🔐 “I thought it was significant that the Pope’s comments relate to the ontological question of personhood. It is not obvious that consciousness is an especially important category for Christian theology of personhood. After all, angels and ants are both conscious.”

Had a great chat last night with @imperialauditor and realized that my 'collection of semi-related historical anecdotes' is actually closer to a 'toolbox for multicentury ideological victory.' Will try to turn it into an essay/talk/series sometime soon

This Is Just To Say I have eaten the seedcorn that was in the civilization and which you were probably saving for future generations Forgive me it was delicious so sweet and so abundant

1. This guy’s screenwriting is incredible, some of the best cinematography I’ve seen in AI videos. 2. I guess ElevenLabs v4 can pronounce Latin pretty well.

every moment that has ever been has passed never to return

I am, in fact, starting a Simone Weil reading group, hosted by @zenonmk and me at the @AvalonInst! Simone Weil (1909-1943) was a French philosopher, ascetic, and mystic. T.S. Eliot described her as “at the same time more truly a lover of order and hierarchy than most of those who call themselves Conservative, and more truly a lover of the people than most of those who call themselves Socialist.” Most of her writings, with the exception of one essay on the Iliad, were published after Weil starved herself to death in 1943, in solidarity with the occupied French population. For this group, we’re planning to start with Gravity and Grace, a collection of aphorisms from Weil’s notebooks, then (if we have time) The Need for Roots and “The Iliad, or The Poem of Force” Our first meeting will be at noon on Saturday, October 10th. If you’re interested, please DM me — we have limited space, but we’ll try to fit everyone in!

I enjoy a lot of the fruits of modernity despite being partially alienated from the core of human experience by those same enframing forces; I look upon the future of radical technics with a mix of excitement and horror

*taps sign*

The Exposition, which has also been called "thinkhaven" or "learning man", is a concentrated microcosm of many, many things that I love. There will be historical short film, great music, and discussions on virtually every aspect of human behavior. Hope to see you there!

still waiting for the rules-based liberal international order to inspire art like this

The Avalon Exposition is one month away! Join us for a weekend celebrating the study of mankind - from anthropology to theater, from military history to genetics, and live music from Sikh Tabla to the Ancient Greek lyre Bring your own art and thought! avalon.institute/exposition/…

ok I'm now having Codex translate the entire Philokalia from source text, from scratch, and checking against modern translations putting footnotes where there's confusion we truly live in an incredible age

If you know anyone who could use a small fast grant for animal welfare or AI x Animals, tell them about Manifund's Falcon Fund! We have $500k to disperse and aim to review grants in ~1 week: manifund.substack.com/p/fast…

A state spokesperson said "we released the deranged man-eating lions back into the shire earlier today after they promised they would stick to eating dandelions". They added, "we love the lions of Murderstan, and ask all creatures of the Gentle Forest to be kind."

ups my p doom 5% because we're clearly getting superhuman ai propaganda persuasion and that's going to cause full speed ahead downs it 5% because its actually kind of convincing

“Are the sex parties separable from the eschatology?”, the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked after

If you’re waiting for more money to say fuck you, then you’ll never say fuck you

If $10M doesn’t give you the freedom to go hard after crazy ideas, nothing will. There are only two numbers for fuck-you money: infinity or zero

some people aren’t courageous enough for any amount of money to be fuck you money, for other people an empty bank account is already fuck you money