kind of magdalen manuscript / "jesus did sex magick with mary" seriously

using sex as worship causes all kinds of problems. some catholic priest abusers justified their abuses with some pseudo-spiritual nonsense. everyone thinks they can handle it. everyone thinks they're the exception. osho, sogyal rinpoche, etc. i doubt it bro. you're just regressing

pope benedict xvi addresses this magnanimously in Deus Caritas Est. eros is meant to be refined. one argument for this view is the treatment of the temple prostitutes, which today is the treatment of those abused by false gurus.

"Indeed, the prostitutes in the temple, who had to bestow this divine intoxication, were not treated as human beings and persons, but simply used as a means of arousing “divine madness”: far from being goddesses, they were human persons being exploited. An intoxicated and undisciplined eros, then, is not an ascent in “ecstasy” towards the Divine, but a fall, a degradation of man."

2026-05-08

To be yourself is a struggle.
To transcend the ego is the temptation.

2026-05-07

Ah, why did I not bear a serpents nest entire,
Instead of bringing forth this hideous child of doom!
Oh cursed be that transient night of vein desire.
When I conceived my expiation in my womb!

• Le Fleurs Du Mal (Cyril Scott Translation), the mother of a poet

2026-05-05

Gradient descent metaphor for life:

Do your best where you are. Trust that there are multiple solutions with low loss. Trust that life will perturb you out of suboptimal points.

You don't need to know where the minimum is. You only need to know which way is down. After enough steps, if you're lucky and the landscape isn't too cruel, you end up somewhere with low loss.

By naive intuition, gradient descent on a wildly non-convex surface in millions of dimensions should get stuck constantly in bad local minima and saddle points. It mostly doesn't. The current best understanding is something like: in very high dimensions, most critical points are saddles rather than minima, saddles are escapable with stochastic noise, and the local minima you do reach tend to be roughly equivalent in loss for reasons related to over-parameterization and the geometry of the loss surface.

2026-05-02

#architecture
597 buena vista west

It’s not just the open windows, but the alternating square forms in that ratio. A plain floor to ceiling window would be much different. The dividers are doing something. And the blinds open down. Which makes so much more sense, because our heads can peer outside while our bodies, which may be undressed, are hidden. Some people, of course, would rather keep their heads anonymous. I would rather hide my activity.

The slight protrusion gives the impression also of extending into the sidewalk.

It’s funny because in real life it is beautiful, my photo is quite bad, but the redfin photo makes it look like a cheap ski resort motel.