7 for Sunday is a weekly serving of 7 things for you to savor. — It’s an email containing my reflections on interesting things I find laying about, seasoned with some quotes from my collection. See https://7forsunday.com/.
My blog has an enormous amount of photography. There are over 2,000 images posted, and while many are simply me saving typing a thousand words, many of them are gorgeous. I’ve cherry-picked the best of them into a Featured Photography page.
…actually, since I’m me, I set up some code that creates pages of images arranged into gallery-carousels, and I have only to tag the images behind-the-scenes rather than manually edit them into the page. I digress.
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Ours is the age of criticism. Religion and law try to escape from criticism, religion by saying that it is divine and law by showing that it is powerful. But some suspicions arise from this escape, because we can respect only those things which stand up in free and public trial.
~ Immanuel Kant
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The ways in which we are all susceptible to drowning ourselves into drama, and what it takes to float free, is what Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919–February 8, 1999) explores in her subtle, splendid 1978 novel The Sea, the Sea — the story of a talented but complacent playwright approaching the overlook of life, who is ultimately overcome by his tragic flaw: Despite his obsessive self-reflection (or perhaps precisely because of it), his egotism ultimately eclipses his creative spirit — that brightest and most generous part of us, the part rightly called our gift, the part that extends the outstretched hand of sympathy and wonder we call art and invites, in Iris Murdoch’s lovely phrase, “an occasion for unselfing.”
~ Maria Popova from Iris Murdoch on the Myth of Closure and the Beautiful, Maddening Blind Spots of Our Self-Knowledge
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I’m not a playwright—but the rest of that character seems too like me. “Drowning ourselves in drama…” “…obsessive self-reflection…” “…egotism ultimately eclipses his creative spirit…” Methinks The Sea The Sea would be a good cautionary tale for me to consume forthwith.
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Reading time: About 6 minutes, 1200 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/14
In recent years I’ve been choosing a touch phrase. The phrases are reminders, intended to cue up a larger train of thought.
For 2023 the phrase is “Choose today”. It is inspired by two different quotes, both having withstood the test of time:
Stick to what’s in front of you—idea, action, utterance. This is what you deserve. You could be good today. But instead you choose tomorrow.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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…and one of my daily reflection prompts from Epictetus:
So is it possible to be altogether faultless? No, that is impractical; but it is possible to strive continuously not to commit faults. For we shall have cause to be satisfied if, by never relaxing our attention, we shall escape at least a few faults. But as it is, when you say, “I will begin to pay attention tomorrow,” you should know that what you are really saying is this: “I will be shameless, inopportune, abject today; it will be in the power of others to cause me distress; I will get angry, I will be envious today.” See how many evils you are permitting yourself. But if it is well for you to pay attention tomorrow, how much better would it be today? If it is to your advantage tomorrow, it is much more so today, so that you may be able to do the same again tomorrow, and not put it off once more, to the day after tomorrow.
~ Epictetus, 4.12.19-21
Indeed. If it is to my advantage tomorrow, it is much more so today.
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For it’s always that way with the sacred value of life. We forget it as long as it belongs to us, and give it as little attention during the unconcerned hours of our life as we do the stars in the light of day. Darkness must fall before we are aware of the majesty of the stars above our heads.
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Congratulations on the new library, because it isn’t just a library. It is a space ship that will take you to the farthest reaches of the Universe, a time machine that will take you to the far past and the far future, a teacher that knows more than any human being, a friend that will amuse you and console you—and most of all, a gateway, to a better and happier and more useful life.
~ Isaac Asimov, from Isaac Asimov On How Libraries Can Change Your Life
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This tiny little post, which is written around Asimov’s short note quoted above, launched me in off in multiple directions. A library. Asimov. A type–written note. Even Asimov still made typing mistakes—how fast must he have been able to type after all those years of writing? What type writer did he use? Every now and then I feel like getting a type writer—but I spin off into looking at typefaces, and what the heck would I actually do with a type writer? OMG no I’m not going to start type writing the slips in the slipbox. (Because that’d be insane, and because hand writing the slips is part of the point since it reinforces learning. I don’t think typing would do that.) And I keep thinking I never got around to building the library/reading space that as a kid I’d always dreamed of. So many ideas. So little time.
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Because that’s all that could restrain us (if anything could)—the only thing that could make us want to stay here: The chance to live with those who share our vision. But now? Look how tiring it is—this cacophony we live in. Enough to make you say to death, “Come quickly. Before I start to forget myself, like them.”
~ Marcus Aurelius, 9.3
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This practice is one form of what Shinzen Young would call “Noting Gone.” (He uses gone as a noun here, a certain kind of sensation, rather than an adjective.) What you’re noting is the moment where a thing goes from being here in your awareness to being gone from it, and the feeling of that moment. It doesn’t matter what the thing is –- a fish, an LED light, a musical note, a shape formed by drooping power lines. It also doesn’t matter how it vanishes — by slipping beneath the surface, by turning off, by going silent, by exiting your field of vision. In all cases the this gone quality has the same feel. It is the unmistakable, mildly surreal sensation of a thing having vanished.
~ David Cain, from The Vanishing Point
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This piece is a real splinter in my mind. I feel certain I’ve seen the “noting gone” concept before… but I can’t definitely find it. Perhaps I’m recalling that I read this very article, 6 months ago, AND marked it for reading later. So now I’m actually reading it a second time . . . It is definitely an unmistakable, mildly surreal sensation of a thing having vanished.
Also, in my quest to dig out the splinter, I searched for “gone” and got an interesting in itself set of posts.
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What is important in knowledge is not quantity, but quality. It is important to know what knowledge is significant, what is less so, and what is trivial.
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Three birds of prey hunker down in the light drizzle falling on Bouchaine Vineyards in California’s Napa Valley. Rocky, a beefy Harris hawk with long white-tipped tail feathers gently preens his marbled wings while E.B., a hybrid barbary and saker falcon with a dappled white-and-brown chest, keeps his gaze trained on a row of neatly plaited grapevines. Hootbert’s eyelids flutter sleepily over his big yellow spectacled owl eyes.
~ Shoshi Parks from, The Birds of Prey That Stand Guard Over California’s Vineyards
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That’s worth the click just for a few close–up shots of some raptors. But also, “Hootbert”.
I once had the distinct pleasure of a too-brief visit to a Falconry school where I was repeatedly astounded. The Harris Hawk I handled was a rescue; It had a damaged toe making it unable to survive on its own. Perched on your arm they are impressive—like, “there is a dinosaur standing on my arm” impressive. It weighs nothing. When it flies in your face it’s like being beat with a feather–duster. It’s gaze and movements are so fast and focused, it seems time must run at a different speed for them. In flight it’s nearly silent, but perched, it makes little sounds rather like a chicken, rather than what you might imagine of a murderous bird of prey. They’re supremely efficient at killing, but basically dumb as a stump otherwise. It was not the least bit interested in harming me, with its razor–sharp beak and talons mere inches from my face and my [I assume] tasty eyes. However, it was 105% interested in murdering the *expletive* out of what we offered it as food. We humans come hard-wired to be afraid of snakes and falling. (I’m only afraid of three kinds of snakes: Little snakes, big snakes, and most sticks.) Harris Hawks are fairly low on the shock-and-awe scale of avian predators. Having met one, I now completely understand why other birds flee in terror.
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Reading time: About 4 minutes, 800 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/13
Thank you for reading! I appreciate your time and attention, and I don’t take it for granted.
In years past I’ve posted some links to things which I pay for—if I’m not paying for something, then I’m probably the product being sold. So I prefer to pay for things when I can (when I’m able and when paying directly is possible.) Here are few things I use, which I pay for: Hindenburg, Overcast, Reeder, Feedbin, Tower, Transmit, OmniFocus, OmniOutliner, iaWriter, Discourse, Basecamp, Bluehost, Hover, Zencastr, Zoom, Otter, Mailchimp, Substack, Supercast, and Front.
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You determine the quality of your mind by the nature of your daily thoughts. If they circle around the same obsessions and dramas, you create an arid and monotonous mental landscape, and this secretly makes you miserable. Instead, you must seek to radiate your mind outward, to unleash your imagination and intensify your experience of life. […] You are in fact surrounded every day by endless marvels, and to the degree you let them into your daily consciousness, you expand your mind and reinvigorate its immense powers.
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Over the last few years, deep-learning-based AI has progressed extremely rapidly in fields like natural language processing and image generation. However, self-driving cars seem stuck in perpetual beta mode, and aggressive predictions there have repeatedly been disappointing. Google’s self-driving project started four years before AlexNet kicked off the deep learning revolution, and it still isn’t deployed at large scale, thirteen years later. Why are these fields getting such different results?
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This makes the interesting distinction between average–case performance, and worst–case performance. People are really good by both measures (click through to see what that means via Fermi approximations.) AI (true AI, autonomous driving systems, language models like GPT-3, etc.) is getting really good on average cases. But it’s the worst–case situations where humans perform reasonably well… and current AI fails spectacularly.
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We—mankind—are a conversation.
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Go to this YouTube channel: Kino Lorber, click Playlists and then view the Free Documentaries (80 feature-length films) or the Free Movies on Demand playlist (145 films.) Kino Lorber is an international film distribution company; I thought it was a person when I first heard mention of this.
Now try this experiment: Pick a documentary (try Filmworker if you know who Stanley Kubrick is, M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity if you have eyes, or Hieronymus Bosch: Touched by the Devil if painting is more your thing.) Watch the movie. Then reflect on the experience of watching a feature–length documentary, versus say, modern “serial” shows. I’ve relearned just how bad modern entertainment can be, when I reminded myself just how good film can be. (Surprise bonus-round: Watch The Atomic Café and be gobsmacked, horrified, and… some-other-feeling-I-can’t-quite-find-the-right-word-for in repeated cycles.)
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Every time you wake up and ask yourself, “What good things am I going to do today?” remember that, when the sun goes down at sunset, it will take a part of you life with it.
~ Indian proverb
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On your deathbed, you would do anything, pay anything for one more ordinary evening. For one more car ride to school with your children. For one more juicy peach. For one more hour on a park bench. Yet here you are, experiencing any number of those things, and rushing through it. Or brushing it off. Or complaining about it because it’s hot or there is traffic or because of some alert that just popped up on your phone. Or planning some special thing in the future as if that’s what will make you happy. You can’t add more at the end of your life…but you can not waste what’s in front of you right now.
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This blog started initially as a place for me to post a eulogy, and then it grew to serve many more purposes. It’s now solidly a way for me to reflect, and to work with the garage door up. Discovery, reflection, and efficacy are pretty frickin’ important to me and keeping up with the ‘ol bloggin’ forces me to keep up with daily discovery and reflection. I’ve a bunch of other processes beyond this blog.
It’s a rare post where I both have a point and state it explicitly: Whether you go off to Holiday’s article and follow that thread, follow my links in this email or this post, or my series teaching daily reflection matters not. It only matters that you take time to reflect.
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Reading time: About 4 minutes, 900 words
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This issue is https://7forsunday.com/12