No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
Steve Jobs's words:
Wednesday, September 14, 2011
A post about going into the military
Archiving a personal post about the military, and how it affected his life. Written by MarriedtoMurder: I enlisted in the Army at 19 to run away from life hoping I'd reinvent myself and become something BETTER. Well... depending on what Branch/MOS you enlist in will determine how you handle this choice - plus, if you are sensitive or if you have an issue with taking orders then the military might not be for you. I became very good at TAKING orders, I just had a problem with agreeing with or seeing the logic behind them. The military is a very inclusive environment. Once you're in, you become a part of the military. This means that the outside world becomes the past, and everything about your life is military. The people, the ideas, the mindset, the goals - EVERY. THING. If you do not adapt to this mindset then after a short while you may begin to resent the military. It depends though on the person. I was very home-sick, I didn't like my command, I was so shit tired of the training, the war, the shooting. I was infantry - so the stress was a lot higher than other jobs in the army. I just want to say that the Military will not SOLVE all of your problems. Yes, it's a stable job and there are benefits, but there is a lot to lose. Yourself, your friends, your life. Many people will downvote me who either were in and enjoyed it, or who buy into the romanticized idea of the military. I lived in the shit for years - hell, my battle buddy hung himself in the middle of the night during basic training in his wall-locker. I woke up to a purple faced friend who left me a note saying, "Thanks for trying." At 19 that was my entrance into the fast paced, high energy, balls to the wall life that the military is. Your opinion does not matter unless you are a high commander. Your life only matters as long as you are breathing and your family is living in a house. I did enjoy some good times, I met some fucking awesome people. I trained with Navy Seals and I went to many different places. However, there is a lot that I lost. One of the biggest things is my perception of self. Once I got out I lost the Soldier side of me and nothing I seem to do in life will ever be as... BIG as that. I feel like a Star who is past their prime. I feel like I can never live up to who I used to be, even when I was unhappy - I set super high standards and the feeling of "doing something great for your country" no longer follows me. Once you're out, at least in my case, I have never seen the world through the same eyes. Hard to explain, but life seems... dull. Its a mindfuck of a life my friend. Whatever you do I wish you the best, the best, the fucking BEST. If you need advice, please PM me. But do NOT fall for the recruiters easy going friendly attitude. You're a number. A car to sell. You mean nothing to them and they would try to sell you the moon if they thought you'd believe it. Do you regret it? Eh... I did what I did. If I could do it over I would. I mean... honestly - I learned a lot and now I could sleep in a park and not even suffer or bitch about it. It taught me a lot about how far I can push myself. It's just... there are a lot of long-lasting effects that haven't gone away for me. Not just from war, but from the life. It's hard, it really is. And it is not for everyone. There's a 50/50 gamble that you'll adapt. Most of the people who loved it are those who either wanted to do it since forever - who knew how to play the rank game, not make waves, make friends with higher-ups and move through with ease. Other people who seemed to like it where those who hungered for power, those who LOVED ordering people around. I had some amazing SSGT's who loved to help us, train us young kids, show us about life and mentor us. From a guy who had no dad, this really helped me. Just... don't make this choice without thinking it through - sitting on it. The military is also cutting (the army at least) 40,000 soldiers next year. They don't really need as many ranks, and it might be even HARDER for you. I know that when I enlisted it was at the height of 2 wars and their standards were much lower (academically, physically and so on). You have to WANT this life, you need to be the type of person who yearns for something more than just a fale-safe stable job. Those who enlisted because it was a last resort usually were the ones who said, "What the fuck did I do?" Those who had a long family history of serving, those who grew up in the South - hated middle-eastern people or just wanted to go and blow shit up where the ones who seemed to adapt better. For me, just... not being able to hold down a stable relationship - seeing friends come and go (die) - missing out on my family and friends back home... it all just became too hard on me and it made me hate my day-to-day. In retrospect, I appreciate some things that I went through, so yeah... I'd do it over again because I don't know what else I could have done at that time. If I could go back I'd say... go to school, get any job, try to build skills on your own - open a business, just be.... the military pay is meh - and most of the time you blow the money you save out of bordem, or just because it's the only happy thing you can do in that life. So... like out of a LOT of people I met, only one guy ever saved up money. Most, out of loneliness married any barracks whore who gave them the time of day. It's a very lonely life unless you love drinking and partying. If you can make it off base then yeah... maybe you will have fun but most off post cities are shitty. So... I'm ranting now lol. All I'm saying is DO THIS IF YOU WANT IT. If you want to be a cop, just do it. Don't go the military route. You will probably be so burned out of bureaucratic bullshit once you leave that you won't even want to go into another profession taking orders. At least... I wouldn't.
Thursday, September 8, 2011
What we learned from Netflix
Under promise. Over deliver.
People became so enamored with Netflix for its wide variety of offerings at a more than reasonable price. Now that the offerings change and the prices adjust due to contracts, Comcasts, and a need for more cash, people scoff, argue, and cancel their accounts. For $16/month, do you think what Netflix has to offer is no longer a great deal?
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Untitled
Written in response to Meredith Attwell Baker, one of the two Republican Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission, planning to step down and move into the position of head Comcast/NBC lobbyist (merged together only 4 months ago):
FCC chairmen have ALWAYS been corrupt (except Newton Minow -- as far as I know, he was kickass). Among the worst was Fowler, appointed by Reagan. Fowler thought tv was "a toaster with pictures" and struck down rules protecting children from host advertising (pikachu selling you pokemon toys), PTAR (the prime time access rule, trying to get local shows on prime time), and Fin/Syn (which made it so that independent production companies and producers, who take all the financial risk in making tv series, are able to make money off their creativity instead of selling their hopeless asses to networks).
He wasn't even the worst -- I think it was 1957-1958 when a representative named Harris led an investigation of the FCC for corruption. The FCC has 7 chairs with staggered 7-year terms. Most of them were having their kids' college paid for by networks or some other equally obvious sign of corruption, all while deregulating limits on how many stations a network could own. Thing was, Harris was getting paid off too -- he ordered his investigator, a guy named Schwartz, to not actually reveal the blatant corruption he had found. Schwartz refused to hide it, and Harris told him he'd destroy his career if he did. So Schwartz trotted over to the new york times and released it all anonymously. Congress decided to conduct hearings of the FCC, and before they even began 5 of the 7 chairs stepped down. The FCC head of the time did not, because, although he had the most blatant evidence of corruption piled against him, he was supported by the then president, Eisenhower.
But the FCC's got no choice. Unfortunately, whenever the FCC steps up to do its damn job and protect people, the politicians of congress step in and rule it "overstepped its bounds" based on whoever's the congressmen are getting paid by at that time. Even external groups get screwed over in an expensive court case if they try to be moral -- the lobbying arm of networks, the NAB, realized awhile back that host selling to kids is insanely immoral, and has huge, huge effects on kids like no one else, because at certain ages they cannot discriminate between the tv show and the ads. So they wrote guidelines (just guidelines!) against host selling, and these were struck down by congress in a pricey lawsuit later. Another case -- the "Fairness Doctrine" was a network's attempt at self-regulation, trying to make sure controversial issues got equal air time on both sides. It was upheld by the supreme court, then struck down in a veto by Reagan. Another example: the FCC tried, way back when cable companies were only CATV (cable antennae tv) to force them not to steal content. CATV was the equivalent of video piracy today -- they found towns where people couldn't get tv signals, attached a big antenna, wired the house, and bounced it down to them -- for a lofty price. And they didn't make their own content, but sometimes charged as though they had made the NBC shows themselves. If a network had a problem with them, they'd cut off the signal to that network, or fuck up its ratings some other way for them like by bouncing a competing stations' signal in from miles and miles away to a top city (think getting the top CBS shows from DC in NYC). The FCC tried to help the networks out by forbidding CATV from doing stuff like this, including cutting out certain networks and not others in a must-carry agreement. Struck down by Congress.
The real kicker is we've already lost everything to corruption, a long long long time ago. Do you have any idea what tv, what radio, originally was? Radio -- way back, by 1912 -- was a TWO-way medium. It was the internet without pictures. And it wasn't expensive -- you didn't have to buy a laptop or head to a library-- you could make a basic radio with some basic supplies, including a coffee canister. People spoke to strangers miles, sometimes hundreds of miles away. Can you imagine what the world would have been like had radio not been seized for commercial interests in 1927? Within 15 years, a medium that brought people together was boxed and sold to companies so they could sell things. Kinda reminds you of something, doesn't it? Kinda reminds you of net neutrality. The internet didn't come into full force until fairly recently. And already, companies are foaming at the mouth, trying to own the newest medium. And they'll probably win in the long run, too.
And we wonder why the US continues to have problems.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Great post by yeahiknow5 about America, right now (via Reddit)
I feel like this was worth reading, because I can't say I disagree with any of it, and I'd like to archive it here for anyone else to read. If you have any interest in American politics and future of our nation, you may find interest in it too.
The original link is here: http://www.reddit.com/r/socialism/comments/g0vaz/breaking_republicans_pass_bill_to_kill_collective/c1k6a3r
You should read "What's the Matter with Kansas" & "Deer Hunting With Jesus".
Both are great takes on a working class, anti-intellectual, redneck culture that has been convinced to consistently vote against their own best interests.
I listen to my own father, who has been the victim of layoffs from corporate merger after merger, who's had his retirement fucked, who's lost money on wall street - he's done everything he was 'supposed' to do. He joined the military, went to college, had 2 kids, bought the house, invested & saved his money, worked his fucking ass off all his life & he still has squat to show for it. Now as a man well into his 60s he's feeling the wrath of age discrimination, he's finding his skills becoming outdated & his pay & benefits today (for the last 10 years) are lower than what they've been in the last 30 for him. Living the american life he finds his health failing as he's a lifetime smoker with a growing waistline. He's the prototypical uncultured, red-blooded american male. He slathers his streak in ketchup, votes conservatives down the line, and wants the good old days before the women, blacks and fags took over. He's a flag waver, supports his troops, and fends for himself.
He's always bitching about how much money corporations have to spend bc of regulation & about how the upper class need a tax cut. Nothing in the world makes him angrier than "socialism" & the so-called welfare state. Working people getting needed services bothers him tremendously because a few extreme token examples get painted as degenerate leeches by the likes of AM Radio & Fox News.
ANd then he'll turn right around & support corporate subsidy for just about anything from corn to oil - b/c it "stimulates jobs" and it "trickles down". He refuses to recognize that we as a nation spend more money at the beckoning of corporate America than we even begin to touch what we spend on our own citizenry through what he claims is "welfare" or infrastructure.
He's a working class guy who's been fucked by the system all his life. He still puts his suit on with a kind of sad pride, every day, & goes to work downtown to phone-monkey job nowadays. He's doing a job any body could do but he likes to pretend all his education & experience has gotten him somewhere. He's deluded about what America's exceptional way of life has brought him personally as he is deluded about what the world is like at large.
So he denies global warming, blames the unions, blames teachers & other government workers, blames regulation, blames the EPA & the FDA, blames those struggling to make it in this world, blames the blacks, blames the immigrants, blames everyone & anyone but those at the top. He'd rather blame fellow working people trying to grab a piece of the pie, rather than blame the crooks who deprive us all. Because somehow - be it by gender identity, racial identity, national identity, he thinks his class, his type belongs at the top. He's the top dog! But he's not. He's a nigger, i'm a nigger, muslims are niggers and mexicans are niggers, teachers and steel workers, and farmers too. To people like the Koch Brothers, we're all niggers and my dad can't see that. This is an us vs them game and people like my father are fucking deluded as to what side they're on or can be on one day.
Somewhere deep down inside, he admires those at the top - he wants to be them & even though he knows he'll never be one of them, he likes to pretend.
He goes to his Applebee's, Red Lobster & Outback & bitches about all the blacks there. I think this is important to note - it's indicative of his whole perspective. He is the same CLASS of people as these folks, he's spending roughly the same amount on dinner as them, but thinks things are going to hell because they are there. He doesn't get that he IS THEM. He's the same fucking class, in the same fucking boat. He's got relatively the same education level, roughly the same pay checks, living roughly the same way of life. But he's been convinced to fight, to hate, to dislike his own class of people & to admire & defend the class that basically owns & controls his life & all our lives. He has been perfectly trained to rail against the 'other'. Against feminists, environmentalists, labor movements, racial minorities, immigrants, public sector workers, union members. These people aren't HIS brothers & sisters - they are his enemy. He's so busy hating "otherness" that he doesn't realize he is them - and we're all getting fucked by the same small group of people at the top.
This is the same thing as him blaming unions & the welfare state. He has been indoctrinated through the years to fight amongst, to disagree with, to blame, & sometimes to outright hate people in the same boat as him. Surely - he's not on welfare but when you look at his salary and then I look at the income of people laid off for the last 8 months who can't find work and are in need of assistance - you can't help but notice - He is more like them, than the class and wealth that he worships and will never be a part of. Ever. And it's funny - this old man, he's always talking about 'having class', he talks about those stupid "yankees" who "have no class or decency". He would scold me as a child for acting up "have some class!" But the reality is he is a tactless guy, farts at the dinner table and blames in on the dog, has the most difficult time understanding his audience - makes crude and offensive jokes in front of people he barely knows. He dips out of the most important and formal events of his life to 'catch the game'. He did so while my mother was in labor, he did so at my fucking wedding. I could only imagine him at a cocktail party amongst these rich assholes he worships and the stares, gawking, and gasps that would be produced b/c of the shit that pops out of his mouth and the way he acts. He knows nothing of wine, different types of silverware on the table, and has never been able to wrap his head around a multi-coursed meal. He'd rather just have a big well done steak with some french fries, ketchup - lots of ketchup. I know this all sounds like a cheap shot but the man has no culture to him, and little 'class'. He's a grown up 'good old boy' from a small town with a mediocre education who knows suburban American life and that's all he knows. Yet somehow he worships the class above him and to think, these people wouldn't be caught dead eating where he eats, or even eating what he eats when they go out. These people would whisper to each other about his uncouth behavior. His broken English when he says "waRshington" or "waRsh", "y'all", "irregardless" and large portion of the English language that he mispronounces or flat out makes up. These people would not be caught dead with my father. So I fail to see why they get such lavish praise from him. Not only does he kiss the ass of, but actively defend & fight on behalf of those who would take everything away from him, his wife & his family if they could make a buck on it - because he believes in an American dream & a way of life that simply doesn't exist. He's a peasant, a 'working class hero', he's a pawn, a worker-bee, a nigger, a wage slave. He's not them, he'll never be them. And "their" policies directly spit right in his face, in my face, in all our faces.
He talks of freedom of those who have all the capital, but he doesn't worry about his own freedom. Liberty and freedom, when you don't have money, is just a word. It is meaningless drivel when you can't afford healthcare, education, shelter, retirement, and food. Look at Latin America - they were told (or forced) to give up on "socialism" in many nations - they were told privatizing water, electricity and other utilities would increase efficiency and that they would have LIBERTY! Instead - rich people who had no ties to their culture took over the utilities, raised the prices to the point most of these things became unaffordable luxuries. But you know -- they finally had "freedom!", they had "liberty!" That's capitalism baby!
And it's no different here. If you cannot find somekind of financial stability for necessities - you aren't free. It's that simple. In this regard, he doesn't worry about the freedom of his neighbors, of his children, or himself. All he see's as those liberal that take away rich people's money are the same people telling him where he can & cannot smoke and that he should put his seatbelt on - so liberals must "hate freedom!". Those damned reading elitist liberal communists!
He has been convinced, as have many Americans - to hate their own & to defend their masters. To squabble over our petty & even cosmetic differences, rather than to unite on our common interests to fight for proper pay, benefits, rights as a consumer & as a worker, & for a clean environment.
This is what happens when you have a class of people who were never taught to think for themselves, who act like reading is for fags, who are more willing to listen to hot heads like Beck & Limbaugh than to read any kind of political theorists, scientists, or economists. This is what happens when you close your mind & you become one who's always looking for that "other" to hate & to blame for your problems rather than to look at yourself or open your eyes to the bigger picture.
People like my dad are willing to accept AM radio, Fox News talk shows, & even Fwd chain emails as official sources, & then single-handedly ignore any material the talking heads on these shows didn't point him to. Because you can't trust anyone but them!
The ability to critically think, verify, discern the credibility of sources, to do the damned research yourself, is completely lost on these folks. That's what these fucking Tea Party & GOP talking heads hope for. They hope to god that their lies they spew get echoed in the public sphere so often that it becomes reality. That people are too dumb or too lazy to verify what they spout. This makes it so that people who are trying to get real shit done have to waste our time correcting mis-truths & disinformation just to garnish the slightest bit of public support to make progress anywhere.
People don't realize how dangerous this shit is. Right now the economy is & had been in the shitter. People are scared. People have lost their jobs & they're angry. They have organized & mobilized into this populist "tea party". They even think it's a real grassroots org & dismissing the fact that they're being led by billionaires & a corporate media. These are the angry masses that will eat up any scapegoat that their "leaders" feed them. We've seen this in history before.
I'm not trying to evoke Godwins Law or anything but i see a lot of correlations between the right-wing disenfranchised populist uprising here in America & a lot of what people experience in Wiemar Germany. There was a lot of angry people, scared about the loss of their jobs & an economy in bad shape. Those angry, uneducated people were looking for someone to blame. They didn't care if they sided with a political party that would be responsible for fucking them over & destroying their democracy, not to mention the massive harm they would do to other groups.
No, all that mattered was they found leaders who pretended to have answers. People like quick & simple answers & fixes, certainty & shared anger. That's what the Nazi Party gave them. That's what the Tea Party/Fox News/AM Radio & portions of the GOP are giving this right wing uprising too.
Anything intellectual is ignored or met with disinformation & a general air an superior anti-intellectualism. Everywhere I go: home to my parents, at work in the break room, flip on the tv, browse the internet - i see the same message: "My opinion is better than your facts". This approach is rooted deeply in ignorance & anger most of the time. When the populace stops listening to those with brains & ignores factual information, & opts for those that shout opinions, we got a problem.
The Tea Party would be an extremely powerful force if they had a politician that was worth a damn. Every time they have someone who is charismatic, they're an obvious idiot or crook. If somebody comes along who is charismatic & honest the US is in trouble bc of the frustration, disillusionment, justified anger & the absence of any coherent response from liberals. What are people supposed to think if someone says ‘I have got an answer, we have an enemy’? There it was the Jews. Here it will be the illegal immigrants from Mexico, the Muslims, teachers, unions, Planned Parenthood, NPR, & blacks (you can toss in atheists, homosexuals & liberals too).
We will be told that WASPy private sector males are a persecuted minority. We will be told we have to defend ourselves & the honor of the nation. instead of fixing problems that truly affect the all of the working class, the nation will be convinced to support legislation that will further protect & consolidate power for the corporate elite. All those privacy rights, the voice we have in our government, & due process checks & balances that protect us all? Those things just get in the way of security & stability. The right-wing that supports these parties & leaders get hurt too, just in a more subtle way - they give away their rights & are too stupid to realize what they've done to themselves.
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Update on the New Zealand earthquake.. first hand experience
I am privileged to correspond with an ex-American now-New Zealander via a private forum. Today, he updated us with his first hand account of the earthquake aftermath.
Monday, November 29, 2010
IQ.org archive has something to say about Wikileaks
Sun 31 Dec 2006 : The non linear effects of leaks on unjust systems of governance
"You may want to read The Road to Hanoi or Conspiracy as Governance ; an obscure motivational document, almost useless in light of its decontextualization and perhaps even then. But if you read this latter document while thinking about how different structures of power are differentially affected by leaks (the defection of the inner to the outer) its motivations may become clearer.
The more secretive or unjust an organization is, the more leaks induce fear and paranoia in its leadership and planning coterie. This must result in minimization of efficient internal communications mechanisms (an increase in cognitive "secrecy tax") and consequent system-wide cognitive decline resulting in decreased ability to hold onto power as the environment demands adaption.
Hence in a world where leaking is easy, secretive or unjust systems are nonlinearly hit relative to open, just systems. Since unjust systems, by their nature induce opponents, and in many places barely have the upper hand, mass leaking leaves them exquisitely vulnerable to those who seek to replace them with more open forms of governance.
Only revealed injustice can be answered; for man to do anything intelligent he has to know what's actually going on. "