Any topic is good. Don’t care about format or where it’s published as long as I can access it (substack, random PDF, journal, etc). Looking for deep and rare thought, but essay length for a short reading.
EDIT: Also I am particularly looking for stuff not as much in online or nerd culture.
I stumbled across a theory that really early christian figure Paul of Tarsus was a Roman/Herodian plant trying to thwart Jewish uprisings. I’ve only seen videos so far and I don’t know how credible it is really, but it was a really interesting idea, I’m sure you could find an essay if that’s the sort of historical conspiracy theory you’re interested in.
On music and words - Friedrich Nietzsche (1871)
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/51548/51548-h/51548-h.htm#ON_MUSIC_AND_WORDS
- The language is from a different era and takes a few pages to get into.
Read The Egg.
I highly suggest the Umberto Eco book “How to Travel With a Salmon”. It’s a collection of short essays on a variety of topics.
Read this many years ago and enjoyed. Great recommendation in the spirit of this thread (for anyone who has not read it)
I enjoyed reading Ur-Fascism so it’d probably be nice to read something lighter from him.
Foucault’s Pendulum is amazing.
It’s the book that kicked the Davinci Code to death and left it bleeding in a gutter.
It’s the book Dan Brown was “inspired” by.
That’s actually a complicated story…
It goes back to a book called “Holy Blood, Holy Grail” back in 1982.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Blood_and_the_Holy_Grail
Then you have Foucalt’s Pendulum (1988) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucault’s_Pendulum
The comic book series “Preacher” 66 monthly issues from 1995 to 2000. - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preacher_(comics)
Da Vinci Code (2003) - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Da_Vinci_Code
There is not a lot “light” about Umberto Eco, but How to Travel With a Salmon is one of them.
If you’re in the mood for nonsensical madness:
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Time_Cube
or
https://pdf-library.org/terrence-howard-math-theory.pdf (Yes, this is the actor that played Rhodes in the first Iron Man movie)
I suppose that OP didn’t state that the ideas presented must be worth any consideration
OP did not!
Upvote for time cube
You beat me to the cube. Wish the original blog was still around
What is entropy : https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-entropy-a-measure-of-just-how-little-we-really-know-20241213/
The life changing contrast of Japanese clutter : https://aeon.co/essays/the-life-changing-magic-of-japanese-clutter
As we may think is an exellent read
How about HG Wells talking about mini wargaming in 1912? I think it’s fascinating to see proto-nerds inventing the geek stuff that we take for granted a hundred years later.
Little Wars via Project Gutenberg
This one is from 2001 and is about how the pornography trade was getting increasingly violent, interesting to read in a post internet porn world. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/mar/17/society.martinamis1
I like this one about tick borne illness a lot. https://www.outsideonline.com/adventure-travel/essays/jungle-wedding/
Could the genetic diathesis in the stress-diathesis model of disease for both psychiatric and medical illness be staring us in the face?
I love the bit where they just attack the idea of someone saying “Ugh, capitalism” and perform character assassinations (on people they seem to respect?) rather than actually discuss issues in the world. Like yeah, virtue signalling exists. See the companies that ask to work with LGBTQIA+ people specifically in the month of June and no other. We know it happens. You’re doing the exact thing you’re currently complaining about.
“Y’all can’t quote the exact policies that are causing issues” - says the dude who complains about everyone in Brooklyn having ‘Ugh capitalism’ in their tinder bios. I thought we were talking real issues here? Hard hitting policy that needs to be changed, not horny men using a tactic.
Awful article really.
There’s never any real discussion of detailed fixes in this kind of complaint—because that might acknowledge we can fix the problem without overthrowing the system. There’s never any argument about how under socialism (or some other alternative economic model) public policy tradeoffs, political failures, or scarcity just wouldn’t exist.
I will acknowledge that is in there but he spends the entire article talking about how much of a loser you are for saying Ugh capitalism, then throws in those two sentences. That’s not an actual discussion, it’s the article equivalent of drawing the person you disagree with as the virgin loser and yourself as the chad.
He’s right to point out that either no alternative is offered or the alternative is just more regulated capitalism with a stronger safety net.
Yep, and an intelligent discussion could have been had, if this had been the point of the article. Instead we got 4 paragraphs stating which people are saying this phrase and the rest discussing how much of a loser those people are.
It’s as if “Capitalism” wrote that article.
That’s certainly a way you can describe something.
Recuperation would be a better description.
