Also recently interviewed in the Hindustan Times, if you subscribe (because paywalled, unfortunately; the print issue has a truly gigantic photo of me and no one should look at it) www.hindustantimes.com/lifestyle/ar...

"All three worlds fascinate because they replicate the Subject’s central concern: how to sustain meaning when the gods are dead."

"Warhammer shows the Subject’s form defending against chaos; Malazan shows it living with pain; Bakker shows it frozen in perfection."

3) R. Scott Bakker

This really made me think:

'A point where coherence becomes too absolute, where the frame no longer vibrates but hardens into fatal logic.
For the subject—whose inner law is “the edge of dissolution, but only within a frame strong enough to hold”—Bakker eliminates the edge.'

This is actually quite good, tbh:

"The subject likely reads the Imperium not as endorsement but as allegory: the cost of maintaining coherence through repression."

2. Warhammer 40k

"The Imperium’s machinery of faith and control is their psychic mirror: a civilisation—and a self—that endures precisely by keeping catastrophe aesthetically contained."

Not only did I have to overhear a number of local politicians (including a former President and multiple current and former MPs) talk some absolute nonsense at the funeral, I have had to come home and put together another Mamdani note.

Though, these are probably the best lines from the song:

"Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone"

And, are definitely in the pantheon of all-timers.

"Bill, I believe this is killing me"

Obviously, related, but, when it comes to painting a picture of lost time, I'm not sure if there are sadder & more devastating lyrics in music than these. They hit particularly hard at middle-age.

I should probably stop being a grumpy old man and just listen to the thing.

A tangent, but I assume we now have to capitalise the G in Gooner, to distinguish the fans of the football club from the masturbatory act. Unless, of course, one wants to conflate the two for bants.