Category: Essay
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Escaping the Cool Kid Panopticon
The pursuit of meaning isn’t a weekend retreat My undergraduate degree was in philosophy, and early in my coursework, I took a class on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Naturally, we didn’t read the whole thing. It’s massive. But our professor, who was an Aussie and who, every time he said Kant’s name, sounded as if…
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Is Finding a Purpose for Losers?
The Bourgeois Man Makes His Case. Going by the title, you might assume that this book would be some religious self-help text about strengthening one’s faith. You’d be wrong. Published in the aftermath of WWII, The True Believer is instead an attempt to describe the psychology of the individual member of a mass movement, any…
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To the Little Black Girl in the Bottom Left-Hand Corner of That Horrifically Cringey Biden Clip
I started this essay some months ago without much idea of how I would end it. I had some idea of what I wanted to say, but there was something missing, and this prevented me from finishing the essay for a long time. But sometimes, the universe seems to rise up and place the answers…
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Thinking about the Boogie2988 Problem
For anyone who was online during the halcyon years of the 2010’s, Boogie was one of those guys that you just couldn’t help knowing about. Even if you didn’t watch his content, you knew his face, and you knew that he had a reputation for being one of the nicest people around, if one who…
The Barking Years 