waste

Causality attempts to create free agency

Wie schüf' ich den Freien, den nie ich schirmte,
der im eignen Trotze der Trauteste mir?
Wie macht' ich den andren, der nicht mehr ich,
und aus sich wirkte, was ich nur will?
O göttliche Not! Gräßliche Schmach!
Zum Ekel find' ich ewig nur mich
in allem, was ich erwirke!
Das andre, das ich ersehne,
das andre erseh' ich nie:
denn selbst muß der Freie sich schaffen:
Knechte erknet' ich mir nur!

When I heard the learn'd juggalo

People make fun of Violent J for having sung, "Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't wanna talk to a scientist; y'all motherfuckers lying, and getting me pissed."

But what if the lines had instead been "Fucking magnets, how do they work? And I don't wanna talk to a scientist; y'all dragged Diana from her car, and getting me pissed"? People would not have been so quick to mock then, surely! And—arguably—that's what they were on about anyway.

(The post title inverts that on which it's based, but I couldn't resist.)

Make that extremely tricky nothingness

This blog is amazing.

Among its other virtues (including testing whether a stock that was made with the addition of lye, which was subsequently neutralized by the addition of hydrochloric acid (bonus: the reaction produces table salt) was safe to eat by eaing some), a recent post on low-temperature cooking contains the sentences "I verified this phenomenon by paying five bucks to drink a cup of cooking water from a New York City hot dog vendor" and "After hundreds of hot dogs were cooked in it, it is in equilibrium with the meat". Isn't that—being in equilibrium with the meat—in a way, at least, the goal of many Hellenistic philosophical schools?