“don’t trust people who believe that they have arrived at the end of time, or at its culmination, or that they exist outside of it. Never believe anyone who thinks that they are looking at the world from outside of the world, at history from outside of history.”

AI, Ozymandias

In the waning years of the 1800s, during the late Victorian era, some came to believe that human knowledge would soon be perfected.

‘Beneath the stains of time The feelings disappear’

Getting good restaurant service in Montreal is getting increasingly difficult. Many restaurants are only open ~15 hours a week (Kazu), making a reservation comes with a $40 per person cancellation charge (Saint), empty restaurants cannot seat you because all their tables are supposedly reserved (Passé Composé) and two-hour limits are becoming the norm. Some places will even cancel a reservation made two months ago using lame excuses (Yoko Luna) Makes you wonder if these businesses are functioning in a free market or if they are copying the Soviet Union “How to explain; how to explain that the doors of Moscow’s eating-places indeed opened only to those entitled to pass through them, and that there were remarkably few places where you could hope to be fed simply by turning up with money.” — Red Plenty by Francis Spufford https://a.co/0I0dvsx

'Filmed with ferocious energy and with enough sexual variety to match late Fellini, it may be passing through standard bookings on its way to a long run as the midnight successor to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." '

Roger Ebert

Hedwig And The Angry Inch movie review (2001) | Roger Ebert

"Hedwig and the Angry Inch" occupies an almost extinct movie category: It's an original rock musical--indeed, according to its maker, a "post-...

'The headline is just how they get you to click, see. And that too is all culture writing now: a simulacrum of provocation with an escape hatch through which an essay’s author and its fans can slither, if the pushback proves too fierce.'

Think Less, Agnes

To be concise: Agnes Callard’s recent New Yorker piece isn’t really about how travel is bad.

The AI doom hype has a very neochristian flavor. Our original sin (letting AI loose on the internet), the repentance (backtrack and regulate), the apocalypse (super-intelligence destroying humanity)… Yes, AI will control the internet, but the apocalypse will come only if we continue to obey internet algorithms. It would be similar to deciding to live in water and accepting sharks as our gods. If civilization decides that the internet is our god, then you don’t need super-intelligence to control us. An average inquisitor bot would be sufficient to paralyze us.

#ObsessiveSurfing for June 23 The movie adaptation of the musical 13 was directed by Tamra Davis, a veteran music video/film director. Davis was married to Mike D from the Beastie Boys. Mike D produced songs for Portugal. The Man. And guess what, Portugal. The Man have a new album with some pretty good songs

'Joan is awful' is plain brilliant! Deepfakes, multiverses, and informed consent nightmares all rolled into one perfect Black Mirror episode

LIBRA-NET (13) : INITIATIVES AND INITIATIONS We organized our first international event, and we had a blast! Plus some other highlights in our most recent newsletter

Libra-net (13) : Initiatives and initiations

We sponsored our first international event, and we had a blast! Plus some Macedonian highlights, and an upcoming S(c)iesta with Bojana Stojanova an...

Erik Hoel says his goodbye to Cormac McCarthy, a fellow novelist who wanted to be a scientist "What makes McCarthy feel like a figure from an older era is precisely this polymathy. In fact, I almost used this quote from Blood Meridian in The World Behind the World, since it’s about the limits of science: 'The universe is no narrow thing and the order within it is not constrained by any latitude in its conception to repeat what exists in one part in any other part. Even in this world more things exist without our knowledge than with it and the order in creation which you see is that which you have put there, like a string in a maze, so that you shall not lose your way. For existence has its own order and that no man's mind can compass, that mind itself being but a fact among others.' In many ways, McCarthy was a novelist who wanted to be a scientist. He had my personal sympathies—it is a tough position to be in, no matter which way the desire runs."

Energy drinks extend your life, Cormac McCarthy passes, book reveal, social media sociopathy

Desiderata #13: links and commentary

This is the most important essay you will read today (or this year). You might disagree with some of it, but it will haunt you like a good horror story

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Paul Graham (@paulg) on X

"How can something be both very silly and very evil at the same time? The answer is that what’s going on is very silly, but the silliness is dist...

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'You don’t have diversity when you gather people who look different but talk and think alike. It’s not enough to hire the extras from the space-cantina scene in Star Wars.'

The New Criterion

The diversity myth - The New Criterion

On multiculturalism as misdirection.

We hit it out of the ballpark this weekend! https://twitter.com/qantarot/status/1667931713681408007?s=46&t=FlkpaqKLGAY_LD1217_V3g

All the info about the MRathon Highlights after-party in one thread. Join us today (Thursday) at the Don on Danforth, we'll be up late:) https://twitter.com/qantarot/status/1666829656232714242

Спремни сме за живели со нашите поддржувачи во Торонто. Јунска С(ц)иеста во Don on Danforth, масонски храм претворен во ноќен клуб. #ISMRM23 VIP делот отвара во 19:30 на 8 јуни, контактирајте нѐ за билети https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FyCvaoUXgAApcSl?format=jpg&name=4096x4096

Important because it evokes the movie Brazil by Terry Gilliam, both literally (it appears in it) and metaphorically as a dystopian reality born out of utopian visions

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The Cultural Tutor (@culturaltutor) on X

This is a real place. It is a housing estate called Les Espaces d'Abraxas, built near Paris in 1982. And it's one of the most important buildings ...

'Remember, as you read, that this story does not take place in the literal, historical Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but only in some nearby kingdom; as near to it as wishes are to reality, and also as far away.'

Goodreads

Red Plenty: Inside the Fifties’ Soviet Dream

Once upon a time in the Soviet Union.... Strange as it…

The Brechtian side of Kubrick

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Filippo Ulivieri (@nessuno2001) on X

[Thread] I’ve noticed something odd happening in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. True, there’s plenty of odd things going on in The Shining, b...