I’ve been reading Žižek and Heidegger lately. Žižek labels himself a Communist (politics), Lacanian (method), and Heideggerian (ontology), so I asked Claude and ChatGPT how I fared.

https://open.substack.com/pub/brywillis634737/p/who-am-i?r=pvxh5&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=masto

#politics #philosphy #ontology #method #zizek #blog #video #podcast #substack #introspection #extrospection #Wittgenstein #pluralism #perspective #biography #rovelli #being #relata #relationships #philosopher

Sunday Morning Reading

Time for a little Sunday Morning Reading.  Sharing good writing is a normal thing to do. Maybe that’s abnormal. Don’t know. Don’t care. Defining normal is a tricky subjective thing. But then trying to define most things these days feels, well…almsot abnormal.

Just be normal. Is that a “new normal” or last week’s “old normal?” Do we crave normality? Does it matter? Normally, I’d have more to say, but instead check out JA Westenberg’s Just Be Normal About Things.

Mathew Ingram takes on the subject of consciousness, one of the latest discussions bopping around the bits and bytes surrounding AI, with his piece, Is Atlantic Writer Ted Chiang Conscious? How Do We Know? If you ask me, that fact that this is being discussed calls whatever the idea of consciousness is into question. Doesn’t feel normal. For that matter doesn’t feel abnormal either. Just weird.

Mike Masnick states the obvious in CEOs Who Think AI Replaces Their Employees Are Just Bad CEOs. 

David Todd McCarty calls his piece The Slow News Moment. I like his description better. “How we became terrorized by the 24-hour news cycle and what we might do to combat the charade of exigency.” Perhaps less is more normal.

“We are being robbed by the worst people in the world,” says Kelly Hayes in The Heist State. Spot on, given that blatant thievery is the new normal these days.

Everywhere you look life is a scam. That is indeed far too normal. Neil Steinberg takes on one that targeted him and other writers in We Love Your Book! Now Give Us Money. Funny stuff.

Protect The Weird, Slow and Inefficient. Natasha MH thinks AI might one day become as invisible a tool to the process of writing as the typewriter did in its day. But look again. The tools don’t matter as much as the desire. 

(Image from Justin Simmonds on Unsplash.)

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links. 

Last night I finished reading "Why Grow Up?" by Susan Neiman.

Oh boy that was a harsh read. Here's my review on TheStoryGraph:

https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/fd4828b8-f385-47f8-ba67-f3f9953688c6

#reading #philosphy #books #bookstodon

Is there a name for the following concept:

0. Each life is born from an event

1. Life can mean any living thing and birth and death count as events

2. Now, the extensions to the obvious:

2a. Each and every event yields life.

2b. The ostensible birth of a given life is not necessarily the exact result of the event "having a child" that your parents took part in, and could exist as a subset of these events

Imagine: I am the birth resulting from a fly dying, or a book burned.

#philosphy