draining notes - giants

General Guiding lights

SICP Chapter 2 opening quote : 

The acts of the mind, wherein it exerts its power over simple ideas, are chiefly these three: 1. Combining several simple ideas into one compound one, and thus all complex ideas are made. 2. The second is bringing two ideas, whether simple or complex, together, and setting them by one another so as to take a view of them at once, without uniting them into one, by which it gets all its ideas of relations. 3. The third is separating them from all other ideas that accompany them in their real existence: this is called abstraction, and thus all its general ideas are made. 

John Locke, An Essay 

Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

From the Tao of Programming  

When you have learned to snatch the error code from the trap frame, it will be time for you to leave

From Taoist literature 

Cook Ting and his ox Cleaver

Joko Beck

Life always gives us exactly the teacher we need at every moment. This includes every mosquito, every misfortune, every red light, every traffic jam, every obnoxious supervisor (or employee), every illness, every loss, every moment of joy or depression, every addiction, every piece of garbage, every breath. Every moment is the guru.

Sheldon Kopp

https://thetcj.org/in-residence-articles/eschatological-laundry-list

Folks and their pieces

 Kalzumeus / patio11

https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/936615043126370306

mindbogglingly large amounts of money in mundane simple LOB apps

Jason Fried

https://www.inc.com/magazine/20110301/making-money-small-business-advice-from-jason-fried.html

https://lifehacker.com/im-jason-fried-ceo-of-basecamp-and-this-is-how-i-work-1790556608

sell-sawdust.  like Rails

Derek Sivers

There's too many, here're the main ones

happy,smart, useful.  https://sive.rs/hsu

ceramics art project story  https://sive.rs/failure

no speed limits https://sive.rs/kimo

hell yeah! or no! https://sive.rs/hellyeah

Idlewords

all of it- good range

https://idlewords.com/talks/thoreau_2.0.htm

https://idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm

https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Steve Maxwell  

http://www.killingbuddha.co/steve-maxwell

there are 5 links on this page. Ensure to read them all. Themes - minimalism, pranayama, chi, life

Rasmus Lerdrof  quotes on programming

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rasmus_Lerdorf

 We have things like protected properties. We have abstract methods. We have all this stuff that your computer science teacher told you you should be using. I don't care about this crap at all.

 I actually hate programming, but I love solving problems.

I've never thought of PHP as more than a simple tool to solve problems.

Giles Bowkett

 Again, so many, but the original blog has been scrubbed and anything interesting has been sanitised. Ditto for Zed Shaw

https://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/

Zed Shaw

Steve Yegge

Three blogs and counting. Infinite number of words. 

https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/

https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/blog-rants

https://steve-yegge.medium.com/why-i-left-google-to-join-grab-86dfffc0be84

also videos.

Your job is not your job, Your job is to automate your job away !

https://www.youtube.com/@SteveYegge/videos

Scott Adams

I still hold God's Debris to be the best explanation of the universe. How-to-fail is also gets great perspectives.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704101604576247143383496656

Slava Akechmet

Two posts on Lisp - explaining lisp

Three articles on life stuff  - taming doubt, taming perfection, raelity of enso

all removed. wayback machine would still have some i guess 

defmacro.org

Christian Grobmeier

10 rules of zen programmer.

https://grobmeier.solutions/the-10-rules-of-a-zen-programmer-03022012.html

Keep your mind clean

Cal Newport

Corrupted callings/career capital

Deep work (murakami running)

https://calnewport.com/on-the-value-of-hard-focus/

https://calnewport.com/corrupted-callings-the-subtle-difference-between-finding-your-lifes-work-and-loving-your-life/

Philip Greenspun

https://philip.greenspun.com/

https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/

Matt Might

Computer stuff / functional programming stuff aside, lots of wisdom

http://matt.might.net/articles/hacking-strength/

http://matt.might.net/articles/work-life-balance/

Alan Kay

man who said "knowledge is silver, perspective /outlook is gold, IQ is lead"

no blog, but youtube videos are deeeeeeeep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyIQKBzIuBY&t=635s

Scott Locklin

'How to be a man' article. Let's face it, we all need to look in the manual now and then ..

https://www.takimag.com/article/tips_for_big_babies/

Mark Manson

just keep reading em all

https://markmanson.net/5-massive-books

https://markmanson.net/paradoxes-that-are-true

https://markmanson.net/the-zen-dilemma

Mark Watson

Mark Watson

Loving Lisp book

Java AI Book

Python AI Book

James Hague

https://prog21.dadgum.com/

Michael O Church 

How the Other Half Works: an Adventure in the Low Status of Software Engineers

again, post taken down. Still, very enlightening exploration of status.

waybackM to the rescue

Naval Ravikant : Rich no luck

https://nav.al/rich

many soundbites

Ribbonfarm

https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/12/08/acting-dead-trading-up-and-leaving-the-middle-class/

also, gervais principle for introduction to powertalk for the clueless

Misc

https://www.experimental-history.com/p/excuse-me-but-why-are-you-eating

https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2022/02/10/the-scientific-virtues/

The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone, 

via "TenGigabitEthernetb3/0/0" to "0/10"

 ever in fear, he squeezes the sands of life so tightly in his fist

that they stream out of the gaps between his fingers

 

the drummer's call

 it's suddenly quiet, just the sound of the surf

and it feels like i'm standing on the beach, with the waves receding more than they are coming in

in the evening failing of light

there's a man standing there

he hands me a pair of drumsticks

suddenly I notice

there're drums behind him , in the gloom

not just one, a lot , side by side, all the way past sight

"play whatever you want  .. play from the heart", he says, 

"it'll be enough."

from the top of the  steel rod tower in the sand,  the dim shape of a man starts waving his hands

 riffs from a thousand guitars united, break over the sound of the waves

hundreds of symbols clash in the moment , and

i run towards the empty drum set 

as the sounds start filling the sky....

* first day as a meth math dealer

them : do you have a proof that's rigorous and thorough ?
me : *giggles ... we don't have thoreau, is emerson okay ?
* gets stabbed

In 2000 a batch-mate wrangled a summer internship in HP. took me along as a sidekick.

Once there, we make a Bug reporting tool . These were glorious days . Front-end meant writing HTML code via the out.println of the servlet, and we manipulated the back-end directly via  JDBC . With my extensive experience in C programming ( 2 hrs max) , I wrote code to create a JDBC connection every time the 'function' was called. An HP employee tried very hard to teach me relational database cocnepts, and chided me when  I dropped tables left and right.  Another reviewed my code, and with a distressed expression,  exclaimed "You've written it like C" ... he felt the same pain as though someone had put petrol in his diesel car and driven it..

Lunch as ÅLWAYS channa batoora at a chat shop nearby, I would get to office taking two buses, smoking in between the change. Cigarettes were 1- 2 rs each

Things haven't changed much, code-wise... 

Day in and day out I have cursed OOP. It has always been a case of over-engineering. It's nice to have a parent class cover the complexity of the  core domainf and then the child classes extend the behaviour ,adding sub-domain functionality. yet, this only works if you have complete domain knowledge up front. if you get the perspective wrong while starting, you'll be forever throwing away your classes.

procedural seems saner in this light.

 more turns on the hamster wheel

i realise i have nothing to say

bought hg wells - the flying man and other stories , from om books, phoenix mall

metro rides

whitefield,  kadugodi, wopfarm are all desolate wasteland, with a container processing place somewhere in there

 books that transcend

1. The Wind in the Willows -there have been many, but this stood out. I read and read and read this, every summer vacation

2. Alice in WOnderland - for a while

3. Three men in a boat - helped me a lot in the early bangalore days

4. Chronicles of Master Li & Number Ten Ox - Bridge of Birds - right now. I feel it is truly divine

 

from Wikipedia page on Travis Kalanick,

in two lines,  what makes successful people successful 

Kalanick has been described as a passionate libertarian and a fan of author Ayn Rand.^[127] However, Kalanick supported Obamacare because it allows Uber drivers, as independent contractors, to maintain health insurance as they transition between jobs.^[128]

 The cognitive dissonance of living in dull daily domestic certainty coupled with an overwhelmingly uncertain future creates an unbearable tension that can leave us exhausted and demoralized.

source : https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/life-smarts/202103/covid-19-induced-lack-motivation

 in my house, the floor is like an eternal pizza , whose toppings only we keep eating

a 2 year old who is independent, and has strong opinions on food ownership (miney!!!)

ensures the toppings keep coming

what if 

 Every neural network contained 

a smaller ,refined neural network within, 

trained exactly as per itself, 

but with attenuated signal levels

Therefore the internal neural network

Functions as a governor...?

also see : bagging and boosting in random forests

 Does she have a POS machine ?

https://twitter.com/RenukaJain6/status/1455481096515186690

Boom boom maadu

https://twitter.com/nsitharaman/status/1456291677186842628

 "Cybernetics, or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine" by Norbert Wiener 

- Although Wiener was an American mathematician, his book had a profound impact on Soviet cybernetics. The book was translated into Russian in 1950 and became a foundational text for Soviet cybernetics.

"General Theory of Information Transfer and Communication Channels" by A.N. Kolmogorov 

- This book, published in 1949, provided a mathematical framework for the study of information theory and had a significant impact on the development of cybernetics in the Soviet Union.

"Essays on the Theory of Control Systems" by Victor Glushkov 

- Glushkov was a Ukrainian mathematician who developed an early computer called the Kiev Institute of Cybernetics. His book, first published in 1966, presented his theory of the management of complex systems and the use of cybernetics to model and control them.

"The Biological Computer" by A.I. Kitov 

- This book, published in 1965, explored the use of cybernetic principles to study the brain and nervous system, and proposed the idea of the "biological computer" as a model for artificial intelligence.

These and other Russian books on cybernetics helped to shape the field and contributed to its development in the Soviet Union and beyond.

remembered  an oooold ooooold blog I used to read and think myself superior

ooold

don't exactly when I stopped reading it. Strand days yes, mu-sigma - maybe no, probably gave up after payflex

maybe before nile ? I was reading a lot of different motivational during groupon days, very fundamental stuff...

fantastic article that whips today's "tech" into the trashcan . exactly what I feel but couldn't articulate

https://www.takimag.com/article/the_myth_of_technological_progress/

the blog
https://scottlocklin.wordpress.com/

and numbered points  from a motivational 

https://www.takimag.com/article/tips_for_big_babies/2/

Be discriminating and judgmental. 

Dress like you have self-respect. 

stop wearing your fucking backpack. 

Get a job.

 Get physically fit.

Stop playing fake sports 

Make your peace with your family 

Stop being a passive lump waiting for something nice to happen to you 

Make stuff. 

Stop living life according to your whims and passions. 

Do something nice for others once in a while 

 Lao Tzu pales in comparison to Master Li

" I will point out that a noise some people hear and others don’t isn’t speaking to the ears. It’s speaking to the heart, and you have a hole in your heart. All young people do. It’s there to catch the wonderful things of the world, and later on it gets filled up by broken things. Forget about your ears. Listen with your heart."

"The supernatural can be very annoying until one finds the key that transforms it into science," he observed mildly. "I''m probably imagining complications that don’t exist. Come on, Ox, let’s go out and get killed."

The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox 

- Barry Hughart

re-framing lao-tzu

under your foot, today, right now, lies the first step of a thousand-mile journey, to kamchatka, to vladivostok, to svalbard ... it lies there like the tail of a snake narrowing down to almost nothingness

pick it up, follow the thread, open the folds, adventure is yours

 stupid and evil isn't an axis. it's usually the both , just looks one or the other in different contexts

 When your degrees of freedom

Are fixed few and not decided by you

The land is now stratified 

And you are a serf

cross-expressing

 cross-express : assemble components of one category, in the elements of another

for eg, 

- a water-color of micro-services

-  a poem involving machine-learning technique

- a slide deck of the Tao Te Ching or Thief of Time

- a computer program capturing behaviours of the Tao

- a musical composition expressing robot library patterns

- a four part play involving conversations. between the database, the spring service etc on a typical day

cross-expressing information sitting in one's head as a form of catharsis, done regularly , is a good technique for mental hygiene

it also is a great tool for learning new material, locking them in, and understanding their powers and  limits

analysis of my bookshelf, the categories -

1. Order in disorder -topics typically include  chaos, cybernetics, Complexity - Melanie Mitchell, Model-thinking , Ashby,  Alvin Toffler, Drucker, Godel Escher Bach, Winkless/Browning. All hard science,tech books are a hard subset of this.

1.1. all hard tech/science books - feynman, android-zechner, sicp, paip,see 1above

2. Philosophy - this might as well be a primordial form of 1. This category can be a subset of 1. McLuhan,  Deleuze & Guattari, 

3. War & Conflict - The Art of War, On War, Certain to Win, Games of Strategy, any printouts on ooda loops, Book of Five Rings

4. Economics and wealth - psychology of money, intelligent investor,  how stock markets work, cartoon guide to economics 1 & 2, wealth of nations

5. Psychology - books on habits - this is still a subset of 1, William James

6. Health & Human condition. - graeber, fung , yoga books. meditation practice printouts and books, toffler, systemantics

7. God/Hypotheses/Heuristics - multiple books on Zen, Gita versions,Vaishnavism, multiple books by Buddhists.    It's a toss-up whether the practice parts of these books end up in 5 or 6   or here. Works of Vivekananda ( some works border on 1)

*keep the meta books in each category in the right end of the shelf'

** freakonomics seemingly combines 4,5, and 6, wgibson 1.1 and 6

Philosophy, and its children, science, math, logic, language & grammar  .. etc seek the order in the seemingly disorderly

Art seeks to express the orderly using seemingly disorderly & chaotic elements

art if a way of understanding and learning, and thinking beyond ( somebody quoted this)

 ideas, like seeds, in the mind take root. then flower into perspectives which grow like the woods

until you can see the sky only through the gaps in the leaves

the mind becomes captive(1) to perspectives, unable to see other things

hence it becomes necessary to deconstruct, & refactor regularly

via art or chemicals, or both

here art is nothing but cross-compiling

and chemicals facilitate de-stratification

Footnotes

1. you only see what you believe. perspective drives perception

2. all things are objects of some perspective (3)(4)

3. all perspectives are wrong, some are useful

 A robot told me

After i met about twenty people, i realised humans are gross

 Those who live by the sword , die by the sword

Those who dont live by sword, die at the hands of the swords of those who do

The medium is the message botches

In this phenomenal (ly long) post, there is much good reading and much Graeber like vibes thrown off...
the related post on millenial burn-out got me hooked/floored completely, nodding at every sentence thinking-saying "hey, that's me .... !!!" , and I didn't even know before reading this, that I was a millenial 

( I always thought Gen X  - nintendo playing , suit wearing,  proactive quoting suburban-dwelling office-goer )
yet, it loses the plot when we reach here .... I quote the post ..

But, when you think through the implications, we don’t actually want less productivity as a society. We want more…

* We want energy to be more efficient in order to reduce climate change.
* We want more powerful and smaller supercomputers in our pockets for the same price.
* We want less waste filling up landfills.
* We want the things we buy to cost less while also getting better and faster.

to be honest, I don't care about ANY of the above. I am pretty sure no normal human does. Or he's lying.

Productivity is not a term used by a normal human. It is a term used by an industrial human. And given to him by his managers. It is a term of the capitalist.

We REALLY don't care a f*ck about climate change. Not when the trillions of tons of CO2 released  in the process of constructing un-livable cities,   monstrous cars,  an infinite number of pieces of plastic kitsch which we need to use and throw, all the while using up our time and life and giving us a life of slavery ,  within metal boxes , beige colored cloth boxes and drywall boxes , through which we cycle, like a gerbil in its wheel.

After meaning has been ripped away with the deluge of bullsh!t jobs, and our connection to the Earth has been ripped away - we can no longer see beyond house, office, city, country... we are told to - what - take a bicycle to work ? to save the planet ? or use paper bags ? 
The entire debt driven economy keeps driving us running faster and faster doing things we hate more and more and constructing a world that is more and more meaningless, senseless, and un-palatable. You want to save the planet, then take a hard look at the economy and kill some of your sacred cows  such as   profit-over-humans... the planet'll naturally recover

In a connected world, profit becomes a zero sum game. Learn the term 'pareto efficient'

And this is the kicker , the smoking gun - the piece of shit sitting in th middle of your plate of your so called thousand-dollar-caviar - 
We want more powerful and smaller supercomputers in our pockets for the same price.

We don't. we have plenty of computing power. People have launched space shuttles on less computing power than in a typical pocket phone.  We want those closed eco-systems opened, the processing power of our devices actually unshackled. 

We don't want to be forced to buy new phones every year. Forced to throw away previously bought ,perfectly working phones. A wikipedia page viewed on a CRT monitor does not convey any less information than when viewed in 4k. 

Pictures of your beloved in 4k will always be a lesser stand-in than time spent with them in real space-time, as opposed to commuting from said unlivable cities to your bullsh!t meaningless job  to earn money to buy more and more disposable mass produced low quality cr@p what excels at stealing life and time from its makers.  

We are all running captive on a capitalist-consumerist treadmill, which keeps speeding up. The socially approved drugs of society give it away. Caffeine (it's not coffee anymore),  to up and get things done for your boss, and alcohol to shut down the body and mind, and take the edge off of your rage at the emptiness , while you grab a meal of massively subsidised wheat injected with  sugar, and varieties of palm oil, these are the only tastes available now anywhere.

And the way this sentence is worded, so specifically, while the rest of three seem like vague generic  points in a corporate social accountability powerpoint, or some enlightened high-schooler's anti-capitalist manifesto. 

Freeing the planet from debt and even money , is the only way to free up the 7 billion supercomputers that are today struggling to make it on the bottom tier of the Maslow Pyramid.

UBI  has been proposed by more intelligent minds, way in the past, but that would stop the gusher of 'profit' from the 'engines of economy', so I don't see it happening. Until the entire planet is a large wasteland.

Is consciousness in a thing the same as its behaviour ? the sum total of behaviours ? or is it something else - something more ? something inside ?

Here is where philosophy stops and religion begins. Religion takes one hypothesis, elevates it to the level of an axiom, then proceeds to build a system of rules on top of this and live out a life on these rules.

Samkya claims there are many ,  Buddhist Anatman claims there isn't one. Advaita claims there is one. Visista Advaita claims there are many, of which one is exalted and worth worshipping..

At this point, we know a thing for what it does. even physical properties can be expressed as a 'does' ;

for eg, what a surface 'does' when you touch it makes it hard or soft or clay-ey 

This is primarily because we 'know' reality through our sensors. 'we' 'know' our reality through our sensors. It is not possible to be aware of something without physical interaction with it. 

now suddenly Sciences of the Artifical pops up as a prime candidate

and so does  (a)reading on intrinsic value, and munger's list of mental models  (both printouts)

the more we dig in and tease out the strands of curious wondering into  skein ..... , the more it seems somebody has already done that much more polishedly

religion - we are now doubling down on 

a) concentration - see tibetan elephant pictures 

b) body awareness (by tightening and loosening , and along with breath ) (asana. what else!)

c) exercising the body in all forms (mens sana corpore sano) like long walks,  treadmill hard, strength up etc

don't know where zazen fits into this, nor chanting, not eight silk, nor a devotion to universal bhagavan

might do to learn muscle-ology (anatomy? musculature ?) for b)

d) and also finally a daily metta practice. this is also for health

in retrospect, all this 'religion' just seems 'bompu zen'

reconciling advaita and anatman,  reading Vvknnda's Samkya, then incorporating daily recollection of the Brahman, this seems more like religion

also fasting, self-denial, prayer &cleansing routines , etc fall under operational religion

while you're here remember to check out 

* uncouth reflection

* 

 tell me what the world is,

and how you see your life play out

froogy, ain't it

 

difference between real-world types and bookish types is that the latter can only compute things on the same page, whereas life throws things in a sequence, and almost never in the same page, rather,  one must compute a 'page' in ones own head across many episodes

 bro

what if

bear with me  

what if

what if

the Dude

was a modern day stand-in

for the Big J  ? the JC !!!

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JozAmXo2bDE&list=PL08109F3C918B45C5&index=44

don't know what's more moving

that so many from their hearts come together to offer so huge a tribute

or something that's worthy of such

 art's bigger than you think

'cos your soul's bigger than you think

leave the thinking behind

zen

 it's 30 years late

but i am awake now

the world is off center 

(stop the world i want to get off)

alcohol

so much fun in and around lakes

 

 listening to iron maiden when drunk on beer

is my religion

nothing compares to taking the thought-lattices into the real world

this comes a pale second

but I'll settle for this

Harold be thy name !!!

 workout more

so you can drink some more

more and more 

the stream flowth

debate like the persians

 twice let the ratios clash

then let the swords clash

and let the edge be 

brought forward

and see if you aren't alive

 It's not down in any map

true places never are

said the taxi-driver

 a mirror was walking down the road, when it ran into another person coming down the road

it said, I want to see what I look like

the other person said, that's cool, I happen to be a mirror, ( and it was) but I also want to see what I look like,

and our first mirror said, that's cool, we can both see each other in each other

and so they looked at themselves in each other

but .....

** new reading list

anti-oedipus, thousand plateaus, difference & repetition.... these 

nagle-pricing

light that shines through infinity

ode less travelled

bksi pranayama

feynman lectures

ccna , ccwa

-----

** oh no more newcomers **

samuel butler - erehwon

hg wells - time machine ! (see ai discussions)

** current reading /read list

McLuhan -Understanding media, the medium is the message

Walden by Thoreau, Emerson 's essays - Nature ...

Hobsbawm

Bibek debroy - ramayana

psychology of money

hardcore zen, sit down shut up, karma dipped in chocolate..., 

Flashman !!!!

truckload of dung, mindf. bliss. beyond

walden

odyssey

AoW, BoFR, OW, P

-----

** old reading list

 dune

sicp paip aima

model thinking

ashby -  intro-cybernetics, design for a brain

adam smith

william james

intelligent investor

duhigg

emerson essays

darwin among the machines

stross, 

l-systems

complexity digest

model thinking, melanie mitchell

4 hour work week, e-myth revisited

master li

fido

 

what's in a name

Dear Universe , 

The name of a man is a numbing blow from which he never recovers. 

- Marshall McLuhan

They say people named Dennis have a high probability of pursing a career as dentists, and the Louie-s have a high probability of settling in Louisville. 

Some people never had 'Doctor' as a career option. 

Pre-destination much, Dear Universe ??

 

not so popular greek mythological monsters

Head of a Fish, Body of a Snake !!

Glares at you angrily !!

 

 i've learned to avoid prefaces, forewords, introductions, and the like, and get stuck in the first few pages of the first chapter of the books i buy and attempt to read

so, i am experiencing unprecedented levels of high quality failure these days

 The id thinks in  absolutes, without probabilities . Absolutes with a personal bent

Each woman is the President of the World Women's Association, 

but almost all men are but associates  of the World Men's Association 

Each word , like a goldfish in a bowl, dies when taken out of context, and becomes a lie.

For eg, replace mental health with happiness in articles and see what they say 

Contradictory things co-exist abundantly in this universe

 Processing python doesn't work , for me.  And not just the error it throws. This line from the home page

> With the gradual addition ... — it has become increasingly clear that Processing is not a single language, > but rather, an arts-oriented approach to learning, teaching, and making things with code.

 source : https://py.processing.org/

I've highlighted the key bit in brown, like the shit that it is . Hurl !

 If you have enemies , you might end up dead, but you eventually inevitably will. 

If you don't have enemies, you might as well be dead. 

 One might argue that we should provide a universal basic income, so that folks transcend the lower pavilions of Maslow, and are free to explore and practice art and science. 

Thinking about it a little bit, you can see that these are the only two things that man can do with his mind.

Philosophy is study of what the world appears to be.

Art is building things that appear to be like the world, almost, maybe.

Philosophy aims to build abstractions which either encompass, or explain in a generative way, the infinite variations the senses perceive. Hence, it is philosophy that drives measurement, counting, and enumeration & categorisation of properties or attributes of nature.

Art goes the opposite way, and it builds non-abstract things, whose meaning and significance is abstract, whereas that of philosophy is concrete.

Aesthetics, beauty, elegance etc is an orthogonal axis to these.

 What if the big bang was actually an explosion of consciousness, which gave rise to many virtual minds.... after all, the number of minds in the world is claimed to be one ..

In Advaita* even a rock is it. 

What if dark matter which permeates  and is contained in everything, is actually the Tao,  it gives rise to the two - matter and energy, space and time,  positron and electron .....

Atoms are 99% empty space. The boundary between the cup and the tea, or between two objects, is just a lot of space with some particles interspersed. I suppose, the only reason they don't blend into one, is charge, and material specific forces.

Then, if a person could switch off all charge in his body, he could walk through walls ! 

reading : Keepers of the Kalachakra by Ashwin Sanghi

ps : late night reading  of Foerster talking about cybernetics

 https://web.archive.org/web/20150121072726/https://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html

what if the taoist heaven and earth were nothing more than the wave and the particle ?

pps :* re advaita and vishishtadvaita from sivanandaonline - 

Sankara's personal God, his Isvara, is himself something unreal, Ramanuja's Brahman, on the other hand, is essentially a Personal God

ppps : The ISKCONis sound remarkably like V.Advaita, even though the name they throw about  much in their literature is Advaita....

two poems on money

 

what this money is
in your hand you hold
tis but, fragments of many lives
with hands and sinews who will toil
watch with loving eye for thee
the heart will keep the beat for the time
they are entirely for thee
be gentle, in your words, in your ask
for together this path we walk

 ---------------------------

balls of all
in my fist
I squeeze

Who needs Lucy when you have McLuhan

this one page of mcLuhan quotes is such a trip in itself !

 https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Marshall_McLuhan

 

Channeling Alan Watts

Historically gods have enjoyed immense power and strength, riches, success in all battles, battalions of beautiful women.  Everybody aspired to be one , to wander forests and come upon some magic or mage who would confer such powers onto them.  Of course, conveniently ignoring Ragnarok. The death of Krishna doesn't get sung much.

 The stories of Buddha in the east, and later Jesus in the middle-east, put an end to that. Now godding is not an aspirational career choice any more. No more 'celestial monarchs'. Will new gods be in charge of the Interest Rates of the Universe ?

More Alan Watts - "Money  isn't real. It's book-keeping"

It's only as good as it is enforceable, hence morality, law & order, and enforcement. 

Universal basic income would fail in societies where rationality isn't predominant. Brains fear  the unseen tiger in the bushes more than the fruit(?) dangling off it.  Hence, in any society, over time, money will flow to the one who can keep the monsters at bay, and typically the monsters are kept at bay by other monsters, hence you'll find them in the police and army. 

Can a maslow index be calculated , to describe how a person/society would behave, given a situation, where in the hierarchy would the response come from ?

brainy people need to express themselves to remain happy. brains secrete thoughts like stomachs secrete acid, said a buddhist. and in keeping with the rules of physics, we can assume the secretions pile up and up in the head until the human  is paralysed. that is why yoga nirodhas the citta-vrittis, and nirvana is a 'wind'-less landscape.

2 take aways from mark manson's elon musk video - problem solving as a way to wealth, and doing one thing for a few DAYS as way to be more effecting. 

 super-apps !

i think an app dealing with just, say, menus, would be easier to create, operate, and maintain.

An Exploration of the fractal hand model and its pertinence to significance and patterns of emergence, existence, and evolution of sub-sects in society

Fractal Hand Model : A Thought Construct

Top View

SideView

The Nature of Consciousness *

The Prickles & Goo Model

Delanda de-stratified

The  Consciousness of Nature

Five functions of a Swarm

Side effects :  McLuhan Numbness

Contradiction & Co-existence

There are no paradoxes in nature - Ayn Rand

The previous sentence is true - Godel

My nose is growing - Pinocchio

Identity, Hierarchy, and Control

I am Strange Loop

Types of loops

Perception

thnking outside the box

Symbolic representation & manipulation, and predictability

AKA Computers and poker

Cybernetics

Smallest physical model of feedback

Is Feedback Perception

Non symbolic perception, and the embodied observer

Unified Actor-observer entities

Simultaneously autonomous  and pre-destined agents : fingers of the fingers of the hand

Exploring fingers

(thousand plateaus?1000 years of non linear ?)

Baroque, Surrealist, Impressionist

Minimalist, 

Capitalist,  communist, socialist

Cool, hip, fashionable, expensive

wormgrub

Care and nurture of your agent

Religion as value-reinforcement systems

Religion as 'moralising' the unpalatable

Religion as out of your head

Thinking out of the box de-mystified

Religion as opium

Religion as de-stratifying agents

Reversing McLuhan Numbness

Karma : Weaponising (softly) McLuhan Numbness

Retraining

Speaking of things without using their name(s)

Loosening up

The Graham Hancock Phenomenon

Meditation as refactoring the symbol manipulator value map

Odds and Ends

Only one electron

L-systems

General Semantics

E-prime

spotlight and searchlights of attention

 ADD is not a deficit of attention, it's the inability of a student to focus on what the teacher says, and it's more of an authoritarian flex than anything else.

ADD is a super power, and small minds want to snuff it out in others when they are young and can't defend themselves.

Prove me wrong

 mischievousness is nothing but individuality and concomitant action in someone else  

when others don't share worlds with you

 difference between being somebody and doing something (Boyd)

a fast bowler bowls fast bowls, but a person playing the game will attempt to take wickets one way or the other

(this is a sucky example. a fast bowler attempts to take wickets. presuming it is easier to bowl medium or slow , the hypothesis is that a person bowling fast is attempting to do a difficult thing, when easier options exist)

how about - managers exist to retain, and grow budgets, and only incidentally grow their divisions/projects/teams 

We've put it in words today
we'll put it in equations tomorrow
and one day

 it will be a household word

made in China

then journeying on a container ship
then riding on a truck 
then arranged on a Walmart shelf

by an hourly wager

you'll park your large SUV

and drive it home

and use it until its time

when it proceeds by truck again

to be buried under the earth
in this great land of ours

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree Walden,
And a small cabin build there, with fancies and borrow'd axe make;

 ***



----
This is the introducing poem in Emerson's Nature essay. Strangely, it is only seen in some particular edition(s)


The rounded world is fair to see,
Nine times folded in mystery:
Though baffled seers cannot
impart
The secret of its laboring heart,
Throb thine with Nature's
throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Spirit that lurks each form within
Beckons to spirit of its kin;
Self-kindled every atom glows,
And hints the future which it owes.

There are many others which start with a different poem, I cannot understand what happen'd.

Now compare and contrast with the opening lines of the Tao Te Ching :

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

It is quite possible that Emerson was aware of, or had read , the Tao Te Ching at some point, before producing his text, and that the lines/idea lay quietly in the subconscious, showing up in his writing as though original.

Would Huck Finn be considered a deadbeat by today's standards ? I hope not ..

Would Thoreau be the Huck Finn of his time ?

--- 
Attributions 

Image : https://www.nps.gov/places/walden-pond-in-the-walden-pond-state-reservation.htm
Poetry : https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43281/the-lake-isle-of-innisfree

Title: Essays
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson
Editor: Edna H. L. Turpin
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/16643/16643-h/16643-h.htm#FNanchor_469_469
and also
https://emersoncentral.com/texts/essays-second-series/nature/

The Complete Tao Te Ching
Translated by Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English

Sometimes I feel religious practice, especially what Ram Dass describes in Be Here Now,  aims to provide a trippy life without actually purchasing or ingesting anything specifically for it, and shares similarities with the shaman intern fasting & sitting in tents waiting for lights and visions to come ...

When I frame sadhakas as folks desperately working hard to get permanent trippy powers, like the ability to take trips at will, it makes a phenomenal amount of sense . It makes the ritual that religious folks go through, as purposeful now.

There's something for idea that religious practice is something to do with re-training and re-wiring the neural network in your brain so that purpose continues to exist. The 'I' and the voice in your (mind's) ears is just  trace/debug messages from the brain's log file, which  got in front of the brain's headlights.

Fasting is a simple and powerful technique to re-draw the world around you, simply as it exactly was, but two lower degrees of importance . 

Aurobinodo explores the idea that the Vedas pertain to the processes inside the mind , in his this book - Secret of the Veda. 

Book available online at
https://www.auro-ebooks.com/the-secret-of-the-veda/

Pirsig, in one chapter of the famous Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, derives the Tao Te Ching as pertaining to when the subject is aware of the object - again, an internal thing , something happening inside one's head.

What if Brahma was nothing more than the pineal gland, so worshipped by Gaia-Pyramids-Area-51 kinda folks  .... ? The word 'brahm' I've seen used in different contexts - in one, it is creation, as in 'what Brahma wrought', but in other, it is a delusion  - as in tamil we say 'adu ellam bramai'. In the Brahma jaala sutra, AJ Brahmali explains that the Brahma Jala is a net to catch views. 
Equating all three - views, delusions, creation - I feel I can confidently hypothesise, that we are referring to that which sits inside our heads and creates our abstractions. Like, a finger when poked, twitches. There is no 'mind' involved, just signal travelling from sensor (skin,muscle) to spine, and a canned voltage response triggering a twitch. However, the human is much more complicated. There is a human sitting inside ones' head - the image of the self, which the brain can include in simulations of multiple disasters. This is where the second arrow hits. see figure.(tbd)

Alan Watts famously remarked once that "Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export". 

While the faithful still debate to this day citing this piece of literature and that, 

I put forth the simple formula.  ** Bhakthi minus vishnu equals metta **

and you can put that in your pipe and smoke it. 

The practices and rituals of both deal excessively with handling 'karma' on a day to day basis, and eventually,  beyond the current life (call it mind or soul).

 nothing more poisonous

than an inner circle member

who is apathetic or un-aligned

the universe is a giant Rorschach gallery

moment by moment 

a new story is made, or an old one reinforced

but it's all stories 

all the way down

and a giant ball of buzzing nothing much at the bottom

Dont be stupid

Dont be fat

Dont be daft

Dont be Taft

 A million people are holding the first step of a thousand mile journey under their foot, but are waiting for permission

 Your education is the first nail in your coffin

Your marriage is the second

The most important thing in art is The Frame. 

For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. 

You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise,  what is that shit on the wall?” 

― Frank Zappa

 if i die, will i be reborn at a chronological juncture after today ? or can I be born as, say, a viking in pre historic time, raiding and plundering Britain for fun and profit  ?

can two souls co-exist in different bodies in different rebirths in the same time period ?

will there be 'leakage' between the two ?

will the mind keep rebirthing itself until it experiences all the realities it fractures are creating ? will that ever end ?

will the last few centuries be extremely jaded piles of kitsch ?

 Wild goose cheese

ocular precipitation

 when the large junky mass of events and symbols and text 

that we collect so hungrily day after day

when it connects with meaning

tears well up from the heart 

and break out of the eyes

The total number of minds in the universe is one. In fact, consciousness is a singularity phasing within all beings. - Erwin Schrödinger

source

There is only one electron. - paraphrasing Wheeler
I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, "Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass" "Why?" "Because, they are all the same electron!"[1]

source

move over church of bob, church of the flying spaghetti monster, there's a new deus in town !!

Welcome to .....

** The Church of The Electron ** !!!

May thy speed and momentum flow energise us !!!

Sermons starting at CERN this friday

 we must deal in fables, things are fables before they are true

things are dreams before you can hold them in your hands

a faint whisper a face in a hazy cloud a flash of light from the horizon

then it builds and builds until before you it stands

 curated analog gaming is going to be the second education revolution

 the object creates the object

if the subject doesn't exist, does the object exist ?
if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has it fallen ?

if the subject doesn't exist, does the object exist ?

tree falls in forest

  I have been given regular glimpses and hints,only now I can recognise them as such. But thats it.

I also now understand I cant read my way into this, so some energy is freed up not reading esoterica.

Family and job has me in a chokehold but turining into it, I find effort gives me joy . Clawing back up from convalescence, eveerything is a new life breath. Fasting, and some prayer, i now see as power tools to work this magical body of ours.

Wont say I understand what you are doing specificlly but the larger strokes i can understand. 

The journey always starts by inverting the landscape .

Earlier folks used to go sit in a shamans tent and fast until visions come, whenever they were spiritually ill.

We have to make our own.

in the beginning god created Atom

from inside is body pulled out a rib

and saw that it was an electron

which had the symbol e,  and voltage is V

and this was known as eV

there is no such thing as evil (there is)

Sheldon Kopp :

Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed new problems.
All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.

--- ** ---

But that aside, evil is evil, and inclination to hurt another is a thing.

What is considered evil a lot is just apathy - <3 towards something, and apathy towards everything else, including humans.

At the core of all organised masses of people, such apath-ists thrive.

...the Sage treats the people as straw dogs.

They do live in serendipitous synergy with that element which can hurt other humans for fun and profit.

The child-welfare cartel demons and drug peddler-gangs exist to generate a source of uneducated unsophisticated labor for the capitalists.

Misery at the bottom creates demand for basics - food, shelter, life .... and that's why, at the top of the empire today are companies that provide nothing more than food & shelter. We would've naively assumed that we'd have moved the majority of humans past the first 2 Maslow rows. Unfortunately, like a valley, humanity seems to slide into the bottom masses first at every attempt to move past.

No shiny silver one-suits and flying cars.

The cure is compassion. And families are the way to mass produce it. 

The middle class is a powerful weapon because it is able to generate large number of compassionate mammals

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/airships-rise-again-180979343/
from https://www.ranprieur.com/
Will an airship 'tugged' by a truck or a van be cheaper than a freight mac truck ?

paws 1

 

***

3. At that time (the time of concentration) the seer (Purusha) rests in his own (unmodified) state. As soon as the waves have stopped, and the lake has become quiet, we see its bottom. So with the mind; when it is calm, we see what our own nature is; we do not mix ourselves but remain our own selves.

4. At other times (other than that of concentration) the seer is identified with the modifications.

- Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali, Swami Vivekananda

http://www.vivekananda.net/BooksBySwami/PatanjaliYogaAphorisms/chapter1.html

***

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.

The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.

Ever desire-less, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations

- Tao Te Ching, translation - Gia Fu-Feng & Jane English

https://terebess.hu/english/tao/gia.html

---

There seems to be a single explosion, a seismic centre of philosophy, probably in the Himalayas out of which arose Zen, Vajrayana, the yoga sutras, Shaivism ...

It's hard to read one without seeing the other reflected in the words. Unless, of course, the translator knew only one, and translated the various schools of thought into a single one

Listening to Why your diet is trash
Good news, I had the right ideas all along
Bad news, I had been accumulating ideas, instead of accumulating lifestyles and habits
rephrasing : good habits don't give you 'benefits', they just help you live out your destiny
wow, mind blowing stuff!!
Type 2 diabetes starts as extra calories sloshing around your body, first they end up in cells, then muscles, then gut, then liver, ( order and capacity varies for people), then it remains in the bloodstream..
This is different from folks whose insulin is faulty, or pancreas doesn't work to make correct insulin or in correct quantities.
This is different from diabetes Insipidus; from insipid, meaning weak, or watery.
This is mellitus. melodious. sweet.sugar. Okay, enough showing-off

If your insulin is fine ,it's a problem of quantity, and having nowhere to put the calories. Hence , burn it while eating less !! easier said than done.

There are powerful homeostatic forces working to keep the equilibrium. 

This is a systems problem.

There are multiple reasons , or forces, ensuring that you eat what you eat and you exercise as you do. 

These range from your social environment to your eco-agro environment to your upbringing to your friends to your job. And last but not least, your self-image - what you identify subconsciously as.

Tools - fasting , exercise, eating low carb ; controlling cortisol using meditation. NLP;  personal development programs to change self image ; different circles of friends and colleagues ..

Imagine, say,  hobos on a subway who have gotten on to the train somehow. They can't get past security at any train station due to some bureaucratic, red-tapey rule that the security follows and no one can change their mind. So they keep turning back the hobos at the gates leading out of the platform and into the terminus. 

So the hobos keep accumulating on some platforms,   some trains are overloaded, some the conductors push off at some platforms increasing the crowding there. Where are these hobos coming from ? (hint :they are the carbs you eat!! )

Adding insulin is just adding more conductors to push them off the train onto the platform, except, on one platform they are full to bursting at the seams and every time the train stops there (automatically- programmed shit these are ), as many get back on the train as they are pushed off...

So go ahead, add more conductors.

brahma is energy

 https://wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-podcast/robert-thurman2/

 Another notion we concerned ourselves with was, of course, memory. But at that time, in the 1950s, I was at odds with most of my colleagues who were dealing with memory. As I see it, memory for biological systems cannot be dead storage of isolated data but must be a dynamic process that involves the whole system in computing what is going on at the moment and what may happen in the future. The mind does not have a particular section for memory, another for counting, and another for language. The whole system has memory, can count, can add, can write papers, and so forth.

H H Foerster, Understanding Understanding

truth is, work happens in that time when you and the world are both under the impression that you aren't going to be doing any work. The threshold where you hang up your work persona like a company jacket but still haven't left the building

 opening 3 min of grand tour se1e1 had me in tears, esp when the other two show up out of nowhere

 every once in a while i check the analytics on this blog to ensure that.i haven't caught readers

" Timing is important",  said Uncle Ashok, dipping his biscuit in his tea. 

He lifted it out to his mouth, and a soggy bit broke off and fell back into the cup

**

Uncle Ashok carefully dipped his biscuit in his tea.

"Timing is very important chellam",  emphasised . 

A section of soggy biscuit collapsed into the tea

 Imma vegetarian

Gonna feed myself vegetables when alive,

Gonna feed vegetables when am ded

on managing weight

someone once told me that after meditating for an hour you don't feel hungry

I used to feel that way after 1 hr yoga session, in around the time I was working in Strand  

I used to fast on Sundays at one time

I used to finish eating by sunset at one time, after reading 'Critical importance of time restricted eating' by Jason Fung - in which he mentioned a study in which intermittent fasting of 18 hrs helped reverse pre-diabetes in young-ish men

Both these have helped me so far

The Ekadasi diet prescribes a no-grain approach, seems similar in spirit to Keto or Paleo diets -  and the straight line in these matters - the SCD diet

also seems to work

The How-not-to-die guy looks at research to conclude that a vegan, plant based diet is they key to health *

The China Study seems to agree

Chan meditation seems to insist on the lotus pose no matter what, and the emphasis on working through the pain - however ,they say the chi rises, in a few years, rising through the stomach, then lungs etc, curing diseases as we go

James Nestor talking about Swami Rama to Joe Rogan in https://open.spotify.com/episode/58Drs6tKeuq82hMTbcDC0G

sources:
* https://nutritionfacts.org/book/how-not-to-die/

A Plebspective

 from watching The Americans, what I can conclude is that the US was formed by a bunch of rich successful people who knew what they were doing, and the prosperity continued until the 80s and 90s, showing cracks eventually

the Soviets were on a lurching dash for prosperity,  starting from starving peasantry documented in, say,   Flashman . While they could execute fantastically, the majority of the mindset was not that of the wealthy.

All revolutions that executed the top classes in their country were instinctively tackling what they hated -they 'have's while they were the 'have-not's.

These  have almost always failed (feels good to speak so authoritatively and definitively with no backing credentials whatsoever), or at least struggled until the 'have' mindset kicked in into the masses.

America kept the dream going - and folks could also get rich, for a while, and this is where the others seem lacking

American manufacturing was also a game changer. Drucker somewhere I remember saying the Americans came up during the war due to their management practices - esp training. From this I gather the general idea was of dumb-simple machinery that could allow anyone to be trained to operate them, and a complete lack of unions or Left  allowing for incompetents to persist in the jobs in the name of 'humanity'*

Reading Inspector Singh stories about the South East and East Asia , it's troubling how much death has been dealt out in the name of revolution and progress. Apparently , one thing the White Man got right was the idea implementation of egalite, without gulags.

from wherein comes the 'have-and-let-have' mindset ?

There's a concept called Pareto-positive. I came across this in the 'cartoon guide to economics' in around 2015? 16 ? I have been reading  'smart' since, say 2001 ? probably not as smart as I thought, However , that's a term or idea I believe that ought to be thrown about a lot more . 'Win-win' as a term has been there for some time , but only in management /consultant jargon, not plebspeak

however, fundamentals are always hidden , by the nature of the beast, and not any malice

the only others I see talking about this, stilling or suppressing the fight-flight-animal, is the likes of Ajahn Brahm and Gaur Gopal Das - their message is to un-conditionally chill - socially very  though they don't cover wealth

Gabriel in the Americans gives me the creeps. He is pure evil ; lying, corrupting and ruthlessly getting work done out of the protagonists. Reminds me of the tech-leads/project-managers early in my career. One of them happily told me in 2004 ? - that there is no more software development going in the world.

The middle-manager is the manifestation of the agent-principal problem. We don't see them as such, but that's what it is. The middle-manager is a broker, plain and simple, but masquerading as one of your own tribe.

Where are we ? we started talking about the Americans then escaped  segued into high-level analysis of Soviet era psycho-economics, with a compare and contrast with the American 'way' during the war2, added a mention of modern-day healthy psycho-economic attitude  name-dropped Drucker, then bashed our famous hate-candidate - the middle managers of the past ... no structure or goal, which is probably well, a bowl of soup is more focussed than a goulash... 

While we're here, I want to name the two latest sources on Asia - Shamini Flint's Inspector Singh series, and the Asianometry youtube series. 

What Asianometry mentioned in one small 5 min segment of the video helped me draw a straight line outline of Japan from the time of Gai-jin to the days of Rising Sun  (and also the mention in Liar's poker)- esp. the social make-up that drove society , and which changed over time.

Aside, Shinto-ism has been compared to Hinduism in some way, and has been said to be used as a tool to build national pride to make Japan into an imperial nation.  A map showing the extent of the Japanese territory during ww2, before the decline, is very impressive - they literally ownd Asia - parts of China, Malaysia, Philippines ... the Byomkesh Bakshi movie has them planning to enter Calcutta via Burma, and providing support to the Indians against the British. In typical Indian fashion, we don't mention Bose's armies lurking beneath the surface, awaiting to overthrow the status-quo.

Will the joy of consuming Bean and Douglas Adams overshadow the anger, sadness, dismay, terror of the negatives of the Raj in India ? Flashman's  Mountain-of-light is an extremely depressing story, lost my appetite at the end of it - and Rudyard Kipling's Kim was the opposite - energising and renewed an appetite for Indian cultural product and architecture

We are way past 500 words but then this is not an essay. An essay starts with the concrete, de-stratifies, and then re-calcifies. We are rambling, wandering , meandering. Not zen-writing -in which we don't edit any.

Asianometry also helped me to understand Korea and their socio-economics better.  The paragons of quality, efficiency and virtue - were/are as corrupt as India, and yet produce more - the take-away is that it's not corruption..

The Inspector Singh brings home the point that the Asia that we know of as Asia broke out from feudalism to communism in the 80s/90s - modernisation notwithstanding - and got aerially bombed by the US, then turned to a modern society. Probably the US tried the same approach to the middle-east expecting a similar result but was unpleasantly surprised when they quickly developed (or revived) their perennial j-crusade

With the abolishment of the gold standard everywhere, the economy is no more a zero-sum game. Inflation is the (literally) cost of that, coupled with growth in product? and services.
Product growth seems to be larger chunkier bulkier carsSUVs, and services seems to be Swiggy that gets you your neighbourhood idli-sambar-chutney for a 50Rs markup and 80Rs delivery/packing/service charge. Also IPOs of loss-makers.

I am piqued by the Qute and the Mahindra e2o than by the behemoths like Harrier and the Morris .There are billions without cars, or basic things, and the world seems focussing on selling to larger and larger cars to bangalore-ites

I keep leaking into ranprieur.com - the dream is to do an into-the-wild without the dying part, apparently mental health improves along with the physical, economy be damned. Then build a cabin of clay and wattles, then write another walden. Living next to a water body is probably the best thing you can do - read the opening of Moby Dick

What is the story of larger and larger cycles of debt ? looking at Evergrande ( also Asianometry ,thanks Am)

For another day:

1. hobsbawm vs sowell

2. when I was small, and in school, English had a short story by Roald Dahl, about a new car owner who gives a ride to a hitch-hiker.

* Is there a better way ? if you do know one, do tell me 

 

the hacking scene in Jason Bourne is too painful to watch

right at the beginning of the movie too

 advantage        dis-advantage            un-advantage

necessary          un-necessary             un-necessary

rational.            ir-rational                  un-rational

mature.             im-mature                 un-mature

dear english, so much time and brain could've been saved 

The total number of minds in the universe is one. 

 -Erwin  Shroedinger 

I Am That 

 - Nisargadatta Maharaj

There is only one electron

 - John Archibald Wheeler, (paraphrasing)

There is no spoon

 - Andy & Larry Wachowski , in The Matrix, when they were Andy/Larry

 those are thinking of going to retail

those who believe in democracy

those who believe in the inner goodness of all humans

remember, Joshua Bell played a million dollar violin on a subway and earned a whopping $32 dollars in a day

 the world should be a lot more at rest, letting natural patterns to rise and fall, and heal and regenerate

but it's not. it's a lot more active, gritting its mind's teeth and pushing forward and through and getting things done and what not

there's a lot more energy available, and it's usually suspect - malicious, if not misguided

gardens of delight to be opened at every corner, drawing in the wondrous-eyed, life wasn't & isn't supposed to be so glitzy, but then the stories they fill our heads with ...

the energy is made available because, once a baseline fire  of fear and terror is kindled, the engine runs all on its own, with greed stepping in to push you to greater heights where fear wouldn't do

watching 'the americans'

the anatomically accurate devotional dancer lost in the ecstasy

 

 that professor's story of filling the jar with large rocks small rocks sand and  beer

breaking the abstraction

those large stones are  practices of eating right and fasting, exercising all 3 components and practising relaxing, and having a clue of what is one's business

the tiny cannonball