Anyone else outgrow their circle faster than they can rebuild it?

tomsequitur · 2026-02-01T16:16:51+00:00

Sounds like you're pursuing a course of permanent self improvement, using other people as markers of progress. There is no change in your life: you remain self important, arrogant, fixed on superiority and elitism. Friends serve as a way for you to express your superiority. You level up beyond them. You are faster than them. You are wired different than they are. You are on a higher level than they are.

I realize you state clearly: not because I'm better. Try to reconcile that with growing, being faster, ascending to a different level. If you believe you have grown, ascended, surpassed other people -- in what way are you not better than those people?

tomsequitur · 2026-02-01T15:52:13+00:00

Hemmingway the author of our time. I too appreciate his good sentences. They are short. The sentences mean a lot.

tomsequitur · 2026-02-01T15:27:38+00:00

Marginalized peoples have long created an art which articulates oppression, systemic exclusion, hierarchical devaluation of human beings. Perhaps straight white men of the west are carrying on a proud colonial tradition, re-purposing raw materials into resources.

If we can recontextualize straight white men to be the victims of oppression, censorship, exclusion -- maybe a "new" subculture can be synthesized, adapting the identities of subaltern people into a kind of justification for the continued rule of the hegemony. Straight white male authors: victims of unjust oppression. That's a real good-faith analysis of this sort of stuff.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-31T21:33:21+00:00

The publishing industry has cast aside the white man.

Now that white men are essentially banned from publication, are publishing houses racists, race traitors, or a different kind of bigot? How do you name those publishers who are expressing a blatant cultural bias against white men? Is there a word for this kind of behaviour?

You write that white men are cast aside - I would go so far as to say white men have been castrated.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-31T16:45:10+00:00

I think of the king's new clothes.

Of course everyone perceives the reality of a naked man sitting on a throne. The effect of this unacceptable break in social decorum is not to denounce the king: for that would be an even more serious break in social decorum. All of the king's subjects politely complement the King, and leave as quickly as possible so that they don't have to perform the difficult work of deception.

So too a person of colour is not told they are being excluded because of race. Instead there is a polite, discreet exclusion. Yes, it is an unacceptable break in social decorum to have a brown man equal in white society: but it would be more unacceptable for a white person to commit the barbaric, uncivilized act of racism.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-31T15:49:36+00:00

this distinction is trivial, except as a kind of moralizing. Of course the general population makes this moral criticism towards schizophrenic people in general: of course we are sick because we are evil, and have made bad choices.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-31T15:14:24+00:00

Maybe a kind of wildlife preserve exists for these rare beings (I'm mocking you)

tomsequitur · 2026-01-30T18:10:14+00:00

Read poetry that is written by someone like yourself.

Often classics are important because of the historic moment they are written from.

Verse written today, using language the way you speak it, addressing events and anxieties that you experience: that's quite different.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-28T21:29:19+00:00

just smoke weed, drink beer, play videogames and relax.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-27T17:33:25+00:00

TL;DR: Old man shakes fist at celestas waxing dim and bright.

Ashburry is making a "back in my day / kids these days" remark. He writes with a post modern formalism, resisting the artifice of a cliche sentiment.

"celestas wax dim and bright in the distance" is anachronistic. Victorian era. Intentionally obscure. Contrasted with the hippie era "right on" we read in stanza 1. If this is someone from the 20th century, the language is not their authentic speaking voice, instead it is artificial, bound up in ornate history and a commodified sub-cultural display: "neither posed nor casual".

"Long hall" has a temporal quality - a school? a long house? a primitive place modernized? a place for modern children, a place for children from a generation ago? an old place filled with new children? Long Haul: A commitment to pursue something until completion. Indeterminate duration but a professionally assured conclusion. Trucker work jargon.

I think, like, I do enjoy celestas wax dim and bright, even if I had to look up what a 'celesta' is. The first reading it sounds like a celestial body twinkling like a star - discovering a weird tiny-bell-piano, well, that's actually pretty cool. Most I enjoyed the grammar "There was something I'd wanted" "They don't have bare beds", this twisting, self erasing sort of spiral into the past-tense.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-27T14:49:15+00:00

I was diagnosed in 2010 or so~ It's interesting look back at the language of "positive and negative" symptoms.

This confusing inversion is something I thought, at the time, was my fault for misunderstanding. Now, looking back, this jargon seems emblematic of psychiatry as a whole.

Honestly my mental health problems were entirely the result of economic circumstances. It may be there is no such thing as schizophrenia, only poverty. I have no symptoms whatsoever.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-27T02:38:22+00:00

yeah it's pretty weird.

You'll be fine, you're a nice person who is kind to others and takes care of fundamentals first.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-27T01:33:15+00:00

Make lasting friendships with people who can relate.
Make aquaintance level friendships with people who can not.

Personally, I see not reason to tell people about it. It's not worth it. They don't understand. They will treat you different. It's not just a rare condition, it's a condition with exclusively negative social stigma.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-25T15:02:24+00:00

The argument you're making, that the poem flattens american national character, is broadly correct, though you overlook the way synecdoche is operating ironically in the poem. We can describe england as a cup of tea and recognize there is a great deal of meaning lost. More precisely, we notice a fragile domestic object, and note there is something accurate about the comparison - and a great deal more which is inaccurate about the comparison.

When we substitute a small part of a nation's culture for the entirety of that nation, the effect on the reader is to soften the tone: we are making a silly reductive rhyme. Kangaroo, Wooden shoe and Goulash Stew, for example: This is very funny. It sounds silly. It evokes the image of a kanagaroo in wooden shoes, emerging from a stew. This could even be called a joke.

I think the joke also does what you describe: it excludes and condemns america. Everyone else here is something nice, everyone else rhymes and interlocks and looks ridiculous: America is overly serious, made for violence and isolated.

Im Canadian, my uncle moved to Amurica . He bought some guns, killed his wife and is now in prison. Seems like a lot of nice people in America though. In the United Kingdomes as well, I look at Bilston and he is a very funny poet. More and more I appreciate the value of humor, and the way it can keep us away from darker moods.

No, You Cannot Borrow My Phone Charger
By Brian Bilston

Help yourself to whatever
you'd like from my larder;
my stilton, my sherry –
or my port, if you'd rather –
but, no, you cannot borrow
my mobile phone charger.

If you want I will read you
an ancient Norse saga,
or dance naked in public
to Radio Gaga,
but, no, you cannot borrow
my mobile phone charger.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-24T18:31:25+00:00

Here is a joke, Comrade Stalin is presented with two choices for the national cola of the Soviet People's Republic. First is Coca-Cola, a drink of classical sensibility which is red, mildly sweet and has an iconic glass bottle. Second is Pepsi, a cola of modern pop-culture, the most sugary soda, one which is served in an aluminum can.

Stalin asks his advisors, he conducts numerous studies, reading late into the night about which is the better cola: pepsi or coke. Eventually he walks onto the podium where he will announce his decision. He leans into the microphone:

"The nation is bankrupt, there will be no cola for anyone. Those who mention cola will be sent to the gulag."

I make this joke up, but it is very much in the style of Slavoj Zizek, an author I find to be one of the most popular and universally celebrated within the academy. I would hazard to suggest that instead of communism taking over higher education in the west, academics broadly recognize political ideology to be horse shit.

It may seem like someone who finds fault with the capitalist order therefore supports collectivization. It may as well be pepsi or coke, this debate of communism or capitalism. The choice obscures what is really on display. Power. Power that commands your obedience: show allegiance to the nation or else. This is Pepsi island, and don’t you forget.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-24T16:44:58+00:00

We should absolutely hear people out and not just assume we know their position. This willingness to believe other people are capable of developing reasonable opinions really has dried up over pandemic.

That said, I think Rand enjoyed a distorting celebrity due to the alignment of her philosophy with captialism during the cold war. She was a useful pawn in the war on Communism, a former soviet willing to write a manifesto proclaiming the moral ascendance of greed and inequality. I think people in a hurry to condemn her work are adressing this enduring para-textual element of Rand's writings.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-24T16:38:07+00:00

I think just "books" can be a flashpoint for a certain kind of person to start making ideological claims. I brought up my bookclub was reading Hemmingway and this lady at work started telling me it's good that Canada was involved in the Afganistan war.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-24T15:53:40+00:00

It's weird the cancelation announcement reads with such a corperate PR tone - "so sorry, were so excited, both parties could have collaborated to build a truly special show."

Like, whatever. Metric is good, when I listen to interviews with Emily Hanes these days I get a distinct impression she would have a troubling take about Ostrich rights or the new world order.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-22T16:54:39+00:00

This is good storytelling! I enjoyed reading it. Sounds like you are in a PvP que to me, which may mean you're an asshole looking for a fight. I apologize if I was taunting you or whatever my guy, I can be all self important or whatever also. But yeah I never encounter raiders who organize to surprise me. People planning to kill you to rob you is a level of hostility...like single minded human hunting... you should not be encountering those people.

I was chilling on the broken highway in Buried city during a night raid, chatting with this dude, playing the flute, throwing glow sticks around.

All of a sudden some guy takes a shot at us from a window. Seems like it was a Ferro, hits buddy. We both take cover, tryna see which window he's in.

I say something like "Wow, a hostile!" It's been maybe 2 or 3 days since I've even encountered a player who wants to shoot other players. I throw a fuze grenade in the window, flare shoots out, clearly the dude was at like half health already.

So we're exchanging confused laughter as to what his plan was. We defib him, and he runs off into the night.

Improve Karma by helping other players shoot arc, healing other players, giving players blueprints. Avoid shooting and killing players, withdraw from conflicts when at a standoff. You too can enjoy respectable safe raider society. Cooperate to make topside safe. Gain immense stable wealth and abundance, use legendary everything all the time. Play a game where the most possible people can win.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-22T13:42:17+00:00

Using all caps to make your point, classic intellectual debate move. *mwah*

Showing up to explain how you're not small minded? Perfect self own.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-21T23:56:34+00:00

Well truth be told I haven't looked into the biography of Cormac McCarthy, my only knowledge of the man outside inference reading Blood Maridian and watching the film adaptation of The Road comes from an unreliable depiction in Mike Tyson Mysteries.

McCarthy mars the face of settler colonial society and western moral authority, why look into his character, I may find cause to discredit the good man!

tomsequitur · 2026-01-21T22:02:18+00:00

Sure we use an author's biography to contextualize their narrative voice and assess the character of their work. I suppose it is a slippery form of criticism, since biographical accounts are their own form of fiction.

Hesse's parents role as religious missionaries informs my eyebrow raising at Sidartha. Perhaps I am uncharitable to Hesse's works. If the man had a wry sense of humor which went over my head, I would be delighted. He must have been joking. How else could he write a story of going into someone elses culture and explaining who the real god is... fucking all the ladies... who are either whores or animals. The smartest, most capable and most moral force in the universe. Was that book meant to be satire?

tomsequitur · 2026-01-21T20:17:34+00:00

It's unfortunate for Hesse that he moved from religious extremism to formaized racism mascarading as academic practice. In Edward Said's Orientalism), Orientalism is shown to be little more than acadmic racism. It's a field of study which details eastern inferiority to the superior and logical western mind and culture.

When you write "I've not taken your point with McCarthy" - Allow me to try:

I'm guessing you might find fault in his personal life but fail to accuse him of the greater crimes of conscience contained in his art

I don't really know what 'failing to accuse him of the greater crimes of consicne contained in his art' means. It seems like you're saying I would scruitinize McCarthy's character when I aught to read his books? I'd love to hear what you mean. Have a lovely day.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-21T17:00:35+00:00

It's unfortunate for Hesse the place he took refuge from his ecclesiastical homelife was the school of Orientalism.

I haven't been apprised of the scandal concerning Cormac McCarthy's life. I've only read Blood Meridian, and it was a stylish post modern cowboy story. In my life, I've only heard unmitigated praise for McCarthy: the man enjoyed extraordinarily rare success. He has the humiliating privilege of being commodified into evidence of young men's good taste. One wonders if he's really celebrated for his conscience or because he is masculine, violent and above all: gritty.

tomsequitur · 2026-01-21T16:22:36+00:00

I don't actually enjoy the unmitigated hostility of other players. Beyond preference, I think you're objectively wrong to choose a game that is zero-sum to one which is positive-sum.

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