The Existential Pulse

A few useful bits and pieces

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:41:11 GMT

After my survey’s went out and were met with uncontrollable success, I now have a better idea of what people are after. To my surprise, many of you wanted some suggestions for music, films, books, and the like. Well, I like to keep a paying audience happy, so here are some things I have enjoyed lately:

Most Played Songs

Amon Amarth - Eight Legs of Thunder

Clutch - The Drifter Returns

Weezer - Say Yes

Jack Shaindlin - let’s Go Sunning

Above & Beyond - Can’t Sleep.

Busta Rhymes - What Up

President - Fearless

Coheed and Cambria - The Pavillion

Skeeter Davis - The End of the World

Lesley Gore - You Don’t Own Me

The Ink Spots - Maybe

Film

Project Hail Mary.

That’s it really, movies really are shit nowadays. Evil Dead Burns is one but I absolutely hated it and it’s gen Z writing was worse.

Books

Mark Sentesy: Aristotle’s Ontology of Change

Johann Hamann: Writings on Philosophy and Language

William Brown: Non-Cinema: Global digital filmmaking and the multitude.

Marcus Steinweg: The Terror of Evidence

Martin Hagglund: This Life: Secular faith and Spiritual freedom.

Joanna Stalnaker: The Rest is Silence.

Podcasts

Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru

Philosophy Bites

Philosophize this!

Long Bangers Podcast

Gregory B. Sadler

Excersize

Tyson style push-ups

Playing Card Squats

calf raises

Beer

Carlsberg

Cat

Cosmo (the white cat)

Reflections of a first-gen philosopher part 4

Andrew Robinson — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 13:31:11 GMT

Once again, it is time to hear the thoughts of me as I write them out in a continuous movement - like a goddamn orchestra - without much in the way of a care or a worry about what you think about it. We talk a lot about AI, don’t we? It’s either the death of thinking or the next best tool for it. But let us look at one of the most recent clauses used by…

Grief Bots and loss: what has been lost?

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 11:16:49 GMT

Popular moral danger word ‘AI’ and its real-life counterpart: Large ‘the scourge of academia’ Language Models (LLMs for short), it seems, are here to stay. Someone cleverer than I decided to write an article using the LLM, given the fancy and high-class name ‘Claude’, and people are wigging out, man: The death of philosophy! The end of essays! The death…

A terse thought about grief

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 28 Jul 2026 21:24:58 GMT

I want you to imagine something.

Suppose that there are a group of people, let us call them Australians for shits and giggles. Now, let us suppose further that Australians, Aussies for short, do not experience the myriad affects of grieving. However! These Aussies can articulate grief utterances about the deceased - speak as the bereaved speak, partake i…

A prisoner's dialogue

Andrew Robinson — Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:29:16 GMT

Those of you who have been with me since the beginning know that I have a love for philosophical dialogues and philosophical maxims, but I haven’t actually written one in a very long time.

Today I want to correct that. This is a dialogue. It is about something philosophical. In full glorious Scottish dialect - like Rebus.

Where to Start with In flames

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:14:33 GMT

Now that the World Cup is officially over (do not even start the 'men’s World Cup’ pish; go consult Russell’s theory of definite descriptions, haha), it’s time to start writing things again. But! as an easy way into such writings after such a long hiatus of thinking, I am going to start with something a little more basic. What, pray, can I mean?

Well, m…

Death and Grief.

Andrew Robinson — Sat, 04 Jul 2026 14:09:33 GMT

Recently, I gave my very first offline talk to some non-philosophers at my local community centre about death and grief. I was expecting about five people to attend after such high-intensity advertising; eight actually attended - so that is a win (admittedly, one person came because they thought it was seniors’ salsa dancing, grabbed a free bottle of wa…

A brief thought on friends

Andrew Robinson — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 19:28:20 GMT

I have some new subscribers. So I need to clue you in. These posts of mine are written in a continuous flow, without really pausing. There is no editing, no polish, and as close to how I speak as possible. I make no apology for this, and if you expect well polished philosophical thought, then maybe I ain’t for you, gringo. But I find merit in what I now…

A glance at the past

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 30 Jun 2026 16:59:49 GMT

Many of you fine folks know that I didn’t start my education until later in life. The rest of you freeloading parasites won't even be reading this sentence, so it doesn’t matter what you think.

For the fine people, I have stumbled upon something that gave me quite a little surprise. I found the piece of writing that won me the illustrious Newbattle Abbey…

Against The Happiness Mob

Andrew Robinson — Sat, 20 Jun 2026 13:03:07 GMT

Today, I am going to play devil’s advocate and offer a very quick defence of asociality. That is to say, I will defend the freedom to choose not to seek out friendships with others - maybe, let’s see how it goes. It should be remembered that this is purely an academic exercise, and that I do not think this is the correct view - the fact that I have to s…

Nine Reasons to Stop Treating Hume as Scotland’s Only Philosopher.

Andrew Robinson — Fri, 12 Jun 2026 15:56:45 GMT

David Hume, Historian and part-time philosopher, remains indispensable to the history of philosophy, thanks to Kant. However, there is a slight issue. That issue is the habit of treating him as the whole of Scottish philosophy, or as its spokesman - he has overexposure, as it were.1 That habit makes the so-called Scottish Enlightenment look and feel narr…

The Whole Damn Animal: Leibniz and the Banishment of Death

Andrew Robinson — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 19:35:24 GMT

Immortality. Old news, right? Pythagoras started the whole ‘immortal soul’ idea (don’t bite kids) that Plato blatantly stole and put into Socrates mouth (just keep swimming). But let us suppose that you find some level of comfort in the idea that the soul will live on, a true immortal. Let us not get bogged down in the details of such a view, but just s…

Be aware of the AlgoRHYTHM

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 16:24:52 GMT

Visibility. What is that in the context of the modern age? To be, is to be seen, remarked the Bishop known as Berkeley. Ok, so strictly, Berkeley spoke of being perceived, not ‘seen’. But we needn’t be strict here. On the one hand, perception can be private. But on the other hand, visibility is public. Consider that a thing can be perceived by one mind …

How to get Better at reading Philosophy

Andrew Robinson — Tue, 02 Jun 2026 10:32:10 GMT

We all demand free advice on how to do something better from someone with more skin in the game than we do. Reading philosophical works is no different. So, instead of writing about it, I will promote my new podcast, which covers this very topic. Y’all can click this link and learn how to get better at reading philosophy.

Andrew.

The Peculiar Theology of Coheed and Cambria's Amory Wars

Andrew Robinson — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:52:03 GMT

Taking a little break from the Seneca letter analysis, I want to turn my attention to something that I have been sitting on for, oh, years. That, you freeloading parasites, is looking at the philosophical commitments of Coheed and Cambria’s massive sci-fi saga: The Amory Wars. Written by Claudio Sanchez, lead guitarist, singer, and frontman of Coheed an…

Seneca's letter to Lucilius LXIII

Andrew Robinson — Sun, 10 May 2026 15:31:42 GMT

We are moving on. Read pt1 and pt2 if you haven’t already. Seneca is now about to say something clean and dangerous:

“What,” you say, “am I to forget my friend?” It is surely a short-lived memory that you vouchsafe to him, if it is to endure only as long as your grief; presently that brow of yours will be smoothed out in laughter by some circumstance, ho…

Seneca's letter to Lucilius LXIII

Andrew Robinson — Fri, 08 May 2026 21:43:11 GMT

Yesterday, we dealt with Seneca’s opening to Lucilius; instead of recapitulating it, your lazy ass can read it here. Now we move on to the second paragraph. Again, only looking at what Seneca says about grief, not his Stoic motivations broadly construed.

After telling Lucilius that we mustn’t wail, he now goes on:

Do you think that the law which I lay dow…

Seneca's Letter to Lucilius LXIII.

Andrew Robinson — Fri, 08 May 2026 00:08:30 GMT

I have never actually gotten around to reading much of Seneca, so this is going to be a new series in which I read and analyse a different paragraph from his LXIII letter to Lucilius about his friend’s death, from beginning to end. I was going to do this as one thing, but I decided to break it up for the same reason that The Hobbit was made into three f…

Stop Asking Which Philosopher to Read First

Andrew Robinson — Mon, 04 May 2026 13:26:54 GMT

One of the most popular questions that people ask those who study philosophy in an academic setting is where should they start with philosophy? Now everyone will have their own preferences and say stuff like Plato or whatever, or say things like ‘read the original author’ - but that sounds to me to be a bit of a wishful idea that seems to assume somethi…

Loose Thoughts On The Nature of Philosophy

Andrew Robinson — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 22:16:57 GMT

If you have spent a modicum of time on Substack, you will have surely come across people talking about how boring Analytic philosophy is, or how incomprehensible Continental philosophy is. That, by the way, should be enough to immediately disqualify anyone from talking about such things: saying ‘continental’ is a well-established misnomer and umbrella t…