S. D. V. Stephens: blog

A Dream

2026-08-04T00:00:00Z

I had a rather odd dream a little less than a week ago. At some imaginary, unnamed, and presumably reputable academic institution, a respected professor of American literature gave a lecture on post-modern American literature, the content of which eludes me, as those pesky details in dreams often do. DeLillo’s White Noise was not specifically mentioned here, although DeLillo, in general, was. Following this lecture of dream-length— that is to say something which has no temporal markers for measurement— while packing up her material the professor chatted with some students, myself included. The particulars of our conversation continued on along a walk to her office, this time just her and I.

We were conversing on the role and legitimacy of satire and burying authorial convictions within said satire: how are we to parse and differentiate the elements of satire that are face-value and ironic (this answer, of course, being boiled down to a developed sense of critical thinking and cultivated media literacy through exposure, reflection, and education; but that is nothing new). This topic led to the main contents of the dream: we argued and discussed satire in White Noise.

She posited that it was indeed entirely a satire. That the convictions held and simulacral oddities between our world and the world of White Noise were not merely to create a sense of fuzzy yet alien familiarity, but, too, to emphasize that it is like the simulacra: an ironic, bastardized (but in this case quite intentional) reproduction; the word encapsulating that: satire. I argued that the work weaseled in genuine intellectual (and somewhat reprehensible) positions to such a degree that the book used satire as a shield and vehicle to probe at something more, and that the critiques fell flat, the ideas were superficial, and the analysis provided was circling a truth and dramatically missing the mark. She told me, though: that was the point! The critique of the book is not a critique of modernity, it is not a critique of capitulation or capitalism or etc, etc. it was instead a critique of the critiques! The academic was the perfect vessel: his field of study obviously pseudo-intellectual (Hitler studies; there was literally just one book that was used—Mein Kampf); the very idea that the field became world renowned; the fact that the college was literally called “The-College-On-The-Hill” and that throughout the book no character is truly a caricature of anything or anyone, nor were said characters starkly unique; instead the conglomerated as a boring mass of bundled contradictions, though certainly human, nonetheless ignorant. Mis/dis-information was frequently perpetuated by characters with great levels of education; and the entire character of Murray, especially near the end, constantly clarifying that themselves, as academics, are given not only the privilege but the right to speak on the matters of the mind and theory and society while contemplating from a point entirely devoid of society and societal participation: they were above others who had to engage with social theory as praxis. The family perfectly embodied the middle-class-thinking-themself-bourgeois dynamic; they were entirely reified and as such came to view economic base and superstructure as entirely alien, transcendent, and deistic; completely beyond the veil that contains human capability. They had clearly failed at recognizing their subject-object consciousness to such an extreme degree that, by the end, when this nebulous mass intensified its growth inside of Jack, the nebulousness— specified within the text itself as the most notable characteristic of the growing mass —was there to literally be the object itself in the subject-object relationship; Jack, through the last several choices in the book, has the opportunity to alter the form of the mass to be one of subject, but instead it became one fully of object. The mass is not even mentioned in the last few chapters, it is not cared about, it is never brought up again: Jack is hollow. He has become a full object. But this was the entire point of the book! It was a story of becoming object. The critique of critiques thereby that held the author’s most pointed intentions was that pseudointellectualization and analysis among the academy and intellectual society, all too often, instead of bringing about subject-object (or from a Marxist perspective, class) consciousness, brought about a new, strengthened, more reified version of this consciousness, and submitted themselves to be analysts to an ineffable and entirely autonomous capitalistic machine. The intellectual(s) are comforted by their education, capabilities, surroundings, resources, and brilliance; but such educational and intellectual prowess does not make one correct—it gives them, instead, a more complex manifold in which to be wrong.

By the end of this fruitful and aethereal conversation, I had been entirely and utterly convinced to forfeit my preceding position on this book, and upon waking, I realized that, indeed, she was right! Perhaps the analysis of the mass here may be a stretch of sorts, it doesn’t really matter in this instance as it is besides the point, but the overall content and its conclusions had changed my mind, quite literally, overnight. How both totally strange and wonderful! Dreams be dreaming frfr.

States of Calamity

2026-07-24T00:00:00Z

I have been reading DeLillo’s White Noise as of late, and I was struck with an odd, comforting, engaging sense of familiarity. I am in the part of the book where the evacuations occur and our literary family watches in real-time as the feathery plume becomes a great cloud of darkness: a norse god of death, chariot wings and all.

I wondered why this felt all too familiar: the calamity, the chaos; the orderly and controlled evacuations, filled with the unknown, watched from rooftops and windows, from the sidelines and within cars. The state of rural panic, thousands of cars piling onto a thin stretch of road, one after another, making way to their emancipatory destination, was alien and cold to its native population. There is no less true notion in the city. The centers of urban hubbub are in a constant state of national emergency, people walk by in rushes and flurries, packed into traincars headed towards their destinations so that they may finally lay to rest their worries of the now; thousands upon thousands fleeing the in-between moments of life in favor of the exchange between subjects from region to region. When you become part of a city, when you live the city, you become a force of calamity, an intermediary between places, people, things.

Boston is where I call home. I was not always a Bostonian. I grew up in rural Texas. Sirens were a rarity, a treat. It meant one thing and one thing only: something was coming; something formidable, something powerful, something awesome. The earnest drill from the warnings of imminent or preceded disaster came but maybe twice a decade. Bostononians, inhabitants of a city that holds no populous candle to the likes NYC, Paris, or London, or virtually any tier of Chinese city, have become used to the wailing of of hourly sirens from trucks, cars, and vans; emergencies happening so often the stunning sirens coagulate into one doppler-induced 12-tone nearly inauditory white noise.

The controlled siren calamities eroticise disaster. Emancipation from oneself becomes the most desirable form of existence in transient spaces. The rural domiciles are unable to naturally undergo this liberatory ecstatic tranquility. The screaming wanna-be white noise of rural sirens gives its inhabitants glimpses of freedom. Glimpses of urbia.

How is one to live, survive, thrive without having been part of this larger soulless, aimless, and pointed mass, losing themselves to the infinite and immense? There are those in rarer individuals in rural parts who themselves manufacture their own conscious drive towards this phenomenon, experiencing this great interpretative dance of bouncing, gyrating lights, minds, peoples, and ideas without themselves ever having been a real participant. That is not most, however. To live as and in calamity, evacuation, constant movement, this is what it is to engage with the world, to engage with life. Indeed, rural centers are areas between life and death, existing as an intermediary plane of recovery and rejuvenation, an intended temporary settlement, useful as refuge for mind and soul; the purgatory plane has now been dotted with an assortment of permanent inhabitants which bring vibrancy and actuality. Ironically, the very world intended for brief temporality cannot exist without its permanent maintainers.

So many urbanites mentally perish from lack of rejuvenation, just as proportionally many ruralites reify their consciousness with dejection, fear, and delusion, finding it inhuman and anti-life to submit oneself to the worldly infinite.

Then, it is the case that the rural centers experience this infinity only in a state of chaos: a town evacuation, a natural disaster, a nuclear event, a meltdown, an event that brings all those together in one great into one great heaving organ sharing in the peculiars of the unknown whizzing by them at speeds that they cannot consciously register and dimensions they cannot optically perceive. In these moments they find themselves among the urbanites. They have become city dwellers.

Connections

2026-07-21T00:00:00Z

I have been ruminating on my past connections.

There are physical connections, simple connections, digital connections; connections you read about in romantic classical literature; connections watched in tragedies; connections that are quick and long-lasting, connections that form your psyche; connections that deform your psyche; connections that are exiled to forever exist inside of a car, house, or mind; connections lauded around with ecstatic and haughty proclamation, an external signifier of worth; connections that make you hate, yearn, fear, puke, love. Given the vastness surrounding and the density of term connection(s), whatever is it that I could ruminate on, and how could I ever express this in language (given that language is the very thing which initiates this disclarity)?

Connection. Here I use connection in a novel, technical sense: in their eyes behind the iris I see two lives contained: the soul of the subject-object and the soul of hidden meaning: implications stuffed away, hidden ciphers, codes, cryptograms, and interpretational double-speak. The subject-object soul expresses itself to all and makes itself known, connection exists when the soul of hidden meaning calls to you, letting you know, too, it can see that you see it back. You and your connecting partner talk in obscure languages, prompting hidden glimpses behind the veil; and a secondary method of communication, conducted with optical fluids; sudden, strategic glances; and mental reflections. The connection is entirely unfalsifiable to an external audience, and this is by design.

A past connection has plucked itself from the temporal fold and oriented its connectors’ ocular vectors towards my being: the eyes of Dr. TJ Eckleberg, outside my window, peering in: a semi-permanent fixture. All I must do is look back at the owl eyes, back at the glasses, back at Daisy. This cyclical torrential pool of a lazy-river, calming and inviting, a violent storm of a future unknown. It is a good thing I know to swim this time. It is a good thing I know that I know I can swim. I could always swim. I now know that.

I am excited for my future.

I am excited for the pantheon.

My name

2026-07-16T00:00:00Z

My legal—that is to say my birth—name is Samuel Stephens. On academic papers and in public presence I maintain the moniker “S. D. V. Stephens,” signing off all emails with “SDVS.” I have added a singular initial and altered the content of another. David became a borrowed and playfully pretentious facsimile of Erasmus’ forename, Desiderius; and the added “V” for Vichaama: an attempt at heritage reclamation. Borrowing a metaphor from Don DeLillo, it (SDVS) has added an air of false dignification—a signifier, as if I wore a borrowed suit coat, slightly too large, tailored for a taller, more full man, with hopes that my adult body might somehow grow into it.

I live in the shadow of the suit coat. I deem it inspiration and aspirational, a motivation; at times, however, it becomes heavy, hot, and unwieldy.

But what am I to think of it myself?   Do I carry it without thought, as if natural? Do I look in the mirror and see this man, coat and all, and identify?

Do I love him?

When a name matches who you want to be, who you want to become, you are satisfied. When a name is all that you can currently change in order to get closer to your inner Elizabet (ref: Bergman’s Persona), your inner ideal, then such a name feels bittersweet, deistic, too old, too new, false, aspirational, inspiration, depressing, and more real than you are yourself. Desperate are we, some of us, for a rebirth, a name is a plot, and as a plot it invariably begs to end in death—here, for yourself. A new name is an attempt at pheonixian suicide, praying, demanding for an infernal, radical rebirth: total palingenesis.

Reaching for The Sky

2026-07-06T00:00:00Z

I am not quite so sure when it began—maybe when I was 7 or so—but I have the tendency to lie down on surfaces and tower an arm up lazily, balancing itself on the bones below, and grasp at sources of light and whatever it is that exists behind them.

On Brain FM - Recuerdos De La Alhambra by Francisco Tárrega performed by Andrés Segovia.

It allows me to feel closer to notions of the divine and, in my chest, feel the pressure of the transcendental lowering its weighty body upon me; a weighted blanket from a bright light.

In one of the engineering buildings I found myself in an empty meeting room. I did the usual tasks, maths and tutoring, music and nonsense. A wave of exhaustion reached me. Perhaps due to my terrible sleep over the past couple of weeks or because the adderall wore off. At some point I got out of my seat and slowly walked to the center of the lengthy meeting table, trailing my hands along the edges as I got closer and closer towards the gravitational center of the table. I felt called. I lied down. I looked up. There was a bright light emanating from behind the ceiling: it was a painted white ceiling nestled and hidden behind the metal façade that was the initially believed ceiling. The island chandelier found itself reflecting upon that white background, lighting it up. The light behind the light. There really was something there after all: another ceiling.

Handel’s Sarabande, with a bit of punctual irony, began playing from my phone, and I reached towards the light behind the light. And I cried. I began focusing on the object in front of me—my hand—instead of that great light behind. There was a cut on the back of my hand (I do not recall how this ended up here). My fingers had a slight tremor and my skin seemed as if it had been screaming for moisture and recently gave up its self-preservational protests.

Now I am here. I realized I have written so little about those things I do. Those rituals. The great intensity of feelings that constantly inhabit my body, good, bad, joyous, grieving, and each feeling beyond: all intense. All overwhelming.

I have ASD—Autism Spectrum Disorder—and this leads some people to believe I have deficits in feeling (by all means this myth certainly aided by the fact of my flat affect). I do not. I feel so much. So much all the time.

On Brain FM - Thamlaton by EMEL

06-16-2026

2026-06-16T00:00:00Z

Some new feelings I have encountered—said feelings are old and known, but surprising and welcome, for every time it happens it harbors old novelty—I would like to note here: A maths problem you have worked on for well over an hour, possibly several, seems entirely perplexing; you are sure you have missed something as your path feels improperly hardscrabbled. And then it dawns on you: aha! it is so incredibly simple, stupidly simple in fact! A short 1-2 page answer (or as small as 1-2 lines) more than suffices. You feel goofy for the time lost, relieved you were able to solve it, and satisfied at the elegance of the solution. A maths problem you have been excited to work on: you saw it out of the corner of your eye while scrolling through the pset and excitedly finished all the other problems before in order to get to this one (order depends on the pset, however; most of the time I jump around on problems, in this particular case however, I went in order), only to, upon tackling the problem, solve it immediately! Maybe there is a bit of joy with it, but it is quite bittersweet. You were hoping to tango with the problem for a bit, allowing yourself to know it. Ah well.

Hobbes-and-Leviathan

2026-04-28T00:00:00Z

The naivete of Leviathan

The Fire is Here

2026-03-22T00:00:00Z

There is a popular resurgeance of the missattributed Gramsci quote "Il vecchio mondo sta morendo. Quello nuovo tarda a comparire. E in questo chiaroscuro nascono i mostri," roughly meaning: "The old world is dying; the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters." Despite Gramsci never having written this (instead writing "In questo interregno si verificano i fenomeni morbosi più svariati," meaning "In this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear," which as Philip Oltermann noted in The Guardian, is not quite as pithy), it has never felt more true in this time. Indeed, there is a perpetual ouroboreality to the death of the old and the struggle of the new, however there are certain times where upon causal historistic interrogation the era pertinent and paradigmatic to the construction of the new world---philosophies, governance, science and all---makes itself known by shouting "Now is the time for the new!" wherein historians and social theorists gather 'round to read and write the autopsy of old worlds.

The internet jokingly mentions it is my ideology which shall rise from the ashes of the old world!

In an earlier blog entry I spoke about the fallen sun. The fire that it brings.

Trump and Freud

2026-03-21T00:00:00Z

Brief Psychology of Fascism

In Massenpsychologie und Ich-Analyse, Sigmund Freud outlined the first major psychoanalytic analysis of the modern political mass. Though Theodor Adorno insisted the problem lay not mainly in the realm of psychology, acknowledging its subservient nature to that of the base—economics—he highlighted, nonetheless, the importance of said psychological analysis in terms of the authoritarian personality lending itself to fascism. Freud had a bit of Marxian clairvoyance on this matter, seeing the distant tidal wave of fascism approaching far before it rose to prominence: he conjectured that the Massenseele (the group mind) had its own political motives, separate from that of the logical, rational, individual: affect, symbols, myth; these bonds that brought people together—brought them as fasces bound with an iron band—are erotic libidinal drives; that is to say, beyond the sexual, these libidinal group solidarity bonds were broadly erotic in nature. The resulting behavior is not, despite all appearances to look as such, something trans-historical. That is to say, fascism is not a lapse of regression. It is, instead, a simulation of that regression. It is modern and artificial. The simulation allows people enraptured by a fascistic wave to fantasize about their release from society and morality, reducing instead to instinct; fully embracing their full human power without apology, breaking, rupturing through morality (perhaps you more heartedly agree with the characterization, now, of this erotic nature). Nietzsche, worshiped by many a fascist, himself positioned as arguably a fellow-traveller, wished to bring about an embrace of the raw self—your archaic primitive form, the inner animal; the path to the übermensch then is penetrating through morality (much like our aforementioned fascistic rupturing) into the primitive reversion (dies bedarf hier keiner weiteren Erörterung, da eine solche den Rahmen der vorliegenden Abhandlung überschritte). The absurd and childish nature of the Massenseele needn’t be lost on me: Adorno, referencing the work of Gustave le Bon and Psychologie des Foules notes, in his work Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, that the mass political societal entity was an irrational entity; “it may well be the secret of fascist propaganda that it simply takes men for what they are: the true children of today’s standardized mass culture largely robbed of autonomy and spontaneity, instead of setting goals the realization of which would transcend the psychological status quo no less than the social one.”

Indeed, robbed of their autonomy and spontaneity, the Massenseele seek a great leader, one who has embraced their inner man-beast; upon the advent of a leader, the group mind idealize and identify with the leader—they exist as the common man and the übermensch; they are just like you, and they are nothing like you. This contradiction is summed up well by Adorno:

“Even the fascist leader’s startling symptoms of inferiority, his resemblance to ham actors and asocial psychopaths, is thus anticipated in Freud’s theory. For the sake of those parts of the follower’s narcissistic libido which have not been thrown into the leader image but remain attached to the follower’s own ego, the [übermensch] must still resemble the follower and appear as his “enlargement.” Accordingly, one of the basic devices of personalized fascist propaganda is the concept of the “great little man,” a person who suggests both omnipotence and the idea that he is just one of the folks, a plain, red-blooded American, untainted by material or spiritual wealth. Psychological ambivalence helps to work a social miracle. The leader gratifies the follower’s twofold wish to submit to authority and to be the authority himself.”

The eroticism, then, is not just from the binding of the fasces, but, too, from simultaneously dominating and being dominated. It is desirable; thus, performance, play, itself is thrust into view; the aesthetics of order and loss of control: long banners and clean Neo-classical architecture unite with brash and impassioned speeches, painting an aesthetic reminiscent of culinary theatre.

This strictly reactionary performance, this display of art, is the fascism of the future; cult ritual performances (Benjamin’s epitome of l’art pour l’art: fiat ars— pereat mundus) wherein leaders “lose control” and show “lack of restraint” as mere falsehoods, refusing to actually threaten the very liberal democratic structure which bore it. The deceptive nature of the performances does not detract from their efficacy as long as the Massenseele feel as if they are releasing their inner man-beast. This digression is not strictly relevant to the material at hand, so I will end it here; however, of final note on this point, the fascists attempt to supersume bourgeois society through autocracy, but find themselves incapable of doing so long-term: the base is far more loyal to the bourgeois than to the fascist.

In the developmental schema of Freud, the young child begins with an oral fixation: gratification, incorporation, and validation of the mouth and its oral pleasantries. Speech is the mode then of simultaneous consumption and the act of being consumed; the lies, the childish diatribes are not to be taken trivially: it is the substance of freedom for the masses. The character of the fascistic leader follows this prepubertal classification of orality—focused on pleasure via speaking and rambling incessantly, hoping to befool others. It becomes unbound by rationality and reason: it is mythic repetition.

We now turn to the modern day; Freud and Adorno’s analysis of fascist psychological methodology, in almost its whole, remains true, sans a minor oversight of what will be termed boring fascism.

Donald Trump and the MAGA base

Donald Trump, archetypal of the oral character, of course, utilizing, consciously or not, every tool of the typology with MAGA, conceives of reversion and returning directed to the masses. The mythic repetition of "Make America Great Again" finds its importance and its continuance in the ritual action itself. Indeed, again decreeing a reversion to wholeness which never existed: the (political) base’s primal object of desire.

There is something evangelical here; it is the duty then of members of this base to seek converts en masse, yet without regard to approach, thus becoming one which robs autonomy of the members of the evangelizing. And who are they to evangelize for other than the salvific and deific figure of Trump? Primed by decades of submission to pastoral authority and anti-intellectualism—familiar with the erotics of domination and surrender—requires no new psychological molding to accommodate the fascist leader. The identification with the leader as ego-ideal, the hostility toward out-groups as the negative bond that reinforces internal cohesion, the replacement of individual critical faculty with the affective logic of the mass—all present, all functioning as theorized. The follower's narcissistic libido is split precisely as Adorno described: partially invested in the leader-image, partially retained in the ego, requiring that the leader remain recognizable as an enlargement of the self rather than an alien superior. Trump's vast vulgarity, his fast food and gaudy gold-plated aesthetics, his transparent mendacity pose not obstacles to identification but in it, its conditions for identification in its entirety. He must be one of them. He must also be more than them. It is, however, here we note a digression from Freud’s original analysis; the material (substance) of the matter and its philosophies are just as important as the resulting form it consequently assumes; that is to say, the morality, lack thereof, aesthetics, and lack thereof are essential to the resulting form the Freudian psychoanalysis gives. The analytic theory, however, finds its basis in bourgeois culture, and thus it is these philosophies that must underpin the fascistic analysis: with Trump, this does not hold.

Despite barbarism, the fascism of Adorno’s time englamoured itself with a certain cultural density: it recruited philosophers, architectural and aesthetic doctrine, cinematography, and the entire apparatus of Gesamtkunstwerk. The fascism of the early twentieth century emerged from bourgeois culture and carried, within it, the marks of bourgeois Bildung (formation). Its leaders, regardless of psychological pathologies, underwent Bildung: the long, intergenerational epigenetic process of cultural, intellectual, and aesthetic formation through which the bourgeois subject is constituted. Within this Bildung are the aesthetic values which, as Marcuse argued in Eros and Civilization, do not merely decorate the psyche but participate in the construction of the superego and ego-ideal themselves. That is to say, the Bildung constitutes the concept and identification of the self.

Trump underwent no such Bildung. Here, observations of Slavoj Žižek's become indispensable: Trump exists not as a member of the bourgeois cultural order but as its perpetual aspirant, orbiting the class whose cultural authority he covets but whose formative processes he has never undergone. He is, in this regard, structurally homeomorphic to Thatcher at Balmoral as depicted in The Crown: present among the aristocracy, tolerated, never absorbed; she buys her own furniture (and packs her own clothes) and in so doing reveals the irreducibility of the gap. But Thatcher, at minimum, was the ideological coherence of neoliberalism incarnate; she was the project. Trump is not even that. He is the periphery without a center, aspiration without formation, the desire for bourgeois legitimacy without any of the cultural substance that would make such legitimacy possible. The golden gaudy garish form of Trump’s psychopathological architecture is an LLM-reproduction, a bastardized stochastic parrot of the bourgeois formation.

Trump and his base, seem then, to follow quite well the analysis of Freud and Adorno, however, there is of note an imperfection: that is to say, due to the tripartite analysis of Freud relying on the bourgeois Bildung as essential to the formation of the psyche, it overlooks the fascist which wishes to be the liberal; the fascist who goes to operas and musicals thinking it enlightened but prefers Phantom of the Opera to Offenbach’s Les Contes d’Hoffman. Trump, unable to be an accepted member of the bourgeois cultural superstructure, chooses not to attempt to destroy it but to imitate from his twisted conception of what the cultural sphere actually is through whatever means possible. Wherein is it, then, that this tripartic analysis fails? It is in the identification of the crude simulacra of bourgeois culture, clearly and boldly marked by the advent of boring fascism. The intellectualization of fascism that pervaded during early conception is notably absent from the modern MAGA movement; the internal secrecy of conspiracy is instead on display for all to view in its absurdity and ugliness. The material and visual culture of MAGA here is now brought to our attention: mass-produced borderline scam/ sham merchandise, Trump steaks, Trump vodka, Trump phones, all with his mockery of gold plastered at every opportunity—these designs through whatever interpretation that may be given do not act as agents of the avant-garde but instead as the “sloppification” of aesthetics due to indifference or even disillusionment.

Then we might conjecture: it is not only morality that this modern fascistic movement attempts to break through and shed, but it is, too, aesthetics, which the movement seeks to make itself free from. Yes, indeed, this boring fascism after the evacuation of Bildung from its leadership creates a gilded mise en scène attempting to fool its audience and entrap them in the aesthetic wave of shedding aesthetics. Indeed, too, emblematic of the paradoxically presented shedding and acceptance of aesthetics by the fascistic regime, military parades and constant America-first propaganda become the very accepted aesthetics of this ugly, raw fascism. The Nietzschean penetration through civilizational prohibition into archaic power has extended itself to the realm of aesthetics: putting on a circus show, performing strong-man aesthetics of violating aesthetics and morality. This is boring fascism.

One might object to this classification of boring fascism, noting the historic nature of Italian Futurists who aligned themselves with the fascism of Mussolini despite their aesthetic avant-garde innovations, thus allowing us to reasonably deduce that the fascistic and the avant-garde are not here oppositional, and thus the MAGA base can be classified as the avant-garde, for their boldness of aesthetic violations. To hold a mentality would be akin to intellectual suicide; causality here is inverted: in the case of the fascists of old, we move from aesthetic transgression towards political deployment, but in modernity, we start at the fascistic and decide our aesthetics from there. But more, then the entire apparatus under discussion—moral simulation, aesthetic transgression, leader-identification, the Massenseele itself—belongs to the superstructure. It is a manipulation of superstructure, not the base, and superstructural changes are under no obligation to produce consistent or logical formations. The base by no means requires coherence from its ideological emanations; only that they function. To take a brief example from the modern day: superstructural indifference to logical consistency accounts for the otherwise inexplicable formations of gay furry Nazis, Latinos for Trump, and LGBTQ for Trump, among others.

Assuming, forgoing analysis accuracy, i.e., that Trumpist fascism is not fascism-done-poorly but a structurally distinct modality produced by the absence of Bildung in its leadership and the superstructural chaos of the medium in its entirety, then the approach commonly employed as a reaction to the Trump base is misguided. The aesthetic poverty of Trump’s golden kitsch movement and its mockery instead build up and reinforce the ideological grounding of the (political) base; thus, mockery sustains it, enflames it (this is by no means an assertion that without such there would be no aforementioned movement, merely this is an analysis of the outcomes resulting from the superstructure, a truly sufficient condition, as with most Marxist, Freudian, or critical theory analyses is always the base). The hope that boring fascism’s aesthetic impoverishment makes it somehow less dangerous than its historical predecessors—that its lack of Riefenstahl, its absence of Speer, its substitution of QAnon for Schmitt, renders it a diminished thing—can be the most dangerous error of all. The base, as Adorno reminded us at the outset, does not require the superstructure to be elegant, beautiful, or intellectually coherent. It requires only that it function. And the libidinal mechanisms function. The identification functions. The simulated regression functions. Boring fascism is no less fascism for its boredom; it is fascism that has dispensed with the pretense that the superstructure need be anything more than what it minimally must be to bind the fasces together. The iron band holds, whether polished or rusted.

Textbook progress

2026-03-11T00:00:00Z

I am mostly done with the 55a textbook now. Just some verifications of proofs, make sure spellings are correct (I always confuse kernel with kernal). I will try to have that uploaded soon. I want to try a bit at writing fiction as well, that might be a fun creative exercise.

The content for class has been venturing into algebraic topology, and, in all honesty, the material at hand is quite terrifying. Disgustingly elegant conceptually, horrendously terse when one has to actually prove things. I guess that is the hallmark of not truly understanding.

I woke up a bit late, but got a decent amount done today. Got an acceptance from my first transfer college so far. Which is good. Learned slivers about the Peking review on Khruschev from a friend (along with some Soviet literature).

Today is a good day.

August 26, 2025

2026-03-03T00:00:00Z

August 26th, 2025. In the thick and muggy air, a film of humidity laid on my skin: warm and oddly comforting. Voices passed behind me, coagulating into a single, soft, and ambient hum. Dusk was well underway. A soft auréole around the lamps that lined the concrete forecourt of Harvard’s Science Center lit the surface of my journal. As I sat upright, orthogonal to an ash wood-slatted sculptural lounger, the slats slowly pressed their shape into my legs and rear. I began to write. A friend and I planned a rendezvous for an hour ago at this exact spot, to attend a comedy show. He hadn’t shown up. While attempting a proof on boolean lattice structures, I felt a vibration in my pocket. I grabbed my phone to check; it read, “I’m so sorry! I just forgot.” The simple and remorseful statement inspired me: I forewent my proof for the time being and began to fervently write prose.

I so deeply feared being forgotten. To be forgotten is to die a second death. The first contains some dignity, even in the most tragic and unfortunate circumstances. The second holds irrevocable finality, and, for brief moments, though we may persist as people yet to experience our first death, our second death can make itself known; and, for a brief, yet existentially terrifying moment, we are rendered nonexistent in the memory of our loved ones. My pen acquainted this knowledge to the pages, inking over a great number of them.

I looked up, taking a breath from writing, allowing my hands to relax. I saw the stars in the sky. Immediately they transfixed me. How was it that in this city, these stars still shone so bright? Vega was the brightest star I could see in the sky. Its radiance filled the heavens and its awe was so great that tears fell down my cheeks. I felt that it could flood the whole night sky and still never blind me. I was compelled to lie down, my back forming to the lounger’s contoured undulating surface, its impressions upon my legs and rear now on my back.

My gaze never left Vega. Suddenly and violently, Vega’s light swelled, filling up the whole sky, the entire world, all of the past and present—all that has ever been. Birthing a veridical hallucination, the star allowed me to peer through its eyes and see the panoply of people and peoples within itself.

The climate was tropical. I was in southern Mexico. I saw La Bestia, El Tren de la Muerte; a small family, parents and a daughter, harboring dreams of a better life, clung to the top of the train. They would never make it to their destination. There was no human who harbored memories of them left in the world; Vega never forgot them. A shift—I was then in a small room, in Brussels, Belgium, 1848. The air was filled with smoke, tobacco, and a strong miasma, no doubt indicative of a home belonging to someone tragically afflicted with hidradenitis suppurativa—what, in the 19th century, was called “excruciating boils”. A bearded man in his late 20s was furiously writing; he dreamt of a better world, a new way of organizing society. He somehow knew that what he was writing would go on to radically change the world. It would allow people to hope, to dream of a more equal future, a better future, a new future. Vega saw him. A radical shift again—I was outside of my childhood home. It was night. I was standing outside in the grassy twenty acres of wooded Texas lands. There was a slight breeze that carried a chill through the forest. I looked up and saw the stars, they were so much brighter out here. I looked towards my former home and saw my 13-year-old self standing barefoot outside, crying. My parents had left me outside as punishment during the night. They would later go on to forget that such an event happened. Vega did not forget.

I came to. I was once again outside in that same forecourt. Tears streamed down my face. I was silent. Vega had shown me something impossibly beautiful. Time passed in a flurry, and abruptly it was an hour later. My friend arrived, immediately and profusely apologizing for forgetting me and the comedy show. I no longer cared. A transcendent insight took place here, under the eyes of the stars. The stars see the ugly of humanity, the forgotten, the dead and deprived: those who had their second death. The stars hold the memories of the forgotten. I know that now. I told my friend to not be saddened and that I completely forgive him. I told him to lie next to me and look up at the stars. I pointed to Vega, noting that its light spanned 25 light-years to arrive at our eyes; we discussed how utterly honored we felt in that moment to have the star's light shine upon us. As we both looked up I realized, faintly, I could see him in the star. He looked at me; I at him. Yet, we both laid parallel, both with eyes fixed on the star. We saw each other in the stars.

When I returned home, I opened my journal and noted my imaginative metaphysical celestial encounter. I understood now what my subconscious told me through the eyes of the stars: regardless of second deaths, the stars do not forget. Until time inevitably causes the last star in the sky to lose light, and until every celestial body has dimmed and become quiet, the stars will remember me.

thoughts, musings

2026-03-03T00:00:00Z

Sometimes I compile lists. I am not sure why I do this, but it becomes obsessive. I create lists of composers, critical theorists, books, languages, waters, people, names, buildings, types of fabric, parts of x-ray machines. In some sense, it is therapeutic. But these lists take up my time. They feel like living and so I substitute my life for these lists. Who do I want to read? What do I want to know? What do I want to create? Instead, one might make a list and have fantastically lived these lives.

A friend told me I should write a blog the other day. I told them I would. I forgot. But, hey, I am writing it today! Better late than later.

I think about all the ways to love a person. The different boundaries we draw between types of relationships and types of love to more easily categorize these uncaptureable feelings end up being so arbitrary we concern ourselves, more, by having a Platonic ideal and contorting love to form around it. Love is illogical; you do not love someone because their eyes, their face, their intelligence, you do not love for even the kindness and the friendliness of others, no---first you love and then form description around it. You contort it to your Platonic ideal, approaching, not quite reaching. That does not make the love any less beautiful, any less genuine, it simply means it is altered. This distortion's goodness or badness quality is not tethered to the aforementioned.

Yesterday I was trying to figure out how to properly represent supremums and infimums using Hasse diagrams for things like posets. Hasse diagrams come up so often; I am unsure of their limitations. I once conjectured they may be useful in attempting to describe Hempel's definitions of science using non-classical logic. Maybe it's gobbledygook, maybe it's interesting.

Something I have had to learn is that, despite novelty, there is so much math that fails at "reasonable interestingness," by which I mean, it fails to properly capture something interesting to the greater literature (or in context of it). The issue is I often find these things interesting. Usefulness is dubious at best in such realms of interest so far. I do like to think that perhaps something will come of these orbital musings.

Speaking of lists of things, I recently compiled a list of movies I want to see with others. I have no idea what half of the movies are, but they were recommended by people and figures I respect, so I imagine, at the very least, it will give some insight into them.

I think I am going to post one of the essays I wrote for college. I shall do that after.

The Penguin

2026-01-23T00:00:00Z

My absorption of others and subsequent regurgitation as art has carved out a permanent, beggingly permeable, slot on the other side of the veil. I can sometimes taste them in my mouth---pale imitations. How could I have known so wholly, how could I have been entirely? When did I stop? The transition isn't quite clear, it's muddied with childhood dreams and love, warped and twisted, hopeful and wondrous.

In 2007, Werner Herzog, known for his films that force our intense gaze into the absurd, released a documentary film shot in Antarctica. I'm sure you know where this is going by now. Near the end of the film, Herzog interviews David Ainley, a penguin scientist, and fatefully asks is there a such thing as insanity in a penguin?

I found a PhD thesis on animal psychopathology related to insanity while scouring Wikipedia: Animal Madness by Laurel Braitman.

I have for a long time been trying to categorize this veil. It has proven difficult. The nature of it eludes me and I find myself often questioning if understanding is even possible (I know it exists, it must). My discoveries have not been fruitless, however; I have information, though it is very likely a great number of you already know of its illusory powers, it tells us of loves and lies and joys and pains and fears and hopes and dreams and shortcomings and successes and and and; does the veil amplify in its falsity as time marches on?

Braitman's argues that we, the disordered, see proxy and reflection in these animals and their repetitive, obsessive, depressive behaviors. I wonder if during the Paleolithic Neanderthals, and what we triumphantly call proto-humans, looked into our eyes, saw our madness and wondered if we were truly ego dystonic, as they were.

The lone penguin in Braitman's eyes simply does what the penguin does, in Werner's eyes he claims to see as is: nature; but in the penguin's eyes I see something far more. It is not a mirror. It is not falsity. It is not even me.

or maybe not.

andandandandand.

and.

and

good-day

2026-01-19T00:00:00Z

good-day

Today has been a good day.

Woke up early, meandered and thought. Studied; got some of the textbook done plus some coding---I am trying to write an app for running Wikipedia on my Remarkable Paper Pro, but this likely won't work to well with qt-resource-rebuilder since all the .qmd files use a patching system with obfuscated symbols that total to some cypher-ridden messes. Listening to some pretty high tempo Jazz.

You know, today I decided I was going to read a book. So at around 4pm I started reading Widow Basquiat, finishing it the same day. I should read more, much more. Much more, now. Yes, now. Thoughts will come later, perhaps tomorrow.

Spoke to friends and loved ones, so that's nice.

Tired.

choices

2026-01-17T00:00:00Z

It is often that I am paralyzed by choice. My friends jest with me, drawing similarities between my indecision and constant lactose-induced stomach aches and Chidi Anagonye's infamous stomach-ache-decision-paralysis that so constantly plagues him in the show The Good Place (excellent show, highly recommend it if you have not yet seen it). I digress.

After concluding some biology studies, in the commons room on the second floor of Harvard's Smith Campus Center, I made my way to a deep recess in the wall, just past Harvard's fancy new professional head shot machine---free photography at your fingertips, which contained a vending machine. I knew I was hungry, but more so, I knew that if I left the commons I would be unable to return without the aid of others (card access issues), so vending machine it was. So many choices, so many flavors, so little money. Choice paralysis might come as a symptom of poverty at times, others a symptom of obsession (obsession with optimization of experience, of time); this case was a clear one---poverty stricken choice limbo: my money needed to stretch further than would allow for fanciful tasting. Should I get the chips or the protein bar? What if I got the protein bar with the sparkling apple cider? No, no, that totals over $7, far too much for me to be flagrantly spending right now. Well what will it be, then? Chips or the bar. Hmm. Indecision resulted in me choosing neither the chips nor the bar.

I recall another time, when I was with my partner, exploring ice cream shops along the shopping and confectionary district Newbury St., and I could not for the love of me decide on J. P. Licks or Ben & Jerry's. J. P. Licks had a far more inviting atmosphere, raw brick, a seating area filled with earth tones and dark comforts, but I had been here before, thus was it really the optimal choice if I am ice cream curiosity? Ben and Jerry's has more of the flavor I might be looking for, a shorter line, gluten free treats for my partner, and a less crowded environment. Its interior was also painted white, which I detested. The overhead lights garishly illuminated the shop. How silly am I? Attempting to optimize ice cream choice. I am not even the one paying and yet I still and struck with walking back and forth to test out the environments of each establishment. What if I needed to try the seats? What if I didn't like their spoons?

We ended up eating at Ben and Jerry's and it was satisfactory.

The choice, when made, is liberating. But the process by which we arrive at this choice is excruciating: the mental subterranean tussle and struggle, for me, breaks out from within my mind and rears its unsure self to surrounding spectators.

Song of the day:

I couldn't decide (ironically) on the song of the day so here are two: Zombie by The Cranberries and Giulio Cesare in Egitto, HWV 17, Act 3: Pangero la sorte mia by Handel.

SDVS

P.S.: unsure why I sometimes decide to "sign off" and other times I just leave no signature. Perhaps I will decide on one method at some point, or maybe even add a point to the signature.

Learning to Publicly be Stupid

2026-01-16T00:00:00Z

Learning to Publicly be Stupid

I am always terrified of appearing stupid. It's more than that, really; I am always terrified of not having my perceived humanness as smart. Perhaps some childhood issue---it doesn't matter what right now---which now constantly manifests as this fear (it feels more primordial). Loss of perceived character or identity (doesn't matter for this case).

This fear is what, I believe, has kept me from this "blog post a day" attempt. I am afraid to write something stupid or show my incompetence at times. I fear I am not a person if the projected person--- the I that I hope others perceive my being as---is incongruous with my judged actions of the current I. This causes great discomfort within this imagined self: reflection on the nonexistence of the self, the sudden struggle with the disillusion of consciousness; the self being but passing thoughts, passing analogies, passing concepts; reminds me of a mapping of atomic concepts, we can go on with that analogy: the self, as reflected in the public to verify the self that is the perception of the self, is in a bijective relationship; once bijectivity fails, the self realizes its true nature as but atomic mappings of concepts randomly permeating the mind---disillusionment occurs. This disillusionment will not fully resolve, until the onset of some return to the environment isomorphic to the projection. The projection harbors that such an event will not occur until the return to perceived institutes of elite status---even then, return doesn't quite fit.

The main remedy for such a malady might be exposure therapy: posting things regardless of potential failures and potential moments of incompetence, regularly, and having some, if not many, posts be gleaming with incompetences.

Tldr; I will try to write more.

SDVS

Every Day

2026-01-07T00:00:00Z

Yes. I have decided. I will attempt to post one blog every day.

Some days

2026-01-06T00:00:00Z

Some days I feel like writing very little; others, a lot (ambiguity of language). Today is some days.

I was learning about the absurdity that is Fisher, Land, and the like's Cybernetic Culture Research Unit (CCRU). It was rather odd, extraordinarily esoteric, fictionally enchanting, and undoubtedly brilliant. Those who took it as gospel, however, certainly have become lost in the plot (Land included); though I suppose that is precisely the point.

I lost my phone today. I tend to do that. Lose things. In the 365 days I have lost my wallet at least 4 times (left in a bus station, a train station, on a bus, in a car), drivers license (left in a bathroom stall at a Costco and dropped it into the coin-sucking couch) 2 times, and my phone a minimum of 5 times. I am not sure if I will retrieve it this time. I certainly hope so.

After therapy, in the heart of bustling Boston, I gazed out at the steel-glass and glass-brick structures, cultures, arts, and all, stretched out before me, spiraling to the sky. I was completely captivated by the sheer awe-some (as opposed to awesome) buildings that towered before me. I love what we do. I love what we build.

I am not a great writer, I am realizing. But I want to be, and so I shall get better. Perhaps I will try to write something every day. No promises.

Today has been a good day.

The sun has fallen down

2026-01-05T00:00:00Z

I am not sure when it was; whether it was when I was born, when I took my first steps, spoke my first words, wrote my first poem; whether it was when I cried screams of childish terror at a 3 square inch portion of our mobile home carpet catching fire, or maybe it was when I lost my first friend; maybe it was when I stopped believing in divinity; maybe it was when I learned I was gay; maybe it was when I learned that my mother and I were (are) the same people, trapped in a strange land, when I learned she was unhappy in that small rural town with her children so far far away, her mother in the ground, and her father a continent apart; maybe it was when I, so young and naïve, learned that some children's favorite toy's were plastic bags not because they favored them but because there was nothing else to favor; maybe it was when the vice president called my people demons, or when the current president called us criminals; maybe it was when I broke things off with my first love, or maybe it was during the months after; maybe it was when I became homeless; maybe it was when I slept in a bathroom, cold tile, frosty floor; maybe it was yesterday; maybe I'm hoping it's tomorrow; maybe it is an innumerable and unpredictable number of years from now, and I am, in fact, a prophet.

I really don't remember. I'm not quite sure when the sun fell down.

Sometimes I see glimmers and rays, crepuscular, friendly, and tired (solidified hope within my gaze) of the fallen sun. Sometimes I think it will shoot back up into the sky. Sometimes I imagine that the sun is there, shining brighter than ever before, blinding me, us, with okayness. Sometimes I imagine that the great prophet, James Baldwin, will have his dream come true, and that when the sun does finally rise again, despite it being the last rise for many (there will be a last rise for you and I as well), we will nonetheless be unbound by our shackles: our totems and rituals, our taboos and blood sacrifices, our steeples, mosques, and synagogues, our races, armies, flags, nations, and families---our avoidance of death. Sometimes I imagine that bright blinding light from the sun---which has reclaimed its rightful spot in the sky is Baldwin's fire next time; that Baldwin's god has blinded us in fiery love.

But I look out and see the sun: not in the sky. Those radiant rays are not glimmers of light, but embers of the raging fire to come.

The fire next time will be from the fallen sun.

Welcome to the Blog

2025-12-12T00:00:00Z

This is the first post, testing Markdown and [math] rendering.

Some Mathematics

Here's an inline equation: [math], Euler's identity.

And a display equation:

[math]

My Neovim + LaTeX Workflow

2025-12-05T00:00:00Z

Taking lecture notes in real-time requires speed. Handwriting is fast but unsearchable. Typing is searchable but slow for mathematics. My solution: Neovim with aggressive snippet expansion.

The Setup

Neovim with LazyVim as base configuration
VimTeX for LaTeX compilation and viewing
UltiSnips for snippet expansion
Custom Python CLI tools for document management

Key Snippets

The magic is in the snippets. When I type mk and hit Tab, I get inline math mode:

mk → $|$

For display math:

dm → \[|\]

Fractions are automatic:

// → \frac{|}{}

Real-time Compilation

VimTeX compiles on save with latexmk -pvc running in the background. The PDF viewer (Zathura) auto-refreshes, and SyncTeX lets me jump between source and output.

The Result

I can transcribe a professor writing on a blackboard in real-time, complete with diagrams (via TikZ snippets) and proper mathematical notation. The notes are searchable, version-controlled, and beautifully typeset.

The full setup is on my GitHub.

Notes on Polyadic Algebraic Structures

2025-12-01T00:00:00Z

Classical group theory studies sets with a single binary operation. But what happens when we generalize beyond binary?

Basic Idea

A binary operation takes two inputs: [math]. A ternary operation takes three: [math]. More generally, an n-ary operation takes [math] inputs.

The question: can we build interesting algebraic structures with n-ary operations? What properties carry over from groups, and what new phenomena emerge?

Polyadic Groups

A polyadic group (or n-ary group (or n-groupoid)) is a set [math] with an n-ary operation [math] satisfying:

Associativity (generalized): [math]
Unique solvability: For any [math], there exists a unique [math] such that [math] for each position [math].

Some Questions I Have

What is the analog of a Lie algebra for polyadic groups?
Can polyadic structures model physical systems that binary structures cannot?
What role does adicity play in differential equations?

These are the questions driving my current curiosity in the field.