Reposted by RFBrownwardsNew Books at Project Gutenberg @new.gutenberg.org · 31/01/2026New #ebook at Project Gutenberg: The red brain by Donald Wandrei www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77823 033
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 01/02/2026I wonder if Melania’s documentary will be funny if you’re stoned at a midnight showing. 🥬 000
Reposted by RFBrownwardsOpen Culture @openculture.bsky.social · 31/01/2026Walter Benjamin Explains How Fascism Uses Mass Media to Turn Politics Into Spectacle (1935)openculture.comWalter Benjamin Explains How Fascism Uses Mass Media to Turn Politics Into Spectacle (1935)Image via Wikimedia Commons In his 1935 essay, 'The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproducibility,' influential German-Jewish critic Walter Benjamin introduced the term “aura' to describe an au... 03921
Reposted by RFBrownwardsAnthony Cross @anthonymcross.bsky.social · 23/01/2026I'm very excited to share the pre-print of my paper, "Algorithmic Recommendation and Aesthetic Flourishing," newly forthcoming in the Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism! #philsky #techethics #philai (See thread for the short preview)philpapers.orgAnthony Cross, Algorithmic Recommendation and Aesthetic Flourishing - PhilPapersIn the age of streaming, we face a pressing problem of aesthetic choice: how are we to navigate the overwhelming quantity of content to which we now have access? Streaming platforms ... 141
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 19/01/2026When I first noticed the Marx-Critical Theory Feed comically captures any #Bsky posts re Groucho Marx, I thought how Barthesian. But I see now content about Richard Marx I’m like, that’s so Baudrillard. 010
Reposted by RFBrownwardsan appliance is making a weird noise that isn't on youtube @jesseltaylor.bsky.social · 18/01/2026Average Sunday show interview: OFFICIAL: we are going to dip enemies of the state into acid vats HOST: how will you pay for it? OFFICIAL: tariffs HOST: critics say tariffs don't generate acid vat money OFFICIAL: tariffs have generated more money than has ever existed HOST: thank u for ur time 141152713641
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 19/01/2026Took six months off #Bsky to see if it would upgrade its utility,attract more reputational users. See you in six months. 000
Reposted by RFBrownwardsDan 💙💜💖 @youareaprogram.bsky.social · 19/01/2026Me at the gender studies murder mystery event: The Judith Butler did it! 2164
Reposted by RFBrownwardsThomas Harvey @happyspastic.bsky.social · 18/01/2026The "enshittification" of the internet is exactly what Marx would have predicted. 031
Reposted by RFBrownwardsMatthijs @mccaine.bsky.social · 18/01/2026I had a dream that I went back in time (by unexplained means) to convince Zacarias Moussaoui, who looked like a kind of emo twink, not to do 9/11 by convincing him of the truth of Marxism (??). It worked too 1191
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/07/2025Origin of May-December romance? From an 1818 ballad, An Old Man Would Be Wooing: "An old man, an old man, will never do for me, For May and December can never agree." Use this in conversation at your next cocktail party or social gathering. 💙📚 020
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/07/2025I do not use exclamation marks as I think that they are probably the most dispensable piece of punctuation to which a writer can descend unless he is writing for dumb actors. -Tennessee Williams 🖋️📚💙 000
Reposted by RFBrownwardsAllegra Rosenberg @tchotchke.bsky.social · 18/06/2025"Our online lives will reshape not only the practice of studying history but also how future generations will tell the story of the past." www.theatlantic.com/culture/arch...theatlantic.comArchivists Aren’t Ready for the ‘Very Online’ EraThe challenge: how to catalog and derive meaning from so much digital clutter 0295
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 13/06/2025(cont) For what one has lived is at best comparable to a beautiful statue which has had all its limbs knocked off in transit, and now yields nothing but the precious block out of which the image of one's future must be hewn? 🖊️📚💙 020
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 13/06/2025Only he who can view his own past as an abortion sprung from compulsion and need can use it to full advantage in the present. -Walter Benjamin, Agesilaus Santander 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 13/06/2025I have been a stranger here in my own land, all my life. -Antigone 🖋️📚💙 060
Reposted by RFBrownwards@LemonsGinger&IntLaw🤺 @lemonsginger.bsky.social · 09/06/2025For years , the study of humanities have been undermined , ridiculed and defunded . Philosophy, history , literature , language are the bases for critical thinking , but what is more important , they are the basis for empathy 111
Reposted by RFBrownwards𝘍𝘳𝘦𝘦 & 𝘌𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘭: A Journal of Ethics and Public Affairs @freeandequal.bsky.social · 10/06/2025In “Preference and Prevention: A New Paradox of Deontology,” Richard Yetter Chappell argues that even those who accept, for themselves, deontic constraints against serious wrongdoing cannot, if they care enough about others, always want others do to so. #moralphildoi.orgPreference and Prevention: A New Paradox of DeontologyIt’s commonly thought that we can reasonably oppose serious wrongdoing. For example, deontologist bystanders may prefer that an agent allows the killing of five rather than wrongly killing one as a me... 143
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 04/06/2025An art is like a living organism—better dead than dying. There is no way of making an aged art young again; it must be born anew and grow up from infancy as a new thing, working out its own salvation from effort to effort in all fear and trembling. -Samuel Butler, Erewhon 🖋️📚💙 020
Reposted by RFBrownwardsPaul Connolly @thepaulconnolly.bsky.social · 31/05/2025death cannot harm me more than you have harmed me, my beloved life. October by Louise Glück (From Averno, 2006) 0286
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 29/05/2025He didn’t know whether he was happy or felt like crying. At least he felt in harmony at such moments, he had nothing to do but wait quietly, without quite knowing for what. - Camus, The Silent Man 000
Reposted by RFBrownwardsAuthor R. A. Moss @author-r-a-moss.bsky.social · 26/05/2025This regime has taken Heller's insights on corruption and cruelty to nightmare proportions. Milo Minderbinder's moral twin now infests the White House. #booksky 💙📚 #HistoricalFiction ⏳📚 #booksky.club/main 📚💙 #bookskychat #sanity #litfic 🖋️📚 45414
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 21/05/2025No, he didn’t love her; he was merely afraid of what was not she. But who can always sleep alone? Some men do, cut off from others by a vocation or misfortune, go to bed every night in the same bed as death. -Camus, The Adulterous Woman 🖋️📚💙 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 19/05/2025I love having the category of a #literaryfiction feed on Bsky, but a lot of users seem to recently use the tags to promote “literary” “fiction” that aint either. Remember, Thou canst not be false to any man. 🖋️📚💙 151
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 19/05/2025I don’t find Hari Kunzru’s novel Blue Ruin a particularly innovative story, but it is an astute, philosophic examination of the tension between art as pure expression and art as capitalist endeavor. Have you read this, do you know if there are thematic links to Kunzru’s “red” and “white” novels? 🖋️📚💙 020
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 18/05/2025You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change. - Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 16/05/2025To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf, is the definitional modernist novel: plotless, subjectivity fragmented, allusive, alienating. It’s also an emotion-bending literary triumph. 🖋️📚💙 171
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 15/05/2025There is no description of the universe that isn't arbitrary and conjectural for a simple reason: we don't know what the universe is. -Borges, Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge 🖋️📚💙 131
Reposted by RFBrownwardsAuthor R. A. Moss @author-r-a-moss.bsky.social · 15/05/2025A lot of words remain to be written about the tears this regime is bringing to the world. If you write, do your duty. People need courage, comfort and hope. #booksky 💙📚 #HistoricalFiction ⏳📚 #booksky.club/main 📚💙 #bookskychat #sanity #litfic 08916
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 11/05/2025Poetry moment, with Asia: And now you find yourself in '82 The disco hot spots hold no charm for you You can concern yourself with bigger things You catch a pearl and ride the dragon's wings 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 08/05/2025A little sorrow, a little pleasure, Fate metes us from the dusty measure That holds the date of all of us; We are born with travail and strong crying, And from the birth-day to the dying The likeness of our life is thus. -Swinburne, "Ilicet" 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 29/04/2025Beauty came too readily, came too completely. One forgot the little agitations; the flush, the pallor, some queer distortion, some light or shadow, which made the face unrecognizable for a moment and added a quality one saw for ever after. -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 🖋️📚💙 020
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 29/04/2025What is the meaning of life? The great revelation never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark. Making of the moment something permanent. In the midst of chaos there was shape. -Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse 🖋️📚💙 030
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 20/04/2025The very stone one kicks with one's boot will outlast Shakespeare. -Woolf, To the Lighthouse 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/04/2025Murderbot Diaries 1: All Systems Red. Martha Wells. Tense, darkly hilarious, and both scary and hopeful about AI future. Convincingly detailed hard science re sentient artificial intelligence, astronautics, and space colonization. Do people recommend the rest of Murderbot series? #booksky💙📚 010
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/04/2025We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world.-Steinbeck, EoE🖊️📚💙 010
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/04/2025East of Eden: I marvel at Steinbeck’s commitment to scope, place both beautiful and bleak, and characters illustrating philosophy on the ontology of morality. Characters also a bit unnatural. Except Lee, the Chinese servant? Are there prior Western novels that gave us nuanced Asian characters?🖋️📚💙 030
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 17/04/2025Mr. Carson (for the defense): You are of opinion [Mr. Wilde], I believe, that there is no such thing as an immoral book? Oscar Wilde: Yes. Mr. Carson: May I take it that you think "The Priest and the Acolyte" was not immoral? Oscar Wilde: It was worse; it was badly written. 🖋️📚💙 050
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 16/04/2025The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed—the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. -Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator 000
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 16/04/2025Underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Most of their vices are attempted shortcuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and dying a cold horror.-Steinbeck, EoE🖊️📚💙 020
RFBrownwards @rfbrownwards.bsky.social · 16/04/2025There was a man who, lacking perception of human dignity and knowing all too well every aspect of human weakness, used his knowledge to warp men, to bribe and threaten. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and gladness he was dead. -Steinbeck, EoE 🖊️📚💙 000