Category: Blog
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Open questions
Here’s a list of questions that I’m looking for leads on. If you think you can answer any, or are able to point me in the direction of writing that deals with similar issues, please reach out; my contact is suspendedreason(at)gmail.com I’m also looking for:
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Flesh as Surface
“And I must go with stone feet / Down the staircase of flesh”—Ern Malley In the visual arts the past few years there’s been a slough of works that foreground the flesh, shoot meat in macro, and appropriate skin as texture.(Corpus as corpus.) We have Seth Price’s Danny, Mila, Hannah, Ariana, Bob, Brad, which showed…
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Ripple
It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are brokenPerhaps they’re better left unsung Grateful Dead, “Ripple” 1. Matching games We went into the pound blind. My aunt works in shelters, and I should have—but didn’t—reach out to gather intel: what are the signs, how do you know, how can you tell? The honest answers to such questions…
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Strategic Conceptualization
When consequences are the result of categorization, people will perform categories to attain their desired consequences. Categories carry with them a mix of connotations (social reputations) and decision rules (conventions for associated practice). Decision rules, that is, are domain-specific actions conditionally undertaken on the basis of whether a object or event under consideration is ruled…
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Précis for an action-oriented theory of language
What is a word, or message, or utterance? It is a move by an agent (~superorganism) undertaken in order to transform the environmental state, in a desired direction, by means of altering another agent’s information state. This transformation may occur directly, if the targeted slice of environment happens to be that agent whose informational state…
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Planète sauvage
I took 3-MeO-PCP for the first time in a long time, standing in the baby-blue kitchen of L & N’s Ridgewood apartment. I dissolved into litboard threads feat. The Brothers K, then schlepped across town to the Rubin c. 7:00 & smoked a spliff by the entrance & went inside the glass doors & went…
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Language Games: Work, Play, Simulacra
Our speech may not be rational, but it is motivated. When we choose to speak, we speak for reasons. Our perceptions alter our models, alter our decisions, alter our actions. Our actions alter others’ perceptions alter models alter decisions (ad infinitum). Advertising is communication with specific, narrow motivations: envisioned ends which, in conjunction with player…
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Girls S2: Lip Service
“How can I be manipulating you if I don’t even know I’m being manipulative?” This, out of Hannah Horvath’s mouth after asking her father for a loan. This is the question of the Girls S2 finale. What does interpersonal manipulation really look like? Can we manipulate in a way that appears to be denying our…
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Short-term, long-term in selection games
Natural Hazard prompts in the Pfeilstorch server: “The biggest problem with misrepresenting who you are in dating is that you might succeed.” Generalized: “The biggest reason to not strategically misrepresent yourself in a selection game is that you might succeed.” What properties of a selection game determine if or when this is good advice? Selection…
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Adaptation ripples in the NBA
Last time: Bateson was very interested in nontransitive comparisons, possibly because they subvert the commonsense transitivity of hierarchy and dominance which in many cases we read into the data because of our expectations. We rank sports teams for a winner at the end of the season, yet this final ranking aggregates a lot of non-transitivity…
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All Is Well E28: Functional Railroading
Previously, on communication as manipulation: “Consensual and Non-Consensual Manipulation,” “All Communication is Behavioral Manipulation,” “All Communication is Manipulation,” “Linguistic Fit,” “Is strategic interaction Machiavellian?,” “A Landscape of Communication,” and “ACiM is a Natural Extension of Cybernetic Theory.” Timestamped link to clip under discussion, beginning 5:30 in. Shi Tiandong, love interest of protagonist Su Mingyu, is…
Suspended Reason 