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soulcruzer

soulcruzer

working notes from the textual underground

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Shadow Work as an Ongoing Conversation

A short note on rereading Debbie Ford, noticing our reactions, and treating shadow work as an ongoing conversation with the self.

Debbie Fordnarrative alchemy

I finished Spotify the Gnostics, Here's the First Church of David Bowie. The first part was a nostalgic trip through the 80s. I enjoyed that; however, I bought the book for the second part, Sean Manseau's Phonomancy work. a bit disappointed. Read like a drug-fuelled psychodelusional trip through his own ego consciousness. Maybe my discomfort...

PhonomancySean Manseau

Somewhere I Belong (and it’s not in my head): a mixtape

A rock mixtape for crawling out of the rut: Linkin Park, Papa Roach, System of a Down, Avenged Sevenfold, and the stubborn desire to live the thing instead of performing a brand.

I asked this question a couple of years ago. I would rephrase the question now. The world definitely doesn't owe you a meaning. You have to make it for yourself. It's built slowly from the choices you make that compound over time. You can be free without direction. You can have direction without freedom. What...

mind and meaningquestions

I'm wondering if invoking the ends justify the means argument to support why it's ok to use AI in creative endeavours is a little extreme. I was reading Moody Warlock's blog post last night about using AI for DND worldbuilding. His main argument against the use of AI is that there is no blood, sweat,...

Existential Consent Consent is the move most people miss when they talk about uncertainty. We have better words, or at least more familiar ones. Acceptance. Surrender. Choice. Courage. Faith. We reach for them because they're already waiting on the shelf, already worn smooth by use. But each one bends the thing slightly out of shape....

The Mirror That Answers Back

The old questions have not changed much. How should I live? Who am I becoming? What is worth paying attention to? What is freedom? What is wisdom? What is the soul, if we dare still use that word? These questions predate Socrates. They predate writing. They are carved into the bones of the species, and...

Pierre HadotSnow White

I've been testing the Kospet Tank M4 special edition smartwatch. It's a fraction of the cost of something like the Apple Ultra smartwatch. Performance so far has been top-notch.

lifestyleSmartwatch

What happens to human meaning-making when thought itself becomes networked?

I'm not asking what happens to productivity or output. I'm asking what happens to meaning. When thinking is distributed across human-AI systems, something genuinely new appears. Not better thinking or faster thinking. A different category. Meaning that emerges from the interchange itself, that no single node, human or machine, can claim to have authored. You...

Meaning-MakingMind and Meaning

Ted Nelson: The universe is a system of ever-changing relationships

https://youtu.be/Bqx6li5dbEY?si=wO7lmNCkCIT33JI_ This short clip from Ted Nelson in Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World is less about technology and more about a philosophy of connection. Nelson reflects on the core insight that has guided his life's work: reality is not made of isolated things but of relationships, connections, and ever-changing patterns. The central...

hypertextLo and Behold

Likes Me, James Baldwin and the Un-fragmenting of …

Likes Me, James Baldwin and the Un-fragmenting of Euro-modern Time by folukeifejola. This essay reminded me of the famous quote often attributed to Churchill: "Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it." But Baldwin's point is even more unsettling. We don't merely repeat history because we've forgotten it. We repeat history...

Foluke AdebisiJames Baldwin

A Lamp at the Doorway

I finished Richard Cavendish's The Black Arts this week. Not in the heroic readerly sense of having sat down and consumed it cleanly from first page to last, pencil in hand, scholar's lamp burning into the night. I have been reading it on and off for a few months. Picking it up, putting it down,...

alchemybook review