Millenarianism or millenarism (from Latin millenarius ‘containing a thousand’ and -ism) is the belief held by a religious, social, or political group or movement in a coming fundamental transformation of society, after which “all things will be changed”. Millenarianism exists in various cultures and religions worldwide, with various interpretations of what constitutes a transformation.

via: https://www.marginalia.nu/log/a_138_systemdocker/

Like, there’s definitely a disapproving tone in some parts of this article, but I can’t help but nod and agree.

This analysis applies neatly to the daily lives of secular monks. A feeling of “mundanity” and “diurnality” pervades their existence: The practical conduct of everyday life defines the scope of human existence, with daily affairs, tasks, and projects all shaped by habits. There is no world but this one, no day but today, no self but the one knitted together in this perishable mind-body composite.

Each Calvinist is ascetic inasmuch as he exerts rational, “constant self-control” over himself, so that by means of active supervision, “constant thought,” he can direct his will. His object is the calling, a “mundane occupation” through which he can exercise his will for the sake of God’s glory. He produces fruits, and those fruits might be a sign of God’s favor.

via: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/02/american-loneliness-personality-politics/681091/

Zavlis is right that it is a great deal to ask of anyone. It is a great deal to ask of therapists, who at least have (under ideal circumstances) the training, the supervision and the structure to do the work. Prescribers rarely have anything of the sort. So part of what is needed here is structural. But it begins with relinquishing the fantasy of “pure” medication management. The emotional and relational dynamics are not an intrusion upon the work of prescribing. They are a part of the work itself. Whether you know this or not, whether you accept it or not, that is the job.

The origin of the term. More work on heterosexuality is needed, I suppose.

Such a theoretical lacuna is unsurprising. Heterosexuality has long been a neglected object of study, elbowed out of sexuality studies right after the field emerged by the sexier and cooler project of queer theory. Queer theorists look smugly at heterosexuality over their shoulders as the thing that they have—thank God—left behind. In doing so, they remain outdatedly attached to a moment in which heterosexuality was widely understood to be an idealized form of life.

Yes, universal queerness and the abolition of gender may be the horizon toward which we are eventually moving—but what happens in the meantime?

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmutjUfrpQQ

Are the straights okay? In episode 44 of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into “heteropessimism,” the sense of disillusionment or even shame associated with heterosexuality. From viral TikTok videos to studies showing that women are less dissatisfied than men in heterosexual relationships, post #metoo society is reckoning with the everyday sexism of many relationships. Ellie and David explore the reasons for heteropessimism, consider alternatives such as political lesbianism and boys’ education, and ask: how can we be attracted to things that are bad for us, and how can we break out of a heteropessimistic approach to love?

In this episode of Overthink, Ellie and David conclude their four-part series on intimate relationships with a discussion of polyamory. Many argue that polyamory has liberatory potential as a radical form of relating to others. Some say that polyamory is natural for humans–is this story from evolutionary biology true, and does it matter? Ellie and David discuss these issues and also explain how polyamory encourages us to rethink jealousy through the concept of compersion. The two also touch on the relation between polyamory and colonialism, and gender and racial dynamics in understanding poly identities!

previous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tsaa821kWQ8

In this episode of Overthink,  Ellie and David talk about open relationships. 50% of millennials are not interested in having purely monogamous relationships. With many still wanting a primary partner, some are turning towards open relationships. What do open relationships have to offer? Ellie and David start off by talking about their own experience with open relationships and its ties to their philosophical and feminist beliefs. Then the two dive into the open relationships of famous existentialist thinkers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It’s juicy! By the end of the episode they also discuss the romantic mystique, the triangulation of desire, our ability to understand desire, and more!

previous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA45EN78ji8

On this episode of Overthink, Ellie and David dive into monogamy. Ellie jumps into her obsession with reality shows centered around monogamy that are actually examples of polyamory, aka the entire Bachelor franchise. Then they discuss the appeal to nature that is often made when talking about monogamy as well as Aristophanes’ story of the one, the potential negatives of all-consuming love, cheating, and more!

previous: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BYtI6GmOeo

On this episode of Overthink, Ellie, and David discuss the history and philosophy of marriage. Why do married people in the U.S. receive over 1,000 legal benefits that single people do not? Ellie and David dive into Foucault’s analysis of ancient Roman marriage and Hegel’s idea that marriage unites the subjective and objective spheres. Then the two discuss the way it’s been used bio-politically, as well as queer critiques of marriage. They also discuss minimal marriage as a solution, how the average wedding in America costs thirty thousand dollars, their own experience with the idea of marriage, and much more!

What a great video on the nature of probability!

via: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK_KZv-YyOc

LLMs are built to automate a complex web of reification. They are designed to tell us what we want to hear. As we write, “Trained on an enormous corpus of human writing, speech, and code, and tuned to refine responses around context and memory as user interactions unroll, a model of this kind is designed to provide the sense that one’s expectation is being exceeded.”

Artificial intelligence is a bizarre technology that participates in its own mythmaking.

see: https://www.theideasletter.org/essay/reify-this/

For however futuristic the new genies seem, there is never actually progress in genies. Magic is not a measurement of their capability, but a description of our irresponsibility. Effortless wish-fulfillment is a perpetual hypothetical, no matter how perilously it is ever approximated.

I want you to explore. I want you to want to explore. If you walk into the darkness with a lamp, you will come upon all sorts of things you did not already know were there. One of them might be the thing you would have told the genie to fetch, but the more you explore the darkness, the better you will understand what else you might want from it, or from yourself. Everything you do changes you: exploring cultivates your curiosity and discernment and perspective and humility; settling for wish-fulfillment impoverishes your experience and then even your wishes.

I don’t know what will happen to us. I don’t trust the people in charge of the future, but humanity isn’t going to change any time soon. I refuse to be incurious about magic just because we can’t be trusted with it.

Hannah Montana? Capitalism? Video Essay?

Sometimes, you watch a video and really do end up asking yourself: “is there more to life?”

So perhaps the grotesque part, the unavoidable part of optimization culture, is the idea that there must be clear rules that work for everyone and guarantee large, measurable, quantified improvements and that every intervention must work like a miracle drug. The rare case of an impressive discovery like Ozempic convinces people that every problem can be solved by one simple trick.

This warps the questions we ask. It forces us into metrics and quantified scores. It warps the process itself. As Scanlon puts it, “The reason we can’t solve our problems is not lack of tools or information - it’s that the dominant method (add, optimize, measure) is the wrong method for the problem (figure out what’s poisoning you).”

Comments on this post are great! Given that it discusses maxxing, I feel strong connections to Alex Avilo’s recent essay at time of writing.

see: https://youtu.be/uox4OMC50-4?t=2492

Responding to some counterarguments

Very fair criticisms via a psychological lens. Perhaps this is a question that I should return to.

The part where work actually feels like it matters. If your revolution is all grim refusal and no joy, I feel for you, and I think you’re doing it wrong, or being forced into it, or you’ve been value-captured by a different set of metrics.

via: https://jimmyhmiller.com/legibility-is-ruining-you

In Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, Lorraine Daston distinguishes between thick and thin rules. Thin rules are the algorithmic, mechanistic rules we in software favor; they are rules that can be obeyed and enforced unambiguously. Thick rules, on the other hand, are rules of thumb; they are guiding principles. Daston shows how there has been a historical progression from thick to thin rules. That today, we almost always think of rules as this thin, algorithmic process.

via: https://kevinlynagh.com/newsletter/2026_05_difftron/

Many people will tell you this, about being queer, but you will fuck up your own life until you believe it, so here’s one more repetition: Believing the meanest thing about yourself also requires you to believe the meanest possible thing about the people who love you. You cannot be good for even one other queer person if you are still doing hate crimes to yourself.

But there is another man in that scene, and he is also losing something — not by choice, not for the sake of some grand principle, but because his boyfriend cares less about his feelings than he does about some abstract idea of Righteousness. Being kind to the people who love you is also righteous, and William is resolutely failing to do it. He’s so steeped in his particular suffering that he can’t see the pain he’ll cause.

Regarding the feminist concept of sexual objectification, Bauer explains that it was coined as part of a feminist shift in how to understand the world and one’s experience in it. According to the shift in question, in a context in which women experience widespread, systematic, diachronic, and structural disadvantages, certain ways of perceiving and representing women tend to cause them material and psychological harm. Bauer argues that once someone participates in this shift, the term ‘sexual objectification’ will ‘light up’ the relevant phenomena, and the person in question will see objectification everywhere she looks in contemporary culture. This is the case even if she is not in a position to specify exactly its marks and features.

Finally, I have read my first SEP entry in full. This reading has definitely strengthened my understanding of common positions, but no real illumination was had with respect to what to do about this whole thing. Sigh.