Phoque you, Amazon. Phoque you, Capitalism.

*The sound of a co-opted Jingle Idiocratic Bells AMZN commercial blades through my eBayed camera phone as I try to blog whilst struggling against the T9 autocorrect grammarlyified writer's place I still call my own*

How's THAT for some context, fellow blogspotters (and Reddit blogwriters, let's not kid ourselves).

Now for a strictly (lol not at all) cons list of what, for example, Amazon Web & non-web services permits and encourages, explicitly:

• tracking your purchase orders, music/video playlists, and your wishlist of stuff that you end up "having" to buy for yourself anyway, this ruining Christmakwanzaa or w/e

• paying teenagers/grown-ass men/women like $2.50 per hour to have bums watch you for $2.50 per hour to gleam strategies to git gud @ video games

• enforcing viewership SNP/Attention Span Potential (ASP) by getting people to click on little boxes to generate in-IRL currency that one can spend to get visicreen users (i.e such you and I) to react, thus spending calories

• false advertising. man, even the delivery drivers are bums who have to use Amazon phones to take pictures of our houses to prove to their bosses that, yes, Canada Post's employees fucked up once or twice so instead we'll just sell our province (and especially our capital) out to one another by delivering 3D printed carp to each other. The ads I was watching were showing happy white-ass crackaz in blue UPS/FedEx hats delivering nice boxes inside a fleet of smiling mini trucks. instead, we have ugly-ass rental vans that, yes, clog up the streets but if you need toilet paper before you inevitably buy a cheap bidet, then yes; also the minivans will deliver THAT to you the day-of.

But FFS what kind of culture needs instadelivery of everything? Oh yeah ours, cuz the price of gas has been between 90¢ and 170¢ for about as long as I remember.

• redheaded girls. need I say more? WTF happened to knives? 

• the internet goes down, Alexa gets to make more money than I could ever dream of controlling. how is that fair to the individual that actually sometimes uses the money judiciously (prolly not the self-avowed bulk ARPG economy enjoyer, mind you)

• delicious food at non-exorbitant prices. the Whole Foods takeover; a whole other beast. at least it's probably not Galen Weston's fault, entirely, for once 

19+ eyes only - Legal marijuana haul

Title is there because I'm a paranoid mofo.

I'm here.

Still a throwaway account now...

- KaLdOcE

Philosophy

I cannot possibly continue teaching at this institution without first addressing the issue of philosophy - what is it, why do we care what it is, and perhaps more important for students, why is it useful?

Firstly, I should talk about my credentials, for though I resent the overuse of titles in the modern world (e.g. I have a Ph.D, so you clearly know nothing!), I do not deny that they are incredibly beneficial in allowing one to trust knowledge, which is one of the chief aims of philosophy and perhaps more specifically, epistemology.
I lazily graduated high school in 2008, but with a minor lack of credits and low marks, I decided to travel around Canada first and volunteer, living with 10 other teenagers in three different provinces. It is through Katimavik that I realized the benefits of experiential, or informal, learning. I would consider myself a well-traveled Canadian, but not a well-traveled earthling, having yet to escape Canadian boundaries on any of my journeys.

I took a night school philosophy course after Katimavik was over, and it is there that I first met my true educational love. All the other high school subjects I had taken thus far, though interesting some may have been, seemed to lack... depth and purpose. Why did I care that the endoplasmic reticulum was near the mitochondria? Why did it matter that Macdonald was the first prime minister of Canada?

This philosophy course was different from all other courses, because it actually answered questions that had plagued me since my childhood. And if it didn't completely answer all of my questions, it at least made the attempt to address them.
Suddenly, I actually cared about school. I cared that I was making myself smarter. I thought "Hey, if I could earn a living doing this, I'd be pretty damned happy!".

Of course, the common joke since probably the early 20th century (or perhaps since Socrates' time) is that philosophers don't find jobs. One cannot be hired as a "philosopher" in this modern day and age, because there is not a need for them. Really?
I would argue that the world needs more philosophers right now, people who can think and who encourage others to think instead of working a regular 9-5, for "das man", as Heidegger might put it. If people used more philosophy in their daily life, they'd be happier. Happier people benefit society more than sadder people (although economically speaking, depressed people bring a lot of money to the table, especially for rich healthcare companies that profit off others' misfortune).

So here I am. An undergrad student with a passion for philosophy, but with no Ph.D to show for it. Still, I think I have a lot to offer if you care to continue studying at Academia Illustrae. Philosophers, even philosophers-in-training such as I, can teach just about anything. They can even teach it well, especially in the modern day with the help of the internet, as long as they transmute information into knowledge and do not merely dish out facts.

And that is, quite literally, what philosophy is. Love of knowledge. Love of wisdom, to be more specific. Philo means love, and sophy means wisdom.

So really, I am a philosophy student, and a master of my own knowledge, which may or may not be wisdom.

That's the lesson for today. Philosophy!