Wow never thought I would see an article mention Shinryu Suzuki, very cool. I read Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind as a kid and I still remember practicing the sitting and breathing like it was a magical tome.

The hardest part I remember is the nothingness of meditation and I remember his warnings not to fixate on trains of thought. I should probably reread it sometime.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zen_Mind,_Beginner%27s_Mind

> If cobalt never existed in DRC, what exactly would they be doing for work and subsistence? Is this horribly unsafe and in-humane form of work a step up from whatever alternatives they have, or perhaps from nothing at all. Again I am not condoning it, I am just wondering

Is just wondering the new just asking questions?

Clearly they would be doing something else, perhaps what they did before the mine opened.

I feel by framing it as either a step up from nothing at all or from something lesser, you've already condoned it.

What is the something else? Starving? Looting and pillaging? Warring? Becoming software developers?

As a history enjoyer I have actually heard of this:

> The Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra) or the Spanish Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra española) is a purported historiographical tendency which consists of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda

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

I learned by making a paracord sling and flinging marshmallows.

I like to believe it’s so fun because I’m tapping into some primordial fascination with spinning objects, like a dog chasing a wheel.

What a stunningly myopic conclusion.

I hope one day you are able to acknowledge all the people in this world that live for purpose instead of for making Lumberg’s stock go up half a point.

I’m not really sure what having a purpose has to do with it. Whatever your purpose is, it is sustained by corporations and other people working for them, unless you are farming your own food and building your own house.

> they sent a 30 day notice to license the product or they’d sue

This tracks with what I saw, one day there was an email sent out to make sure you don’t have docker desktop installed.

It was wild because we were on the heels of containerize-all-th-things push and now we’re winding down docker?? Sure whatever you say boss.

As someone who thought they used obsidian somewhat well, I feel like a caveman/casual after reading that.

I mean that as praise, it reeled me in as both a puzzle (what am I even reading right now) and a conclusion (the bleeding edge of obsidianmd space is like XKCD straws).

For what it’s worth that tracks with me experience in video games.

When I sat with 30 other testers for 6 days per week I achieved mastery I did not believe possible. Eventually I could cakewalk even the most difficult challenges in those games and I was generally recognized as a highly talented tester.

Meanwhile I’ve sunk more cumulative hours alone into Elden Ring and I have accepted I will never reach that same level of mastery.

It’s a humbling realization how much of my prior greatness was actually just my environment at the time.

Thanks for the paper.

It starts boldly by redefining the “american dream” into “line must go up” which ironically sounds like boomer logic being projected onto millennials.

I don’t know about the Fed but my dream as an American isn’t to accumulate more wealth than my parents.

Fwiw, the American dream in my neck of the woods is financial independence from landlords and bosses.

> something as simple as a parking ticket is borderline life threatening

I always lived in fear of being pulled over and getting busted for not having the insurance I couldn’t afford.

Eventually get pulled over and ticketed, cough up $1000 for proof of insurance to bring to court then get a payment program to pay off $1000 fine.

Once the proof of insurance expired, begin the cycle again.

Until I finally got enough earnings to always pay my bills every month on time, my entire financial existence hinged on how often the police stopped me.

There are definitely people in Louisiana who just dispense with having a driver's license and tell the police to arrest them and they will bail themselves out with cash (and keep the cash around!)