Resources and technology →

Published May 15, 2023  ·  All posts on May 15  ·  

But the deeper reason is that there’s really no such thing as a natural resource. All resources are artificial. They are a product of technology. And economic growth is ultimately driven, not by material resources, but by ideas.

~ Jason Crawford from Can Economic Growth Continue Over the Long-term?

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A few years ago my thinking shifted. I used to think of something, simply by its existence, as being a “natural resource.” More recently I’ve begun to pay attention to which, and how much, technology has to be added for something to be a resource. Anything in the ground has no special value until someone adds the mining or drilling, the refinement, distribution and so on. That makes it clearer how to evaluate the trade-offs.

It becomes easier to visualize, and realize, that the constraints are not the amount of the natural resource (the raw stuff) but rather that the limits are all the expense, destruction, energy, transformation, and ideas that have to go into making that raw stuff usable. And sometimes, it’s just not the right trade-off to make a something into something useable.

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May 14, 2023 — #32 →

Published May 14, 2023  ·  All posts on May 14  ·  

Reading time: About 5 minutes, 900 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/32

Generous silence →

Published May 14, 2023  ·  All posts on May 14  ·  , ,

Generous silence provides space for the other person to be with their own self, for you to be with them for presence to show up. It allows them to take a breath. It whispers, “this is an interesting place to be. Let’s hang out here for a moment.” […] Generous silence can allow the delicate insights of a conversation to blossom and bloom.

~ Michael Bungay Stanier

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Human collaborators →

Published May 14, 2023  ·  All posts on May 14  ·  ,

And so we did the math, and it was really at the same time that I had lost [my idea] that she had gotten [her idea]. And we like to think that the idea jumped from my mind to hers during our little kiss that we had when we met. That’s our magical thinking around it. But it’s — there is no explanation for that other than the one that I’ve always abided by, which is that ideas are conscious and living, and they have will, and they have great desire to be made, and they spin through the cosmos, looking for human collaborators.

~ Elizabeth Gilbert from, The Muse Strikes Again

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Obviously that’s not how any of it really works. But it is a sublime, inspiring idea! I know that if I focus (or worse, fixate) on where some idea came from it’s easy to lose the delight of the overall thing. This cosmic perspective from Gilbert reminds me to simply take things and run with them. If I can. If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.

If I can’t run with it, well, that’s okay too. It is simply okay. But, if I still need some self-convincing, that cosmic perspective gives me the comfort I need to let go.

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Gravy →

Published May 13, 2023  ·  All posts on May 13  ·  ,

To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.

~ Bette Davis

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Miracles →

Published May 12, 2023  ·  All posts on May 12  ·  , ,

A person who is lucidly aware of the miracles that surround him, who has learned to bear up under the loneliness, has made quite a bit of progress on the road to wisdom.

~ M. C. Escher

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Enhancing relationships →

Published May 12, 2023  ·  All posts on May 12  ·  ,

HomeNet could be (and has been) interpreted as an indictment of the internet, or screens, or modern communications technology in general. In truth, it illustrates a much simpler truth about love and happiness: Technology that crowds out our real-life interaction with others will lower our well-being and thus must be managed with great care in our lives. In order to reap their full benefits, we should use digital tools in ways that enhance our relationships.

~ Arthur C. Brooks from, Technology Can Make Your Relationships Shallower

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I’m reminded of some comments by Rafe Kelley.

If junk food is flavor divorced from nutrition, then pornography is sexuality divorced from the context of relationships. Video games are thrill divorced from physicality. And so you take these boys who have this inherent aggression and you let them play Fortnite, and they can play all day without any self-regulation from having the physical demands of actual rough and tumble play. The problem is that it so easily out-competes the actual thing that we need, which is the real physical play.

~ Rafe Kelley from a video short from an Instagram post, so I’ll just link you to his Evolve. Move. Play. project.

Brooks and Kelley are talking about different technologies, but I think they’re both pointing toward the “divorce” being the actual issue. The arrival in the living room (mentioned by Brooks) divorced [I’ll say] the mental stimulation from the other people in the house.

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Love →

Published May 11, 2023  ·  All posts on May 11  ·  ,

You want my opinion? We’re all a little weird. And life is a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall into mutually satisfying weirdness—and call it love—true love.

~ Robert Fulghum

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Which are necessary →

Published May 10, 2023  ·  All posts on May 10  ·  ,

Real wisdom is not the knowledge of everything, but the knowledge of which things in life are necessary, which are less necessary, and which are completely unnecessary to know. Among the most necessary knowledge is the knowledge of how to live well, that is, how to produce the least possible evil and the greatest goodness in one’s life. At present, people study useless sciences, but forget to study this, the most important knowledge.

~ Leo Tolstoy

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What scales →

Published May 10, 2023  ·  All posts on May 10  ·  

efficiency scales but isn’t memorable

inefficiency is memorable but doesn’t scale

~ “Gaping Void” from, «https://www.gapingvoid.com/blog/2022/09/20/core-human-motivations-thoughts-inspired-by-kunal-shah/»

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This post over on Gaping Void is a great tour of their illustration style. There are several fun and interesting take-aways from a podcast episode from a different favorite site of mine, Farnam Street.

The point (from Shah, in the podcast) about what scales and what doesn’t has always fascinated me. If I try to imagine how to build something (whatever it is) in a way that it will scale up to “huge” it never works out well. Planning for scale up front, involves huge amounts of time, and then huge amounts of building. Instead, I like to think of technology (or any system) as a force multiplier; can I, by my own linear work, do something whose affect can be multiplied through technology?

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