• Aksamit@slrpnk.net
    0·
    11 months ago

    Objectively: It’s entropy, life is part of the process for dismantling the universe.

    Subjectively: It’s whatever you like. Personally I find a lot of comfort in the objective view.

  • RQG@lemmy.world
    0·
    11 months ago

    At uni the biologist parties were always the ones with the most sex. So that checks out.

    The least sex was electrical or mechanical engineering. Just the couple of ay dudes had some fun.

    Weirdest sex was for sure psychology student parties.

    • PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca
      0·
      11 months ago

      Agreed. I was at a party and I got blackout drunk and regained my awareness as I was sitting on a log barfing. To my right is a psychology student holding my shoulders and stroking my hair. She then walks me home, invites herself in, empties the entire contents of her purse in my shared living room, then takes me back to my room and rides me for an undisclosed amount of time.

      Psychology student sex was weird that one time.

      And don’t even get me started on civil engineers…

    • StarlightDust@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      0·
      11 months ago

      I used to live with a biology student who would constantly have house parties. Those parties weren’t the most sex-filled ones I’ve ever been to but they absolutely attracted the wealthiest party goers.

  • VubDapple@real.lemmy.fanEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Pynchon from Gravity’s Rainbow:

    “Don’t forget the real business of the War is buying and selling. The murdering and violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals. The mass nature of wartime death is useful in many ways. It serves as a spectacle, as a diversion from the real movements of the War. It provides raw material to be recorded into History, so that children may be taught History as sequences of violence, battle after battle, and be more prepared for the adult world. Best of all, mass death’s a stimulus to just ordinary folks, little fellows, to try ‘n’ grab a piece of that Pie while they’re still here to gobble it up. The true war is a celebration of markets. Organic markets, carefully styled “black” by the professionals, spring up everywhere. Scrip, Sterling, Reichsmarks, continue to move, severe as classical ballet, inside their antiseptic marble chambers. But out here, down here among the people, the truer currencies come into being. So, Jews are negotiable. Every bit as negotiable as cigarettes, cunt, or Hersey bars.”

    • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 months ago

      I’ve read nothing by Pynchon, so I have no real context… Is this meant to be in his voice? Or is this a character in the novel speaking? Thx

      • VubDapple@real.lemmy.fanEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        Its been years so I dont specifically recall. My guess is that it is the voice of a sort of omniscient narrator. It does seem to be a stand-in for Pynchon’s perspective to some extent. It’s such an exuberant novel. There is definitely a sense I recall that this (at the time) young man was stretching to the limit of his prodigious ability and wanted to show that ability off.

    • Chris@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      I struggle to read these days and I couldnt get through gravity’s rainbow. Worth a read? Should I get the audiobook?

      • VubDapple@real.lemmy.fanEnglish
        0·
        11 months ago

        It’s one of the more difficult books to get through frankly but it is rewarding. The thing to appreciate when attempting it is that mid-30s Pynchon was inventing his own English grammar. Some sentences are a full page long and it will challenge your memory. So the best approach I think is to just let it wash over you. After a while your mind adapts. You’ll miss a ton the first time through and that is OK. I think I had to start it three times before I eventually got through it and I was younger then. I have reread it a few times since, once with a companion book that annotated each chapter and offered commentary on the book’s structure which is actually impressively plotted. But don’t let it intimidate. Just let it wash over you and enjoy the funny parts. There are a lot of funny parts. The audiobook route sounds less fatiguing. Fickt nicht mit dem Raketemensch!

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
          0·
          11 months ago

          The thing to appreciate when attempting it is that mid-30s Pynchon was inventing his own English grammar. Some sentences are a full page long and it will challenge your memory.

          He always seemed like a more modern take on James Joyce or something (coming from someone who’s never read Pynchon)

    • orange_squeezer@lemm.ee
      0·
      11 months ago

      It wasn’t until I got to the cigarettes and cunts as currency that I realized this was not a particularly hardcore monologue from Gravity Falls, a popular show I had not watched, but Gravity’s Rainbow. Great excerpt though.

  • grrgyle@slrpnk.net
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    11 months ago

    Except we have the foresight to know everything will end. Even if we were to produce 100 000 000 perfect replicas of our genes they would still hit the same wall— extinction. Further, whether we have free will or not (prolly not), we’re able to coopt the gene platforms to further non-procreative aims.

    It’s a bit like saying the point of a TV show is to earn profit for the people who bankrolled it. Well, yes that’s why it’s here and literally the only thing that will keep it going, but you can do a lot more within those constraints than play out the material reality.

    So the question remains.

    • exasperation@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      11 months ago

      Even if we were to produce 100 000 000 perfect replicas of our genes they would still hit the same wall— extinction.

      Doesn’t matter, had sex.

  • Zacryon@feddit.org
    0·
    11 months ago

    Getting your finger bitten off by a person who is wearing a lot of make-up? Pls explain, I’m not a biologist. /j

  • TedDallas@programming.devEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    Personally I feel like it is a dumb question. Life gives you meaning. By that I mean life enables the creation of symbolic truths. And what enables life is a different question.