As I navigate the waters of corporate internet providers I am convinced that a company with a total quality service model could easily eat their breakfast, lunch and dinner. Many people fear Soviet style socialism. It’s hard to see how corporate capitalism is any better sometimes.
Mind, Body, Earth, Community :: Essays On Attention Paid
What is important to the left brain is what’s in front of it in any given moment, and what needs or can be done with it. Self-preservation, utility, and utilization are the name of the game with the left brain.
A recent study at the University of Toronto shows that infants have longer attention spans when experiencing live music. We’re told how much kids love staring at screens, but even video playback doesn’t captivate them as much.
Not surprising, is it? Further evidence that analog cultural interaction is superior.
It is quite a thing to see leading Republicans—including a former president—in mugshots for their assault on our democracy and to know that party leadership supports their actions. Indeed, it is unprecedented, and for those who remember what a grand party the Republicans have been at times in their history—Lincoln, after all, was a Republican, and so were Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower—it is a sad end.
But an end it is. The authoritarians who have taken over the party have abandoned their history and are now building something altogether different.
… indeed…
One of this morning’s baristas is channeling the look of…
Mr. George Whipple (also known as George the Grocer) is a fictional supermarket manager featured in television commercials, radio, and print advertisements that ran in the United States and Canada from 1964 to 1985 for Charmin toilet paper. Typically, Whipple scolds customers who “squeeze the Charmin,” while hypocritically entertaining such actions himself when he thinks no one will notice. The character and catchphrase were created by John Chervokas of the agency Benton & Bowles. Prominent ad-man Sid Lerner also worked on the campaign.
From yesterday…
From yesterday…
Verizon saga continues… largely, my problems have been sorted… but, just now, I received an “Extender” from Verizon… even though I told them I did not need it… since returning the last one caused all my disconnect problems, I think I will put this one in a closet and forget about it.
Mind, Body, Earth, Community :: Essays On Attention Paid
What I learned from Ms. Federici is that capitalism is an organizing force of enormous consequence. Consequence that is brutal and harmful to the mind, body, earth, and community connections I began this post with. It has rearranged the relationships between men, and women, and the earth, in profoundly destructive ways. It has fragmented the world and its creatures into things that, in their thingness, are maximally exploitable. This includes you and me. Divided, everything and everyone is exploited and utility is the quality everything and everyone must have.
From yesterday…
So, Verizon can disconnect your Fios service with a push of a button, but a technician is needed at the house to reconnect it? This makes no sense to me.
Mind, Body, Earth, Community :: Essays On Attention Paid
For the next few weeks, I periodically ran into her and would ask if things had gotten any better. She would say not really, and I would encourage her to hang in there, these runs of frustration and struggle do, eventually, end. I always wished her a better rest of her day as I walked on.
Mind, Body, Earth, Community :: Essays On Attention Paid
Another analog social media app is my daily early morning walk and photograph practice. Often, they are strictly mind-body-earth affairs. Occasionally, they are community affairs, too. I meet people I know. I see people I don’t know, but know them as regulars on the street. Every so often, I learn their names.
From yesterday…
From a couple of days ago…
I have decided to focus on getting out of the house and going for walks (mind, body, earth, sometimes community) and winding up at local coffee shops, where I can have direct human-to-human contact (definitely community). Even if that contact is superficial banter with a barista whose name I know and who knows mine, it’s better than the social media app stand-ins we are plagued with. Even if I know no one, and talk to no-one, I am in a space alive with people interacting analog fashion. The coffee shops are my analog version of social media apps.
Judgment used to be the foundation of the idea of reasonableness–a concept you may remember, but which we are in danger of losing, if we have not already done so, in a mechanised, bureaucratic society.
— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
Acquiring a degree of judgment that can make these elements intelligently cohere is–or used to be–the whole purpose of education. It is why we study the humanities. What history and classics and literature tell us is not to be found in the sciences anywhere. Nowadays we seem to have forgotten this crucial insight, on which the future of our civilisation nonetheless hangs.
— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist
I am discovering that the best calendar app for me may be Apple’s Reminders. It’s ability to apply a date and time to a reminder renders a simple timeline list of events and proposed actions that adjust to each addition of a new reminder.
Went for an early morning hike with the pack…
From this morning’s walk…
We watched Red, White and Royal Blue last night. The movie is based on the Casey McQuestin novel of the same title. It’s a latterday fairytale with a plot only viable in fairytale land, but, it is amazingly frank about homoerotic male relationship and sex. Highly recommend.
From this morning’s walk…
In the category of Wow! Just, Wow!
August 14, 2023 - by Heather Cox Richardson(https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-14-2023)
Today, U.S. District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found for the young Montana residents, agreeing that they have “experienced past and ongoing injuries resulting from the State’s failure to consider [greenhouse gas emissions] and climate change, including injuries to their physical and mental health, homes and property, recreational, spiritual, and aesthetic interests, tribal and cultural traditions, economic security, and happiness.”
Unfortunately, by being purely strategic in intent, the left hemisphere makes strategic mistakes, since it remains largely ignorant of the reality on which it relies. As a sophisticated computer would. And very soon, no doubt, will.
— The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World by Iain McGilchrist