Pierrick Simon

@pierricksimon.bsky.social

987 Followers 502 Following

Philosopher. Working on philosophical exercises, philosophy as a way of life, and political disagreements. Enthusiastic about: #phenomenology, #mindfulness, #hermeneutics and the medical humanities. https://philosophicalexercises.blogspot.com/

Image from the title page to The Strange and Wonderful History of Mother Shipton (1686) An old woman flipping through pages with strange images and diagrams.
picture of a cat lying in dried mint. The poster asks "is it OK for cat to lie in dried mint?"
Thomas Cole - Architect’s Dream An architect is seated at the top of a huge pillar of stone. All around them is a vast landscape filled with immense buildings, as if they were "dreamed up" by the architect to fill the world around.
Cuno Amiet Schneelandschaft 1904 Description: a solitary figure looking very small against the gigantic background of a land of snow, trudging in a snow storm. At the top of the painting, a little bit of landscape horizon, just enough to add to the impression of grandeur of the landmass of snow
someone cosplaying as J.R.R. Tolkien watching 1 minute of gameplay from shadow of mordor ; @paddywagz on youtube
‘Dear Sir,’ I said - ‘Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons - ’twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we’re made.’ SOURCE: found in "on fairy stories" in "The Monsters and the critics and other essays"
any austin in a youtube interview from a channel "conversations with tyler" ; title of the video "any austin on the hermeneurtics of video games"
"Yes, that is a tricky problem. I have only one player, so I only have limited experience, but I did run into this. At some point it occurred to me that we were playing DND, but that most people in the hobby were quite disconnected from History. I started to suspect: "wow, I am not sure the majority of people who play this game truly understand what a "noble" is, or what a "knight" is, or why on earth people would want "slaves"". They have an anachronistic vision of these things. With my player, the solution that I found was to have talks in and out of game about the history of these things, and to make it clear that if they want to interact with this world they will have to deal with the fact that the NPCs think this way. With a lot of social encounters found within the game, my player had to engage with the fact that the NPCs had a feudal mentality. Also, one thing that helped is that I always allowed this player to play their character with 21rst century ethical ideas: after all, all eras have their trailblazers and their philosophical heroes, so you can't restrict them by saying "you are not allowed to expect better of the world". This way you have a compromise: they bring in their ethical sensibilities, but they cease to think that NPCs are personally stupid or personally sociopathic, as opposed to just historically stupid & historically sociopathic :) My attitude was "look, why are we playing a game set in a medieval looking world or an ancient looking world if we are not going to truly connect with these time periods? Is it just superficial aesthetic fluff? What would be the point of that?" I was bummed at the thought of that, and so I decided to be frank and pedagogical."
r/Meditation post that reads "What are these pleasant feelings? Why did they arise?"
"Cool Air By H. P. Lovecraft" "You ask me to explain why I am afraid of a draught of cool air; why I shiver more than others upon entering a cold room, and seem nauseated and repelled when the chill of evening creeps through the heat of a mild autumn day. There are those who say I respond to cold as others do to a bad odour,"
reddit post that says "Accidentally became too mindful while eating a Dorito" tagged "Question"
Owen Ware says: "As I see it, beneath the plot of Ofterdingen is an exploration of how the self originates, how we lose a sense of connection with nature and with others, and how we might regain that connection from a higher standpoint. Novalis works with the Romantic idea that the challenge we face is one of integrating reason and sensibility into a more complex form of harmony that still allows for individuality, differentiation, and particularity."
From "Ecophilosophy as a Way of Life" by Freya Mathews: "As a latter-day expression of such a root tradition, the figure of the ecophilosopher could, in a contemporary Western setting, claim considerable authenticity, authority, and gravitas. For those of us wishing to defect from modern, techno-industrial civilisation, an identity as a philosopher might grant us social licence to flout cultural norms and push back against social pressures. Turning up to our workplace or to social gatherings looking home-spun, gap-toothed, dressed in simple, perhaps second-hand, attire, without vanity, oblivious of the fads and trends"
Stuff that worked for me to unlock the second jhana (according to the notes that I took at the time): - I was advised to not worry too much about achieving a complete absence of discursive thinking. Getting obsessed with this would be a distraction. - I was told it was okay to *reflect on* how pleasant the sensations were in first jhana, and to get really joyful and happy about how pleasant these sensations were. In this way, you are smoothly transitioning from pleasant sensations (j1) to the acknowledgement of pleasant sensations in the form of gratitude, happinness, compassion.
"It's fine for a character to not be the main mover/shaker that shapes the world's events. They can be a passive person. But they should not be a passive character. I feel like a passive character is someone who goes "oh wow, that's crazy, anyway...". They react to what's happening around them but they don't do that very human thing that everyone does of trying to *interpret* what the events around them mean. Of trying to get at what the events should mean for them personnally. Even a passive person does that. I always like to make a distinction between the plot and the story precisely because of paradoxes like this. It's fine for the character to not move the plot forward (the facts, events, chain reactions), but we must feel like they drive the story forward (the emotional engagement we have with the mystery that is the tale being told). We ask "What's gonna happen next? Will people be okay?" and we must feel like the main character is at the center of that emotional engagement."
"I think doing research is worth the time, but doing research only for the sake of being "accurate" is not worth it, no. The point of research is for you to have a greater understanding of how different or similar the historical period was from yours: being curious in that way makes it so there is a "good reason" for your story to be set in that period and not another. I would go as far as to say that you could disregard anything that comes up in your research: you can just decide to do some anachronisms if you want, if you think that it serves your plan better than being "accurate". Still, you need to know that you are doing it. It's not homework done so that the readers are not mad at you, it's more an exploration of what attracted to a different era in the first place :) It's fun"
You Guys Are Getting Paid We're the Millers Meme Template. "My hypnagogic hallucinations are visual" "Mine are auditory" "you guys have hallucinations?" "you guys remember falling asleep?"
"How can I write a callous main character without making him unlikable or annoying?" OP adds: "(callous means emotionally hardened, unsympathetic, and insensitive to the suffering of others)"
disco elysium parody with a Dan Dennett quote "“If you can approach the world's complexities, both its glories and its horrors, with an attitude of humble curiosity, acknowledging that however deeply you have seen, you have only scratched the surface, you will find worlds within worlds, beauties you could not heretofore imagine, and your own mundane preoccupations will shrink to proper size, not all that important in the greater scheme of things."
a black and white drawing of a man falling off his horse because he is blinded by divine light (like saint paul on the road to damascus). The man is labelled "Me" and the divine light is labelled "the driest phenomenological text"
Mythos Special Gifts A Human wills their breath and sees in the sun. A Rarkan wills their heart and sees in the night. A Gnome wills their memory and sees aeons past. An Elf wills the world and sees everything.
"How to write an evil protagonist who is not an edgelord" "It seems there is a fine line between writing compelling evil protagonists whose actions we know are wrong, but who are intriguing nonetheless (Walter White, Anakin Skywalker, Louis the vampire) and "edgy" characters, who the author intended to come across as irredeemable, but who are widely misinterpreted by audiences as role models or attempts to justify terrible philosophies (Eren Jaeger, Joker, Patrick Bateman)."
D&D tactical map, which includes pirate ships and a huge sperm whale blocking their path.
yoda in a swamp, looking unassuming, saying "oggg. Great warrior." and then "Wars not make one great."
r/writinghelp asks "What are some ways you can die, realistically, at 17?"
yoda in a swamp, saying "ohhh. Great warrior... Wars not make one great"
a black and white picture of ilsetraut hadot in 2015
A sith (darth maul) meditating in the lotus pose, and darth siduous congratulating him on his "stilness and quiet". The drawing evokes a blend of rage and stilness with destroyed buildings in the background and stark red and black colours
a quote from an academic paper where the term "bad-making features" appears, as well as "good-making features"
"Mengzi replied, "It would not. My heart has been unperturbed since I was forty" from the Essential Mengzi
jar of nutella flying by the camera of the livestream of the Integrity spaceship preparing for a lunar flyby
NASA Live event starts soon
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: the unlikely domino meme "Fascist Takeover" allegedly caused by "George Lucas decides bad soap opera dialogue is a feature, not a bug, of his potentially culture-defining pre-quel trilogy about fascist takeover"
But now you may go on to say, 'What is this rest you are speaking of? To me it seems to be all hard work, and painful at that: certainly no rest ! When I set out to do what you say I find nothing but pain and battle on every side. On one hand my mind would draw me away, but I will not let it; on the other I want to be aware of God, not of myself, yet I cannot do it. There is war everywhere and pain. It is a very odd sort of rest you are speaking of!' My answer is this, 'You are not yet used to this sort of exercise, so it is bound to be most painful for you. But once you get accustomed to it and know by experience how much profit is in it you will not willingly quit it for all the joy and rest in the world. And yet it is admittedly very painful and difficult. I still call it "rest" however, fo r the soul has no doubt as to what it ought to do and, what is more, it is made so much more confident (I am speaking of the time of this activity) that it is not likely to go far wrong.'
on r/Meditation "Does anyone have recos for a moderate level book on Buddhism? I am not ready for multiple Buddhas. I am not ready for judging someone else’s karma can bring me bad Karma. I am not ready for only A Buddha can judge karma using our past and present lives. I am not ready for multiple lives."
Marc Andreessen tweets "You're a 15 second sliding context window with the working memory of a goldfish, your long term memory is mainly fake, and it's a minor miracle you can get out of the door in the morning."
Black bird, on a tree, surrounded by branches, against a blue background.
A Common Kingfisher in England. It has blue upperparts, orange underparts and a long bill link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Alcedo_atthis_-England-8_(cropped).jpg
from Reddit: "I don't have suggestions, but I'll just confirm that, yes, twitching and twitcher have a negative connotation. It's a derisive term more often used in the UK birding community but familiar elsewhere. It describes a type of birder who hardly cares for birds themselves but merely cares about adding a tick to one's lifelist. People have stories of twitchers driving a thousand miles to the site of an extreme rarity, stepping out of the car, getting a photo, and getting right back in the car and heading home. Twitchers are sometimes described as deeply selfish and sometimes unethical; they might hoard information about interesting birds or enjoyable birding sites, not help others spot what they're seeing, might trespass, might use playback during breeding season, etc. In North America the rough synonym is listing or lister, though that has a less harsh meaning. It often encompasses the hobby of keeping track of sightings in personal ways, such as what you've seen at home (a yard list), in your local area (a patch list), or any number of arbitrary lists that are effectively a side-game to play while still enjoying birds as something more than a "collectible"."
a great cormorant fishing in the water
from "A New Refutation of Time" by Borges Text reads: "A fifth-century Buddhist treatise, the Visuddhimagga, or The Path to Purity, illustrates the same doctrine with the same figure: "Strictly speaking, the life of a being lasts as long as an idea. Just as a rolling carriage wheel touches earth at only one point, so life lasts as long as a single idea" (Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy I, 373). Other Buddhist texts say that the world is annihilated and resurges six billion five hundred million times a day and that every man is an illusion, vertiginously wrought by a series of solitary and momentary men"