>>24848148
that font looks so fucking annoying to read

>>24848916
textbook rage.

>>24848873
So 0,1,2?

>>24848940
wrong again dumbass

>>24848270
but epicsauce war is the sign of a based and redpilled trad mind amirite

>>24847054
Subjective

I was feeling pretty snazzy that day. I’d just gotten my hair trimmed and my mustache touched up. I decided to treat myself to some McDonald’s. The one on King, with the good ketchup packets. Somebody there might learn a thing or two about style, too. I winked at myself in the mirror and headed out the door.

I was at the front of the line and had just ordered my usual. That cute girl was working the counter today - I think she noticed my hair. I was about to say something to her, but then I felt this disgusting moist warmth on the back of my neck. I turn around and there’s some greasy bastard standing there, polluting my neck with his breath.
“Dude, manners? You’re breathing on my neck.” I said.
He just looked at me. Suddenly I got a really bad feeling, my heart started to beat faster. I noticed my order was ready and grabbed it and got out of there.

An hour later, I was telling my buddy at the bus station how close I’d been to getting her number. He chuckled and told me my zipper was undone. What could I say? Envy always tries to downplay other people’s success.

>>24847561
Nice

>>24847486
>>24847505
>>24847519
Kek, brilliant.

>>24847054
McCarthy
He turned the horse down King Street towards the building at the end of the promenade. When he arrived, he grabbed hold of the saddle curl and loosened his boot in the stirrup and swung his leg over, dismounting the horse. The building was large in front of him and the two yellow swoops intersected like paling beams of dusky sunlight and where they crossed they marked an unintentional destination before him. He hobbled the horse to the paloverde pole and lifted the hat back on his head and walked towards it. A small Mexican with hair fashioned like a monk and a thin mustache stood at the front of the line.
Deja de respirar en mi cuello, he said to the man behind him.
No te estoy respirando en el cuello.
No tenéis el aliento de Dios, sino el de los demonios.
The monk then grabbed his pollo and his papas a la Mexicana and turned around and walked towards the boy.
Caballero.
He said as he smiled and tipped his hat to the boy and walked out.
An hour later he saw the monk standing, waiting for something to come that was late in the coming. His brow was furrowed in contemplation and he looked beyond in the distance at the sun dripping like candlewax below the peaks of the mountains at the edge of the horizon. His friend pointed to him a zipping motion, but the monk furrowed his brow yet more and lifted his hand to smooth his mustache and ignored him and looked on.

I stood in the automated queue at McDonald’s on King Street, one of the last physical fast-food establishments still in operation—though modified, of course, for the times. The walls were lined with self-cleaning nanobots, and every table was embedded with digital interfaces that allowed you to adjust your meal to your precise nutritional requirements. Even the fries, made from a synthetic bio-crop, were curated to your taste through an algorithm that predicted your ideal flavor profile.

I was studying the menu when I noticed the man at the front of the line. His appearance was jarring—an anachronism even by the standards of the 23rd century. A bowl cut, which had once been a symbol of mid-20th-century rebellion, and a pencil-thin mustache, more a sign of pretension than style. He stood rigid, eyes flicking nervously, as if the algorithms in the air were reading his every thought.

He suddenly turned toward the man behind him, his voice cutting through the sterile hum of the restaurant. “You’re breathing too close to me,” he accused, his tone both strange and familiar, like something out of a history lesson. The man behind him, a younger figure with augmented eyes that glowed faintly, looked stunned.

There was a moment’s hesitation—an awkward, irrational pause where the laws of logic, reason, and the TechConscious should have smoothed over the situation. But no. The man with the bowl cut, his face flushed with some ancient primal discomfort, grabbed his tray—nuggets and fries—and fled the restaurant in a flurry of movement. The precision of his exit was almost too swift, a performance of a man unprepared for the unpredictability of human emotion.

An hour later, I saw him again—outside the First Avenue Bus Station. His movements were more erratic now, as if the nerves that had once propelled him from the restaurant had not settled. His friend, standing just slightly too close, whispered something to him. I couldn’t hear the words, but the expression on the man’s face said everything. Then the friend pointed at him with a mock-serious air. “Your zipper’s undone.”

The man froze. His face shifted from embarrassment to horror, and his hands immediately reached for his clothing in a futile attempt to restore some semblance of dignity. But in a world of data-read, predictive algorithms, there was no place for such irrationality. In the quantum-accuracy of the TechConscious, a moment like this was an anomaly, a blip of human unpredictability.

>>24846549
>>24849092
anderson is a good comparison. fun is subjective but it's definitely comfy

>>24849092
You can't relate because you're not a generational hyper-genius. The rest of us are.
Simple as.

>>24847142
I find sincerity repulsive.

Every other line is a referential quip, and an overbearing tendency to be hyper specific about every object/organisation described in a smug cutesy way.

It's very reddit.

>>24849168
So, what I'm getting from this is Reddit has always been super high IQ, and 4chan is the REAL midwit site.
If I start acting like a Redditor, do you think my IQ can be salvaged? Will it go up?

>>24849108
Caesar was a really good writer. You should read him sometime.

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Ahh, I see it is time for Globohomo and ZOG to hastily defend Liberalism because they realize they need it. This is really a pathetic rear-guard action; they should have been defending Liberalism for a while now since it is the ideology that undergirds their entire geopolitical project. They let the Fascists, the Monarchists, and the Catholics whack away at it basically for 20 years uninterrupted, and have only now belatedly realized the error of this.

Of course they're too late to save it. They're too late to save themselves. The coming decades will be terrible for them.

>The Liberal Principles of Benjamin Constant and Madame de Stael
does this retard not know that those two were both constitutional monarchists or is she suggesting that constitutional monarchists can be liberals?

>>24849155
>constitutional monarchists can be liberals
Yes?

oh my god she's a benjamin constant scholar, that explains it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helena_Rosenblatt
>>24849160
fellas, is supporting a hereditary monarchy a liberal position? nordcucks can't reply

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>>24846418
same

>>24846387
>A unique feature of the folding-stock variants is the butt hook. With the stock extended, the hook can be pushed in and turned 90 degrees to the left or right, to fit under the user's forearm. This is to enable the shotgun to be fired with one hand; e.g. while abseiling/rappelling, or from a vehicle window while driving. The hook can be released from the buttplate completely by turning 180 degrees.
it's a pistol brace

I’m almost done writing my first novel and my biggest fear is that when it’s done, and out in the world, nobody will care.

>>24849087
>writing for others and commercial success/recognition
ngmi

>>24848246
Kys

>>24849121
Dreams don't exist. They are made up by women and homosexuals for attention.

>>24849128
Ok brown.

>>24849121
once. i wrote a story about being attacked by a deranged woman who fell badly and was knocked out. she had artificial eyes.

I stole them.

Yes. I posted one in the writing general thread yesterday.

>>24848909
Probably because they put out for the right people, and then maybe blackmailed as a bonus incentive. There is no such thing as luck, it's just causes we don't understand and coinciding of events.

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>>24847966
>>24848075
this is exactly the same as seeing a retarded video like hawk tuah going viral and thinking 'i'll make a retarded video and go viral too!' no way won't. you'll make a retarded video and be lost in the sea of 1 trillion retarded videos uploaded that day and get 7 views. you'll write smut equal and comparable to viral smut and get 20 sales after an aggressive ad campaign. the success has nothing - NOTHING - to do with the quality of product, of which there are, in the romance category, not thousands, not hundreds of thousands, but literally millions of near-indistinguishable works. unless you can market like audra winter - which isn't calculated but rather the culmination of narcissistic personality disorder and a planetary sized ego - luck is the be all, end all. so go ahead. write that shit if you want. you will never, ever make a buck from it.

>>24847802
Rey x Kylo fanfiction.
>>24848871
it's done in illustrations to show who wants it and who's surprised by it. In real life guys close their eyes too because it's weird staring into a girls eyes from 1 inch away.

>>24847802
Normie woman falls in love with autistic gigachad.
Light romcom. I liked it.
It gets spicy toward the end, albeit nothing exceptional.

>>24847966
you are right but my sense of honor prevents me from doing it.

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>>24848998

>>24848998
it really is a night and day difference

Thinking of blowing a little cash on a 4chan ad for my KDP ebook. I'll target /lit/, but what other boards might be enticed by a slightly surreal, sapphic dark romance? I can only think of /u/ and maybe /x/.

>>24849042
>Thinking on wasting money on 4chan
Read >>24848382

>>24849042
Good idea. Makes the web experience better for us all when the retards publicly announce themselves, so they're easier ignored

>>24848330
Portuguese is cancer

>>24848473
Literally only learning it to read books.

>>24848596
Unless you need either of those languages for work, this is the ONLY thing that makes learning them worthwhile.

>>24848330
why are you talking about experts when the common person's idea of an argument is ad homing someone as a nigger? when experts do that it's because y'all mice.

>>24848619
>learning languages for wageslaving
ngmi

>>24848022
>If Plotinus can't be described as 'religious', why does he take so much trouble to allegorize/philosophize Greek myths?
Gee, I don't know, maybe because he knew that they (or Egyptian myths, for that matter) could not be taken literally, but that the reason they held so much sway over greek culture was because they contained a truth that existed completely apart from them and from it?
Which again, would obviously make him NOT religious?

Idk, just a guess.

>>24848170
>saying this guy believes in God is like saying Buddhists believe in God...
Might be, depending on the buddhist. I'm no expert but it seems to me that some strands of East Asian Buddhism in particular came much closer to a sane (and greek) conception of God than the abrahamic magical sky daddy. Plotinus may have had some knowledge of Buddhist thought, though that's highly debated. (some in the 20th century have gone as far as speculating that Ammonius Saccas was a buddhist going by Gautama's nickname, Sakyamuni)

He wasn't an annihilationist, though. And the extent to which he actually was "ashamed of being in a body" is debatable. (though those are two unrelated concerns)

He probably wouldn't have believed in personal immortality (which makes him somewhat closer to Aristotle than to Plato), and how he would reconcile that with his belief in metempsychosis is a difficult, though not intractable problem.

There might be some truth in the anecdote that recounts his dying words, but at the very least I think it's true to the spirit of his writings.

>>24848058
Try all of Ennead IV.4. for starters. IIRC it contains not just references to technical astrological concepts but also a detailed overview of real metaphysical questions in astrology and astrological/theurgic magic.
>Next thing you'll be telling me he could read hieroglyphics.
I have never thought about it, it wouldn't surprise me if he could but I don't think that's relevant.
>>24848170
Take your meds annihilationism schizo.

>>24840808
Unironically, Alan Watts

>>24841814
>In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God
>And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us

Idk dude the Bible seems pretty straightforward on this one.

>>24844191
The whole "early-middle-late" schtick was a product of certain fashions in Biblical studies (Documentary Hypothesis, the "Q" gospel) being applied to other Classics. At best, it only shows trends in Plato's writing style, but it's pretty worthless as an actual theory of philosophical development, since every dialogue within each "range" differs crazily in some respect (like with the treatment of Eros in the "middle" dialogues Symposium and Phaedrus, or differences between the tripartite souls of the "middle" Phaedrus and Republic) that's better explained for other reasons. It's exacerbated by the fact that Plato never indicates in any way such a development, nor pulled from circulation dialogues that he came to apparently disagree with.

>>24840575
>considering I'm mostly interested in his political philosophy (but open to the other things)?
Filtered

>>24846570
Couldn't have put it better myself

>>24840943
>>24840917
What are your thoughts on using the Iamblichean Curriculum instead?:
1 Alcibiades
Gorgias
Phaedo
Cratylus
Theaetetus
Sophist
Statesman
Phaedrus
Symposium
Philebus

>>24848137
personally, I haven't read Alcibiades yet, so I don't know how good that is for beginners, although I know it used to be the one everyone started with before its authenticity became considered dubious.
I think its always better to read Crito and Apology before Phaedo just for context; admittedly, I don't think this really matters philosophically, although it might also be better to read Meno before Phaedo because I think there is some overlap there with Plato's theory of recollection.

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>>24847366
here is much interesting browsing material
.
.
RIGHT WING BASICS
http://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pi20Rr9_BxBbMIfcZUTTGslfZTifEiCm
google drive easy to use interface
download the whole blob or pick and choose

>>24848997
I do have those.

>>24848997

You are better off reading the most basic book you can find on statistics and distribution curves, especially the normal curve. Once you understand this simple math you will understand why all left and right wing parties in the modern world are basically identical and right in the middle of the political spectrum despite their name.
Wasting time reading about more extreme political positions is pointless, you will lose 100% of the time in an election to a party that sets its policies closer to the middle.

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Have you heard of web novels? I'd recommend reading Reverend Insanity, it is very comfy and easy to read, and also has a lot of valuable life lessons. Give it a shot, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

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I liked The Old Man and the Sea a lot. Talked to americans about it and they hate it because they were forced to read it in school or something, great shame.

>>24848750
>Swinburne
Wrote an elegy for the death of Baudie
>Eliot
Now we're talking

>>24848600
Baudelaire would pray to this nigga every morning lmao

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Man, free thinker! do you think that you alone
within this world are the only thing that thinks?

>>24848578
>16th/17th century England
overrated as hell

>>24846434
I honestly don't see Rimbaud's influence is so great. Even in France people don't actually care about him because of the poetry.
I am not saying this as an insult but as a mere observation.

>>24848924
Read the Iliad kr reread. Preferably a translation with great poetic beauty; for me it was Fitzgerald, but you might find Merrill or Lattimore more to your taste. Pope's rhymes may inhibit your ability to hear the internal rhythm of the verse, so I'd avoid him.
The Iliad's sheer volume, combined with its seemingly repetitive nature (death after death after death) will force you to confront the real driving force of the narrative - the language. Focus on trying to feel the rhythm, the groove, read it to yourself out loud. That's how verse first clicked for me - Homer's roots in music (his poems, according to scholarship, were meant to be sung out loud).
Once you've got the Iliad down, read the Aeneid. Vergil had the luxury of writing things down instead of having to memorise the whole thing like Homer, so the Aeneid is a denser, more refined poem. Again, focus of feeling the rhythm, but also pay attention to word order, the syntax, any alliteration. Read slowly and read to yourself out loud. I used Fitzgerald here again.
Afterwards, tackle Paradise Lost. Milton takes after Vergil and is refined to the extreme and makes heavy use of enjambment, his verse's meaning flows from one line to another. This gives his verse a looser feel, but it's able to create more complex rhythms. Again, read slowly, reread passages you don't fully understand (Milton's syntax is fucked) and read to yourself out loud from time to time.
By this point you should be hooked on poetry, Milton's verse is frankly unmatched in what it's trying to do. Shakespeare is denser (he uses some extremely compact metaphors where Milton is more long winded), more versatile, more ambiguous (inspires multiple competing readings of the same line) and, on top of that, funnier. He makes copious use of puns and irony. Maybe read some Carroll (Hunting of the Snark) to get an ear for humour too before you tackle Shakespeare.
For Shakespeare, I recommend trying out his Love's Labour's Lost and Macbeth. LLL is Shakespeare at his punniest, playing with wordplay until it's stretched to its very limit: "Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile". It felt very Carrollian to me. Macbeth is moody, simpler to understand and with a tight construction, making it a very easy entry point. Though it's not without its fair share of Shakespeare's incredibly condensed metaphors:

Whence is that knocking?
How is ’t with me when every noise appalls me?
What hands are here! Ha, they pluck out mine eyes.
Will all great Neptune’s ocean wash this blood
Clean from my hand? No, this my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red.

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>>24849070
(2/2)
If you don't have the ability to or want to see Shakespeare performed on the silver screen, then don't watch the play recordings, go for movie adaptations instead. I found Fassbender's Macbeth brilliant, though a bit hard to understand due to Scottish accent.
You could also look up performances of his famous monologues on youtube, to get an ear for his rhythm and see how differently people interpret them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zn955417swY

>>24849070
>>24849072
I wasn't expecting a response with this amount of depth. I already read The Iliad, The Odyssey and everything by Milton (including Samson Agonistes, which reminded me of Faust). I never made it to Roman poetry, but I always wanted to read Virgil since reading Dante. I'll try your recommendations of different translations. Maybe the ones I read were simply off tempo. Thank you, anon. It means a lot to be on the receiving side of a high quality post.

>>24849081
The fall of effortposting is one of the saddest things about /lit/.
To me, poetry is a mix of two things - music (rhythm, tempo, metre, alliteration, rhymes) and information density - just how much interpretative power can you put in each little word. Some poets focus more on one than the other, with Shakespeare being arguably the perfect balance between the two.
Faust is a display of virtuosity - Goethe jumps freely between different styles and genres (the Helen segment is a classic example) - mixed with heavy symbolic and interpretative difficulty. Is Faust's final speech (He only earns both freedom and existence / Who must reconquer them each day. [...] My path on earth, the trace I leave within it / Eons untold cannot impair.) meant to be sincere or ironic? Is his redemption earned or unearned? And the whole classical walpurgisnacht segment is one great filter. It's one of the strangest books I've ever read, matched only by Melville's Pierre and Ulysses.

Homer, if poorly handled, can feel very flat. There's a lot of formulaic and repetitive elements, especially in the Iliad. He requires a fine poet's touch, and the more popular translations (Fagles, Wilson) seem to trade his poetic spirit for prosaic readability. Which is important for students and laymen, but I think their translation loses too much of Homer's power.
Fitzgerald to me is the most touching, Merrill the most musical and Lattimore the grandest in its diction:

>Fitzgerald
Anger be now your song, immortal one,
Akhilleus' anger, doomed and ruinous,
that caused the Akhaians loss on bitter loss
and crowded brave souls into the undergloom,
leaving so many dead men—carrion
for dogs and birds; and the will of Zeus was done.

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Should I get Jean Santeuil or Les Plaisirs et les Jours?
What are his essays/critiques like?

>>24847290
>They are all trying to pesher-read in prophecies that obviously weren't meant that way. Take the "call my son out of Egypt" thing. Matthew invents this retarded contrived narrative just to justify a line in a verse that has nothing to do with prophecy and was a historical statement about YHWH calling Moses and the Israelites out of Egypt.
Again, you show a lack of understanding of how Christians (including the Gospel writers think).
The thinking is not
"Here is some Old Testament lines" to "then let's build Jesus' history over it"
It was the opposite.
It was "here is what happened to Jesus" to "let's interpret the Old Testament based on this".

You are getting the causality wrong.

>>24846996
>>24847282
>>24847290
>>24847322
>>24847325
>>24847333
You people worship a dumb Jew God and are arguing about the specifics of it. One guy thinks his Jew God is actually not really a Jew God but rather some other God, and the rest of you are seeing how Jewish you can get in following a Jew God. Ridiculous. This whole religion is a mind virus.

>>24846996
>why is Peter made to look like a retard throughout the entire Gospel?
But... but the criterion of embarrassment

>if we keep repeating the blatant lie that Luke is some great historian interviewing eyewitnesses people will eventually believe it

Another funny thing is how people just ignore the 20+ other gospels that were excluded from the canon because the early church didn't think they could sell gnosticism to people. But that's totally not a sign of purposeful manipulation and distortion of the message.