November 2011
12 posts
The world wins this round
I think I’m done for now. Like any fun ride, it eventually breaks down and requires maintenance or mothballing.
To poorly paraphrase Martin Laird, what we actually experience in the physical world is often not our true source of pain and suffering. It is the stories we tell ourselves about what we are experiencing that causes it. Getting caught in these stories we tell ourselves is a mind...
Book Get!
Finally got a copy of Thomas Merton’s Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Appropriate timing given current events. If you can find a copy near you, give it a read.
Selected quotes:
“One of the first things to learn if you want to be a contemplative is to mind your own business. Nothing is more suspicious, in a man who seems holy, than an impatient desire to reform other men.”
...
Badge Anxiety
One active behavioral enemy of a more peaceful, unhurried solitude is “undone things.” More specifically, their omnipresent reminders.
Email unread, news unchecked, flashing notifications still flashing, simple and immediate errands pending… Leaving anything unfinished that could be finished in a ‘matter of moments’ is a deadly cloud of distraction.
I would say that...
"Technology is a great hammer, but not every... →
An excellent response in an open Reddit thread titled “Should there be a necessities movement?” The context for proposing this question is pretty obvious once you notice the subreddit is r/Transhuman…
International development… not a field I’d want to get into again any day soon.
A rescue they will never forget: Baby elephant and... →
harvestheart:
this is a feel good story with pictures - they were so close to death
Ethical decision is ethical.
The typical U.S. household headed by a person age... →
The median net worth of households headed by someone 65 or older was $170,494. That is 42 percent more than in 1984, when the Census Bureau first began measuring wealth broken down by age. The median net worth for the younger-age households was $3,662, down by 68 percent from a quarter-century ago, according to the Pew analysis.
Alternative story link to HuffPo (CNN)
Well, now. While that...
Consumption of News: By Us, Of Us
It’s a tricky decision to consume news in the morning or evening… Or preferably, even less frequent than that. The world looks so very different after the dust settles.
“Consumption” in this case is eerily appropriate. Do you want to start off the day by filling your conscious mind with the thoughts and opinions of others? Or do you want to end the day doing the same?
...
The neglect of care is the greatest scandal of... →
Neglecting care has political advantages. It allows governments to pass on care costs to families and communities, rather than financing care as a public good
1 tag
Carrying the 1: We are our own 1%
It is our responsibility, as members of the global 1% (sloppy numbers alert!), to carry forward our responsibilities towards and in favor of the global 99% before, during, and after we have addressed the inequities against our own 1% — the struggle we are taking on now.
If you can read this, on a computer screen (or mobile device), with Internet access… Congratulations, of a sort. We...
October 2011
11 posts
1 tag
“A spiritual practice [like contemplation] simply disposes us to allow something...”
– Martin Laird, Into the Silent Land
Compassion for Machiavellian Princes?
I will believe we’ve come somewhere as an ethical species when we can admit to being — and truly are — saddened by the violent death of those whom we have been indoctrinated to hate, and indeed, including those who have actually trespassed against us.
Until then, well, we still seem to fail at the latter half of the relatively easier method called “hit it with bigger stick...
Everything The Media Told You About Occupy Wall... →
Bonus (non-dictionary) irony points for the source.
5 tags
We're supposed to be the counter-culture? →
She knows what’s up. Also, give vapid-cynicism a follow if you want to see an opinionated mind in action (which is the best way to give yourself a reality check).
from vapid-cynicism (excerpted, since the reblog function’s a bit off today):
Isn’t that what we’re missing? They’ve all come and gone: The dandies. The flappers. The greasers. The hippies. The punks. The grunge. Now what?...
Why Facebook's new Open Graph makes us all part of... →
… keeping in mind that Tumblr is a free service, too.
Dangerously close to "us versus them"
I have an income, a college education, and no debt.
In order to say this today, I had to ignore conventional channels, bypass gatekeepers, and always be willing to walk away from ‘money on the table.’
The ‘social contract’ we sold ourselves into remains unfulfilled; we trusted, we obeyed, we jumped through the hoops, and played the game. Maybe we even knew these rules...
September 2011
8 posts
Brainpuke: Neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is... →
8rainpuk3:
Neuroesthetics (or neuroaesthetics) is a relatively recent sub-discipline of empirical aesthetics. Empirical aesthetics takes a scientific approach to the study of aesthetic perceptions of art and music. Neuroesthetics received its formal definition in 2002 as the scientific study of…
Clarke's Fallacy →
See, I find this sort of thought approach absolutely fascinating, and happily spend hours pouring over agreements and arguments and so forth on similar matters… But I would be jumpy as he’ll actually discussing this in most conversational settings (academic, casual, or otherwise).
Envy of Conviction
Too all of you good people who post on your religious and philosophical certainties, please know that I downright envy you that certitude. That’s said without any sarcasm or hidden agenda! That’s said without regard to whether I could agree with your positions or not! Just… thank you for showing your humanity.
Holding fast to faith in a larger truth, and defending that position...
Here’s a malformed and incomplete thought I would like to share with you. Consider the following:
We as people in a society have two imperatives:
Reject all human authority which does not respect you.
Be a good and compassionate person, to yourself and others.
It’s easy to pursue one at the cost of the other. It’s a supreme balancing act to pursue both well.
Aside from...
1 tag
Richard Rohr: Falling Upward (CNN Article) →
Never would I have expected CNN to run a fairly prominent article on Richard Rohr… and today it’s a featured story on the CNN.com front page. The article itself is rather ‘light reading’ — par for course with networks of its ilk, of course — but a surprise nonetheless. Falling Upward is high up on my to-read list as Rohr is an excellent writer, deep thinker, and...
1 tag
Abort! Abort!
This week’s post, should there have been one, is hereby clobbered and given a furtive burial due to the release of Minecraft 1.8: The Adventure Update (part 1).
“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no...”
– Carl Jung (via q-u-i-e-t)
(also, follow Project Get Real if you aren’t already… seriously!)
August 2011
5 posts
The Opinionless Majority
Witness all the fan ravings and critic bashings of your most/least favorite thingumy. Wow, the louder of the two must be right.
Here’s something I’ve learned from having to do support for a teensy little app with over half a million users… the majority don’t care all that much, don’t write in to complain, and certainly don’t congratulate. The ones who do like...
While I can’t yet commit to being ‘back,’ here’s what was done or is soon to be passed:
A move (again)
A vacation (mostly)
A new direction at work, of work
(insert blur here)
A funeral
A recovery — so goes the theory.
Through it all, here are two truths I re-discovered:
The less solitude I can seek out, the less I am myself; the more I become an gestalt of the...
2 tags
2 tags
One FPS: A quick thought on the state of App Store... →
chartier:
I’ve been thinking a lot about the terrible state of App Store review culture, such as the vicious reviews and staggering entitlement that you see for $3 apps that took months of sweat, blood, and sleepless nights to create, and I realized something.
The typical user feels pretty powerless around…
1 tag
“When solitude was a problem, I had no solitude. When it ceased to be a problem I...”
– Thomas Merton (via minimalmac)
July 2011
2 posts
On hiatus until I have something nicer to say about the human race in general, starting with certain exemplars in my own life. This could take a bit.
June 2011
11 posts
“It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by...”
– Jon Kabat-Zinn: Coming to Our Senses (via mindfulwellness)
hy3e asked: Tag, you're it!
Here are the rules:
Each tagged person must post ten things about themselves. You have to choose and tag ten people . Go to their blogs and tell them you tagged them. No tag backs. :)
Do you even do this? :3
Here are the rules:
Each tagged person must post ten things about themselves. You have to choose and tag ten people . Go to their blogs and tell them you tagged them. No tag backs. :)
Do you even do this? :3
Instapaper Blog: The FBI stole an Instapaper... →
instapaper:
One of Instapaper’s five leased servers was hosted at DigitalOne, a Swiss hosting company leasing blade servers from a Virginia datacenter. Early Tuesday morning, the FBI raided the datacenter to seize servers used by another DigitalOne customer for fraudulent “scareware” distribution, according…
3 tags
“Once you have tasted the nectar of Silence, then whether your eyes are open or...”
– Vimala Thakar, “The Dimension of Silence”, from Glimpses of Raja Yoga (Rodmell Press)
4 tags
4 tags
Too many screens are a sign of discontent
Premise: I am intending a brief offline sabbatical. More specifically, there is about a week’s time in which, beyond basic tasks for work, I have no obligations that tie me to the digital realm.
The last time I had a chance to do this was over a year and a half ago. Before our little part of the world got turned on its head twice in as many months, and recurring regularly thereafter. Now...
“It’s no wonder we don’t defend the land where we live. We don’t live here. We...”
– Derrick Jensen (via goodgouda) (via beautefantasy) (via all the good people who reblogged this…)
The Bootstomp of WWDC?
Well that was fun: Witnessing Apple effectively putting a good number of people out of business today, some of whom I consider good acquaintances. I’m glad the company has some snazzy new stuff on the way, but sometimes it feels like they’re using the App Stores (including Cydia) as pay-to-play and disposable R&D department / minefield detection squad.
I’m not saying...
1 tag
3 tags
Blessed are the Peacemakers... (Raven's Bread... →
No hermit is permitted, by the fact of his or her solitary way of life, to escape from the world.
May 2011
12 posts
1 tag
