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from farkas philosophy

You should probably watch this video before reading. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kd7y3SeGaFo&t=384s&ab_channel=AgmaSchwa

In this video Angma schwa talks about the linguistic (and metaphysical) concept of deixis. His main concern is not the actual educational explanation of deixis, but the speculative possibilities of deixis in non-naturalistic, or non-human conlangs. To support this he introduces the concept that deixis relates to temporal and spatial dimensions centering on a deictic “here” in natural languages, but he imagines various speculative deictic relations. He initially introduces two. One of these accesses called a d-axis relates to the relative velocity of the here, and the e-axis (standing for egocentric) shows the causal relatedness of the thing being discussed to the “here” itself. Angma schwa calls both of these higher metaphysical directions, when in actuality the d-axis is just physical, not metaphysical. This is why the e-axis is more interesting to me. The other two axes are also metaphysical, and I want to bring this to light.

Those initial spatial and temporal axes interest me as well, because they use what American philosopher Graham Harman calls categories of relationality, or tensions, time and space. These two categories are accompanied by two more for him, essence and eidos. This is talked about in his book The Quadruple Object, in which he theorizes on the metaphysics of objects.

The most important aspects to understand are that there are four parts to an object. Two of these parts are types of qualities, or traits, the real qualities and the sensual qualities.. Two of these parts are types of the object themselves, the real object, and the sensual object. Any given object you can name will have all four and the tensions between them. The real object is the least relational aspect of the object, and is the actual reality under the surface appearance of an object. An object is not just its appearance it is also its real in-itself side. Though objects do appear to one another. So the sensual object is the identity of an object to another object. For example if I were to see a hat, the real object would be submerged under the sensual object masking it. This hat would have a color upon sight, a texture upon touch, a shape, and maybe a scent upon nuzzling it. These are the sensual qualities which exist upon the object. They exist as mere appearance, though are not the identity of the object. The identity (sensual object) is more than the sum of its sensual qualities.

The more complex sort of qualities are the real ones which are hidden. A hatmaker is not always making hats, but can make hats. I may not see a car driving, but I know it can. Real qualities are qualities that are not currently in action. They are submerged, and known only by prior knowledge, or theory. The real object is also separate from its qualities, and appearances. The many qualities change, but the ship of Theseus remains. Though maybe we only know that its mast is not original because Theseus told us himself. We only know that a book has a cheap twist ending because we suspect that the writer can only write endings like that. This theoretical knowledge is a tension called eidos. Eidos is specifically the tension between the sensual object and the real qualities. The tension between identity and submerged traits. The four tensions, or categories of relationality are key to Graham Harman’s theory, essence, eidos, space and time. Time is the relation between the sensual object and the sensual qualities. See the fluttering in and out of colors and scents that you associate with your dear hat. Space is between the real object and its sensual qualities. This is how these qualities are arranged over the real object, as textures and colors meld over something deeper. Finally essence is between real quality and real object. These submerged inactive qualities are merged onto one another.

So basically what I wanted to say was that you could incorporate the tensions into linguistic deixis. It’s not naturalistic, but it can happen. Agma Schwa was ahead of me when he created the e-axis which I believe is similar to an axis of essence. This is because it corresponds to the overall relatedness, or essentiality between. In general the deictic center can represent any object with language potential. So the main idea is to track an axis, an axis of eidos, or a T-axis for theory. How I'm imagining this function most similarly to the e-axis.

Let's make a sample vocab to show off how this works.

Pa: here temporarily. Now. Pu: before Pi: after

Sa: here essentially. The essential center. The real object. Also first person pronoun. Su: unrelated essentially. Si: related essentially

Fa: here spatially. Fu: behind, below, and left Fi: in front of, above and right.

Ta: deictic center of eidos. The sensual object. Tu: unrelated theoretically. Not necessarily stemming from the identity. Ti: necessary from the identity. Theoretically related.

Kosa: run, or running. Baluka: is, are. Verb be, or being Vasu: home Dula: you

Sa kosa pa: I run now Sa kosa fa, pu kosa vasu: I run here before running home. Sa baluka fu dula: I am behind/below/left of you. Si dula kosa: you running is essentially related to me. Or you running is caused by me. HArd to translate. Tu Sa kosa: my running has something to do with my identity. : The reason this makes sense is because if you know someone is a runner, you assume they run.

 
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from hwithumalut fiction

Jeremy O’Riley, Sarah Watt, Axel Suarez and Michael Hersh were standing near a vending machine at the campus, outdoors. Jeremy O’Riley, Sarah Watt, Axel Suarez had dyed hair, but Axel and Jeremy’s hair colors were mild red and blond highlights, and Sarah’s was a three colored blue, green, and black swirl. Michael usually did not hang out with them all the time. They were all looking at the sunset a little bit. It was quiet, and still. Except the occasional slurp of soda. The dusk was a vibrant New York City flag shade of orange.

“So how do y’all feel about AI” asked Michael

Sarah Watt laughed a bit.

“I don’t like AI,” said Axel.

“I hate AI so much. It’s gonna kill art. ” said Jeremy

“I guess I think that it’s bad for artists too” said Michael

“I also love AI, and hate it.” said Sarah Watt

Everyone looked at her.

“Well I guess I should explain” said the grinning Sarah Watt “It is great and horrible. Like what I mean is that I have a fetish for being canceled. Right wing people love AI. Left wing people hate it. So I have to be canceled, so I go for both positions, so I can get canceled. I love getting canceled. Can-cel-la-tion! Woooo! So excited for the hate comments about to come in. It’s my absolute favorite. The idea is basically that right wing people love to cancel. They just hate calling it that. Can-cel. Left wing people love to cancel, and will call it that. So either way I get to be canceled. That’s why I love and hate AI.”

Internally she thought that “cancel” was a clever pun on God’s part. With the incel suffix, and all that jazz.

A shaky “Oh.” emerged from someone's mouth. Drinks were not being drunk. Eyes were unmoving. Everyone in a horrified and rapt trance state.

“I can give you persuasive arguments for my position. I will propagandize you! That’s what people do with political opinions. I basically think that being able to have free digital images for all sorts of artists, like novelists, is good. Like starving novelists don’t have to pay for cover art. Which is good. Youtubers for stock art in the back of their green screen videos. But also this is bad for visual artists. So it’s good and bad. Cancellation is so! ihebfihseeeeeeee!”

Michael had on a tilted look. Axel had a sort of forced line mouth, and was looking into Sarah’s eye’s without piercing through.. Michael did not know Sarah Watt well. To him she was the sort of friend that was best friends with some of your best friends. Axel nervously sipped soda and figured that they were wrong when they thought that they knew the ins and outs of Sarah’s soul.

Jeremy O’Riley was frowning, and gazing toes-ward. He hid behind his rectangular glasses’s glare, as intense as the glare that appears on sunglasses in children’s anime like Yu-Gi-Oh, or Pokemon. He had known Sarah Watt his whole life. They were like neighbors growing up. They went to different highschools. But are now attending the same art school. They both liked the same people here. They both liked to read. Now Sarah Watt needed to be abandoned. Needed to be left without friends. She was immoral. She ought to be canceled. Maybe that’s the wrong word, because of the negative connotation. But also she couldn't be. She somehow had a fetish for cancelation? To displease her you would not cancel her, and instead you would be nice to her which felt backwards. Jeremy clenched his jaw tight, each tooth to each other tooth. A small cavity in the second premolar.

 
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from qaqland

昨天可能风有点大,吹的小伞龙骨断了一根。我去找淘宝卖我伞的店家,客服说 7 天包理由退换,除此以外再不提供保修。看了看别人的,也都是如此,就去拼多多随便买了个绿色的。

河南下雪了,我这里也有点冷,那天刮了风,伞坏了……给老师写了结题报告,签字寄送,看了书,机器学习还没安装环境。自己要学习的 Linux 和 Wayland 还进展很慢。

 
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from FarkasCity Blog

FarkasCity allows you to categorize your posts with hashtags. To do that, simply include a hashtag anywhere in your post. Here’s an example: #HowTo. That tags this post as “HowTo”, and clicking on the hashtag will bring up all the posts with the same tag. This is how I’m able to link specifically to the tutorials on this blog in the welcome emails, despite having more than just tutorials on this blog.

Tips and tricks

List of tags

You can add a list of tags in your blog’s header so that readers can easily find all the tags on your blog. To do this, create a page titled something like “Tags” that simply lists all of the hashtags you use. Then, you can pin it to your blog’s navigation so that it’s accessible from anywhere. Here’s an example.

Accessible hashtags

For people using screen readers, multi-word hashtags can be problematic because the computer doesn’t know where each word starts, so it can’t pronounce them correctly. To fix this, simply capitalize the start of each word (“#ThisIsAnExample” instead of “#thisisanexample”).

Keeping it clean

If you’re worried about hashtags disrupting your article, try putting them at the bottom. If you want, you can also add a section break to further separate them.

PS: Did you know?

Hashtags are called hashtags because they are tags made by placing a hash (#) in front of them.

 
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from BurntRamen

The rot of leaves, the fall of winter The sentineled patter of rain against the shutter - The Willows partake in their sacrament Of Holy Tears. Dark rings now light, the infestation banished The sky overcast, in a graying melancholia Oh what potential you had - Weep now, here, in my arms May the red return to your cheeks with firm resolve. The Caterpillars aren’t worth it.

 
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from BurntRamen

Oh no, you poor thing You little marionette - Oh, how frayed your strings, Dancing upon that soap box, Spouting your delusory surmise. Its like watching the night sky - Peering stars long dead, Echoes – of remembrance. You adorn your treasured dress - And dine upon your favorites; Tea biscuits and Rat poison.

Why do you cry as your throat burns? Why do you retch for broken reflections? You hold the hammer in your hand. Let go of mine, Let go, Let Go. You can't pull me into you I can't – I … I .. .

Your band is playing - Can you hear the harpists? The violins? They're playing the song of Freya, Don't you know? So why do you cover your ears? Ignoring her call to arms. Stand up… Stand up! Goddamn it, STAND UP! My grip releases from their throat, I look at the blood, how it lathers my hands.

Disgusting

 
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from qaqland

软件的作用:读取仓库的 .git 文件,生成包含本项目信息的静态网页,以方便在Cloudflare Pages 等静态托管平台发布。即类似 CGit 但并非动态网站。

最早是在即刻,2022 年 7 月份发布了这个想法。可以 self-hosted 的 Git 托管网页提供者,大的有 GitLab、Gitea、SourceHut 等,他们提供了完整的体验,而且功能超出预期;功能上和我想法比较接近的有 GitWeb、CGit,它们稍稍偏极客

我希望它能有这些 Features:

  • 现代设计及交互
  • 高性能静态网页
  • 轻松、简易部署

虽然我前端水平不行,但是好看一点应该还可以;信息读取有 libgit2cgit 两种模式选择;配置的话,主要是本地仓库的绝对路径,一个文本文件就行,cron 或者 hook 可以让外部程序来进行。

【终止】2023 年 3 月更新:用的人不会多,毕竟像我这样子买不起不用备案服务器的人是少数,且少数人中并不介意使用 GitHub,有服务器的人选择就更多了。个人的时间是有限的,我无法保证后续的活跃维护及完备健壮性。文拉法辛项目稳定后再来看

:D

 
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from DJ Chase’s Blog

Links rot. It’s unfortunate, but it’s just a part of the web. Content disappears and links rot; if you don’t host your own images, then you can’t guarantee that your images will always appear. In this situation, alt-text can be the difference between your piece still making sense and it being completely useless. This is because many browsers show the alt-text with the missing image icon, so descriptive alt-text can make sure your audience still gets the necessary information.

If the alt-text doesn’t load for you, try viewing this article on my site.

Examples

Quiz question

Here is how this question is supposed to look like:

Alice, Bob, and Carlos go to a restaurant and pay a total of $38.50. Bob does not eat beef. Alice payed less than Carlos, Carlos payed more than Bob, and Alice payed more than Bob. What did each person order at the restaurant?

Unfortunately, the link to the image no longer works, leaving this question completely unanswerable:

Alice, Bob, and Carlos go to a restaurant and pay a total of $38.50. Bob does not eat beef. Alice payed less than Carlos, Carlos payed more than Bob, and Alice payed more than Bob. What did each person order at the restaurant?

If the person who made the quiz provided alt-text, then the quiz would still be answerable (albeit erroneously formatted):

Alice, Bob, and Carlos go to a restaurant and pay a total of $38.50. Bob does not eat beef. Alice payed less than Carlos, Carlos payed more than Bob, and Alice payed nore than Bob. What did each person order at the restaurant?

Graphs

Math can be nearly impossible sometimes without graphing. Imagine if you prepared a document with graphs but didn’t include alt-text! Here are some examples of how graphs can be understood through alt-text.

Suppose we add the line g(x) = |x − 2|. Where would this line intersect with f(x)?


Suppose we add the line g(x) = |x − 2|. Where would this line intersect with f(x)?


Suppose we add the line g(x) = |x − 2|. Where would this line intersect with f(x)?

If you use images as links, then not using alt-text means they’re completely unreadable if the image fails to load or if a user relies on a screenreader.

Northern Essex Community College COVID-19 Safety Measures



Northern Essex Community College COVID-19 Safety Measures

General

Even if your images don’t contain critical information, you still probably put them there for a reason. It’d be nice if people still had an idea of the images if they don’t load.

Did you know that Massachusetts residents who qualify for food stamps (SNAP) can get an additional $40 per person per household each month to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables?


Did you know that Massachusetts residents who qualify for food stamps (SNAP) can get an additional $40 per person per household each month to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables?


Did you know that Massachusetts residents who qualify for food stamps (SNAP) can get an additional $40 per person per household each month to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables?


#Prescriptive

© DJ Chase 2023-02-28. Licensed under the Academic Free License (AFL 3.0).

 
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from qaqland

昨晚刷到 B 站有评测红米 12c 的视频,想起来我也用过类似的产品。现在我也不怎么去在意这些东西了,记忆在不断流失于是记录一下过去。

初中

家里据说有个座机,不过我完全没有一点印象。最早对这种东西的印象是家长的手持电话,他们会把旧的留在家里联系用。我不懂那些功能,但不外乎短信电话,最好不过还有内置小游戏。

  • 步步高音乐手机?能拍照录视频,游戏里比较喜欢弯水管的那个,每次可以选择水管调整方向,环成一个圈就得分!
  • 按键手感很棒系统快快的三星 Anycall?横板妈祖、宝石消消乐

初三记得当时有魅族 mx3 大战小米 3,我在魅族 mx3 17.99 bug 价那天快 100 大洋买了小米的金属耳机,从此对小米音质一直有偏见。

高中

高二我短暂的有过智能手机 vivo x5m,音质不错,手机也很纤薄,就是处理器高通骁龙 615 拉跨,稍稍使用就会发热,就 2000 多的售价我现在觉得不划算,有点难过。但是当时母说可以给我买,便被冲昏了头,但是又机不可失失不再来,也是思考之后的唯一可行的行为。

明面上,我有台 100 多的诺基亚,这台诺基亚一般放在家里与家长联络用。它的按键很硬,比买到的手撕牛肉干差不了多少,大概定位上就是给老人的,但是字又很小,比不了当时的 21 克老年手机。但是系统非常完善,我只找到一个 bug,日常的功能,从音乐收音机,到手电筒闹钟记事本,一应俱全。我喜欢她的音乐,可以用内存卡听歌,数独游戏不好玩,但是屏幕的点对点像素风格与主题色彩非常讨喜,现在都觉得很好看。说到闹钟,强迫性的只有一次一个闹钟设置,于是我每天中午和晚上都要手动设置一次,给我的生活增加了一点点乐趣(?)

背地里我在攒钱,我不知道我能怎么办。我有天看到说 Lumia 要倒闭,我去学校旁的文具店让老板代购,但是当时那家店的最后一台 Lumia638 还是卖掉了,特别想拥有个黄色的。最后攒的钱买了 iPod touch6,小小的也很可爱,现在也倒闭了。

高三去天津参加冬令营,给幼小的我造成了不小的冲击,不仅仅是扫码的共享单车,大城市里的同学们有智能手机可以用,有的甚至还有笔记本电脑,我带着习题册去的。

高中这几年大概是手机的黄金期,从来没奢望过 1999 高端机型,但只是红米 1s 就觉得很高级,不只是系统但也是后盖、呼吸灯,后续的红米 note2 比 note1 好看太多,小米 4c 的构造也长在我 xp 上;也有在微机课上看了魅蓝 note2 的发布会直播,mback 惊为天人,后来有魅蓝 metal 深得我心;锤子坚果好多好多颜色,在那么多颜色里纠结了很久很久,虽然 799 也不贵,但终究最后一个我也没有。

大学

  • 红米 note4x 用了一年,不是个好手机,拍照很差对比不如红米 4x,整体是我体验过最差的,各方面都很不行。
  • iPhone se 是红米 note4x 期间在酷安买的,精致的小手机,但是每时每刻我都觉得它在发热即将爆炸(可能热是我的幻想),不得不挂了闲鱼。虽然后来又入手了一个整体不如它的 se。
  • 黑莓不知道多少,系统有亮点但不如安卓甚至 wp 好用,好的系统键盘与触屏的输入交互应该是协调的,虚拟机做的还不如 xwayland,倒闭预料之内。
  • 红米 4a 有很多系统可以刷,但是真要主力使用可能顶不住压力。
  • 华为荣耀 10 用了两年,拍照没有宣传的好,当时还挺像原生安卓的,讨厌刘海屏,其它没什么好说的。
  • iPhone se 2020 两周,系统让我感到窒息(可能是这时候焦虑症比较严重),很快就原价卖了。
  • 红米 7a、红米 8a 体验大概几个月,这俩没啥区别,都是高通 439 + type-c + 32 位系统,不同在于后者是水滴屏,都比我想象中的好用。
  • 红米 k30i 用了快两年后置很多摄像头,就我而言可以都去掉只留一个。后面用着开始屏幕误触乱点,电池也充不上电。

现在

在用 moto g71s,当然是网上很多人说的垃圾,对我而言不支持 pd 或者无线充电有点可惜,NFC 红外可要可不要如果有就好了,除了系统桌面有时会有图标消失的 bug 外,整体都挺好的。原生安卓谷歌框架纯净无广告,都是花钱买不到的东西。

更好的东西出现,从前的美好就会吃灰,失去就会怀念,拥有又觉得心烦意乱,有的东西真的错过就没有了,不只是物件错过,更是那种上下文关系或者叫环境不再。全文没有什么价值,就当作分析自己吧。

 
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from farkas philosophy

1: What is a zero player game?

2: A game with no players. For example Conway’s Game of Life.

3: Sometimes people use the term to refer to game with two computers facing off. Such as in the end of the movie WarGames a computer plays Tic Tac Toe with itself.

4: Why is it the case that if I play myself in Tic Tac Toe, it’s me playing myself, but computer playing itself is zero players. Are zero-player games with two computers facing off actually zero player?

5: So Is a computer a player?

6: to answer 5 it’s more complicated than yes, or no.

7: See how in when three people are sitting down on a coach playing Super Smash Bros and they decide that they want to play teams. A team of two humans versus a team of a human and a CPU. In my experience the CPU and human team is still a two player team. So the answer to 5 can be yes.

8: In some competitive games designed for two players you can insert a CPU instead of a second player.

9: In 8 the CPU may or may not be second player though. The human may just be “playing against the computer”. 5 can be no.

10: Games like Undertale, or the Portal games obviously just have one player. You are not even “playing against the computer”, your just playing the game which is against nothing in particular. The computer fascilatates the game.

11: When is the CPU a second player and when is it a mere computer?

12: On the wikipedia pages for computer chess and computer shogi, computers are referred to as being players, but usually only in the context of a game. For example saying “either player”or the “2 players”. Though they are also referred to independently as being “computer players, this is not the primary way of referring to chess engines. Usually you just say chess engine for chess computers.

13: There are two senses of the word player in the context of games. One is involving a player who is inside of a game currently. For example “there was a chess game and the players were May and Maya”. The other is someone who plays a game often, competitively, and/or professionally. For example “Hikaru Nakamura is a chess player”. Usually you don’t call someone who can play chess a chess player unless they are either playing a game currently, or play often/well/competitivly/professionally or maybe just enjoy it. So there are present players who are presently playing and habitual players who may often play. These categories obviously overlap.

14: in 12 chess computers are only called players presently. They are not called player habitually.

15: 2 is a correct definition of a zero player game, but it is not specific about which type of player.

16: Sometimes computers are not even given the status of present player. For example in 9 the computer can be a present player, but does not have to be.

17: Why do chess and shogi get present players for there computers as shown in 14 and 12, but other games don’t? For example I may be playing Super Smash Bros against a CPU. I might not called it a player.

18: Chess computers can consistently beat the best chess Grandmasters today. In Super Smash Bros the CPU is considered easy to beat. Chess also has a culture of intellectualizing itself.

19: Chess computers are when playing and in the context of a game players because of 18. My central claim here is that chess players don’t want to be beat by mere machines. They are fine with being beat by players though. So what they did was that they made computers become players. Inhuman, removed players, but still players in database records. Super Smash Bros players have no need for this, because they can’t be beat by CPUs.

20: 15 is misleading in a sense. It is correct that the definition in 2 does not specify, but it does not necessarily need too. There is ambiguity. Two chess engines playing one another is a two player game, as shown in 12 but two tic tac toe computers playing are a zero player game because there is no need for Tic Tac Toe computers to become players. Tic Tac Toe is already mastered by humans.

21: It also should be noted that chess engines may move toward being non-players again. The wikipedia page computer chess says “Players today are inclined to treat chess engines as analysis tools rather than opponents”. This is true and may mark chess moving toward engines being non-players. This is uncertain though.

22: A zero player game is a game with zero players. Though what a player is depends partially on the game. Though players are generally similar in most games, there are outliers that are outliers for specific reasons.

 
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from hwithumalut fiction

“It's so weird that caterpillars change species”

“What?”

“You know. When they become a Kakuna- sorry cocoon then the cocoon becomes a butterfly.”

“No. When you mean they just metamorphosis.”

“Yeah. they change species. It's weird that it happens three times. “

“What? How does that even makes sense. They just metamorphosis once. One species the whole time. “

“There are three animals though. Caterpillar, Cocoon, and Butterfly.”

“No. It's defined by reproduction. Species are. They are all the same genes.”

“How can it be reproduction, because Caterpillars are children and therefore can't fuck.”

“That's not what species are. Mules cannot reproduce and therefore cannot be a species.”

“What? Mules are obviously animals.”

“Yes. They are just not a species! “

“What's the difference?!”

“You idiot.”

”...”

”...uh...”

”...”

”... I'm sorry...”

“I'm sorry too. That was really rude and immature of me.”

“Thanks.”

“I found a video about it let me show you.”

 
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from farkas philosophy

When should I give advice? What is it? Advice is inscructable. I don’t fully know what advice is and what it’s position in society it holds. It’s probably super hard to understand. I don’t mean guides, how-to-bake a muffin, more like life advice such as “fake it till you make it” or “be confident”. Guides have their fair share of problems too, but advice is the weird thing I want to look at today. Advice is inscrubatable on the surface. How many cliche pieces of advice have you dismissed in your life on the ground of “just being a thing that people say”. I have dismissed alot, though looking back, what was really happening was that I happened to be so desensitized to people saying it that it’s meaning never clicked.

There is a great subsection in the half finished novel called The Pale King by David Foster Wallace. This subsection concerns the rambling (very sane, just rambling) recollections from a character named Chris Fogle that comes towards the climax of his pseudo-religious revelation that leads to calling to be employed in the IRS. He also at somepoint remarks “But I remember once, during an afternoon on which he’d paid me to help him with some light yard work, asking my father why he never seemed to dispense direct advice about life the way my friends’ fathers did. At the time, his failure to give advice seemed to me to be evidence that he was either unusually taciturn and repressed, or else that he just didn’t care enough. In hindsight, I now realize that the reason was not the former and never the second, but rather that my father was, in his own particular way, somewhat wise, at least about certain things. In this instance, he was wise enough to be suspicious of his own desire to seem wise, and to refuse to indulge it—this could make him seem aloof and uncaring, but what he really was was disciplined. He was an adult; he had himself firmly in hand. This remains largely theory, but my best guess as to his never dispensing wisdom like other dads is that my father understood that advice—even wise advice—actually does nothing for the advisee, changes nothing inside, and can actually cause confusion when the advisee is made to feel the wide gap between the comparative simplicity of the advice and the totally muddled complication of his own situation and path. I’m not putting this very well. If you begin to get the idea that other people can actually live by the clear, simple principles of good advice, it can make you feel even worse about your own inabilities. It can cause self­pity, which I think my father recognized as the great enemy of life and contributor to nihilism. Although it’s not as though he and I talked about it in any depth—that would have been too much like advice”.

He remarks on something his father did not tell him, but he just sort of figured. The reason his father did not tell him is because that would be against the very point it. Is Chris Fogle giving us advice? This is probably an example of the author’s favorite sort of contradiction, the double bind. Or maybe it’s not an example of this because what Chris Fogle is saying is not advice, or is it? We really can’t tell. Fogle is mostly just blurting things at us, which a character latter in the book calls “irrelevant”. So it’s not advice. Yet there is another question of whether, or not the author of the book wants to give us advice. We cannot know here, because of how the author unfortunately committed suicide before this book was finished being written. So Chris Fogle is probably not giving advice, but the author may be, but still possibly could not be. Chris Fogle could also be? Did we get anywhere by this? I think actually, but I’ll get to that later.

So the idea is that giving advice is bad, because it’s simple and hard to follow, but you can’t say that because that’s giving advice. Ok so the way I want to approach this problem is by talking about the question is it even possible to use advice. Basically what I want to say is that advice is mostly helpful long after it is given. Advice is a double bind, it is very complex and yet impossibly naively simple. Most times that I have found advice to be useful is when I realize something years after hearing for the first time. This is always a eureka moment, a liberating shock. Advice is most useless as rule that you just have to follow from above. Life Advice for me rarely works in the moment, always in continual recollection and reflection. Advice works like actively connecting all the dots in creative patterns, not just blindly following certain rules.

If I walked up to you, and told you “fake it till you make it”, or “where there’s a will there’s a way” you would think I was being a pretentious. You would be probably correct, but there could still be truth to these statements . You could probably quickly and swiftly point out how these advice were each independently contradictory. For example “I want to instantly become a very wise person” does mean I get to be a wise person instantly. This to me is missing the point. “Where there is a will there is a way” is maybe more about the way than the will. One would also probably not know the way, so it probably won’t happen soon if at all. The advice is only helpful in highly specific situations. It is helpful as a process of understanding things. You don’t need it. Its just useful for understanding what things may have happened to you and what may happen. Though it’s also a very personal understanding. The reason I would be pretentious if I tried to tell you the advice is because then I would be foolishly overcoding my own understanding over someone else’s understanding of the world using statements that exist out of context of the understanding. This context is a big theme is the subsection concerning Chris Fogle. He is rambling so much, because he need to provide context. A certain type of story-of-my-life style context is important for using pieces of advice.

The hard parts for me with advice are somethings I call mentally by the nick names “the wall of action” and the “the wall of understanding. This wall of action is the difference between being able to act inside of advice fluently, and to just try to anxiously follow it. Often when advice first appears meaningful, I might push my self too hard to act on it even though I have not become practiced enough in following the advice. This is very stressful sometimes, and can hinder advice following, but I am past the first step without realizing. The first wall is understanding, which is more like of basic understanding. It’s like knowing the grammar and vocabulary of a language, but not being able to have a smooth conversation. Once you connect the dots with the advice I am past the first wall. I know what you want, but just can’t maybe follow the advice well. I feel free, but have entered myself into a more tight cage soon after. The wall of action is the hardest part, it is purely technical in some ways. It is the point were generating effort becomes effortless. There is no guide, only action. Or maybe there is a guide that I just have no idea. This seems unlikely, I just have no idea.

Now I need a better example that works well outside of it’s context. My example will be a list of 30 rules on writing from Jack Kerouac. It is actually 30 rules on how to make good prose. It’s called by him “Belief and Technique for Modern Prose*. Most lists online which put it up call it some thing like “Kerouac’s 30 rules for writing” or “cool essentials for writing spontaneous prose”. Kerouac is of course famous for his improvised semi-stream of consciousness style and his alcohol and drug use. This list of rules is short and somewhat amusing. Go read it, or listen to it in the form I initially encountered it in.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAXginhe4ec&ab_channel=polymathematics Article: https://www.writerswrite.co.za/kerouacs-30-rules-writing/

Woah? Right. These rules are bonkers, not necessarily in a good, or bad, or neither way. They are half useless and half unintelligible, on first glance. Most of them have nothing to do with writing on first glance. Yet on the second and third glance they seem meaningful. Why should a writer not get drunk outside their own home? How does this effect prose? These are fine things to point out about this list initially looks. This list is actually deeper than it looks if you initially though it was pretentiously shallow, and it’s shallower if you thought it was super deep, or mind blowing. Look the drunk thing. This is rule 3. You will have just read rules one and two, Kerouac likely wrote them one after another. These actually form a train of thought. See he wants you to write secret notebooks. He wants you to listen to everything. Those connect because how else will you remember what your listening too. So he is saying don’t get drunk outside your home, because how else will you hear the secrets to fill your notebooks with. To some people they might have picked this all up immediately upon reading the list and that I was pointing out the obvious, but others might have thought that this was a strange unnatural connection for me to make, and that I was projecting back into it my own ideas. I want these two groups to become friends. Not all of these rules are close to valid, or understandable. I do not know much about the author Marcel Proust, or what it means to be an “old teahead of time”. They are a part of Keroauc’s mental map of the world, they maybe great advice to him, but horrible advice to many other people who have no idea what a “dumbsaint” is. The listicle that states that these are essentials are the real issue I think. There are people in the world who have read these rules and let these rules control them, because maybe they heard that Kerouac was a famous writer.

So I want to use these concepts that I have developed to talk about ethics. This is just the first step though. Though I need to think about this more, because it is basically rooted in a issue I have with the famous ethical question the trolley problem. In general you will never directly face the literal trolley problem. It’s a somewhat misleading and stressful question. Even if you have an answer in the abstract, you still have to hesitate if the problem were to actually arises. Also it’s not even a strict test of ultilatarianism versus deontology, as it is often presented as being. Imagine the one person on the track is super important and will save thousands. Imagine the five people are all horrible. Most people who subscribe to ethical theories will also concede exceptions to their given theory. A deontologist when surprised with the lying to Nazis to save News scenario may contradict themselves, and a utilitarian when asked if they would brutally rape someone to save two might say no. The cultural sensitivity around certain topic makes black and white, ultilatarian versus deontologist positions either impossible, or merely true as rules of thumb. This connects to advice, because generally advice is accepted as in the form of rule of thumb. Though this can often demean advice, and make the advice fail because there can be to many exceptions built up. If advice, or ethics is taken to be absolute law of reality then it becomes impossible, contradictory, and stressful as previously talked about.

Advice is in some respects then a sister of ethics. Advice tends to be conductive to virtue, but not essential itself. Like what the German philosopher Imanuel Kant thought about pets. He believed that being nice to animals was not strictly morally necessary, but that it was a sign that someone was going to break real human ethical law if they abused animals. Though I also think that it’s maybe different from this, because he also abscribes no in-itself value at all to not hurting animals. I would likely ascribe some, but not as much. Kant only allows yes/no in itself values, all other values are end based. Why can’t value have ends and be in-itself real value. I think allowing varying levels of both varieties of value in an ethical action is nessarily for a nuanced conception of it. So I guess I think that the word advice has the connotation of lesser value than ethics. So advice maybe fits onto a spectrum of possible ethical value. The real hard part is navigating the difficulties of particularly situations and particular exceptions to the rule. This navigating requires experience, and seems to not be fully prefectable as is common sense. Common sense has a great deal to do with it. This always seems to trouble me, because I on a personal level think that commons sense is a fairly dogmatic idea. Yet on a practical level I think that we are always seeped in common sense anyways, and that the reasons why you should do a specific thing can be less important than the need for action at all. This is because common sense needs some level of dogmatic acceptance to follow it, but this acceptance has greater rewards than uncompromisingly useless strict forms anti-dogmatism. I still feel unresolved about most of my questions about advice.

 
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from hwithumalut fiction

Streets lights dreaming in terms of fire Cell phone’s sweet songs singing higher Lanes of suburban lawns of the same style Childhood friendships in memories long gone Teenagers riding sleepily along the yellow. Friends not seatbelted that need no weak talk like “hello” Bottles sit in both cars running both ways Glass and metal is in minds endless haze Whining lights of red and then blue The world must be repatched with glue

 
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from GUTIMETEO

Máxima: 19,1ºC Mínima: -3,8ºC Media: 5,0ºC Lluvia: 26,6 mm. Mes de Febrero seco y frío, muchos días hemos tenido con temperaturas mínimas bajas, la nieve nos visito dos días, el segundo dejando 2 cms. de depósito. La mínima de -3,8 es la segunda más baja de la serie, la medía de temperaturas es de las más bajas de la serie. Solo ha faltado que lloviese más, a ver Marzo.

 
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from SarahAnneDipitous

Sometimes I think about the police state we're building—and how it will specifically affect me as a woman—and I realize the fact that letting so many apps and devices have information about me is probably a mistake.

I also think about the fact that the people who think the government is stealing our souls or whatever also think law enforcement should have access to my most private information. If I have intimate information about my body recorded, say, on a period tracker, the GOP thinks that it should be available freely and easily.

Tbh, I don't think they think of law enforcement as “government” most of the time. Signs of their racist origins that, while we hate the government, we trust a violent, criminal gang to bring about justice. Hmm. I don't personally feel great about domestic abusers, murderers, and rapists (and their many enablers) getting access to a ton of info about me. Doesn't seem awesome.

I'm trying, slowly, to prune the data that gets recorded about me: changing my SMS app so that at least Google doesn't have all my records. My cellphone carrier still does though. But at least my locally stored texts are now encrypted. Anything to be less transparent.

Of course “anything” comes with the caveat that security and convenience are often at odds. And once you are used to the convenience, it's hard to do without. But convenience comes at a steep cost which, in my mind, is steadily rising. If we are going to create a police-state, the least I can do is start to “police” my own actions and what I choose to share with the world.

 
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