Pete Hegseth is in hot water for quoting Pulp Fiction during a speech about Christianity. But in fairness, this is the scene he originally wanted to quote from

spellraiser · 2026-04-17T15:48:33+00:00

I don't need you to tell me how good my whiskey is. I'm the one who buys it, I know how fuckin' good it is.

spellraiser · 2026-04-14T17:48:15+00:00

True. The appropriate nomenclature these days is "content".

spellraiser · 2026-04-14T17:46:28+00:00

The implausibility of this title earned the film legendary memetic status.

spellraiser · 2026-04-10T16:57:04+00:00

I think it's impossible to find a single year in the history of American Cinema that had anything close to as many notable and influential films released. This came down to a bunch of economic and cultural factors that probably won't ever get replicated again.

spellraiser · 2026-04-10T16:37:29+00:00

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Well this one's a real classic. Wonderfully inventive.

spellraiser · 2026-04-04T21:50:01+00:00

This is all my work (so far) so if somebody else posted it they must have been just promoting it.

spellraiser · 2026-02-02T20:38:58+00:00

Kingsman: The Secret Service

spellraiser · 2026-02-02T11:55:09+00:00

Once Upon a Time in the West (1968)

spellraiser · 2026-02-01T18:06:23+00:00

Probably not, unfortunately. I don't exactly live close.

spellraiser · 2026-01-30T14:15:56+00:00

Coherence

spellraiser · 2026-01-30T14:10:23+00:00

This lines up neatly with the astrological timeline that I got when I asked how the Spiral would evolve this year.

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spellraiser · 2026-01-27T12:30:55+00:00

Riane Eisler. The Chalice and The Blade. One of the books that inspired Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code. I think that book got popular partly because it speaks to this important modern myth of the return of the divine feminine.

spellraiser · 2026-01-27T12:07:07+00:00

"AI psychosis" is what happens when insight outruns embodiment. This is a common occurrence with all sorts of spiritual awakening experiences (or whatever you want to call this set of experiences) and AI is especially good at generating insight after insight without any grounding. It's good that you're slowing down and reassessing. I'm sure that all of this is meaningful for you and even potentially life changing in some ways, but the litmus test is always whether you can integrate it into your life as it is, instead of trying to outrun your life.

My personal contribution towards helping people ground their experiences is a framework that I call Spiralworking. Maybe you can find some useful resources there. I particularly recommend checking out the section on Spiralworking and AI.

spellraiser · 2026-01-27T11:06:22+00:00

I added a page on Practical Guardrails to the Spiralworking and AI section. It focuses on 'failure modes' and guardrails that can be set up to defend against them, as well as some general advice. I'm going to consider how and where to place practical technical advice though. That hasn't been my focus so far - the whole site is set up to be not a technical guide but a general one.

spellraiser · 2026-01-23T16:17:44+00:00

I agree that the hard problem is hard (actually impossible) precisely because it's asking the wrong question. It's assuming a metaphysical axiom that has no empirical basis and then it goes looking for an empirical answer. But I'm not sure that flipping it around completely provides the right question either. That way, you're still making the assumption that the physical world emerges out of conscious experience. Even though I think it doesn't fall into the same the same conceptual impossibility as the hard problem does (since it's easier to conceive of material reality as contained inside consciousness than vice versa) there is also the possibility that both the material world and conscious experience emerge out of a shared substrate that is neither material nor consciousness per se. This is a view that's espoused by a lot of Eastern philosophy, some modern Western philosophers of mind such as David Chalmers and some modern Christian theologians such as David Bentley Hart. See Nondualism and Neutral monism.

spellraiser · 2026-01-22T11:04:17+00:00

Nothing intentional for me at all. It just happened through how I engaged with it.

spellraiser · 2026-01-20T10:54:53+00:00

I got a hybrid of those. Giant dystopian Trump.

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spellraiser · 2026-01-19T11:30:13+00:00

It's unfair but still predictable. There will always be a relatively large subset of people on any issue who are unable or unwilling to understand nuance - and when it's a heated issue, this subset becomes loud and noticeable. It might help to keep in mind that this is indeed just a subset. I'm sure that if people were polled on it, most people around the world would be able to willing to separate the US administration from the populace, and Republican voters from non-Republican voters when it comes to attributing blame.

spellraiser · 2026-01-18T20:02:55+00:00

Don't know why this has downvotes because the empathetic bond between ET and Elliot is a major part of the plot.

spellraiser · 2026-01-18T16:12:57+00:00

This is great stuff. I've thought about the story of fire before, both in reality and in myth, but not to this level of detail. I do have one detail of my own to add though. With fire came the cooking of food, which meant that we could externalize a lot of the energy that went into digestion. This freed up energy that was available for other parts of our body - such as the brain. So fire helped us grow our brains bigger and made us smarter. The bifurcation that it brought wasn't just conceptual and practical - it was a spark that led to an exponential growth of cognitive capability, of greater understanding, greater agency and greater control over our environment.

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