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As [Robert Anton] Wilson pointed out, "certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude." [...] To sympathise with the Certain for a moment, they do not have it easy. There are billions of people on this planet and they all have wildly differing ideas about politics, ethics, theology, art and science. It is very hard for the Certain to insist that their own position is the only right, true and undeniable one, especially if they posses a basic knowledge of mathematics and probability. You can rationalise away this problem by deciding that the rest of the world is basically composed of idiots, but it is rarely a good idea to admit this publicly.

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Life is more accurately measured in probabilities.

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"Shut up," he explained.

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Yea, brethren and sistren, now abideth doubt, hope and charity; these three; and the greatest of these is doubt. For doubt puffeth not itself up into pomposity; doubt suffereth long, and is kind. With doubt all things are possible.

Other ones I liked:

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Science does not assume "natures" spookily indwelling "within" things, at all, at all. Science posits functional relations between "things" or events. These functional relations can also be called patterned coherencies or, in Bucky Fuller's terminology, "knots" – energy patterns and interferences between energies. All scientific models describe such energy "knots" between "things" and not spookily indwelling "within" "things." Science also increasingly doubts the existence of "things" in the [Thomas Aquinas] sense and speaks more of relations between space-time events.

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In summation, scientific models consist of mathematical generalizations that presently appear useful. The habit of calling these models "laws" is increasingly falling into disfavor, and the working philosophy of most scientists is frankly called "model agnosticism." This attitude is that our models can be considered good, relatively, if they have survived many tests, but none are certain or sacred, and all will be replaced by better models eventually. Models that cannot be tested at all, even in principle, are regarded as meaningless, or as the Logical Positivists used to say, "abuse of language."

On my devblog I write about Lotus Agenda and my own re-discovery of making a "DONE" list as an ego-gratifying complement to regular TODO lists

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About Russia's Wagner Group. I don't want to romanticize these scumbags but it makes me think about the sci-fi series "Hammer's Slammers", about a for-hire tank brigade. Also makes me think about the enemy group Cobra from old "GI Joe" cartoons. It's hard to think private armies could be a thing in the real world, but I guess in a world where some corporations have bigger budgets are larger than many nation, it's not a total shock.

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It hit me the other day *exactly* what NFT's are.

When you were a kid, you ever play "that's my car, or that's my house" with your friends? Point to something and say "that's mine?"

It's literally just *that* written down on a computer network.

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TIL the shiny sousaphone during the hip hop Super Bowl halftime show was Devon Taylor (from Preservation Hall + Young Fellaz and Postmodern Jukebox and more)

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"Oh we could watch the Olympics..."
"Yeah, like I want to watch those dumbos! I'm no athlete but at least I know not to ski BACKWARDS. And you ski ON THE GROUND not like up in the air and spinning around."

Happy Valentines and Like Some Winter Olympics Day!

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roses are red
and your boobs are hot
my love poem's bad
but i love you a lot

violets are blue
well actually purple
you make me happy
like a big milkshake slurp'll

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i wanna b a minimalist so bad but i just love Stuff

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Among my many goals is to hopefully inspire folk to be immodestly happy with their lives. Just. Reveling in the joy of being themselves. Unashamed -- without harm to anyone else -- and just fully and completely in love with their lives and their flesh and their hearts.

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The sea speaks more honestly to those willing to drown.

via

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AI Generated Candy Hearts

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Well, I used to be bad when I was a kid but ever since then I have gone straight as I can prove by my record; thirty-three arrests and no convictions.

I played him in a high school production, and this is his biggest laugh line. Right now, I can picture Trump saying something similar.

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bailey's chocolate martinis for valentine's day by my sweetie Melissa!

i do not want to have you
i do not want to have you
to fill the empty parts of me
i want to be full on my own
i want to be so complete
i could light a whole city
and then
i want to have you
cause the two of us combined
could set it on fire

My battery is low and it's getting dark.

good night, sweet rover (see also xkcd's tribute)

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( via cracked.com's 30 Fascinating Facts About All That Candy You Love )

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From a FB tuba group I'm in...

"Many slightly over-weight children who do not have a lot of spare energy are very happy on the tuba. [...]You do not need an agile brain. [...] Responsible, good-natured boys who are happy belonging to a group can be content in band or orchestra playing what seems like endless oompahs to an outsider."

Guess they got my number! 4 my sweetie Melissa

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via

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How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.

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Heyyy, Officer Flatski, the cardboard cutout policeman who watches over the bike cage at Alewife got a shoutout in Cracked's 7 Serious Problems That Had Hilarious Cartoon Solutions

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Blender of Love

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HEY REMEMBER WHEN COLUMBINE WAS LIKE A BIG EVENT? NOW IT'S LIKE...A WEDNESDAY

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You look like a thing and I love you.

College has taught me you don't need fun to have alcohol.

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Valentines Jello by Melissa and candy hearts for her :-D <3

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Years ago, The Onion put up a Kid's Valentines Day Page... I feel like they're on the verge of falling down the old memory hole, so here they are...

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Those cards actually aren't as good as these old authentic but horrifying ones! Boot at Bread and Puppet

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The One Thing The NFL Will Never Do To Make Football Safer. Spoiler: remove the padding and helmets. Like the "protection" added by boxing gloves, the body armor they wear lets the hits be a lot more forceful without as much visible damage at the time, and so leads to much worse long term problems. http://kirkdev.blogspot.com/2015/02/programming-atari-2600-part-ii.html - I wrote up the experience of programming an original game for the Atari 2600 over the weekend of the Global Game Jam Oliver​ Winnie​

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Watching Ben Wyatt be an enthusiastic goof ball at the "Donna & Joe" wedding/episode of Parks & Rec I kind of want to be an unending fountain of enthusiasm and positivity.

Does that get old after a while? Can you do it without losing rationality and/or being annoying?

If you're in a clown posse, you don't need to tell us you're insane. We know. Nobody's thinking you're an emotionally stable clown posse.

The Bible is a big story made up of little ones, many with no useful messages for humankind other than Be very, very afraid and Never, ever forget to bring a gift.

(mouse around to change flow)

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http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/02/10/the_ticking_clock Oy. Israel's (no relation) gonna attack Iran this year. Just when the world seemed a little more settled down.

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Listen, when I was a kid, my mother said to me: 'Bruce, one day you're going to die. You're going to die if you worry or you don't worry.' I was brought up with that philosophy, so I don't worry.

via

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Don't not eat crumbs off your shirt on my account, buddy.

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Yesterday Amber and I drove up to her folks' in New Hampshire.

On the trip she suggested I draw her a Valentine's Day Tiger, in double honor of Valentine's Day and the Chinese New Year - the year of the Tiger, which happens to be my year.



Not my finest work, but it was a bumpy trip.

On her folks' fridge was a picture of her as a young girl --

I like both the color/light of that, and her bemused/startled expression... kind of a less glossy / less mean version of Jill Greenberg's work with kids portraits.

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http://www.zefrank.com/valentine/ - so good - happy VD to you!

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http://daphaknee.livejournal.com/833486.html - Dave Sim Valentines (http://is.gd/8nVIJ for context)

--A watercolor I did (alongside EBB) for this month's Blender of Love, 2009 Valentine edition.

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It bums me out that I'm not as good at multitasking as I think I used to be. I used to enjoy having a TV or radio on while working, more than I do now. (Some of it might be a working at desk vs working on couch thing)

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ulillillia.us - this is a special site, in a few senses of the word. "Ulillillia" seems to have Asperger's, or similar, and his site is an unfiltered look into a way of thinking that is both familiar and alien.http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Ulillillia is a reasonably sympathetic (well, as sympathetic as ED gets) summary.

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Just found out about the baker "Japonaise" in Brookline... rice balls and plain Calpis (like Sprite but creamy instead of carbonated)- the market at Porter Exchange only has the fruity versions. Sweet!

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Love and stoplights can be cruel.

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Always a bit paranoid that I accidentally have an ethernet "crossover cable", not a normal, even though they're WAY out of vogue these days.

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On an aggressively anti-Valentine date with cmg. Hooters, in fact. When did people start bringng their kids here? Happy Valentine's Everybody!

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Quote of the Moment

Hair is a part of you. It is not a part of me, because I am a frog.

... just read "Sesame Street Unpaved", a book about the show so many of us grew up with. Cool to see the "behind the scenes" kind of information.

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Video of the Moment

--OK, maybe not as captivating, or captivating in the wrong ways, as the Daft Hands version, but still a bit mesmerizing.

Bleh. Snow, ice, slush, sleet. The kind of day that almost makes me wish I had a job to stay home from.

Hope it doesn't make too much backup for my flight tomorrow.

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Silliness of the Moment
Chaoskitty Hearts You...or at least did as of 3 years ago. Wow, have to clean up that backlog...

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Vaguely Romantic Anecdote of the Moment
So I gave blood the other day, and the bandage they use after tends to leaves this ooky residue behind, a pretty resilient and ugly outline of where the tape was. As I was scrubbing at it in a slightly too-hot shower, I had a weird flashback (cue Wayne's World / Scooby Doo wavy line "doodlydoo doodlydoo doodlydoo"...)

My first girlfriend was KJ, at summer camp. (Oddly enough she came from my dad's hometown of Coshocton.) One day at camp she wrote on my hand in ink, one of those wird pre-high school romantic gestures. I have no memory of what she wrote, but she joked that now she'd be able to tell if I was taking showers...

Well, the fact was I wasn't taking many showers, mostly because of the "user interface" of the shower in my cabin... a single button that might as well have been labeled "please douse me with a laserlike stream of incredibly hot water and try to melt flesh right off bone, thanks."

So I remember furiously scrubbing at that damn ink in the sinks there, with their amazing innovation of hot and cold water. Still, I couldn't get all the ink off, and was worried what that was going to say about my hygiene...


(from my most recent
Blender of Love,
Valentine Edition.)

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Valentine Quote of the Moment

our love is like a honey baked ham ... pink, salty and unclean in the eyes of the lord.

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Valentines of the Moment

--Funny Geeky Star Wars Valentines from something awful.

Happy Valentines, everyone!

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Perspective of the Moment
An HTML scale model of the solar system. Gives your horizontal scrollbar a serious workout! Looking at the size comparison, in some ways the Earth is bigger than I gave it credit for...much smaller than Jupiter and the Sun of course, but still. It's the distance of it all that's most inspiring. (And that's 5.5 lighthours to Pluto; the nearest star is 4.1 lightyears away.)

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Tool of the Moment
In a bit of tragically last-minute Valentines Daying (for a guy who runs a site called "the Blender of Love" I can be surprisingly unromantic) I found this tool, Tearooms in MA with an option to sort by distance from any given zipcode...pretty cool!

Art of the Moment

--"Cider, Redux". I made an artsy, morose sort of valentine for Mo using this technique, but it ended up to be more than I wanted to share here, even though it came out better than my second use of the technique, an old prose poem I made, and an earlier unrequited romance. UPDATE: I did two more that I sent into the loveblender, Accuse, Redux which came out well and To Sleep, Redux...plus I made a larger version of this one.

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Geek Love Poem of the Moment

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
chown -R you ~/base

select text(or hit Ctrl-A) for translation:
"roses are red, violets are blue, all my base are belong to you"
(funny, that's two days in a row I've posted 'L33T-speak)

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Quote of the Moment

"Men want the same thing from their underwear that they want form women: a little bit of support, and a little bit of freedom."

Valentine's Day. Hopefully free of massacres.

I'm thinking about modifying where the comments links and stuff are... check out this page to see the design I'm playing with...prettty much the old design, but with the comment links as standalone boxes at the bottom of each entry. Sarah likes the current "tag" look (I think I do too) but Ranjit thinks comments-at-the-bottom looks good and makes more sense. What do you think? Maybe if I added some little black directional triangles to the left of the date/comment count? Also, I gotta decide if I should suppress or subvert the guestbook, I'd really prefer people use the comments system. Maybe I could have the guestbook be form as an amalgamation of all the seperate comments pages...

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Funny of the Moment

"Howard...you look awfully somber..."
"Just trying to figure out why all of my relationships are always so torturous."
"There's an expression 'all humor is cruelty.' Basically, at it's heart... it's about inflicting pain and laughing at others."
"So?"
"Okay...now tell me...what quality do you look for most in a woman?"
"...um...A good sense of humor..."
"Howard...I rest my case..."

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Link of the Moment
A site called {fray} has a set of small anecdotal essays, The Things We Do For Love. If you're in a hurry, I'd suggest Things to Undo, though I don't know why I find tales of love lost more compelling than those of love found.

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Arts and Crafts of the Moment

Classic Videogame Needlepoint. Heh! My dad was a national competition level Counted-Cross-Stitcher... I've never been tempted to try, but I'm surprised I hadn't thought of something like this before, colorful pixels and stitches go well together.

That time of year again...time for love and layoffs! Today's entry is all cribbed from the latest edition of The Onion...

Valentines of the Moment

--From The Onion's Valentine's Day Kids Page...I love these, though they don't change much from year to year.

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Quote of the Moment

People who don't let themselves get talked into something new every once in a while have dull, dull, dull sex lives.

Recipe of the Moment
Nuts to you on Valentine's Day! This is one of Mo's simple holiday favorites. I've actually started to like pecans by themselves as a snack food, but that's because I'm a lazy bum...I think most will agree that this recipe is better, and not all that difficult:

Rosemary Roasted Pecans -- serves 25
"A big bowl of roasted nuts is a favorite predinner nibble. It's also easy to prepare and serve. This version relies on aromatic rosemary, a touch of butter, and a spot of honey."

2 pounds whole pecans 1/2 stick (2 ounces) unsalted butter 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper 1 tablespoon honey 1/2 cup chopped fresh rosemary 2 teaspoons salt

Preheat oven to 325F. Divide pecans between 2 rimmed baking sheets. In a 1-quart saucepan over low heat, melt butter with cayenne pepper, honey and rosemary. Allow rosemary to begin to sizzle in butter, then immediately pour butter over pecans, dividing it between the 2 pans. Sprinkle pecans with salt and toss with a spatula. Roast pecans until crisp and brown, about 25 minutes. Stire twice during baking. Let cool. To serve,divide among 2 bowls or place in 1 large (2-quart capacity) bowl. Store pecans in tightly sealed freezer bags. In a very cold freezer (0F) they will keep 3 to 4 months. If they have been frozen, it is nice to refresh them in a 300F oven for 10 minutes before serving.

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Quote of the Moment

I don't pretend to understand the mysteries of relationships, but it seems to me that lust and passion and sex are how many men and women manage to fend off the natural shocks of matrimony and all that proximity and the inevitable bruises and the sagging heart.

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Link of the Moment
On the blender board of the loveblender Gala came up with the idea of having everyone submit their top 3 picks from the last year, this is the result.