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Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.
Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy. For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger. And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine. And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.
Experiment IV
We were working secretly for the military Our experiment in sound was nearly ready to begin We only know in theory what we are doing Music made for pleasure, music made to thrill It was music we were making here until They told us all they wanted Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red It's a mistake in the making From the painful cries of mothers to a terrifying scream We recorded it and put it into our machine They told us all they wanted Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red It's a mistake in the making It could feel like falling in love It could feel so bad It could feel so good It could sing you to sleep But that dream is your enemy We won't be there to be blamed We won't be there to snitch I just pray that someone there can hit the switch They told us all they wanted Was a sound that could kill someone from a distance So we go ahead and the meters are over in the red It's a mistake in the making And the public are warned to stay off
That one new feature you added? That sparkly, Techcrunchable, awesome feature? What did it cost your user? If the result of your work consumes someoneâs cognitive resources, they canât use those resources for other things that truly, deeply matter. This is NOT about consuming their time and attention while they're using your app. This is about draining their ability for logical thinking, problem-solving, and willpower after the clicking/swiping/gesturing is done.
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But even if we can justify consuming our user's cognitive resources while they're using our product, what about our marketing? Can we honestly believe that our "content marketing" is a good use of their resources? "Yes, because it adds value." we tell ourselves. But what does that even mean? Can we honestly say that "engaging with our brand" is a healthy, ethical use of their scarce, precious, limited cognitive resources? "Yes, because our content is useful."
And that's all awesome and fabulous and social and 3.0ish except for one, small, inconvenient fact: zero sum. What you consume here, you take from there. Not just their attention, not just their time, but their ability to be the person they are when they are at their best. When they have ample cognitive resources. When they can think, solve-problems, and exercise self-control. When they can create, make connections, and stay focused.
Being compassionate is an act of resistance; it is different from being caring, or passive. Compassion, literally meaning âto suffer withâ, is rooted in our loving desire to be alongside one another in our common struggle for a better spiritual and social reality. Compassion is an act of resistance because the compassionate cannot rest until all suffering has ended. Compassion is the recognition that none of us are free until we are all free.
Being compassionate is an act of resistance; it is different from being caring, or passive. Compassion, literally meaning âto suffer withâ, is rooted in our loving desire to be alongside one another in our common struggle for a better spiritual and social reality. Compassion is an act of resistance because the compassionate cannot rest until all suffering has ended. Compassion is the recognition that none of us are free until we are all free.
Is it only when the flowers are in full bloom and when the moon is shining in spotless perfection that we ought to gaze at them?
All naming decisions have several constraints in common. You want names that are as short as possible, so they are easy to type, format, and say. At the same time, you want to convey as much information as possible in each name, so readers will not have to carry as much knowledge in their heads. You want names that are familiar, to take advantage of knowledge readers already have via metaphor or analogy. However, you want names that are unique, so that others who are also choosing names will not accidentally choose names that interfere with yours. The first rule I follow is no abbreviations. Abbreviations optimize typing (a 10â100 times in 20 years task) over reading (a 1000â10000 times in 20 years task). Abbreviations make the interpretation of a name a two step processâwhat do the letters stand for and then what do those words mean. The class and method naming patterns here will produce names that you should never have to abbreviate. Naming the root class of a large hierarchy is a momentous occasion. People will be using the words you choose in their conversation for the next 20 years. You want to be sure you do it right. Unfortunately, many people get all formal when they go to name a superclass. Just calling it what it is isnât enough. They have to tack on a flowery, computer science-y, impressive sounding, but ultimately meaningless word, like Object, Thing, Component, Part, Manager, Entity, or Item. Youâre creating a vocabulary, not writing a program. Be a poet for a moment. The simple, the punchy, the easily remembered will be far more effective in the long run than some long name that says it all, but in such a way that no one wants to say it at all."Smalltalk Best Practice Patterns"
The Paradoxical Commandments
- People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.
- If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.
- If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.
- The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
- Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.
- The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men and women with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.
- People favor underdogs but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.
- What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.
- People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.
- Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.
People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don't think that's true. Being surrounded by the wrong people is the loneliest thing in the world.
We did not allow them to make an example of us.
The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.
I fortunately come from generations past that learnt to think using paper. If I have to cut off my right arm to escape computer addiction, I can do that. Generations now and especially in the future will quite literaly be unable to think straight without an electronic device in their hand. To them, life will be brutually stressful with no inner peace to be found because they will be assaulted non-stop by disingenuous companies who have every kind of life-sapping wares to peddle.
My life's work is not what I've made, it's who I am when I sit in front of a blank file. If I lost everything, I would have lost nothing.
Donât collect data. If you know everything about yourself, you know everything. There is no use burdening yourself with a lot of data. Once you understand yourself, you understand human nature and then the rest follows.
If my experience serves any purpose, it is to illustrate what most already know: our courts must not be allowed to consider matters of great importance in secret, lest we find ourselves summarily deprived of meaningful due process. If we allow our government to continue operating in secret, it is only a matter of time before you or a loved one find yourself in a position like I was â standing in a secret courtroom, alone, and without any of the unalienable rights that are supposed to protect us from an abuse of the stateâs authority.
True words aren't charming, Charming words aren't true. People who know aren't learned, Learned people don't know.
Be one with the dust of the way, Then you can't be controlled by love or by rejection. You can't be controlled by profit or by loss. You can't be controlled by praise or by humiliation.
Arms are instruments of ill omen. When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish. There is no glory in victory, and to glorify it despite this is to exult in the killing of men. When great numbers of people are killed, one should weep over them with sorrow. When victorious in war, one should observe mourning rites.
There are many people who are not entirely themselves because as children they were not given time to think about themselves. And because they donât know everything about themselves they canât know everything about everything. But no one likes to admit that she doesnât know everything about everything. And so these people try to make up for not knowing everything about everything by doing things.
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People who for some reason find it impossible to think about themselves, and so really be themselves, try to make up for not thinking with doing. They try to pretend that doing is thinking.
It is very sad then that so many children are hurried along and not given time to think about themselves. People say to them when they think that they have been playing long enough: âYou are no longer a child. You must begin to do something.â But although playing is doing nothing, you are really doing something when you play; you are thinking about yourself. Many children play in the wrong way. They make work out of play. They not only seem to be doing something, they really are doing something. They are imitating the grown-ups around them who are always doing as much instead of as little as possible. And they are often encouraged to play in this way by the grown-ups. And they are not learning to be themselves.
You cannot be just one color. If the bloody thing is ever gonna work out properly, then we all have to intermarry and screw each other blind, and get to be.. coffee-ish.
I learned that it is the weak who are cruel, and that gentleness is to be expected only from the strong.
The purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.
The difference between real material poison and intellectual poison is that most material poison is disgusting to the taste, but intellectual poison, which takes the form of cheap newspapers or bad books, can unfortunately sometimes be attractive.
All violence consists of some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.
There is no greatness where there is not simplicity, goodness, and truth."War and Peace"
Any one who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory. Good culture is born of a good disposition; and since the cause is more to be praised than the effect, I will rather praise a good disposition without culture, than good culture without the disposition.
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody's watching.
It is possibly the most spectacular moment of resistance that I can think of in the 20th Century... The fact that five little kids, in the mouth of the wolf, where it really counted, had the tremendous courage to do what they did, is spectacular to me. I know that the world is better for them having been there, but I don't know why.
about the White Rose
I said, 'Somebody should do something about that.' Then I realized I am somebody.
I will, in fact, claim that the difference between a bad programmer and a good one is whether he considers his code or his data structures more important. Bad programmers worry about the code. Good programmers worry about data structures and their relationships.
I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility [that is, the later judgment of historians] has to make up for the want of legal responsibility [that is, legal consequences during the rulers' lifetimes]. Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which . . . the end learns to justify the means. You would hang a man of no position, . . . but if what one hears is true, then Elizabeth asked the gaoler to murder Mary, and William III ordered his Scots minister to extirpate a clan. Here are the greater names coupled with the greater crimes. You would spare these criminals, for some mysterious reason. I would hang them, higher than Haman, for reasons of quite obvious justice; still more, still higher, for the sake of historical science....
No machine can replace the human spark: spirit, compassion, love and understanding.
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
You wouldn't hire someone who couldn't make themselves a sandwich to be the head chef in your restaurant.
You wouldn't hire a gardener whose houseplants were all dead.
But we expect that people will trust us to reinvent their world with software even though we can't make our own city livable.
I'd rather be rude than a fucking liar.
Speak the truth even if your voice shakes.
We should stop calling feminists 'feminists' and just start calling people who are not feminist 'sexist,' and then everyone else is just a human. You are either a normal person or a sexist. People get a label when they're bad.
God Bless the Grass
God bless the grass that grows thru the crack
They roll the concrete over it to try and keep it back
The concrete gets tired of what it has to do
It breaks and it buckles and the grass grows thru
And God bless the grass
God bless the truth that fights toward the sun
They roll the lies over it and think that it is done
It moves through the ground and reaches for the air
And after a while it is growing everywhere
And God bless the grass
God bless the grass that grows through cement
It's green and it's tender and it's easily bent
But after a while it lifts up its head
For the grass is living and the stone is dead
And God bless the grass
God bless the grass that's gentle and low
Its roots they are deep and its will is to grow
And God bless the truth, the friend of the poor
And the wild grass growing at the poor man's door
And God bless the grass
Google Reader is just the latest casualty of the war that Facebook started, seemingly accidentally: the battle to own everything. While Google did technically âownâ Reader and could make some use of the huge amount of news and attention data flowing through it, it conflicted with their far more important Google+ strategy: they need everyone reading and sharing everything through Google+ so they can compete with Facebook for ad-targeting data, ad dollars, growth, and relevance.
RSS represents the antithesis of this new world: itâs completely open, decentralized, and owned by nobody, just like the web itself. It allows anyone, large or small, to build something new and disrupt anyone else theyâd like because nobody has to fly six salespeople out first to work out a partnership with anyone elseâs salespeople.
That world formed the webâs foundations â without that world to build on, Google, Facebook, and Twitter couldnât exist. But theyâve now grown so large that everything from that web-native world is now a threat to them, and they want to shut it down. âSunsetâ it. âClean it up.â âRetireâ it. Get it out of the way so they can get even bigger and build even bigger proprietary barriers to anyone trying to claim their territory.
Well, fuck them, and fuck that.
Dig within. Within is the wellspring of good; and it is always ready to bubble up, if you just dig.
You will give yourself relief, if you do every act of your life as if it were the last, laying aside all carelessness and passionate aversion from the commands of reason, and all hypocrisy, and self-love, and discontent with the portion which has been given to you.
Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.
All is ephemeral, - fame and the famous as well.
Turn your body inside out like a piece of cloth, look how it is made from the inside and what it will be when age, sickness and debauchery have taken their toll on it! Of short duration are those who praise as well as those who are praised, those who remember and those who are remembered. And even that happens just in one corner of the world, and even there not everybody agrees with one another, a single person doesn't even agree with themselves. This whole Earth however is but a dot.
The exterior things touch the soul in no way. They have no access to it and neither can change the mood of the soul nor move it. Rather it gives itself its mood and movement, and according to its judgements that it makes about its own dignity, it also values the exterior objects higher or lower.
Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid.
If something in the exterior world makes you discontent, then it is not that object which troubles you, but rather your judgement of it; yet to blot out this judgement instantly is within your power. And if your dissatisfaction is based on the condition of your soul, who can prohibit you from correcting your views? Likewise, if you are discontent because you are not doing what seems reasonable to you, why not be active rather than discontent? "But something stronger than me is obstructing me." Still, do not be discontent; for the cause for your inaction is not within you. "But life has no meaning for me if this is not done." Well then, end your life, as calm as if you had succeeded; but don't forget to forgive your adversaries."Meditations"
But cast away the thirst after books, that thou mayest not die murmuring, but cheerfully, truly, and from thy heart thankful to the gods.
Remember how long thou hast been putting off these things, and how often thou hast received an opportunity from the gods, and yet dost not use it. Thou must now at last perceive of what universe thou art a part, and of what administrator of the universe thy existence is an efflux, and that a limit of time is fixed for thee, which if thou dost not use for clearing away the clouds from thy mind, it will go and thou wilt go, and it will never return.