the ship of theseus wikipedia article in 2003. 20 years later, after 1792 total edits, 0% of its original phrasing remains. (x)

u know, having a “career” in art is cool and whatnot but i really do just do this stuff cause i have a lot of fun doing everything myself and making the little visuals and writing my little book and making my songs in my bedroom and doing everything exactly to my taste. it makes me happier than probably anything else in the world. i think so much of art has become a competition or a showcase of skill or something these days but i really do believe in creating things simply because you enjoy it.

God this

HERE WE ARE, IN THE OUROBOROS, DOING IT AGAIN. HOPING SOME DAY THIS DANMED CYCLE ENDS.

“Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again.”

—  Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life (via exhaled-spirals)

Autumn Gold by John Atkinson Grimshaw (1880)

Love, Art, Contempt. Last one is kind of scary, wonder where that's supposed to come from.

Witchcraft, Wisdom, Death...

good evening, gorgeous. you pushed up through concrete to put out leaves and flower and you were rewarded with a little sunlight and attention. do not neglect the growth of your root system to pursue flowering for the sake of other people. if you must pour your life into only one half, choose the part below the earth. live. live. live. you will see another flowering season.

Making incremental progress through daily work is such a simple concept, a 10-year-old could get it, probably younger than that even. The problem is I’m not 10 years old, I’m 25, soon 26, with the feeling that I should’ve seen the results of incremental progress by now. But the work wasn’t done. That still doesn’t mean the concept has ceased to exist. I can still start doing something every day and get better at it, but it's gonna take HUMILITY. HUMILITY. I’ll achieve nothing by thinking I should’ve done better by now and panicking. I need to be as humble as a 10-year-old and learn with the same attitude of excitement as a 10-year-old learns.

Kids are excited to do the things they love and get better at them. They aren’t stressed out about the future because they’re protected, but also because they know they have a lot of time ahead of them. Young adults also have lots of time ahead of them but status anxiety and failure to provide are really painful and your psyche can get preoccupied looking for relief from those things. 

Why I am Not (Currently) a Theist

This blog is about nontheistic forms of religion. With that being said, it might be interesting to discuss why I don’t believe in deities. Specifically, I am going to argue that it is more likely that deities don’t exist than that they do. As always, keep in mind that this is the work of a layperson, not a philosopher. But I’m going to give it my all.

For this post, I will define “deity” as a non-material intelligence that has the power to effect reality. This is not the Omni-God of Monotheism, but more a Polytheistic God. The Christian equivalent would include not only God but also angels and spirits and the like.

Now then, I hold that the most useful evidence for the existence of these deities is claims of directly experiencing them. 

Other pieces of evidence, such as the apparent design in life-forms, can be explained by the process of natural selection. Most other arguments for the existence of deities falls in a similar category.

People from all over the world of countless different belief systems claim to have had these mystical experiences with deities. Even Atheists sometimes have these experiences. I believe I may have had these experiences as well.

At the moment, science does not have a conclusive and final explanation for these experiences, though we know the brain is certainly involved. Therefore, we have ourselves a mystery.

Now then, throughout our history, there have been many mysteries. Oftentimes we have proposed that a deity was behind such mysteries. This includes questions about what causes disease, and the seasons, and natural wonders, and the like. We have not explained all of these mysteries, but we have explained many of them.

In every case up until now, where a mystery has been conclusively solved, the possibility of a deity being behind the mystery has been ruled out. Each and every time, we have discovered an explanation that did not involve a non-material intelligence. 

Therefore, since every mystery we have solved up until now has been shown not to be caused by deities, our religious experiences most likely aren’t caused by deities either. Therefore, since these experiences are the best argument for the existence of deities, and these experiences aren’t likely to actually be caused by deities, deities most likely do not exist.

Nevertheless, I only say they most likely do not exist. Real critical thinking requires an open mind. In the end, I am not the smartest person to exist, and I would never claim to have perfect views.

As always, these are just my thoughts. 

the problem with visual platforms like instagram and tiktok (or ones that limit the amount of words you can use like twitter) is that they are inhospitable to complex discussions of themes and narrative. which is why booktok/booktwt are both so stupid. they incentivise u to aestheticise reading to the point where even your personal annotations are more for the benefit of an unseen audience than for yourself. fuck understanding or interrogating the book that youre reading. what u need is likes and retweets. don't buy a book that will make your bookshelf ugly. don't crack the spine, read it once, or read the ebook and keep the physical copy purely for display purposes. only read about hot people, young people, middle class english speaking westerners. only read about people who are exactly like you. you must never be pretentious you must never be overly serious you must never be ugly. etc. its all very miserable

Clark Mills describing Tennessee Williams' work ethic during their summer of writing together in his basement.

Some further notes on Williams' habits.

from impossible to difficult to unfamiliar to familiar to easy to automatic

i'm still hopeful things will turn around, it's just gonna take some time. and i'm going to germany on wednesday for a few days so i have that to look forward to