Too many possessions is clutter, visual stress, cleaning, maintenance, debt, less happiness. Too many tasks makes it harder to focus on any one thing or get anything done. Too many things we want to learn means we never learn anything well.
~ Leo Babauta, from The Necessary Art of Subtraction
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First they will laugh.
~ unknown
Then they will copy.
Don’t. Give. Up.
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As we approach the 100 year anniversary of the creation of the Federal Reserve, it is absolutely imperative that we get the American people to understand that the Fed is at the very heart of our economic problems. It is a system of money that was created by the bankers and that operates for the benefit of the bankers. The American people like to think that we have a “democratic system”, but there is nothing “democratic” about the Federal Reserve.
~ Michael Snyder, from «http://www.redflagnews.com/headlines/25-fast-facts-about-the-federal-reserve-please-share-with-everyone-you-know»
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And so we get to the so-called “OK Plateau” — the point at which our autopilot of expertise confines us to a sort of comfort zone, where we perform the task in question in efficient enough a way that we cease caring for improvement. We reach this OK Plateau in pursuing just about every goal, from learning to drive to mastering a foreign language to dieting, where after an initial stage of rapid improvement, we find ourselves in that place at once comforting in its good-enoughness and demotivating in its sudden dip in positive reinforcement via palpable betterment.
~ Maria Popova, from The Psychology of Getting Unstuck
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Odds that a word I type will start with some weird symbol.
~ Randall Munroe, from Sigil Cycle
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Hours of Bill Cosby on reel-to-reel.
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The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened, it’s just wonderful. And … the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned.
~ Douglas Adams
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It’s worth the effort, because being awake means we’re not missing life as we walk through it. Being awake means we’re conscious of what’s going on inside us, as it happens, and so can make more conscious choices rather than acting on our impulses all the time.
~ Leo Babauta from, 12 Indispensable Mindful Living Tools
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For several years, I’ve been on the verge of writing something about grading within Kinokawa. Stefan Stenudd has, hit all the high points, and saved me a lot of effort:
Therefore, though with some reluctance, I have kyu and dan gradings in our dojo, trying to make sure that everyone advances in grades in accordance with his or her advancement in aikido. That’s not rocket science, but it’s not a piece of cake either.
~ Stefan Stenudd from, The Gordian Knot of Grading
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If you’ve been studying with Sensei Wirth for some time, you’ll notice a few obvious differences – things like our having changed to colored belts for kyu ranks ~2001/2002, hakama for dan ranks, etc. He also dives deeper into the details of performing higher level dan gradings – which is something that I don’t have to worry about.
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Data brokers have pioneered advanced techniques to collect and collate information about consumers’ offline, online and mobile behavior. But they have been slow to develop innovative ways for consumers to gain access to the information that companies obtain, share and sell about them for marketing purposes. Now federal regulators are pressuring data brokers to operate more transparently.
In 2012, a report by the Federal Trade Commission recommended that the industry set up a public Web portal that would display the names and contact information of every data broker doing business in the United States, as well as describe consumers’ data access rights and other choices. But, for years the data brokers have been too busy to build a centralized Web portal for consumers. So, we decided to help them out and StopDataMining.me was born!
~ http://www.stopdatamining.me
Go there. Then, one by one, follow the links to the data mining companies “opt-out” forms. These companies ALREADY know who you are.
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