Category: ruminations
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Meandering Thoughts about How to Encounter the World
One of the things about knowing the ultimate question is that you may ask it everywhere. And in asking it everywhere you run the risk of becoming an insolent grade-schooler new in the knowledge that they can ask the question “Why?” of anything. This gives rise to the risk that you use it to endlessly […]
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Habits Matter
It has been more than a month since I posted here. And before a short streak of three relatively-consecutive posts, it had been nearly a month before that. I say this not to apologize–it’s been far too long for that to be anything but hollow–but to demonstrate my point. Around the start of June of […]
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Serendipity and Ephemerality
Making twilight more beautiful, since the dawn of time Because I nearly missed it, and because it wasn’t going to be around long, I seemed far more concerned than anyone else that tonight’s twilight, in this time and place, was full of beautiful and unexpected colors, in beautiful and unexpected places. I suppose it started […]
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The Perfect Day
I was struck recently, by a bit of profundity in the oddest of places. Twitter, as you may know, is a “micro-blogging” system that allows you to post thoughts of at most 140 characters. It sounds like thoroughly pointless technology, but it was there that I found this: so many different ways i could have […]
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How Blogs Die
wickenden (ASA) There are two general signs that a blog is heading toward extinction. The first is a declining frequency of posting, and the second is a proportional rise in the number of posts about the blog itself. These two don’t always go hand-in-hand; sometimes it’s just one or the other, sometimes you don’t get […]
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The One-Off News
Recently I’ve been giving some serious thought to my aversion to cable news, local news programs, and the vast quantities of stories that circulate on the internet. I came to this rough conclusion: There are essentially two kinds of news: events and trends that change the lives of millions of people, and one-off stories about […]
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The Narcissism of Communication
All communication is narcissistic. By writing something that I intend for others to read, I am saying that my idea–the one expressed in this, the prior, and next sentences–is good enough, clever enough, interesting enough, that people should pay attention to it. By making any effort to communicate with anyone, I’m saying that I’m worthy […]
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A Drop in the Bucket
raspberreh (ASA) A few years ago, my understanding of the state of the world and it’s need for change was rather pessimistic. I saw a great flood of things going wrong. That the dam that had been holding catastrophe back for decades was beginning to leak. At best, I thought, I could hope to plug […]
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Vestigial Fear
Sam UL Fear is rightly synonymous with anxiety. Like anxiety, fear is essentially a feeling of discomfort or unease with a given situation. Dark alleys in dangerous neighborhoods are something of which I am fearful. They make me anxious. Such a fear is reasonable in the proper amount. And should my fear make me more […]
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Tomorrow, You’ll Be Dead
wickenden (ASA) It can seem like there are hundreds of them. Those little phrases that tell you that you should make the most of today. Like, “Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.” Or “We’re only dancing on this earth for a short while.” Or “Live everyday as if it were your last.” […]