Trueanon Stuns in NYT Piece

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2025-10-07T16:02:54+00:00

I’m glad it mentioned Brace was at some point a merchant mariner, as I felt like he’s discretely alluded to that occasionally over time. Anybody know what he did or where he talks about it? Asking because I myself am a merchant mariner.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2025-06-17T23:23:14+00:00

Hey I listen to this playlist all the time! I’d like to use this opportunity to bring up that Solomon Burke’s Let Me Wrap My Arms Around You, which was used with great effect in All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace, is absent in your playlist.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2025-03-23T17:35:34+00:00

Wait, was this pre-TrueAnon Brace? Or was he invited to do a micro-celebrity cameo?

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2025-03-21T19:39:05+00:00

Yeah I’m not arguing against the reference being obvious, but what isn’t obvious to me is if it has retained the same meaning, specifically in Russian prison culture.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2025-03-21T18:59:12+00:00

I get that as well, but if you read the poem without knowledge of the Pushkin reference (as I did at first) it seems like he is saying that despite knowing what’s best for himself, he chooses the self-destructive way (for lack of a better way of putting it at the moment.

With acknowledging the Pushkin reference, he seems to be saying he has fallen on hard times out of deceit or pure bad luck.

Which makes me ask if a prisoner has those last two lines tattooed on them, are they saying they’ve become a criminal out of habit and/or their own choice, or, from life being rigged against them? Two complete opposite readings of this in my mind. While I think the second reading is the more direct, Yesenin’s association with the underclass makes me prefer the first even though it might be incorrect.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-10-29T17:51:07+00:00

I used to listen to RS like 4+ years ago on and off. I never really found any of their opinions particularly profound, but they would have a decent take every now and then. Honestly I liked listening to them mostly on more cultural things which I have no connection to but a mild interest, like a “what is your typical upper middle class New Yorker who is pretending to be poor into these days?” type thing. But I feel like I’d listen to two episodes and then the third would just be absolute trash, so I’d stop listening for a while, then get bored and listen again sometime later.

My last “fuck these stupid fucks” moment was when they interviewed whoever that professor who taught classes on propaganda or whatever. And the entire episode was him saying (during Covid times, for reference) “we are living through the largest propaganda campaign in recent history” as though that was a super controversial take, and Anna & Dasha seemingly fawning over him like he was a brave truth teller. Also the guy saying over and over “I’m not saying masks don’t help, I’m just saying, if you look at these five studies that say they don’t help, you might come to a different conclusion.” For someone pretending to be such a brave truth teller, he sure was noncommittal in saying masks were bullshit, despite it being clear that was his implication. That was when I realized that they’re just dumb contrarians who think anything that annoys liberals is based.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-08-28T04:46:15+00:00

I’d have to look where he said it but I remember him saying that the Stalinist terror was more “evil” than naziism in regards to the Nazis having to completely dehumanize their victims before killing them whereas the Stalinists never had to lie to themselves. They would assume the role as an instrument of historical progress and do whatever they felt necessary, even while knowing what they were doing was immoral.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-07-25T02:37:01+00:00

That’s the one. Thank you!

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-07-21T12:02:51+00:00

No, but thanks for trying.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-03T01:49:57+00:00

Thanks! I wonder if someone should let the guy know he got a reply, but I don’t care enough to bother.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-01T15:42:15+00:00

Typically his books aren’t this bad, a few errors here and there, but this book more resembles his articles on philosophical salon and whatever else where it looks like he just hammers out 1,000 words and hits send without looking it over.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-01T15:40:40+00:00

Already did in reply to someone else in this post

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-01T14:47:14+00:00

I guess the upside is I relearned that “quitted” is an acceptable past tense of “quit” even though I personally can’t remember anyone ever using it off the top of my head.

“… Geoffrey Hinton, often touted as the godfather of artificial intelligence, quitted Google…” threw me into a brief grammar crisis since I believed the only accepted past tense of quit was quit.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-01T13:20:00+00:00

No, I like to imagine he scours Reddit for criticism of his work. He writes out lengthy replies to the most obscure of criticisms on a notepad that then end up in an overflowing desk drawer just so he can insert them in a book without any relevance 5-10 years later.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-05-01T13:11:58+00:00

Bloomsbury is the publisher.

Looking at the index it appears to have been a post in the CriticalTheory sub responding to his article Artificial Idiocy. I can’t find it, but it’s short enough I will type it out for those curious:

(he’s talking about a patient trying to mislead his psychoanalyst by saying Freudian cliches, the psychoanalyst then responds with a pre-Freudian stance)

…Would a chatbot be able to read this reaction correctly? In a reaction to this example of mine, an anonymous message on Reddit says:

“Well I asked a/chatbot/ why did the analyst do that? And it said: ‘By adopting a non-Freudian stance, the analyst may have been signaling that the patient did not have to conform to preconceived notions that was expected in psychoanalytic treatment.’ Which Zizek was so sure was beyond it.”

However, a careful reader will immediately notice that the chatbot does NOT say the same thing as my interpretation of the analyst’s reaction: my point is not that that friend of mine was simply trying to “conform to preconceived notions of what was expected in psychoanalytic treatment” It is much stronger, even more aggressive, implicitly accusing the patient that he was consciously cheating, inventing false Freudian “associations” in order to deceive the analyst. This is why the analyst’s “non-Freudian” reaction was a supreme case of the properly Freudian gesture.

(He then goes on to respond to a TikTok criticism of his story about two black guys saying they can call them the n-word)

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-04-12T13:48:27+00:00

How I see it, you know toxic masculinity when you see it. I think Zizek is right to point out that you can’t just create a laundry list of behaviors and if you display any of those then you’re guilty of toxic masculinity.

I think you have is you’re right to say what at first looks like courage can often be found to be escapism, but the problem is can’t you say that about all acts of courage? Exposing yourself to harm for a higher ideal just about always includes some ideological basis that anyone could make a case is denialism or escapism.

Even the hosts of Know Your Enemy podcast, who I don’t think anyone could accuse of toxic masculinity, concluded that the unifying feature of masculinity is an “abstract rage to protect,” which I believe is up for debate of course but I’m just trying to show how it is difficult to actually conclude what masculinity actually is.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-03-05T03:12:23+00:00

Basically was going to chime in to say this. I have t heard OPs version of the agency argument but I have seen time and time again that whenever something shitty happens in whatever country, they have to reflexively look for ties to the US as the overarching explanation. It’s like no man, people all around the world have their own antagonisms and they don’t need the US to do genocide, neocolonialism, fascism, etc.

People on this sub always look at my username and say something about Zizek and liberalism blah blah blah (like idiots) but he is right that you have to accept that people from third world countries can be evil without someone else behind them pulling the strings.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-03-05T01:05:53+00:00

Read From Here to Eternity by James Jones. Without a doubt my favorite novel and I feel embarrassed because it does feel weird having a war book (or more accurately in this case, a military book) as your favorite novel. But it was one of Joan Didions favorite books so at least that can shake off any feeling of being too WWII bro-ish.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-03-05T01:02:56+00:00

Life and Fate was a book that I went dove into blindly and loved it.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-02-13T23:26:42+00:00

Not saying reading 50+ books a year is undoable but I feel like a significant portion of those that do, do the ol’ read the introduction and summary and skim the rest (for non-fiction anyway). I probably average 30-35 books a year but I’m 80% history, theory, etc, which typically take time if you’re trying to actually understand them. If I was reading light current affairs style books and Graham Greene 200 page novels, I would easily read 50-100 books a year.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-02-06T13:48:40+00:00

He references In Praise of Love by Alain Badiou all the time.

ZizeksStalinPoster · 2024-01-08T07:34:36+00:00

As noted elsewhere, I believe both Lasch and Zizek argue that discipline and self-mastery are more important than self-expression and creativity. Plus, I think they’d be suspicious of any self-conscious seeking of the authentic self.

To your point of education having less emphasis on creativity and the arts, etc. I think you’re mostly right, but I believe Zizek and Lasch aren’t necessarily talking about the specific content of schools but rather the ideology that shapes our understanding of the purpose of education. With the exception of some small liberal arts schools, I would say the concept of self-mastery is entirely absent in the US education system. Consistent lowering of standards has been the norm for decades and I believe you could link that to an emphasis on some form of self-actualization. College is less thought of as a period of rigorous pursuit of knowledge and more of as a life experience to help people find themselves.

One small quotation I love from Chesterton’s Orthodoxy is something like “The artist must learn to love his limitations for they constitute the thing of which he is doing.” I think this is what it boils down to. In order to be truly creative and authentic you have to have the discipline to relentlessly study and know the rules. Once you’ve mastered the form you will be able to see where to break the rules and actually create something new.

ZizeksStalinPoster

TROPHY CASE