“Whatever your sightedness, there’s something to be said for learning to listen more attentively to sonic scenery. Kish believes that vision has a way of blunting the other senses unless people work to really flex them. Deft echolocators, he says, are able to perceive fine differences—distinguishing, say, between an oleander bush (“a million sharp returns”) and an evergreen (“wisps closely packed together, which sound like a bit like a sponge or a curtain”). They’re discovering sonic wonder wherever they go. We asked Kish to tailor a lesson for first-timers just learning to listen to the landscape.”
—Jessica Leigh Hester, “Teach Yourself to Echolocate.” Atlas Obscura. October 11, 2018.
Category: quotes
The Uselessness of Discussion to Find Truth
“‘Every philosopher runs away when he or she hears say ‘Let’s discuss this.’ Discussion, they claimed ‘are fine for roundabout talks, but philosophy throws its dice on another table. The best one can say about discussions is that they take things no farther, since the participants never talk about the same thing.’”
—Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari quoted in Richard Marshall, “HowTheLightGetsIn Festival, London 2018,” 3:AM Magazine. October 14, 2018.
Discussion is about building relationships and expressing our feelings. A discussion creates the bonds that bind a social set or tribe. It’s expressing an agreed upon shared truth and signals belonging, or not.
Even if we are expressing a personal truth, it is a small part of it. The personal truth worth hearing is often the secret we keep to ourselves. Speaking it to another would wound our self-conception and social standing. Typically, we only share the part that enhances those things.
We are rarely interested in hearing another’s truth, much less be changed by it because the truth shared by “discussion” is rarely worth hearing.
Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook
“There ain’t a thing I do, / a person I know, / a dish I cook, / couldn’t be made / a mite better. That’s / no reason / not to love it / for the best that it is / right now.”
Not just recipes, but full of wisdom about cooking and life.
In the Introduction of the 2017 edition, it points out that any seasonings indicated in the recipes beyond salt, fat and sugar can probably be quadrupled to be right. They were probably revised downward to reflect the bland 1960s New York palettes of the audience of that time. I tried Turnip Greens ‘n Corn Dumplings with some changes, such as yogurt for sour milk, and enjoyed the result.
Originally discovered this cookbook from the article below:
“But in The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks (2015), food historian Toni Tipton-Martin argues that Princess Pamela’s cookbook positions itself as a ‘clever retort to scientific cooking’ that could characterize so much of cookbook writing of the era, especially the kind that got published by predominantly white authors. Tipton-Martin provides a useful framework: Princess Pamela’s Soul Food Cookbook isn’t a manual so much as it’s a highly organized diary of her culinary knowhow. Numerous notes in the margins of the book’s reissue, inserted with asterisks by the Lee brothers, fill in the gaps that her original instructions invite.
She prefaces each chapter with a sort of evocative, lush canto; each poem is a time machine. Some read like proverbs: ‘You play ‘possum with that man and you end up cookin’ it for him,’ she writes before a recipe for roast opossum with sweet potatoes. Others attack the dazed, uninformed ignorance of soul food that surrounded her in New York City: ‘Practically every kind of people eat somethin’ that somebody else make a godawful face at,’ she opens her entry on tripe. ‘If that don’t tellya what this race-hatin’ is all about, nuthin’ will.'”
—Mayukh Sen. “She Was a Soul Food Sensation. Then, 19 Years Ago, She Disappeared.” Food52.com. February 2, 2017.
Empty Realm
Therefore, both the factory line and the movie theater are sites of discipline, and within each capital stamps our minds with the indelible mark of sameness. The relentless monotony of the latest sitcom, same as the old sitcom, is the monotony of the office (this identity realizes its apotheosis in video games, where after work players continue to “grind” their life away in what are ultimately glorified spreadsheets). To be entertained is to give consent. The superficiality of mass culture finds its reflection in the superficiality of social relations under the corporate gaze. “Honey, I’m home” is “welcome to Walmart.” This stultifying logic of uniformity, originating in the capitalist mode of production and ensuring its continuation, seeps into every facet of our lives. It hijacks the human drive towards mimesis, we become our own impostors. The alienated subject is reproduced, the NPC emerges.”
—Evan James. “Empty Realm.” Jacobite. October 2, 2018.
Interesting throughout.
Alone in the Jungle
“Capitalism will deplete you, while letting you think you have the means to improve your lot. Indeed, it will attempt to force its therapy on you… Anxiety, and especially depression, as the late social critic Mark Fisher noted, often have social causes, but we are led to believe that we suffer individually and must struggle alone. Fisher’s point is that we are prevented from even considering such conditions as social. The treatments on offer, the most common ways to discuss recovery—therapy and pharmaceuticals—are essentially solo journeys that patients undertake. Against this hyper-individualist vision of psychic healing, we do well to highlight Fisher’s core insight that the tools we are given skew how we understand the world and our place in it. Language, typically the most essential method by which we articulate our affective life, can be a most insidious means of our own oppression if co-opted by those who would exploit us.”
—Miya Tokumitsu. “Tell Me It’s Going to be OK.” The Baffler. No. 41. October 2018.
The law of the jungle appeals most to people that don’t live in the jungle.
Too Broke to Be Woke
“Though it might grant social and professional benefits to members of the elite liberal class, engaging in scholarship and activism that demonizes men, white people, or heterosexuals doesn’t make the world more just, nor does providing students with empirically-unsupported implicit-bias training and “toxic masculinity” workshops. These practices bake the seeds of prejudice and discrimination into educational experiences that are supposedly focused on fighting prejudice and discrimination. In fact, the use of divisive and hateful language in the name of social justice is a red flag: Those on the front lines know there is too much at stake to burn bridges and attack others. They want allies, not enemies.”
—Clay Routledge. “Social Justice in the Shadows.” Quillette. September 14, 2018.
Social justice is a fine idea frequently undermined by its strongest proponents. It’s a rare good idea that doesn’t have this problem.
In a Few Days, Credit Freezes Will Be Fee-Free — Krebs on Security
“The law also provides additional ID theft protections to minors. Currently, some state laws allow you to freeze a child’s credit file, while others do not. Starting Sept. 21, no matter where you live you’ll be able to get a free credit freeze for kids under 16 years old.
Identity thieves can and often do target minors, but usually this type of fraud usually isn’t discovered until the affected individual tries to apply for credit for the first time, at which point it can be a long and expensive road to undo the mess. As such, I would highly recommend that readers who have children or dependents take full advantage of this offering once it’s available for free nationwide.”
—Brian Krebs. “In a Few Days, Credit Freezes Will Be Fee-Free.” Krebs on Security. September 18, 2018.
Requesting a credit freeze for ourselves is a great idea, but it is an even better idea to freeze your children’s credit.
