Text Dump: Sloths, Politics, Narratives
I wrote enough to post normally this week but decided to hold some of that text back. I was in Atlanta for a couple of days, and I guess I brought some pretty shitty weather with me. I didn’t schedule any posts while I was preoccupied with all of this. I’m dumping these ideas here more »
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy II
Yesterday I accidentally published this alongside my scenes post. Sorry about that. More non-DeLanda posts next week. — The last post on this topic attempted to define Deleuze’s three ontological dimensions by following DeLanda’s examples for the logic behind it. These three ontological levels: Apparent actual things with extensive properties (e.g. “metric” measurements) Morphogenetic processes with intensive properties (e.g. temperature, pressure, more »
Scenes
First pass on scenes today. Next chapter of Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy on Friday, probably? — Current Trajectory Grounding: (as in “common ground”): collection of mutual beliefs and assumptions between people (and also the act of amassing this collection) Scenius, an introduction by Kevin Kelly Presumably, accepting people are biological (and cognitive) assemblages, it is plausible that larger complexes more »
Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy I
These are notes on Manuel De Landa’s Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy, which is a refactoring of Gilles Deleuze’s ontology (specifically, it’s intended as an introduction to Deleuzian thought for analytical philosophers or scientific-minded readers unfamiliar to Deleuze and his very continental methodologies: this dude has two very different, very important concepts called “differentiation” and “differenciation”. That’s more »
The Arcane in Two Aeon Articles
I’m done for the week. Now that my winter break surplus is expended, I think I’ll try to reduce my output back to two posts per week. That’ll also give me more time to edit, which is a skill I really ought to be honing a bit (I’m a bit of a gunslinger with the more »
The Lives of a Cell
I’m flying to and from Orlando these weeks, guaranteeing several hours of undisturbed reading. I read Lewis Thomas’ book of essays in the air last week, The Lives of a Cell: Notes from a Biology Watcher (1974) [pdf]. It was quoted by a friend-of-a-friend on Facebook, and I recognized something in the quote and began reading the more »
Make-Believe
The best article I’ve read on Ebert’s response to “Are Games Art?”: An Apology for Roger Ebert. It is clear, it is elegant, and you don’t have to ‘buy’ it to see that the negative argument can exist in the absence of curmudgeonly ignorance. — There’s no need to delay my answer to the question, especially more »
Mulling: Potential
Yesterday’s post cites far more practitioners than theorists, which was maybe why it sounded wildly more obvious and applicable. My current unfinished post is on “Games/Art”, bouncing off of the next book on my list, Imaginary Games. Soon I’ll break from the games studies (to restock) and publish some notes I’ve been scribbling on some more »
Unnecessary Obstacles
Caillois introduced a spectrum from paidia (“play”, improvisation) to ludus (“games”, ordered, rule-bound, requiring skill or effort). To play a thing (or play with a thing) is to explore it in some sense. As I’ve noted before, to game a thing (eg. gaming the system) is more directed and manipulative. The relationship between play and more »
Man, Play and Games
Roger Callois’ Man, Play, and Games (1961) is a direct response to Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and largely builds off of it while editing a few key tenets. The quotes immediately below are from an article I read for context on Callois’ background (Thomas Henricks, “Man, Play and Games- An appreciation and evaluation” [pdf]). It was hugely helpful more »