ranprieur

This discussion is completely about propositional statements, as if that's the only way to know anything. I would say, don't let mere words change your sense of what's real.

I don't buy the idea that changing camel to rope is about pleasing rich people, because a rope can still nowhere near get through the eye of a needle.

But a rope is qualitatively the same kind of thing as a thread; so if camel is the right word, the message is that what gets into the kingdom of God is a whole different kind of thing than money.

There's a difference between a simulation and a computer simulation. If our world is contained in a vastly more advanced world that we don't know about, I doubt they'd use something as primitive as computers.

It's nice to see both Engine Summer and In Watermelon Sugar on this list. If you like mellow postapocalpyse, check out Hitoshi Ashinano's manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.

Physics as Metaphor by Roger S Jones. I've never seen a better explanation of how time and space are constructed out of perceptions.

I have a BA in philosophy. Rather than learning the truth, I discovered that almost all philosophers were wrong about almost everything.

But in tracing the history of wrongness, wrestling with all the fashions of thinking, you learn to think with precision. That skill continues to help me.

This reminds me of how Hollywood can't make great films anymore because of test screenings. Authenticity is perceived as weirdness and gets filtered out.

In my imagination I can see images basically the same as I see with my eyes, but less detailed and nowhere near as persistent.

Back of the eyelid visuals are a whole different thing, and it's good to know there's so much room to work with them.

This is an anti-sun puff piece. It doesn't even mention vitamin D.

The red states are going third world.

Placebo Effect Grows in U.S., Thwarting Development of Painkillers

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/placebo-effect-gr...

The most interesting thing is that "placebo responses are rising only in the United States."

"Every person on the planet" is an exaggeration. But I've had my own website for 20 years, and it's much better than Facebook and Twitter.

Wow, I thought this was a hundred years away.

So far it only works with words. I'm wondering how soon it could work with pictures, so you could imagine a willow tree and the machine shows a willow tree on a screen. A powerful daydreamer could make movies without a camera.

The author uses the word "develop" a lot without ever defining it. If he tried to, I think it would become more clear that there are a lot of things human societies can get better at, which don't necessarily go together.

I still use an old Sansa Clip mp3 player, filled with whatever self-made playlists I'm listening to. But it's nice to know about Plex.

I walk a mile to the library to print. Still more convenient than owning one.

I guarantee, highly productive people aren't going through the day forcing themselves to do stuff they don't feel like doing. Gordon Ramsay is not like, "Oh lord, another cooking show that I have to discipline myself to do."

Highly productive people are obsessed. They're in the flow. And there are techniques to work yourself into obsession or a flow state, but it's much more tricky and difficult than the author suggests.

He says, "discipline is like an engine that, once kickstarted, actually supplies energy to the system." Kickstarting an engine is easy. What he's talking about is more like building an engine.

I get mp3s from Bandcamp or Soulseek, keep them in folders on my laptop, and put them on an old Sansa Clip for listening. If I make a playlist, I use Mp3tag to change all the album names to whatever the name of my playlist is.

Stop using the word "forgiven". Borrowing money is not morally wrong. A better word is "canceled".

I find it strange that he takes for granted that activities should "give back energy", and that you have to be dead tired for that not to happen.

Personally, even when I have good energy, almost everything I do drains it and doesn't give it back, until I sleep to recharge.

Maybe this is the difference between highly motivated people and the rest of us, that they find it normal for activities to give back energy.

I still don't know why we need the word wellness. Everything that's in "wellness" and not in "health" is dodgy.

One of my favorite games is Lords of the Realm II (1996). It's a medieval 4X game with turn-based county management and real time battles. I've always wanted a game on that framework, but with way more complex management, and battles where you can zoom in to play a single soldier, or zoom out to play tactics.

People are becoming smart in different ways and the tests aren't keeping up.

I've always used single blade disposables. They don't work quite as well as other options, but they get the job done and they're dirt cheap.

I tried homesteading too. All I ever wanted in life is to have nothing to do all day, and homesteading is the opposite. It's for workaholics, and also for people who love driving.

And I don't think it will help you survive in a collapse. Here's a piece from 2004 that I mirrored on my own website, Urban vs Rural Sustainability by Toby Hemenway: http://ranprieur.com/readings/urbanrural.html

I use cannabis for creativity and motivation, in both writing fiction and playing piano. I can't prove that it gives me better ideas, but looking back from a state of sobriety, I believe that it does, and certainly I've been more productive high than I ever was sober.

The catch is that I take frequent breaks. My current rule is, for every session, I have to go one calendar day without using it at all. This also keeps my tolerance low, so I only use about a gram a month.

I used a chainsaw for several years, cut up some trees into cordwood, and used only plain canola oil the whole time. There were places on the saw that got a bit gummy, but functionally it worked fine.

I've been running for years, without expecting runner's high, and also without ever getting it. I assume runners who get it just have a different kind of brain-body.

Everyone is wondering how sleep serves life. Maybe it's the other way around: the purpose of being awake is to find nutrients and a safe place to enable sleeping.

Every time an article says "it's time," it means the right time was far in the past, and the politically possible time is far in the future.