7 for Sunday

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/.

The payoff

March 22

If I think about how some project or effort of mine affects the world, it’s hard to imagine the effects that I would never know about. A tree falls in the woods; if no one hears it, does it make a sound? Does it make a sound a microphone would pick up? Yes, of course. Does it make a sound that affects someone? No, of course not. The answer depends on what we mean when we ask the question. If I do something creative, and no one that I know of benefits from it, does it matter?

Why? Because anyone who has ever done anything worth a damn, knows that they probably weren’t the main beneficiaries of their efforts. Our work may have lit up the world, but we still remain down in the mud, somehow.

~ Cierra Martin from, https://www.gapingvoid.com/what-samurai-teach-us-about-service/

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For some reason, I liked the overall shape of that little article. But I don’t like the imagery of “we still remain down in the mud.” I feel like the thankless creative work that I do, doesn’t leave me “down in the mud.” A better metaphor—the way I think of it—is that I’m “still in the workshop.” I’m in the workshop. I’m being creative. My work has affects (I presume), but the fact that I don’t see those affects doesn’t make them any less real.

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Transcendence

March 20

Maybe, if I was feeling really brave, I’d say that there is just one thing that I need to get beyond. If I was feeling that brave, I’m not, I’d say it’s the drive drive drive I feel to do do do.

What we usually do is either be driven, driven, driven by this fear … or we conclude that we need to abandon everything and start with a fresh slate. With this fear, it can feel like these are the only two options.

~ Leo Babauta from, https://zenhabits.net/still-behind/

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As Babauta of course goes on to point out: There aren’t, in truth, only two options. I’m still not feeling brave, but the idea that there’s a third-way sounds delightful.

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Noses

March 18

Have you ever tried to read Gray’s Anatomy? I tried to read a modern printing of a 1901 edition that was given to me. It’s 1,200+ pages in a perfect-bound book! That might have been 30 years ago and I’m not sure if anything from that adventure stuck… and yet, I bet a huge amount of knowledge has stuck. I recall it was an endless succession of interesting rabbit holes.

Nasal congestion, I’ve learned in all this, is far weirder than I ever thought. For starters, the nose is actually two noses, which work in an alternating cycle that is somehow connected to our armpits.

~ Sarah Zhang from, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/10/humans-have-two-noses-really/675823/

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I’m struggling to resist the urge to see what Gray’s has to say about the nose. I do know that even the most fleeting search of the ‘ol Internet turns up a huge amount of material around this topic. I will also say that I’ve long known that lying on one’s side tends to open the opposing nostril’s nasal whatsit-stuff. Which I know only because I have a long history of sinus and allergy problems and have necessarily tried to sleep with a plugged schnozz, leading to creativity and experimentation.

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Try steeper

March 17

“The obstacle is the way” is not a phrase from Art du Déplacement. It’s a two-thousand-year-old comment from a Stoic (writing in a personal journal to himself.) In a similar vein, he also wrote that, “nature turns all things to its own purpose.” Likewise the more modern “Rust never sleeps,” is equally pithy.

The real lesson is of course that there’s a season for everything. Sometimes more challenge is the key to progress, and sometimes simply being is the key. (Which is also something thoroughly covered in the Stoic philosophy. And please: Stoicism is not at all about suppressing one’s feelings.) I think I learned that seasons lesson early on from bicycling. I’m from Pennsylvania, from an area of rolling, often wooded, hills. Every bike ride ever was an endless repetition of “down a hill, ’round a corner, up a hill, round a corner, down a hill, …” In a very real sense, all parts of that were equally fun.

In a comfortable, prosperous country like ours, some of the built in tendencies of Human nature tend to work against us, saying, “Hey – I’ve noticed we have plenty of food and reasonable shelter and that’s good enough. So let’s just double down on the Netflix, comfort foods, and occasional luxury purchases and that will keep us safe.” Instead, I want you to set your life treadmill to just a bit of a steeper, healthier incline setting.

~ Peter Adeney from, https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2023/11/02/moving-to-culdesac/

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I’d like to mention that “Culdesac” in that linked URL is a town’s name; You can go read that article either for the life advice, or to learn about one of several towns in the U.S. now which are being built as people-first. (As opposed to basically every other town and city which is built as cars-first.)

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The Internet

March 15

When I started really fiddling with the Internet in 1989 it was a twisting mazy of branching passages. It was entirely technical details and arcane (not to be confused with difficult to master) knowledge. It was fun and rewarding to figure things out—all I had to do was simply read and experiment. It was also very much social! There were people, both in-person and remote (as in, I don’t think I’ve ever met them in person), who I got to know through working on things and exploring and building. But at no point did I ever even wonder if what I was doing and building was going to change society. “This is interesting” and “I wonder if…” were my guiding philosophy.

Such prophesies might be dismissed as the prattle of overindulged rich guys, but for one thing: they’ve shaped public opinion. By spreading a utopian view of technology, a view that defines progress as essentially technological, they’ve encouraged people to switch off their critical faculties and give Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and financiers free rein in remaking culture to fit their commercial interests. If, after all, the technologists are creating a world of superabundance, a world without work or want, their interests must be indistinguishable from society’s. To stand in their way, or even to question their motives and tactics, would be self-defeating. It would serve only to delay the wonderful inevitable.

~ Nicholas Carr from, https://aeon.co/essays/the-internet-as-an-engine-of-liberation-is-an-innocent-fraud

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But an equally great quote is: “Technology promised to set us free. Instead it has trained us to withdraw from the world into distraction and dependency.”

Anyway. Looking back, I don’t see how I could actually have done anything differently. Looking back, I can clearly see how we—the world, society at large—got where we are.

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Horror and systematic idiocy

March 13

Have you ever looked at your own writing and wondered: What author’s work might it resemble? And if you haven’t, I hope I didn’t just break writing for you.

All I can remember of these once indispensable arts is the intense boredom by which the practice of them was accompanied. Even today the sight of Dr. Smith’s Shorter Latin Dictionary, or of Liddell’s and Scott’s Greek Lexicon, has power to recall that ancient ennui. What dreary hours I have spent frantically turning those pages in search of a word for “cow” that could be scanned as a dactyl, or to make sure that my memory of the irregular verbs and the Greek accents was not at fault! I hate to think of all that wasted time. And yet, in view of the fact that most human beings are destined to pass most of their lives at jobs in which it is impossible for them to take the slightest interest, this old-fashioned training with the dictionary may have been extremely salutary. At least it taught one to know and expect the worst of life. Whereas the pupil in a progressive school, where everything is made to seem entertaining and significant, lives in a fool’s paradise. As a preparation for life, not as it ought to be, but as it actually is, the horrors of Greek grammar and the systematic idiocy of Latin verses were perfectly appropriate. On the other hand, it must be admitted that they tended to leave their victims with a quite irrational distaste for poor dear Dr. Smith.

~ Aldous Huxley from his essay, Doodles in a Dictionary from, Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Other Essays

Lest you think that’s an overly long quote, I’ll point out it’s still only about half of the paragraph. Huxley can really unspool a sentence. Some of the writing in that book—Huxley’s, omg no not Smith’s dictionary—are overwrought. But some of them have a delicious tinkling of structure and grammar with an occasional punctuation of solid snark.

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Life

March 12

Whoever wants life must go softly towards life, softly as one would go towards a deer and fawn that are nestling under a tree. One gesture of violence, one violent assertion of self-will and life is gone. […] But with quietness, with an abandon of self-assertion and a fullness of the deep true self one can approach another human being, and know the delicate best of life, the touch.

~ D.H. Lawrence

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White blood cells

March 11

If you had said that it’s possible to see white blood cells with the naked eye, I wouldn’t have believed you. If you had somehow convinced me, I’d have then been impressed. But never would I have thought that it’s possible to see your own white blood cells in your own eye. Aye, ’tis true!

The blue field entoptic phenomenon is an entoptic phenomenon characterized by the appearance of tiny bright dots (nicknamed blue-sky sprites) moving quickly along undulating pathways in the visual field, especially when looking into bright blue light such as the sky.

~ Wikipedia from, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_field_entoptic_phenomenon

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Is the takeaway here that you’ve just learned something? …or that wonders never cease? …or something else entirely?

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I am a creative

March 10

It’s a good day, any time I can find an excuse to link to A List Apart. This piece doesn’t need an excuse to be linked. Nearly every sentence in it starts with “I am a creative…” and makes it read like some sort of manifesto… or the beginning of a communal incantation at some Creatives Anonymous meeting in a church basement.

I am still 10 times faster than people who are not creative, or people who have only been creative a short while, or people who have only been professionally creative a short while. It’s just that, before I work 10 times as fast as they do, I spend twice as long as they do putting the work off. I am that confident in my ability to do a great job when I put my mind to it. I am that addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement. I am still that afraid of the jump.

~ Jeffrey Zeldman from, https://alistapart.com/article/i-am-a-creative/

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That quoted bit isn’t better than several other bits. Rather, I wanted to point to that “addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponement” to say that verily (be sure to read the example use of verily related to aviation) this used to be me. These days I’m addicted to the adrenaline rush of postponing… and then entirely abandoning whatever it was. Also, I am still afraid of the jump.

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Diverse, distributed and interesting

March 8

A small platform—like a family restaurant, or an indie bookstore—can be run by a small group of passionate people. Possibly, it can even be run by one person. Things are too big, when they get big enough that everything needs to be normalized (specified, rules based, flow charted, committee decided and charted.)

The future of the internet that most excites me is also, in many ways, a snapshot of its past. It’s a place where the Neil Gaiman’s of the world don’t need to feed their thoughts into an engagement engine, but can instead put out a virtual shingle on their own small patch of cyberspace and attract and build a more intimate community of like-minded travelers. This doesn’t necessitate a blog — podcasts, newsletters, and video series have emerged as equally engaging mediums for independent media production. The key is a communication landscape that is much more diverse and distributed and interesting than what we see when everyone is using the same two or three social apps.

~ Cal Newport from, https://calnewport.com/neil-gaimans-radical-vision-for-the-future-of-the-internet/

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It comes down to engagement versus contribution. A large platform is one where engagement is rewarded (time spent on the platform, ads viewed, affiliate links followed, likes given, etc.) and a small platform is one where contribution is rewarded. What makes small platforms and spaces potentially great is that everyone’s contribution can be seen. “I see what you did there,” is both how culture is created and how cultural norms are enforced.

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Confusion

March 6

Sure, it’s been thousands of years, but has anything really changed?

Once my curiosity was piqued, I could see a bit of curdling in some of the men around me, too.

They struggled to relate to women. They didn’t have enough friends. They lacked long-term goals. Some guys — including ones I once knew — just quietly disappeared, subsumed into video games and porn or sucked into the alt-right and the web of misogynistic communities known as the “manosphere.”

~ Christine Emba from, https://archive.is/20231114213637/https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/07/10/christine-emba-masculinity-new-model/

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This article was interesting… but I didn’t feel like it offered any answers. Then again, I’m no longer the target audience (man, of a certain age), so perhaps it simply didn’t “land” with me. On the other, other hand, I do think it’s worth a read.

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