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The week is like an engine

Actually, I call it Slot Achievement Engine.

This might be left-field: it’s the way I think (I’ve disccovered). It’s actually thinking, predicated on a corporeal sensation, in three dimensions. I’m reminded of when Aldous Huxley first took LSD. He was disdappointed that he, uniquely, did not see wild surrealstic scenes with millions of colors. In The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley wrote about his mescaline experience in 1953, where he anticipated seeing “manycolored geometries, of animated architectures, rich with gems and fabulously lovely” but the experience focused on external reality. Well, that’s what it’s like being an “intellectual”. I’m not one. I DO see “manycolored geometries, of animated architectures”, but don’t need the LSD. In fact, it’s kind of a “disease” – chronic, I can’t get past it, or around it. Always with the geometries!

Quick plug: A fuller account of Huxley’s mescaline experience can be found on chiwijournal.substack.com. 

So this thing gets built inside me, and is tangible. I can find it, and access it. And I get “signals” from it, when the “slots” get filled.

Here’s how I make each week:

Slot Achievement Game – A mind-based achievement tracking system

This program implements a game with multiple fillable slots that track progress toward
completing an “engine”. Each slot can be customized with a unique name and assigned an
achievement level from 1 to 5.

Key Features:

  • Multiple customizable slots (default: 5 slots)
  • Each slot has an editable name field (format: “Slot:”)
  • Achievement levels range from 1-5 for each slot
  • Color-coded visual feedback:
  • Real-time progress tracking with progress bar
  • Completion notification when all slots are filled
  • Reset functionality to clear all slots and names

The “engine” is considered complete when all slots have been filled with some achievement level:

What I am doing here is “mocking up” something that I have felt, lurking in my psyche, for quite some time, in order to share it with you. It’s not an “app”, in the digital world. For some people, there have always been “apps” – in the cerebral world – although I don’t use “cerebral” or “corporeal” in my own language. These kinds of concepts belong to a childish, “Western” conception of the human. I tend toward the Vedic teachings, which allow for such mechanisms to be a part of the human experience. In this case, I would term the realm for my inner coding “subtle body”, in contrast, or in harmony with, the physical body:

**Sukṣma-śarīra (सूक्ष्म‑शरीर)**                                                                                 

In the Vedic, Upaniṣadic and yogic traditions the “subtle body” is called **sukṣma‑śarīra**, literally  
“*the fine or subtle body*.”  It is distinct from:

| Aspect | Sanskrit term | Rough English equivalent |
|——–|—————|————————–|
| Gross physical body | **sthūla‑śarīra** (स्थूल‑शरीर) | “coarse/dense body” |
| Subtle body | **sukṣma‑śarīra** (सूक्ष्म‑शरीर) | “subtle, fine body” |
| Causal or causal‑karmic body | **karana‑śarīra** (कारण‑शरीर) / **para‑rūpa** (पर‑रूप) | “causal/seed  
body” |

Terminology I use:

  1. engine: In computing, an “engine” refers to a core, specialized software component that provides specific functionality or “power” for a larger application, much like a car’s engine drives the vehicle but isn’t the whole car. It handles complex, repetitive tasks like processing data, rendering graphics, or running game logic, abstracting away low-level details and allowing developers to focus on the user experience, with examples including search engines, rendering engines, and database engines. Key Characteristics
    • Core Functionality: It’s the central processing part, handling the “heavy lifting” of a program.
    • Specialized: Engines are designed for specific tasks, like a physics engine for game simulations or a rendering engine for web browsers.
    • Abstracted: It often works behind the scenes, providing an interface for other parts of the software without exposing complex internal workings to the user or other modules.
    • Metaphorical: The term borrows from mechanical engines to signify a powerful, essential subsystem
  2. slot: A slot comprises the operation issue and data path machinery surrounding a set of one or more execution unit (also called a functional unit (FU)) which share these resources. A slot is a computer processor connection designed to make upgrading the processor easier, where the user would only have to slide a processor into a slot.
  3. game: In Wittgenstein’s theory, a “game” isn’t defined by a single set of essential properties but by a family resemblance: a network of overlapping similarities (rules, objectives, skills, fun) linking diverse activities like chess, cards, and ball games, showing no single common thread but rather a continuum of shared features, much like words in a “language-game” gain meaning through their use in specific contexts, not abstract definitions. To understand “game,” one learns its diverse uses and rules within a specific “language-game,” not by finding one universal essence

It’s easier for me to describe myself now, at age 63, partly because I have let my mind wander, and followed it closely. Now that I can “see” it, it doesn’t upset me so much.

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because it’s morning noon and night

When the Spirit moves you. Can be any time, and a great chance that the time will be inconvenient.

yes, we need to be watchful – inspiration chooses its own time, and as it comes, it goes. you won’t remember.

and so what? will generations suffer from the lack of my little musings? my little music? it’s all tolled just a drop in the cosmic bucket, and not a drop will influence the course of the Grand Scheme.

But for the people on earth, for the weak and heavy-laden, your creativity will have a profound effect.

So do it.

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the question being…

Do I need another – yet another – writing tool, like FreeWrite? Answer is likely NO. While it is critical to write all the time, for many reasons, this is not dependent on the tools. People have written entire novels on the floor of their prison cell.

But this is more easily supported by a common psychological construct of deflection: when a task is difficult, for any reason, or rather, when a practice, involving not-so-diffiult tasks, is difficult to establish, the human (21st Century Western Human) will tend toward buying something, rather than just doing something with the materials and tools at hand. We see it in everything from yoga to music – buy a yoga mat, a towel, special clothing, etc., instead of just getting on the mat, or the floor, or the grass. All these have been done by great masters.

Deflection is the killer. Will swamp you in a boat in a moat circling with a single oar.

Not to say that equipment – finely tuned, correctly engineered equipment – is the problem. It is not. Once deflection is ruled out, good equipment is essential. In music, great players can play well on shitty equipment. Beginners can play on shitty equipment, but can’t overcome the physical barriers on such equipment, as can the masters. The key here is positive reinforcement, because we are talking about the practice, more than the product. In order to establish the practice, the human needs rewards – even the most advance bodhi, no matter what they tell you. We are all creatures, and will remain so until we are liberated by death. Further, there is no shame in being a creature, no merit in disdain of motivation.

Simply, if the music sounds good, or, if the asana feels good, the mind-body will blossom, and motivation will be achieved. A poor instrument will cause psychological pain; an instrument capable of beautiful sound will inspire the player to hunt down the optimal physical application that produces that sound. But this beauty must be experienced at least once, and acknowledged by the player. Oftentimes, this is just a miracle – a happy accident. Indeed, in life, we don’t summon g*d – we are summoned; or, we stumble upon it. We commit a generous act, and get surprised by the return flow or reward – the sensation of oneness with the Lord.

So yes, by all means, get a wonderful Lamy ink pen; get nice paper; and get the FreeWrite. But be prepared for these tools to just sit there and gather dust; be prepared for the ink to dry up. Because the tool is not the maker. The spark, the holy spirit, the tao – whatever you have felt as the origin of creativity – is the maker. Sadly, the maker can’t be bought, and can’t itself be made. We often call it a gift – which must be given, and received. And no amouunt of money or hard work can make it. It must be found.

So much for equality or equity. Creativity is outside the purview of social order. Can’t be legislated into existence, the same way no law or social injustice can quell it: the more the artist is chained and beaten, fingers broken and tongue cut out, the louder the outpouring of creativity.

So, what to do, Dad? I don’t know. But I say: begin with the tools you have, to create the practice. Struggle with the limitations at the beginning. Find the spark, even in the dark. When the flow ultimately smacks up against a technical wall, afford yourself the next-level tech, and see if that re-opens or re-ups the flow. If it doesn’t, it wasn’t the blocker. Back to square one.

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The Tedious Process of Seeing Your Life Flash Before Your Eyes

Yeah, so that’s the cliche taggged to the last moments of life – you see a B Grade movie of your entire existence, sped up – of course! who could stand watching that shit in real time. And, you’re presumably dying relatively soon, so no time for commercials.

Well, I haven’t died yet – or so I think. Because after a certain age – can’t quite remember – but around the 50s, I started to have vivid dreams of exactly that nature: re-runs of my syndicated life moments, as an ongoing docu-drama series, or, set of series. I had a lot of great shows in my life. But they were definitely all “shows”. When I watch them again, I guess, like Clint Easdtwood, I hardly connect to that dumbshit playing the role of ME. I’m hoping that years and years of practicing yogic detachment (Buddhism inherited from yoga, sorry…), maybe that let me do this – this detached viewer.

Nah. Because I’m not detached – I’m trapped in the shit! It’s like Kafka’s “In the Penal Colony”, where my sins are engraved into my skin, by some lurid gravure machine, until sufficient repetitions have caused sufficient depth, so that pieces of me start to fall off. I get stuck on that segment where people have rewound it so many times that it’s worn. But they are not sections that I would mark – in fact, the opposite: they are the small,but excruciating segments, which held the greatest shame. That moment when you remember your wife and family, but you’re on some sordid boondoggle with a bunch of youngsters, raging on chemicals, racing along some road – and, for me at least, this lasting dichometric pattern of good Kam v. bad Kam, has to skip, like a record, digging the groove deeper and deeper, until I can smell the burning vinyl. Fuck.

Let’s take an example that only I and maybe 50 people in the world will understand. I used to teach at a Catholic Seminary – ESL. I had a great love of Catholicism, and a great love of helping people from other countries, make it in the Land of Coppurtunity. So, my base philosophy was solid. On the other hand, I greatly resisted transforming these vital young men into conformists. Beside the point. I was assigned a beautiful second-floor office, with an office-mate, windows, sunlight…but I soon found a room in the basement, that had been a radio studio in some distant past! After some intensive, poinsonous mold cleaning, I moved in, and never left for 10 years. So, the dream is just me trying to find my way to the basement. Of course I’m late, because I was raised to hold the fear of lateness – I don’t believe I was ever really late, but always held the tension of being late. So, that vignette just replays endlessly: the entrance to the basement has changed over the years, as though the Seminary had come into a lot of money, and had remodeled everything, such that I can’t find the old door, or, if I do, it leads somewhere else. And then there are all the well-meaning “adults” – did I mention I have a permanent man-child thing? They are always trying to help, and, to be fair, they DID always try to help me get along, find my way – they loaned me money, tolerated my hippie shit.

In dreamland, the Seminary had evolved – a lot. Much more in control, much better financed, and well-rounded in its mission. But me – I was still stuck, wearing the wrong clothes, trying to burrow into nonentity, being on the verge of missing my first class.

While I wish this shit would end – just to sleep – I fear the way that will happen is my actual death. So I will shut up and bear it for now. Just wondering what the key is, to transfer into a new dream state, one of the present, of my successes. Probably fucking therapy. Or Ayahuasca.

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The meaning of a quote from Wuthering Heights?

Don’t know why I, of all people, didn’t get this! I know the feeling of “the universe…a mighty stranger”, when you lose someone you love.

princemyshkin's avatarkronikoles

“If All Else Perished, and He Remained, I Should Still Continue to be; and If All Else Remained, and He Were Annihilated, the Universe Would Turn to a Mighty Stranger: I Should Not Seem a Part of It.”

What does she mean when she says the part “…the universe would turn into a mighty stranger..” ???

Best Answer – Chosen by Asker

If he were gone, she wouldn’t be able to find her place in the world anymore, because he is her home and her heart. It’s like when something really bad happens, someone you love dies, and you expect the sun to stop shining and the world to stop turning, but life goes on for other people. For Cathy, her world would stop if he died. The sun shining would seem wrong and foreign. Life would become a stranger to her because her…

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How to Foster Empathy in Your Kids

colleenchicagochildrensmuseum's avatarLet's Play!

One of my earliest Thanksgiving memories starts at school. I was in second grade and we were making turkey hands—you know, when you trace your hands and your fingers make the feathers—and we had to write what we were thankful for on each one of the feathers. Like any good 8 year old, I wrote toys, cake, TV, and family—just in case Santa was watching for early nice points.

When I got home, my mother took a look at my masterpiece and asked me, “What do you think I’m thankful for?” I immediately thought it was a trick. I slowly answered, “Me?”

Little did I know, I received more than a big hug that day—I received a lesson in empathy.

Empathy is the ability to place yourself in someone else’s shoes and to imagine how they feel. These skills allow us to become stronger problem solvers, critical thinkers, collaborators, and…

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Ever been to Atlanta? 

Take a look at this:

http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Atlanta-Georgia.html
What I want to point out first about this site is that it is real data.  From police records.   This site has no funding – just banner ads. 

Here’s what you don’t know about Atlanta – the parts are not the same as the whole. For example,  downtown Atlanta is where Gone with the Wind premiered. It is also a very dangerous place.  The place called “Buckhead” is where frat boys go to drink and vomit.   Also dangerous if you are a nice girl. 

If you look on the map in the link,  you will see that red is considered very high crime. Pink is only high.  All of the city center is pink. High.   

I knew two missionary priests who ran a halfway house downtown.  Lasted  years before they were shot and killed. 

In the northeastern part,  the crime rate is orange,  normal. Wealthy white people work there. It is filled with corporate parks with their own private security. The whole place it on lock. There has been controversy regarding the train: for many many years something has prevented the downtown train from extending out to the corporate heaven. Inherent racism. Everyone who lives there knows it. 

And directly north of the city the color is yellow – low crime.  That’s where all the people who work in the corporate parks live. 

If you go too far north,  you will notice two things: there are only white people. And the gun law is open carry.  I took the wrong cab once,  ended up listening to a preacher on the radio,  and the cabbie showed me the Colt 45 he carried in his glove compartment. It was like Deliverance.  The color of the rest of the map is white – very low crime rate. Don’t know if that’s a joke or what. 

Atalanta is famous for the change in its crime rate. In 1994, Atlanta was ranked the most dangerous city in the country by the Morgan Quitno Press.[5]   I was there.   I know. But this was famously solved by a true civil rights leader, Maynard Jackson. He was Atlanta’s first African-American Mayor – in an of itself a true win for civil rights. What Maynard did was to “connect” the scary downtown with the business burbs,  and he did this with a lot of politics and not a little money. Actually, Maynard was Mayor two times. The first time,  he fired the white police commissioner and replaced him with an African-Amreican. He took heat for this.  But he overcame all of this and came back strong. Really,  if you are unfamiliar with  this,  you should educate yourself.  But just to be sure

Maynard Jackson provoked a major racial crisis in May 1974 when he attempted to fire the incumbent white police chief, John Inman. Jackson believed the change was needed to grapple with Atlanta’s growing crime problem and charges by the black community of police racial insensitivity toward African Americans. Whites opposed the firing and racial tensions rose, detracting from Atlanta’s proud motto: “too busy to hate.”

In August 1974 Mayor Jackson appointed A. Reginald Eaves, a college friend and fellow activist, as Public Safety Commissioner. Eaves was criticized for lacking police experience. He generated controversy by appointing an ex-convict as his personal secretary but was criticized more for what was considered as a system of quota promotions and hiring in the police department, which many decried as “reverse discrimination.”[4] Despite the outcry, Jackson retained Eaves in his post. By the spring of 1976, Atlanta enjoyed a drop in crime rates 

That is civil rights activism.  This has real results. 

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Bruce 

This is about a giant Schnauser. I mean like a human dressed as a dog. Black. 

We are in the CVS, which led me to the sign on his little jacket , Service Dog. 

His owner was a Marine, about my age. Puts him around Desert Storm? His pile of medicines puts him around Agent Orange. So maybe he was 20. He paid for everything with his drivers license. 

He was Black, but not like his dog. This guy had evolved into  a big round brown bear. Probably called him Bear back in the war. But we don’t know his name. We know his dogs name. 

Bruce. He said it once per minute on the pretense of demonstrating the peecision disincline of this giant Service Animal. Not. 

Bruce doesn’t do shit. Bruce gets oatmeal baths from his groomer each weak. The main command is “Bruce say Hi”, at which Bruce stands up at his full height of 6 ‘ 2″ and puts his paws either a person or the Pharmacy counter. 

But his main trick is hugging his master the Bear, for which he is rewarded by the inane question “Do you love me?”

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Hitler, alias Schickelgruber

”From the beginning of 1877, 12 years before Adolf was born, his father called himself Hitler, and his son was never known by any other name until his opponents dug up this long-forgotten village scandal and tried, without justification, to label him with his grandmother’s name of Schicklgruber.” – Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock

This is my goto list on books about Hitler:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2003/nov/17/top10s.hitler.thirdreich

I saw this movie recently called Youth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3312830/

It was about Age, naturally. What kind of movie do you make about youth? Seriously. Youth is that life-segment in Western Civ where we weave the stories that define us.  Age is the realization that they were just stories. Optional reading.

This movie had that heinous tendency of weak writers/directors to equate gratuitous shock with boldness in art. Among those heinous moments was when we finally discover the secret role that Paul Dano’s character has been preparing, by observing the old people in some Swiss sanitarium.  It’s Hitler as an old man! And he certainly did milk the shock value of the revelation as much as he could.

What he didn’t realize is that Hitler, the mention of Hitler, alone, is just not that shocking.  Now, the idea of Hitler as an old man is modestly interesting – the idea gave me about two minutes of new thought. But then…pfffft…

The deal is, what we can now see in retrospect, is that Hitler was actually NOT the demon mastermind of the extermination of 6 million Jews and the harbinger of WWII.  He was a little squirt from Linz, Austria, who had been rejected (by Jewish academics) at the Kunstakademie in Vienna. He was a short guy.  His mom didn’t love him.  His dad didn’t love him.  Does this really require that much intellectual effort?

What, in fact,  is frightening and bizarre and horrific is the rise to dominance of the Third Reich, and what is most terrifying about it is that it was NOT dopey Hitler’s doing, but the confluence of all the hatred and greed of human society, at its weakest moral point, supported by Western corporations, and carried on the shoulders of normal people.

There’s a BBC series that I follow, called Foyle’s War.  In Season 9, Episode 2, they deal with the substantial support of Hitler’s Third Reich in it’s early years, by Western industrialists. General Motors, Ford, IT&T, Standard Oil…all contributed directly to the Third Reich’s enablement. Here is a short list:

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-147191

But the list is much longer, and the details, as they are unearthed in this century, remind me of a worldwide organization, something like ISIS, except with unparalleled business and policy expertise backing it. And, it is key to note that each of these material supporters was also a major stockholder.

I’m not trying to forgive or forget Hitler.  I’m just hinting at the likelihood that he was more like a ghoulish George W. Bush – an oaf, that appealed to an ocean of peasants.  But backed by a seamless, invisible multi-national machine, largely US and British. I mean, it is not realistic, when you trace Hitler’s rise to power, that he did so with a band of SS thugs, and his charisma, alone.  Right?

The lesson is this: a bunch of rag-tag jihadists are not capable of funding and managing an efficient worldwide terror organization. Take it as a given that the bulk of the mechanical, financial, and technical infrastructure is taken care of behind the scenes by, yes, the very nations that the terror organization seems to be against! It defies simple reason, which is why the cloaking mechanism has been so effective, all the times this strategy has been employed. Add to this the fact that many of the key public players in the conflict are, themselves, unaware of the intricacies of how their holy war is being funded, and sharing this ignorance with the key public players on the Western front, and you have this bonus smoke screen of clumsy attempts to actually fight – when there’s no one to fight against! We are all in the same Roman arena, slaves pitted against one another, unaware that our immediate opponent in the ring is actually our brother.

 

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Money Flows With Refugees – the Good of Capitalism

“Money Flows With Refugees” – suspend your blind faith in a belief you did not come to on your own! Capitalism solves problems that neither Liberals, Leftists, nor even Capitalists can solve!

It’s really simple – the is a kind of spontaneous generation of solutions in the social organism: “necessity is the Mother of invention.” But really, what does that mean?

It means that while no large nations of the world were ready to step forward to provide the means for refugees to find safe passage to new homes, smugglers and pirates – the world’s oldest capitalists – could easily provide these services.  In return, they don’t require allegiance to a religious or political doctrine – they just want your money.

And there is the other side of the coin – the “refugees” in this case, are not some impoverished band of peasants. Instead, many of them are affluent (enough) to pay for their freedom themselves!  No need to ask the United States for a handout – they had the money all along to direct their own futures.  They just weren’t that committed to taking the responsibility into their own hands.

And how do I know this? Well, just look for yourself!  There it is, in black and white (pixels): there is a booming business in Turkey, fueled by someone ?!?  Guess it must be the refugees.

Why is that hard to accept?  I guess we would prefer refugees to be weak, helpless victims of totalitarian warplay.  And you betcha – there are plenty of those refugees!  I am not making a generalization about refugees here.

What I am pointing out is that those who CAN take care of themselves need a little push, and then the WILL take care of themselves – which then leaves the real refugees – the poor, the destitute – to be cared for through Love and Charity. Because we can’t carry everyone (everyone doesn’t need carrying).

The “push” these people needed was only money.  Maybe that is the push the Great and Mighty Government powers need too?! But in truth, the many, many such situations in the world – micro- (as opposed to macro – , i.e. not “small”) struggles for autonomy, that lead to some sacrifice, are best handled by local resources – the “village”, of Hilary Clinton, only “village” is far too naive a term. Something an affluent Eastern Seaboard baby would come up with.

The agents of social change are transient, created at the moment when the need and the resources are brought together. You don’t even need to know your helpers, and, they may even cheat and stab you sometimes!  Like real elves and fairies!

But you know, the faery tale has changed a bit – or rather, returned to the original Grimm version.

Source: Money Flows With Refugees, and Life Jackets Fill the Shops – The New York Times