Monthly Archives: May 2022
The two Avatars.
Both Avatar: The Last Airbender and James Cameron’s Avatar are allegories of Westerners who take pleasure in the fantasy of inhabiting and controlling Others.
Friendliness, not friendship.
The easiest way to negotiate is to treat your “partner” as someone with nothing you need.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
Talking heads who started talking about US black/white politics six weeks ago are remarkably obnoxious and opinionated about it.
Capitalist nature.
Chicago meatpackers used to say “everything but the squeal” is sellable; this is the actual source of the apocryphal idea that “Plains Indians use every part of the buffalo.”
The year is now.
Reformists and realists alike are exaggerating how much they are willing to risk and how resilient their system is.
We appear to need them, but they in reality need us.
Our recognition of their supposed specialness is the effect, not the cause of their actual power over us.
Covid19 world.
The lack of undue deference is not a lack of civility; it is simply that certain survival tactics have turned suicidal.
Gratitude.
Anytime I want to criticize an ancestor as “insufficiently radical,” I remind myself that their struggles are what afford me half a chance at surviving.
The prejudice against contingency.
Most of the times we say we’re overdetermined, we are actually underdetermined.
I am resolved to drag my feet.
The more bullshit work we do, the more bullshit work we receive.
Art of Aphorism 
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