Words stand in

Words stand in for everything we are not given.

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Broken

The circle isn't broken.  Only our representation of the circle is broken.

The difference

The living make poetry, the dead are poetry.

Too

Use the sound, too, to see.

On reality

Reality is a container we fill with confabulation.

The trick

The trick is to acknowledge reality but not to worship it.

As hard as it is

As hard as it is for the mind to see reality, even harder for reality to see the mind.

Everything must be resisted

Everything must be resisted, even, essentially, the paradigm of resistance.

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Forever

When I tire of summer, let me linger in autumn forever.

More chance

More chance that the world will become the poem than that the poem will become the world.

The proof

The poem is the proof and the proof is the poem.

Part of wisdom

Part of wisdom is beginning to understand—and come to terms with—all that will not be revealed.

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How boring is that?

I have tried not to say the things that one is expected to say in a poem because, how boring is that?

Even what I know

Even what I know I know is subject to the limits of knowing.

And also, of course

The essential is the occasional which occurs everywhere but the center (and also, of course, at the center too).

The real enemies

The real enemies are the ignorant who are content with—proud of—it.

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The source of all

What you have not perceived, or properly processed, is the source of all your failure.

Which

Which will prove more difficult, to take an ethical stance toward AIs or to take one from them?

Cannot be

The neural cannot be neutral.

There is no

There is no static order.

Temporariness

Temporariness is permanent.

On consciousness

Consciousness is the beginning of the end.

Only people

Only people favor aphorism.

Only death

Only death is what we think it is.

Getting it wrong

It never ceases to amaze me how wrong everyone else gets it. (I, too, get it wrong, but in a way that seems to me less surprising.)

To the wilderness

To the wilderness a path is an abomination.

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On aging

Aging is a tripling down on our shakiest wagers.

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Real

Nothing is real is real.

Anything & nothing

Anything is possible, and nothing is likely.

Citation

Citation isn't endorsement.

Knowing

Knowing is as close to reality as we can get.

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Even more

Submission is even more unethical than domination.

Society

Society is just the infrastructure of culture.

To boldly know

To boldly know what no one has known before.

Those things which are

Those things which are separate long to be joined; those that are joined, to be separated.

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The only reason (Barney)

The only reason generative AI technologies like ChatGPT have a snowball’s chance of replacing mainstream professional writing is because mainstream professional writing has been devolving toward the vapid, voiceless, informative “style” of algorithmic writing for three decades.

Vicenzo Barney

What starts as

What starts as soil ends as sand.

On consequence

Consequence is intolerable.

On the Republican Party

The Republican Party, in turning on democracy, has ceded the right to continue to exist. Period. You can't be permitted to work within a democracy if you have worked to end that democracy.

Market logic

Market logic is compromised logic.

Our reasons

We have our reasons for obsessing over reason.

Or

Vigor or rigor, rarely both.

Less and more

There is less old and more new every day.

All the hells

All the hells I can imagine are peopled mostly with reactionaries.

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