#aeon magazine

[thefugitivesaint]

As a philosophy enthusiast/dilettante/amateur, I’m feeling somewhat embarrassed to have only recently come across the name Günther Anders. It’s also pretty exciting to encounter a thinker you’ve never heard of for the first time especially when their body of work seems both interesting and which seems to echo some of your own sentiment about modernity, technology, and the state of contemporary industrialized culture(s). (Additional info on Anders) I was introduced to Anders through an episode of The Philosopher’s Zone podcast. They summarize Anders as “..the most interesting and important philosopher you've probably never heard of. An exile from Nazi Germany who landed in America in the late 1930s, Anders was a prescient theorist of media and technology whose insights are remarkably pertinent to today's digital landscape. His major work is a best-seller in Europe and he's one of Germany's most well-regarded intellectuals, yet he's almost unknown in the Anglosphere.” (FYI: Anders is “almost unknown in the Anglosphere” because most of his work has not been translated into English. It’s an interesting discussion and I highly suggest giving it a listen.) While doing some digging into Anders I came across an essay in Aeon called ‘Philosopher of the Apocalypse’. Here’s some (liberally lifted) choice quotes (or, you know, you could just go and read the essay itself): “For Anders, the disasters of the 20th century were simply the logical outcome of a pernicious process that had already been underway for many years, involving the gradual exclusion of mankind from all production processes – and, ultimately, from the world created by those processes. The real catastrophe in this regard, which Anders hoped to make ‘visible for the first time’, lay in the transformation of the human condition, a transformation that had become as naturalised and imperceptible as it was destructive. ‘The atom bomb,’ he argued, was ‘thus the ultimate emblem of an unearthly, unsettling and haunting force channelled by complex technological objects: it illuminates that the more “our” technological power grows, the smaller we become; the more unconditional and unlimited the capability of machines, the more conditional our existence; the more machines connect us by virtue of their very existence, the more we are also singled out as being expendable and inadequate.’

.... “The modern work model, with its extreme technical division of labour and chains of abstraction, had made the worker lose sight of the end product (and environmental consequences) and reduced his function to mere repetitive execution or monitoring. The worker performed standardised work of little intrinsic value – geared mainly towards profitmaking – in which there was little possibility for self-expression or the cultivation of a work ethic.” .... “The proletarisation of labour went hand in hand with the production of poor-quality products programmed for immediate obsolescence: objects were no longer intended to last, but to be consumed as perishable materials and replaced at a frantic rate in an unending cycle of creation and destruction justified by advertising’s ‘death drive’. The world had been transformed into a ‘ghost’, derealised through an abundance of ersatz products and make-believe realities that extended well into our private lives in the shape of what Anders described as ‘playful products freely delivered [by radio and TV] at home’ .... “Within this ‘totalitarianism of apparatuses’, programmed obsolescence had been extended to man as he had found himself increasingly assimilated to the technology of production. He had been gradually deprived of his autonomy and ability to create a world for himself, and his freedom was reduced to the stark choice between adequacy within the technological world or exclusion from it for failing to comply with its imperative to continuously produce and consume. By investing all dimensions of human existence, it had ushered in the complete pacification and subordination of man within a fully consumerised society.” ... “Technological modernity had imposed our unilateral surrender to machines, rendering our capacities to understand, feel or act redundant and superfluous in the expectation of becoming ‘absolutely consubstantial’ with machines and freed of our ‘shortcomings’ by them. For Anders, the root cause of our apathy lay in the discrepancy that had arisen between our faculties, especially our imagination, and our actions, in such a way that ‘we are unable to conceive what we can construct; to mentally reproduce what we can produce; to realise the reality which we can bring into being.’

...

“Much of the recent technological takeover of our lives has been underpinned by the myth that it was synonymous with emancipation and progress – a conceit it was suspect to challenge even while that very imperative further contributed to the growth of inequalities, the destruction of nature and the waste of resources. ‘The real terrorists’ in this regard are the so-called experts in charge who were as ignorant as us but ‘who continuously frighten our common world with the threat of destruction.’ Rather than ‘enlightening’ man, the progress of technology had ended up further anchoring his obsolescence and placing him outside of history.”

... ‘Despite increasing media representation of these threats, we live in what Anders called ‘the age of the inability to be afraid’ and still overwhelmingly remain passive in the face of this development. Even when objectively aware of the dangers linked to the climate crisis, the collapse of biodiversity and the diminution of resources, we prefer to continue to pay lip-service to them to better avoid direct confrontation with them. We take refuge in ignorance, even in reckless overconsumption. And yet, faced with the prospect of our not so remote extinction, ‘Do we,’ as Anders challenges us, ‘have the right to sit idly by? Is the mortal gravity of our future … a carte blanche to laziness?’” PS. Here’s a lecture, in English, on Anders that I also gave a watch. 

#günther anders #German-Austrian philosophers #philosophy podcasts #philosopher's zone #aeon #aeon magazine #critical theorists

[zwischenstadt]

"Let us begin with the fact that the ubiquitous phrase is almost exclusive in its application to Africa: ‘precolonial Africa’. How often do we encounter this designation in discourses about other continents? If not, what explains the peculiar representation – treating the continent as if it were a single unit of analysis – when it comes to Africa? I am afraid it comes from a not-so-kind genealogy that always takes Africa to be a simple place, homogenises its peoples and their history, and treats their politics and thought as if they were uncomplicated, each substitutable for the other across time and space. Once you are thinking of ‘Africa’ as a simple whole, it becomes easier to grossly misrepresent an entire continent in the temporal frame of ‘precolonial’...

...All who talk glibly about ‘precolonial’ Africa, insofar as the designation bespeaks a temporal horizon, award an undeserved victory to the racist philosopher. Of course, the ‘pre’ in ‘precolonial’ supposedly designates ‘a time before’ colonialism appeared on the continent. But how do we deign to describe a period from the beginning of time to the moment when the European, modernity-inflected colonial phenomenon showed up? It accords more of a mythological than a historical status to the arrival of modern European colonialism in Africa and its long and deep history. The ‘precolonial’ designation, in practice, even excludes two earlier European-inspired colonialisms in Africa. After all, for those of us who know our history, Roman and Byzantine/Ottoman colonial presences on the African continent were not without legacies on the continent, too."

-Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò, Aeon Magazine

#Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò #aeon magazine #africa #colonialism

[diaryofaphilosopher]

The ancient communion between ferns and hornworts is the latest in a series of newly discovered examples of horizontal gene transfer: when DNA passes from one organism to another generally unrelated one, rather than moving ‘vertically’ from parent to child. In fact, horizontal gene transfer has happened between all kinds of living things throughout the history of life on the planet – not just between species, but also between different kingdoms of life. Bacterial genes end up in plants; fungal genes wind up in animals; snake and frog genes find their way into cows and bats. It seems that the genome of just about every modern species is something of a mosaic constructed with genes borrowed from many different forms of life.

— Ferris Jabr, "The Gene That Jumped."

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

#Ferris Jabr #Horizontal Evolution #horizontal gene transfer #Aeon magazine #quote #quotes #biology #chaotic academia #science #ecology #zoology #We grow together or not at all...

[victusinveritas]

Saved by Infinite Jest

by Mala Chatterjee

Read the full story here. In the surreal aftermath of my suicide attempt and amid the haze of my own processing, my best friend visited me in the hospital with a (soft-bound and thus mental-patient-safe) copy of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest under his arm. It was the spring of 2021. A couple months earlier, I had slipped in a tub, suffered a concussion, and triggered my first episode of major depression, and those had been the most difficult months of my life.

Though a lifelong ‘striver’ and ‘high achiever’, nothing I’ve ever done was harder than waging that war against myself while catatonic on that Brooklyn sofa. This was an inarticulable and so alienating war, one during which, at every moment, it was excruciating and terrifying to exist at all. I thought I knew the extent of my own mind’s capacity to torture itself, to hurt me, and what this thing we call depression can really be like. But I had been wrong.

For anyone who hasn’t experienced it at its worst, I now think it is psychologically impossible to imagine. It may even prove impossible for those who have experienced to still remember it after the fact, just as someone who temporarily perceives a fourth dimension wouldn’t really, fully remember what it was like once the perception is lost, only facets of the larger, unfathomable thing.

So maybe I can’t really remember, either: but I can recall thinking again and again these staggered reflections I’m writing now. Some of the swirling emotions that distressed and disoriented me on that sofa also remain faintly accessible, like the crippling inability to make any decisions, no matter how small, such that even contemplating a choice among some host of mine’s warmly offered selection of teas would incapacitate me with self-loathing and breathless, gushing tears. I remember hopelessly trying to make myself feel even the glimmer of anything good, turning to everything – the music, the friends – that had brought me so much joy before, only to find that I could no longer feel any of it but rather just, from somewhere afar, see and long for it while watching as the ever-darkening blackness in me instead consumed it all.

I remember the debilitating guilt and shame that emerged for everything I had ever done, including for having the audacity to keep existing for so long. And I remember an overwhelming empathy as I wondered how many others felt this way in the history of the world, imagining the vastness of all these solitary confinements within our minds across space and time. At the same time, it was unfathomable to me that anyone had ever felt like this, or that there could even be enough darkness in the universe to realise the experience more than this once.

Read the full story here.

#infinite jest #aeon magazine #david foster wallace #mental health #depression #tw sui ideation #personal essay #Mala Chatterjee

[ifeeltheneedtheneed2read]

"A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything but the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde

But I read this fantastic article that pretty much said the opposite, so I'm torn between a 19th century gay romantic or a Scottish philosopher.

#oscar wilde #slurpees cost $1 #but their value is immeasurable #Mara Van der Lugt #aeon magazine #philosophy #quotes #poetry #beautiful quote

[surroundedbytheworld]

It can be distressing, but liberating too. Use these tips from clinical practice and personal experience to emerge stronger

by Micah Rees (Psyche, 2022)

#religion link #english #leaving your religion #how to thrive after leaving your religion #deconstruction #religious deconstruction #recovering from religion #spiritual deconstruction #micah rees #psyche #aeon #aeon magazine

[djhamaradio]

#Africa #Aeon Magazine #Marx #Socialism #Capitalism #Duppy Echoes

[garadinervi]

Edwin Morgan, The Computer's First Christmas Card (1965) (The Second Life, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 1968), «Second Aeon», No. 15, Second Aeon Publications, Caerdydd-Cardiff, 1973 [National Poetry Library, London. © Edwin Morgan Trust, Glasgow]

#graphic design #art #poetry #concrete poetry #visual poetry #magazine #book #edwin morgan #second aeon #second aeon publications #edinburgh university press #national poetry library #edwin morgan trust #1960s #1970s

[vinescreens]

Aeon - Why being "born gay" is a dangerous idea

(screenshot that I've just found in an old Flickr account of mine created on the late 2000s)

#aeon #born this way #born gay #magazine article #shamus khan #why did i screenshot this #favorites bar #favorites folder #mozilla firefox #ms paint #queer #2010s

[rockrevoltmagazine]

MIND INCISION Unveils New Single, "Zero Two Thirty"!

Denver, CO based, metal band MIND INCISION has released their new single, “Zero230”! Produced by DAVE OTERO at Flatline Audio, “Zero230” is off of the band’s upcoming, debut EP, The First Cut. “‘Zero230’ is inspired by soldiers who are suffering from PTSD or anyone that knows someone who is or has suffered in the past. In this song we talk about how a soldier wakes up in the middle of the night…

View On WordPress

#"Zero230" #2023 #AEON CRUZ #Arcanium #DAV #Dave Otero #debut EP #Flatline Audio #Government Health USA #JASON NEIL #JON MAGGARD #Kelly Morse #Kyle Loucks #MIND INCISION #Mother of Exile #Motograter #MUSIC GALLERY INTERNATIONAL #music magazine #new EP #New Heavy Rock Music #new music #New Rock Music #new single #PTSD Foundation of America #rock magazine #Rock Revolt #Rock Revolt Magazine #RockRevolt #RockRevolt Magazine #Shawn Barusch

[biglisbonnews]

The Top 5 Longreads of the Week This week's top stories by Elizabeth Whitman, David Grann, Jack Stilgoe, Gloria Liu, and Tony Rehagen. https://longreads.com/2023/03/03/the-top-5-longreads-of-the-week-455/

#Top 5 #aeon #Cosmopolitan #curation #David Grann #Elizabeth Hickman #Experience Magazine #Gloria Liu #Jack Stilgoe #Outside #The New Yorker #Tony Rehagen #Longreads

[soracities]

where do you find articles or personal essays to read? and also do you have any favorite sources for news? i want to read more but i’m having a difficult time finding sources 🤍

I've answered this just recently but here's a more complete list for essays from places I visit most often (favourites are marked **)

LitHub**

Electric Literature**

Guernica Magazine**

Hazlitt**

Longreads**

Pangyrus

The Dial**

Bloodknife**

Aeon **

The Marginalian**

Asymptote Journal

N+1

Nautilus**

Quanta Magazine**

The Believer

Ordinary Plots**

The Point Magazine

The Baffler

Paris Review (Redux newsletter is good for things usu behind the paywall)

The New Yorker

The Artifice

The Collector

The Rumpus

Catapult

Tin House Archives (the online section is no longer running but past publications are still available)

Additionally, highly recommend switching to Mozilla Firefox and trying the "Pocket" feature on their homepage: it collects links to articles across the web on topics that are either trending or based on the Pocket suggestions you usually click on. I'm on private browser 99% of the time but there's still 2 or 3 articles at least that I'm always interested in and I love it!

Some other places I read things: Poets&Writers, Atlas Obscura, The Guardian, The Independent, New Scientist, Al Jazeera, The Atlantic, BBC, National Geographic, Wired, NY Times, GQ, NPR, The Irish Times / Independent, etc., I don't have favourite news sources as a rule since I usually read 2 or 3 articles on the same topic from different places depending on what it is (I don't like relying on single sources). But on the whole this covers most of what cross my orbit unless I'm looking for something specifically 💗

#ask #anonymous #reading recs

[nvuy]

May I also propose gap moe boothill where everyone thinks you and him fuck nasty but he’s actually rlly sappy in bed and he pins ur hands down by intertwining your fingers and he looks at u like you’re a treasure and he fucks u not just for the sake of pleasure but bc he really needs to get his feelings across

mdni. you may.

he’s one of those dudes where he beats up people all day, and after a hard day’s work, he’s so excited to go home and kiss his spouse. it’s like a reward. even if he’s done nothing notable all day, and ESPECIALLY if a mission is a bust.

he’ll come home skipping pretty much. be prepared to be picked up and spun around like he hasn’t seen you in three months.

the dynamic is basically jessica and roger rabbit.

call him your wife. he’ll start giggling.

there’s no place like in your arms. even if his hands are cold hard metal, he’s all over you. he’s genuinely like a lump sometimes. he’ll just lay over your lap and he will trap you against the couch like a cat if he feels like it.

same in bed, except more cuteness aggression. it’s like a virus. like something possesses him and the demons win over and he WILL start nuzzling into you and leaving all these marks on your neck. every time he sees an inch of skin, all his systems say “bite.”

he’s got his tongue buried inside you, but at the same time he’s gripping onto your thighs like a lifeline because WOW you are so soft and warm. he feels like the luckiest man alive.

he thinks you’re the prettiest thing in the universe. genuinely nobody can compare.

that pretty girl on the magazine cover? eh.

the supposed “most handsome man in penacony?” who’s lying… that weirdo can’t even come close to you.

god forbid you get insecure, or you have trouble exposing yourself to him. he’s ALL over you like sticky rice. he makes you feel like an aeon.

tldr; this is him

#$. after hours #$. love mail #$. anon #boothill x you #boothill x reader #boothill hsr #hsr x reader #honkai star rail

[heavenlyyshecomes]

misc reads pt. 11

The legend of the music tree, ellen rupell shell, smithsonian magazine

The depths she'll reach: freediving's alenka artnik, xan rice, longlead

Sufi Islam thrives humorous, eloquent and poetic as ever, nile green, aeon

Mars is a hellhole, sharon stirone, the atlantic

Obliterating the natural world, nathan j. robinson, current affairs

What lies beneath, julian sancton, vanityfair

A winelike sea, caroline alexander, lapham's quaterly

The centuries-long quest for the scent of god, john last, noema magazine

Hayao miyazaki and the art of being a woman, gabrielle bellot, the atlantic

The death of the ‘chic’ writer, barry pierce dazed digital

All about eve—and then some, lili anoulik, vanityfair

The archive of a vanishing world, grace linden, noema magazine

In the land of living skies, suzannah showler, harper's magazine

Daydreams and fragments: on how we retrieve images from the past, maël renouard, lithub

The haunted city, azania imtiaz khatri-patel, aeon

Princes of infinite space, kyle paoletta, baffler

Humans are overzealous whale morticians, ben goldfarb, nautilus

immortal by default, jared farmer, lapham's quaterly

Short fic:

Morning, Noon & Night, claire louise-bennett, the white review

Office hours, ling ma, the atlantic

Nights at the hotel splendido, sam munson, granta

shanghai murmur, te-ping chen, the atlantic

The hydraulic emperor, arkady martine, uncanny magazine

Goodnight, melancholy, xia jia, clarkesworld magazine

#this has been in my drafts since may i think maybe earlier 😭 #articles #misc readings #readings #reading recommendations #ref #ref: mine #i don't know if this is actually part 11 i haven't been consistent w the numbers 🫡 #mine

[longreads]

Best of: Reported Essays

Our "Best of" package continues today with the reported essays we loved in 2023. We're showcasing a story on climate change and loss by Summer Praetorius at Nautilus, Jennifer Senior's piece on her aunt Adele, who was institutionalized as a baby for The Atlantic, Nick Bowlin on how climate change is affecting the mining industry at The Drift, fascinating (and surprising!) reportage on Pompeii from Guy D. Middleton for Aeon and Tom Vanderbilt's treatise on time for Harper's Magazine.

Check out the list and why we loved each piece, here.

#longreads #best of 2023 #reported essays #writing

[avaetin]

‘Yours is green. It’s a pity they're the wrong shade.'

@haiseiscute333 @sunshines-child

Dark! Percy...?

He wants to kill.

He wants to rip a person apart.

He wants to destroy everything.

But, above all, he wants Nico di Angelo.

Cold, sea green eyes gazed at the saved image of Nico on his phone - that one image taken by the paparazzi of him at the concert in Melbourne, Australia, smiling warmly towards the camera, his cheeks flushed a rosy pink from the heat and his skin glistening with a sheen of sweat. He looked so soft, so sweet… like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. And, oh, Percy had a ravenous appetite for him.

Seeing him tonight, bathing in his presence… his voice… his scent… his taste… Percy could feel his loins stirring from the memory.

The industry’s darling - his darling - had the face of an angel, but his body was the greatest sin incarnate. So soft and slender… Percy knew from memory that Nico’s thin and delicate waist can fit perfectly in his hands. His legs - gods those legs - which Percy had only seen in the magazines of his summer photoshoots. They were hairless and had the most perfect proportions. Percy was more than willing to worship them for hours. They would look glorious, littered with his marks… wrapped around his waist… or draped over his shoulders. It was possible, Percy was certain. Nico did tons of ridiculous poses, Percy was aware of how flexible his body was. Then there were his lips, those sweet bow-shaped lips. Percy had loved kissing them; they tasted absolutely divine.

But most importantly were those warm, brown eyes, more beautiful than any jewels in the world. So, so beautiful. So, so gorgeous. So, so… expressive.

Percy lifted one of his hands, the hands that touched Nico’s hips, and licked his palm. He moaned underneath his breath, the sound guttural, as the memory of his angel’s delicious groan surfaced to the front of his mind.

‘Percy.’ He stared at his image once more, engraving those mesmerizing eyes and that enchanting smile to his memory.

‘Percy.’ He licked his lips as he envisioned how debauched Nico would look like underneath him as he voraciously plunged into his depths. Gods, Nico shouting in euphoric rapture as Percy filled his tight body and claim him as his would be his greatest symphony.

‘P-Percy…!’ It mattered little to him that his brother got a taste of Nico first. As long as Percy was the last. He was confident that he could pleasure his angel a thousand times better than Aeon. And when he’s delirious with ecstasy, he would ingrain the truth into Nico’s senses.

Nico only needs him.

No one else.

Especially not Aeon.

“Percy… What are you doing out of bed…?” Percy turned around and stared at the pitiful yet voluptuous body on the queen-sized bed. She was a gem too. It’s a pity though that she was gray when he only wanted and needed brown.

Pressing his lips to the image of Nico, he locked his phone and placed it on the bedside table before he rejoined Annabeth on the bed. Staring at the image of his angel and thinking about him made him aroused to the point of needing to vent it out. The warm body could be used. Annabeth could be used.

“Hmm… Percy…”

“Don’t talk.” Percy only needed a warm body. Hearing her talk and seeing her visage was ruining his pleasure. Even her scent and her flavor ruined his fantasies. But they would have to do for now. Until he could have the actual person in his arms, her warm pliant body would just have to do.

“Pity…” Percy whispered into her ears as he slipped once more inside her depths and immediately started pounding into her core. Even in the haze of pleasure, Annabeth knew what he was thinking.

‘It’s a pity they’re gray. Would be nice if they were brown.’

She would let him have her one last time - as a parting gift - before she would break the terms of their agreement come morning. She was done playing his unwinnable game; she would rather some other poor unfortunate soul did before she completely lose herself.

An exhausted smile curled her lips as an amusing thought formulated in her head. Yes, perhaps it was a pity that her eyes weren’t those warm brown hues he had been yearning for. Still…

‘Yours is green. It’s a pity they're the wrong shade.'

#ceo! aeon x celebrity! nico di angelo #aeon (pjo) #nico di angelo #nion #percy jackson #annabeth chase #pjo #i only have one more part in mind lol