ignorance Archives - Home For Fiction

ignorance

Happiness Is for Idiots

October 28, 2025

happiness, ignorance, philosophy, society

Herodotus has Solon deliver the famous adage, Call no man happy until he is dead – and if you are a perceptive reader, you could even make a pivot to Giacomo Leopardi’s “Everything is evil”. Happiness is elusive, happiness is difficult to define, and ultimately, happiness is for idiots.

I’m not the one who has made this observation, to which I subscribe. Slavoj Žižek has mentioned it on several occasions, and here’s a fairly recent one:

I will briefly refer to Žižek’s take, but in this post I’m basically using it as a starting point. Yes, happiness is for idiots, but my main thesis is that happiness – much like love or success – is a concept people don’t really understand.

Crucially, they don’t even bother to understand and that’s the main problem.

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Scammers and Spammers: 5 Ridiculous Emails

September 7, 2025

Home For Fiction

computer, home for fiction, ignorance, society

It’s no accident “scammers” and “spammers” are only one letter apart. In most cases, their roles overlap. That is to say, scammers send a massive number of unsolicited email (spam) hoping a few naive people will take the bait.

Obviously, Home for Fiction also receives some such traffic. I’ve several safeguards in place, so I can’t complain, and ever since I moved Home for Fiction to a different server, which I control fully, the situation has improved further, as now I can implement more fine-tuned defenses.

Still, every now and then messages by scammers and spammers get through. And that’s fine, because they’re hilarious! So here are 5 ridiculous such emails I’ve received, for me (and you) to have a laugh with.

Spammers and Scammers. Image of Punning Walrus holding a sign reading: grumpy mode activated — Spammers and Scammers make Mr. Walrus very, very grumpy…

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The Era of Work is Over

August 3, 2025

Society

capitalism, freedom, ignorance, society

Labor is dead; the era of work is over. And no, just because you are still employed in a sort-of-9-to-5 well-paying job, it doesn’t mean the statement is wrong – just as having just eaten doesn’t mean there’s no world hunger, or snowing where you are doesn’t mean there’s no such thing as climate change and global warming.

Older people still entertain certain ideas about work, the workforce, youth, and all that. Part of the problem, I guess; generation gap and all that.

When they were young, and up until the 80s and likely 90s, you could indeed walk into an office well-dressed, shake a couple of hands, and be hired on the spot. Isn’t that the stereotype? In any case, it was a largely accurate description.

No more. Work is dead. The era of work is over – also thanks to technological innovations, like AI. And the sooner we, as society, understand that, the better.

The Era of Work is Over. Collage of images depicting happy office workers and street workers. — On the left side, what American dreamers want you to think working is. On the right side, what working *really* is for vast portions of the global population.

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