Seneca this morning:
“Show me that the good life doesn’t consist in its length, but in its use, and that it is possible—no, entirely too common—for a person who has had a long life to have lived too little.”
I just wrote about this yesterday actually.
nostr:note137sd9h4qvjunknnn08gf3e8q7kuhqldc5rdpshpecl9m54gs3x4qauwn5c
Watching The Santa Clause. 🎅🎅🎅
It’s kind of like #nostr. Is it gonna “work” in the long term? Can it scale? I have no idea. Probably the odds are not in its favor. But I’ll be damned if I’m gonna lean into the alternatives of instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok. nostr:note137sd9h4qvjunknnn08gf3e8q7kuhqldc5rdpshpecl9m54gs3x4qauwn5c
People always ask me why I’m hyperventilating and I don’t know why I always have to explain to them that I’m trying to lose weight. 😂
Be friends with people who do this kind of stuff. nostr:note1dwenkwwy245f58gau247hr8jekzrcgtrfezhtfj83vsxq7famhtqzq5zra
Our society is not well. There are a lot of things contributing to that but and many places we can see the evidence for it, but I’m thinking about the future and where it goes from here.
The idea of national unity or shared vision or direction at a scale of millions is pretty much out the window. We had a flavor of national unity for about 5 minutes at the beginning of covid before it devolved into tribalism. The Internet, social media, algorithms, and rent seekers mean the chance for shared vision is gone.
We see cultural decay everywhere. In the absence of religion we see people trying to bootstrap religion ether explicitly (seeking spirituality or something similar) or implicitly signing up for pseudo-religions (like wokeness or red team versus blue team politics).
When I read national news it seems like the country, and the world for that matter, is a dumpster fire. Of course, it’s not. That’s a distorted sample of the most click worthy stuff. But there’s enough signal in the noise to pick up the trend line.
There is also evidence of this decline in my own community. The culture wars have not missed us and neither has the crisis in meaning, the death of the stable family, or the opioid crisis (all of which is connected anyway).
However, when I consider the future I believe that small communities will become more and more important. People “out there” seem crazy, but when I walk around my community I see people mostly just trying to struggle through life. Trying to make a living, raise their kids, and find some enjoyment in life.
This is why I’m increasingly skeptical of the federal government and more focused on state and local government. We need to be allowed to build systems that fit our communities without interference from forces wildly disconnected from them. Especially when those forces are loaded with rent-seekers and narcissists driven by greed and power.
The rub, obviously, is that even if we all decide that we’re going to focus on building healthy local communities, there are countless forces that will transcend those boundaries, ranging from pandemics to global military conflict to environmental disasters.
I guess I see two approaches for individuals concerned about the future of our society or, put simply, the world our children and their children are going to inhabit. We can either focus on the large scale, trying to solve problems through things like national politics or “winning” the national (global?) culture war. Or we can try to focus on our local communities first, devoting proportionally less energy to systems which are increasingly disconnected from us.
Of course, it’s not a simple dichotomy. However, we can choose where we set the slider. While I recognize the allure of being part of something much bigger than yourself is ever-present, I think too many people have set the slider to the former. And I’ve little confidence that the latter will succeed at a massive scale. It would require a radical change in where most people spend their energy (and there’s a reason that so many people don’t right now – it’s difficult). But I am certain that the former approach will fail and in fact is currently failing spectacularly before our eyes.
I’d encourage you to take an audit of where you spend your energy. Is it shouting into the noisy nihilist void? Or is it developing yourself, your family, and your community in such a way that they grow and develop into something greater than they were before?
#plebchain
This is really good. 😂
I don’t post about Bitcoin a lot but seriously, Bitcoin is honest money. If the ceo of J.P. Morgan thinks it’s bad then it’s probably good for average people. nostr:note1skv0d4kk6ztxaf724cne8exa07yn0030fsuvksd7zjs9m5p0rwpsjdgkhs
Seneca was such a badass.
“I don’t complain about the lack of time . . . what little I have will go far enough. Today—this day—will achieve what no tomorrow will fail to speak about. I will lay siege to the gods and shake up the world.”
#stoicism
Joe Pug’s version of this song is haunting.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/downbound-train/1040208332?i=1040208743
Give it a good rinse and dry it on your pant leg and it’s back in business.
Good for you. Theres so much variation between individuals there seems to be no one-size-fits all. Different people will have different tolerances for sugar, meat, etc.
Yeah, I think that’s right about hypertrophy training. I’ve plateaued in some strength areas and just don’t have the equipment (mainly bigger weights) to push it further.
And yeah, I’m definitely better emotionally and mentally on days that I workout. But I think one has to get to a certain level of fitness to feel that. Like, if the pain or tiredness from working out outweighs those benefits then you just think there aren’t any benefits or you don’t notice them. In my experience about a month of regular exercise is enough to get in that kind of shape. But it’s obviously different for everybody.
No, just life. Lol. I did a few small triathlons several years ago and will occasionally do a 5k for fun but I’m just mainly trying to stay in shape.
Yeah, first grade was tough. When they’re in kindergarten and preschool they still seem like little kids.
I think it’s probably great for people. Even when I ran cross-country in high school, we were supposed to get at least one longer run where we kept our heart rate low. I try to do at least one of those workouts a week that is longer with a zone 2/zone 3 heart rate. But I still find a lot of value in interval, workouts and also just enjoy them.
Basically, I’m always trying to challenge my body in different ways. Once I get comfortable doing a workout, I try to ship it to something different. (Although, in all honesty, one interval, work out a week is kind of a mainstay for me.)
“Parents of Gen Alpha must take this seriously. I speak to many parents about social media; they worry that their kids will talk to predators or be exposed to explicit self-harm and suicidal content — which are, of course, real risks. But there is also something more pernicious, and more destabilizing happening. Something we have to get ahead of. Because maybe it seems like your child is simply watching some makeup tutorials, following some mental health influencers, or experimenting with their identity. But let me tell you: they are on a conveyor belt to someplace bad. Whatever insecurity or vulnerability they are struggling with, they will be pushed further and further into it.
What I would say to the parents of Gen Alpha is: don’t let your children open accounts on social media platforms when they are still in early puberty. Delay their entry until at least 16. Prioritize their in-person interactions, and encourage them to discover who they are from real-world experiences, not manipulative algorithms.”
Gm. Got some intervals in this morning. #running #runstr 
nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft blows my mind. About the only thing I can wake up thinking about and bring into existence this quickly is a bowel movement. 😂 nostr:note1z67crw6skyufrtp02acazre54y56v0qv58ms6uplkd240wdxzrpq2mj779
That’s Lake Superior at the end of the last video. nostr:note1wnmfy2nu826cj3zmfmmdhnl73cgzh48jq6sznuksc42x3vpm344sxm65az