My President Is Black
Reblog while it’s still true
Misplaced Lens Cap
Xuebing Du
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
One Nice Bug Per Day
Keni
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
NASA
wallacepolsom
Today's Document
PUT YOUR BEARD IN MY MOUTH
noise dept.

roma★

JBB: An Artblog!
will byers stan first human second
art blog(derogatory)
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DEAR READER

JVL
No title available
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her

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@trappedinhuman-blog
My President Is Black
Reblog while it’s still true
for I am made of words. And as long as I can remember myself, I have read voraciously, I have lived stories — not losing myself in them, not quite, but rather taking the fabric of the story and draping it over the scaffold of my life.
So I crawled out from under my rock today.
The summer is nice. I brewed some tea, Chinese, red, pungent. Went out to a park. There’s a river, and flowers, and smudged shapes of people strolling about. I walk into the thicker part of the woods, and there’s a clearing and a wooden table, and I settle down and take out my notebook.
I just came back to the city, and there’s a frothing mass of things to do and people to meet and projects to embark on, all swhishing on my head, and I’m trying to enforce a semblance of order.
Hey, tumblr!
(isn’t the internet a bottomless sinkhole where any amount of text disappears, never to be seen again?)
(why am I writing here where I don’t know anybody?)
I’ve landed in Nuremberg, will be here for a couple of days. I’ve been to Bavaria before, but briefly, and never to Franconia. I’m giddy for something to happen, but I’ll have to take initiative here.
Last time in Munich was absolutely rad. I’ve brought my German back from the state of grave disrepair, gotten to know a few people, played cello, walked through most of the city center, been to a theater, and that’s in less than a day. This time I’ve got five days here which should be plenty if only I won’t stew in my hotel room or spend all evening meditating in a castle courtyard. Come to think of it, this latter is not half bad.
So. On the off chance that anyone reads it in time and finds it not awkward to address internet strangers, I’d love to hear suggestions as well as meet with people. I believe I’ve written an introduction post when I’ve gotten on Tumblr a while a go. Or maybe not. Whatever. I love the cobblestones streets and the channel and there’s a volume of Geoffrey Hill’s poetry I wanted to study and it’s getting late so there.
Doing good better redux
Over the last several days I’ve been reading through the #80000hours website. They seem to have done our homework for us. You know how sometimes you’re trying to reason about the best course of action and you write down the problem, think hard, but then get tired and pick just about any appealing option and wing it from there? They make it much easier to *really* think things through and find the right meta-level on which to apply effort to do the most good.
One of the unobvious things I’ve learned is that there are pressing problems, and then there are *really fucking urgent* problems which seemingly should have resourses thrown at them indiscriminately because thousands if not millions of human lifes are at stake and every dollar makes a difference.
Like, go and pay for some malaria nets right now or something. Make a poor black kid live to see another day.
Another thread of reasoning starts with the observation that direct action is much less effective than taking several steps back and working on strategy, social cohesion, health, education, sustainability or plain making sure we don’t all die suddenly for no good reason. But the further we go on the ladder of these meta-level problems, the more nebulous the benefits seem. Sure, Newton’s discoveries have laid a few bricks in the foundation of modern technology, but does that mean that you should pursue your talent for natural philosophy and abstract reasoning and devote your life to what will most likely to only be more obscure abstract nonsense?
There must be an optimum somewhere, but discovering this optimum, even reasoning about it, is precisely such an endeavour: on the one hand it looks like overthinking and not doing anything of consequence, on the other hand it’s essential because of how the problem space is squished: finding an important problem that you can make progress on seems to be really important:
(taken from https://80000hours.org/career-guide/most-pressing-problems/)
I notice that I am confused. I’ll go on to procratinate reading their website and rationalize away my anxiety that keeps me from writing to FHI, MIRI and all the nice places where the above reasoning says I should fight tooth and nail to be accepted.
Accidentally, if anyone reading this is affiliated with the organizations mentioned, or knows the appropriate way to get a foot in the door, please tell me. I’ve been following them for years now and am a huge fan and would like to contribute.
Reblog if you created a weird sun twitter but couldn’t keep it up.
I’m feeling like I’m in a David Mitchell novel: I’m stuck at an airport and the reality is coming apart at the seams.
There’s a TV full of talking heads and nauseating jumpy moving pictures (I’m not used to tellys). For the last several hours is has been displaying the very same streets I’ve walked this morning, and yesterday, and the day before, and the calm, warm, friendly stones are now teeming with people. Angry, concerned, exalted about something — thousands, *tens of thousands* of them on the streets of Paris. There are signs which wiggle too fast for me to read. The’s a scrolling ticker at the bottom of the screen which is telling bits of vaguely related stories. Something something brexit something something communist party something someting.
My flight is held up because the plane is broken, or something, no one seems to know what. When I stand up from the piano — oh, of course there’s a grand piano, all red velvet and white lacquer — to check up on my flight, someone comes by and *breaks* it. Like, how do you break a grand piano?
I come to the business lounge, pour myself a glass of ice and settle down to write. My spidey sense is tingling and I feel a story coming.
A guy across me asks if we’ve ever met. We talk and figure that we didn’t. I don’t know anyone named Muhammed, not personally, and I haven’t been to London, like, ever. We both write code. We both like Omar Khayyam, but Muhammed’s lucky to be able to read him in original Persian.
We chat some and hit on a project we could do together. He’s got an idea and is working on the backend, I can work on the frontend and as we sit I sketch out strategy — turns out I’m familiar with the problem domain and he’s pleasantly surprised with the articles I send his way and my overview of the competition.
I remember that I have a postcard to send. I have an empty postcard on me, I even have a postal stamp, but there’s no post office in the airport. One of the business lounge assistant kindly offers to take it outside and post it for me, so I draw a picture of the divine Parisian architecture — partly from memory, partly from the photos I’ve snapped, even though this sort of thing should be drawn from nature — and off she goes as it’s the end of her shift.
Hours pass by, the TV is getting more feverish — is there a revolution at hand? — the discussion turns to psychiatry and dealing with depression and CBT workbooks, I ping my brother’s roommate who’s doing research in Sonology in Den Haag — I’ve *taught* that, but I’m in my own little bubble, so wouldn’t it be nice to have someone to talk shop — and there’s 80000hours career guide I’ve earmarked for reading as wait for my plane so might as well do that.
If someone hasn’t seen it yet, there are new scans of Beowulf online: http://www.openculture.com/2016/06/1000-year-old-manuscript-of-beowulf-digitized-and-now-online.html If that’s not cool I don’t know what is. A counterpoint: there’s a novel exploring the story of Beowulf from the monster’s viewpoint. (amazon link)
Note to self: I’m an ungrateful bastard. So many people have real problems, and here I am waxing about aesthetics and loneliness and existential angst.
What are some other social attitudes that would have been as crazy in 1879 to express or to expect the future to agree with? I can’t help but think that there’s an inherent direction in which things develop, in which the overtone window is slowly slipping. This is mostly the same sentiment as “Reality has a well-known liberal bias”. But I expect that if I could take the outside view properly, then this would turn out to be false. That there would be many conflicting undercurrents instead, dragging the social mores every which way.
James Ferguson. Astronomy on Newton’s Principles. 1773.
mind the epicycles
Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief. Do justly NOW. Love mercy NOW. Walk humbly NOW. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.
From the Talmud
Pirkei Avos (Ethics/Chapters of the Fathers) 2:16
(via arubasmusings)
That last bit –
Lo Alecha haM’lacha Ligmor, veLo Atah Ben-Chorin leHivatel Memenah / לֹא עָלֶיךָ הַמְּלָאכָה לִגְמוֹר, וְלֹא אַתָּה בֶן חוֹרִין לִבָּטֵל מִמֶּנָּה / It is not your duty to complete the task, but nor it is your freedom to withdraw from it
– is something which is not shared nearly enough, something which is not repeated nearly enough, something with is not SHOUTED FROM THE FREAKING ROOFTOPS nearly enough.
(via thetransintransgenic)
QUANTA MAGAZINE: How did you manage to become both an astrophysicist and a writer?JANNA LEVIN: I’m more surprised people become only one or the other. All kids are scientists, and all kids are artists. They all read. How is it that we give up such big things? That’s the question if you ask me. I just didn’t give stuff up. […] I very much have to write to please myself. I think some popular science doesn’t do that, and I think that’s where it stumbles. If you’re not writing for yourself, you’re always being a little bit disingenuous.
Terrific Quanta Magazine interview with astrophysicist and writer Janna Levin, author of the fascinating and wonderfully poetic Black Hole Blues (so poetic, in fact, that Ben Folds set it to song).
Levin’s book is this remarkable.
(via explore-blog)
things i need:
more nonbinary friends
Don’t we all.
So I just wanna make sure
The collective Unsong fandom is aware that, like, Unsong is about as Christian as it is Jewish, if not more so, right?
And that the Kabbalah in Unsong is related to Kabbalah in the real world only maybe slightly more than the Hylaean Theoric Domain in Anathem is related to Mathematics in the real world, right?
Right?
RIGHT?
So calming
If you have anxiety trying taking deep breaths in sync with this. It’s very relaxing.
Need to reblog again.