West Elm Caliban retweeted
My dad was a corrections officer who cannot be baited. He just says āit sounds like you feel pretty strongly about this.ā
West Elm Caliban retweeted
January 1st in 1953, at the age of 29, Hank Williams took his final ride going through the Heart of Appalachia. He performed, what would be his final show, at the Elite Cafe in Montgomery on December 28th. He was supposed to play a show in Charleston, WV but canceled due to the weather.
Williams paid a college student named Charles Carr to drive him, and they set sail for Canton, Ohio. They made a stop in Knoxville to get a room, and to see a doctor for the ailing Williams. The doctor gave Williams two B12 shots with morphine, before getting a call that night telling them they had to continue on and make the New Years Day show in Canton. They stopped in Bristol for a quick bite, where Williams declined to eat, and that is where he spoke his last words.
Thereās a local legend in Tazewell County, VA that Hank may have taken his last breath there. They stopped at a service station in Claypool Hill, VA off Route 19/460, and Hank was asleep in the back of the vehicle, but alive. About two hours into West Virginia they stopped in Oak Hill at the Skyline Drive-in (known as āHanks last stopā to locals, and still open), where they found him dead. Did he take his last breath in Tazewell County, VA? Who knows?
West Elm Caliban retweeted
a condition of immigration to ANY country should be that you become the biggest caricature of that country's people you can be
West Elm Caliban retweeted
what it was like writing this post:
Itās been 19 days and 20 hrs since I last felt Kateās warm embrace. She landed 47 minutes ago. The 24 hours of travel no doubt has her rushing to shower. She needs to cleanse herself of a dirtied world incompatible with her sensibilities. The wash doubles as a ritual, preparatory for entrance into the symbolic world weāve constructed.
The time apart has been costly.Ā My bodyās electrical signaling betrays the separation. Without her touch, my vagus nerveās 100,000 myelinated fibers have dropped their high frequency spectral power, squawking distress. An intelligent system broadcasting diminished wave forms, hoping to be heard.Ā There are other signals of distress.
My white blood cells have shifted their gene expression, upregulating pro-inflammatory genes IL-6 and TNF-alpha and downregulating my antiviral genes.Ā A pro-aging biochemical signature of a system suffering hardship.
My environment is a pristine anti-aging laboratory. Air, water, food and light are meticulously measured. Toxins are filtered. Purification systems run autonomously. Biomarkers tracked. Nutrition is calibrated.
Yet outside my control is the affection of another. The 68 trillion cells that constitute Bryan Johnson run non-negotiable code. They demand tenderness, and not of a whimsical type, but deep, all-encompassing love that must be earned and carefully maintained. Otherwise they protest in self-termination.
Sheās now only 13 miles away and I can viscerally feel her essence. The transmission pulses in high fidelity. As if there were a fiber optic cable streaming our connection at light speed through the multiplexed cylinders of glass. The time apart created latency, buffering the connection, depriving us of the luminescence and dimming into noise.
In 15 minutes she will be within reach. I can visualize the whites of her eyes and smell her aroma. When she arrives, she will be shy. Whenever we are apart, she returns to zero. Her previous openness will be closed. Her emotional dynamic range will be held in reserve until she feels she is safe and can trust.Ā Iāll need to kindle her again. The rush of the courtship enthralls me.
The anticipation drives a small cluster of my midbrain neurons to flood dopamine. Nerve fibers activate, lighting up my skinās receptors as it awaits for slow, caressing touch. My hypothalamus begins synthesizing oxytocin, preparing to dump it upon first eye contact to ensure the reestablishment of our pair bond. This biochemical orchestra fills me with delight and sensorial want.
Kateās been mulling over what sheāll wear for days.Ā Sheās considered dozens of possibilities and modeled out my anticipated emotional state, the weather, and our planned activities. The colors will be representative of her psychological state and be positioned to soothe mine. The texture, style, and hues will interplay with our biology. The deliberately chosen accessories will add flair, intrigue and play. This is how she flirts, seduces and bypasses my mind to speak directly to my physiology. She has other tricks too.
Sheās arrived. I must wait for her. Her timidness will want to determine the cadence. I hear the door crack open and her bag drop to the floor. Sheās nervous. Iām on the couch, neutral and open. She rounds the corner and our eyes meet. The inhibitions wither as the magnetism draws us together. Soft hellos are whispered and our bodies interdigitate.
I feel her finger tips on the back of my neck. Goose bumps light up my body. Skin nerve cells fire signals directly to my brain, bypassing the analytical mind. The hypothalamus dumps the oxytocin, inhibiting fear and lowering cortisol. The body washes itself in this anti-inflammatory chain reaction.Ā Our respiration and heart beats are now synchronizing. The brain piles on with a release of endorphins to soothe the psychological pain of our separation. New powers are now in control. Let them run in glory.
I press my cheek against hers. The skin on skin triggers a wave of desire. I brush her lips with mine, catalyzing a massive activation of neurons in her brain, overwhelming thought and forcing presence.
She relents and wants to dance. Sheās home.
I slip my hand under her shirt and brush the small of her back. Goosebumps spread like a wildfire across her body. Her hypothalamus stimulates the release of GnRH which tells the pituitary gland to wake up her reproductive system. Our olfactory systems consume each other with delight, signaling immune system compatibility.
I move both my hands to her jawline, holding her head firmly in place. Our mirror neurons speak to each other. I know what she wants. My lips press against hers and I softly bite her lower lip. Kateās blood vessels dilate from the acetylcholine and nitric oxide release, flushing her lips, skin and body. The cascade is nearing waterfall.
The executive control of our brains surrenders. No longer concerned with the 68 trillion cells. The prefrontal cortex goes dark. Eliminating future planning and probabilistic modeling. Activity in our parietal lobes diminishes, dissolving the boundary that distinguishes between self and other. No longer is there Kate and Bryan, just a singular biological entity suspended in a state of bliss. The outside world goes quiet. It doesnāt exist. We dissolve into raw existence.
West Elm Caliban retweeted
This issue of Calvin and Hobbes lives rent-free in my mind
West Elm Caliban retweeted
āAs far as we can tell from a purely scientific viewpoint, human life has absolutely no meaning. Humans are the outcome of blind evolutionary processes that operate without goal or purpose. Our actions are not part of some divine cosmic plan, and if planet earth were to blow up tomorrow morning, the universe would probably keep going about its business as usual. As far as we can tell at this point, human subjectivity would not be missed. Hence any meaning that people inscribe to their lives is just a delusion.ā
ā Yuval Noah Harari in "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind"
West Elm Caliban retweeted
this is probably my favorite christmas comic (1982). intentional or not, i enjoy that it can also be extended into a theological and historical metaphor.
West Elm Caliban retweeted
One thing that has put me off of self driving cars just as an aesthetic matter is just how often my VW thinks it knows better than I do. Canāt remote start the car because the coolant is a little low, which I already knew. Canāt use the key fob to unlock the passenger side door when the car is running. Same with the trunk. The display reads: āEco tip: please close the sunroof.ā But thatās not a tip, itās a request.
And of course everybody knows about the auto stop/start.
Living with this is annoying as hell. Itās like somebody in HR at VW is standing over my shoulder at all times, not letting me do what I want to do with my car.
West Elm Caliban retweeted
But they were all of them deceived, for 11 more days of Christmastide remained.
West Elm Caliban retweeted
If you ever read Tom Hollandās āDominion,ā in which he makes the case that the pre-Christian human mind is so alien to any mind infected by the ideas of Christ as to be wholly unintelligible, which he does by surveying the sheer depth and breadth of ideas which we take for granted and assume are just āhumanā which are in fact uniquely Christian, then you might come away thinking, āWell thatās a great catalogue of all the ways we now irrevocably think like Christians, but where can I find a book that illustrates how /they/ thought? The ancient pagans? I want to see the alien.ā
The answer is simply to do what Holland did. Read those ancient works. Read the Greek epics. Read the Odyssey.
But donāt apply your own standards to it. For instance, when the hero rapes a woman, or tortures or mutilates someone helpless and begging for mercy, or kills a small child, donāt try to figure out why it was actually justified according to your way of thinking, and donāt even think about why it needs to be condemned according to your way of thinking. Rather, just sit there and wrap your mind around the fact that no one thought it needed to be justified or condemned when it was written. It was self-evidently, to them, a heroic act, part of what it means to be a hero.
Once you manage this, most of the modern controversies even over events like Oct 7 and the Holocaust will melt away. You will realize there isnāt any trouble in believing a man raped a girl with a nailgun until she died and then called his grandma to brag about it, nor that Germany and Russia created entire industrial systems of labor camps which had as their objective to ensure that no laborer survived the labor (and entire industrial systems to dispose of the bodies as the laborers died), or that Saladinās biographer boastsāboasts, because it is a point of pride and honor for Saladināabout āmiserly women forced to yield themselves, and women who had been kept hidden [nuns] stripped of their modesty ā¦ and free women occupied [meaning āpenetratedā], and precious ones used for hard work, and pretty things put to the test, and virgins dishonored and proud women deflowered ā¦ and happy ones made to weep!ā
It will not be hard to imagine these things done, it will be easy to believe the stories of the holocaust and all the rest, because you will come to understand, by reading pre-Christian heroic stories, that all of this is just normal human behavior. Itās what you would do, would proudly participate in, but you happen to have been born in a Christian land in a Christian time, even if you yourself are not Christian. And where lands become un-Christian, ānature heals.ā Human beings return to what they naturally are: the kind of thing that considers this behavior not horrific but heroic, and to be lauded.
The worst thing about Nolanās Odyssey hasnāt even been discussed yet. Odysseus convinces the Greeks to throw Hectorās infant son off the walls of Troy. Odysseus raids a city on his way home and kills all the men and enslaves the women. Odysseus kills an unarmed suitor who clings to his knees begging for his life. Odysseus tortures a goatherd who sided with the suitors by slicing off his ears and nose, chopping off his hands and feet, and ripping off his genitals and feeding them to dogs. Odysseus has his son brutally hang twelve of his slave girls who slept with the suitors. I remind you of all this because Nolanās Odysseus will instead have the same moral values as the 2025 median voter.
