How was I being a puritan? I used language throughout that demonstrated I was speaking from my own experience and sharing my own understanding.

All language points at people’s real experiences and understanding. And how I define a word, such as excitement and happiness, affects my understanding of what is possible. I thought they were synonyms for many years, growing up in a consumer capitalist culture, it’s kinda what I was fed by advertising and my environment. Eventually, I learned to delineate them. And found, in my own experience, they’re not the same.

If you use different words and have a different understanding of your lived experience, more power to you.

Been meditating for years, and it took me a long time to realize that excitement is not happiness. But closer to what Buddhism calls restlessness and worry. And it tends to cycle with sloth and torpor in a pattern very similar to what we call bipolar.

Manic episodes, for me, are when the excitement keeps going without any rest. Exhaustion occurs. And delirium sets in.

I don’t find any of these states pleasurable (i.e. euphoric). Joy is what I equate closest to euphoria. An overflowing abundance of positive feelings shared with others. I imagine if we got worried or restless hanging onto that positive feeling, it could play a role in the cycle though.

Happiness is calm, restful. A lack of restlessness, anger, sloth and torpor, etc. Contentedness is a synonym for happy.

Anger/Desire, are, at base, aversion and attachment. If I’m attached to joy or angry at my depression, those are additional factors that keep us caught in the cycle.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_hindrances

Money is a carrot on a stick. It’s not fulfillment.

We find lasting fulfillment and self-worth through our connections with each other. With your kid, with your co-workers. With other people in your life.

Try consciously putting your attention on the things that are actually fulfilling. Money doesn’t buy happiness. It does make life easier. But happiness is the time you spend with your kid, not the money you spend on him.

1 is bullshit.

We can organize. Get involved in our communities. Make sure we and our loved ones are as safe as possible if shit does hit the fan.

2 ignores the fact that this isn’t 2016. The judiciary is stacked this time around. And the SC has already given Trump immunity for a lot of the bullshit he says he plans to do.

You can hope for the best. I do. But I’m also preparing for the worst.

I’m not counting on the democrats to save me. You’re praying that things are okay when every indication out of Trump is the opposite.

Some times I’m not going to worry is just apathy in disguise. I think that’s the case here.

The similarities I see between them and the Aztec corporation from shadowrun is pretty astounding. Both primarily sell consumer goods.

Technology generally isn’t good or bad. A surgeon’s scalpel for example, can both heal or hurt, depending on the skill and intentions of the user.

What AI is, is powerful. Which makes it good in the hands of some, and very, very bad in the hands of others. This isn’t just about censorship or capitalism. One of the first of the newer AIs was able to generate 1,000s of novel lethal compounds overnight by changing a single parameter. That’s just on the medical/warfare/terrorism side of things.

Social trust is likely to erode as deep fake technology gets into the hands of literally everyone. State actors will go after other states, as we’re seeing in elections already. And rogue actors will be able to spread misinformation or use the technology to con people. Corporate actors are already using the technology to manipulate people for profit. With harmful outcomes apparent.

I’m not an AI hater btw. The advances we’ll see in medical technology, microbiology, and understanding large systems like weather and societies, will be and is amazing. But, there’s no guard rails at the moment and won’t be any likely in the years ahead. It will be a wild ride and AI is just one more thing that’s going to drastically change our world in the coming two decades. Some of it will be good. And a lot of it will be bad.

Amazon?

Jobs that typically women do also pay much less. Regardless of if the women in question take any time off to raise children. Or if the individual employee happens to be a man.

Teachers for example. But also human services workers and similar jobs. And this doesn’t get into hiring biases for high paying jobs, like management positions in any field, which tends strongly to break for men.

The idea that women take time off from work to raise babies, and therefore they get paid less, isn’t the issue, in other words. Women don’t take 25% more time off then men. And not all women are having babies. But we’re affected by the gender pay gap all the same.

Or maybe people should be prepared for the worst because a violent felon was just elected to run the country?

When Trump’s health catches up with him and he dies. And his cult of personality dies with him.

Of course, by then, the fascists will have already done a lot of damage as far as cementing future authoritarian regimes.

Mass strikes, mass protests. In other words left organizing is the only positive I expect out of the coming term.

And I expect it will be met with state violence and terrorism because Trump has already said that’s his plan.

Maybe if it bent around me in particular. I watched an interesting sci-fi movie that was on a similar concept of temporal bubbles.

But I forget the name.

Just like the first time over and over.

Space and time or inseparable, and we are inseparable from space and time.

Which is saying, if time is a knot we are part of that or knot, just like everything else and would have no idea that we are in it.

Optimally observing the breath and the body first. Trying to observe thoughts without that solid foundation, tends to get us caught up in our thoughts.

And yeah, we do have to be aware when our thinking hijacks are attention. But the focus of attention should first of all be on the breath and the breathing before it shifts to any sort of deeper observation of thoughts and feelings.

And that’s generally good advice whether you’re on the cushion or not. Thoughts and feelings can easily carry us away. Our body and our breathing is always in the present.

If sitting meditation doesn’t work for you, there’s walking meditation, Qigong, body scans.

Really it’s just about finding your breath and your body and settling into the present and sitting meditation is just a tool to teach us how to do that.

The meme is shit by the way.

The idea isn’t to build up tension all day and then let it go when you finally get to the cushion. The idea is to learn to let go on the cushion so all day you can let shit go.

That’s why we call meditation practice. It’s so we can implement it in the moment when we need it.

Racists, misogynists, homophobes, billionaires.

Oh and Russia and Israel.

This ruling is just on the emergency order to shut down the lottery which would end tomorrow anyway because tomorrow is election day.

There is still a criminal case proceeding.

Which is civil rather than criminal.

I wonder if people that participated in this lottery will start filing suit.

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Well since we have to teach them to count and they do appear to have some form of language, they could just split themselves into a line and count off.

They would need poll watchers of some kind though, to be sure the count was done fairly.

They also live in smaller communities than people do, so I wouldn’t imagine this would be a great solution for a whole nation of dolphins. But it would work for a large pod.