Zompist Bboard Again

Stars and Stripes by KMFDM, on repeat.

Recently, I read Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow, a culturally conservative Nobel Prize laureate in literature. Loosely reminds me of Jack Kerouac's Desolation Angels. That could be because I haven't read a representative sample of English literature. (I have never read Hemingway and only bits of Faulkner.) If you are ever tempted to retreat into esotericism, remember (this is relevant to the plot): https://youtu.be/y0gxccYR-QE https://youtu.be/R9h6yCixvpc https://youtu.be/Hd3yrHS88WA https://youtu.be/g-w8Kwhd0dQ

I also started The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos. I get the feeling Dominic Smith doesn't understand that Jack Kerouac was rabidly anti-Marxist. Or maybe the poet figure is a reference to someone else I don't know about.

I shouldn't have read Goliath by Max Blumenthal. Businessmen in suits were hurling themselves at protesters, and Israeli airport authorities were shooting laptops containing Arabic text before this book was published in 2013.

I'm trying to get into Schoenberg.

Edit: I am reading The Books of Jacob by Olga Tokarczuk. I don't know what to say about it yet. It's too deep for me.

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2026 10:31 pmI'm trying to get into Schoenberg.

Good luck.

malloc wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2026 11:29 pm

rotting bones wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2026 10:31 pmI'm trying to get into Schoenberg.

Good luck.

Thanks. I liked this one: https://youtu.be/kpTXZDVe5Wg

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Patrick Boyle's latest video: https://youtu.be/rnW3Bq6_-6k

I reread the books on Platonic Theology by Proclus: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Six_ ... y_of_Plato When you read this, you realize the things he says in his hymns weren't poetic metaphors for him. For example, his metaphysics has something called Life, and Life literally has a "prolific fount". The technical works of Proclus are hard to read. If you want to understand this, thoroughly study Plato's most annoying dialogue first, Parmenides. The theurgic Neoplatonists believed Parmenides reveals the structure of the World of Ideas. This structure was later smuggled into Christianity in a bastardized form as the hierarchy of angels.

Vita Nostra by the Dyachenkos. I love this book. It's often called "evil Hogwarts". It's a magic school combined with cosmic horror. The school isn't fighting the horror. It is the horror, a horror that's practically metaphysical in refinement. It could be an analogy about the horror of existing in any social system. Not sure how much of this is intended. However, when a student complains the school is torturing them, they are told all education is like that, and it's good for them. The book is in Russian. The standard disclaimers apply if you read it in translation.

Trying to read Kant's Critique of Judgment. I've only read Pure Reason and Practical Reason before. This book, Judgment, is actually considered to be Kant's most central and distinctive work. This is the book where Kant discusses the beautiful and the sublime, for example; central to the debate over whether Kantian morality is sadism in disguise. It's also considered to be annoying to read even for Kant. When he was very old, Kant apparently lost all perspective on how to emphasize the important points in writing. The translator says the text meanders all over the place, and important points are buried in the middle of rants.

India's RSS has an international network: https://youtu.be/b7Lxsi5Os4k

Medicines can suddenly disappear for no reason (Veritasium): https://youtu.be/ksn5yrsC3Wg

MKUltra: https://youtu.be/FG613PxD6zY

A survival of Odin: https://youtu.be/rK7yYSFfSOw

Cyberpunk short film: https://youtu.be/-Rzl7nUdEs4

"Narcissism": https://youtu.be/CjWDlwISFcY