What in the hell …

He was a ruler of Rome, who I’ve suddenly become interested in. (more…)

I’ve just become interested in Servius Tullius (details to follow) and as a result I found this odd and oddly charming document on the internet. It’s a version of the wikipedia entry on Tullius, with definitions inserted in the middles of sentences, making it very hard to read, and many of the defnitions are totally wrong given the contextual meaning of the words (”come - semen”, “monarch - a migratory butterfly, Danaus plexippus, found in North America”).

Here’s an excerpt:

The Census
Servius Tullius according to the Roman historians initiated the first census. The noun comes from the participle of the verb, censere, “to judge”, “to estimate”. It the indefinite object of a transitive verb refers at root - (Australian coarse slang) An act of sexual intercourse - to the estimate - a rough calculation or guess - itself. The census was an estimation - the amount, extent, position, size, or value reached in an estimate - of the total - entire; relating to the whole of something - personal - a advertisement by which individuals attempt to meet others with similar interests - assets of Rome. Servius Tullius used it as a gauge - the depth to which a vessel sinks in the water - of military capability. The Roman census as practiced by Servius was quite different from our census, which aims at counting and locating people. Servius made sure those functions were performed, but goal, score he was primarily interested in property assessments. He used - that is or has or have been used - them to divide people into classes, nor was he at all - throughout the whole of (a stated period of time; generally used with units of a day or longer) - interested in status - a situation or state of affairs - or snobbery; in fact, - an objective consensus on a fundamental truth that has been agreed upon by a substantial number of people - he was killed for his popularizing. He wanted to know what arms - plural of arm - and equipment Rome could provide. The army at that time - the inevitable passing of events from future to present then past - was primarily privately funded, not publically.

Whole thing here.

A friend sent me a quote from the German Ideology (more…)

It’s the title of a book by Jacques Ranciere. (more…)

It’s a concept from Ranciere that I don’t fully understand. The basic idea, I think, is that there’s stuff which is understandable, transparent, reasonable - in a word, sensible - and stuff which incoherent, opaque, irrational. And the different positions form an ensemble which changes over time. Put differently, there’s inclusion as inclusion and inclusion as exclusion, and the set of all both varies. Ranciere has an epistemological argument and so on connected with this, and a lot to say about aesthetics, I don’t know what to make of that. What I like about this is more simplistic. It helps me think about, maybe just by analogy, a way to think about things in Marx and elsewhere. (I think this might be more akin to what Ranciere calls the police, but I’m not entirely sure.) Some rather confused and wideranging notes on this … (more…)

At one point I had plans to think and write more about working in a university. It’s been a minute since I’ve done anything on that. (more…)

Practicing a bit of Portuguese. Here’s a translation of a piece by Negri and Giuseppe Cocco. The two wrote a book together recently, called GlobAL: Biopoder y luchas en una América latina globalizada. I’ve not read it yet cuz Prometeolibros are wicked slow in shipping. Original is here. I’d love it if someone w/ better portuguese than me would review it. I may be able to get someone offline to do so, if that happens I’ll post the revision. (more…)