The key to survival is an open mind… how can anyone have any idea what will happen next? I guess we survived because we got this early lesson, it’s not about following anything. To love what you do in a progressive way is the main thing… To be prepared to go against the grain.
What happens is this: ‘Stuff’ is a word for the world as it looks when our eyes are out of focus. Fuzzy. Stuff–the idea of stuff is that it is undifferentiated, like some kind of goo. And when your eyes are not in sharp focus, everything looks fuzzy. When you get your eyes into focus, you see a form, you see a pattern. But when you want to change the level of magnification, and go in closer and closer and closer, you get fuzzy again before you get clear. So everytime you get fuzzy, you go through thinking there’s some kind of stuff there. But when you get clear, you see a shape. So all that we can talk about is patterns. We never, never can talk about the ’stuff’ of which these patterns are supposed to be made, because you don’t really have to suppose that there is any. It’s enough to talk about the world in terms of patterns. It describes anything that can be described, and you don’t really have to suppose that there is some stuff that constitutes the essence of the pattern in the same way that clay constitutes the essence of pots. And so for this reason, you don’t really have to suppose that the world is some kind of helpless, passive, unintelligent junk which an outside agency has to inform and make into intelligent shapes. So the picture of the world in the most sophisticated physics of today is not formed stuff–potted clay–but pattern. A self-moving, self-designing pattern. A dance. And our common sense as individuals hasn’t yet caught up with this.
The new bridge at the Hoover dam (via i.dailymail.co.uk)
I’d love to go see this before it’s finished.
“photographic proof that new mexico isn’t just straight up desert..for all you non-believers” (via erin azouz)
Some more photo’s from yesterday in tehran #iranelection (via .faramarz)
I’m not much of a motorcycle person, but man these are sexy in their simplicity.
“Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world, and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.”
The book’s full introduction is available on Rushkoff’s blog. It’s well worth a read.
knows.tumblr.com - all iPhone all the time.
When no knowledge is held to be respectable which is not objective knowledge, what we know will always seem to be not ourselves, not the subject. This we have the feeling of knowing things only from the outside, never from within, of being confronted eternally with a world of impendetrable surfaces within surfaces within surfaces.
I heard this catchy little tune, by Thee Headcoatees, while having lunch in a diner yesterday.
It’s good to be back in San Francisco.
When a lot of us saw it, we thought this was the definition of a great game,” says Pete Fenlon, CEO of Mayfair Games, Settlers’ English-language distributor. “In every turn you’re engaged, and even better, you’re engaged in other people’s turns. There are lots of little victories—as opposed to defeats—and perpetual hope. Settlers is one of those perfect storms.
Monopoly Killer: Perfect German Board Game Redefines Genre
Settler’s of Catan is the first board game I’ve enjoyed since cheating at Life against my sister when we were kids.
Graffiti in Pripyat - BLH’s tour of Chernobyl
