I’m kind of loving the rewilding of Northgate Park.

The sorrow at leaving my city fades

before the old joy of being in new mountains.

– Wang Wei (d. 761)
couplet from ‘Arriving at Ba Gorge in the Morning’

RIP Irma

https://provincetownindependent.org/obituaries/2024/07/02/former-shop-owner-and-author-irma-ruckstuhl-dies-at-93/

Mandukya Upanishad

https://archive.org/details/thirteenprincipa028442mbp/page/390/mode/2up?view=theater

Barbecue Man

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/11/nyregion/nyc-costs-brisket-sandwich.html

Long Covid

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/12/14/opinion/my-life-with-long-covid.html

 

Boomer wealth transfers will only exacerbate stratification. 

The end of content?

Ezra Klein and Nilay Patel: Minute 22:30

 A love is one to whom you may be yoked without compassion.

W. G. Sebald

 

quizzo

things I love:

the kiddo; the earth; small houses; good glassware; R; family; dogs; warm days; snow; salty snacks; expensive incense; pretty earrings; the first day of school; hot bread; a lover's look; big leaves; opennness.

things I hate:

vines that swallow up trees; small hive beetles; rejection; misbehaved dogs; capitalism; too strong incense; judgement; violence; violent cops; prison industrial system; burned out teachers; erosion; trustafarians; lazy writing.

people I admire:

mom and dad; T Monk; Coltrane; Hendrix; Radiohead; DJ Shadow; Sun Ra; Alvin Caplan; Rabbi Chiel; Ms. Romaine; Bill Hohenstein; Julianne; Kabeera

essential questions:

who am I? what will be the future? what is the nature of gastronomy, beauty? how does one write well? what will be after I'm gone? would anyone have true compassion for me? what is animal consciousness like?

five words to live by:

existentialism; romance; enlightenment; spirit; death.

Sense and Nonsense, Conviction and Cowardice

Junichiro Tanazaki: In Praise of Shadows

In Praise of Shadows

The Opt-Out Generation

Speech to text generation

AI

I have been working on the writing of Gilles Deleuze for over 15 years, and so it is interesting to see his theories manifest in the computational science of AI neural networks and large language models.

If there has been a touch of anxiety and existential dread to 2023, it is because AI that could easily pass a Turing test has been created, leaving us to admit that our brains, our consciousness, maybe even our sentience is more biological, material, and mechanical than we ever believed. In essence, what is special about us, and are we evolving towards a future where our co-habitation and maybe even integration with AI will fundamentally upend what we thought it meant to be human?

my love

 

Spiritual Ascent

The hypothesis is that if we are going to live fulfilling lives, we must prioritize spiritual fulfillment: rest, caring, love, tenderness, fun, joy, weakness, pain, growth, community, communion with nature, exercise, etc. I would say that "back in the day", many people got these things mainly through religion. They also got the bad parts as well: guilt, shame, dominance, ignorance, violence, trauma, brainwashing, war, sexism, classism, racism, etc.

Religiosity, in my day-to-day, and in that of many of my peers, is minimally impactful. I don't go to minyan, or even pray every morning. Even beyond religion, I rarely engage spirituality actively. I often prioritize work, family obligations, friend obligations, social media, travel, consumerism, video games, housework, TV, restaurants, etc. ahead of any kind of meaningful spiritual fulfillment.

I must prioritize the things that are actually improving my spiritual fulfillment, and question the value of everything else. The idea that there is not enough time is a straw man. I was lying in bed doing transformational breathing, and I hit the 20-minute mark, and I had 10 minutes left to go, and I felt a real pang of guilt that I was spending a whole thirty minutes on this indulgent exercise and then, as my palms and legs tingled and I became lightheaded, I realized that anything else I did today, or even this week might not be as important as this moment of self-love and exploration. Challenging myself to breathe continuously for thirty minutes, having a mild out-of-body experience is exactly where I wanted to be. Everything else can piss off.

It begins with practice. Spirituality is not something to be engaged, thankfully, in the abstract. It is lived through. What are the practices that I will calendar to engage in this, and will I make it the priority, or will I let other obligations get in the way? How deep can I go into my mind and intellectualism? Where will it take me?

 

AI: The Story Up Till Now

 https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/03/technology/ai-openai-musk-page-altman.html

The Age of Jedi

Where the people can sing, the poet can live

- This is no place for love.

- One day, perhaps, unimaginable generations hence, we will evolve into the knowledge that human beings are more important than real estate and will permit this knowledge to become the ruling principle of our lives. For I do not for an instant doubt, and I will go to my grave believing, that we can build Jerusalem, if we will.

- James Baldwin, "Nothing Personal"

The Montessori Method

 https://harpers.org/archive/2022/02/every-child-an-emperor-on-maria-montessori/

sick bass chops

 

Kendrick's Breathwork Song