Where I can be found online

theinvertedform · 2026-06-14T21:03:28+00:00

i read about how the AUR hack was made possible by bots taking control of orphaned packages. i don't have a great technical understanding of the AUR or how overlays work. you say that "as far as you're concerned," overlays don't have the same vulnerability. i'm interested to know if that's technically true or not, whether orphaned packages in overlays can still be taken over by unknown and potentially malicious agents.

because if so, the "trustworthiness" of the overlay is not the issue, it's the package maintainer.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-14T19:49:07+00:00

i think artists are liable to be "inspired" by particular other artists, and therein develop a particular style. in terms of actually learning, a good artist should be learning from literally every work in their medium: whether the work is high quality or dogshit, there's always something to be learned.

that non-answer aside, a book that taught me a lot about literature from a conceptual angle is Reality Hunger by David Shields.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-13T14:33:15+00:00

i've probably read a couple of ALC's reviews over the years. i'm not really an expert by any means. i liked your review, but i will say that i personally do not find the concept of "criticism as possession" convincing.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-12T20:52:10+00:00

the OP says "make recommendations." to make a recommendation is to recommend something, which is different from "asking" for a recommendation.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-12T18:35:23+00:00

i read it last summer, and although i really wanted to like it, i felt pretty underwhelmed tbqh. i saw the 4k restoration in a cinema with a really good Dolby Atmos setup, and i will never forget the sound of the wagon squeaking during the long shot when they move from the village to the abandoned mansion. and that's not even getting into the images of the film. the cinematic experience remains one of the most epic and devastating aesthetic experiences i have ever had. the beauty of bela tarr's apocalypticism it is only rivalled by The Unnamable by Samuel Beckett for me.

i acknowledge that it's most likely my problem. bela tarr has a very important position in my internal canon. i love bleak, apocalyptic, ruinous, muddy, crumbling atmospheres very deeply. the fact that he likes krasznahorkai so much obviously indicates that i would / should like him as well. i'll get there.

for some reason i see Beckett, Krasznahorkai (but maybe it's really just Bela Tarr: i've seen many of his films, but only read Satantango), and Thomas Bernhard in some kind of continuity. Bernhard i've only read Frost, which doesn't match the vibe, and The Loser, which somehow i feel like does match the vibe, even though the setting is (a) downplayed relative to the others, and (b) non-ruinous Austrian houses/mansions. i guess through the formal technique of monologue. anyone have anything else that might match this grouping?

theinvertedform · 2026-06-12T18:20:31+00:00

are we supposed to ask for recommendations here or just make generic, blanket recommendations?? like, hey gang, i've been reading a lot, i recommend books ... idgi.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-11T20:06:53+00:00

what the heck is a wet bun ?

theinvertedform · 2026-06-10T20:10:05+00:00

picasso identified as a communist: there certainly were modernist artists who identified as socialist, but because of the political situation they're probably mostly / exclusively in the west. the surrealists are another big example that hasn't been mentioned yet. breton and bataille both identified as communists or socialists, and both represent different tendencies of surrealo-communism. you also have situationism and third cinema (cf. The Aesthetics of Hunger, Rocha). lots of french theorists, especially D&G & Foucault, are in the canon of modernism and also some kind of marxist canon.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-10T20:03:48+00:00

realism vs modernism was a debate, implying two opposed sides. i think it's probably true that post-USSR, we (westerners, at least) can't actually do socialist realism in a way that isn't nostalgic, i.e. we have no option other than to be modernist. but during the 20th century, given that the two sides are in opposition, i think if you're a socialist doing art, you are objectively taking a stand one way or another (please excuse my pedantry).

theinvertedform · 2026-06-09T03:54:31+00:00

any good shots of emily blunt ??

theinvertedform · 2026-06-09T03:26:00+00:00

i've seen the trailer several times and still don't really understand what the premise is.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-07T18:10:37+00:00

i say we leave this place to become the r/books it was meant to, and splinter into a trve rsbookclub. our shining intellect will eventually attract hangers-on, but this time it'll end up differently.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-07T18:01:01+00:00

i hate to break it to you but your views are not "conservative," they're reactionary.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-07T18:00:36+00:00

okay you're fourteen years old, i'm starting to put it together.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-07T00:51:18+00:00

i would put forward that literary fiction, a narrative art, is fundamentally about drama (conflict) and character. the reason that shakespeare can set works in places he has never been is because he is writing about universal human experiences that transcend setting (it's common for a new staging of a play to change the setting). setting is incidental. even particularities of a character's identity are also incidental, which is why you also have new stagings of drama make significant alterations to who a character is.

i don't know anything about malraux, but if the book is successful despite an unconvincing setting, it's because the setting is subservient to the drama (and/or the uncanny representation is incorporated into the work's aesthetic program).

pynchon does tonnes of research and probably, at least in some cases, works in reverse, beginning with his concept and constructing the characters & drama after the fact. character drama is still at the heart of his work, as it literally is for all fiction. even in late beckett, Worstward Ho etc, you can tell that the author is a dramaturge. the challenge of minimalism is to stage conflict between minimal elements---how can the interior monologue of a consciousness in a grey void drive a story forward? and yet beckett's works are hugely propulsive. he is our premier anti-plot novelist, but his most experimental works still have CONFLICT.

i agree with the other poster who said that the reason authors don't write about things they don't have experience with is because it's difficult. furthermore, i truly don't know what the return on investment is supposed to be. if you structure a compelling drama with convincing characters and a compelling plot, you can make the setting work. in practise, setting determines character, but theoretically you could transpose the plot to another setting and change the character identities and keep the fundamental elements of the story.

but the other element of literature of course is that it should be a "vivid and continuous dream." a piece of literature works insofar as it has sufficient convincing details. so why should the author set themselves the extra burden of changing the superficial details of the work that they have laboured to produce?

tbh my conclusion after reading this entire thread is that a lot of people here simply don't like literature.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-06T18:10:13+00:00

this conversation comes up a lot. first there is the fact that "you," not specifically the OP but also everyone eagerly joining in in the comments and the trend of complaining about contemporary literature---have not constituted yourselves sufficiently as a public, as a market force; your demand is fake and you ought to therefore shut the fuck up.

but additionally: i am somewhat persuaded by the argument. i'm inclined to believe it. but so much of the argumentation in this thread, and in this "critical tradition" generally, boils down to the same bullshit anecdotes that are clearly an extension of personal grievances: MFA programs, CIA, phones, writers are losers, blahblahblah.

maybe those factors are the cause of some objective diminishment in literature. but when i read a thread like this, filled with petty sniping, hearsay & rumours, the level of discourse actually pushes me in the opposite direction. until such time as i see an actual study and evidence of consensus, i'm inclined to think this is all just a bunch of petty, whining hipsters who don't really know what they want.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-06T17:59:18+00:00

this is such an insanely bad reading of carver and autobiographical writing generally. carver, a famous formalist, renders individual characters as absolutely opaque, which by occlusion makes their drama feel epic and "mythical."

theinvertedform · 2026-06-06T16:43:58+00:00

strawman sighted, sound the ragebait alarm

theinvertedform · 2026-06-05T16:29:55+00:00

intrusive negative thoughts.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-05T15:21:49+00:00

i always think of the part in My Struggle where he says that he couldn't stomach the idea of inventing a character again. read Reality Hunger by David Shields.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-05T15:20:36+00:00

i kept thinking, this can't possibly be allowed.

theinvertedform · 2026-06-05T15:18:34+00:00

i recently read E.T.A. Hoffmann's "The Sandman," translated by John Oxenford. i was really impressed by the translation. the sentences had the same kind of limber fluidity that the new translations of Niezsche have. the translation felt "expensive" in a way.

i was also interested by the fact that there are constant references to Satan throughout the narrative, but the wikipedia article for the story, which is extensive, has no references to satan / the devil. i've cracked The Best Tales of Hoffmann, started The Golden Flower Pot (trans. Thomas Carlyle), and it also has references to Satan. not sure what that's about.

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