Three months? Ack, I’ve fallen behind again.
An interesting take on the sabbath.
“On my first solo two-night camping trip, I forgot to bring a backup battery to charge my laptop or phone…I mostly kept my phone turned off. Very quickly, I started being able to think about aspects of my situation that had been too overwhelming, too in motion, to get leverage on the day before. Because I wasn’t dealing with them. I wasn’t keeping up with anything. I was just present, where I was. I wished I’d done this years ago.
And then I realized: if I had keeping a Sabbath, it wouldn’t have taken years to take a step back from social momentum. I’d have gotten a chance within seven days of noticing that there was a problem. And seven days later, another chance, and so on.
…
One more useful attribute of the Jewish Sabbath is the extent to which its rigid rules generate friction in emergency situations. If your community center is not within walking distance, if there is not enough slack in your schedule to prep things a day in advance, or you are too poor to go a day without work, or too locally isolated to last a day without broadcast entertainment, then things are not okay.”
To quote a friend: Trump is taking a harder line against NFL players kneeling during the national anthem than a neo-nazi driving a car into a crowd. >:(
This is so good it brought tears to my eyes. So much <3 for TNG
Oh shit, this is how Silicon Valley works? Can anyone I know in start-up culture corroborate? It sounds like a bad way to do business. But on the plus side, also sounds fun and exciting from my POV. :)
“everyone gets caught in a meta-reputational meta-signaling trap that allocates resources extremely poorly and forces founders to focus solely on activities that can help them raise funds until the point where they have to get ready to approach the actual stock market, and thus need to build a real company. Deviating from this plan gets you punished on multiple meta-levels.”
Holy Crap. This is powerful and amazing. Notes on an Imagined Plaque. Strongly recommend it, even tho I know listening to stuff is a pain.
“No matter what the context, we sexualize male touch. We do it automatically.
As a result, it has become every man’s job to prove they can be trusted, in each and every interaction, day by day and case by case. In part, because so many men have behaved poorly. And so, we prove our trustworthiness by foregoing physical touch completely in any context in which even the slightest doubt about our intentions might arise. Which, sadly, is pretty much every context we encounter.”
This is admirable as hell! In Durham, crowds stood in line to turn themselves in for the crime of tearing down a Confederate statue
Me, listening to Hamilton: Wow, they did a great job making King George the abusive boyfriend. I hate him now.
Me, watching Hamilton: OMG, King George is the best, I see why people stay with abusive boyfriends now.
Zvi argues that value drift has estranged the movement from its Mission.
“The rationalists took on Berkeley, and Berkeley won. … This is taking many of the people most capable of saving the world, and putting them in a culture focused instead on better living.”
See screen cap on left. This goes for traitors and slavers as well. Tear down every monument to Confederate generals, rename every street, rededicated every building. No worship of inhumanity.
(via due process tho. Seriously, no vigilantism)
You know all those NFL owners standing side-by-side with their kneeling players? That is good, and I am happy to see it. But Colin Kaepernick, the courageous man who started this movement, still hasn’t been signed by any of those NFL owners. Time to start putting your money where your mouth is, guys.
Oh shit, shots fired. American Apparel is testing shoppers with identical “Made in America” vs. foreign-made clothes. I think American Apparel is making the wrong argument though. The “buy American” issue is a moral issue for those who make it, so even if most people decide not to pay extra to buy American, that only reveals that most people are immoral (again, to those who make this argument). For example, if most people would choose to reinstitute slavery, that doesn’t mean it isn’t immoral. Or substitute “burning carbon” or whatever.
“The idea that children are individual human beings should not feel like a radical notion”
Here’s what Time put in its headline: Charles Koch Says US Can Bomb Its Way to $100,000 Salaries. Here’s what Charles Koch actually said:
“I think we can have growth rates in excess of 4%. When I’m talking about growth rates, I’m not talking about that GDP, which counts poison gas the same as it counts penicillin. What a monstrous measure this is. If we make more bombs, the GDP goes up — particularly if we explode them.”
Even Time fucking Magazine?? >< Goddammit, there is already plenty of good reason to hate the Koch’s, why go out and fucking lie for no reason??
Outside of existential threats, this is the most important thing facing our society right now. It is the most disruptive technological change we’ve seen in our generation, and it’s wreaking havoc. This Is How Your Fear and Outrage Are Being Sold for Profit
“The knowledge of how to reliably hijack the human brain for attention is one of the most significant new trends of the 21st century. This discovery, like every large-scale invention in our history, has unexpected outcomes that are difficult to predict.
If we wish to continue to live in a common reality, we must be willing to look at these outcomes with a clear head. Addressing our biggest issues as a species — from climate change, to pandemics, to poverty — requires us to have a common narrative of the honest problems we face: Real threats. Real reasons for outrage.
Without this, we are undermining our greatest strength — our unique ability to cooperate and share the careful and important burdens of being human.”
After eight years, I finally opened the owner’s manual and made my car’s auto-unlock feature unlock ALL the doors when I put it in park. Shoulda done this years ago. Procrastination will damn us all!
“Eco-consumerism may expiate your guilt. But it’s only mass movements that have the power to alter the trajectory of the climate crisis.” “Neoliberalism has not merely ensured this agenda is politically unrealistic: it has also tried to make it culturally unthinkable.”
The headline is Neoliberalism has conned us into fighting climate change as individuals. I disagree that it’s neoliberalism to blame, but it’s certainly a thing that’s happening. I wince whenever I see one of my friends beating themselves up for not washing out and recycling every tiny damn jar. Their attention is being misdirected so the real levers are completely ignored.
How A Reader’s Feminist Critique Changed My Sci-Fi Novel. So heartwarming that I got shivers of frisson at the end.
Corvids continue their ascension! Ravens Are So Smart, One Hacked This Researcher’s Experiment. Still unsure if we should be encouraging this or wiping them out preemptively. I hope to live long enough to see this become an actual issue ^^