neuroplasticity article
Here's a basic rundown of the history (and fanaticism) of neuroplasticity. Turns out our brains are neither hardwired at birth nor able to make us fly by thinking. Who knew!?
hennessy youngman on post-structuralism
kinder
"It is a little embarrassing that, after forty-five years of research and study, the best advice I can give to people is to be a little kinder to each other." --Aldous Huxley
situationists
A very short introduction to the Situationists.
alok vaid-menon
Here are some highlights from this interview with Alok Vaid-Menon.
"I hate how 'growing up' means that we are taught not to be honest and vulnerable with each other in public. I want to know everything about everyone. I am so bad at small talk. At parties with strangers I want to talk about your daddy issues and your first kiss and what you wanted your life to become and whether or not that came true. It’s hard for me to live in a world where we are taught that people we do not know are 'strangers,' and where we are taught to afford infinite complexity to ourselves and not others. Most of the time I want to scream in large groups about all of the parts of ourselves that we have to censor in order to become coherent."
"I struggle with how we have to aestheticize our pain – often make it beautiful – in order for it to be taken seriously."
"I’m working on understanding apathy as a political strategy of survival, as an active process of desensitization to the cruelty of the mundane. I’m working on understanding how to feel a type of happiness detached from possession – how to truly feel accomplished outside of the various rites of capitalism we are ingrained to value."
oh dear trailer
A movie trailer from the mind of Adam Curtis. Very interesting stuff.
He also made the 3 part series "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace" which makes the case against the concept of nature as self-regulating machine.
implicit bias test
Here are a few fun tests of our biases. Learn about your brain!
toilet paper
"What are you looking for in these lands of dependent transformation? The Buddha-Dharma is just so much waste paper to wipe off privy filth. The Buddha is a phantom body, the ancestors just old monks. The true Buddha has no figure, the true Dharma no form. All you are doing is devising models and patterns out of phantoms." --Lin Chi in 9th Century China
talking to the sun at fire island
A TRUE ACCOUNT OF TALKING TO THE SUN AT FIRE ISLAND
by Frank O'Hara
The Sun woke me this morning loud
and clear, saying "Hey! I've been
trying to wake you up for fifteen
minutes. Don't be so rude, you are
only the second poet I've ever chosen
to speak to personally
so why
aren't you more attentive? If I could
burn you through the window I would
to wake you up. I can't hang around
here all day."
"Sorry, Sun, I stayed
up late last night talking to Hal."
"When I woke up Mayakovsky he was
a lot more prompt" the Sun said
petulantly. "Most people are up
already waiting to see if I'm going
to put in an appearance."
I tried
to apologize "I missed you yesterday."
"That's better" he said. "I didn't
know you'd come out." "You may be
wondering why I've come so close?"
"Yes" I said beginning to feel hot
wondering if maybe he wasn't burning me
anyway.
"Frankly I wanted to tell you
I like your poetry. I see a lot
on my rounds and you're okay. You may
not be the greatest thing on earth, but
you're different. Now, I've heard some
say you're crazy, they being excessively
calm themselves to my mind, and other
crazy poets think that you're a boring
reactionary. Not me.
Just keep on
like I do and pay no attention. You'll
find that people always will complain
about the atmosphere, either too hot
or too cold too bright or too dark, days
too short or too long.
If you don't appear
at all one day they think you're lazy
or dead. Just keep right on, I like it.
And don't worry about your lineage
poetic or natural. The Sun shines on
the jungle, you know, on the tundra
the sea, the ghetto. Wherever you were
I knew it and saw you moving. I was waiting
for you to get to work.
And now that you
are making your own days, so to speak,
even if no one reads you but me
you won't be depressed. Not
everyone can look up, even at me. It
hurts their eyes."
"Oh Sun, I'm so grateful to you!"
"Thanks and remember I'm watching. It's
easier for me to speak to you out
here. I don't have to slide down
between buildings to get your ear.
I know you love Manhattan, but
you ought to look up more often.
And
always embrace things, people earth
sky stars, as I do, freely and with
the appropriate sense of space. That
is your inclination, known in the heavens
and you should follow it to hell, if
necessary, which I doubt.
Maybe we'll
speak again in Africa, of which I too
am specially fond. Go back to sleep now
Frank, and I may leave a tiny poem
in that brain of yours as my farewell."
"Sun, don't go!" I was awake
at last. "No, go I must, they're calling
me."
"Who are they?"
Rising he said "Some
day you'll know. They're calling to you
too." Darkly he rose, and then I slept.
a small-scale organic farmer
A Small-Scale Organic Farmer Wants You to Know a Few Things. A great essay by Claire Boyles at McSweeny's.
nader on sanders
"Bernie Sanders should tell the millions of voters watching the 'debates' that local socialism is as American as apple pie, going back to the 18th Century, by mentioning post offices, public highways, public drinking water systems, public libraries, public schools, public universities, and public electric companies as examples." --Ralph Nader
gunfinger
