Some gems from 2018;

• Port Royal Ltd (portroyal.ltd)
• The MaryMaid Company (marymaid.co)
• Aytekin Tank: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists (medium.com)
• John Harris: Are dark kitchens the satanic mills of our era? (theguardian.com)
• SumOfUs: Tell Premier Horgan to protect BC’s water from Nestlé’s profiteering (actions.sumofus.org)
• Ralph Waldo Emmerson (philosopher and poet, among other things) once said;

Now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists,—talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature; poetry,—O, they adore poetry,—and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, “dear liberty!” they worship virtue, “dear virtue!” Yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A little experience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? The innocence and ignorance of then patient is the first difficulty; he believes his disease is blooming health. A rough realist or a phalanx of realists would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend your bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment, might be tried. Another cure would be to fire with fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to suspect that something was wrong.

• Marc Bevand: My Experience With the Great Firewall of China (blog.zorinaq.com)
• Television by Roald Dahl (author, poet and pilot);

The most important thing we’ve learned,
So far as children are concerned,
Is never, NEVER, NEVER let
Them near your television set –
Or better still, just don’t install
The idiotic thing at all.
In almost every house we’ve been,
We’ve watched them gaping at the screen.
They loll and slop and lounge about,
And stare until their eyes pop out.
(Last week in someone’s place we saw
A dozen eyeballs on the floor.)
They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they’re hypnotised by it,
Until they’re absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keeps them still,
They don’t climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink –
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
IT ROTS THE SENSE IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK – HE ONLY SEES!
’All right!’ you’ll cry. ’All right!’ you’ll say,
’But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!’
We’ll answer this by asking you,
’What used the darling ones to do?
’How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?’
Have you forgotten? Don’t you know?
We’ll say it very loud and slow:
THEY … USED … TO … READ! They’d READ and READ,
AND READ and READ, and then proceed
To READ some more. Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!
The nursery shelves held books galore!
Books cluttered up the nursery floor!
And in the bedroom, by the bed,
More books were waiting to be read!
Such wondrous, fine, fantastic tales
Of dragons, gypsies, queens, and whales
And treasure isles, and distant shores
Where smugglers rowed with muffled oars,
And pirates wearing purple pants,
And sailing ships and elephants,
And cannibals crouching ’round the pot,
Stirring away at something hot.
(It smells so good, what can it be?
Good gracious, it’s Penelope.)
The younger ones had Beatrix Potter
With Mr. Tod, the dirty rotter,
And Squirrel Nutkin, Pigling Bland,
And Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and-
Just How The Camel Got His Hump,
And How the Monkey Lost His Rump,
And Mr. Toad, and bless my soul,
There’s Mr. Rat and Mr. Mole-
Oh, books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw your TV set away,
And in its place you can install
A lovely bookshelf on the wall.
Then fill the shelves with lots of books,
Ignoring all the dirty looks,
The screams and yells, the bites and kicks,
And children hitting you with sticks-
Fear not, because we promise you
That, in about a week or two
Of having nothing else to do,
They’ll now begin to feel the need
Of having something to read.
And once they start – oh boy, oh boy!
You watch the slowly growing joy
That fills their hearts. They’ll grow so keen
They’ll wonder what they’d ever seen
In that ridiculous machine,
That nauseating, foul, unclean,
Repulsive television screen!
And later, each and every kid
Will love you more for what you did.

• Aytekin Tank: Why the world needs deep generalists, not specialists (medium.com)

Category	Input	Output	Time to Mastery	Equivalent
Master	100%	99%	20 years	Expert in a field, unique insights.
Journeyman	20%	80%	4 years	Journeyman in a field with some unique insight.
Apprentice	4%	64%	10 months	Mastery of basic concepts in a field.
Beginner	0.80%	51%	2 months	Working understanding of broad concepts and field underpinnings.
Layman	0.16%	41%	12 days	Cocktail-party conversational in a field. Can ask smart questions.

• From The Lessons of History (book, pdf) by Will & Ariel Durant;

Nothing is clearer in history than the adoption by successful rebels of the methods they were accustomed to condemn in the forces they deposed.

• A prediction from the book, only off by about twenty years;

By the year 2000, Grant predicted, the Nordics will have fallen from power, and with their fall Western civilization will disappear in a new barbarism welling up everywhere from within and from without.

The Seven Hermetic Principles

Mentalism
  All is mind, the universe is mental.

Correspondence
  As above, so below; as below, so above.

Vibratioon
  Nothing rests; everything moves; everything vibrates.

Polarity
  Everything is Dual; everything has poles;
  everything has its pair of opposites;
  like and unlike are the same;
  oppossites are identical in nature, but different in degree;
  extremes meet;
  all truths are but half-truths;
  all paradoxes may be reconciled.

Rhythm
  Everything flows, out and in;
  everything has its tides;
  all things rise and fall;
  the pendulum-swing manifests in everything;
  the measure of the swing to the right
  is the measure of the swing to the left;
  rhythm compenssates.

Cause and Effect
  Every Cause has its Effect;
  every Effect has its Cause;
  everything happens according to Law;
  Chance is but a name for Law not recognized;
  there are many planes of causation,
  but nothing escapes the Law.

Gender
  Gender is in everything;
  everything has its Masculine and Feminine Principles;
  Gender manifests on all planes.

• From the documentary, Stink.

[John Kerry]: “Have you asked for studies from independent sources?”
[FDA]: “(pregnant pause) We don’t normally ask for independent studies.”
[John Kerry]: “Then you don’t protect the American people.”
—
[Mr. Markey]: “Does the FDA have the authority to ensure that products like bubble bath
and baby lotion are free of toxic chemicals like formaldehyde before they hit the
shelves?”
[FDA]: “Um, there is no pre-market approval requirement.”
[Mr. Markey]: “If the FDA believed that the level of formaldehyde was harmful, could it
require a recall of that product from market shelves?”
[FDA]: “Uh, it could not under current law.”
[Mr. Markey]: “If a company decided to include arsenic as a component of a face cream,
would they even have to notify the FDA first?”
[FDA]: “Uh, it would not.”
[Mr. Markey]: “If arsenic was used as a component of a fragrance, would the company be
required to list arsenic on the product label?”
[FDA]: “As a component of a fragrance it would not.”
[Mr. Markey]: “That would come, I think, as a shock to most people because everyone
assumes that they can turn the box around. And see what’s in it. But the FDA does not
have the authority to require that to be disclosed to the public. And I think therein
lies the problem.”

• Abigail Cain: Before Envelopes, People Protected Messages With Letterlocking (atlasobscura.com)
• Andrew Merle: The healthiesst people in the world don’t go to the gym (qz.com)
• Cecilia Skingsley: Why Sweden’s cashless society is no longer a utopia (weforum.org)

• c. 1870;

Remember, remember!
The fifth of November,
The Gunpowder treason and plot;
I know of no reason
Why the Gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot!
Guy Fawkes and his companions
Did the scheme contrive,
To blow the King and Parliament
All up alive.
Threescore barrels, laid below,
To prove old England’s overthrow.
But, by God’s providence, him they catch,
With a dark lantern, lighting a match!
A stick and a stake
For King James’s sake!
If you won’t give me one,
I’ll take two,
The better for me,
And the worse for you.
A rope, a rope, to hang the Pope,
A penn’orth of cheese to choke him,
A pint of beer to wash it down,
And a jolly good fire to burn him.
Holloa, boys! holloa, boys! make the bells ring!
Holloa, boys! holloa boys! God save the King!
Hip, hip, hooor-r-r-ray!

• Dante;

  Such a sweet decorum and such gentle grace attend my lady’s greeting as she moves that lips can only tremble into silence, and eyes dare not attempt to gaze at her. Moving benignly, clothed in humility, untouched by all the praise along her way, she seems to be a creature come from Heaven to earth, to manifest a miracle.

  Miraculously gracious to behold, her sweetness reaches, through the eyes, the heart (who has not felt this cannot understand), and from her lips it seems there moves a gracious spirit, so deeply loving that it glides into the souls of men, whispering: “Sigh!”

In 1835, President Andrew Jackson said;

You are a den of vipers. I intend to rout you out, and by the Eternal God I will rout you out. If the people only understood the rank injustice of our money and banking system, there would be revolution before morning.

• Abraham Lincoln also knew.
• William McKinley also knew.
• John F. Kennedy also knew.
• Donald Trump also knows while learning from the previous to leave it alone.

• Brian Gallagher: The Case for Making Cities Out of Wood (nautil.us)
• John Harris: Are dark kitchens the satanic mills of our era? (theguardian.com)

• Sean Parker, founder of Napster and founding Facebook CEO;

When Facebook was getting going, I had these people who would come up to me and they would say, ’I’m not on social media.’ And I would say, ’OK. You know, you will be.’ And then they would say, ’No, no, no. I value my real-life interactions. I value the moment. I value presence. I value intimacy.’ And I would say, … ’We’ll get you eventually.’

I don’t know if I really understood the consequences of what I was saying, because [of] the unintended consequences of a network when it grows to a billion or 2 billion people and … it literally changes your relationship with society, with each other … It probably interferes with productivity in weird ways. God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains.

The thought process that went into building these applications, Facebook being the first of them, … was all about: ’How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’

And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while, because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever. And that’s going to get you to contribute more content, and that’s going to get you … more likes and comments.

It’s a social-validation feedback loop … exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you’re exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.

The inventors, creators — it’s me, it’s Mark [Zuckerberg], it’s Kevin Systrom on Instagram, it’s all of these people — understood this consciously. And we did it anyway.

• Harley Manson: Unlocking The Power Of The 3-6-9 (awarenessact.com)

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.” – Nikola Tesla

First Round Review: It’s Price Before Product, Period (review.firstround.com)

The Egg, by Andy Weir

You were on your way home when you died.

It was a car accident. Nothing particularly remarkable, but fatal nonetheless. You left behind a wife and two children. It was a painless death. The EMTs tried their best to save you, but to no avail. Your body was so utterly shattered you were better off, trust me.

And that’s when you met me. “What… what happened?” You asked. “Where am I?” “You died,” I said, matter-of-factly. No point in mincing words. “There was a… a truck and it was skidding…” “Yup,” I said. “I… I died?” “Yup. But don’t feel bad about it. Everyone dies,” I said.

You looked around. There was nothingness. Just you and me. “What is this place?” You asked. “Is this the afterlife?”

“More or less,” I said. “Are you god?” You asked. “Yup,” I replied. “I’m God.” “My kids… my wife,” you said. “What about them?” “Will they be all right?”

“That’s what I like to see,” I said. “You just died and your main concern is for your family. That’s good stuff right there.”

You looked at me with fascination. To you, I didn’t look like God. I just looked like some man. Or possibly a woman. Some vague authority figure, maybe. More of a grammar school teacher than the almighty.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “They’ll be fine. Your kids will remember you as perfect in every way. They didn’t have time to grow contempt for you. Your wife will cry on the outside, but will be secretly relieved. To be fair, your marriage was falling apart. If it’s any consolation, she’ll feel very guilty for feeling relieved.”

“Oh,” you said. “So what happens now? Do I go to heaven or hell or something?” “Neither,” I said. “You’ll be reincarnated.” “Ah,” you said. “So the Hindus were right,” “All religions are right in their own way,” I said. “Walk with me.” You followed along as we strode through the void. “Where are we going?” “Nowhere in particular,” I said. “It’s just nice to walk while we talk.”

“So what’s the point, then?” You asked. “When I get reborn, I’ll just be a blank slate, right? A baby. So all my experiences and everything I did in this life won’t matter.”

“Not so!” I said. “You have within you all the knowledge and experiences of all your past lives. You just don’t remember them right now.”

I stopped walking and took you by the shoulders. “Your soul is more magnificent, beautiful, and gigantic than you can possibly imagine. A human mind can only contain a tiny fraction of what you are. It’s like sticking your finger in a glass of water to see if it’s hot or cold. You put a tiny part of yourself into the vessel, and when you bring it back out, you’ve gained all the experiences it had.

“You’ve been in a human for the last 48 years, so you haven’t stretched out yet and felt the rest of your immense consciousness. If we hung out here for long enough, you’d start remembering everything. But there’s no point to doing that between each life.”

“How many times have I been reincarnated, then?”

“Oh lots. Lots and lots. An in to lots of different lives.” I said. “This time around, you’ll be a Chinese peasant girl in 540 AD.”

“Wait, what?” You stammered. “You’re sending me back in time?”

“Well, I guess technically. Time, as you know it, only exists in your universe. Things are different where I come from.”

“Where you come from?” You said.

“Oh sure,” I explained “I come from somewhere. Somewhere else. And there are others like me. I know you’ll want to know what it’s like there, but honestly you wouldn’t understand.”

“Oh,” you said, a little let down. “But wait. If I get reincarnated to other places in time, I could have interacted with myself at some point.”

“Sure. Happens all the time. And with both lives only aware of their own lifespan you don’t even know it’s happening.”

“So what’s the point of it all?”

“Seriously?” I asked. “Seriously? You’re asking me for the meaning of life? Isn’t that a little stereotypical?”

“Well it’s a reasonable question,” you persisted.

I looked you in the eye. “The meaning of life, the reason I made this whole universe, is for you to mature.”

“You mean mankind? You want us to mature?”

“No, just you. I made this whole universe for you. With each new life you grow and mature and become a larger and greater intellect.”

“Just me? What about everyone else?”

“There is no one else,” I said. “In this universe, there’s just you and me.” You stared blankly at me. “But all the people on earth…” “All you. Different incarnations of you.” “Wait. I’m everyone!?” “Now you’re getting it,” I said, with a congratulatory slap on the back. “I’m every human being who ever lived?” “Or who will ever live, yes.” “I’m Abraham Lincoln?” “And you’re John Wilkes Booth, too,” I added. “I’m Hitler?” You said, appalled. “And you’re the millions he killed.” “I’m Jesus?” “And you’re everyone who followed him.” You fell silent.

“Every time you victimized someone,” I said, “you were victimizing yourself. Every act of kindness you’ve done, you’ve done to yourself. Every happy and sad moment ever experienced by any human was, or will be, experienced by you.”

You thought for a long time. “Why?” You asked me. “Why do all this?”

“Because someday, you will become like me. Because that’s what you are. You’re one of my kind. You’re my child.”

“Whoa,” you said, incredulous. “You mean I’m a god?”

“No. Not yet. You’re a fetus. You’re still growing. Once you’ve lived every human life throughout all time, you will have grown enough to be born.”

“So the whole universe,” you said, “it’s just…”

“An egg.” I answered. “Now it’s time for you to move on to your next life.”

And I sent you on your way.

• Michael Grothaus: Forget the new iPhones: Apple’s best product is now privacy (fastcompany.com)
• Eric Hoffer (philosopher) once said;

In times of change, learners inherit the earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists.

• Sam Biddle: Sheryl Sandberg Misled Congress About Facebook’s Conscience

(theintercept.com)

• Ian Sherr: Why Washington is so angry with Facebook, Twitter and YouTube (cnet.com)

• Claire Reilly: US and intelligence allies take aim at tech companies over encryption (cnet.com)
• Albert Einstein (physicist) is credited with saying;

If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.

• In 1641, Cardinal Richelieu (clergyman) is credited with saying;

If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.

• In 1945, Karl Popper (philosopher, commentator) said;

Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.

• The Paradox of Intolerance (wikipedia.org)

Rick Merritt: Path to 2nm May Not Be Worth It (eetimes.com)

• SumOfUs: Tell Premier Horgan to protect BC’s water from Nestlé’s profiteering (actions.sumofus.org)
  • Nestlé pays $2.25 per one million litres of water while Canadians pay over $2.25 for half of a single litre.

Staff: Ontario reportedly to allow privatized legal pot sales (globalnews.ca)

• Ralph Waldo Emmerson (philosopher and poet, among other things) once said;

Now society in towns is infested by persons who, seeing that the sentiments please, counterfeit the expression of them. These we call sentimentalists,—talkers who mistake the description for the thing, saying for having. They have, they tell you, an intense love of nature; poetry,—O, they adore poetry,—and roses, and the moon, and the cavalry regiment, and the governor; they love liberty, “dear liberty!” they worship virtue, “dear virtue!” Yes, they adopt whatever merit is in good repute, and almost make it hateful with their praise. The warmer their expressions, the colder we feel; we shiver with cold. A little experience acquaints us with the unconvertibility of the sentimentalist, the soul that is lost by mimicking soul. Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debauchee of sentiment? Was ever one converted? The innocence and ignorance of the patient is the first difficulty; he believes his disease is blooming health. A rough realist or a phalanx of realists would be prescribed; but that is like proposing to mend your bad road with diamonds. Then poverty, famine, war, imprisonment, might be tried. Another cure would be to fire with fire, to match a sentimentalist with a sentimentalist. I think each might begin to suspect that something was wrong.

• Sir Andrew Wiles (mathematician) once said;

Perhaps I could best describe my experience of doing mathematics in terms of entering a dark mansion. You go into the first room and it’s dark, completely dark. You stumble around, bumping into the furniture. Gradually, you learn where each piece of furniture is. And finally, after six months or so, you find the light switch and turn it on. Suddenly, it’s all illuminated and you can see exactly where you were. Then you enter the next dark room…