A horse walks into a bar. Bartender says, "Hey buddy, why the long face?"
Horse says, "My alcoholism is ruining my life."
Bartender blinks. "Oh. Uh. Sorry, I--uh--thought this was a joke."
Horse sighs. "Yeah, so did I."

I'm reading Daniel Pink's 2005 "A Whole New Mind". It has some of that left/right hemisphere stuff I find important, and says that right-hemisphere thinking was going to be raising in importance with an age of "abundance" (material good satiation) "asia" (offshoring off many jobs) and "automation" will make artistic pursuits where the money is. But now of course it's automation in the form and of Generative AI that is making inroads bo the into outsourceable work in the "Asia" variety, and doing bizarre inroads into a lot of arts industries.

I'm telling you, Molotov cocktails work. Any time I had a problem, and I threw a Molotov cocktail, boom! Right away, I had a different problem

As some new semi-crises emerge to at least temporarily overshadow earlier stressers, that quote has been coming to mind. When I was houseshopping in 2021, some of the places used a system called matterport to make 3D maps of the interiors, along with 3/4 perspective views and overhead views. The interactive versions of the place I bought were taken down but I really liked the dollhouse view in particular.

---

Carrie: You should cut up that pineapple you bought.
Max: Why should I do it?
Carrie: Because you like cutting up complicated fruit.
Max: Huh. I didn't know that I liked that.
Carrie: It's not my fault you're not self-aware.
Max: ...

---

Today's the 50th Anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy

made immortal in the Gordon Lightfoot song 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.

---

---

Our president can't tell an Onion-like satire article from reality.

Also he's easily manipulated by Fox News (by some coincidence he gets all hot and bothered about Nigeria the day after a slanted FOX piece on the situation.)

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....

---