Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.
~ Simone Weil
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On this day
September 12thEmptiness
People jump back and forth in pursuit of pleasures only because they see the emptiness of their lives more clearly than they do the emptiness of whichever new entertainment attracts them.
~ Blaise Pascal
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That’s… interesting
But in our Physics Project we’ve developed a fundamentally different view of space—in which space is not just a background, but has its own elaborate composition and structure. And in fact, we posit that space is in a sense everything that exists, and that all “things” are ultimately just features of the structure of space. We imagine that at the lowest level, space consists of large numbers of abstract “atoms of space” connected in a hypergraph that’s continually getting updated according to definite rules and that’s a huge version of something like this…
~ Stephen Wolfram from, https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2022/03/on-the-concept-of-motion/
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I’m not sure what to say about this. I am certain that Wolfram is not crazy and that he is brilliant, but he’s pretty far beyond what I can understand. (Picture me doing that slightly askew, squinting thing.) On the other hand, if they really are making the progress they seem to be… it’s going to be a neat time to be alive, in another decade when they get things sorted out.
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One great city
…the world is one great city, and the substance out of which it is formed is single, and there must necessarily be a cycle of change, in which one thing gives way to another, and some things are destroyed and others come into being, and some things remain where they were and others are moved.
~ Epictetus
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Risk and reward
If you take risk out of climbing, it’s not climbing anymore.
~ Yvon Chouinard from, https://www.rockandice.com/people/yvon-chouinard-what-ive-learned/
Just checking: Be sure you know who Yvon Chouinard is.
Risk is everywhere. If you’re not a climber, I’d venture to guess that you regularly ride in automobiles, which is the most dangerous thing you regularly do. It’s not particularly risky—the chances of catastrophe are low. And it’s a risk I’m comfortable with. Comfortable in both senses: I’ve rationally assessed the risk and do what I can to reduce that risk, and I’ve been exposed to the risk so often that it no longer evinces a visceral reaction.
Certainly, in climbing the objective hazards loom larger; when you’re looking down on large birds cruising the ridge-lift, your physical perspective shifts your mental perspective on life. But there are objective hazards everywhere. For me, I like to do everything reasonable to reduce all of the risks, but knowing that the risks exist— spending some time each day sitting with those risks, knowing I cannot fully eliminate all of them— that’s living.
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10 Millennia
… in which one would actually not mark the site, but mark many other sites with clues, that once put together, would be a sort of test to be sure you understood the dangers — before revealing the location.
~ Alexander Rose from, https://blog.longnow.org/02008/07/16/communication-measures-to-bridge-10-millennia/
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Sometimes I find things which just simply make me go, ‘wow.’ Here’s one. :)
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Courage
Courage is not the absence of fear but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.
~ Ambrose Redmoon
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Day 42/100 – “101”
(Part 45 of 104 in series, 100 Days of Training (2017))
Too much on my mind today. What do I *not* want to do? …I really don’t want to stop in the middle of everything that’s going on, and go out to work out– So, right, burly QM session it is then.
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Annecy France
Photos from our very brief glimpse of Annecy. Tres belle!
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Weekend prep: Highland Park and ‘gar.
Weekend prep: Highland Park and ‘gar.
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