Writings

It’s been a few years since I watched this clip of former Facebook executive Chamath Palihapitiya sharing his concerns about attention extraction services and the dopamine industrial complex. This video was influencial in my descision to stop using those platforms in 2020. I just rewatched this video a few minutes ago, and Palihapitiya’s thoughts are just as potent and applicable today as they were when he first shared them. Maybe even more. ...

There are a lot of reasons single-use plastic waste is problematic. However, completely stopping using single-use plastic can be pretty difficult… Improvement, however, is comparatively pretty easy! Take a minute to think through the single-use plastic you’ve thrown away this week. Are there any patterns? Anything you threw out several times throughout the week? Utensils, coffee cups, water bottles, plastic bags, meat packaging? Note one or two instances that stuck out. There is likely a simple habit change that you can make which will make it so you won’t need to use that type of single-use plastic again. ...

The blank page is scary. It’s unclear what “should” go on it. “What should I write about?” “What should I draw?” “What should I make?” Not to mention, there’s the terrifying element of we don’t want to mess this up! If we leave the page blank, it stays clean. We can have the satisfaction of not having made any mistakes. We know we can walk away without having failed. Leaving the page blank is comforting. ...

When was the last time you wrote a letter? Not an email; not a text message. A letter. When was the last time you wrote an address onto an envelope, and sent it to someone through the mail? It’s probably been a while. Heck, there’s a decent chance you don’t even know the mailing addresses for some of the people you might want to send a letter to. You might not even have paper and envelopes on hand to write and send a letter. ...

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry “Once you get fancy, fancy gets broken.” ~ Morgan Spurlock “Leadership is simple. But simple doesn’t mean easy.” ~ (paraphrased) Jocko Willink

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Free/Libre Open Source Software. With rare exception, all the software I run on my computer is Open Source (Brave, Bitwarden, to name a couple highly valuable and accessible favorites). Similarly, when I help friends and loved ones setup a new digital device, I always try to encourage them towards the free/libre and open source version of a given product, instead of the closed source versions they are normally used to. ...

Sometimes a reboot is the best option. Sometimes things just get too much to keep up with, and the best option is knocking it down and trying again. Could have been an issue with taking on too much. Could have been lack of good systems for managing the challenges that would arise. Could have been something completely unforeseeable and beyond our control. But regardless, there comes a time where resetting is all-around a better option than trying to push forward on something that’s not working. ...

Most people are familiar with the quote commonly attributed to Einstein: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” The implication often being that it doesn’t make sense pursuing a positive outcome using tools and techniques that we know from experience tend to leave us with negative results. The inverse of that idea seems less frequently discussed, but may be even more important: if something you do is giving you positive result, don’t stop! ...

Counterintuitive, but game-changing. For whatever reason, the cards often fall in such a way that the deficiencies or excesses presented in one problem end up fitting like a perfect puzzle piece into corresponding respective excesses or deficiencies of a different problem. That’s a central concept within regenerative agriculture paradigms like permaculture: one system’s detrimental and potentially damaging surplus output can be another system’s much needed, life-giving input. This is connects potently with the idea of an abundance mentality. ...

I spend a lot of time on the Internet. Like, a lot a lot. You probably do to. And that’s cool. The internet is a great place. It’s definitely got its problems, but it’s got a ton of amazing stuff going for it, too. I want to suggest something, though: maybe our brains aren’t created and optimized for this kind of thing. Maybe, to be constantly online and connected to this infinite flow of thoughts, noise, and information… to be able to instantly look up almost any piece of information that ever existed from a magic slabs in your pocket, to be able to in a second be in conversation with anyone in the world, or to be instantly contacted by anyone else in the world at their slightest whim… to be able to make boredom a complete thing of the past… ...