Rhys Ting
@rhysjamais.bsky.social
A former qualitative researcher in public health nutrition policy making the leap into philosophy. [MPH → MA]
3rd-culture thing & skeet bricoleur
🇸🇬x🇲🇾/prev🇺🇸🇦🇺
3rd-culture thing & skeet bricoleur
🇸🇬x🇲🇾/prev🇺🇸🇦🇺
Books that rewired my brain in 2024. 💙📚
(Yes, a lot of these were to do with thesis-writing.)
(Yes, a lot of these were to do with thesis-writing.)
![Science:
1. Terrence Deacon - Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged From Matter
2. Charles Seife - Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, From Our Brains to Black Holes
3. Amanda Gefter - Trespassing On Einstein’s Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing, and the Beginning of Everything
4. James Gleick - Chaos: Making A New Science
5. Sara Imari Walker, Paul W.C. Davies, George F.R. Ellis [eds.] - From Matter to Life: Information and Causality
6. Rupert Sheldrake - The Science Delusion: Feeling the Spirit of Enquiry
7. Charles Seife - Zero: the Biography of a Dangerous Idea
8. Jimmy Soni & Rob Goodman - A Mind at Play: How Claude Shannon Invented the Information Age
9. Laura Tripaldi - Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials
10. Felix Flicker - The Magick of Matter: Crystals, Chaos and the Wizardry of Physics
11. Jimena Canales - Bedeviled: A Shadow History of Demons in Science
12. Paul Davies - The Demon in the Machine: How Hidden Webs of Information Are Solving the Mystery of Life
13. Jessica Riskin - The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument Over What Makes Living Things Tick
14. Jim Baggott - Origins: The Scientific Story of Creation
15. James Essinger - Jacquard's Web: How a Hand-Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4xbeq3efmoqwp73tg4kfftdh/bafkreia2wkuokwjyrkytffgimm3kzycu3nz6hkh2ryk7houuiskk4qc32e@jpeg)
![Nonfiction & Biography:
1. Haing S. Ngor - Surviving the Killing Fields: The Cambodian Odyssey of Haing S. Ngor
2. Binyavanga Wainaina - One Day I Will Write About This Place
3. Darren McGarvey - Poverty Safari: Understanding the Anger of Britain’s Underclass
4. Erika Fatland - Sovietistan: A Journey Through Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan
5. Kate Washington - Already Toast: Caregiving and Burnout in America
6. Binyavanga Wainaina - How To Write About Africa
7. Jehad Abusalim, Jennifer Bing & Mike Merryman-Lotze [eds.] - Light in Gaza: Writings Born of Fire
8. Judith Tebbutt - A Long Walk Home: One Woman's Story of Kidnap, Hostage, Loss - and Survival
9. Naomi Klein - Doppelganger: A Trip to the Mirror World
10. Agnes Arnold-Foster - Nostalgia: The History of A Dangerous Emotion
11. Patric Gagne - Sociopath: A Memoir
Fiction/Poetry/Classics:
1. Azareen Van der Vliet Oloomi - Call Me Zebra
2. Paul Valéry - Selected Writings of Paul Valéry
3. Fred Moten - All That Beauty
4. François Rabelais - Gargantua & Pantagruel
5. Patrick McCabe - Poguemahone](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4xbeq3efmoqwp73tg4kfftdh/bafkreihsqz66zqknbrvn3vs42d4eotc3gycouh6r6l7xpij4yu3jtkwlkm@jpeg)
January 1, 2025 at 6:32 AM
Books that rewired my brain in 2024. 💙📚
(Yes, a lot of these were to do with thesis-writing.)
(Yes, a lot of these were to do with thesis-writing.)
🎧 Here's a Topsters chart of my favourite albums from 2024.
So much interesting music this year!
(full list of album names in alt-text)
So much interesting music this year!
(full list of album names in alt-text)
![[Topsters chart of album covers in a 7x6 grid]
The names of the artists and albums are as follows:
1. Jessica Pratt - Here In The Pitch
2. Michael Head & The Red Elastic Band - Loophole
3. Laetitia Sadier - Rooting for Love
4. Sleater-Kinney - Little Rope
5. Mach-Hommy - #RICHAXXHAITIAN
6. Dehd - Poetry
7. FEH - Split Second
8. Halo Maud - Celebrate
9. Sault - Acts of Faith
10. Shirlette Ammons - Spectacles
11. Dora Morelenbaum - PIQUE
12. St. Vincent - All Born Screaming
13. Les Amazones d'Afrique - Musow Danse
14. Bill Laurance & The Untold Orchestra - Bloom
15. Juliana Gattas - Maquillada en la Cama
16. yaya bey - Ten Fold
17. Clara Luciani - Mon sang
18. Doechii - Alligator Bites Never Heal
19. Chanel Beads - Your Day Will Come
20. Adrian Younge - Jazz Is Dead 021
21. Four Tet - Three +
22. Naseer Shamma - ABWAB
23. Hannah Miette - Hannah Miette
24. Tassia Reis - TOPO DA MINHA CABEÇA
25. Pat Metheny - MoonDial
26. TR/ST - Performance
27. Elbow - AUDIO VERTIGO
28. Michael Kiwanuka - Small Changes
29. Fink - Beauty In Your Wake
30. Fred Hersch - Silent, Listening
31. Diane Birch - Flying on Abraham
32. Khruangbin - A La Sala
33. Amen Dunes - Death Jokes
34. Astrel K - The Foreign Department
35. Kelly Moran - Moves in the Field
36. Luther Allison - I Owe It All To You
37. The Narcotix - Dying
38. Kaïa Kater - Strange Medicine
39. Lucy Rose - This Ain't The Way You Go Out
40. Ani DiFranco - Unprecedented Sh!t
41. Julian Lage - Speak To Me
42. Emma Volard - Alibi](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4xbeq3efmoqwp73tg4kfftdh/bafkreigaqgovmrpeihu3tai5tuxs33d7abyenpcv4seeewroug6xpijliu@jpeg)
December 30, 2024 at 6:26 AM
🎧 Here's a Topsters chart of my favourite albums from 2024.
So much interesting music this year!
(full list of album names in alt-text)
So much interesting music this year!
(full list of album names in alt-text)
Current 💙📚: pulp surrealist classic "Fantômas", acquired yesterday at a used bookshop. Can see how it prefigures Arsène Lupin/ Jean Genet's work, & obvs reminiscent of Dostoevsky's C&P sans existential introspection. This 'flat affect' narration -surprisingly- gives me Ottessa Moshfegh vibes (!)
![Book cover of the Picador edition of Fantômas, which reads:
MARCEL ALLAIN & PIERRE SOUVESTRE
THE LEGENDARY NOVEL OF MYSTERY AND ROMANCE
(Black text against a yellow stripe at the top)
[Illustration of a light-skinned, tuxedoed figure with his chin resting again a white-gloved hand. He is wearing a top hat and an eye mask with the book's title (sans circumflex), "FANTOMAS", written across his visage. Said figure is portrayed as a giant against the evening sky - dark blue fading to yellow - and towering above the city of Paris, with the silhouette of the Eiffel Tower visible towards the bottom left.]
The bottom right corner has text which reads:
" 'ENFANTOMASTIC'
JAMES JOYCE"
Followed by a text box containing the words "FIRST BRITISH PUBLICATION"](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4xbeq3efmoqwp73tg4kfftdh/bafkreibt23o6pttrol75coaz2ijtvxdtakgph32stdxhddqaqqj6wrztya@jpeg)
December 16, 2024 at 6:42 AM
Current 💙📚: pulp surrealist classic "Fantômas", acquired yesterday at a used bookshop. Can see how it prefigures Arsène Lupin/ Jean Genet's work, & obvs reminiscent of Dostoevsky's C&P sans existential introspection. This 'flat affect' narration -surprisingly- gives me Ottessa Moshfegh vibes (!)
My favourite photo of Claude Shannon
November 24, 2024 at 7:07 AM
My favourite photo of Claude Shannon
The 2014 Penguin edition of Stanisław Lem's "The Cyberiad" has one of my favourite book covers. Though I wish they would use 'ł' and not 'l' in his first name, which are very differently pronounced in Polish! 💙📚
November 22, 2024 at 8:22 AM
The 2014 Penguin edition of Stanisław Lem's "The Cyberiad" has one of my favourite book covers. Though I wish they would use 'ł' and not 'l' in his first name, which are very differently pronounced in Polish! 💙📚
Said "demure" photo of Adorno at the beach
November 19, 2024 at 3:27 AM
Said "demure" photo of Adorno at the beach
This reminds me, Serres also refers to Riemannian geometry in "Hominescence" (p.115). The word "arborescence" makes me wonder if he and Deleuze discussed it.
![[Levels and maps: Riemann surfaces]
The passage to the global happens here by not missing any of the intermediate steps along the arborescence or rather the flaky pastry foliation of the living and the inert. For we readily represent, at least ever since Porphyry, the whole of living things by means of an arborescence, a model that has the advantage of suggesting their genealogy but the drawback of projecting kingdoms, genuses and families onto a single one of the living things.
For why would the vital dynamic, in general, slip into a particular form
of vegetation? Why, consequently, not also represent living things by means of a Riemann surface, a kind of multi-layered flaky pastry mille-feuille or pile of cards at different levels, connected transversally together? This model would have the threefold benefit of showing the global integration in formation, plus the biotopes and biocenoses running across the levels, but also the genealogy along the connections.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:4xbeq3efmoqwp73tg4kfftdh/bafkreihesvvubgyg3jqzd7fwksyhuibhaehocepjgw64osvp74qfon6vau@jpeg)
November 17, 2024 at 4:04 AM
This reminds me, Serres also refers to Riemannian geometry in "Hominescence" (p.115). The word "arborescence" makes me wonder if he and Deleuze discussed it.
Today I found a secondhand copy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’—a reprint of the original version replete with the 1928 cover! Precious. 💙📚
January 15, 2024 at 6:36 PM
Today I found a secondhand copy of Virginia Woolf’s ‘Orlando’—a reprint of the original version replete with the 1928 cover! Precious. 💙📚
While writing up a section of a term paper on the relation between French positivism & historical epistemology I found this wonderful X thread by @masssimons.bsky.social on Abel Rey, predecessor of Bachelard/Canguilhem. Thank you for this! #philsci #philsky
January 2, 2024 at 6:08 AM
While writing up a section of a term paper on the relation between French positivism & historical epistemology I found this wonderful X thread by @masssimons.bsky.social on Abel Rey, predecessor of Bachelard/Canguilhem. Thank you for this! #philsci #philsky
A year ago I did a book club on Adorno’s ‘Philosophy of New Music’ where he comes close to preceding Richard Dyer’s notion of “pastiche” with his critique of Stravinsky. I came out of it with a renewed appreciation of Schoenberg! Fave quotes below. #philsky #criticaltheory
December 31, 2023 at 1:49 PM
A year ago I did a book club on Adorno’s ‘Philosophy of New Music’ where he comes close to preceding Richard Dyer’s notion of “pastiche” with his critique of Stravinsky. I came out of it with a renewed appreciation of Schoenberg! Fave quotes below. #philsky #criticaltheory
Here’s Thorstein Veblen talking about horses within “pecuniary canons of taste” — specifically, fast horses. (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899) #sociology
December 31, 2023 at 7:58 AM
Here’s Thorstein Veblen talking about horses within “pecuniary canons of taste” — specifically, fast horses. (The Theory of the Leisure Class, 1899) #sociology
I often reflect on Richard Schechner’s framing of the private vs. public audience using Athenian theatre as a prototype. (Source: ‘Performance Theory’, 1988) #philsky
December 30, 2023 at 7:43 AM
I often reflect on Richard Schechner’s framing of the private vs. public audience using Athenian theatre as a prototype. (Source: ‘Performance Theory’, 1988) #philsky
Thinking about this quote from Édouard Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’. Hadn’t noticed till now his use of ‘epistemological break’ à la Bachelard/Althusser! #philsky
December 29, 2023 at 7:05 PM
Thinking about this quote from Édouard Glissant’s ‘Poetics of Relation’. Hadn’t noticed till now his use of ‘epistemological break’ à la Bachelard/Althusser! #philsky
🎧My favourite music albums of 2023:
December 29, 2023 at 4:52 AM
🎧My favourite music albums of 2023:
There’s also a back cover!!! (Source: archive.org/details/ageo...)
December 28, 2023 at 5:01 PM
There’s also a back cover!!! (Source: archive.org/details/ageo...)
Favourite reads this year. 💙📚
December 25, 2023 at 3:40 PM
Favourite reads this year. 💙📚