Writing About The Future as a Goal Exercise

In three to five years, what do you want your life to look like? What do you want to achieve with this class/degree/training? What do you want your epitaph to say/what do you want to be able to remember on your death bed? There are countless variations of this exercise that have shown up in my life again and again.

I often listen to a wide range of podcasts and in the last few days I have again tripped over this exercise again most recently on a Jordan Peterson episode of Theo Von and before that Debbie Millman's first appearance on Tim Ferris. The stunning Last Lecture by Randy Pausch comes to mind too.

Thinking back, I can only identify one time I have really done this and it was accidental. As a kid I knew without a doubt I'd end up programming computers for a living. Full stop, that was going to be my lifes work. Looking back I wasn't even that good at it but I saw amazing possibilities. The other times I remember being faced with this was in classes, the intro questions. "What do you want out of this class?" type questions. My stock answer is brief, "An A."

If I have ever done this exercise as an adult I don't remember it. Change is the only constant in life. The last comprehensive, whole life goal list I remember setting had one thing on it and I was single digits in age. It seems everything since has been tactical. Degree or not? Kids or not? Move or not? To make a play on Doctor Pausch's, "Achieving Your Childhood Deams", maybe it's time to think about my middle age dreams.

On the Deplatforming of American Contingency

Listening to Mike Glover on Andy Stumpf's Cleared Hot podcast this morning, I was concerned to hear an organization Mike works with (founded?) has been deplatformed. He didn't mention which platform but he said there was no warning and the account was just gone.

I wanted to see if I could surmise why. The latest blog entry is a bit old but defines a list of "thread forces" being "monitored". It starts with an international lists of competitor countries and enemy groups. Maybe not the same list but others would put up but passes the smell test for me, fair enough.

But then it goes on to list the "national threat forces". I googled a few and some I recognized and I gotta tell you, I don't see ANYTHING from the right wing extreme on the list. It's all left wing stuff from what I saw including at least one legal, actual political party. No nationalist, fascist, or supremacist/separationist threats at all? Really?

I have heard Mr. Glover on podcasts a few times now and he claims that this organization is non-political. Some of the national threats may be actual threats, I don't know. Now you and I may not agree with the political views espoused by the communist party but many people served and died defending this country so that everyone, including communists, can share and advocate for their ideas. The website doesn't list why the communist party is a national threat. Nevermind there is an e-day countdown clock on the bottom of the page. Not so non-political, really.

So I stopped looking. I don't know how deplatforming works or why it happens. Based on a cursory look at the website, I can see it could have been caught up in filters looking for violent or misinformation spreading nationalist agitators. I don't agree with it, but I understand it and acting surprised feels disingenuous to me based on what I read.

GracieUniverisity.com Combatives videos to Classes Cross Reference

Thanks to Gracie Durham for the cross reference chart!

iPhone Mounting on Ubuntu 18.04

iPhone clearly dying. Apple cloud account overstuffed. What about those pictures? How to mount an iPhone 6 on Ubuntu 18.04 with thanks http://itsonlycode.blogspot.com/2017/07/linux-mint-mount-your-iphone-like.html and https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/linux-iphone-6s-ios-11.html.

1) Connect ithing 

2) On ithing screen trust computer

3:
$ idevicepair pair
SUCCESS: Paired with device ...

NOTE: If you forgot to step 2, you get: ERROR: Could not validate with device 175e0db3db5e06bf3bd0f4a2eb302200762aecd1 because a passcode is set. Please enter the passcode on the device and retry.

4:
$ mkdir ~/mnt/ithing

5:
$ ifuse ~/mnt/ithing/

6:
$ cd ~/mnt/ithing

7:
ls
Books  Downloads       MediaAnalysis  PhotoStreamsData  Radio
DCIM   iTunes_Control  PhotoData      Purchases         Recordings

No idea what DCIM means but that's what the pics and vids have been under on every ithing and android I've ever used. Once complete, don't forget to unmount:

8: 
$ fusermount -u ~/mnt/ithing/

The Petty Man

"The petty man ... is utterly disorderly but hates for people to criticize him. He us utterly unworthy but wishes for people to consider him worthy. His heart is like that of a tiger or wolf, and his conduct like that of beasts, but he ates for people to consider him a villain. To those who flatter and toady to him he shows favor, those those who would admonish him he keeps at a distance. Those who try to be correct he considers laughable, and those truly loyal to him he considers villains." Xunzi c. 310—c. 220 B.C.E. Quoted from Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy by Ivanhoe and Van Norden

Meritocracy or Aristocracy?

When the estate/death tax was being publicly debated some years ago, I had a politically active cousin ask me with wonder why I think it's a good thing. My answer at the time was because I don't believe in having an American aristocratic class. My cousin countered with asking why someone shouldn't be able to pass their hard earned assets on to their children. I responded with the that I'm not worried about their children being rich, I'm worried about their great grand children being rich through no virtue of their own, that I prefer we live in a meritocracy where people have a chance to get ahead. Neither of us saw a belief conversion that day.

My answers haven't changed and, while I don't agree with everything, this article lays out the argument better than I can. I think it makes much more sense to give everyone a their first three or four or five or six or times the poverty rate (or some other number that makes sense) dollars tax free and to tax all other income above at the same rate. And by all I mean everything. Interest, long and short term capital gains, income from all financial devices, salaries, inheritance-- any situation where someone ends up with money or assets counts as income to me.

Why? Without something more fair than what we have now, there will eventually be violent revolution in our future and I don't want anyone, especially my children or grandchildren, to live through that.

Pot Prohibition

“Using a drug to put your brain in an altered state is not recreation. That is self-destructive behavior and escapism.”

Reading books, video games, music, or movies spring to mind as common forms of recreational escapism. Pretty sure when you are experiencing them, your brain state is altered. What about roller coasters and water slides? Outlaw those too?

What about emotions in general? Why not forbid weddings or death? Certainly that would prevent changing brain states and even some self destructive behavior.

I don't use marijuana. When exposed to it as a young man it put me to sleep in minutes every time. Even so, I find this kind of intolerance for how other people want to live their lives offensive. Who the hell is Scott Chipman to try to tell me or anyone else how we should live our lives?