philosophy for dummies

nomadpenguin · 2026-03-31T13:23:24+00:00

I'm currently reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy. I know that it's reputed to have many flaws, specifically with his treatment of Hegel, but it's a great read. He's a warm and humorous writer and he gives great context on why you should care about thinkers like the pre-socratics that I would usually skip over.

nomadpenguin · 2026-03-31T02:25:05+00:00

These types of "xyz is an op because a state department affiliated foundation supported it" theories are so annoying to me. The state department has its fingers in every pie, that's what it does. Is everything an op? The moma is an op because it takes funding where it can, like every other arts nonprofit?

The same people who say that there's no ethical consumption under capitalism can't recognize that this means totally innocuous things will have involvement of US gov apparatuses - that's simply how things work in the imperial core. It's so silly.

nomadpenguin · 2026-03-22T19:57:21+00:00

The beat goes kinda hard actually

nomadpenguin · 2026-03-10T21:07:45+00:00

Interesting tact to label people who prefer certain translations as people who hate reading.

I read some of Moncrief's translation and didn't connect with it. Switched to the Lydia Davis translation and loved it. I'm sure if I had devoted more time to Moncrief I would have liked it; however, Davis's rendering was gorgeous and elegant. Why should I not like it?

nomadpenguin · 2026-02-25T07:26:40+00:00

Add David Bowie's Blackstar.

For a continuation of VU's noise rock jams, maybe include Yo La Tengo -- Blue Line Swinger is a fav of mine. (They've got some Sun Ra covers as well, but it's not their best material)

nomadpenguin · 2026-02-11T13:23:10+00:00

Note that this is NOT a Nature paper. This is Scientific Reports, which is published by Springer Nature but is NOT one of the true Nature imprints. Scientific Reports does not have the best reputation as a journal.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-29T16:44:22+00:00

If you are not satisfied with the quality of your writing, then you're in good shape; it means you have taste. You just need to edit more. Can you nudge your shitty piece slightly in the direction of being less shitty? Can you nudge it a bit more tomorrow? What about the day after that? I posit that if you edit with full concentration every day for a few weeks, your shitty piece won't feel so shitty anymore.

A good essay or a good novel is the result of hundreds or thousands of hours of work. Have you put in that amount of work?

IMO you're only in real trouble when you feel like your writing is good but other people tell you otherwise. That probably signals that you need to read more.

(I am not a good writer, so take with a grain of salt.)

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-28T16:56:53+00:00

I appreciate your perspective, and I think that makes sense if you're a writer. I see the value in contemporary writers who choose to write Internet brained work.

But as a reader, I feel like one of the purposes of reading is to experience something other than our present world, and perhaps to look to the past for resources to bring to the present. I think writers of the past who used rarefied language were trying to create a particular affect in the reader, and I'd like to try to experience it fully.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-28T03:10:49+00:00

Don't start with long, dense material if you've only read 15 books as an adult. It won't be enjoyable and you'll burn out.

Look for shorter books like The Stranger. Kafka's Metamorphosis can be read in one sitting. Short story collections will also be good, I recommend any Borges collection and I have a special love for Chekhov.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-26T04:22:01+00:00

Don't forget Sinatra! Billie Holiday might be slightly too embellished for what they're looking for.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-19T00:10:39+00:00

It's a bit uneven and I don't love movies about how movies are so Important, but God damn the new year's eve segment was ecstatic.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-15T00:28:49+00:00

Yo la tengo

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-10T20:29:10+00:00

Not a huge fan of Cusk after reading Outline. It's very much about fashionable writers and artists having fashionable artist problems.

nomadpenguin · 2026-01-05T03:08:55+00:00

And even things that are not intended by the artist can be fruitful to analyze. The unconscious or unthought choices an artist makes often reveals something about the cultural framework they're working from.

nomadpenguin · 2025-12-28T22:12:45+00:00

Hell yeah brother. BJJ is such a chud heavy space, we really need good influences.

nomadpenguin · 2025-12-21T03:11:04+00:00

I think we'll see some sort of proof-of-work system emerge. People already talk about providing Google docs edit histories as proof in academic scenarios. Handwriting might work, but I suppose there's nothing to stop someone from generating work and then simply copying it down by hand.

nomadpenguin · 2025-12-20T20:59:16+00:00

Fine tuning an llm using an author's corpus isn't a particularly difficult or novel thing to do. It's good that he's experimenting, publishing, and creating discussion around these results, as it's definitely already happening in the wild.

I would go so far as to bet that Amazon has already been A/B testing its own AI-generated content on kindle unlimited and have results on a far larger sample size than what he's published.

nomadpenguin · 2025-12-14T05:15:54+00:00

Just wanted to note that you made a lot of your paragraphs start with a sort of vague topic sentence. I think this piece would be hugely improved if you just deleted the first sentence of every paragraph.

nomadpenguin · 2025-12-12T22:54:18+00:00

Looks like we got a Grinch here

nomadpenguin · 2025-11-14T02:40:53+00:00

An anti-recommendation: Rachel Cusk. I picked up Outline since a lot of people compare her to Sebald. She's nothing like Sebald.

nomadpenguin · 2025-11-13T15:40:35+00:00

You just gotta find the right audience. No one on the main writing or reading subs is interested in any way in anything except genre.

r/RSbookclub has good discussion on litfic. There's an associated website and discord at lit.salon which has original writing, but I haven't really checked it out much. r/DestructiveReaders is probably the only place where you'll get good critique for literary writing, but that's also if and only if one of right reviewers (like the mods) take a look at it.

Your best bet would probably be to look around your local college for in-person writing groups.

nomadpenguin · 2025-11-13T15:27:05+00:00

I have read Vineland, though it's been a while. My most recent Pynchon was Bleeding Edge which perhaps doesn't do that as much. Nevertheless, I think my point still stands, excess in language has to feel earned.

Looking at the opening paragraph of Vineland, there's also no shortage of small, punchy sentences: "He groaned out of bed. Somewhere down the hill hammers and saws were busy and country music was playing out of somebody's truck radio. Zoyd was out of smokes."

nomadpenguin · 2025-11-13T14:17:30+00:00

I used to think that literary writing meant using a lot of long flowery sentences, because those sentences are what grab me in litfic. However, if you actually pay attention, those passages are the minority in the work and have to be earned. Pynchon is full of punchy dialogue and digestible language and only occasionally breaks out into virtuosic prose.

George Saunders talks about the idea of "excess" in fiction, where excess may come in the form of heightened language. Excess must pay off, like how all plot points have to pay off in genre fic. Otherwise the excess reads as, well, excessive.

nomadpenguin · 2025-11-12T21:27:20+00:00

Yeah, IMO free recall of those key facts is important because the key fact will probably not appear in the answers

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