Daniel

Meme-style image with the words "Kierkegaard would have killed on Twitter" above, and then an excerpt from Kierkegaard's journal (1838) that reads: “I have just returned from a party of which I was the life and the soul; witty banter flowed from my lips, everyone laughed and admired me—but I came away, indeed that dash should be as long as the radii of the earth’s orbit——————————————————wanting to shoot myself.”

Well— 🤔

#Kierkegaard #philosopy

The Origin of the Research University—Asterisk Universities have existed for more than a thousand years — and for almost all of that time, they weren’t centers of research. What changed in 19th century Germany?

"If you’ve ever been personally victimized by the need to publish or perish, you can blame one man, and his name was Gerlach Adolph von Münchhausen." 🤨

#academia

asteriskmag.com/issues/10/th...

Writing for 'the Public' Won't Save Us | The Chronicle of Higher Education Humanists created new venues to affirm our value. Now they're at risk of collapsing too.

I'm nearly blind from all the eye rolling I did reading this "essay," and I'm not even sorry for saying so. 🙄

#selfpity #humanities #givemeabreak

archive.today/BIR5M

Image of the mechanical ladder outside the Louvre Text below says WENN'S MAL WIEDER SCHNELL GEHEN MUSS (When you need to move fast) Underneath is more German text which translates as "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

The German company that makes the mechanical ladder used in the Louvre heist has used the image to advertise, with the text 'When you need to move fast'

10/10 response, no notes

How's this Daryl Dixon #WalkingDead series? I gave up on The Walking Dead around season six, bc zombie stories are the same thing over and over, and I never finished Fear the Walking Dead for the same reason. But zombies in France might be an interesting twist.

As for lava tubes in Hawaiʻi, I would typically leave those to others, but I've done it. They're pretty dark, featureless, and narrow, but sometimes open up to bigger cavities where cultural material is sometimes found. But it can be a lot of worming your way through them. Not my favorite thing.

The wild cave tour in Mammoth Cave is actually pretty fun and interesting, although there's some crawling on your stomach through some tight spaces for a few meters at some points, and they warn the men about a formation they call "circumcision rock." 😱

"Such a task will impress most readers as abstruse."

Well, OK, but here I am. Lol

Ohhh man—I guess I shouldn't regale you with tales of doing archaeology in lava tubes in Hawaiʻi. Or tell you about the time my ex-husband and I did the wild cave tour at Mammoth Cave NP. 😅

Now I wish I was a time traveler, so I could make Socrates my best frenemy. 😥 Alas!

This is perfection. 👌🏼

#LouvreHeist

My friend: Did you just call Plato a ding dong?

Me: Nooo, I called Socrates a ding dong, bc he is.

😹😹😹

😹😹😹

Mdr, j'ai oublié ces expressions. Ben, j'était vraiment comme un lapin autrefois—j'étais allé tellement de plaisir à rencontrer des mecs et à être à la hauteur de la réputation du lapin. 😹😹🤷🏻‍♂️ Mais, je pense pas avoir jamais posé un lapin. 🤔 Maybe.

And if I recall correctly, it’s the only known ice age cave with images of sea creatures.

#archaeology #UpperPaleolothic

The "Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt" by Gustav Klimt showcases the artist's signature style, blending realism with rich ornamental details. Surrounded by vibrant patterns and figures reminiscent of Byzantine art, the Baroness is depicted in a dreamlike, elaborate ensemble, reflecting Klimt's fascination with opulence and the human figure.

Portrait of Baroness Elisabeth Bachofen-Echt
https://botfrens.com/collections/109/contents/28576

How my fake accent became a full-blown identity experiment | Psyche Turning Points When I spoke like someone I wasn’t, people listened more closely. What did that say about them – and me?

Sometimes I think about legally changing my name to Luc Lapin, which is a little joke—lapin is French for rabbit, I was born in Year of the Rabbit, and I could sign my name with two lowercase cursive l's, which would look like bunny ears. I hadn't considered a new accent and backstory, as well. 🤔

How do you know what it's like to be you?

Mushrooms, usually—they're very good for that.

Heard about the Louvre jewel heist and my first thought was “finally, some good old fashioned normal crime”

Glad you enjoyed it, and I agree. Human matters are trivial and fleeing (on a cosmic scale), but the playfulness between man and cat is timeless. I like Montaigne's question—who is playing with whom?—bc I ask myself that same thing all the time. 😹

70% Off Sale

In a grim world, some good things continue, such as the annual @princetonupress.bsky.social 70% off sale. press.princeton.edu/sale/70-off

This reminds me of the ninth century poem "Pangur Bán" written by an Irish monk. Pangur Bán was his white cat. I legit feel connected to this monk across the centuries. Sometimes I think my cat Thibaut (who's also white) and I are the reincarnations of them both. 🤷🏻‍♂️

*This* is Salvador Dalí?! 🫨
(It is. I looked it up.)

(As an aside, Sagan touches briefly on psychedelics—which he says he's never tired when he wrote this essay—in the final paragraph.)

Mr. X (Carl Sagan) on Marijuana This account was written in 1969 for publication in Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). Sagan was in his mid-thirties at that time. He continued to use cannabis for the rest of his life.

And speaking of #cannabis, Carl Sagan, writing as Mr. X, shared his perspective on it in this essay included in Grinspoon's book Marihuana Reconsidered (1971). I'd read it before, but it was interesting to revisit with new questions about how cannabis experiences overlap with psychedelic ones.

I'm so fascinated by this, because what was actually happening to her? Surely she wasn't *really* levitating. 🤔

publicdomainreview.org/essay/the-re...

(I figured it had something to do with weed, but I never asked bc I didn't want to appear too pedestrian about such things. Big mistake—always ask or look it up. Lol. But it was for consuming cannabis concentrates, aka dabs. #til)

I've been learning a lot about cannabis for the last week or two, since I didn't really know anything about it, and now I finally understand why my grad school buddy had a gigantic butane torch in his apartment. 😹😹😹

Screenshot of the paper's abstract, which reads: Aesthetic experience is widely believed to foster creativity, yet the neural mechanisms mediating this link remain poorly defined. Here, we propose five key brain networks that may support this process and systematically review the evidence. In the creative generation stage, immersive aesthetic stimuli first activate the default mode network (DMN), which supports memory retrieval and spontaneous divergent thinking. Concurrently, the executive control network (ECN) remains suppressed, enabling associative thinking and intuitive creativity, while the salience network (SN) monitors novel or emotionally salient features. During the creative evaluation stage, aesthetic processing synergistically engages the SN, DMN, and ECN. The SN flexibly modulates the coupling between the DMN and ECN. The DMN contributes to affective and interoceptive evaluation, retrieves prototypical events, and supports insight generation, whereas the ECN inhibits conventional ideas, facilitates mental set shifting, and promotes the formation of novel associations. In the creative expression stage, aesthetic experience recruits the sensorimotor network (SMN), enhancing creative output and improvisational capability. Across all three stages, the reward system (RS) plays a dual role in both initiating and sustaining creativity. Dopamine released in response to aesthetic pleasure increases cognitive flexibility and task persistence during the generation and evaluation stages. In the expression stage, it maintains high creative motivation, thereby driving creative implementation and reinforcing emotional resonance. Importantly, none of these stages is mediated by a single brain region or network; instead, creativity is supported by the dynamic reconfiguration of connections within and between these networks. Finally, the review addresses current challenges in the field and proposes promising future directions.