“One could make a case that some of the very earliest Enlightenment salons were held not in Europe but in Montreal, during the 1690s. It was there that an indigenous statesman called Kandiaronk, acting as liaison between the Wendat ('Huron') confederation and the regime of Louis XIV, sat down regularly with the French governor-general, the comte de Frontenac et de Palluau, and his deputies—including a certain Baron de Lahontan—to debate issues such as economic morality, law, sexual mores, and revealed religion. Kandiaronk was widely hailed by French observers as the most brilliant logician and wittiest debater anyone had ever met (one slightly irritated Jesuit wrote, 'No one has perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity'), and a book based on notes from these debates later became a best seller across Europe.”
From HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: Democracy's indigenous origins in the Americas – By David Graeber and David Wengrow
“If you are ready to be ashamed of your own country, this is the first step towards freedom today.”
— Slavoj Zizek, How to become Free
“Miss Lonelyhearts drank steadily. He was smiling an innocent, amused smile, the smile of an anarchist sitting in the movies with a bomb in his pocket.”
From MISS LONELYHEARTS by Nathaniel West.
To have an inner life without an outer one is just as bad as having an outer life without an inner one.
On Charles Dickens' Unfinished Murder Mystery – “Since shortly after Dickens’s death in 1870, writers (and musical theater playwrights) have attempted to pick up where he left off, trying to solve the novel’s central murder themselves and write an acceptable second half and ending. The strangest, though, was published in 1873, by an American printer named Thomas Power James. He claimed that the spirit of Charles Dickens had appeared to him and dictated the rest of the novel through him, and published a full version of the novel. Arthur Conan Doyle, noted spiritualist, found credence in this, and endorsed this “ghostwritten” continuation, saying that Dickens’s style remained consistent throughout the story. This edition endured in America far longer than it should have.”
Lily Allen says she earns more money from selling feet pictures than Spotify streams – “Imagine being an artist and having nearly 8 million monthly listeners on spotify but earning more money from having 1000 people subscribe to pictures of your feet. don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
Inbox 192, RSS 310. Had intended on firing up the newsletter this weekend, but a migraine got the better of me yesterday.
“I gently sucked Simone's breast while waiting for the soft-boiled eggs, and she ran her fingers through my hair. Her mother was the one who brought us the eggs, but I didn't even turn around, I assumed it was a maid, and I kept on sucking the breast contentedly. Nor was I ultimately disturbed when I recognized the voice, but since she remained and I couldn't pass up even one instant of my pleasure, I thought of pulling down my pants as for a call of nature, not ostentatiously, but merely hoping she would leave and delighted at going beyond all limits.”
I knew Georges Bataille's STORY OF THE EYE was supposed to be “transgressive”, but this is just trash. I cannot for the life of me understand what the appeal was to Sontag or Sartre, the appeal that drew me to look into the book to begin with. It is, thus far, not even sexy.
“Simone settled on the toilet, and we each ate one of the hot eggs with salt. With the three that were left, I softly caressed her body, gliding them between her buttocks and thighs, then I slowly dropped them in the water one by one. Finally, after viewing them for a while, immersed, white, and still hot (this was the first time she was seeing them peeled, that is naked, drowned under her beautiful cunt), Simone continued the immersion with a plopping noise akin to that of soft-boiled eggs.”
Odd fixation with eggs and urine, the latter of course I know to be a fetish but one I never could quite understand. None of the characters' actions seem to make any sense to me, they're all just stupid in the same way modern porn actors typically are. Most reviews of this loathsome pamphlet of poorly conceived depravity seem to refer to it as “thought-provoking”. I, thus far, cannot see why. It's short enough that I'll carry on with it anyway, but I have a feeling I'll long for the time wasted on it nonetheless, no matter how little.
I've been awaking past midnight for the past few nights now, tummy growling with want. And every night I succumb to its needs by prepping a little snack. Terrible new habit.
Uh, no shit?
In other news, capitalism is already dead, according to Yanis Varoufakis. We are now in the age of techno-feudalism.
“The newspapers, needless to say, complied with the instructions given them: optimism at all costs. If one was to believe what one read in them, our populace was giving 'a fine example of courage and composure.' But in a town thrown back upon itself, in which nothing could be kept secret, no one had illusions about the 'example' given by the public. To form a correct idea about the courage and composure talked about by our journalists you had only to visit one of the quarantine depots or isolation camps established by authorities. As it so happens, the narrator, being fully occupied elsewhere, had no occasion to visit any of them, and must fall back on Tarrou's diary for a description of the conditions of these places.”
From Albert Camus' THE PLAGUE.
The above passage basically highlights the role filled today by blogs and social media, the role which traditional journalism for the most part cannot quite fulfill. Social media however is positioned to soon be taken over by an onslaught of AI-powered content, likely fueled by mix of corporate and government agendas, and people are likely to be forced to take their genuine voices elsewhere.