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Essays / personalScienceMusic

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416 from 23 Aug 2020 to 29 Oct 2026
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2026 82

  1. The Apeiron
  2. S&M and Bible Studies
  3. The Revolutions of Matter
  4. Oort Cloud Review Launch in New York City, Next Thursday, October 22!
  5. Motuo
  6. The History and Philosophy of Astrobiology
  7. The Oort Cloud Review in London, November 11!
  8. “I truly believe the world is made of music”
  9. A Full Fall Schedule
  10. Notes on Hope
  11. A Ludicrous No-Brainer
  12. Some Urgent Housekeeping
  13. On Doomerism
  14. In Chains
  15. Clavis
  16. Turn Off Your Mind, Relax and Float Downstream
  17. Dolly
  18. Introduction to the Philosophy of G. W. Leibniz
  19. What Is The Hinternet?
  20. Announcing a New Hinternet Foundation Online Course!
  21. Introduction to the Philosophy of Leibniz
  22. Fabulous — On Jason Arday
  23. Writing for Cabinet Magazine
  24. Introduction to the Philosophy of Leibniz
  25. Introduction to the Philosophy of G. W. Leibniz
  26. The Dynamics of the Egg
  27. La Dynamique de l’œuf
  28. On Zola's “Nana” (1880)
  29. “Theater Kids”: On Zola’s Nana (1880)
  30. Skewered!
  31. Madame de Sévigné, Saint-Simon, Norbert Elias, Proust, Pepys, Al Bundy, Etc.
  32. Homer and other Guslars
  33. The Substack Cloaca
  34. Back from the Oort Cloud
  35. L’Exception française
  36. The Most Beautiful Short Story Ever Written
  37. The French Exception
  38. Sideways Reflexions on the Philosophy of Translation
  39. Mon Amérique à moi
  40. Le bon coup !
  41. The Angelic Engine
  42. Reading and Translating Chekhov Across Multiple Languages
  43. The Hinternet Needs Your Support!
  44. Computer World
  45. The Oral Literature of the American People
  46. “The Power of Life”: A Livestream with Jessica Riskin on the Legacy of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
  47. Reading the Void
  48. An AI Scale for Writers
  49. The Science of Weather and the Nature of Science
  50. “AI Ethics” Is a Dead End
  51. “Pet Sounds” at 60
  52. Whither the Humanities?
  53. Pocket Symphonies
  54. Divertimento on a Footnote to Gruzinski
  55. Announcements!
  56. “Maitreya Corso“
  57. Rhythm and Reason
  58. Hawai’ian Music Is American Music
  59. Against the New Literalism
  60. The Jazz Singers
  61. “Sweet Leilani”
  62. Quam minimum
  63. The Voynich Manuscript: A Translation
  64. The Philosopher and the Tsar
  65. Whither the Humanities?
  66. A Third Way for the Humanities
  67. Towards an Alternative Canon of Millennial Pop
  68. Kyys Ñurgun’s Battle
  69. The Enigmas of Gerhard Richter
  70. The Ego Trip
  71. Coming Clean
  72. Under the Ribcage
  73. The Hinternet Foundation
  74. Point Dume
  75. Point Dume
  76. The Soul of the Soul of 1960s Soul
  77. Alex Pretti Was Murdered by the State
  78. Greenland Fantasia
  79. An Age of Chimeras
  80. American Capernaum
  81. What Were the 1990s?
  82. “Fire moves away”

2025 108

  1. “There is a net beyond the net”
  2. The Hinternet’s Best of 2025!
  3. “You could use an editor”
  4. Hinternet Essay Prize Contest
  5. Beyond Interpassivity
  6. “How Might Current and Emerging Technologies Best Be Mobilized to Secure Perpetual Peace?”
  7. The Universal Mirror
  8. Bathtime in Bulgaria
  9. The Broken Day
  10. This Is Hardcore
  11. Incompossible with Florida
  12. AI Psychosis!
  13. Livestream with Lawrence Weschler in 20 Minutes!
  14. Spreadsheet Selves
  15. Livestream with Lawrence Weschler, Tomorrow, November 6
  16. C’est la Lune qui nous rend humains
  17. The Moon Makes Us Human
  18. The End of the Whisper
  19. Spirit Is a Bone
  20. How Not to Die
  21. Ahead of Our Times
  22. Reminder: Justin Smith-Ruiu and Alyssa Loh, Livestream on Attensity: A Manifesto of the Attention Liberation Movement
  23. Keeping House
  24. The Return of Maria Theresa
  25. Horse Sense: Clever Hans and the Crepuscule of Equine Telepathy
  26. How to Change the World for Real
  27. On Drugs Pub-Day Livestream
  28. Celebrating 110 Years of The Hinternet!
  29. Masterpieces from the Ceramics Collection of Iñaki Etxeberri
  30. Virtual Book Launch for On Drugs
  31. On Drugs!
  32. Confessions of a Cell
  33. The Shitpost of the Deed
  34. Towards a Theory of Side-Eye
  35. The Substack Age
  36. The World Is Everything That Is the Fall
  37. A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence
  38. Towards a Theory of Trads
  39. Look Straight at the Sun
  40. What Our World Sounds Like Now
  41. The Archive
  42. ChatGPT-5: A Review
  43. The Voynich Manuscript: A Translation
  44. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump
  45. Spores b2f
  46. Petition to a Council
  47. The 20th Century Is the Only Century
  48. “I am the century’s decay”
  49. Francine
  50. The Mohole
  51. I Support Viewpoint Diversity
  52. “She makes me nervous”
  53. The Hinternet Is Entering Phase 3
  54. The Exhaust of Attention
  55. AI Is Making Us Smarter
  56. The Poems of Maxim Morel I
  57. “Symbolic Retaliation”
  58. Autofiction Is All We’ve Ever Known
  59. Back to Work
  60. Brian Wilson (1942-2025)
  61. Introducing Maria Theresa
  62. Redneck Cosmopolitanism
  63. The Revolutions of Matter
  64. Rêves trouvés
  65. We All Work for the Same Boss Now
  66. How to Do Soul-Craft with State Tools
  67. On Drugs: Our First Interview
  68. Hélène Finds Her Voice
  69. The Nest
  70. Is It Time to Flee the US?
  71. The Replacement Agency
  72. The Trans-World Listening Disc
  73. American Homeostasis
  74. Life of the Great Cortés
  75. Star Systems
  76. Nature, Grace, and History
  77. Several Newsworthy Items
  78. Murmuration des anagrammes
  79. Does the Left Really Need to Be Chastised for the Past Decade of Deviation?
  80. Creative Humanities
  81. On Attention
  82. Hinternet Essay Prize Competition
  83. The Death of the University
  84. “Why hath the unicorn but one horn?”
  85. « Pourquoi la licorne n’a-t-elle qu’une corne ? »
  86. Can the Humanities Survive?
  87. “AGI” Is Impossible: Objections and Replies
  88. “AGI” Is Impossible
  89. Digital Plowshares
  90. 47° 31’02” N, 5° 55’12” W
  91. Big Things Happening at The Hinternet
  92. For a Rapprochement with Russia...
  93. За сближение с Россией ...
  94. We Have Never Been Brodern
  95. A World-Historical Upgrade
  96. The Harold Rosenberg School of Historical Cosplay
  97. My Kind of Conservatism
  98. The Stars in Our Phones
  99. Here Come the Allodidacts
  100. An In-Depth Profile of JSR and The Hinternet
  101. A Second Kind of Objects
  102. A Note on Literacy from Brother Martin XoPo
  103. American Vacuum
  104. The Counterpart Files
  105. Die Gegenstück-Akte
  106. Best Housekeeping Yet!
  107. Inaugurious
  108. Palm Beach, Tower D

2024 71

  1. Warm Holiday Greetings from The Hinternet
  2. Hinternet Production Labs — An Audio Launch Event!
  3. The New Medical Supernemesis
  4. Cetacean Philosophy
  5. Can One Become a Different Person?
  6. Looking Back
  7. The Great Subduction
  8. Великая субдукция
  9. Talking Trump, RFK Jr., Epistemic Collapse, &c.
  10. Bangers and Mash
  11. On Bonfire Night
  12. The Internet Is Killing Science Too
  13. [OVERRIDE]
  14. The Trump Restoration
  15. Reading Notes
  16. The Future of Reading
  17. Bun. Chapter Ten: The Language Burrow
  18. Chignon. Chapitre dix : Le terrier du langage
  19. Agnes and Justin on Robert Musil’s “The Man Without Qualities”
  20. Bun. Chapter Nine: The Boötes Void
  21. Nodus. Caput IX: Boötis vacuum
  22. Bun. Chapter Eight: Kamala Harris for President
  23. Пучок. Глава восемь: Камала Харрис в президенты
  24. Bun. Chapter Seven: Hurricane Hélène Is Back!
  25. Bun. Chapter Six: How Old Is Rap Music?
  26. Notes on the Political Economy of the 21st-Century University
  27. Only Idiots Care about IQ
  28. Bun. Chapter Five: You Must Study the Motions of the Bodies of the Living
  29. Bun. Chapter Four: This Time for Real
  30. Bun. Chapter Three: What’s Going On at The Hinternet?!
  31. When and Why Did People Start Believing in Aliens?
  32. “Kamala touched me!”
  33. How G. W. Leibniz Helped Transform Russia into a Superpower
  34. Bun. Chapter Two: Mary’s Universal Musurgy
  35. Guest Work from the To-Come
  36. The Goths
  37. At the Willie Nelson Concert, at the Indian Casino, in Wheatland, California, with Mom, in the Summer of 2024
  38. Nevada Philosophy
  39. We Have Never Been Democrats
  40. World Spirit on Feedback
  41. “A Series of Small Apocalypses” Out Now in Liberties
  42. Better than Sex?
  43. Three Telltale Signs of Online Post-Literacy
  44. A Night Out in Paris
  45. From Divine Machines to Sex Machines
  46. For Unconditional Surrender
  47. Selected Short Fiction of Justin Smith-Ruiu, 2022-2024
  48. Against “Euthanasia”
  49. Country Music in a Fractured Country
  50. An Introduction to Philology
  51. In Fond Memory of Jerry Rothenberg (1931-2024)
  52. The New Yorker on the “Crisis of Attention”
  53. The Cancellation Policy
  54. For Those Who’d Prefer Not To
  55. Fear the Eclipse
  56. Neo-Utilitarians Are Utter Philistines
  57. Bun. Chapter One: The Storyteller
  58. The Reeds and the Silt
  59. An Ocean of Data
  60. Occupation: Jean Cocteau
  61. Croissants to Die For
  62. From Rubber Soul to Revolver
  63. Twice-Found Sounds
  64. Interferences
  65. Writing Is a Bad Habit
  66. Creative Writing as Philosophy
  67. All the Feels (Eels)
  68. Cultural Strip-Mining for an Exhausted Age
  69. The Over-Under
  70. A Yukaghir Love Letter
  71. A Soaring Domain of Sparkling Jewels

2023 45

  1. A Year of Ordinary Time
  2. The Zsigmondy Effect
  3. Agnes Callard and I Discuss Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames
  4. Queries, #1
  5. News of This World and the Next
  6. Polonius, His Muse
  7. The Moose Jaw Event
  8. The Living Dead
  9. From the Complete Works of Justin Smith-Ruiu
  10. Notes on Dance
  11. Petition to a Council
  12. Our Dumb Century
  13. Spores
  14. The Superette
  15. In Conversation with Agnes Callard
  16. The Seat of the Soul
  17. Plump Masters
  18. Lunar Caustic
  19. For Zerco
  20. Anthem for a Forgotten Generation
  21. Santísimo Sacramento
  22. State of the ‘Stack, 2023
  23. Trinkgeld’s Final Wish
  24. Alkahest
  25. No alhakest
  26. Postmodernism Is Good, Actually
  27. The Nocturnals
  28. Hinternet Summer Sale!
  29. Ubi Sunt
  30. Bezumov’s Principal Objection
  31. The Jersey Barrier
  32. The Reckoning of Time
  33. My Own Private Energy Crisis
  34. The Index of Coincidence
  35. “JEHS”, RIP (2001-2023)
  36. Notes on the Great Dematerialization
  37. Cull the Robo-Dogs, Cherish the Dirt-Clods
  38. My Dinners with GPT-4
  39. GPT-4 Is Really Quite Stupid
  40. About Town
  41. Friedman’s Universal Key
  42. Cultural Recursion
  43. The Esoteric Doctrine
  44. The Transmutean Hypotheses
  45. Francine

2022 53

  1. Metapoiesis
  2. An Ocean of Earth
  3. Join my New Subscriber Chat
  4. Walking, Seeing, Thinking
  5. Yaka Yaka
  6. A Locus of Care
  7. Boogaloo
  8. Marvin Gaye at the Franprix
  9. The Roaring of Things (A Guest Essay from Sam Kriss)
  10. Re-Entering the Vampire Castle
  11. A Request to Readers
  12. The Kentrogon
  13. The Fragile Bodies of Famous Men
  14. The Xylonet
  15. The Xylonet
  16. Two Years on Substack
  17. ChronoSwooping (Audio Version)
  18. ChronoSwooping
  19. Why Is America So Cracked?
  20. Do We See Through an Ultrasound?
  21. Do We See Through an Ultrasound?
  22. No Minds Without Other Minds (Audio Version)
  23. No Minds Without Other Minds
  24. Notes on the Vibe Shift (Audio Version)
  25. Notes on the Vibe Shift
  26. Is Everything Political?
  27. Is Everything Political?
  28. The Mohole†
  29. The Mohole
  30. Songs for Invertebrates (Audio Version)
  31. Songs for Invertebrates
  32. Books Become Games (Audio Version)
  33. Books Become Games
  34. Against Resistentialism
  35. Beats per Minute, Centimeters per Inch
  36. Beats per Minute, Centimeters per Inch
  37. The Very Possibility of Nuclear War
  38. Silence, Insouciance, Takesmanship
  39. Notes of a Russophile
  40. Notes of a Russophile
  41. Paradoxes of Pacifism
  42. What Is Love?
  43. After Literacy
  44. After Literacy (Audio Version)
  45. We Are Still Not Living in a Simulation
  46. We Are Still Not Living in a Simulation (Audio Version)
  47. “What Is Gender?”
  48. Here for the Ratio
  49. Here for the Ratio
  50. Ghost Photography
  51. Ghost Photography
  52. Every Day a Dreyfus Affair
  53. The Voynich Manuscript: A Translation

2021 39

  1. Annus constrictivus
  2. The Corona of Care
  3. Why We Are Not Pagans
  4. Trans-Class
  5. Do Names Have Souls?
  6. It's All Over (2021)
  7. On the Winds
  8. Garbage, Human Beings
  9. Covid Is Boring
  10. The Crying Man
  11. Proust’s Panmnemonicon
  12. “The Hinternet” Is Turning One!
  13. A Total Work of Art
  14. In Castoria
  15. Notes on Violence
  16. The End of Books
  17. Skip the Intro?
  18. On Compassion
  19. “HR Managers of the Human Soul”
  20. The Problem with “Animal Intelligence”
  21. Hobby-Horses
  22. In Defense of Ethnoscience
  23. Will France Go Woke?
  24. On Not Eating Meat
  25. Against Intelligence
  26. On the Job
  27. Sweet Nothings
  28. In the Tank
  29. The Grammar of the World
  30. Friends of the Devil
  31. Click the Boats
  32. So Empty
  33. The Earth Is Going to Be Fine
  34. The Panmnemonicon
  35. The GameStop Squeeze and the Fable of the Bees
  36. “Whatever manifests itself has the shape of an ‘I‘”
  37. The Politics of Tiger Attacks
  38. An Exceptional Situation
  39. Who Is René Girard?

2020 18

  1. “This was a cruel year...”
  2. CTR Technology
  3. What Are the Humanities?
  4. The Question of Humanism
  5. The Substack Discourse and the Self-Referentiality of Everything
  6. The Forest Is the Polis
  7. Welcome the Trump Voters Back
  8. Abstain from Beans
  9. Emily in Paris
  10. May I Write in the First Person Now?
  11. What Was California?
  12. Are Birds Dinosaurs?
  13. Keyword Authoritarianism
  14. The New Eliminationism
  15. A Proposal
  16. Out of Their Heads
  17. Greetings, Dear Readers
  18. Justin E. H. Smith's Hinternet