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Geoff's Miscellany

Miscellaneous Musings

Culture

You Have No Power Here, This is a Library

June 12, 2020 by Geoff Leave a Comment

This is funny.

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Filed Under: Culture

What is true wealth?

June 11, 2020 by Geoff Leave a Comment

NN Taleb delineates some features of true wealth. What do you think, is anything missing?

TRUE WEALTH

Worriless sleeping
Clear conscience
Reciprocal gratitude
Absence of envy
Muscle strength
Frequent laughs
No meals alone
No gym classes
Good digestive functions
No meeting rooms
Periodic surprises
Foamy coffee
Crusty bread
Ability to nap
Access to a hammock

— Nassim Nicholas Taleb (@nntaleb) June 11, 2020

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Filed Under: Culture, Philosophy

Spartan by Five Iron Frenzy

June 9, 2020 by Geoff Leave a Comment

There are some songs that stick in your head forever. This is one for me. I don’t even know how I came across this album in high school, but I did. Anyway, I think Reese Roper really got articulated something profound in this brief and fairly unpoetic song. Here’s my favorite bit (it starts at 00:59):

Limping through the world
There’s a knowing look or two
Is it just the cripples here
Who understand the truth?
Why is love so painful
Why do we always lose
Paving pathways for the lost
The bitter, and recluse?
He said “Love endures all things”
And it hurt to think it’s true
did it nail Him on a cross
did it crucify Him too?

Lyrics

Billie Holiday on the radio
My sluggish heart is beating seven beats too slow
Another sad song and another shot of blue
Cold and unconcerned are anything but new
He said “Love endures all things”
And it hurts to think He’s right
If I mark the span of failure
Is his burden just as light?

I am, Spartan
Close my heart so tight
Jesus
Save me
From myself tonight

Limping through the world
There’s a knowing look or two
Is it just the cripples here
Who understand the truth?
Why is love so painful
Why do we always lose
Paving pathways for the lost
The bitter, and recluse?
He said “Love endures all things”
And it hurt to think it’s true
did it nail Him on a cross
did it crucify Him too?

(Bridge)
The angels are singing over the plains
The shepherds are quaking, echoing refrains (Echoing refrains)
And all of our slogans designed to take away the pain
Meant nothing to the Son of God that night in Bethlehem

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Filed Under: Music, Christianity Tagged With: Five Iron Frenzy

Remote Work, Transportation, and SARS-CoV-2

March 17, 2020 by Geoff Leave a Comment

In the past 100 years, the world has experienced three major technological revolutions with respect to human industriousness and communication:

  1. Mass availability of automobiles for personal travel.
  2. Mass telecommunications for mass one-way messages via television/radio and telephone calls.
  3. Mass availability of personal computers.

With these three technologies, one would think that the American dream would be to work from home or near home, to drive to work to solve in-person problems and work communications would be brief, informative, and useful.

Instead, we’re in this bizarre circumstance wherein traveling to a central location (because it came first) is the primary work mindset and telecommunications and computers are used to make employees more aware of their work bureaucracy from home.

Now, working from home has trials and difficulties, but it also allows for helping family, choosing hours, working efficiently without interruption from lazy co-workers, and so-on. This applies to education, most jobs

My hope during the SARS-CoV-2 quarantine situation is that we can make the family the center of American life with work as the intrusion.

This would be good. Old habits die hard, though.

Of course, the issues raised by a viral spread this large are both practical and speculative, for instance, while a smaller world with more local economies would make local quarantining far easier, having megacorporations like Amazon, for all the problems it causes, makes it easier for people to access things like vitamin C, materials they need for their small business when local supplies are unavailable, and so-on. Is there a way, in the future, to have a world that integrates the resources of a global economy while maintaining the local culture and efficiencies of local communities. Like, why is every building in America made of drywall when it mildews easily in humid areas? Mega-economies are efficient at spreading things everywhere regardless of appropriateness.

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Filed Under: Economics, Culture

What my World Sounds Like

January 29, 2020 by Geoff Leave a Comment

Ultramindset hack: listen to this while you do anything to make that thing feel more significant.

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Filed Under: Music Tagged With: music

Bruce Springsteen: The Hitter

December 17, 2019 by Geoff Leave a Comment

The Hitter is a good song about adventure, loss, memory, and compromise. It’s hard to to listen to several times consecutively when I periodically remember it.

I hope you enjoy it.

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Filed Under: Music, Culture

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