Coming to the end of your "duck" post, I did a double-take on the end photo thinking you reposted the final scene of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," but I detect some AI noodling here. Nonetheless, your commentary on what's happening real-time gives this a lame-duck rejection of what we see in the country right now, so I applaud your creative way to vent.
Thank you! I've had that photo on file for years, and my understanding is that it's not AI, but gangsters in a bar in Weimar Germany in the late 1920s...
I don’t know if you’ve seen “The Haunting of Hill House” on Netflix, but the blond woman on the bottom right looks just like the evil ghost that made the mother go crazy…
I don't know if there are answers and that's why I don't sleep at night. For some reason the simple idea of being kind to one another is considered a bad thing...
I've mentioned before that my wife and I live on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. In the last 5yrs we've managed to pick ourselves up somewhat to become part of the nebulously termed upper working class. It's a somewhat jaded point to make but we find that happiness is coming from the same places it came from when we were having beans on toast for Christmas day lunch. It comes from the security you have with someone you love who loves you back, from spending time walking the dog or seeing how the feral cats will respond to you when you feed them. It comes from knowing that there is NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE between the pizza you cook at home or the Michelin starred meal you've just spent 2 weeks wages on.
If you are doing things not because it leads to a deeper understanding of self and life but to just simply tell other people you did a thing, then you have missed the point of your time here.
My wife just called me a pretentious font! Wait, she's saying something else now...
Why does the island of sanity seem to be contracting? I really hope I'm missing political nuance here but why is everyone pandering to Thump? Is it a question of trying to handle him with kid gloves, like he's a ticking bomb? The man is so obviously a self absorbed tyrant. Who is still making excuses for this predator? It is completely baffling.
It really is baffling, and genuinely worrying to see last bastions of push-back slowly falling silent. This of yours sums up my entire post in a sentence... so, much more concisely ;-)
"If you are doing things not because it leads to a deeper understanding of self and life but to just simply tell other people you did a thing, then you have missed the point of your time here."
I'm now sat open mouthed as I watch him word soup his way through signing exec orders. Not a sentence comes out of his mouth that isn't at best a distorted truth. Johnny nodders and brown nosers surround him. It makes me feel physically sick to watch and listen to him.
Love this "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". So very many are selling their time alive for useless information or "entertainment". If information doesn't relate to my 4 F's then I'll pass.
I think the answer is as simple as continue to be the better person, educate yourself using actual books and good teachers, and fight as hard as you can for freedom. Never give in. It’s going to end in wars sadly, because we don’t learn from the past. I’ve noticed an increase in the numbers of spiritually awake people recently. I don’t mean religions, it’s more that people are realising the joys of being part of nature and accepting we’re all just tiny bits of stars in the grand scheme of things. Here for a flash, then gone. We’re not gods. All the technology in the world can’t make us so. Neither can money.
Excellent choice of photo. Things feel so bad in the UK right now that I've been avoiding the news and trying to distract myself. But this makes me feel like we're in Cabaret and I'm just enjoying the entertainment at the Kit Kat Klub.
This dilemma is perfectly encapsulated by that photo. But I have no answer to it either.
“I do not need to know what some distant acquaintance had for lunch. I should not make myself anxious striving for the regard of people I will never meet, and for whom my labor’s fruits are of only passing interest...”
Deli-sliced roasted turkey on sourdough with stone-ground pale ale mustard and a bunch of pepperoncini (sadly I was out of gruyère), then put in the sandwich press.
Thoughts, blogs, goods, tech, all of it is just a ball we toss around for the same purpose: to connect with people, to find love, to be seen and understood, because in the end it all boils down to the same human needs. What I don’t understand is why, when you see a post from someone, it doesn’t carry the same weight as if that person were standing in front of you, every post is a piece of a person, and it deserves the same attention you’d give them in real life. That’s the dissonance we’ve been wrestling with since TCP/IP first linked two machines, and that's because the internet is not real life.
Real life belongs offline, yet we’ve shifted banking, government, and business into this unreal nonplace, pouring money and trust into it, and in doing so completely misunderstood what the internet was ever meant to be. It wasn’t supposed to be a vault or a fortress, a place for power structures or the storage of everything we can’t afford to lose. The internet is a playground, a park, a town square, a space to throw ideas around, to share whatever’s on our minds. It’s telepathy. And when nothing that truly matters lives online, the internet becomes harmless, no sensitive files to steal, no critical systems to hack, no genuine threat, just pure fun.
When I am online, nothing feels real. It only becomes real when I share it with people, when I carry the memory of having interacted with them in physical space, and that’s when the truth materializes. I know this because during the pandemic I was forced to work and collaborate with people through video calls, and an uncanny, unsettling feeling washed over me, it felt as though we were trapped inside glass cells, each of us visible but untouchable. I was at home, yet I felt further away from them than ever, as if I had never truly met my coworkers at all, and the separation carried the texture of something synthetic, fragile, easier to dismiss than any interaction that happens face to face.
Real community can’t be replaced! The real question is, where is it?
That's the real question... and the difficult thing is that there's no doubt that SOME of community is now online. It can be just as "real", for better or worse...
Right. This is exactly the kind of response someone would get in "real" life if we were sitting in a coffee shop, talking about the failure of the internet. 👀
Well, hmmm. I think you made a sharp turn that essentially wiped out the first half of your post:
"Choosing to turn aside from the news and from current events in order to live in some kind of intellectual Arts & Crafts universe in which we focus on the timeless essentials of life sadly also serves the people who want to dominate us and to destroy the planet for their own ends, those sleek monsters supported by the kind of perpetually angry morons who can lose their minds over Cracker Barrel changing their logo, on the ludicrous grounds that the redesign is “woke”."
I'm not certain that is quite as obvious as you're making out. Let's pretend, for instance, that Trump tries to send the National Guard into Chicago (I say tries, because I think such a move would be met with a great deal of resistance from Pritzger and the populace at large, due to Chicago's much more compact cityscape -- same for NYC). That's horrible, I agree. But I'm in Massachusetts -- am I going to drive to Chicago to participate in resistance? Maybe, because my son lives there, but I suspect if things got hairy there he'd tell his mom and I to stay put. Regardless, the media has a narrative where everybody is supposed to see everything that happens anywhere in the world as cause for anxiety and outrage because the event is symbolic of a large and more dangerous trend. It's the Domino Theory of world events. But on the basis of impact, exactly what is the benefit of people across the nation and across the world getting up in arms if the problem is occurring outside my circle of influence?
Living a life that is in opposition to the current regime -- living a life of community, personal care of those we share a community, and cooperation; living a localist life of greater simplcity -- DOES make a difference, because it allows those around you to see that other choices are available, that the 4th F doesn't control us, that ee have agency. Our social media/MSM doom machine wears our belief in personal agency down and leaves us susceptible to learned powerlessness. And no, the "and then they came for me" trope is not a pushback -- all of those steps in that meme are at the level of the local, which is where we should all be focused.
Oh, I agree. And I don't think the second half of the post negates the first: I think both things are true at once, held in an uneasy balance.
Your point about the geographical separation of the two circumstances — and different spheres of influence — is a very good one, at least for now. I live in Santa Cruz, California, which is as liberal as it gets. The local cops have told ICE to fuck off, they're not helping.
But if this all goes as badly wrong as it could, then eventually it will be true in the villages too... and even individual houses. The reach of tech and the media in general is far, far greater than it was the last time something like this happened.
Yes, and that's when I will take arms. "The reach of tech and the media in general is far, far greater than it was the last time something like this happened." And that's part of the problem. I agree we need to KNOW about what's happening, and perhaps even consider what our response might be, but we are constantly being yelled at that we should be outraged/worried/alarmed/disturbed about everything everywhere all at once. I don't think the human mind and body is capable of dealing with that bombardment. I totally believe in "standing with" people in solidarity, but unless we have the capability of doing more than that, I think that's where we leave it.
Again, absolutely agree. I even wonder whether this perpetual THE SKY IS FALLING from the media is designed to burn out our ability to care. Watch, wait, be ready - but save some energy to live a real life in the meantime.
Infant morality is indeed a terrible thing…let the little fuckers grow up feral 😉
UGh - thank you ;-)
I noticed it but couldn't think of anything funny😉
Coming to the end of your "duck" post, I did a double-take on the end photo thinking you reposted the final scene of Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining," but I detect some AI noodling here. Nonetheless, your commentary on what's happening real-time gives this a lame-duck rejection of what we see in the country right now, so I applaud your creative way to vent.
Thank you! I've had that photo on file for years, and my understanding is that it's not AI, but gangsters in a bar in Weimar Germany in the late 1920s...
I thought it was "The Shining," too...
Close, but no Overlook Hotel. :)
I don’t know if you’ve seen “The Haunting of Hill House” on Netflix, but the blond woman on the bottom right looks just like the evil ghost that made the mother go crazy…
I truly truly appreciate this post.
It’s the state of every thinking persons mentality.
Looking for my lake has been interrupted by having to cross the information highway.
I appreciate your validation of the struggle.
Thank you... and I *love* this summation: "Looking for my lake has been interrupted by having to cross the information highway."
I don't know if there are answers and that's why I don't sleep at night. For some reason the simple idea of being kind to one another is considered a bad thing...
That's the worst thing that's starting to come out of this...
I've mentioned before that my wife and I live on the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum. In the last 5yrs we've managed to pick ourselves up somewhat to become part of the nebulously termed upper working class. It's a somewhat jaded point to make but we find that happiness is coming from the same places it came from when we were having beans on toast for Christmas day lunch. It comes from the security you have with someone you love who loves you back, from spending time walking the dog or seeing how the feral cats will respond to you when you feed them. It comes from knowing that there is NO FUCKING DIFFERENCE between the pizza you cook at home or the Michelin starred meal you've just spent 2 weeks wages on.
If you are doing things not because it leads to a deeper understanding of self and life but to just simply tell other people you did a thing, then you have missed the point of your time here.
My wife just called me a pretentious font! Wait, she's saying something else now...
Why does the island of sanity seem to be contracting? I really hope I'm missing political nuance here but why is everyone pandering to Thump? Is it a question of trying to handle him with kid gloves, like he's a ticking bomb? The man is so obviously a self absorbed tyrant. Who is still making excuses for this predator? It is completely baffling.
It really is baffling, and genuinely worrying to see last bastions of push-back slowly falling silent. This of yours sums up my entire post in a sentence... so, much more concisely ;-)
"If you are doing things not because it leads to a deeper understanding of self and life but to just simply tell other people you did a thing, then you have missed the point of your time here."
I'm now sat open mouthed as I watch him word soup his way through signing exec orders. Not a sentence comes out of his mouth that isn't at best a distorted truth. Johnny nodders and brown nosers surround him. It makes me feel physically sick to watch and listen to him.
I'm printing and framing your reply to me😉
Ha ;-) And yes, I avoid listening to his voice as much as humanly possible. It causes a very bad reaction in me.
Love this "a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". So very many are selling their time alive for useless information or "entertainment". If information doesn't relate to my 4 F's then I'll pass.
Absolute same.
I think the answer is as simple as continue to be the better person, educate yourself using actual books and good teachers, and fight as hard as you can for freedom. Never give in. It’s going to end in wars sadly, because we don’t learn from the past. I’ve noticed an increase in the numbers of spiritually awake people recently. I don’t mean religions, it’s more that people are realising the joys of being part of nature and accepting we’re all just tiny bits of stars in the grand scheme of things. Here for a flash, then gone. We’re not gods. All the technology in the world can’t make us so. Neither can money.
Very true... and if we can maintain an increasing focus on the "spiritual" as you've defined it, that can only be for the better.
Excellent choice of photo. Things feel so bad in the UK right now that I've been avoiding the news and trying to distract myself. But this makes me feel like we're in Cabaret and I'm just enjoying the entertainment at the Kit Kat Klub.
This dilemma is perfectly encapsulated by that photo. But I have no answer to it either.
Yep... I keep hearing dire things coming out of the UK about "raising the colors" and ramping racism, which doesn't sound good.
“I do not need to know what some distant acquaintance had for lunch. I should not make myself anxious striving for the regard of people I will never meet, and for whom my labor’s fruits are of only passing interest...”
And yet here we are. Turkey sandwich.
Ooh, that sounds nice. Stuffing?
Deli-sliced roasted turkey on sourdough with stone-ground pale ale mustard and a bunch of pepperoncini (sadly I was out of gruyère), then put in the sandwich press.
No stuffing.
I really want one of those now.
Next time you’re in Saint Louis I’ll make you one.
Deal
Thoughts, blogs, goods, tech, all of it is just a ball we toss around for the same purpose: to connect with people, to find love, to be seen and understood, because in the end it all boils down to the same human needs. What I don’t understand is why, when you see a post from someone, it doesn’t carry the same weight as if that person were standing in front of you, every post is a piece of a person, and it deserves the same attention you’d give them in real life. That’s the dissonance we’ve been wrestling with since TCP/IP first linked two machines, and that's because the internet is not real life.
Real life belongs offline, yet we’ve shifted banking, government, and business into this unreal nonplace, pouring money and trust into it, and in doing so completely misunderstood what the internet was ever meant to be. It wasn’t supposed to be a vault or a fortress, a place for power structures or the storage of everything we can’t afford to lose. The internet is a playground, a park, a town square, a space to throw ideas around, to share whatever’s on our minds. It’s telepathy. And when nothing that truly matters lives online, the internet becomes harmless, no sensitive files to steal, no critical systems to hack, no genuine threat, just pure fun.
When I am online, nothing feels real. It only becomes real when I share it with people, when I carry the memory of having interacted with them in physical space, and that’s when the truth materializes. I know this because during the pandemic I was forced to work and collaborate with people through video calls, and an uncanny, unsettling feeling washed over me, it felt as though we were trapped inside glass cells, each of us visible but untouchable. I was at home, yet I felt further away from them than ever, as if I had never truly met my coworkers at all, and the separation carried the texture of something synthetic, fragile, easier to dismiss than any interaction that happens face to face.
Real community can’t be replaced! The real question is, where is it?
That's the real question... and the difficult thing is that there's no doubt that SOME of community is now online. It can be just as "real", for better or worse...
Right. This is exactly the kind of response someone would get in "real" life if we were sitting in a coffee shop, talking about the failure of the internet. 👀
Ha :-)
Thank you, Mike. You read my thinks bubble. Again.
Thank you... glad it landed. Just wish I knew what to do... maybe both.
Well, hmmm. I think you made a sharp turn that essentially wiped out the first half of your post:
"Choosing to turn aside from the news and from current events in order to live in some kind of intellectual Arts & Crafts universe in which we focus on the timeless essentials of life sadly also serves the people who want to dominate us and to destroy the planet for their own ends, those sleek monsters supported by the kind of perpetually angry morons who can lose their minds over Cracker Barrel changing their logo, on the ludicrous grounds that the redesign is “woke”."
I'm not certain that is quite as obvious as you're making out. Let's pretend, for instance, that Trump tries to send the National Guard into Chicago (I say tries, because I think such a move would be met with a great deal of resistance from Pritzger and the populace at large, due to Chicago's much more compact cityscape -- same for NYC). That's horrible, I agree. But I'm in Massachusetts -- am I going to drive to Chicago to participate in resistance? Maybe, because my son lives there, but I suspect if things got hairy there he'd tell his mom and I to stay put. Regardless, the media has a narrative where everybody is supposed to see everything that happens anywhere in the world as cause for anxiety and outrage because the event is symbolic of a large and more dangerous trend. It's the Domino Theory of world events. But on the basis of impact, exactly what is the benefit of people across the nation and across the world getting up in arms if the problem is occurring outside my circle of influence?
Living a life that is in opposition to the current regime -- living a life of community, personal care of those we share a community, and cooperation; living a localist life of greater simplcity -- DOES make a difference, because it allows those around you to see that other choices are available, that the 4th F doesn't control us, that ee have agency. Our social media/MSM doom machine wears our belief in personal agency down and leaves us susceptible to learned powerlessness. And no, the "and then they came for me" trope is not a pushback -- all of those steps in that meme are at the level of the local, which is where we should all be focused.
Oh, I agree. And I don't think the second half of the post negates the first: I think both things are true at once, held in an uneasy balance.
Your point about the geographical separation of the two circumstances — and different spheres of influence — is a very good one, at least for now. I live in Santa Cruz, California, which is as liberal as it gets. The local cops have told ICE to fuck off, they're not helping.
But if this all goes as badly wrong as it could, then eventually it will be true in the villages too... and even individual houses. The reach of tech and the media in general is far, far greater than it was the last time something like this happened.
Yes, and that's when I will take arms. "The reach of tech and the media in general is far, far greater than it was the last time something like this happened." And that's part of the problem. I agree we need to KNOW about what's happening, and perhaps even consider what our response might be, but we are constantly being yelled at that we should be outraged/worried/alarmed/disturbed about everything everywhere all at once. I don't think the human mind and body is capable of dealing with that bombardment. I totally believe in "standing with" people in solidarity, but unless we have the capability of doing more than that, I think that's where we leave it.
Again, absolutely agree. I even wonder whether this perpetual THE SKY IS FALLING from the media is designed to burn out our ability to care. Watch, wait, be ready - but save some energy to live a real life in the meantime.