Weird Studies

30 Oct 2021 02:15 - 17 Jun 2023 02:01
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    • My current fave podcast, covering art and philosophy from a very specific angle, which is difficult to describe but very real, it's the subject of their mostly-fake academic subfield. The weird is that which cannot be characterized, so there is a certain enjoyable level of irony going on here about the project, which is playful and yet deadly serious.
    • The episodes are always thought-provoking, and the guys have tastes which at least overlap strongly with mine. (They tend to be too art/occulty/woo-woo, and I have issues with that, but I have decided to suppress my scientimism gag reflexes).
    • I just realized that this site started out by having a collection of linked notes in response to rationalism LWMap/A Map That Reflects the Territory, and these guys are like the polar opposite, they are quite militantly anti-rationalism, that's kind of their thing. Not to oppose reason as such, but certainly its deployment as civilizational ideology
      See Technic and Magic for an elaborately developed theory of evil rationalism (technic) vs its salvific opposite magic.
      , its role in capitalism and the dehumanizing effects of science and modernity. My relationship to both groups is weirdly similar: kind of attracted but also repulsed by certain elements, and writing a bunch of web pages to try to work out where I actually stand.
    • Their episodes are so rich I'm going to try to give each one its own page (see the sidebar). I haven't even listened to that much of their back catalog, but every one I have listened to has provoked interesting thoughts. Making a page-per-episode is a bit of an experiment and some might be kind of skimpy.