This blog is samzdat. My name is Lou Keep. These are popular essays. Kindly, they also make for the best introductions. If you’re curious about the blog’s name, read this post here.
I often write series. The best of those is the Uruk Series (Uruk as in Uruk). It includes the most popular posts, and it’s the source of a lot of later vocabulary. Broadly about nihilism and modernity. The index is here. This is a good place to start. See:
Man as a Rationalist Animal, about legibility, metis, and institutions.
The Meridian of Her Greatness, about economic oversight and translation problems. Also state collapse.
The Use and Abuse of Witch Doctors for Life, about bullet-proofing magic.
Without belief in a god, but never without belief in the devil, about mass movements.
Sometimes I write about issues related to quantification and, more broadly, the epistemology of mathematics. On quantification in the social sciences, see:
Enter a search term, e.g. “democracy”, about attempts to measure democracy and “science” vs. philosophy in general.
Love and Happiness, about measuring love. Also about measuring happiness.
On the epistemology of mathematics, see:
Platonism without Plato, on shooting yourself in the foot by ignoring metaphysics.
Truth is a problem. These are about truth:
Truth and lies in a hypernormal sense, not about hypernormalisation, yes about you.
Science cannot count to red. That’s probably fine., about Kuhn and meaning.
Politics, media, and culture war is here:
Banish Plump Mouse Deer and Banish All the World, about folktales, atheism, and why everyone hates you.
How to Fail, about the fearless girl statue and art criticism.
The Guardian’s Inferno, about journalism, Trump voters, and social media.
Social Laffer curves that go for a thousand screaming years, part of a different series about social taxes.
Finally, a very long piece on nihilism. It covers just about everything above, and may be the best thing I’ve written. Certainly the most definitive statement on what this blog is about, but far too long to be a coherent introduction:
Everything is Going According to Plan
top image from Nardwuar
sam[ ]zdat 