The Mortal Brew

Are You In Line or On Line?

A Philosophical Investigation into New York City Idioms

I am no stranger to the East Coast of the USA, and their particular ways of saying things. Personally, I come from “pork roll” and “hoagie” territory, but I live in Brooklyn now, where, arguably, the…

Thoughts on Higher Order Thoughts, Property Dualism, and Phenomenal Consciousness

Higher order representationalism involves belief in that, “phenomenal consciousness involves a kind of inner awareness. Experiences are not phenomenally conscious in their own right, but…

A Marxist Perspective on How an AI Workforce Could Free Us From Labor Objectification

A sort of academic paper in progress

Google’s PaLM 2 LLM (large language model) is learning at an impressive rate. Unlike LLMs before it, PaLM 2 can reason…

The Evolution of the Male Gaze Hermeneutic Labor in the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Archetype

An academic paper

In the realm of cinema, the portrayal of female characters has been deeply influenced by the concept of the male gaze. The phenomenon…

Death and the Afterlife, with Epicurus and Plato

An academic paper

Some men spend their whole life furnishing for themselves the things proper to life without realizing that at our birth each of us was poured a mortal brew to drink.- The Vatican Sayings, Epicurus, 30.

The Ethics of Strega Nona

Did The Punishment Fit The Crime?

The children’s book Strega Nona is buff with philosophical muscle. As an Italian American myself, this story is seared into the back of my mind forever. It can be analyzed through several ethical and moral lenses and, for a…