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[...] While the title "Octet" seems to refer to the projected number of quizzes, Wallace, always seeing microscopic heat transfers as the ultimate arbiter of connection, also points to the Octet Rule of chemistry. [...] More concretely, the Octet Rule is the basis for the body heat one addict offer…

[...] this collection refocuses Wallace's interest in accumulation by pointing to the intimate consequences of a phase of capitalist expansion dominated by financialization, a development begun in the 1980s that Giovanni Arrighi identified in 1994 not as a sign of robust value creation but as the "…

Initials continue generating meaning for Wallace here. The joke meaning of Hal's HI initials is that he is high all the time, but there is also a sacred meaning available to him, an eastern variation on his incandescence: in Japanese Buddhism, the character transliterated as "ka" or "hi" means fire…

While Infinite Jest obviously develops around analogies between addict and consumer, less obvious is the role played by slavery in defining the interface between the two. Wallace portrays the addict as one who lacks true economic agency to the point of being a slave--to being, in my terms, one wh…

Steeply's name also suggests the steeply sloped yield curve of returns on investments, which are often rendered in terms of mathematical function as Y(t), or yield over time--hence a "steep Y" (= Steeply?). [...]