Culture is not your friend. Ideology is not your friend. And ideology…some people think what we’re trying to do here is sort out good ideologies from bad. Should I be a Marxist? Should I be a deconstructionist? And the answer is: no, none of the above. All ideologies are viral infections of some sort, memetic infections that erode your functionability and your comfort with yourself.
— Read on www.secretorum.life/p/the-great-disembedding-repost
Basement Whatever
Escape the algorithm
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A person who has had the misfortune to fall victim to the spell of a philosophical system (and the spells of sorcerers are mere trifles in comparison to the disastrous effect of the spell of a philosophical system!) can no longer see the world, or people, or historic events, as they are; he sees everything only through the distorting prism of the system by which he is possessed.
— Read on www.secretorum.life/p/the-great-disembedding-repost -
You are part of the universe.
You ask, “what am I?”
Better stated: A part of the universe asks, “what am I?”
Through its parts, the universe is capable of asking “what am I?”
The total of all these parts asking “what am I?” is the total awakened consciousness of the universe.
The universe is aware.
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The dream of the democratisation of film-making is coming true. Now that it’s feasible for an individual artist to create an entire film on their own, it’s worth reflecting on what we have lost.
— Read on yakimenko.substack.com/p/on-the-decline-of-sumptuousness-in -
Everyone would smell so good.
A manicured lawn and flowers would be indescribably beautiful.
A Patagonia jacket, rain shell and boots would give people superhuman powers.
People would be calm and orderly, more meditative. Much less alcohol.
A 50 year old would look indescribably young.
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We are emergent phenomena — higher-level patterns and processes that arise from, but are not reducible in any simple way to, the lower-level physics and chemistry.
A human is:
• A far-from-equilibrium dissipative structure (physics)
• Built from self-replicating, metabolizing carbon chemistry in aqueous solution (chemistry)
• That has evolved nervous systems capable of generating subjective conscious experience, self-models, and complex behavior (psychology)
We are the universe temporarily organizing itself into a form that can ask “What are we?” — localized pockets of negentropy and information that have become self-aware through billions of years of chemical and biological evolution. We are both the product of blind physical laws and something that experiences those laws from the inside.
From Grok.
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From fundamental physics, a human is a temporary, localized configuration of quantum fields (or particles and forces in the Standard Model plus gravity) that maintains a high degree of internal order against the universal tendency toward increasing entropy (the second law of thermodynamics).
From Grok.
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Chemically, you are a vast, coordinated network of molecular machines running on carbon chemistry in water, powered by redox gradients, and capable of copying its own blueprint with high (but imperfect) fidelity.
From Grok.
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“Golf feels maddeningly hard to learn because it’s a perfect storm of technical precision, unnatural movements, instant feedback on every mistake, and a brutal mental component—all in an unpredictable environment. Unlike sports where athleticism or hand-eye coordination can carry you early on, golf punishes small errors harshly and rewards patience and consistency over raw talent.” – Grok AI
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Have you ever wanted to research something, so you bookmark a dozen articles, get distracted by everything on the internet, take notes, try to find the common links between the articles, get distracted again – and a project takes way longer than it should? A well-built prompt can fix that, save you time, and return you to the days when reading meant calm focus. The prompt below shows how to make reading calm again.
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…my strong assumption is that most people who push or buy the idea that ‘AI is going to take all the jobs’ haven’t thought much about what ‘jobs’ are, in a fundamental sense.
— Read on endsdontjustifythemeans.com/p/why-ai-obviously-isnt-going-to-take -
Any object, intensely regarded, may be a gate of access to the incorruptible aeon of the gods. (James Joyce)
— Read on www.secretorum.life/p/the-message-of-the-medium -
The proper end of introspection is not being filled with facts about oneself. Your introspection is successful if it is finite, if it leads you towards direct contact with experience. Get out of the way of your becoming.
— Read on sashachapin.substack.com/p/should-you-be-in-charge-of-your-life -
We tend to think of fermented foods as something humans invented and then chose to eat. But, increasingly, scientific evidence suggests the causality runs the other way. Fermented foods appear to have helped shape human biology itself, and our bodies may have been built, in part, to expect them….it raises an uncomfortable question about what happened when the Western food system, in the name of safety and efficiency, quietly removed these foods from our diets in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
— Read on www.asimov.press/p/culture-shift -
As presented in the game, Reality is not fixed, but rather the product of consensus. What humanity collectively accepts as possible becomes so; what it rejects becomes difficult or even impossible to achieve. The titular mages are those rare individuals who have awakened to this truth and, through force of will, can impose their own understanding of Reality upon the world.
— Read on grognardia.blogspot.com/2026/04/retrospective-mage-ascension.html -
The main difference in receiving openly is not that you will tangibly “have more”—it’s not about the gifts themselves, but about the feelings of worthiness, appreciation and gratitude they bring when you are open to them. Someone is trying to express love to you through a gift. Whether that gift is a compliment, experience, object, or anything else. By closing yourself off, you deny yourself of their love. You steal the moment of abundance from yourself. You also reduce their enjoyment.
— Read on read.isabelunraveled.com/p/why-is-asking-so-hard
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