John Smith

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@Vampire_Holiday @OedipasKvass Did Hawthorne write captivity narratives? Or are you saying that those were American originals? Because they were often presented as documentary/verite, no?

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

This but unironically

[Von heute auf morgen @JungeToerless]

Everyone knows that my particularly contingent and contested reading of Marx rooted primarily in minor academic figures of the 80s and 90s is the incontrovertibly correct interpretation, whereas it's self-evident that your disagreement is a sign of illiteracy and imbecility

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Get they ass lol

[New Calculus @CalculusNe75865]

It's a shame they're not freezing acceptance into mainstream mathematics programs, which ceased being mathematics over 150 years ago. I have never voted for Trump but if I knew he would shut down the lot of mainstream math departments, I'd vote for him not only for a third term, but fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh if he lives that long.

Not to be offensive, but the dumbest people I have ever met are those in mainstream mathematics academia - their stupidity is breathtaking. Literally.

[John Lynch CTE @JohnLynchCTE]

Jon jones didn’t fight for 3 years, got fat and choked out Cyril Gene in 2:04. He’s the best fighter that has and ever will live.

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Archilochus invented lyric poetry to talk about blowjobs and money

[Jean Montalte @JMontalte]

"Avant que Platon commençât à philosopher, l’art grec avait déjà vécu sa grande époque dans tous les domaines: tout ce qui lui est pos­térieur dans le monde hellénique, à Rome et dans l’Europe qui s’est inspirée de l’Antiquité, n’est qu’un retentissement de cette génération originelle issue de l’esprit du mythe et donc de la re­ligion. Tout grand art est religieux, c’est-à-dire acte d’hommage à la gloire de l’être. Là où se dilue la dimension religieuse, cet hommage dégénère en excitation et en complaisance ; là où la gloire [das Herrliche] pâlit, ce que nous appelons « le beau » n’est plus qu’un déchet. Goethe le disait à Riemer, avec une humilité surprenante pour l’époque: « Les hommes ne sont productifs en poésie et en art qu’aussi longtemps qu’ils sont religieux ; ensuite ils ne font qu’imiter et répéter, tout comme nous, par rapport à une Antiquité dont tous les monuments étaient des œuvres de foi et que notre imagination ne pourra que copier » (juillet 1810). " Hans Urs von Balthasar, La gloire et la croix.

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@JamesWHankins1 Yeah Aristotle not exactly from the streets tho. Homeboy had a real nice estate waiting for him back east. Only Socrates and Aeschines have any claim to a modest background irrc

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Yeah we definitely have a lot of Aristotle’s published works. His surviving corpus is 2x that of Plato’s, at least. What’s wild is that we can be reasonably sure that we have all of Plato’s complete works. That is wild

[Varad Mehta @varadmehta]

It’s one of the great oddities of history that we have nearly all of Plato’s published works and none of Aristotle’s. And on that score, do we know how or why Aristotle’s disappeared? Is it just one of those things?

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Note to hate on my boy but, like, was Copernicus really misunderstood? Was Galileo? I feel like there are probably better examples

[Democritus Sr @DemocritusSr]

Ralph Waldo Emerson, “To be great is to be misunderstood.” (“Self-Reliance”)

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Thucydides and Plato wrote about the same three decades. Probably a coincidence

[Pymander's ghost @pymandersghost]

As a general rule it is better to be someone who is very interested in classical literature and philosophy than one who is very interested in classical history.

[Harry Cleaver @hmcleaver]

Lots of folks left Twitter for other forums like Bluesky complaining about the flood of neo-Nazis, racist, misogynic material. That flood seems to have been replaced by one of Chinese propaganda. Like Radio Free Europe, touting the virtues of the US vs USSR & clients.

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

I’m begging people to Don Quixote

[anna @moonbeeaam]

When people talk about greatest novels of all time, there seems to be a major bias towards very long realist novels and then just a handful of canonised modernist books

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@Kali_de_Armas Agreed. tho callicles indicating that Socrates is just as victory-loving as those he is criticizing is a pretty devastating riposte. In the complete works it takes S six dialogues to recover until he finally answers the charge at the end of republic

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@hmcleaver My question: which faction in Beijing is it coming from?

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

I will be the one to point out that his chest lacks thickness, throwing off the proportions of the entire presentation

[HowlingMutant @Howlingmutant0]

This is a physique forged over the course of decades in the crucible of self discipline to be admired by other men, not for the pre menopausal lust of some mouthy broad, I demand you speak of it no more

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Taking this opportunity to remind everyone to read the chapter in Todd Hollander’s economics of Karl Marx called “is there a theory of the entrepreneur in Marx?” And then remember he was Engels’ second wife, materialistically speaking, and that Engels’ dad was an entrepreneur

[Kai Bosworth @kaibosworth]

a particularly cruel irony that one of Marx's better and more singular arguments - that ideas are not the drivers of history but must themselves be historically situated - is taken by so many as having a fundamental exception for Marx's own ideas

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@ValeriusLabs Agreed. Dead corn walking

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Maybe he had it coming, you don’t know

[Jay @ThisIsJay216]

New York City is not a real place 🐀

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

@maybe_ghuf Achilles not killed in Homer! But otherwise I agree

[John Smith @smithyqrg]

Homer so miraculous b/c how complex his epics are. Books 10-14 of Iliad are a simultaneous tracking shot of one moment. Later, there is a comedic brawl between gods. Achilles fights a river. Horses cry. Wilson is great because her simple choices let this complexity shine through

[Paul McLeod @pdmcleod]

Part of what's silly about the Emily Wilson fuss is people on twitter talk as if her Homer translations have the Greeks all go to therapy and work out their differences over cups of soy ambrosia and then you actually read her verse and it's metal as hell