Jim Willis

Month: December 2024

  • Read: The Tech Coup

    . The EU invokes a mechanism called the precautionary principle in cases where an innovation, such as GMOs, has not yet been sufficiently researched for potential harms. According to article 191 of the Treaty of the European Union, if a given policy or action might cause harm to the public or the environment and if…

  • Read: The Imperfectionist: How Not to Freak Out, Part Two

    The antidote to all of this, in the broadest terms, is *more reality*, more immersion in the finite here and now: more writing on paper; more gathering in person and in public; more looking strangers in the eye; more scruffy hospitality; more queueing for the supermarket checkout that’s staffed by a human, if there even…

  • Read: In Praise of Inconvenience: The Hidden Costs of a Convenient World

    That’s the convenience paradox: the more we optimize our lives, the less we actually live them. We’re becoming masters of arrangement rather than action, curators instead of creators. Life risks turning into a series of frictionless transactions where we’re always efficiently arriving but never really traveling. Source: In Praise of Inconvenience: The Hidden Costs of…

  • Read: Meditations for Mortals

    And so instead of asking how to summon the energy or motivation or self-discipline to do something that matters to you, it’s often more helpful to ask: What if this might be a lot easier than I’d been assuming? I talked about it with J, the man I live with, and he suggested three hours.…

  • Read: Mud Boots of Empathy in Spain

    Spain’s unity at this moment is from the bottom up. Or, as Spanish professional soccer player Ferran Torres wrote on social media, “The people are the ones who save the people. … Long live Spain.” Source: Mud Boots of Empathy in Spain – the Monitor’s Editorial Board Also on: website

  • Read: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond

    “Under the worst conditions, what’s the most important thing to have?” He replied: “Friends.” Source: Recording: After the Election – Four Ways We Can Respond – Rick Hanson Also on: website

  • Read: Unplugging Is Not the Solution You Want

    his latest work, *Program or Be Programmed*, the 15th anniversary edition, Rushkoff proposes four methods to avoid being programmed by digital technology, and to instead become the programmers of our world. What we require is to: 1. Denaturalize power by revealing social constructions which are ideas we merely invented, and are not pre-existing laws we…

  • Adventures in Self-hosting HiFi Audio Streaming.

    I’ve been through a bunch of self-hosted music setups over the past 10 years or so. There are a long list of good reasons why owning and hosting your own music is better than streaming but I’ll save that for another post. Still, despite years of home streaming my audio collection, I haven’t found the…

  • Read: Is Wokeness One Big Power Grab?

    Indeed, one of the primary reasons such anti-woke reactions feel so unsatisfactory is that wokeness, not always but consistently, stems from the basic recognition of large-scale problems that really do exist. Occupy Wall Street addressed the staggering rise of inequality in 21st-century American life; Black Lives Matter emerged in response to a spate of reprehensible…

  • Read: Manufactured Anxiety: How Self-Improvement Became a Self Destruct Sequence

    Who profits from our constant state of dissatisfaction? The answer, of course, is painfully obvious. Every industry that sells a solution to a problem you didn’t even know you had. Every influencer who monetizes your insecurities. Every corporation that convinces you your worth is tied to your productivity. They thrive while we spiral. And the…