đź“š
Theodor Adorno’s aphorisms written around wwii are terrifyingly insightful for the current moment. It’s also the sort of book where you (I) have to look up words and reread sentences and identify subject-verb placement to understand his syntax (which I think for the most part is at clear as it can be to best convey his complex ideas) and feels like a very anti-brainrot read, like I can feel the peaks and valleys of my brain returning. He’s also gotta be a top 10 hater throughout history and authors his frustrations delightfully. I feel more equipped to insult searingly after reading.
+3
May 19, 2025
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đź–‹
"The more money an American accumulates, the less interesting he becomes."
“I'm not a conspiracy theorist - I'm a conspiracy analyst.”
“One is sorry one could not have taken both branches of the road. But we were not allotted multiple selves.”
“The unfed mind devours itself.”
“Until very recently, the artist was a magician who did his magic in public view but kept himself and his effects a matter of mystery.”
“Yes. With us the ability to detect mediocrity or anything else is rare. Evaluation descends, through ignorance, to mere opinion, and opinion is a matter of fashion. And fashion is based on middle-class, middlebrow values, despite the mock defiance of an occasional licensed fool, like Vonnegut.”
“Self-education is the point of education. But it is easier if you have escaped the stifling of the academy.”
“The critic must know more than either writer or academic. He must also value experience and have a truth-telling nature. I think I have that. In their youth most people worry whether or not other people will like them. Not me. I had the choice of going under or surviving, and I survived by understanding (after the iron - if not the silver — had entered my soul) that it is I who am keeping score. What matters is what I think, not what others think of me; and I am willing to say what I think. That is the critical temperament.”
"You can improve your talent, but your talent is a given, a mysterious constant. You must make it the best of its kind."
— Gore Vidal, my toxic opinionated egocentric guiding light in this sick sad world (quotes which are not broadly inspirational but are inspirational to me to be my best most audacious evil hater self)
May 27, 2024
đź“ś
Firs tthing- walter Ben-ya-meen. If u bring him up in conversation and say ben ja min ur gonna look like an idiot apparently. But its funny bc its not like people say Valter Benyameen. They say walter. Go figure.
Anyways this text is So Great. im definitely late to the game to this contexts of frankfurt dialectics, post war philosophy manifestos, yada yada but this one is so powerful and formative esp if ur an artist or visual creator that is Woke. Its one of his more accessible writings, and he is also a very important person to kno if u r even remotely into literature/philosophie/art/design/criticism etc.
Benyameen talks about this loss/absence of human experience post war/industrual revolution whcih i think is rlly the root of all this floptok based retard gang xiaohongshu on the extreme side, but even at its most tame (yet this is more insidious/barbaric in the bad way as Benyameen puts it) all of these miu miu shoe unboxing, day in the life of a big city transplant, clean consumerism we are witness to online. It is rlly this central idea of experience that hit home for me, and the resulting idea of barbarism which fr opened my third eye and put words to the feelings of trying to contextualize our days of Today. Im also totally going to start using the word barbarian to describe creatives and intellectuals and world leaders haha. Be the Good Barbarian.
dm me if u want my annotated copy i culd keep going but arent these meant to be kept short idk<3
Jan 20, 2024
Got this cheap copy a month ago and it has kicked off an Orwell obsession. there is something so phantasmic reading this in London 70 ish years later he was writing these essays.
Have used this in every essay I can since reading like…. he was so true idk…
Mar 18, 2025
Top Recs from @broodyscanner7
Believing the rest of your life can start today (but not succumbing to the weight of that, which I’ve yet to figure out how to do).
May 13, 2025
I love being a barista because it is so fun to not pay for coffee and taste horrifying extractions and bizarre customer creations (extra sweet caramel single shot breve iced) and take home what we can’t sell to customers. Behold the darkness of week old cold brew concentrate! A true depth of darkness only understood in certain light, black as midnight on a moonless night! Yum yum can’t wait have it with breakfast and feel each blood vessel moving through every artery!
May 26, 2025
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I don’t know if this applies to everyone as we seem to be peak hustle culture to survive the gig economy but I have a lot of free time, so much free time it’s overwhelming, that I pander in all sorts of unhelpful ways. Just saw something about someone who makes exquisite jewelry in their free time, it not being their day job, and am having a long hard think about how tired I really am when I claim to be too tired to work on the thing I claim to want to do…I also think about kids my age getting married and who may start having kids in the next few years (aside from the ones who already have) and how much of a time drain that is and how some day I’ll probably look back on this point and think I was swimming in time. Would probably help to start on the phone addiction first…Sometimes I think it’s possible I’m not as tired as I am, like focusing on how tired I am, trying to measure exactly how heavy my bones feel, only amplifies my tiredness into perceived exhaustion and maybe if I didn’t think about it so much it wouldn’t be as real as I let it, like the cold in winter.
May 27, 2025