"If you're reading this... It's probably too early..."
An assemblage of internet randomness by Cute_Noumena
If you missed the introductory post just click this link to get caught up. That way, those who are new, can catch up on what exactly I’m doing here. This week was special, given how I wanted to have something people could read as soon as they signed up. Moving forward, this Newsletter will be emailed weekly, every Friday at 10:30 AM. I'm doing this purely based on the rate of traffic mornings tend to have and the fact that it’s more likely for me to have content to share at the end of each week.
The general structure of each Newsletter will follow the same structure as the first. I’ll start off with some general comments directly addressing you all with any updates regarding the Newsletter itself. The subsequent sections will be a link to an original piece directly from my Medium Blog, or written and embedded as text on the newsletter itself. Finally, a set of links with short descriptions with a general summary to get you interested, followed by a weekly song of my choosing.
Please feel free to share this with anyone it means a lot to me for anyone to share what I have to say and I genuinely like interacting and engaging in open discussion, so feel free to comment, or forward anything to me.
I hope you are all doing well.
-C.N
“The best possible outcome”
After having some time to really digest and sort my thoughts I find the position that anyone serious about taking action to maximize overall utility, from the narrow point of view of living in the U.S, “should” have probably voted Biden. This isn’t at all because I endorse Biden. To put it simply voting for Trump or Biden will ultimately result in the same violence propagated in the global south.
Voting Biden does not ultimately maximize, “global utility”. Most people don’t even stop and think about global suffering when taking into consideration what the, “best possible outcome” for this election is. It’s a lose-lose situation if either candidate wins. At the end of all this, those who are perpetually affected by the military-industrial complex will remain in their disenfranchised position.
What one truly cares about when thinking about, “the best possible outcome”, is maintaining the status quo of their life. Everyone wants to feel good about who they voted for. Voting is not the same as “political action”. At best, voting is a strategic action with minor consequences for those who are disproportionally better off and only supports maintain the continued suffering of many disenfranchised groups.
Hyper-Liberalism:
“What options do we have to form legitimate political action, if activism is just institutional virtue signaling?”
(…)trying to understand cultural production itself as a cybernetic system, grasping how ideas, images, words and sounds are synthesized and generated, how they spread and propagate, are taken apart and resynthesized.
-Robin Mackay
Cybernetic Culture is deeply entrenched in our “modern” understanding of “Culture”. What we understand as Culture could very well be defined as what, Frederic Jameson, describes as the logic of late capitalism. Jameson diagnoses this self-referential Baudrillardian hyperreality as Post-modernity… (Continue Reading
If you like cooking and like pastries, then this video is just for you. Alex has become one of my favorite youtube channels in a short span of time. The way that he tackles a project comes directly with a combination of a productive temperament and a creative mind. Watching his videos I always walk away thinking, “I never really thought about food like that?” In this case, if you ever wondered what makes a flaky layered pastry so delicious, take a moment to watch the video.
First Bats, then Pangolins, you can now add Minks to the mix of animals that are spreading and mutating Covid-19. “Denmark, the world's largest producer of mink furs, plans to cull all mink in the country to contain a mutated form of novel coronavirus.”- From the article.
NSFW story: I found this story on Reddit and honestly you just have to read it. I won’t even bother saying anything about it because it’s just one of those posts…
Urbanomic is releasing their much anticipated Theory-fiction Comic Chronosis, preorder a copy if you are interested.
“Stalking the multiverse, a strange entity manifests itself in different guises, visiting trauma upon whoever encounters it—whether Jeremy Charles, earthbound hawker of paranoid cosmic visions, or the interplanetary order of the Lacars, intent on extending their galactic empire to planet Earth. This is the figure of Time itself, with whose birth the story of Chronosis begins.”
Finally, my girlfriend recently showed me this song which I absolutely fell in love with upon hearing it. The catchy bass line is an absolute earworm. The fan-made music video ultimately gives an elevated charm to the song, but can appear a bit comical if you’ve seen the movie the clips came from. Ultimately, I love this song because of some of the memories it sparks of my girlfriend and I’s relationship.