• 37+ layers

    37+ layers

    I. Once in a while, we have to start again from the top. If the Situation is indeed a polyrhytmic pattern of clicking, it makes sense that we skitter every so often from its groove and have to go five and four and three and two and hum to get back on track. And so we have,…

  • Guerra cultural

    Guerra cultural

    I.  Praxis is at once the agitating mechanism and the key site of misosophy, the hatred of wisdom. Philosophy teaches, on the contrary, ambivalence and detachment. Contrary to philosophy, theory-in-the-world is of-praxis, specifically the praxis of deferral. Taking a loan is the theory of being able to pay it back at a later time. This deferral operator also…

  • Epideictics III — New Histories

    Epideictics III — New Histories

    Recitativo We have aimed (or, at the very least, repeatedly claimed) to sidestep philosophy. All along, our main directives — if one’s able to motion-blur the proliferation of so-called technical content — have been GENERALITY and GENERICITY; but in our theoretical mood that eschews argument for bald and torrential assertion, we’ve been using them in…

  • A glossary

    A glossary

      I wrote this for a friend. This overview of asemic horizon’s technical terminology (known as “space opera” to earlier readers) follows an order that’s specific (such that it supports a series of contrasts and comparisons) but not special (in that no particular concept or term is anterior to others). THEORY is the theory of…

  • We live in a society

    We live in a society

    I. Easily hidden in plain sight in this one-panel are signs of a moment of transcendence. The comic masterfully portrays the self-important internet “patrician” (or the deluded neckbeard who believes himself to be one). But it only achieves this mastery — this capacity for compression: how many nonwhite pixels does it even have? — by…

  • Outbound link

    No theory this time; instead some impressive artwork by American Painter Mary Coleman. Atrophy (2019), acrylic on canvas I’m very cavalier about randomly appropriating images for the internet since they’re not at all integral to the purposes of the blog (indeed they’re mostly Twitter clickbait) and since I always expect very low flows of traffic.…

  • Versions 2: Non nobis solum

    Versions 2: Non nobis solum

    (or: how to check your privilege in the mirror stage) I. (This post starts as a polemic against its direct antecedent, Versions I: Yngwiepocalypse, which is shorter than our usual content and light on technical prerequisites. You should skim it at least). The core technical component of the “Yngwie thesis” was the dereference operator. Had the “Yngwie” thesis…

  • Versions I: Yngwiepocalypse

    1. The “Yngwie thesis” claims that the agitating element that dominates the dynamics of the crisis is de-signification. We do nothing to establish the validity of such a thesis here; we merely explore its potential ramifications. (Big if true, as the meme says…) (The thesis does not, furthermore, establish the existence of a crisis. One of its distinguishing marks…

  • (A stylized repeat)

    (A stylized repeat)

      This is a version of a text we’ve previously published in this site as a lo-fi/mood/xen/lounge audio track. To my taste it’s exactly right for small house parties or weekend morning walks in the sun.  

  • Epideictics II: “All true theorems have corollaries”

    Epideictics II: “All true theorems have corollaries”

      CHIEFTAIN — Conan! What is worst in life? CONAN THE BARBARIAN — To help your friends, see them parade in front of you and hear the exultation of their women. In the Aristotelian canon the method of logic is discussed in full continuity with the methods of rhetoric and even aspects of persuasion. In this older…

  • Epideictics I: the Will of the People

    Epideictics I: the Will of the People

      The new Joker feature film is pretty good! For a children’s movie, anyway. On the surface, the story instantiates once again the grittier-and-grittier conceit of contemporary Hollywood regarding comic-book characters that are often comically simple enough to be comical simpliciter.  Yet: no one believes that “Batman”  stories are real, but everyone’s able to place batmen on a…

  • Assigned reading

    Assigned reading

    Habitual readers of asemic horizon would do better to spend the time with the new essay by the resurfaced Mencius “Curtis Yarvin” Moldbug titled The Clear Pill, part 1. The editorial note that immediately prefaces it chides us: Partisans of every stripe would do well to prepare themselves to respond to this line of attack—one building strength…