Something Something 3DS [chat]

So, the Nintendo 3DS. It makes things appear to be three-dimensional. So that's...kind of neat, right? It's...another dimension. And we've only ever had two.

It's kind of like...imagine that you've spent your entire life Pressing A to swing a sword...but now...imagine this...but NOW in order to swing that sword you shake a piece of plastic. I mean...that would be amazing; there is no way that would be stupid.

I mean, imagine Mario in 3 dimensions. It's like taking having to stand directly under a block in two dimensions...and then adding another dimension. There's no way that would be a fucking pain in the ass, right?

O'Malley's Finest Hour

O'Malley has.
We cannot has.

Spinoza and Dating: People are not Substances

So far today I have written 16 pages on Spinoza's account of epistemology and just now, while writing an explanation for a completely nonsensical proposition from Book Two, I had an epiphany about my dating life which, I assume, resulted from my having spent the day writing about Spinoza. So, I am going to share my epiphany if only to provide a bit of insight into how my fucked-up mind works.

So, I have always thought that if Player-A loves Player-B, and Player-B loves Player-A, then Player-A and Player-B ought to, by way of their relationship, make the other the entirety of their life. This is to say that, if I have a girlfriend, then I ought not have to require anything but that other person to make my life meaningful. My being with that other person ought to be meaning enough. In a similar fashion, the partner of me ought to be able to make me their focus such that I fulfill all of their needs. Why would I need to play Disgaea if I have a girlfriend? Why would my girlfriend need to spend time with her friends if she loves me? Insofar as the relationship is a loving one, then that love, in and of itself, ought to be a sufficient source of meaning and happiness for the two persons involve. That, as far as I was concerned, was simply what a loving relationship is and what a loving relationship does.

Multiple persons throughout my life told me that I was wrong for multiple reasons. They would cite social precedent; they would cite the business of life and its time constraints. They would cite all sorts of nonsense. But I knew these other people to be incorrect given that I thought myself to be correct insofar as it would be foolish for me to think something which was, in fact, false.

But then I had my little epiphany. And here's what it is:

1D3: "By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself, i.e., that whose concept does not require the concept of another thing, from which it must be formed.

1D5: "By mode I understand the affections of a substance, or that which is in another through which it is also conceived."

Human beings are not substances. Human beings are modes.

So the real reason, the actual reason, for why one cannot rely upon one's significant other for the entirety of one's needs is not for any reason other than the fact that a particular person is not a substance. A particular person is not "in itself" or "conceived through itself". A particular person is a mode, reliant upon something else, conceived through something else

So Player-A, as a mode, relies upon X for its being. Player-B, as a mode, also relies upon X for its being. Even if Player-A and Player-B are in a loving relationship, each still relies upon X for its being. Since Player-A and Player-B each rely upon X, it is not the case that Player-A or Player-B can replace X. Neither Player-A nor Player-B can take the place of X, as they are reliant upon it.

So, Player-A cannot rely upon Player-B, exist purely through Player-B, because Player-B is itself reliant upon X, just as Player-A relies upon X. So it makes no sense, metaphysically, for Player-A to try to rely upon Player-B rather than X, given that there is no way for Player-B to have all of the qualities of X given the relationship of reliance between Player-B and X.

One could argue that Player-A could try to get its X by way of Player-B. The problem is that Player-B has only finite access to X. If Player-A relies upon Player-B for its access to X, then suddenly Player-B must collect twice as much X as it did on its own, which is impossible, in order to provide Player-A with an adequate amount of X. The issue is not one of fairness, of dependence, or any social nonsense. The problem is that, metaphysically, Player-B is incapable of increasing its access to X. So for Player-B to attempt to provide Player-A with adequate X fundamentally depletes Player-B of X, and denies Player-A of an adequate amount of X.

It's just math.

My further confusion resulted from a faulty understanding of love. I thought love to be an inexplicably powerful source of compassion, selflessness, care, and concern by way of which any two people, who mutually enacted a relationship with one another predicated on love, could be together subsumed in an eternal torrent of bliss, happiness, and self-actualization to such a degree that naught was required but that pure, unquashed love.

But, of course, this is not what love is:

2A3: "There are no modes of thinking, such as love, desire, or whatever is designated by the word affects of the mind, unless there is in the same Individual the idea of the thing loved, desired, etc. But there can be an idea, even though there is no other mode of thinking."

See? Love is not an inexplicable force which transcends reason and physical limitations to eternally bind two persons whose hearts beat as one; love is just an affect of the mind.

The problem was that I thought a relationship predicated on love to be a manner by which two persons could become mutually reliant, subsisting upon naught but their love for one another as they strode forward towards the horizon of the future, hand-in-hand as a team which could overcome all odds as their hearts grew to be eternally entwined.

But it turns out that that a relationship is just two modes engaging in a mutual affect of the mind who, on occasion, get naked, rub against each other, and then get bored after a while.

My mistake.

Green Hornet: Seth Rogen > Ben Affleck?

So, here's my thing.

If Green Hornet is better than Daredevil, does that mean that Seth Rogen is better than Ben Affleck?

Haley Barbour: Moratorium Worse Than Spill

David Gregory: Governor, what's worse, the moratorium or the effects of this spill on the region?

Haley Barbour: Well, the moratorium... the spill's a terrible thing, but the moratorium is a terrible thing that's not only bad for the region, it's bad for America. 30% of the oil produced in the United States comes from the Gulf of Mexico, and 80% of that is from deepwater drilling. So that's a fourth of all our oil. This is gonna drive the price of energy up!"


I really wonder if there is any point at which these fuckwits would change which side of the scale they favor:


One Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and they're still favoring the $ over the PLANET ON WHICH THEY RELY FOR LIFE. Is this one of those things where if they, themselves, are waist deep in oil they're still going to argue in favor of drilling? Or is there a point at which their heads come out of their asses? Have we reached a point where industrialization and capitalism have literally won, and if the entirety of the world was paved, all species dead except for ourselves and shit we eat, then Haley Barbour is fine and dandy so long as the dollar has a value superior to that of the euro?

I'm genuinely curious at this point. Because some of these assholes seem to be entirely ok with a paved world. If we destroyed every single plant, ever, but created machines to convert CO2 to oxygen would they be fine with that world? Is that what they want?

I thought that we as a species were sort of begrudgingly giving up nature to accomodate our other desires, that the goal was to strike a balance. But...this shit isn't a balance. When Haley Barbour maintains that economic concerns are more important than environmental concerns? That shit is scary.

The moritorium makes energy more expensive. The oil spill kills millions of life forms. And what Haley Barbour cares about is the cost of energy.

That's like a gunner on the Death Star thinking the problem with the destruction of Alderaan is that it requirs a recharge of the fucking laser.

Scott Pilgrim Trailer Songs

Scott Pilgrim Trailer Songs Mix Tape

It shall be the greatest movie, ever.
With the greatest soundtrack, ever.

Calories: You cannot "has"!

I have a package of eggs here according to which one egg has 70 calories. I also have a container of grapefruit juice indicating that 8 fluid ounces has 90 calories. But did you know that both the package of eggs and the container of juice are propagating a lie? Did you know that, in fact, eggs and grapefruit juice do not have calories? Did you know that no thing, at all, ever, has calories?

I just learned this yesterday, and it fucking pissed me off. Because, apparently, nothing instantiates the predicate "calorie", because "calorie" is not a predicate to be instantiated in the way that, say, "brown" is instantiated in particular piles of shit.

A calorie (with regard to food, a kilogram calorie) is a unit of energy the base unit of which is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius, which is about 4.18 joules (kilojoules when pertaining to food). What is a joule? Well, a joule is the energy exerted by the force of one newton acting to move an object through a distance of one metre. What is a newton? A newton is equal to the amount of net force required to accelerate a mass of one kilogram at a rate of one meter per second per second.

Do you understand any of that? Neither do I; because there was never a Magic School Bus episode about it.

Here's the thing, though: It is not the case that an egg has 70 calories. Rather, 70 calories is the amount of energy "given off", in a very loose and imprecise sense, by the egg when the egg is made subject to cellular respiration, which is this:

C6H12O6 (aq) + 6 O2 (g) → 6 CO2 (g) + 6 H2O (l)
ΔG = -2880 kJ per mole of C6H12O6

Whatever the fuck that is.

If one were to cut open an egg one would not find calories; calories would not be discerned by way of any of the five senses. Hell, one probably could not even derive calories from the eternal essence of eggness. Eggs do not have calories. Or, as it is written on the wikipedia page for Food Energy:

Nutritionists usually talk about the number of calories in a gram of a nutrient, but this implies that the food actually 'contains' energy. It's better to say that each gram of food (fuel) is associated with a particular amount of energy (released when the food is respired).

j'accuse!!!

If you read the 38 definitions for "has" none of them are applicable to the "relation" between calories and eggs, calories and grapefruit juice, calories and anything. Calories are not had, calories are not contained within, calories are not instantiated. Rather, calories are a way of talking about eggs with regard to a particular metabolic process of human beings. Independent of that process? Calories are entirely inapplicable to eggs.

So, here is another example of how anthropocentric jackassery skews the articulation of ontological entities within the world to be subject to human beings. We do not discuss eggs in themselves, eggs as they would be unperceived, unthought, unencountered by human beings, but rather discuss eggs in terms of human beings. Despite the fact that "has 70 calories" is a completely false, completely untrue, completely nonsensical predicate to apply to an egg, we fucking do it anyway. Because, well, we only care about, we only think about, eggs with respect to their utility towards a particular metabolic process of human beings. Eggs do not have calories, but with respect to a particular metabolic process we can consider eggs in terms of calories. So let's just put "70 calories" on the Nutritional Information sticker, because fuck the definitions of "contain" and "has"; we're anthropocentric jackasses who just want to know what eggs are to us.

It's the fucking BP Oil Spill all over again. We can't run a car on pelicans, we can't build a computer out of sea turtles, so fuck 'em! We are anthropocentric jackasses who only care about ourselves and our immediate needs. So fuck language, fuck the definitions of "contains" and "has", fuck nounemal eggs, let's just say that an egg has 70 calories because we're so fucking great that we can just do that. Is it true? No. Does it subvert one's understanding of eggs and their qualities? Yes. Is it completely butt-fucking stupid and a needless skewing of reality towards the needs of human beings irrespective of the actual, true qualities of the thing in itself? Sure.

But, man, can you imagine how big Nutritional Information stickers would be if they accurately articulated information such that it was true? Fuck making big stickers; let's just lie; let's just say that an egg has 70 calories.

Despite the definition of "has".
Despite the definition of "calorie".
Despite the ontological qualitites of eggs.
Despite truth.
Despite anything.

It's just easier this way.