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A state in which “this” and “that” no longer find their opposites is called the hinge of the Way.

ian • 27 • he/them • 也中文
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not at all timely by social media standards, but posting this in memoriam before i forget

from John Deely's chapter in "Semiotics and its Masters", ed. Bankov & Cobley (2017)
5.3 From sensation to Umwelt [Thomas A.] Sebeok was criticizing the Estonians, Lotman in particular, for thinking that language as linguistic communication is the primary modeling system. I can never forget the time he was lecturing at the University of Toronto and said “You know, when people hear about language they immediately think of communication. But language has nothing to do with communication,” and went on in his talk. When it came to the question period, the first question was “Professor Sebeok, you said that language has nothing to do with communication. Why did you say that?” “Because it doesn’t”, Sebeok answered. “Next question.” Sebeok would come up with his novel ideas, each one of which took on the average three years to mature, similar to the time when he opened a session of the Semiotic Society of America saying “I am going to demonstrate to you that all these people talking about animal language, like Jane Goodall, are either frauds or charlatans.” Three years later he held a big conference in New York55 which put a serious crimp in government funding for animal “language” research. I met Jane Goodall, in passing, at that conference, and I said to her “Well, you know, you can argue with another person whether angels exist or whether God exists but you can’t do that with animals”; to which she replied flatly “Oh yes you can”. Where do you go from there?! We went our separate ways.
October 4, 2025 at 8:03 PM
this is the second-funniest drinking party in the history of polytheism
UÞGARD-LOKI: "Well, there's a little cat here that our no-account boys try to lift. I never would have thought to challenge the mighty Thor to such a puny contest, if I had not seen how you performed with that little drinking horn." UÞGARD-LOKI: "This went as I expected, the cat is fairly large, and Thor is little and short." THOR: "As short as you call me, let someone come here and wrestle me! I'm angry now."
June 28, 2025 at 3:18 PM