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Charles Beckett

@charlesbeckett.bsky.social

830 followers 370 following 5.2K posts

'These musings are as inadequately supported as they are gratuitous.' (borrowed from: Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson, JJ.: Concurrence in Trump vs. Anderson, SCOTUS 23-719. March 4th, 2024.) Londoner in Barcelona

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Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · Nov 21

‘What could my mother be to yours?
What kin is my father to yours anyway?
And how did you and I meet ever?
But in love
Our hearts have mingled
Like red earth and pouring rain.’

What he said, from Kurontokai, trans. AK Ramanujan

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 14h

This book, with its many beautiful photographs, was inspired by a short text written by Hermann Hesse, contained in his 1920 collection of fragments - 'Wandering: Notes and Sketches'

www.themarginalian.org/2012/09/21/h...

Hermann Hesse on What Trees Teach Us About Belonging and Life

“When we have learned how to listen to trees, then the brevity and the quickness and the childlike hastiness of our thoughts achieve an incomparable joy.”

www.themarginalian.org

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 14h

From the photobook 'On Listening to Trees/Escuchando A Los Árboles' by Albarrán Cabrera (Anna Cabrera and Ángel Albarrán)

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 17h

Llyfrgi

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 17h

I’ve met Alan Moore (not a man who suffers fools gladly, at all!) and heard him talk about his work and not only would he not recognise this interpretation but he would be absolutely horrified by it, and he would make *extremely* short shrift of Peter Thiel.

Sharon @sharonk.bsky.social · 19h

thiel, man, what the fuck are you talking about

He describes the plot of Watchmen, a 1986 graphic novel involving superheroes grappling with moral questions about humanity against the backdrop of impending nuclear war:

The antihero Ozymandias, the antichrist-type figure, is sort of an early-modern person. He believes this will be a timeless and eternal solution – eternal world peace. Moore is sort of a late-modern. In early modernity, you have ideal solutions, ‘perfect’ solutions to calculus. In late modernity, things are sort of probabilistic. And at some point, he asks Dr Manhattan whether the world government is going to last. And he says that ‘nothing lasts forever.’ So you embrace the antichrist and it still doesn’t work.

Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece, discussing how he believes it represents a future where an antichrist-like one-world government has repressed science. He believes that the hero, Monkey D Luffy, represents a Christlike figure.

In One Piece, you are set in a fantasy world, again sort of an alternate earth, but it’s 800 years into the reign of this one-world state. Which, as the story unfolds, gradually gets darker and darker. You sort of realize, in my interpretation, who runs the world and it’s something like the antichrist. There’s Luffy, a pirate who wears a red straw hat, sort of like Christ’s crown of thorns. And then towards the end of the story, transforms into a figure who resembles Christ in Revelation.

Thiel, along with a researcher and writer at Thiel Capital, explored these ideas at greater length in an essay for the religious journal First Things earlier this month.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

Forgive me for being a little sceptical about the full implentation of the peace plan.

It is incredible, and unforgivable, how many innocent people had to die before we reached this point.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

Life is cheap, energy resources are expensive.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

The ‘war’ could have been ended eighteen months ago. As it is, what forced Trump’s hand was the attack on Hamas leadership in Doha, which made US security guarantees to Gulf states look worthless. A huge miscalculation by Netanyahu.

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Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

Percebes (in Spain) - delicious! In Galicia they abseil down the cliffs at low tide to take them off the rocks - a very dangerous business! Hence the price.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

I’ve had the great fortune and pleasure to work with George a few times and he is just a lovely, lovely man and a great champion of literature.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 1d

Now Krasznahorkai has won the Nobel, just want to give a massive shout-out to poet, translator extraordinaire and all-round good bloke, George Szirtes - www.theguardian.com/books/2015/m...

My hero: George Szirtes and my other translators by László Krasznahorkai

This year’s Man Booker International prize winner on waiting eight years for his first novel to be translated – ‘my publishers were in deep despair’

www.theguardian.com

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Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 2d

A spectacular autumn day in the little town of Martinet and Montellà, where I am now, officially as of this morning, one of the 622 residents.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 3d

PoliSci guy: ‘… and so, in the future, we could end up with a form of competitive authoritarianism …’

Trump: ‘Arrest my political opponents. Send the troops in.’

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 4d

There clearly will be many discrete use cases where LLMs can have great value, but the AI industry in its current form *should* die. We should kill it, deliberately.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 4d

On the other hand, I can spell ‘Britain’:

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 4d

My English degree was a total rip-off. I didn’t learn any new words and I still have difficulty identifying subjunctives. And nobody ever offered me a well remunerated job in the field of English knowing.

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Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 7d

‘Hello Mr weekend sport shooter and full-time racist in your broad daylight night vision and paperweight flak jacket, carrying your carbine like it’s a frisbee. This is what a general purpose machine gun looks like.’

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 7d

And while there is a ghoulish part of me that would like to see their tubby irregulars being rounded up by the 82nd Airborne and the Rangers, I think on the whole the first option would be best.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 7d

ICE is the armed insurrection, and the way things are going, either it is going to be quietly disbanded or regular army units are going to have to put it down.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 7d

Fwiw I do not think the Palestine Action proscription fight is a fight the Government can win, either in court, or in terms of public opinion. They should have been mindful of that when they started it.

Reposted by Charles Beckett

Guggenheim Collection @guggenheim.bsky.social · 8d

Aglow by Vasily Kandinsky, 1928
https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137229

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Founding Collection, By gift

© 2016 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris

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Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 9d

Thank you so much! Very kind.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 9d

He should know

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 9d

‘Can’t get enough of your love, Babe.’

Hits different, though.

Charles Beckett @charlesbeckett.bsky.social · 9d

Thanks X