SwahiliMusings

queennubian: ghdos: 135814n: IS THIS REALLY HOW KEYS WORK...

Sat, 12 Jan 2013 23:54:05 -0600

ghdos:

135814n:

IS THIS REALLY HOW KEYS WORK BECAUSE OH MY GOD I CAN DIE IN PEACE.

My mind was blown the first time I discovered this.

"The tendency to insulate belief from evidence is related to another feature that Leiter thinks is..."

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 14:07:03 -0600

“The tendency to insulate belief from evidence is related to another feature that Leiter thinks is distinctive of religion – “the contribution of religious belief to existential consolation”. Religious belief, he seems to be saying, is not just rationally unwarranted; it is insulated from evidence because it gives consolation and thereby confers meaning on the lives of believers. Once again, however, it is not only the traditionally religious who cling to their beliefs for the sake of the consolation they provide. In our time, secular believers have done the same and on a larger scale. Think of the claims about Saddam Hussein’s supposed arsenal of weapons of mass destruction that were used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Undoubtedly there were geo - political factors (mainly to do with oil) behind the disinformation that preceded the war. But if proper standards for the evaluation of evidence were abandoned for what has been aptly described as “faith-based intelligence”, it was also because overthrowing Saddam was for Tony Blair and the Bush White House a way of furthering an irresistible movement towards democracy and human rights and thereby being “on the right side of history”. The idea that toppling the tyrant would produce anything resembling liberal democracy was never plausible and quickly shown to be mistaken. That has not prevented the same failed experiment being repeated in Libya (and soon, perhaps, it will be repeated yet again in Syria). For those who believe in western intervention, it provides a sense that they still matter in the world; without the conviction that they are in the vanguard of history, their lives would be drained of significance.”

Photo

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:51:45 -0600

STALKING THE WILD SELF

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 22:46:22 -0600

The hunter is in a dilemma.

Wind is blowing his sails

to the shores of the prey’s den

& nostrils are smelling the air

for the sound of his breathing,

shadows, tales, footsteps.

Eyes on the look-out,

imaginations run wild and

danger looms large, hangs heavy

like a thick cloud.

Time ticks, slows and halts, exhausted.

Each waits for the steps of the other,

life and limb pegged on the ear

so that a mis-relay condemns it to

eternal blame.

It must sieve the half-sound of

the tip-toe and the half-breath

and the stealth and the dead silence.

Therein lie life and limb.

~Danieli Otieno

One for Toots and the Maytals

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 20:40:49 -0600

One for Toots and the Maytals

Photo

Fri, 23 Nov 2012 17:08:50 -0600

my richness is life…

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 20:24:02 -0600

my richness is life…

19 Things To Stop Doing In Your 20s - (Anonymous)

Thu, 15 Nov 2012 00:41:37 -0600

1. Stop placing all the blame on other people for how they interact with you. To an extent, people treat you the way you w

ant to be treated. A lot of social behavior is cause and effect. Take responsibility for (accept) the fact that you are the only constant variable in your equation.

2. Stop being lazy by being constantly “busy.” It’s easy to be busy. It justifies never having enough time to clean, cook for yourself, go out with friends, meet new people. Realize that every time you give in to your ‘busyness,’ it’s you who’s making the decision, not the demands of your job.

3. Stop seeking out distractions. You will always be able to find them.

4. Stop trying to get away with work that’s “good enough.” People notice when “good enough” is how you approach your job. Usually these people will be the same who have the power to promote you, offer you a health insurance plan, and give you more money. They will take your approach into consideration when thinking about you for a raise.

5. Stop allowing yourself to be so comfortable all the time. Coming up with a list of reasons to procrastinate risky, innovative decisions offers more short-term gratification than not procrastinating. But when you stop procrastinating to make a drastic change, your list of reasons to procrastinate becomes a list of ideas about how to better navigate the risk you’re taking.

6. Stop identifying yourself as a cliche and start treating yourself as an individual. Constantly checking your life against a prewritten narrative or story of how things “should” be is a bought-into way of life. It’s sort of like renting your identity. It isn’t you. You are more nuanced than the narrative you try to fit yourself into, more complex than the story that “should” be happening.

7. Stop expecting people to be better than they were in high school — learn how to deal with it instead. Just because you’re out of high school doesn’t mean you’re out of high school. There will always be people in your life who want what you have, are threatened by who you are, and will ridicule you for doing something that threatens how they see their position in the world.

8. Stop being stingy. If you really care about something, spend your money on it. There is often a notion that you are saving for something. Either clarify what that thing is or start spending your money on things that are important to you. Spend money on road trips. Spend money on healthy food. Spend money on opportunities. Spend money on things you’ll keep.

9. Stop treating errands as burdens. Instead, use them as time to focus on doing one thing, and doing it right. Errands and chores are essentially rote tasks that allow you time to think. They function to get you away from your phone, the internet, and other distractions. Focus and attention span are difficult things to maintain when you’re focused and attentive on X amount of things at any given moment.

10. Stop blaming yourself for being human. You’re fine. Having a little anxiety is fine. Being scared is fine. Your secrets are fine. You’re well-meaning. You’re intelligent. You’re blowing it out of proportion. You’re fine.

11. Stop ignoring the fact that other people have unique perspectives and positions. Start approaching people more thoughtfully. People will appreciate you for deliberately trying to conceive their own perspective and position in the world. It not only creates a basis for empathy and respect, it also primes people to be more open and generous with you.

12. Stop seeking approval so hard. Approach people with the belief that you’re a good person. It’s normal to want the people around you to like you. But it becomes a self-imposed burden when almost all your behavior toward certain people is designed to constantly reassure you of their approval.

13. Stop considering the same things you’ve always done as the only options there are. It’s unlikely that one of the things you’ll regret when you’re older is not having consumed enough beer in your 20s, or not having bought enough $5 lattes, or not having gone out to brunch enough times, or not having spent enough time on the internet. Fear of missing out is a real, toxic thing. You’ve figured out drinking and going out. You’ve experimented enough. You’ve gotten your fill of internet memes. Figure something else out.

14. Stop rejecting the potential to feel pain. Suffering is a universal constant for sentient beings. It is not unnatural to suffer. Being in a constant state of suffering is bad. But it is often hard to appreciate happiness when there’s nothing to compare it to. Rejecting the potential to suffer is unsustainable and unrealistic.

15. Stop approaching adverse situations with anger and frustration. You will always deal with people who want things that seem counter to your interests. There will always be people who threaten to prevent you from getting what you want by trying to get what they want. This is naturally frustrating. Realize that the person you’re dealing with is in the same position as you — by seeking out your own interests, you threaten to thwart theirs. It isn’t personal — you’re both just focused on getting different things that happen to seem mutually exclusive. Approach situations like these with reason. Be calm. Don’t start off mad, it’ll only make things more tense.

16. Stop meeting anger with anger. People will make you mad. Your reaction to this might be to try and make them mad. This is something of a first-order reaction. That is, it isn’t very thoughtful — it may be the first thing you’re inclined to do. Try to suppress this reaction. Be thoughtful. Imagine your response said aloud before you say it. If you don’t have to respond immediately, don’t.

17. Stop agreeing to do things that you know you’ll never actually do. It doesn’t help anyone. To a certain extent, it’s a social norm to be granted a ‘free pass’ when you don’t do something for someone that you said you were going to do. People notice when you don’t follow through, though, especially if it’s above 50% of the time.

18. Stop ‘buying’ things you know you’ll throw away. Invest in friendships that aren’t parasitic. Spend your time on things that aren’t distractions. Put your stock in fleeting opportunity. Focus on the important.

19. Stop being afraid.

queennubian: shialabeowulf: FAVORITE COMMERCIAL OMFG WHO...

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 23:13:41 -0600

queennubian:

shialabeowulf:

FAVORITE COMMERCIAL OMFG WHO GIFFED THIS !!!!!!!

Swahili rap

Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:37:25 -0500

Swahili rap

CHURCH HOSTAGE

Sat, 11 Aug 2012 08:25:00 -0500

Somewhere in the mist lies the scroll

stolen, long ago, from the vaults of the cathedral.

Coronation hymns, frankincense & long veils

ooze, float & flow in sacred corridors;

snipers in nuns’ habits scan the holy flock, hawk-eyed.

Murder, conspiracy and deceit are in concert

like the crusades backfired on the establishment

and now come to take revenge & with it

the holy grail – the labor of dead popes and cardinals,

the repository of the church’s secrets &

mysterious dealings going back several centuries.

The church is being taken hostage – silently, violently,

the priest just got slain on the altar

but the faithful isn’t aware yet;

they are still reciting the creed,

about to take the sacrament

only no one knows the creed is a dirge.

Danieli Otieno

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

Wed, 08 Aug 2012 21:07:00 -0500

Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus

"Corporations don’t advertise products particularly; they’re advertising a way of life. A way of..."

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:51:23 -0500

“Corporations don’t advertise products particularly; they’re advertising a way of life. A way of thinking. A story of who we are as people and how we got here and what’s the source of our so-called liberty, and so-called freedom. You know, so you have decades and decades and decades of propaganda and education teaching us to think in a certain way. When applied to the large corporation, it’s that the corporation was inevitable, that it’s indispensable, that it’s somehow remarkably efficient, and that it’s responsible for progress and the good life. They’re selling themselves, they’re selling their domination, they’re selling they’re rule, and they’re creating an image for themselves, as just regular folks down the block. It’s tough, you know, they’re putting some taxpayer shareholder money into helping and who can say? But that money should be going to the taxpayers to decide what to do. And while they’re doing these sorts of nice things, they’re also playing a role in lowering taxes for corporations and lowering taxes for wealthy people, and reconfiguring public policy. And what we don’t see is all that reconfiguring going on; we don’t see all that vacuuming up of money, vacuuming out the insides of public processes, but we do see the nice facade”

- Richard Grossman - “The Corporation”, 2003

"One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a..."

Thu, 26 Jul 2012 01:47:28 -0500

““One of the paradoxes of our time is that the War on Terror has served mainly to reinforce a collective belief that maintaining the right amount of fear and suspicion will earn one safety. Fear is promoted by the government as a kind of policy. Fear is accepted, even among the best-educated people in the country, even among the professors with whom i work, as a kind of intelligence. And inspiring fear in others if often seen as neighborly and kindly, instead of being regarded as what my cousin recognized it for - a violence”

Photo

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:37:00 -0500

Subtle Parody

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:35:00 -0500

There is something deeply unsettling to me about a trend that is fast-gaining currency - how a lot of privileged people in society, who choose to “fight” certain causes involving lesser-privileged people than them, go about it. This set me thinking or rather, asking: does a privileged person have a louder voice? I think they do; they are listened to more and their opinions are considered more valuable. And yes, privileged allies, when they use their enhanced voices at all, should use them for the less privileged. That means using their voices to enhance ours, to increase our volume – they need not and should not speak for us; what they should do is direct people to us and let us speak to them themselves. They should not stand on our shoulders; they should, instead, give us a hand up.

I can’t touch this subject without covering a particularly vile out-branch of it. A privileged person will decide, in the name of understanding marginalization, to play-act as one of the marginalized for a certain duration of time. You’ll hear numerous reports of people deciding to live homeless ostensibly because they “empathize” with the situation of the homeless or you might hear of a report of some straight, Cis man hanging around gay bars for the feel of what it is to be gay. This is a mockery of the situation of these people.

I am also awed at the ability of most privileged people to play victim. When they come across a case of prejudice against a marginalized group, they set out to center themselves into the situation completely – they begin to yap about their experience (irrelevant) and their feelings (irrelevant), how hard it is for them (irrelevant), how much they’ve learned (do we care?) and how they’ve grown as a person (still not caring). Now, let’s think this over; could there be a more self-centered way of discussing someone else’s marginalization?

Faking it doesn’t mean you understand someone’s experience – you can never get the full impact of living as marginalized. You can’t sleep in the streets for 3 days and know full well what being homeless means. Here’s one reason why: even during the time you are there, there’s always the assurance at the back of your mind that should the going get too tough for you, you can always abandon that life and go back to your good life. The truly homeless have no such privilege; they have to stay the course of the hard life no matter what and that alone makes you two totally different people even though you both live on street corners. All this mummery can do is give you the FALSE IMPRESSION that you understand.

Photo

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 00:54:58 -0500

The Matthew Effect

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 07:48:06 -0500

Much of life is characterized by what the sociologist Robert Merton called the Matthew Effect, named after a sentence from the book of Matthew in the Bible, which laments “For to all those who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.” Matthew was referring specifically to wealth (hence the phrase “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer”), but Merton argued that the same rule applied to success more generally. Success early on in an individual’s career, that is, confers on them certain structural advantages that make subsequent successes much more likely, regardless of their intrinsic aptitude.

Merton was writing about scientific careers, but as another sociologist, Daniel Rigney, argues in his recent book The Matthew Effect, the same forces apply to most other careers as well. Success leads to prominence and recognition, which leads in turn to more opportunities to succeed, more resources with which to achieve success, and more likelihood of your subsequent successes being noticed and attributed to you.

Isolating the effects of this accumulated advantage from differences in innate talent or hard work is difficult, but a number of studies have found that no matter how carefully one tries to select a pool of people with similar potential, their fortunes will diverge wildly over time, consistent with Merton’s theory. For example, it is known that college students who graduate during a weak economy earn less, on average, than students who graduate in a strong economy. On its own, that doesn’t sound too surprising, but the kicker is that this difference applies not just to the years of the recession itself, but continues to accumulate over decades. Because the timing of one’s graduation obviously has nothing to do with one’s innate talent, the persistence of these effects is strong evidence that the Matthew Effect is present everywhere.

Chris Rock would say….”the media ain’t killed...

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 11:29:44 -0500

Chris Rock would say….”the media ain’t killed no body. When I go to an ATM am I looking over my back for the media?? No! Quit blaming them!”

Haha…Kiss my ass Chris

"We tell people they are “strong” when we are uncomfortable with their pain and would prefer that..."

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 07:52:39 -0500

“

We tell people they are “strong” when we are uncomfortable with their pain and would prefer that they shut up and not bother us with it. To say “but you are strong” is telling someone “I don’t think you should feel that way,” and it’s not a compliment. I don’t think that strength means being invulnerable, or pretending that you are. The belief that silence and stoicism are inherently good qualities is how you end up dressed up like a bat punching criminals in an alley – it’s not a good road to emotional health.
[…]
Be sad. Be angry. Let your heart break – in the diner, on someone’s futon, in the park, on the way to the zoo, at brunch, over drinks, in the therapist’s office, on the bus – Wherever it breaks, let it break all the way open, let it run out and down and spread out in a soggy puddle at your feet. Say, “I’m sorry, I can’t listen to you today, my heart is broken. Will you sit with me a while and I’ll tell you about it?“

Say, “I can’t take care of you today, but you can take care of me, and maybe tomorrow I will take care of you, and we can trade off like that for a while, okay?”

Say, “I love you, and I love that you think I’m strong, but I don’t feel like being strong today. I feel like being angry and crazy and sad. Can we go to the movies or just sit here quietly or take a walk or talk about it or not talk about it?“

Your friends may get scared when you do this. If you, the “strong” one can break, what does that say about them? That’s why they push back at you and try to remind you of your strength, when what you need is for them to stand by you in your pain and weakness. They don’t have to solve that pain, they just have to bear witness to it. Maybe they don’t know how – a lot of people don’t know what to do in the face of other people’s pain. They want to fix everything, and if they can’t fix it they feel inadequate. As the “strong” one you can help them out with this by saying “You don’t have to fix it. You don’t have to do anything. Just be with me, and listen, and love me, and I’ll love you back. That’s all I need – to know that you love me, even when I’m sad and scared and don’t know what to do next.”

”

- Captain Awkward, “The lie of ‘strength.’” (via baddominicana)