ROUNDUP

1. The desire to disappear completely : “I have no literary interests; I am made of literature.” -Kafka. By in Julian de Medeiros.

2. Gender and Math: beautiful minds, mean girls, and hidden figures: Who gets to be a mathematician? By t in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

3. Attention is Erotic: Attraction, ambiguity, and the why watching someone think is one of the sexiest moments you can share. By in Helen Higgins.

4. Chat with Overthink & Dr. Laura Basu: A recording from Dr. Laura Basu and Overthink Podcast’s live video. By in Loveconomics.

5. On Thenmozhi Soundararajan, caste across the diaspora, and the geography of abolition: The Shelf That Changes Everything. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

6. fear of breakdown: a psychopolitical theory. By in the late review.

7. Various Heres in Every Here: On being entangled in place. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

8. The Metrics Are Pointed at the Wrong Objects: Why the Numbers Say Everything Is Fine While Everyone Feels Terrible. By in The Structural Lens.

9. On Forum Rot: Context Collapse and the Degeneration of Online Culture. By in Last_Futurist.

10. take back what it means to be alive. By @adbusters in Adbusters.

11. Every generation loses its sense of loss: The creeping baseline of the natural world. By and in Mini Philosophy.

12. Should we nap? A more curious answer than we might expect.: The possible effects on brain performance, mortality, and... sleepmaxxing? By in Examined.

13. Shame them, shun them, ban them, beat them!: OR: crock pots and lightning bolts. By in Experimental History.

14. Chat with Overthink & Dr. Laura Basu: A recording from Overthink Podcast’s live video. By in Overthink Podcast.

15. The Future of the Humanities Looks Like Monasteries: Humanistic research outside of the university. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

16. British empiricist approaches to the self: Locke and Hume: Can we sense the self? By in Intimate Relationships.

17. All the mothers you don’t remember: A Buddhist meditation on death and compassion. By and in Hello Mortal.

18. What’s the most surprising thing about you? : The Wonders and Woes of Woofing. By in Why Philosophy?.

19. Language and Psychoanalysis: Unlearning Freudian Metapsychology: A guest post by Robert Stolorow, Ph.D., Ph.D. By in Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

20. Marx and the Beautiful Struggle of Life: Offering a different view of Karl Marx beyond orthodoxy with the help of a modern biography. By in Simplifying Socialism.

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ROUNDUP

1. Every generation loses its sense of loss: The creeping baseline of the natural world. By @philosophyminis and @bigthinkmedia in Mini Philosophy.

2. The Right Answer to Kalam? Gesundheit.: God’s Rabid Response Team gets this one wrong. By @billvanderburgh in Philosophy for the Public Good.

3. What About the Unconscious?: Comment on Philip Goff’s ‘Unconscious Consciousness’. By @rafaelholmberg in Antagonisms of the Everyday: Philosophy, Culture, Politics.

4. The Coach Through the Small Fires: No one believes in hell anymore. By @theshadowedarchive in The Shadowed Archive.

5. A Hole in the Sky, by Peter F. Hamilton: Notes on a closed system. By @deterritorialization in Deterritorialization.

6. Diana Ochoa-Chavez: Philosophy demands a rigorous examination of our most basic assumptions. By @celineleboeuf in Why Philosophy?.

7. Thinking is Steering: and minds are bodily motions we’ve hardly discovered yet. By @andreahiott and @lovephilosophy in Love & Philosophy.

8. “It’s just not the same”: What’s the value of authenticity?: Reality has more meaning. By @ericalucaststonestreet in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

9. On Thenmozhi Soundararajan, caste across the diaspora, and the geography of abolition: The Shelf That Changes Everything. By @rexmckenzie in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

10. 5 ways capitalism got me again : From money to childcare woes, my excuses for being away so long. By @laurabasu in Loveconomics.

11. Stop Asking Which Philosopher to Read First: The better question is what you need to understand, and why it matters to you. By @existentialpulse in The Existential Pulse.

12. Children of the Feed: The Emerging Pattern of AI-Mediated Mass Violence. By @harmoniousdiscourse in The Structural Lens.

13. On the Relevance of the Social Contract: And About Fukuyama’s Critique of It. By @cyrilhedoin in The Archimedean Point.

14. The Unknown Freud: For his 170th birthday. By @davidlivingstonesmith in Dehumanization Matters.

15. “A New Acquaintance Theory of Introspection” - Matt Duncan (Rhode Island College): Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2026. By @newworkinphilosophy in New Work In Philosophy.

16. To joke or not to joke? That shouldn’t be the question. : Grassroots ethical satire vs. hate-baiting stand-up. By @politicsoflaughter in The Politics of Laughter.

17. There Is Such a Thing as a Free Lunch: Why A Free World Requires Free Food. By @peacefulrevolutionary in Free Society.

18. Robinsonades of Decadence : On the persistence of the myth of the isolated individual. By @danieltutt in Daniel’s Journal.

19. take back what it means to be alive. By @adbusters in Adbusters.

20. The Horse I Carry Anyway: On loving animals in a world that doesn’t. By @zahrahaider in ZERO POINT.

21. Reading without an algorithm : Notes from Elisa Gabbert’s Any Person Is the Only Self. By @gmwrites in The Gem.

22. Banksy/Hegel/King Charles/Neo-feudalism/Ideology/Blindness/Marx. By @julianphilosophy in Julian de Medeiros.

23. 172. Closer Look: Fanon, Wretched of the Earth (extended) : Listen to Ellie and David take a closer look at Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth in episode 172 of overthink! By @overthinkpod in Overthink Podcast.

24. Does the self witness experience? Exploring the pseudo-philosophy of The Untethered Soul: A philosopher’s take on the bestselling self-help book. By @ellieanderphd in Intimate Relationships.

25. The games we want to be playing: The Score, Part I. By @jaredhenderson in Commonplace Philosophy.

26. The Penny In Your Thoughts: On attention and money. By @schoolofradicalattention in The Empty Cup.

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ROUNDUP

1. Finding your creative/intellectual vocation: ““Nobody can advise you and help you, nobody. There is only one way. Go into yourself.”. By @julianphilosophy in Julian de Medeiros.

2. When Sexual Symptoms Speak: Listening to the Unconscious life of Sexuality: A guest post by Juliane Maxwald, MA, LP, CST. By @psychoanalyticinquiryjournal in Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

3. Everything I read in April : On giving up rating and introducing a new way of reviewing... By @gmwrites in The Gem.

4. Sunday notes. By @samantharosehill in Reflections by Samantha Rose Hill.

5. A Month Full of Medieval Musings!: May 2026 at Medieval Musings. By @hollyabrown in Medieval Musings.

6. On Pragmatism and Post-Analytic Philosophy: outgrowing the “analytic-continental divide”. By @raginbakin in De-alienation.

7. THE FORGETTING OF DREAMS by Dominic Pettman. By @everydayanalysis in Everyday Analysis Substack.

8. I Filed for Roberts’s Disbarment. Then This Happened.: This nation is hungry for justice. By @chrisarmitage1 in The Existentialist Republic.

9. A theory of ghosts: and general universal truths. By @ellismarte in Ellis’s Substack.

10. The Western Left Misunderstands Power: A critique of Jacobin’s framing of Ibrahim Traoré, and the deeper problem of purity, legibility, and distance in Western left analysis. By @ajhornwrites in Simplifying Socialism.

11. Punk, Tech & Care: B. Scot Rousse on Being Human in the AI Age: with Hubert Dreyfus, Fernando Flores, Heidegger, and Kierkegaard. By @andreahiott and @lovephilosophy in Love & Philosophy.

12. When did a stranger change your life?: My conversation with a blue-eyed lady. By @philosophyminis and @bigthinkmedia in Mini Philosophy.

13. 171. Butts (extended) : Listen to Ellie and David talk all things butts in episode 171 of Overthink! By @overthinkpod in Overthink Podcast.

14. The 3rd Annual Blog Post Competition, Extravaganza, and Jamboree: yeehaw. By @experimentalhistory in Experimental History.

15. Cuba’s Finished: Trump said it himself. The May 1 sanctions are designed to finish the job. By @hackingbutlegal in Hacking, but Legal.

16. Collateral Damage: Why the Way We Talk About War Matters: Political and Ethical Aphorism 2. By @romaricjannel in Philosophy and Beyond.

17. Observation vs Encounter: How the world is directed or allowed to show up for students. By @seanisdwelling in Sean Is Dwelling.

18. Rosy Cross: Question of Right and Truth of Christianity: The Fifth Philosophy Portal Anthology is now available. By @philosophyportal in Philosophy Portal.

19. ‘Write what you know’ does not translate to write only about you and your own life. Chill out.. By @craigsnelgrovephd in Cooper Lee Press.

20. Whose crime, what justification: feminism, philosophy, accountability, justice and justification. By @ashleydelcorno in Truth is a Woman.

21. The Pomo Condish Review: Today @ 12:45 PM CT. By @theorygang in Theory Gang.

22. A Sequel to the Philosophy of Flanagan’s Horror: Midnight Mass is a compelling statement about the devastating resolve of the human will to construct means, albeit terrible and potentially incoherent, to preserve that which they love. By @alexdoesphilosophy in Alex Does Philosophy.

23. Are we being too hard on Charlie in “The Drama”?: + Pleasures & Pursuits of the week. By @theexistentialist in The Existentialist.

24. “Methodological Nationalism is Not the (Best Articulation of the) Problem” - Eilidh Beaton (University of Aberdeen): Philosophy, 2026. By @newworkinphilosophy in New Work In Philosophy.

25. More on Democratic Despotism: And What It Means Today. By @cyrilhedoin in The Archimedean Point.

26. Nicole Kidman is becoming a death doula—and you should too: But is everyone actually fit to be a death doula? By @hellomortal and @mauraball and @carolyngreg in Hello Mortal.

27. Punk, Tech & Care: My Conversation with Andrea Hiott: A New Episode of the “Love & Philosophy” Podcast. By @bsrousse in Without Why.

28. R.I.P. Peter Carroll: a little known thinker with a big impact. By @matthewgindin in Philosophy As Therapy.

29. The Dark Ages Were a Lie. Look at the Glass.: Medieval Art and Architecture. By @roguearthistorian in Rogue Art Historian.

30. The Hollowed Institution: When Everything Still Functions but Nothing Does What It Says. By @harmoniousdiscourse in The Structural Lens.

31. Rebecca Lowe: Reading, Writing, and Thinking about Freedom. By @celineleboeuf in Why Philosophy?.

32. Three Years of How Things Work: A brief annual update on this nice place. By @howthingswork in How Things Work.

33. Human Depth: The Right to Oblivion, Part IV (Plus the Reading Schedule for The Score). By @jaredhenderson in Commonplace Philosophy.

34. When Will We Be Ready? : A Reading of Tara Knight”s “When The Moment Came, We Weren’t Ready”. By @cryn in Cryn’s Substack.

35. May 10, 2026: Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think by Ainehi Edoro: Book club moderated by Bhakti Shringarpure. By @warscapes in Radical Books Collective.

36. Descartes and Montaigne on discovering the self: Is introspection a matter of reason or sensation? By @ellieanderphd in Intimate Relationships.

37. What if Frankenstein had cared?: Lessons for the 21st century from a 200-year-old novel. By @ericalucaststonestreet in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

38. Art, Theory, and Feminism, a roundup of the roundups with Mona Mona: A recording from Mona Mona’s live video. By @philosophypublics in Philosophy Publics.

39. What’s actually in our carbs: a pantry raid: Plus the 10x rule, and the mush test! By @mccormickmd in Examined.

40. Cry the Beloved Country : A Reflection. By @rexmckenzie in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

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XOX, Mona Mona

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📣 New section incoming, on happenings: ‘s course on the self just started (#12 below); ‘s year-long slow read of Simone de Beauvoir is ongoingand I’m in it, join us (#7 below); just announced a writing philosophy for a public audience (#14 below); and is killing it with live readings of philosophy on the regular. There is a lot of exciting community building happening, no doubt I’ve missed some current and upcoming happenings. If you want to get put into the upcoming calendar section, DM me.

ROUNDUP

1. “A full and enviable philosophical life” - Remembering Hubert Dreyfus: On the 9th Anniversary of Professor Dreyfus’s Death. By in Without Why.

2. The Existential Reader #3. By in Cooper Lee Press.

3. The moral status of artificial intelligence, part 3: maybe we just shouldn’t: If we want tools, let’s make tools, not persons. By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

4. Some People Deserve to Die: On dignity as a normative status, moral agency, and why life alone is not enough to ground ethics. By in Simplifying Socialism.

5. Morality Without A Master: Vertical vs Horizontal Morality. By in Free Society.

6. Memory and Oblivion: The Right to Oblivion, Part III. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

7. The Second Sex: Week 8. By Megan Burke, PhD in Megan Burke, PhD.

8. The Dread Economy: On the Structural Production of Chronic Low-Grade Terror. By in The Structural Lens.

9. Orpheus and Eurydice: A Myth-Based Framework for Relational Self-Sabotage Under Conditions of Uncertainty: Love, fear, and the moment everything feels too close to trust. By in Helen Higgins.

10. Bullshitting. Sealioning. Gish galloping. And their cousin “the Gotcha”. : The road to misinformation is paved with epistemic exhaustion. By in The Politics of Laughter.

11. Social media’s breakdown of old gatekeepers isn’t new: On Walter Benjamin’s “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” 1930’s Germany, and 2026 America — insights for the nature of (social) media today. By in The Study with Rey.

12. 2. Ancient origins of inwardness: Plato’s Republic, Saint Augustine, and the Katha Upanishad. By in Intimate Relationships.

13. #84 There is No Average Individual: The Great Psychology Delusion with Marek McGann: Why the Mean Misleads and Multiplicity Matters. By and in Love & Philosophy.

14. Writing Philosophy for a Public Audience: I’ll be offering a four-week writing workshop starting May 6. I’d be glad to have you join. By in Daniel’s Journal.

15. The Fascism Spectrum: Asking whether the Trump regime is fascist or not is the wrong question to ask. By in Dehumanization Matters.

16. What comes after illiberalism? Orbán and the deadlock of reactionary politics. By in Julian de Medeiros.

17. 170. Care with Premilla Nadasen: Listen to Ellie and David talk to Premilla Nadasen about her work on care in episode 170 of Overthink! By in Overthink Podcast.

18. What We Make of Ourselves: On attention and craft. By in The Empty Cup.

19. The Strange Appeal of Exhaustion: What Michel Houellebecq’s Book Reveals about Love and Decline. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

20. They built but they don’t own it. They barely run it.: Another form of Extraction. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

21. Loose Thoughts On The Nature of Philosophy: Or, Why I think the Analytic/Continental split is BS. By in The Existential Pulse.

22. Structure & play Jacques Derrida: A recording from Theory Gang’s live video. By in Theory Gang.

23. What is the West, Anyway? : Lessons from Hungarian Elections and History. By n in The Archimedean Point.

24. “Education today trains professionals but does not produce people.” - Vine Deloria Jr. : On types of knowing. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

25. Archival notes: A letter from Hannah Arendt to W.H. Auden. By in Reflections by Samantha Rose Hill.

26. My Hope as a Writer: The Personal Is the Philosophical: The “Why” Behind My Wednesday Essays. By in Why Philosophy?.

27. On the Deconstruction of Masculinity: Deconstruction Without Replacement and the Limits of Positive Identity. By in Last_Futurist.

28. The three things you need to succeed: Only one of which we can actually control. By and in Mini Philosophy.

29. Grievance Poisoning in the First Degree: Is “I am so great” an actual philosophy? By in How Things Work.

30. War, Terror, and the Grief of the Arab Spring: In the context of Neo-conservatism, Liberal interventionism, and the Great Recession. By in Philosophy Portal.

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I am reminded of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer who “experimented” on some of his victims by drilling a hole in their skulls and injecting acid into their brains. He wanted to create “sex slaves” who remained alive but were comatose and in a vegetative state, so he could fuck them and do whatever else he wanted to do to them without resistance or conseque…

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📣Join me for a live discussion of pieces from all my roundups on Sundays 12noon: https://open.substack.com/live-stream/176102.

ROUNDUP

1. The World as Phantom and Matrix pt3 : Gunter Anders. By in Theory Gang.

2. The Chokepoint Civilization: What the Strait of Hormuz Reveals About the Structural Fragility of Everything. By in The Structural Lens.

3. Socio-critical Consciousness as a Material Force: How Critical Capacity Is Produced Through Struggle and Practice. By in Simplifying Socialism.

4. Poetry: Shrine of the Unsaid: Sometimes, our thoughts about others can be something we don’t want to admit out loud. By in Helen Higgins.

5. Néstor Kohan, “Imperialismo cultural y lucha de clases”. By in Critical Theory Workshop’s Substack.

6. The moral status of artifical intelligence, part 2: personhood as a social practice: If it walks like a person and talks like a person, we’ll probably respond to it like a person. But is that enough? By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

7. The Polymarket Professor: A deep dive into Jiang Xueqin & the perils of his geopolitical grift. By in Daniel’s Journal.

8. No Kings, Just Clowns. By in Adbusters.

9. Extractivism: A Primer: What it is, how it works, and why it didn’t end with colonialism. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

10. Our WTF! Years: WTF is with this ceasefire? WTF is with Melania? By in Predictive History Substack.

11. Does Virality Concern Reality?: The case for studying the Internet with linguist Adam Aleksic. By in The Empty Cup.

12. From the Clinic to the Streets: Psychoanalysis for Revolutionary Futures (Pluto Press, May 2026): a response to Lara Sheehi’s forthcoming book (this is the text read at Lara’s book launch April 2026. Reproduced here for those who have asked). By in Unruly Therapeutic.

13. On Ideology as Consumption: Irony, LARP, and the Simulation of Belief. By in Last_Futurist.

14. Beyond Loneliness: Tips from Aristotle. By Nancy Sherman in Feed the Soul.

15. “Because they’re animals”: The twisted logic of Trump’s dehumanizing rhetoric. By in Dehumanization Matters.

16. Liberalism and the “Lost Einsteins” : Chances of Success and Fair Opportunities in a Liberal Society. By @cyrilhedoin in The Archimedean Point.

17. The Politics of Explanation: Political and Ethical Aphorism 1. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

18. Why Feminism Didn’t Exist in the Medieval World: Kate Wagner (aka ‘15thCentury Feminist’) on challenging dominant narratives. By in Medieval Musings.

19. Lost Futures and the Living Dead of 1999: Prince’s ‘1999’ and Charli XCX and Troye Sivan’s ‘1999’ - a future that failed to materialise and a future that is recycled endlessly. By in Cooper Lee Press.

20. Two Visions: Politics of love, or politics of fear? By in How Things Work.

21. A Zen Master’s Advice On the Greatest Gift We Can Give Ourselves. By in Philosophy As Therapy.

22. The Political Debate Trap: Why does everything feel politically polarizing? By in Overthink Podcast.

23. Egan’s Philosophic Understanding: The Question Behind the Question. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

24. “We’re in a time of grotesque imperial wars. We have to keep complaining and protesting.” - Sara Ahmed: A conversation with writer, scholar and activist Sara Ahmed about her book “NO! The Art and Activism of Complaining” for the Radical Futures podcast. By in Radical Books Collective.

25. The Way AI Lovebombs Us: AI is designed to mould itself around our needs, on the backside of which comes control. I sound off after reading some recent pieces on the backlash against AI, jumping on that bandwagon. By in Philosophy Publics.

26. 1. Introduction to Identity and Selfhood: Why is “who am I?” both a perennial question, and one that feels more relevant than ever? By in Intimate Relationships.

27. The Twilight of Psychoanalysis (part 2): The Psychoanalytic Industrial Complex. By in Antagonisms of the Everyday: Philosophy, Culture, Politics.

28. They Hired Me, Hazed Me, and Fired Me by Mail : Inside the network that helped shape the Stuxnet narrative and built companies entrusted with America’s critical infrastructure. By in Hacking, but Legal.

29. Sebastian Wiedemann: Concept-Film-Making. By in Why Philosophy?.

30. Bad Arguments Against Continental Philosophy: The only time I’ll write about this, I hope. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

31. AI, Consciousness, and Moral Disorientation: A Proliferation of Moral Anomalies. By in Without Why.

32. Heavy Metal Thoughts Pt.3: Hearing Time: Why Familiar Songs Are Never the Same Twice. By in The Existential Pulse.

33. The 3 kinds of messages I always delete: (And usually end up blocking). By and in Mini Philosophy.

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ROUNDUP

1. Seducing the Mind: A few thoughts on why seducing the mind is more important than seducing the body. By in Helen Higgins.

2. Nietzsche’s Critique of Philosophers - Part 2: Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits #4. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

3. New Series: Smorgasbord Discussion(s). By in Cryn’s Substack.

4. Cuba’s Fight for Sovereignty with Helen Yaffe . By in Critical Theory Workshop’s Substack.

5. The Hard Problem of (Class) Consciousness: toward a Marxist philosophy of mind. By in De-alienation.

6. Loosing Sight, Finding Vision: And how I plan to carry forward through. By in Philosophy Publics.

7. So, DID colonial plunder create capitalism?: In his Jacobin interview, Vivek Chibber strawmans his critics — an explainer of 2 different definitions of the Marxist concept of primitive accumulation. By in The Study with Rey.

8. Hospice care and the annihilation of entire civilizations. By in Examined.

9. The Tragedy of the Cognitive Commons: How the Smartest AI Could Produce the Dumbest Society. By in The Structural Lens.

10. The Default Position: Why Hierarchy Must Justify Itself & Can’t. By in Free Society.

11. Varieties of Racism 2: Why Is Argentina So Racist - And What Can Nigeria Help Us See? By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

12. Where Is My Mind?: On attending to geographies. By in The Empty Cup.

13. Guest post: David Simpson.: Check it out. By in The Existential Pulse.

14. Unions, or David Duke? : Two basic paths for American politics. By in How Things Work.

15. The moral status of artificial intelligence, part 1: defining the problem: In which we decide to skirt the question of consciousness and take another tack. By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

16. World War Trump: The war to break the world, and make Trump. By in Predictive History Substack.

17. The 2020’s Inversion of the Flaneur. By in Cooper Lee Press.

18. Schopenhauer’s Inverted Turing Test: What would Schopenhauer think of A.I.? By in The Pendulum.

19. The Unthinkable Has Been Thought, The Unsayable Has Been Said: A Civilizational Erasure. By in Going There.….

20. The Drawing Knows the Bird: On dwelling, distillation, and the porousness of the hand-drawn image. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

21. Is Writing with Others Really Writing?: Solitude, Silence, and Solidarity. By in Why Philosophy?.

22. On Self-Critique: Remolding Behavior in the Absence of a True Self. By in Last_Futurist.

23. The Military Purge Just Hit a Disastrous and Revealing Milestone from the Dictators Handbook.. By in The Existentialist Republic.

24. EXCLUSIVE: Sam Altman’s Sibling Is Taking Him to Trial: The federal case against the OpenAI CEO has survived its first major legal test, and the filings tell a much darker story than the public has been led to believe. By in Hacking, but Legal.

25. 168. Closer Look: Levinas, On Escape: Listen to Ellie and David think talk about Levinas’s essay “On Escape” in episode 168 of Overthink! By in Overthink Podcast.

26. Identity and Selfhood: teeing up my next video lecture course!: Diving into a topic that’s important to my research and to, well, all of us. By @ellieanderphd in Intimate Relationships.

27. Eternal Darkness, Perpetual War: By Bhakti Shringarpure. Whom does Israel’s Operation Eternal Darkness really implicate? By in Radical Books Collective.

28. The Order of Things: Music, Storytelling, and Selfhood. By in The Way Out Is Through.

29. Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about: Be kind. Always. By and in Mini Philosophy.

30. #83 Wisdom Gates: Paradox, Care and Discovery with Puzzle-Maker Jasen Robillard: every community is an invitation to care about something together, but what? By @andreahiott and in Love & Philosophy.

31. Dress for the void you want: Week 39: Experimenting with Absurdism. By in Theory Gang.

32. Every tradition has a story about transformation through loss: What Easter and Passover can teach us about transformation—whether you celebrate or not. By and in Hello Mortal.

33. Starting ‘The Right to Oblivion’: The Right to Oblivion, Part I. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

34. Welcome to Passages: Courses, Workshops, Art, Literature, Poetry, Philosophy. By in Reflections by Samantha Rose Hill.

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ROUNDUP

1. The Age of Mutual Economic Vulnerability. By in The Structural Lens.

2. Intuition: Instant Access. By in Rix’s Substack.

3. The Bachelor’s monogamy problem: An unpublished case for the show’s polyamory, from 2022. By in Intimate Relationships.

4. Infinite midwit: OR: if we were playing by Settlers of Catan rules, I’d be dead already. By in Experimental History.

5. Three Frameworks for One Global System: Hall, Moyo, and Amin on imperialism, dispossession, and the making of a neoliberal world. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

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ROUNDUP

1. The Price of Truth: Fraud, Deepfakes, and the Coming Reinsurance Crisis of Reality. By in The Structural Lens.

2. The Consequences of Bad Labor Law: Savage inequality and long TSA lines. By in How Things Work.

3. Interactions Between Emotions: One Ice Cream, Many Emotions. By in Rix’s Substack.

4. Samuel Jonathan: Let’s ask questions that will liberate us! By in Why Philosophy?.

5. The Theatre of Theory: Guest Post: Hammurabi Rubio #6. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

6. Autonomy and the aims of parenting: Independence vs. agency. By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

7. Wordle Bot is Stupid: The New York Times Games crew, take heed. By in Philosophy for the Public Good.

8. The cinematographic device: Public space as film projector. By i in Urbiquity.

9. How to lose an empire in less than 4 weeks: Step 1: Make sure it’s your empire. Step 2: Attack Iran. By in Reclaimed | Systems.

10. On the “True Self”: Performance and Identity. By in Last_Futurist.

11. 166. Pedantry with Arnoud Visser: Listen to Ellie and David chat with philosopher Arnoud Visser about his book, On Pedantry: A Cultural History of the Know-it-All, in episode 166 of Overthink! By in Overthink Podcast.

12. Beyond Violence: Rethinking Struggle in the Modern World. By in Simplifying Socialism.

13. Practice philosophy by other means. By in Julian de Medeiros.

14. Entry #12: The Heretic Who Taught Me to See: On Thorstein Veblen, Robert Heilbroner, and what it means to have been inside the machine. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

15. Žižek’s (Black) Hole: In-between the Parallax of Lack-Excess, Towards the Drive of Communisation. By in Philosophy Portal.

16. Emotional Bandwidth, Intelligence, and the Cost of Being “Intimidating”: The Psychological Cost of Being Misread at Work. By in Helen Higgins.

17. The Watch: On Paying Attention. By in Becoming Human.

18. “Rescuing Socialism from Equality” - Barry Maguire (University of Edinburgh): Mind, 2026. By in New Work In Philosophy.

19. The French Left is Doomed: They Are Not the Only Ones. By in The Archimedean Point.

20. Identity: You and Your Profile, Part 4. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

21. Misunderstanding Anarchism: & Misunderstanding Self-Defence, Expertise, Leadership, Justification, Governments & Democracy. By in Free Society.

22. A creative meditation on impermanence: What Andy Goldsworthy’s temporary art teaches us about letting go. By and in Hello Mortal.

23. What even is philosophy? : On why I cannot give a clear definition despite 4 years of studying philosophy... By writes in The Gem.

24. Walking is Thinking: & a live event in NYC. By in Love & Philosophy.

25. Don’t Fight The Wrong Battle: Values, beliefs, Jurgen Habermas........ and maybe not fighting at all. By in Philosophy As Therapy.

26. The US-Iran End Game: This war ends with the rise of Pax Judaica. By in Predictive History Substack.

27. One cannot imagine Sisyphus happy: The Aztec philosophy that life is more than boulders. By and in Mini Philosophy.

28. You Should Read This: Max van Manen on Pedagogical Tact: Two books that changed how I think about what teaching actually is. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

29. Help me shape what’s coming next!. By in Reflections by Samantha Rose Hill.

30. U and Ur Profile pt 15 : A recording from Theory Gang’s live video. By in Theory Gang.

31. A Brief History of Educational Machinery: One revolution after another. By in New Cartographies.

32. Intimate Relationships Live with filmmaker Emma Parkinson: A recording from Ellie Anderson’s live video. By and in Intimate Relationships.

33. love’s bad infinity: tristan und isolde - in theory and at the met. By in the late review.

34. Diary of a polyamorist: on attraction, attachment, desire, status and prestige. By in Truth is a Woman.

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NOTABLES

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📣 ANOUNCEMENT

Fellow Substackers, I have created two Substack writer’s tools that you might like to check out:

1) Substack Insights helps surface your publication’s analytics, so you can see what is really working. (You might want to double down on that! 😉) It’s free for publications under 1k subs.

2) I am also making available the Substack Notes Scheduler I created for myself. Not only can you schedule notes for later publication, but premium users can also automate posting a link to a post from your archive on any hourly interval (say, every 12 hours). This way your old posts get a second life. The Substack Notes Scheduler is now available for Firefox, and we are awaiting it’s release on Chrome. I will announce that when it’s ready. Cheers!

ROUNDUP

1. Not Grief. Anger.: Why death does not guarantee grief, and why I refuse the script. By in The Existential Pulse.

2. The treatment of violence within the society of the spectacle: 1st draft and a request for feedback. By in The Existential Reader.

3. 165. Pornography: Listen to Ellie and David discuss the nuances of pornography in episode 165 of Overthink! By in Overthink Podcast.

4. Contemplating Computation: On spiritual practice, business culture, and technology with Alex Soojung-Kim Pang. By in The Empty Cup.

5. RIP my profession (and probably yours, too): Artificial intelligence is transforming work. No one is talking about the grief that will follow. By and in Hello Mortal.

6. Opportunity Costs and the Art of (Local) Governance: An Idealistic View. By in The Archimedean Point.

7. Philosophy begins with nothing: Doing philosophy with kids: Babies are the best scientists, and maybe kids are the best philosophers. By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

8. “Why Philosophy?” — A Reintroduction!: The Future of Our Substack. By in Why Philosophy?.

9. The Algorithmic Tribe: How Recommendation Engines Are Constructing Identities. By in The Structural Lens.

10. Gateways to Annihilation Review. By in The Way Out Is Through.

11. Is God Enlightened?: follow me down this rabbit hole for a moment. By in Philosophy As Therapy.

12. The Muscular Armor of Character: (Wilhelm Reich). By in Rix’s Substack.

13. An Existential Guide to: Regret: Regret is a bruise that never ripens. By in The Shadowed Archive.

14. Japan: Caught Between the Houthis and Hormuz: Guest Post: Ethan D. Chorin. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

15. Kim Stanley Robinson on his work, utopic realism, the future of Mars, Fredric Jameson… and so on : New episode of “Crisis and Critique Podcast: Philosophy and Its Other Scene” now out. By in Crisis and Critique.

16. “Iris Murdoch’s Moral Philosophy: Reframing the True, the Real and the Good” - Cathy Mason (Central European University): Oxford University Press, 2026 (April). By in New Work In Philosophy.

17. Palestine at the Movies: A Triptych: By Bhakti Shringarpure. This year, three powerful Palestinian films by women directors make urgent interventions in a highly contested area: history. Only one is nominated for an Oscar. By in Radical Books Collective.

18. Cosma Shalizi Is Aware of All Internet Traditions: Shalizi’s frame of artificial intelligence as mechanized tradition. By in Programmable Mutter.

19. Why we need Aztec philosophy in a messy world: Everything is chaos, and we need to deal with that. By and in Mini Philosophy.

20. Creating in a world that forgives nothing: On Camus’ Create Dangerously... By in The Gem.

21. Trump’s Latest Dehumanizing Slur: Misogyny and Beyond. By in Dehumanization Matters.

22. Should You Live a Charmed Life in an Immoral, Collapsing World? . By in Cryn’s Substack.

23. Chinese Tech, African States, and the New Architecture of Control: A Surveillance Dividend. By in Critical Perspectives @UrbanDividend.

24. Freedom and Free Will in Psychoanalysis: A new issue of Psychoanalytic Inquiry, edited by Peter N. Maduro, J.D., Psy.D., Psy.D. and William J. Coburn, Ph.D., Psy.D. By in Psychoanalytic Inquiry.

25. Bruton: What does it mean to belong somewhere? By in Becoming Human.

26. Join me in San Francisco on Monday, March 16 for my talk: “Why Not Brain Rot: AI & Contemporary Nihilism”: The salon takes place at Frontier Tower on the Human Flourishing Floor. By in Without Why.

27. A Philosophical Reflection on Violence: An examination and reinterpretation of violence as a progressive force against oppression. By in Simplifying Socialism.

28. The importance of having a dream : Fragment 21. By in Julian de Medeiros.

29. Return to Kant?: Reflections on Marxist Readings of Kant and the Pitfalls of Neo-Kantianism. By in Daniel’s Journal.

30. The People Fighting For Your Attention: The Friends of a Attention; Fight Against Brain-Rot Book Club; Estuary. By in Commonplace Philosophy.

31. Disentangling limerence from love: A work in progress. By in Intimate Relationships.

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NOTES

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ROUNDUP

1. Five examples of extraordinary people according to Nietzsche: What does the Übermensch look like? By and in Mini Philosophy.

2. Voting is not harm reduction: On the philosophical implausibility of “harm reduction” through voting for Democratic presidential candidates. By in The Study with Rey.

3. Whereupon Irigaray Springs Her Question of Sexual Difference: Making our way through Irigaray’s An Ethics of Sexual Difference, we have arrived at the posing of the question of sexual difference. By in Philosophy Publics.

4. The Multicultural Myth: Canada Welcomes South Asians. It Just Doesn’t Protect Us. By in ZERO POINT.

5. Feasting for the Senses: On attention and eating. By in The Empty Cup.

6. Who Taught Stone to Pray: Survey of Asian Art. By in Rogue Art Historian.

7. Romantic Risks, Luke Brunning: Lecture 26, Intimate Relationships: Rounding out the course with a return to Brunning’s book and present-day context. By in Intimate Relationships.

8. Marty Supreme (2026): Film analysis and Lacanian reflections. By in Leon S. Brenner.

9. 164. Closer Look: Haraway, Cyborg Manifesto (extended) : Listen to Ellie and David take a closer look at Donna Haraway’s seminal essay, A Cyborg Manifesto in episode 164! By @overthinkpod in Overthink Podcast.

10. Grades Are Dumb.: A rant about pretending to measure the unmeasurable. By in Sean Is Dwelling.

11. Waking Up in the Age of AI: A conversation with Polly Young-Eisendrath. By in Without Why.

12. Taoism and Tea: Applications of Eastern Philosophy in Times of Crisis: Guest Post: Peck Gee Chua & Yuxuan Francis Liu. By in Philosophy and Beyond.

13. The Left has Failed Iran: Socialism’s Fetish for US Aggression. By in Antagonisms of the Everyday: Philosophy, Culture, Politics.

14. Kurt Vonnegut’s Therapy of Disillusion: The Lessons of Malachi Constant. By in Philosophy As Therapy.

15. The Celebrity as Spectacle Explored Through the Murder of John Lennon. By in The Existential Reader.

16. Why Do You Exist?: Philosophical & Political Purposes For Your Life. By in Free Society.

17. Domination ruins everything, part 3: Dissonance: Interdependence harmonizes with our unavoidable uncertainty and vulnerability. By in Humaning is Hard, but Philosophy Can Help.

18. No way except through: Or, what philosophy is for: refusal, naming, logic and paradox. By in Truth is a Woman.

19. We all Care: from the textures of competition to the textures of caring. By in Love & Philosophy.

20. Fullness and Emptiness: From Bodily Activation to the Power to Act. By in Rix´s Substack.

21. The Problem of Narrow Identities: On the Possibility and Necessity of a Liberal Identity Politics. By in The Archimedean Point.

22. The Acceleration: An American ground invasion of Iran would be a disaster. That’s the plan. By in Predictive History Substack.

23. DOGE Has the Draft List: How automatic Selective Service registration, government data-mining, and two active wars converge on a single database. By in Hacking, but Legal.

24. “Lethality, Lethality, Lethality”. By in Dehumanization Matters.

25. The Spiritualization of Politics: Why Ideology Is Replacing Religion: Why It Gets Apocalyptic. By in The Structural Lens.

26. The Beauty of Ephemerality: Why We Should Cherish the Fleetingness of Our Lives. By in Why Philosophy?.

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"Sexual difference would constitute the horizon of worlds more fecund than any known to date, at least in the West, and without reducing fecundity to the reproduction of bodies and flesh. For loving partners this would be a fecundity of birth and regeneration, but also the production of a new age of thought, art, poetry, and language: the creation of a new poetics."

First, let’s gather the work we have done previously: Irigaray brings us to her question of sexual difference through her critique of Heidegger: where Heidegger critiques Aristotle for failing to consider the subject in his study of beings, Irigaray will tell us that Heidegger fails to consider the living subject. Heidegger’s question of being resolves into the question of sexual difference. “Why are there beings rather than nothing?” turns into ‘Why are there (at least) two kinds of subjects and sexual/sexuate difference?” If we can reach these two, a field of difference opens up.

Fecundity is a term Irigaray borrows from Levinas to describe not only the creation of new beings in reproduction, but the harkening of a new era of creativity that would follow an authentic encounter between the two. She expands on fecundity and her reading of Levinas in the closing essay of The Ethics, entitled “The Fecundity of the Caress: A Reading of Levinas, Totality and Infinity, ‘Phenomenology of Eros’.” I hope to get to a reading of that piece in this series. But here, she brings him into her text to suggest a kind of erotics of thought. It’s as if she is coupling with Levinas, to birth the question of sexual difference and of the living subject.

Irigaray’s assumption of the heterosexual couple as the linchpin of our cultures can be taken as descriptive rather than descriptive. In order to get to an understanding of difference (and we might want to rename this multiplicity or diversity) we have to go through the couple, where our understanding of generation is rooted. Generation, creativity, fecundity, that is what we are trying to get at by focusing on the couple.

Some have criticized Irigaray on this point, calling her work heterosexist and essentialist Irigaray herself doesn’t shy away from this critique, and in fact embraces the idea that what she calls sexual difference (sexuate difference and the heterosexual couple) is taken as the original and originary difference in her accounts. But I think that we can take this assumption as conditioned by the discourse on which we are operating, one that is heterosexist and makes any other starting point impossible, for now. The heterosexual couple is emblematic not only for her, but in our Western cultures, it is the understanding from which we must start — on a generous reading of what Irigaray is up to. Still, my focus is on destabilizing the male-needs-centered heterosexual imperative, and we should be on guard against replicating its dominance. Sometimes Irigaray helps us with this (for example, in “Fluid Mechanics”), and other times we must read Irigaray against herself.

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