I read Catherine Wilson's "How to Be an Epicurean" and was a little disappointed though I'm not sure if it's because of the book or, like, Epicureanism itself.

I'm still looking or an outlook or methods that let me lean into the mild, sustainable contentment that comes naturally to me, but without shaving off so much of the spikes of delight, and making a truce with worry as a vital propulsive force, so long as it doesn't become intrusive. To do that Buddhist-ish thing of being attached to the world that is rather than the one I want, and enjoy a sense of unity without having to be anxious about the outcomes for so much of it.

---

Ecclesiastes 8:15 says, 'Then I commended mirth, because a man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry.' Isaiah 22:13 says, 'Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we shall die.'

---

The answer, he explains, is that combinations and arrangements of atoms can take on qualities they do not possess individually. He employs the analogy of letters and words. The 26 letters of the Roman alphabet can be combined into at least 100,000 meaningful words of the English language. Some linguists maintain that there are up to 1,000,000 words in English, though nobody's vocabulary could have that breadth. And from even 100,000 words, millions of intelligible, grammatically correct sentences, expressing millions of thoughts and experiences and observations can be formed. Sentences have 'emergent' qualities that the letters and spaces composing them do not possess. They can be gentle or inflammatory. Unlike individual letters, they can communicate information, persuade, mislead, enable actions or start a riot. In an analogous way, Lucretius suggested, starting with combinations of 'primitive' elements with only a few properties, everything in the noisy, colourful world of experience can be produced.

The alphabet thing is an interesting take on "emergence".

---

Why do you bemoan and beweep death? If your past life has been a boon, and if not all your blessings have flowed straight through you and run to waste like water poured into a riddled vessel... why, you fool, do you not retire from the feast of life like a satisfied guest?

---

Jeremy Bentham, a 19th-century Epicurean philosopher, famously described rights as 'nonsense on stilts'.

---

To exist in a market economy is to live a double tragedy, beginning in inadequacy and ending in desperation.

---

Where wonder is concerned, what Epicurus calls 'piety' – which can take the form of a feeling of gratitude for the world's existence and for my existence in it – is not irrational, even if there is no one to be grateful to.

---

I have to confess "your web browser's assistive AI can be instructed to steal your online banking password via prompt injection because it operates with full privileges and treats all text it ingests as equally authoritative sources of user instructions, including the text of web pages it's summarising" is more surprising to me than it should have been. There really is no one involved at any point in the development of these tools who actually understands what they're doing, huh?

I know i'm at a vulnerable stage in terms of worry a bit; but I was thinking about this video How to Prepare for the First 7 Days of a Total Blackout
glad i went back and watched it after skimming it. it's fairly non-hysteric, but I do wonder about the days after a big blackout, whether EMP/terrorist or solar flare or something. I don't want to become a hardcore doomsday prepper but I'm realizing it might make sense to do a little more hedging and stockpiling. (Honestly I think my partner's love of camping and improv cooking would be potentially very useful.)

I think back to when I was trying to spread the good/mildly fearful word in the run up to Y2K: I made a big page on my loveblender romance poetry site.

And of course I'm speaking from a place of never having lived through too much; but different parts of the world have muddled through a lot. And a lot of people have died; but many have lived.

---

The truly frightening thing about totalitarianism is not that it commits atrocities, but that it attacks the concept of objective truth; it claims to control the past as well as the future.

thinking about Scott Adams and his defense of Trump in terms of "truth doesn't matter only persuasion matters" type thinking Lynette and I took a minibreak for her birthday at Postcard Cabins Machimoodus in Connecticut - kind of a mix of "glam-ping" and a few days of tiny house living.

---

fun hackers vs the spying vacuum story....

---

4 star:
* Sailor's Medley: With Sailor's Hornpipe / Anchors Aweigh / And By the Sea (The Hot Java Band)
* Somos de Calle (Daddy Yankee)
* I Like Giants (Kimya Dawson)

3 star:
* Wild World (Hugh J.)
* Guess featuring Billie Eilish (Charli xcx & Billie Eilish)
* Shake It To The Max (FLY) (MOLIY & Silent Addy)
* Aguas de Marco (Emilie-Claire Barlow)
* Riverside / Caravan / Saints (Bread & Puppet Circus Band, Glover VT)

---

Even if you liked some of the results last night don't forget we're in a "Papers, Please" time.

A judge is a law student who grades his own examination papers. A historian is an unsuccessful novelist. A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn't there. A theologian is the man who finds it. A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. An author is a man who, in the absence of toilet tissue, is forced to use his own manuscript and regrets that he wrote on such stiff paper.

---

Dairy Queen was a reminder of the goodness of life. I don't need gourmet ice cream. A DQ Butterfinger Blizzard tells me that God loves us.

---

And if our country goes to the dogs, there's always Canada. The national anthem is impossible and the bacon is round, not in strips, and you have five political parties, but Canada is fairly sane because there is no Florida, no Texas, no South.

---

Make it clear to your likely survivors that you do not require a big funeral service. You will be elsewhere, not hovering overhead. Tell them you do not want it to be called "A Celebration of Life" because you have already celebrated your own life as best you could and now there should be a few moments of grief and reflection on the precariousness of our situation, and then go have a wonderful evening and be glad it was you in the urn and not them.

---

Buddhism is the easiest religion in the world. Hindus have a thousand rules and I never understood Christianity but Buddhism is easy. You just don't hate anybody. Don't be a jerk.

---

Inscribe this in your heart, reader: whenever you feel sad, get out and take a hike.

---

"This time, like all times, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it."

There's nothing in the dark that's not there in the light.

---

"by any chance do you want hot wax flicked on your nipples?"
"..."