MetaFilter posts tagged with TLDR

Faux Friendship: "…[a] numberless multitude of people, of whom no one was close, no one was distant."

the littlest brussels sprout — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 05:23:02 -0800

Faux Friendship traces the evolution of friendship from classical times to the modern Internet age. By William Deresiewicz, literary critic and former associate professor of English at Yale. (Warning: long.)

Without Guilt & Justice

ageispolis — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:33:52 -0800

"Humanity craves but dreads autonomy." – Without Guilt & Justice by Walter Kaufmann argues that decidophobes employ ten strategies in order to avoid indecisive dizziness. He cites Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn as an individual who demonstrated autonomy through "the most awesome courage".

The Most Civilized Country.

five fresh fish — Sat, 17 May 2008 22:55:42 -0800

The Most Civilized Country. Fascinating article challenging conventional notions of how best to have a society. "Best" being defined by what makes people happy and empowered, mind you. Makes me feel my own country and culture isn't such hot shit after all. Pretty much a dismal failure, by comparison...

A completely revised edition of the Masseian corpus with all the flaws taken out

tellurian — Tue, 13 May 2008 18:52:58 -0800

Masseiana - Containing the three major works of Gerald Massey and his minor work commonly titled: The Lectures. Published here in their entirety, fully revised and amended, with additional material by the editor.

The Unqualified Reservations of Mencius Moldbug

blasdelf — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:59:40 -0800

Unqualified Reservations is a fascinating ongoing commentary on society and governance in postmodernity. He's currently on about the pwning of Richard Dawkins, after writing about Mediocracy and Official Journalism. It might be best to first read his earlier posts in which he defines the self-invented terminology he's fond of using, like: Formalism, The Iron Polygon, Universalism, Neocameralism, and The Rotary System. I stumbled upon this blog after another blog linked to Mencius' posts about the role of Graduate Schools in Computer Science Research, and I got drawn in! His posts are long, and the comment threads on them are exceptionally longwinded and well-reasoned as well. Be warned, you could easily lose a whole day reading through his archives, as I did. Part of what's so fascinating about it is that he often writes from the perspective of hundreds of years in the future, discussing present society as if it's major features had been distilled and anthologized for many generations already.