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Sorry, you really don't see the style resemblance do ya?

Looking at some of Amy Sherald other works such as:


or what @charleton posted. Here is what the MET has to say about 19th Century Folk Art portraiture:

They are characterized by sharply defined forms, neatly organized compositions with clearly defined spatial arrangements, some with an almost mathematical precision and symmetry, generalized lighting, equal attention paid to all areas of the canvas, an absence of expressive brushwork, and an overall flatness and linearity. A current, compelling theory about the look of folk portraits is that they matched the face of the neatly and geometrically farmed agrarian landscape. In any case, it is important to recognize that folk artists worked according to criteria set by their rural clientele. As a group, the portraits describe socially reticent sitters eager to record a likeness but shy of declaring personality and emotion. Elements of pride and class status are apparent but circumspect. Portraits record lasting traits and conditions (some are even memorials to the dead), rather than transitory mannerisms and situations.

Anyway, Sherald's work reminds me of a sophisticated version of folk art.

I just saw @Baden posting of Queen Elizabeth by Lucian Freud. Freud was a hyper-realist. I think his realism, pushes realism beyond itself to an intimate, almost symbolic view and it does this by the effects of his intensive brush work, which are the result of 1000's of hours of work. His use of paint is extraordinary. His average portrait took 1500 hrs., which is almost unbelievable, except when you look at his work.

Western Union is testing Ripple as a payment method. Ripple shares rose almost 4% post market yesterday.

I like the pose. I loathe the light blue background. I don't like the the artist's coloring of the First Lady -- it's too grayish, and the execution of the face doesn't convey Michele Obama's mature attractiveness. The dress takes up way too much space.

There appears to be a couple of political nods in the portrait, the blue/gray background and her nails for Democratic party. This from the Democratic Convention, she apparently started a blue nail craze.



The gown (in the painting) is thought to be a nod to Milly's support of Planned Parenthood.

When I saw Barack's portrait, I could not stop looking at the placement of his hands.

Thinking about Knowledge and Belief.

It seems to me that Knowledge without Belief is impossible and maybe at a certain level their distinction vanishes, but it is clearly not the other way round, Belief without Knowledge happens all the time.
Belief has an emotive quality, an intensity, perhaps this how we bring value to the epistemic. If belief is traceable back to feeling then language may not necessary for belief, but still some sort of semiotic connection.

The fundamental vision practitioners of this magic show about our reality, their true metaphysical framework, is a demonstration of the ideality of the real and the reality of ideation; so long as a magician is skilled and driven enough to dissolve the boundaries between the two. All spells ensnare a portion of our shared narrative, carve out the magician's place upon it through sheer will, and tear the new narrative screaming from the ideal into the real; from the immaterial to the material. Though often overlooked, the powers of chaos magic are pregnant in all uses of language: and what black arts this thread can teach.

Let me make sure I understand what you are saying here. 'God' does not exist prior to man's invention. The people who brought 'G' into existence, these magicians were able to "dissolve the boundaries between", "the ideality of the real and the reality of ideation", bringing 'G' into the real. The real which is at its base is an ideality for man.

I think it works the other way round, 'G' is fetishized, some what in the same way jimmy choo stilettos are fetish items, where their reality points to their ideality

You need to smoke more, although I don't smoke that much anymore, vaping baby!

Welcome to TPF

If I recall correctly the initial 'talk' was from an Asian father to his son. The 'talk' became known as something that went on in ethnic families, I think even Eric Holder indicated his father gave him the talk.

White fathers worry about their children too but they don't have this kind of worry. White people are largely invisible to themselves in a way that different toned ethenticities can never be. I don't think many white people consider themselves privileged because their view of themselves in aggregate is too entwined in the culture they dominate.

Coventry University and the University of Illinois visited five cities across the US and spoke with over 400 people who identified themselves as white working-class (10/2017). Conclusions follow:

1)classic definitions of white working-class communities, framed around ethnicity, income, education and occupation, are narrow and outdated and not accounting for their lived experiences and economic realities;
2)participants identified with being white working-class based around values through which they differentiate themselves from other groups - including being hardworking, honest and not dependent on welfare;
3)economic insecurity (living "paycheque to paycheque"), rather than traditional class credentials such as education or occupation, underpins many participants' identification as white working-class;
4)'fairness' was frequently emphasized by participants, who feel that it is not being applied equally and that racial minorities are supported through welfare and social services while they are left in the slow lane;
5)the concept of white privilege was rejected by many participants, who felt their whiteness was a disadvantage in terms of "reverse racism" existing in the labour market and lack of representation of voice;
6)whiteness was mostly unspoken, with participants preferring to refer to themselves as "working" or "working-class", with communities of colour, conversely, framed not by class but by ethnicity;
7)use of racialised language was common, particularly when participants referred to concerns around neighbourhood change, economic decline, welfare dependency and blame for societal problems;
8) immigrants and racial minorities are seen as being outside the working class and a racial "other", even if they share a similar economic position to those in white working-class communities.

After the civil rights movement, affirmative action, and the rest, America expected that its racism problem would dissolve away, but that has not happened and to quote John Derbyshire

So I think there is a cold, dark despair lurking in America’s collective heart about the whole thing.

The Clinton Foundation...oh wait.

I recall reading how children observer occurrences, develop hypotheses and then test them, apparently on a inherently statistical basis which the paper described as Bayesian (A Gopnik et al).

Just trolling along. Isn't Bayesian inference based on induction?

I am not sure I agree with him regarding the post-modernists. For one thing he says that Postmodernism does not agree with the "Great Narrative" and yet what is Marxs' Narrative if not grand? Not sure I understand how he explains their apparent complicity/duplicity.

I like Deleuze's adventure, what he has to say about the structure of reality. He is not really into arborescent heiarchies as far I can see, he is contends that it is more a rhizomatic structure, like a map with interacting points. He seems very biologically orientated.

Postmodernism is really post structuralism. Where structuralism develops interpretations out of narratives (many statements) by suggesting meaningful structure, postmodernism deconstructs these same narratives utilizing their own concepts as well as those of the structuralist to determine new meanings.

Does it matter?

If all we have to go on are the manifestations of what we sense and the conclusions we draw from them then this is our reality. It is our reality regardless of whether it is directly lived or simulated somehow. I think the only real question is why it appears as it does. We see the sun rise we learn the earth moves and similarly for everything we know about the world. I think the suggestion that there is a hidden reality somehow behind what we experience, is similar to positing BIV.

The Liar Paradox = L = This sentence is false.

The liar does not tell the truth so we must negate whatever the liar says regardless of any statement's he says. It does not matter if the content of his statement is true or false, its must be negated. So, the truth value of ...'not "This sentence is false"' is not decidable as such.

The Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte presented a somewhat similar paradox for images in his work:
The Treachery of Images

This Is Not a Pipe

The text seems to be declaring its referential superiority, except that as part of the work as a whole without the image the text would not have the same meaning, while without the text the image still is referential.

" It is fairly obvious to say that the great American Dream, with all it's hopes and aspirations has failed."

I don't think that dreams can fail, rather we wake up or move on to another dream. The major turning point in recent history I think was circa the 1960's from the sputnik to the man on the moon, the resistance the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights movement and the end of segregation, the martyrs, and of course Las Vegas. The new dream of hope, change, peace, love and drugs could not last long.

Vegas: how a dead place out in middle of the desert became an earth bound shooting star, a facet of the America dream which begat a surreal landscape designed by marketing people with little regard for history or anything else. 42 million annual visitors fantasize in its blare and neon glare. Vegas creates and destroys continually, mimicking the national/international whims of its designers.

I have come to the conclusion that the phenomenal is reality, and the purpose of philosophy/science is to explain why what appears is as it appears. So no hidden 'reality', rather the reality we experience is all there is, and the question is why it is the way it appears.

I think its origin can be traced back to the Bill of Rights , with its Utopian aspiration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Here is quote from "The Epic of America" which Truslow wrote in 1931, in the depths of the Great Depression

“The American Dream is that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

This 'Dream' has evolved over the years. I think R Reagan and M Thatcher had a lot to do with a paradigm shift in the West where individual citizens "... recognized by others for what are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position" became individual consumers, who's success became measured by consumption. Where the more you consume, the more successful you are, the better consumer, hence citizen you are.

It's a difficult subject with a lot of different view points, I think it is and always has been intimately tied up with immigration, why people want(ed) to come to America in the first place. I have a letter written by a family member a long time ago about my great grandparents who where farmers living in Italy around 1860. It indicates that they were planning to come to the United States because they could not compete with the cheap produce being imported into Italy from the US at the time, all they saw was the freedom and opportunity the US appeared to offer.

I enjoyed listening to the following:

If you start with a determinate state (I would say concept not state but...) and negate it you get an indeterminable state (concept), and if you negate that you end up with another determinate state (concept) and all three are intimately related. (Hegel)

Every narrative is a mix, but Plato never suggested a set rules for behavior like some of the Stoics. The substance of Plato's dialogues is between the lines, and not in the lines. Plato teaches how to think, not what to think.

Which do you think was more accessible to those that followed?

We only see an infinitesimal part of all that is and most of that entirety was.

Job 38-40

“Who is this that obscures my plans
with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.

One question that interests me, is why did the Platonist school, even though it was more widespread than Stoicism, didn't produce important historical figures like Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and the like. Would it be because of the overly theoretic aspect of Platonism?

Esoteric vs exoteric

1972

All life interacts with its environment in some manner. Our organism is aware of itself acting in the world. That self-awareness is thought. The cogito enables the unity of appreception, the act of thought. It is only though our awareness of interaction with the world that we have thought. If an organism can't act spontaneously, causally then it can't be for itself, it must be in itself. ((pour-soi vs en-soi)

Here is my favorite looking Alfa Romeo, the Montreal. It has its own owners club.

Wow...shades of Amy Winehouse

Quoting John Searle :D

I gave you a scientific demonstration by raising my hand, but how is that possible? How can it be that this thought in my brain can move material objects? Well, I will tell you the answer. I mean we don’t know the detailed answer, but we know the basic part of the answer — and that is, there are sequences of neuron firings and they terminate where the acetylcholine is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, sorry to use philosophical terminology here. But when it is secreted at the axon end-plates of the motor neurons, a whole lot of wonderful things happen in the ion channels and the damned arm goes up.

What I think is important here is that my thought sets off a chain of physical processes that end up with my arm going up.

Materialism is a system of belief which emphasizes that physical process can explain all phenomena in the world. Consciousness therefore is an epiphenomenon within materialism since it is not a physical process but outcome of a physical process. We however know that consciousness is necessary for learning (please read the following article). This means that consciousness is causally efficacious. Therefore materialism is not correct.

If consciousness is the result certain potential processes of matter which occurs only when matter is constructed in a certain manner this suggests a form of panpsychism. This is the only coherent answer I have found and to believe otherwise I think is to believe in some sort of magic.

So while screw, chairs, and rocks are not aware, virus, amoebas, plants and man display spontaneous movements demonstrating an awareness which these other items do not share.


The experiment you referred to is interesting, but what I think it is pointing out is that perception is a durational process whereby what is sensed must be processed prior to our being conscious of what is perceived. This process is estimated to take between 200 & 500 milliseconds, and the experiment only put the arrow up for 33 milliseconds, but if our sensory process starts processing, then it makes sense that this would have an effect when the image was reintroduced for a longer duration.

If you are into raw speed then (can you handle the Truth? :D)

The 2018 Dodge SRT Demon is 418 hp (312 kW; 424 PS) per ton on 91 octane gasoline and 435 hp (324 kW; 441 PS) per ton on 100 octane or higher. Priced around $100,000.

It reaches 0–30 mph (0–48 km/h) in 1.0 second, 0–60 mph (0–97 km/h) in 2.3 seconds (2.0s with a rollout), 0–100 mph (0–161 km/h) in 5.1 seconds, and the quarter mile (400 m) in only 9.65 seconds at 140.09 mph (225.45 km/h).[54] This makes the Demon the fastest non-electric production car to reach 0-60 mph (0–100 km/h) and to complete a straight-line quarter mile at its time of announcement. The SRT Demon is also capable of accelerating at 1.8 G's of force at launch, making this the hardest launching production car ever.[55] The Demon can also push the boost to 14.5 psi and redline up to 6500 rpm. With this extreme power, and hard accelerating, the SRT Demon is the first production car to ever perform a wheelie.

What constructs the essence of one's being? Such as, if one identifies as being lazy, then must one act lazy, within the sense of the word found in society? For example, if one claims to be lazy and stupid, but is actual hard-working and highly intelligent by that culture's general standards, then does one lie to oneself or is it an internal conflict with what actually constructs the definition of lazy and stupid?

I don't believe we have an essence beyond our organism, which includes our matter and form, what we call our self, the whole, the gestalt. We are never static, always changing, yet our organism normally retains much of the same which enables us to claim self identity over long periods of time. We learn as a child to identify with what others say about us, even when what is said does not mirror our own estimation of our-self. At the same time we learn to assume different roles, nuance existing roles, and we do this all the time, but some roles stick with us because of our history, where we grew up, how our care-givers helped us shape the roles we assume and what we have learnt and in which we feel most comfortable being.

If we can accept that our world has been intelligently created in some way, what do you think would be the most likely implications, and why?

The implication is Pantheism:

The Mercedes is actually faster than the Camaro Zl1

I wonder what was compared. It is hard to find equally equipped models, I saw a couple of youtube videos that suggest they are pretty close, the Mercedes beating the Camaro in 1/4 mile, losing to it in the 1/2 mile. There is also probably a difference based on manual vs automatic shifting, with automatic beating manual in many cases. I like a manual shift, but it sucks in heavy traffic.

Both cars get large price cuts as soon as you drive them off the lot. I like the design of the Camaro, especially the convertible. I've got a Lincoln Town Car L, and a Ford Ranger with a long throw shift, and a shade tree mechanic who knows both vehicles intimately.

I think the Mercedes is the head of the class for luxury, space, ride, but it is more of a cruiser. It has twin turbos integrated into the motor, so you know it will cost like hell to get a turbo rebuilt on one of these....

I like the looks of the Camaro especially the convertable, I think it has same motor as the Corvette but weights 500 or 600 lbs more.

The Hellcat is competes with the Camaro, mean looking, but not so sure about handling, and oh yea it's a Dodge, it lost to the Ford Mustang Bullitt

But do you see god as one, as a deity, or as a force in nature

I don't believe there is any necessary correspondence between logic and the world. The principal of sufficient reason cannot be proved because there is no way to confirm that the structure of thought is the same as the structure of the world. Only contingencies and probabilities can be known, I think chance is prior to the law of non-contradiction.

If what we experience is only available to us by means of our thoughts, which we order, filter, remember, change and modify according to some well worn logic then it is not surprising that people believe in a mimetic correspondence between reality and appearance.

I am arguing that having S, one agent can be conscious of S and then he annihilates S and then create S'.

Consider three movements:

1) S is hypothesized
2) S becomes destabilized as it it is negated (-S)
3) S' the synthesis of S & -S

Determinate negation.

Facebook and Google have become “obstacles to innovation” and are a “menace” to society whose “days are numbered”, said billionaire investor and philanthropist George Soros at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.

“Mining and oil companies exploit the physical environment; social media companies exploit the social environment,” said the Hungarian-American businessman, according to a transcript of his speech.

“This is particularly nefarious because social media companies influence how people think and behave without them even being aware of it. This has far-reaching adverse consequences on the functioning of democracy, particularly on the integrity of elections.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/25/george-soros-facebook-and-google-are-a-menace-to-society

Reason has become instrumental to point where, somewhat like computers, human's can pick up threads of rational arguments, recombine them without thinking through what they are doing. Today reason is solely a means to an end where the only difference between ends lies in probability of outcome.

Objective reasoning is dead, as some might say the light went out.