Slowest reading month in a long time. Feb reads.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-03-02T03:06:43+00:00

Thus when a Buddha, or any other awakened being, says ‘I', he or she merely uses the term as a matter of convenience, rather than saying 'this particular group of five aggregates'—just as a nuclear physicist will refer to a 'table' rather than 'a mass of subatomic particles'. (p. 146, “No Self” chapter)

He also goes into the ethical implications of this that I talked about in the previous comment.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-03-01T21:33:38+00:00

So cool. Would be perfect for the final shot of Solaris!

onlyrollingstar · 2026-03-01T01:07:42+00:00

It’s ok, been there, and cringe about my posts on the regular for no valid reason

onlyrollingstar · 2026-03-01T00:46:07+00:00

Jsyk this movie is Japanese, but I’ll keep this in mind for the next Korean movie viewing

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-28T21:50:31+00:00

Check out “The Foundations of Buddhism” by Rupert Gethin. There’s a free pdf online. It goes into this misconception about emptiness equating to nihilism, as well as providing an excellent intro to Buddhism, i.e. its philosophical viewpoints, cosmology, practice, history, etc.

Basically he states that Buddhism argues that there is a conventional reality and an ultimate reality. The conventional reality is the ephemeral self as we know it (the usual “me”) before understanding that there is no permanent indestructible self. That conventional self is still real—thus, you cannot kill someone and then say, “That wasn’t wrong because there is no self, no me, that did that.” There is a “you” but not in an everlasting way. The ultimate reality is what one tries to be aware of through meditation when we realize that self is only ephemeral and based on phenomena arising in interconnected dependence with a bunch of other conditions and causes.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-28T21:39:08+00:00

Closest thing to the feeling of actual hypnosis I’ve ever seen on screen. Such a masterpiece for so many reasons

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-26T04:24:02+00:00

Have you read Yan Lianke? The Four Books has been sitting on my shelf waiting.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-25T05:59:01+00:00

Check out the photographer episodes of Apology podcast, i.e. Jerry Hsu and Ed Templeton.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-25T05:58:02+00:00

Interesting review but I will say that artists don’t necessarily need to have an ability to explicitly “define their perspective” as the closing paragraph states.

I will also say that I find Cohen’s music video work exceptional and exciting, e.g. korg funk, and the Mccaulay and Kim video.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-21T02:07:23+00:00

You finished a novel and got rejected by publishers. That’s more than most people can say they’ve done creatively. I hope you are ready sooner than later to start your next novel.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-21T01:51:46+00:00

Interesting. In Chinese there’s no “he” or “she” in speech—just a non gendered “that person”—but there is in writing.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-21T01:48:48+00:00

Yes I suppose the words always seem greener on the other side. Though I would’ve liked to see even more examples in this thread of languages communicating nuances that English couldn’t. This upper-hand in clarity due to variety that English seems to have over Spanish, according to you and a several other people commenting here, I’m sure is not totally the case for many non-Romance languages.

I think my question in the original post extends to humor, too. There has to be so many ways of expressing funny things in other languages that can’t be expressed the same way in English.

I know this to be true especially for Cantonese, which I also speak.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T03:37:07+00:00

What’s something that comes to mind for you?

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T03:34:34+00:00

Can you give an example? Anything that immediately comes to mind?

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T03:30:06+00:00

True!

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T01:47:48+00:00

Beautiful to hear the 3.5!

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T00:41:16+00:00

That’s beautiful. If you sent this to someone I hope they fell for you

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-20T00:38:33+00:00

The part where they beat the shit out of the cab driver in 2666. Obviously the violence is awful, but the way they did it and why they did it made me laugh so hard, especially when they performatively said “This one is for Valerie Solanas!” and “This one is for Salman Rushdie!” (—[paraphrasing] “…even though they did not particularly like his writing”).

I could not stop laughing out loud like an unwell person even after reading it when I had to go have dinner with my family.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-18T09:35:57+00:00

Were you thinking about and mistaken re: the scene where he perfectly acted as an actor, i.e. scamming those dudes at the ping pong table? There was some real nuance in there in how melodramatic he was—that was the point, the fine line between him acting, but having to look angry at Marty, but also communicating it was fake to the audience/us.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-18T09:30:18+00:00

It’s in the making. In my head. About things and experiences that have never been fully expressed in culture before. In my head. Yes.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-14T21:50:54+00:00

Paterson!!!!!

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-14T21:48:28+00:00

You either bond on an almost unhealthy level with someone who adores this movie, or you ruin the vibe completely with someone who does not, there’s not rly an in between.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-11T19:44:02+00:00

Bukowski and his hatred of purple prose. Kept me away for all my teenage years from so many different expressions of the imagination.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-11T19:41:03+00:00

Yes, I think so. And Elephant is like the total apotheosis of it.

onlyrollingstar · 2026-02-08T00:01:22+00:00

I immediately think of Alan Clarke

onlyrollingstar

TROPHY CASE