“Blogging is akin to stand-up comedy — it’s not coherent drama, it’s a stream of wisecracks. It’s also like street art — just sort of there, stuck in the by-way, begging attention, then crumbling rapidly.”
Category Archives: Quotable & Notes
Advice from Kevin Kelly
On his 68th birthday, Kevin Kelly offers 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice from Kevin Kelly. My two favorites:
“You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.”
“When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.”
“ambulatory sacks of virus”
Reply
“Anyone else getting a bit … relaxed about all this? I say this as someone who washes his hands after reading about COVID-19, because all hypochondriacs know you can get something just by perusing a list of symptoms. But have we become, let’s say, slightly less alarmed? You keep your distance from the other ambulatory sacks of virus, previously known as “people,” and you don’t feel all that anxious.”
“Of course, that’s the last thing we should be. We should be determined to hunker as long as it takes.”
The same thing at the same time
“There’s never been a time in modern human history when every person is seriously worried about the same thing at the same time. And there’s never before been a ubiquitous threat that can be so instantly broadcast to a world of 7.8 billion people.”
— David Ropeik, consultant on risk management and former instructor in risk communication at the Harvard School of Public Health
We’re All Monastics Now
“In this global pandemic, we’re in an era of isolation, retreat. We’re also in an era of heightened uncertainty. This can be a terrible thing, and drive us to loneliness and distraction … or it can be a time of practice, reflection, and deepening.”
Video
“It’s hard to explain, but, for me, just aiming a speelycaptor (video recorder) at something doesn’t collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.”
— ANATHEM (Neal Stephenson)
To die of old age (Carl Hiaasen – Basket Case)
My first blog post back in 2002 was a quote from Carl Hiaasen’s Basket Case. I’m rereading the book for the umpteenth time and came across the following which… resonates.
“Early on I made up my mind not to die of anything but old age. Stopped smoking because I was afraid of the cancer. Swore off booze because I was scared of driving my car into a tree. Gave up hunting because I was scared of blowing my own head off. Quit chasing trim because I was afraid of being murdered by a jealous husband. Shaved the odds, is what I set out to do. Missed out on a ton of fun, but that’s all right. All my friends are planted in the ground and here I am!”
So sane, so joyous
“The playfulness and joy of a dog, its unconditional love and readiness to celebrate life at any moment, often contrast sharply with the inner state of the dog’s owner — depressed, anxious, burdened by problems, lost in thought, not present in the only place and only time there is: Here and Now. One wonders: living with this person, how does the dog manage to remain so sane, so joyous?”
— Eckhart Tolle
“An existential threat to humanity”
The following quote is from Steven Levy’s new book, Facebook: The Inside Story.
“We’ve actually built an AI that’s more powerful than the human mind and we hid it from all of society by calling it something else,” Harris says. “By calling it the Facebook News Feed, no one noticed that we’d actually built an AI that’s completely run loose and out of control.” Harris says that using the News Feed is like fighting an unbeatable computer chess player—it knows your weaknesses and beats you every time.”
— Tristan Harris (former Google interface engineer)
Order
“In the forest, there is an incomprehensible order that to the mind looks like chaos. It is beyond the mental categories of good and bad. You cannot understand it through thought, but you can sense it when you let go of thought, become still and alert, and don’t try to understand or explain. Only then can you be aware of the sacredness of the forest. As soon as you sense that hidden harmony, that sacredness, you realize you are not separate from it, and when you realize that, you become a conscious participant in it. In this way, nature can help you become realigned with the wholeness of life.”
— Eckhart Tolle