Blog

The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.

Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.

We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”

A hinge that opens the heavens
A small reflection on my daily reading. You’re at an apparent end due to a failure of wit. You can’t imagine what comes next. But you’ll recover wit, you’ll find horizon, and universe won’t end.

6 things mystified me in the trans film ‘I Saw the TV Glow’
This 2024 movie is tough to crack, but finally I think I get it. In art, opaque describes a substance you expect to see through but can’t: paint, glass, a thin layer. Metaphorically, it’s something you can’t understand.

Why are you trans?
Will they be mad that they were given a reason? If so, why did they ask? Trans people didn’t invent gender stereotypes. Collectively, we don’t reinforce them any more than anyone else. We navigate societies that stereotype us.

Jeffrey Epstein said ‘you might want to focus on transgender biology’
He suggested this to evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers in 2019. ‘Little public interest’, Epstein warned, ‘where genetics would be helpful. I’ll do no harm and won’t give you drugs if you ask because it’s bad for you.’

The Epstein Files show a rift between atheists & the consciousness movement
What I still want to know is: Why are Epstein’s close associates anti-trans? Dawkins is not open to the idea that trans people might make interesting or worthy arguments. He does, however, declare he’d listen to how people could merge with chimps.

Your gamete isn’t what wins a boxing match. That’d be your fist.
And other ideas I have after listening to Richard Dawkins tell Lawrence Krauss about his book chapter in ‘The War on Science’. If they’re accurately representing what trans people say, why don’t they invite a trans person on their show to say it? Why the intentional exclusion?