News avoidance lurches right along. Mix of nooz and think pieces today. New software (so far W*nd*ws only) aims to help activists detect and foil government surveillance. Get it here. Can’t say how effective it’s going to be, but it’s endorsed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Amnesty International, and other big-timers in the field. (H/T MJR) Along the same lines, Let’s Encrypt aims to bring SSL/TSL to the masses by taking the difficulties and mysteries out of those pesky web site certificates. (Remember: Encryption is subversive! Or so our masters claim. Which is, of course, all the more reason to…
Author: Claire
Do you ever — have you ever — felt like an alien in this world?
I have and I’m guessing you have, too. I first became consciously aware of my alienness when I was around 11, though it was unconsciously there the first times my kindergarten teacher tried to force me into “social” games that left me like a deer in the headlights. It was there in the way my parents treated my brother and me as if we’d been left on their doorstep by a particularly bizarre band of gypsies. (Brother and I were very different critters, but we were both unconventional loners and deep thinkers, unlike my uber-social, join-everything, voted-most-popular, shallow-as-a-mud-puddle older sister.)
By the time I was in high school, I’d invented an elaborate mythology to explain how I could look so human while being so apart from my supposed peers. I was sent here as an alien spy; the physical transfer succeeded but something went badly wrong when it came to transmitting my mind across space.
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In the adult world — where there are so many more options, where it’s forgivable not to be just like everybody else, and where now there’s a whole Internet! — I’ve seldom been bothered by that terrible sense of being something irreconcilably foreign to the “normal” world. Adults can find their own “normal.” Or live outside of “normal.”
Once in a while alien horror strikes out of the blue, though.
Great (long) article on the universality of middle-age doldrums and how we’re likely to be more happy at 70 or 80 than we are at 20.
Heartbroken artist with an empty house and a bull terrier gets creative. (JavaScript needed to view slideshow.) —– Some cool, fractal-like photography. (H/T SC) —– Local cranberry growers who lost their contract with Ocean Spray landed 20 pounds of their harvest on furrydoc the other day. What do you do with 20 pounds of cranberries? Furrydoc shared the bounty and instructions for drying. I took a couple of pounds and they’re in the drier now, some unsweetened and some drizzled with honey. I’m not so big on cranberries, but I do like the dried ones in salads and trail mixes.…
Don’t be put off by the word “knitting.” Even if you’re not crafty (and I’m not!), even if you’re a guy who’d rather build a brick wall or try for a perfect grouping with your best rifle than (heaven forbid) knit. This is about that process common to so many things.
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You know how you sometimes open a book at random looking for guidance? For some it’s the bible. For somebody else, one of those Chicken Soup things. Could be Ayn Rand or Herman Hesse. But you hope if you just open and read there’ll be a message there, just waiting for you?
I have to laugh. I just picked up Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, not because I had real interest but because it’s one of those must-read books and this is a good time. I opened near the end to a chapter about self care and the art of just being still and listening.
Then I took my old copy of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience off the shelf and arbitrarily opened to a page that heralded the value of 16-hour workdays, but with the work so integrated with free time that you can barely distinguish one from the other.
Yup. And of the contradictory two, I must admit the latter appeals to me more than the former. Not, mind you, because I’m some virtuous workaholic. Far from it. I favor the latter because the former is harder.
So … how are y’all enjoying the deep freeze? Seems as if it’s settling in to stay, doesn’t it? We’re just on the edge of it here in the North(currently not so)Wet — cozy compared with some of you. But it’s clear and cold and fiercely windy and I’m ready to stay indoors surrounded by space heaters. Wonder if I could teach the dogs to use the toilet? Or just encourage them to go walk in the woods by themselves? —– Though I’m still having not much darned luck with “listening to silence” (e.g. sitting meditation), this week has felt…
Over at TZP I blog about a dream of helpless victims of stupidly criminal “gun control.” There continues to be much powerfully good posting over there. Be sure to check it out regularly.
I was looking for a quote that I remembered as being either from Satchel Paige or Charles Fort. No dice.
When I finally narrowed the search down far enough it turned out that the quote was actually from me. But only because my brain badly mangled and probably misinterpreted something actually said by Mark Twain.
Ah, the human mind. Such a wondrous instrument.
Nevertheless, the non-quote led me to something I blogged here back in 2011. It’s the fourth of a series on “the responsibilities of a resident of a police state” and it’s worth a re-visit.
That in turn led me to a Fred Reed column of the same vintage, which is even more worth a revisit.
I’ll wait while you do that.
How one man’s decision and the right moment brought down the Berlin Wall. Something to think about next time things look hopeless.
Old habits die hard. Despite hermitting, I feel it is my bounden duty to say something witty, insightful, and deeply profound this morning about the election results. So here goes:
Damn.