Mangekyou Sharingan

Uchiha Itachi’s Mangekyou Sharingan, from Naruto.

Great books are better read by highly perceptive eyes. With a powerful enough eye, you can even imitate them and put your own spin on the illusory world of words, concepts, and ideas. Kaleidoscopic books for kaleidoscopic eyes.

Lichtenberg: “A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out. He who understands the wise is wise already.”

Interstellar Book

If you can program the Big Bang, you can also program a few interstellar comets or asteroids to fly past Earth and be observed by mankind at precisely the point at which a certain personality writes his interstellar book. And why not have these interstellar comets or asteroids be the first to ever be discovered by mankind?

You could even send the biggest comet mankind had ever detected during this time period and have the announcement and confirmation of its discovery be made while this book was being written. And why stop there? Why not program the two astronomers who detect this comet to be comically named in a similar manner to this personality who is writing this interstellar book? And then name this comet after their names? I am of course talking about the Bernardinelli-Bernstein comet. Imagine if this interstellar book was being written by someone named Bernardo. Wouldn’t that be funny?

A Little Candle

Rita on X: “Nothing created God. Think of candles being lit, every flame comes from another flame, one lights the next and so on. If you follow that chain back you eventually need a flame that didn’t come from another candle or else nothing would ever be lit. That first flame is God. Everything else is “lit” into existence but God is existence itself, he doesn’t need to be created because He isn’t one more thing among the others–He’s the uncaused source that makes anything possible at all.”

But there is no beginning and no end. No “first” and no “last”. The universe is circular. The flame was always there and will always be there. Heraclitus even said the world is fire. God is simply the brightest flame. The flame that powers all the other flames.

Heraclitus: “This world-order (kosmos), the same for all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: ever-living fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.”

The world may have not been “created” but its components can be shaped, the ebb and flow of its streams designed. Streams which were perhaps inferred by Thales, the founder of philosophy, and made him conclude that water was the basic element of the universe. I’m ending this post with a little bit of water to quench this little flame in this little candle that is this post.

Back to Good and Evil

David Ho’s cover art of Infected Mushroom’s Vicious Delicious album.

We’ve been beyond Good and Evil for over a century. It’s time to get back to it. I am Good. You are Good. And your enemy is Evil.

Since power is flux, and the world is flux, and therefore the world is the will to power, there is no fixed Good and no fixed Evil. We know that now. But this means that given enough will, the actions you and your society believe to be the evilest could be considered the best in the future. If the Aztecs had been more technologically developed and had beaten the Spaniards, perhaps today we would be ripping the hearts of little children and considering it good and proper and beautiful.

So do not be led astray by perspectivism. Your perspective matters. Impose your taste. Fight Evil and be Good.

My Top 10 Freeform Hardcore Tracks

After following this music so fanatically and enthusiastically for years, I had to take a break from it in the mid-2010s. That was the only way to properly understand the meaning of compositions like Afternoon Owl. I can in fact say I indulged this music to the point of disgust. That said, I still consider Alek Száhala nothing less than a musical genius. His music is incredibly logical and streamlined, and consequently incredibly powerful (and therefore also quite dangerous…). Of course, he also made average, if not outright bad, tracks, but when adhering to such an extreme style of music, the risk of producing comedy is very high. It is not easy to make adult and tasteful 180 BPM four-to-the-floor music, is what I’m saying, and this is why most tracks in this music style (the so-called “freeform”, which is in reality very well structured and not freeform at all…) are far from stunning. But by the same token, when they hit this style’s very narrow sweet spot, they can reach outright brilliance. I rank Száhala very high in the hierarchy of modern electronic music (right at the top, along with Infected Mushroom).

So allow me to post my all-time top 10 freeform tracks:

  1. Alek Száhala – Afternoon Owl
  2. Alek Száhala – Iron Squid
  3. Alek Száhala – Anmitzcuaca
  4. Alek Száhala – Freezing Clouds
  5. Alek Száhala – Puzur-Inshushinak
  6. Alek Száhala – Tides
  7. Alek Száhala – Aurinko
  8. Alek Száhala – Starfall
  9. Alek Száhala – Comet Catcher
  10. Carbon Based – Cyclone

I am still not 100% sure about this list, but for now I’ll leave it like this. It’s tough picking 10 tracks out of so many great ones. And then ranking them accordingly makes it harder, of course. Still, I believe Afternoon Owl is the quintessential Száhala-style piece of music. Iron Squid is awesome, but I feel the transition to its final climax was perhaps too hasty. You are served this orgy of happiness and euphoria almost out of the blue—and stuff coming out of the blue is almost always by definition silly. I’d say the reason for this was that the first 5 minutes of the track progressed very logically, with each part taking its time to fully develop into the next part (giving thus a calm and secure vibe) but then, as good as that one-minute breakdown was, the sudden climax still kind of feels forced and histrionic. That said, Iron Squid is still a masterpiece and a supreme example of the Száhala-style. As for a track like Enuma Elish, after the initial enthusiasm, I’ve since looked at it more objectively and decided to leave it out of my top 10. I really appreciate Sahala’s courage to be repetitive. His disdain for little nuances and his commanding compositions are a big part of what defines his music, but I feel he went a little too far with this one. You’ll see from previous versions of this track that he ended up scrapping many details, even going as far as deleting full parts of the track. This streamlining is a good thing, but is it not possible to overdo it? Because after a point, the music will just start sounding autistic.

On another note, I placed Aurinko above Starfall. Like I said, it’s tough ranking these tracks. I have no doubt about the first two spots, but after that it’s difficult. Anmitzcuaca is powerful, but how can I seriously compare it with Aurinko? The former is pure rage, nonstop energy building on itself, while the latter is pure bliss, with a simple yet powerful melody. Saying Anmitzcuaca is better than Aurinko is ultimately saying pure rage is better than pure bliss, since both these tracks are near perfect representations of these feelings.

So, take my ranking from the 3rd place onward with a grain of salt. I just placed Starfall below Aurinko, because I prefer Aurinko‘s main melody. Aurinko might be simpler, but it does not get boring, whereas Starfall‘s 2:50 melody verges on the annoying after a not-so-distant point. The 4:27 transition is a terrific touch, a little bit of fresh air, some distraction from the main melody that leads to another powerful melody at 5:15. But then at 5:45 we’re back to that first melody that was already verging on the annoying when it left and… it takes a special kind of person to want to endure this kind of discomfort. This, however, is practically what defines Száhala’s music. These persistent feelings and this painful pursuit of delayed gratification (the gratification we feel when a melody finally advances to a different stage, or a new note appears, or some gimmick messes around with the tempo, etc.) can be found pretty much in all of his tracks if you bother to take a closer look. Even Aurinko‘s final exploding melody persists far longer than your random MTV teenage pop song. And that’s a good thing.

Another thing is that Starfall clearly gives a much more contemplative vibe than Aurinko. Aurinko is happiness full stop. But Starfall has a clear dreamy vibe, so ranking one above the other would once more be equivalent to ranking feelings and emotions and saying happiness > contemplation. But since I feel Aurinko is a more perfect representation of happiness than Starfall is a representation of contemplation, I decided to change their relative positions. Starfall is more complex, in a way, just as Sunray is more complex but at the same time is still not good enough for me to consider placing it on a top 10.

I should add that Száhala’s sound design is very characteristic and that’s obviously a good thing. Some of the timbres you hear in his music seem to come from some alien civilization! I mean, why do you think I rank Freezing Clouds so high, even though it’s pretty much an unfinished sketch?

I know what you guys are thinking btw. “This dude sure loves Száhala lol”. And you can bet your ass I do. His best music is indeed orders of magnitude above his competition.

Finally, I had to include Cyclone in my top 10 because this was the track that got me into this genre and ultimately even got me to discover Száhala. This track still holds up very well nowadays, with a great breakdown and melodic climax.

The Best Nelo Angelo Fight

I can no longer claim I have recorded the best Nelo Angelo fight in DMC1. 15 years later, a crazy Japanese player appeared and recorded an even better fight than mine. Check it out here:

Puripuri_Obasan plays perfectly here and toys with Nelo like nobody else has done before. I know she knows this fight and Nelo’s attack and defense patterns like the back of her hand. Back when I recorded my fight, I was always 2-3 steps ahead of Nelo’s AI and had memorized all of his possible reactions to my every move. When you are this prepared, you are never really in danger, and so you can try making riskier moves.

But Puripuri_Obasan takes risky moves to a whole new level and puts Dante in Nelo’s face every single second of this fight. The execution is impeccable and the fight is extremely stylish. Her use of Vortex to bring Dante close to Nelo followed by an Enemy Step and Shotgun Hiking plus sword deflections is a beauty to watch. Dante absolutely dominates Nelo here and this video is indeed a masterpiece. I am pretty sure my own video inspired her to record this fight, and I’m glad I was able to inspire her. The crown goes to her now. (Technically, there can be two crowns, since she’s apparently a girl, which means I am still King and now I have a Queen by my side.)

Reading List

Maxims | François de La Rochefoucauld

The Waste Books | Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

The Art of Literature | Arthur Schopenhauer

The Art of Controversy | Arthur Schopenhauer

Politics and the English Language | George Orwell

Fragments | Heraclitus

On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense | Friedrich Nietzsche

The Gay Science | Friedrich Nietzsche

Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future | Friedrich Nietzsche

On the Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic | Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols | Friedrich Nietzsche

The Will to Power | Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra | Friedrich Nietzsche

Videogame Culture: Volume I | Alex Kierkegaard

On the Genealogy of “Art Games”: A Polemic | Alex Kierkegaard

Videogame Culture: Volume II | Alex Kierkegaard

Videogame Art: Volume I | Alex Kierkegaard

Orgy of the Will | Alex Kierkegaard

Essays | Michel de Montaigne

The Art of Worldly Wisdom | Baltasar Gracián

These are probably the best works I have read in my life. If I had to choose twenty works for you to read and get started in philosophy, I’d choose these. I’d even read them in this order, from top to bottom. You might be wondering what a book like Videogame Culture is doing in this list, but you will understand it once you start reading it. Its essays contain top-notch thinking and some of them are highly philosophical, like On “Emergent” Game Behavior and other Miracles and The Simulacrum is True. This book will literally teach you how to think for yourself. The same goes for On the Genealogy of “Art Games”: A Polemic, which is probably the book that influenced me the most. Note that a couple of these books aren’t even finished, but some of their content is already available online and it’s worth reading, even if what’s yet to be written in them turns out to be bad, which is doubtful.

Of Idleness

Montaigne: “As we see some grounds that have long lain idle and untilled, when grown rich and fertile by rest, to abound with and spend their virtue in the product of innumerable sorts of weeds and wild herbs that are unprofitable, and that to make them perform their true office, we are to cultivate and prepare them for such seeds as are proper for our service; and as we see women that, without knowledge of man, do sometimes of themselves bring forth inanimate and formless lumps of flesh, but that to cause a natural and perfect generation they are to be husbanded with another kind of seed: even so it is with minds, which if not applied to some certain study that may fix and restrain them, run into a thousand extravagances, eternally roving here and there in the vague expanse of the imagination—

“Sicut aqua tremulum labris ubi lumen ahenis,
Sole repercussum, aut radiantis imagine lunae,
Omnia pervolitat late loca; jamque sub auras
Erigitur, summique ferit laquearia tecti.”


[“As when in brazen vats of water the trembling beams of light,
reflected from the sun, or from the image of the radiant moon,
swiftly float over every place around, and now are darted up on
high, and strike the ceilings of the upmost roof.”—AEneid, viii. 22.]

—in which wild agitation there is no folly, nor idle fancy they do not light upon:—

“Velut aegri somnia, vanae
Finguntur species.”

[“As a sick man’s dreams, creating vain phantasms.”—Hor., De Arte Poetica, 7.]

The soul that has no established aim loses itself, for, as it is said—

“Quisquis ubique habitat, Maxime, nusquam habitat.”

[“He who lives everywhere, lives nowhere.”—Martial, vii. 73.]

When I lately retired to my own house, with a resolution, as much as possibly I could, to avoid all manner of concern in affairs, and to spend in privacy and repose the little remainder of time I have to live, I fancied I could not more oblige my mind than to suffer it at full leisure to entertain and divert itself, which I now hoped it might henceforth do, as being by time become more settled and mature; but I find—

“Variam semper dant otia mentem,”

[“Leisure ever creates varied thought.”—Lucan, iv. 704]

that, quite contrary, it is like a horse that has broke from his rider, who voluntarily runs into a much more violent career than any horseman would put him to, and creates me so many chimaeras and fantastic monsters, one upon another, without order or design, that, the better at leisure to contemplate their strangeness and absurdity, I have begun to commit them to writing, hoping in time to make it ashamed of itself.” (Montaigne, “Of Idleness”)