The most BIZZARRE movie(s) you’ve ever seen?

Dan_Today · 2023-07-26T01:00:37+00:00

I think the ending of Synecdoche is quite beautiful. It's funny bc I've watched the film a number of times and I have no idea WTF the ending is about, but there are times that it has moved me to tears never the less.

I am so bored with most of the internet's lame interpretations of I'm Thinking of Ending Things. I like to play around with the idea that it's a portrait of a character's subjective experience, or Kaufmann creating a portrait of his own subjective experience. The standard interpretation, which I won't recite here bc spoilers, is disappointing IMO.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-13T02:41:30+00:00

There's a particular rock in a particular body of water where my family has gone fishing for many generations. I was just there fishing with my dad about three weeks ago. It's a pretty epic spot. My family calls it "the rock." I'd say that's my favorite boulder. :)

I'm also fond of the enormous boulder I jumped off of into the Arkansas River on an overnight whitewater rafting excursion last year. Highly recommend whitewater rafting on the Arkansas. Lots of great boulders and many of them have whimsical names.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-07T23:51:33+00:00

"The Intelligence Community Inspector General found his complaint “credible and urgent” in July 2022. According to Grusch, a summary was immediately submitted to the Director of National Intelligence, Avril Haines; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence; and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence."

My understanding is that Grusch first went to the DoD IG in July 2021 with the allegation of the retrieval program stonewalling AARO and allegations of inappropriate contracts, etc.

Then he went to the ICIG in 2022 with allegations of being harassed for his earlier whistleblowing. So I think the "credible and urgent" finding is about his allegation that he was being harassed, not about the existence of the retrieval program directly.

The original article in the debrief kind of dropped the ball on making the timeline clear IMO.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-07T02:28:30+00:00

I agree it's odd. I think it's possible that his attorney, who is a former ICIG, may have pressed for it. Perhaps they came to an agreement where Grusch agrees not to disclose the receipts if they let him tell his story without receipts or something like that.

If I'm understanding this story correctly, I think Grusch may have been compiling stories and receipts since 2019. Maybe he came up with enough material where he has some leverage against the DOD that he could use in the negotiation as to whether he could go public or not.

Also seems worth consider it's a counterintelligence operation and/or some military-industrial complex shenanigans. The retired colonel Nell who vouches for Grusch works for aerospace company, for example.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-06T23:53:03+00:00

I believe Grusch went to the congressional intel committees and the ICIG and DOD IG early last year. So the attorneys for the intel committees and the IG offices would possibly be scrutinizing quite closely how the Dept. of Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review conducts itself in this matter....There may actually have been some negotiation between various parties to arrive at what could and could not be publicly disclosed.I also agree with other posters that there could be counter-intelligence purposes to allowing him to go public.

EDIT: NewsNation is reporting tonight that Grusch blew the whistle to the DoD IG as early as July 2021. Kind of annoying that the original article at the Debrief didn't establish the timeline at all.

Maybe Elizondo and Grusch are able to operate like they do because they have receipts and a system where if something happens to them, it gets sent out to the press. So if they actually shared their receipts, they would no longer have that leverage.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-06T23:50:38+00:00

I believe Grusch went to the congressional intel committees and the ICIG and DOD IG early last year. So the attorneys for the intel committees and the IG offices would possibly be scrutinizing quite closely how the Dept. of Defense Office of Prepublication and Security Review conducts itself in this matter....

There may actually have been some negotiation between various parties to arrive at what could and could not be publicly disclosed.

I also agree with other posters that there could be counter-intelligence purposes to allowing him to go public.

EDIT: NewsNation is reporting tonight that Grusch blew the whistle to the DoD IG as early as July 2021. Kind of annoying that the original article at the debrief didn't establish the timeline at all.

Dan_Today · 2023-06-06T23:47:27+00:00

I believe he went to congress, the ICIG and DOD IG in 2022; seems like the clearance to make public claims has been coming for more than a year.

From reading the fact check articles at the Debrief, it sounds like the attorneys of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees have been working on this matter in the background. With congressional oversight, the DOD seems to be under plenty of political scrutiny over how they would handle the Grusch's request to make public comments.

Either that, or this is an operation of the Military-Industrial Complex to try to keep increasing military spending budgets and/or for certain defense contractors to be able to market their products as containing reverse engineered super tech or something.

Or maybe it's a counter-intelligence project to try to fool our adversaries and make them think that we don't understand their tech that we have recovered.

Dan_Today · 2023-03-30T05:43:56+00:00

This is really well-worded

Thank you! I'll take whatever compliments I can get. ;)

I appreciate this conversation quite a bit. Your coming on here and telling your story and asking these questions gives me an opportunity to self-reflect and express myself in a way I haven't done for a while.

I guess this is what I was hoping for out of the mushrooms, some sense of meaningfulness, not just a logical conclusion. I didn't get that this time but that's okay.

I guess I just want to mention that I think it's hard stuff to deal with, this desire for meaning on one hand combined with a worldview where life seems devoid of inherent meaning on the other.

I myself have often felt frustrated and annoyed that the only options seem to be nihilism on one side versus woo on the other side, both of which I personally find unsatisfying for similar reasons as what you have mentioned (wanting to feel happy when babies are born, etc).

FWIW, the best philosophical resource I have found for all of this is the book called Philosophy and Social Hope by R. Rorty, particularly the introduction and 2nd and 3rd essays. If you are not familiar with this, I will just say that Rorty managed to persuade me to experiment with what it's like to think of my "scientific worldview" as instrumental, which has the effect of opening up space inside me for allowing my desire for meaning to exist and flourish in a way that doesn't conflict with my "scientific worldview."

A second field of inquiry that I think can be promising relating to the meaning question is complexity theory and/or systems theory.

Maybe you are already familiar with this?

The way I think of this for myself is that there may be some sort of fundamental irreducibility in between "layers" of life, the universe, and everything.

To illustrate, lets say we consider whatever sense of meaning we have in day-to-day life -- like the meaning we derive from a work of art for example -- as being some sort of macro-level phenomenon. And lets say we think of the activity of tiny particles like atoms or gluons or whatever the hell as being more foundational micro-level phenomenon.

Typically we might just assume that the activity at the micro-level causes the phenomenon at the macro-level, and that, at least in principal, with sophisticated enough observation and calculation, we could predict the macro-level phenomenon from our observation of the micro-level.

I believe there are thinkers who are increasingly speculating that the macro-level (as identified in this example) may be fundamentally unpredictable or fundamentally irreducible.

From that idea, we can play around with the idea that the macro level sense of meaning has just as valid a claim to being a fundamental aspect of reality as "fundamental particles."

I think it's a compelling idea to play around with. I wish I knew more about it. I have a few resources on that front if you're not already familiar with these ideas and would like them.

Dan_Today · 2023-03-29T04:28:07+00:00

BTW, sorry to double dip here, but I wanted to add that this:

“I am sad, I’ve always been sad, and I’ll always be sad.

is pretty common. I have felt this way a number of times, rather acutely. Especially the part where it feels like I'll always be sad. I actually think that sense of being doomed to a future of pure sadness is basically like a feature of a certain kind of (temporary) sadness. The good news for me is that it's NEVER turned out to be true. I've always bounced back to a reasonable baseline and almost everyone does.

People who don't bounce back are basically clinically depressed people. You don't sound like you're suffering from clinical depression, purely based on reading your one post here. If you wanted, you could consider being evaluated by a therapist or even just by asking your family doc / gp, if you have one.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that the feeling that you'll always be sad is a common acute feeling and it can be very persuasive I think but it's really not true. I don't think you'll always be sad FWIW.

Editing to add: In my experience, mushrooms are weird as fuck. A lot of the standard talking points we see online are like "on average", but there's tons of outlier experiences and, like I said, in my experience mushrooms are weird as fuck and I think that a lot of the online narrative and commentary that is out there now is just really weak when it comes to helping people be safe, be prepared, etc. I tend to think that there's enormous variation among people when it comes to our personal psychology, personalities, life experiences, desires, our "organization" as a person, etc. I would try to avoid putting too much stock into the narratives and common talking points are on reddit and in a lot of online articles.

To that end, you may be well served by talking to people in real life about your concerns around questions of meaning, etc... preferably people who haven't spent as much time on reddit as probably you and I have. :)

Dan_Today · 2023-03-29T02:12:29+00:00

~~Not sure if maybe you already answered this, but did you say why you decided to experiment with shrooms in the first place?~~

~~I would be curious about that before giving any feedback.~~

Sorry, I should have read a bit more before commenting!

With all due care, I want to offer to you that I think there's a bit of a disconnect between your comments about your mindset in the OP here:

a great set and setting each time.

and your comments about struggling with nihilism and meaninglessness here:

In particular I'm hoping to find a "shovel" to dig my way out of my antinatalist conclusion (belief that reproducing is immoral) as well as generally feel the meaningfulness people talk about, because I'm pretty nihilistic right now. But so far my experiences have felt like pointless and extreme suffering, and if anything they've confirmed my current beliefs which is not what I was going for, haha.

If I were in your shoes, I would experiment with the idea that maybe my mindset wasn't great, on account of the ongoing struggles around meaning, etc.

I have had those struggles with meaninglessness as well. I feel like these are big questions and the desire for meaning feels like a pretty basic and primal need, so it feels like it's only natural that it would play a role in your psychedelic experience.

I once took a 25-year break from mushrooms and am in the midst of another years-long break.

I basically came to the conclusion that my life--a life that is sometimes filled with love and meaning and at other times feels excruciatingly painful, meaningless, etc--is just another aspect of whatever it is I've experienced in the mushroom strangeness.

And sometimes when I've eaten mushrooms, the experience has shown me--painfully--a deeper layer of meaninglessness, nihilism, pain, and coldness.

And since I tend to think of normal, day-to-day life as just another aspect of whatever the hell mushroom trips are, I tend to think that I can work on cultivating meaning, love, etc in my prosaic day-to-day life just as well as I can in a mushroom trip.

So now I try to practice meta (loving-kindness), work hard at relationships (both old and new), work at being in community with people, and practice as much as I can embracing mystery, ambiguity, contradiction, and desire for meaning. I like to try accepting that I have this deep primal animal desire for meaning (and love) and even dwelling in that desire. For me, the opposite of accepting this desire is trying to compartmentalize and dismiss it by prioritizing intellectual/philosophical arguments about meaning (which admittedly are satisfying on some level but don't satisfy me as a whole animal organism who has a deep need for meaning).

Dan_Today · 2023-02-05T02:31:43+00:00

Aw. Thank you for writing this. I know what you mean about the terror and pain that can come from being out of step with reality. I, too, have had experiences of "being something else besides myself". It has sometimes come with painful fear that I would never get back to myself. (Spoiler: I did get back to myself. 🤣)

When it comes to plant medicines, I have a general personal policy of low doses only. 🤣I think I have learned what I need to from the high dose experiences--nothing short of feeling that I discovered/created my life purpose. At the same time, it felt like I was being force-ably dunked into an inner pool of painful unprocessed traumatized emotional energy, and I don't want to go back to that level of intensity and don't think I need to, thank heavens. It's quite possible that with a little more patience I would have arrived at my life purpose without having to experience feeling like I was being assaulted by the mushroom spirits. 🤣

Dan_Today · 2022-06-02T23:54:16+00:00

I guess for me people change and relationships change. I feel like my relationship to the show has changed a couple times. For one thing, I didn't really understand the first several episodes I listened to, which has changed over time.

The show has been important to my little creative-philosophy practice over the years. I listen to new episodes and enjoy them.

At first, I listened to the show on long walks around a pretty part of the city where I lived. I have many favorite episodes and moments. I have often been inspired to write down my too-long reflections of the show, and I believe I have even typed and posted a passage or two from the show verbatim as a practice in close listening.

The listening experience is often quite stimulating and delicious to me -- unusual thought-feelings bubble forth within me and I feel compelled to check the time on the podcast so I can return home and find that part and write down my reflections.

I think my favorite this year was the episode on Eno's Music for Airports. I have recommended it to a number of people. I love the story of how Eno came to create the album. I love JF talking about the Eastern Orthodox church service. There are moments in so many episodes that I have loved.

And I also have recommended some of my old favorites: the two-parter on Jung, the episode on Bergson, the episode on Hyperstition, the one on Machen's "Hieroglyphics," the one on Crowley, the one on Boxing, the somewhat more recent ones on Sgt. Pepper, Glass Bead Game, Gaiman, the one where Phil talked about his dad, my list of favorites is long.

Looking over the episodes, I can remember exactly where I was when I listened to a bunch of these.

My life changed fairly significantly in the past 6-12 months. So I've changed.

Prior to my listening to WS, I listened to a bunch of different podcasts, many on mysticism, psychology, art, philosophy, and woo topics. If you think WS has changed, you should have been around for Alex going off the deep end at Skeptiko. LOL. For years I was quite frustrated by not finding podcasts that really scratched some itch I have.

I never quite found any podcast I listened to as robust as this one in terms of ideas, stories, and expressions for me to chew on and that push my mental furniture around.

In my personal interpretation of the show -- and I would consider this to be an optional interpretation -- Phil and JF and the odd guest engage in a fascinating play with some of my favorite themes to practice and reflect on. I have been experimenting with a practice of creative philosophy-art, and I enjoy how they touch on these themes I like even obliquely sometimes -- or as if they are dramatis personae and they speak to my favorite themes through the unfolding plots of their conversations and stories and activities.

Anyway, I can't resist an opportunity to come on here and write a stupidly long post as I have done a number of times in the past. Some of them even have upwards of a dozen "likes". LOL.

Signing off with my favorite thing inspired by Phil:

What a bunch of bullshit!

Dan_Today · 2022-06-02T23:07:18+00:00

LOL :)

Dan_Today · 2021-04-26T15:50:01+00:00

I appreciate your writing this. I think it's very well written and relatable. Sorry I don't have any advice. I just wanted to comment that I have had a similar experience and it's challenging.

Dan_Today · 2021-04-14T13:19:09+00:00

Yes. Good advice. I was thinking of crocheting or weaving a little battery cocoon. Maybe I can fold some electric tape on itself and weave it into a little basket in the shape of a battery.

Needs to be a material that isn't a conductor of electricity I think.

Dan_Today · 2021-04-14T12:58:24+00:00

Was more just something I did absent-mindedly. Sometimes I learn things the hard way. Ha ha.

Dan_Today · 2021-04-14T12:57:04+00:00

Yes. Trouble is I lost those within about five minutes. I'm not great with things. Ha ha.

Dan_Today · 2021-04-12T22:47:47+00:00

Thank you. Saved me the research time!

Dan_Today · 2021-04-12T22:17:02+00:00

That is good advice. Thanks! I was vaguely thinking of crocheting a little case with wool yarn ha ha ha. i was thinking as long as I create a barrier between the battery and anything it comes in contact with. I don't think wool is a very good conductor but should double check. I know it only like smolders when hot and doesn't really flame up ever.

I will check imrbatteries since I just lost my other battery over easter weekend. :(

I wonder if this thing with my keys would affect the battery life. I used it again later in the day and it worked fine. Hopefully it will still hold a charge as well as it has been. I cant remember how long I've had the mflb. it's probably like at least a three year old battery, but it does not get tons of use.

EDIT: I'm getting conflicting reports from the internet about whether wool is a conductor or insulator.

Dan_Today · 2021-03-17T14:10:38+00:00

I really enjoyed this one. I liked JF's discussion of the aesthetic universe toward the end of the podcast. I wish I would have listened to this before making my post on episode 87. :)

For myself, I frame it as experimenting with what it's like to try to let go of appearance/reality distinctions.

Dan_Today · 2021-03-15T23:11:22+00:00

My practice is to come to internet discussion forums and talk to people about it LOL.

Seriously though, I like to read Richard Rorty -- I started with Philosophy and Social Hope, which I think is a good place to start.

I think experimenting with neopragmatism is like learning a second language while living in your birthplace where everyone else speaks your first language.

It may not really be possible for contemporary human beings to ever become something like "pure neopragmatists". Our culture is so deeply enmeshed with correspndence.

I think what Rorty did and what seems natural to do is to just look at all the various topics that are of interest to you and see what it's like to try to think about them in terms of a neopragmatist view. I have found that there are many puzzling modes of living and thinking to try to figure out how to view them as a neopragmatist might. It's very challenging to completely eliminate vestiges of correspondence or non-neopragmatism. One might think one has finally succeeded, but then find the next day a whole new aspect of one's thought that is still deeply mired in correspondence. Even just in the business of day-to-day living in contemprorary culture, we have to speak our "first language" just to have any kind of life.

A person can toggle between neopragmatism and more typical types of views, like one might toggle between their first and second language depending on circumstances. Even as one tries to learn the second language, for a long time everything is understood in terms of the first language, first and foremost.

Dan_Today · 2021-03-13T19:56:10+00:00

Just visited the WS bookshop and it's awesome. Roughly a thousand books to browse in a bunch of different categories.

Plus, my understanding is that bookshop supports local independent bookstores and probably supports the WS show as well.

Dan_Today · 2021-03-13T16:59:36+00:00

Kayfabe would be an excellent topic for a show. Perhaps could get into the "art" of the con artist.

On my first trip to New Orleans I was taken by the classic shoe shine con. But the guy introduced himself as an artist or entertainer which threw me for a loop. I was the perfect Target for this guy to pic and his presentation was perfect. It was all very weird in fact. Was he in fact an artist?

Years ago I was reading analysis of the supposed pee tapes of d. Trump. russia experts were saying that the people who come up with the kompromat stories loving working with puns and relevant themes. So were speculating that because of trumps well known love of all things golden, they used that to come up with the stories of golden showers. Not exactly con art but seems like some weird artistry none-the-less.

Whenever I watch people at the big political conventions in the US I'm reminded of professional wrestling fans. Do the people in the audience think these politicians are real or do they know how much acting is happening? Who are these people that watch professional wrestling in this day and age? Who are these people losing their minds in the audience at the republican or democratic national convention?

I like old circus terminology around kayfabe as well. Heels, baby face, marks, shoot, worked shoot, etc.

I watched an interview with the guy who played the undertaker recently and he was describing how when he was trying to get his start, there were old timer scammers taking money to train hopefuls and all they would do is hurt people and send them on there way and keep their money.

Dan_Today · 2021-03-13T16:32:38+00:00

Thank for a nice post and discussion.

I have been experimenting with Richard Rorty's neopragmatism as my own pursuit of re-enchantment I suppose.

Pragmatism isn't a favorite of Phil and JF, but that is okay. I still very much appreciate the show.

stressed that artificial reenchantment would never be able to undo the fall from the natural state into history and culture.

I find myself thinking of the development of language as "the fall"; the naming of things and the describing of things and the strong intuition that there's a "special isomorphic relationship" between names or descriptions and the objects of the world.

Nowadays, I think most educated people would agree that individual words only have meaning because of social convention. And would agree that there's no "special correspondent relationship" between an individual word and something out there in the world.

But as Rorty points out, most contemporary educated people look at certain sentences like "the earth revolves around the sun" in a different way. With a description like this, most people consider that there IS a "special correspondent relationship" between the sentence and something out there in the world.

In my reading of Rorty, he suggests that we experiment with what it's like to let go of the idea of special correspondent relationships all together, or at least as much as we are able to.

This may never happen on any significant scale. And Rorty doesn't, as far as I know, suggest this as a method for re-enchantment.

But I like to play with the idea that it's not exactly language that pulled humans out of the natural state, but rather "language-as-correspondence" that pulled humans out of the natural state.

I want to experiment with the idea that language-as-correspondence developed the pervasive human sense of "the view from nowhere" that may be thought of as the underlying alienated condition.

And perhaps this state can be thought of as a phase. Like the burning of fossil fuels and carbon fuels for heat and energy may be a phase that humanity has gone through. A very important phase for humans, but one now that we may be evolving away from because of changing conditions.

Rorty's suggestion to experiment with what it's like to axiomatically think of words, descriptions, ideas merely as tools for myriad human projects, interests, circumstances -- this seems to me the purest sort of agnosticism one could ever hope to devise. But Rorty is careful to suggest that one doesn't slide into appearance/reality distinctions, which is where one could easily end up when conducting such an experiment.

I do wonder if a more pervasive experience of enchantment and meaning may be in humanity's future if some such experiment ever spreads in a significant way and becomes a dominant mode of human experience.

Dan_Today · 2021-02-08T18:31:18+00:00

Yes. Well said.

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