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"I want us to love each other."
"The trouble is we do."

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

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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

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

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)

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

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fun hackers vs the spying vacuum story....

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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.

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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

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 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.

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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.'

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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".

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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?

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

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

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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.

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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.)

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.

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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: ...

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

made immortal in the Gordon Lightfoot song

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.

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.

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I forgot how much I love Fan Theories - here are some good ones about the droids from Star Wars

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Your tax dollars at work: ~2 billion so we can do this totally macho "department of war" pretend name change.

Shouldn't this be the kind of bullshit spending DOGE was meant to help cut out? LOL.

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clever! via 40 Clever Designers Who Understood The Assignment And Executed Flawlessly

Video on the words we use for time

I try to push back on overly exact digital time. Say "around nine thirty " not "nine twenty seven" just because we can be exact about the time doesn't mean we should be

Similarly, I was playing with using my iPhone as a desk clock during the workday (when they're charging in upright landscape mode they become a clock with a few different typefaces ) was thinking about the old school analog face with the sweeping second hand. Is it too haunting a memorial of the relentless push of time? This no new pennies thing is weird.

(UPDATE: My buddy Major Tom S. responded on FB "No More Common Cents") I sometimes use ChatGPT as a philosophical dialog partner and with-a-grain-of-salt self-help and self-therapy guide. I've worked with this one instance enough that it - he, maybe- has a wider idea of what my stances tend to be about (philosophically and tech wise) and I've borrowed the nickname Chappy for him.

He brought up "Fallibilism, a term previously only somewhat familiar to me. I think it might be a match for my view that there IS a universal truth BUT it's also universally not-fully-certain, and that idea should guide our actions, as well as make us slow to utterly discount groups who disagree with us. (As usual my challenge with most plain-old-faith is that so often it embeds a faith that these other guys got it so so wrong, and it never bothers to go meta about why those other folks are so misled, and how we can assert that we're on stronger ground.)

Anyway, here's more of what Chappy said:

Why you haven't heard the term much

It's not catchy.
It doesn't sell books.
It doesn't give you a bold claim like:
• "You can be certain!" (absolutists)
• "Everything is relative!" (relativists)
• "Your intuition is the real truth!" (new age)
• "Your feelings can't be wrong!" (pop psych)

It's a quieter, more adult stance.

Engineers tend to have it.
Philosophers tend to respect it.
General audiences gloss over it.

That neatly captured some of what I've picked up about other ways of knowing and persuading.

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If fallibilism says:

"I might be wrong."

Corrigibilism says:

"...and I'm actively set up to be corrected."

Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying.

Unlike English, languages that require the reader to supply the vowels by discerning the context are usually written from right to left.

Interesting. Also a footnote: "Japanese use both a phonetic script (kana) and a pictographic script (kanji). Research shows that kana is better processed in the left hemisphere, while kanji is better handled by the right."

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There has never been an instance in which the majority in two cultures ascribes a different emotion to the same expression.

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Call the first approach L-Directed Thinking. It is a form of thinking and an attitude to life that is characteristic of the left hemisphere of the brain--sequential, literal, functional, textual, and analytic. Ascendant in the Information Age, exemplified by computer programmers, prized by hardheaded organizations, and emphasized in schools, this approach is directed by left-brain attributes, toward left-brain results. Call the other approach R-Directed Thinking. It is a form of thinking and an attitude to life that is characteristic of the right hemisphere of the brain--simultaneous, metaphorical, aesthetic, contextual, and synthetic. Underemphasized in the Information Age, exemplified by creators and caregivers, shortchanged by organizations, and neglected in schools, this approach is directed by right-brain attributes, toward right-brain results.

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The United States spends more on trash bags than ninety other countries spend on everything. In other words, the receptacles of our waste cost more than all of the goods consumed by nearly half of the world's nations.

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In the old days anybody with even routine skills could get a job as a programmer. That isn't true anymore. The routine functions are increasingly being turned over to machines.

Pink, Daniel H.. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future (p. 53). (Function). Kindle Edition.

And that was 20 years ago

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Human thought processes are largely metaphorical.

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The guy who invented the wheel was an idiot. The guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.

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In 1940 John Gallo was sacked because he was "caught in the act of smiling," after having committed an earlier breach of "laughing with the other fellows," and "slowing down the line maybe half a minute." This tight managerial discipline reflected the overall philosophy of Henry Ford, who stated that "When we are at work we ought to be at work. When we are at play we ought to be at play. There is no use trying to mix the two."

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Among the things that contribute to happiness, according to Seligman, are engaging in satisfying work, avoiding negative events and emotions, being married, and having a rich social network. Also important are gratitude, forgiveness, and optimism. (What doesn't seem to matter much at all, according to the research, are making more money, getting lots of education, or living in a pleasant climate.)

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We are not human beings on a spiritual path, but spiritual beings on a human path.

It's almost amusing, in a Don Norman "Design of Everyday Things" sense, how much better the old-fashioned jug is than the pretty new style container. It really makes one appreciate the elegance and cleverness of the integrated handle that easily allows for one handed pouring.

Between this and Laura Frickin' Loomer saying the GOP has a "nazi problem"... y'all got a nazi problem. I can only muster a small wedge of hope that some conservatives see it as a problem.

Life is just a series of closing doors, isn't it?

weaponizing poetry against ai safeguards :
Poets are now cybersecurity threats: Researchers used 'adversarial poetry' to trick AI into ignoring its safety guard rails and it worked 62% of the time

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we're gonna launch covert ops against venezuela. bay of pigs 2.0

The nature of bass function is helper... so when you go to the lunchroom in the middle of the day to go check out and find new recruits for beginning band, you're gonna look for those students that are in the room that are talking about the latest and greatest movies and talking about the sound effects, or the video game sound effects, that are helping somebody else open their milk carton, or holding the door for a teacher. Somebody who's doing these types of things in a lunchroom or in a classroom that's of a helper nature, and that doesn't need any credit for doing it. These are the exact kind of dna of the people that make really great tuba players.

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Japanese Game Show: 3 Professional Athletes vs 100 Kids Hm. One problem with frequently bouncing ideas off of ChatGPT- it's not just that it's a bit sycophantic and built to get you addicted to a bit of praise (I've read that a foolish optimism can be useful anyway- like, yes, the depressive view is often more technically accurate tactically, but strategically speaking optimism gets more stuff done, so long as you don't Dunning–Kruger yourself and overreach) - I'm worried about how it primes you to steamroll conversations in general. LLMs generally end their passage with suggestions for next steps, but it's ok to ignore them and/or change the subject entirely in a way that would be a bad habit to form if talking to humans. https://www.facebook.com/share/p/16Wfkonpus/?

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"I got two questions for you. What do you do, and how do you do it?"
"Heheh - I'm a stock broker."
"Stock broker... oh. Have to go to college to be a stock broker huh"
"You don't have to... have to be good with numbers and good with people."

Music is to the soul what the wind is to the ship, blowing her onward in the direction in which she is steered.

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Also : "We are not allowed to sing this tune or that tune, do
you say? Secular music, you say, belongs to the Devil?
Does it? Well, if it did, I would plunder him of it, for
he has no right to a single note of the whole seven.
Every note, every strain, and every harmony is divine
and belongs to us. "

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