Lou Salomé was a Russian intellectual who befriended and influenced many important thinkers of the time, including Nietzsche, Freud, and Rainer Rilke. Nietzsche met her in 1882 through their mutual friend Paul Rée (who would end up becoming Lou's lover). Nietzsche fell in love with her right away, and proposed to her three times in a seven month period (all of which were rejected). He remained great friends with her for a time, and would have long philosophical discussions with her about many topics, but eventually bitterness crept up over her relationship with Paul Rée, and Lou broke off contact with him. After this rejection, his letters moved from admiration into bitter, petty attacks against both Salomé and Rée. It isn't hard to imagine that some of Nietzsche's more misogynistic quotes, such as: "Women are considered deep - why? Because one can never discover any bottom to them. Women are not even shallow" come from his personal bitterness towards Lou Salomé. In fact, many historians and philosophers consider it to be the greatest friendzoning of all time. You can read more about their relationship and its timeline here. I will warn you though, it is quite emo.

The reality TV phase of Marcus Aurelius's life was mostly edited out of Meditations.

Stoicism, which was founded by Zeno of Citium, is largely based on the acceptance of things which you cannot control.. Zeno believed that the universe was deterministic, and it was irrational to get angry or upset at the universe for existing the way that it does. Stoicism gained great popularity in Rome, beginning with Epictetus, who was a slave, and culminating in Marcus Aurelius, Emperor of Rome.

Yeah I mean, life is meaningless and all, but it turns out being a sexy vampire is kind of alright.

Sexy vampires are rather self-explanatory, so instead I'll use this space to talk about Affect Conf, which is a conference my wife is running that's happening next week (October 7-8) in Portland, Oregon. We should always remember that behind every social movement, every political ideal, and really anything worth doing at all, there is basically one thing that makes it function: work. Even Jean-Paul Sartre stood in the street corner handing out pamphlets (there are pictures of it online somewhere), and someone had to run the printer, write the articles, and design the layout of those pamphlets. Affect is a conference about the people, work, and design behind social change movements. It's going to be two days of people talking about what it takes to effect real change in the world, and their own personal stories trying to change the culture for the better. Oh, and at the end there will even be some volunteering / direct action. And of course I'll be there as well.

Although on second thought, what even is the nature of "winning an argument?"

Lenin successfully lead the hostages to overtake the bank, but he died shortly after and Stalin took over, and things kind of went down hill from there.