posted this morning: you may have heard about the tornado situation in kentucky. in my friends town like 70 homes were destroyed. its not much but we are selling some stuff here to raise money for it. we’re like 30% of the way to todays goal here already (~$1100). check it:
hello i will now tell you things that i know about kentucky to raise awareness for our little micro operation here
did you know kentucky has an esoteric connection with japan (its real). in fact colonel sanders went to japan many times (did u know this)
in fact although i can not find my own photos or the tweets at this time, on one esoteric americana roadtrip i went to the grave of colonel sanders. it is tucked away in the back of this nice cemetery. notice anything interesting here btw
there is much esoterica regarding the kentucky japan connection. for example technically KFC in japan was formed with mitsubishi (zaibatsu moment), who at least recently, later, took over KFC in japan. this makes sense as KFC is technically a luxury brand
a long time ago i was reading this on the subway. old guy taps me. i take my headphones off. he says, "whats that book?". i say "its... a history of magic". he says, "does he say magic comes from God?". i said "uh... yeah, actually". he says "good." then just stood there quietly
this happened at the utica avenue subway station in crown heights which i frequented for some time. a few other interesting things happened there. once another guy started talking to me. he was black, and told me he had been privately studying with a rabbi for like a decade
...
apparently he was privately studying history and judaism with a rabbi, alone, and the rabbi had selected him for this process. i asked a lot of questions and the guy did not seem insane, and seemed to know some things that validated his story, but, i could not make sense of it.
the movie ‘jesus camp’ is the movie i’ve watched the most in my life. in a way, that makes it my favorite movie. at this point, i’ve probably seen it hundreds of times. there are times working at my desk where i’d put it on every day. admittedly, bizarre behavior. so, why?
[…]
if youre unfamiliar, the film documents a bunch of kids who are taken to an evangelical / charismatic summer camp. it’s meant to portray them as somewhat extreme: a small window into this dark undercurrent of american religious life, where kids are … brainwashed, basically.
i think this movie has followed me around for most of my life because ive seen it from every perspective. initially, i was teenager atheist who had the perspective of the film: that this was all basically evil
later i turned my back on that perspective entirely, and saw it again
one of my favorite stories about america is from a guy who moved to west virginia to be a pastor. someone organized a garbage truck route to come through an extremely rural neighborhood, at a time when this cost some money. a nominal fee was passed over to the residents.
[…]
it was a trivial amount of money, but the residents there were so incensed that someone would do this without asking them and then stick them with the bill that they stopped doing anything at all with their trash, and just threw it outside until the plan was called off.
[…]
later, this pastor, who was there for this, wanted to pave the road leading up to their also extremely rural church. wanting to avoid any conflict, he called a meeting and laid out his plan: a truck will come, and dump gravel along the now dirt road, at minimal cost.
you hear stories like, person retires then dies very soon after. sometimes this is presented as loss of purpose, or tragic coincidence. my personal theory is the body never takes time “off” to heal so too much “backlog” builds up, then it hits all at once the second you slow down
this also explains the phenomenon of someone taking time off or going on vacation or finally taking a weekend and suddenly getting sick. seems like the universe playing a joke on you. “i never get sick, and im sick now, on my time off”. well, yeah, exactly. not a coincidence.
if a guy has a crazy huge presentation at his job, his mind can tell his body to push getting sick off until after it - or, someone in a situation where they “can’t” get sick usually won’t (this also happens often, once you notice it). apparently people can do this for decades.
the integration of AI and childhood education will progress unhindered unless there is a compelling, easily explainable, and intuitive reason for it to be hindered. below is an extreme example - a fully AI school, but this will be integrated into normal schools.
unless there is a competing model that fully bars its integration. right now it's very easy for us to be online and laugh about this or dismiss it as openly ridiculous, but as the tech advances and becomes normalized, this will not not be enough to stop it. there's no "reason".
concerns about glitches in the tech will eventually dissipate or be confined or solved somehow, and you're going to left standing there while every classroom or school district has an AI component that has replaced some level of normal education.
most people have no idea how psychoactive alkaloids work. why would they? i love coffee. look at this chart: if you drink coffee, after 500 minutes, the caffeine is still there. many people experience this feeling as anxiety. theyd never connect it to a cup of coffee 10 hours ago
ingesting substances can be modeled with an attack, decay, sustain, release model. each of these phases feels different. this is true for everything from psychedelics to caffeine. my contention is that many people experience the sustain and release period here as ambient stress:
they drink coffee. the attack period is what they want, thats good. the decay is fine. the sustain is way longer than they think. they “forget” about the coffee, but are “coming down” off it for hours. they look for an explanation for this feeling and never make the connection.