The Longest Now

A man once said to Buddha: “I want Happiness.”
Buddha said: “First remove ‘I‘, that is ego.
Then remove ‘want‘, that is desire.
Now you are left only with Happiness.”

A case study by Tom Morris.  (Previously: slowly learning to say ‘yes’ )

Love and death and hope. Here’s wishing him a fruitful and productive year.

Tim Starling asks template authors and geo-mavens to be patient.

Realization: In academia, science has grad students to do anything known to be important but not yet automated / solved.  A common goal once these are identified is automating / solving.  Wikipedians have done the first part, but don’t clearly have an analogy to the second as a goal.

Software design (for wikis) has focused on making reading better or more accessible, or helping making manual work less arduous; but not primarily on identifying automatic classes of work and solving them /  knocking them off.  That’s been limited to bot developers and ad-hoc tools built on the toolserver. (If any tools in the wikiverse do this, they are often by Magnus, and regularly get rate limited by the limitations of default toolserver allocations when they get popular.)

Thought: I suspect that is really the primary work moving the project forward.  We need to recognize that and start framing and articulating goals, tools, and infrastructure accordingly.

<update from the AI era: yes, with bells on!>

Via the New York Observer and Salon.   Zounds.

via sebastian.

Painfully awesome.

On December 21 this year we should all make text posts that sound really apocalyptic but aren’t, like

OH GOD EVERYTHING IS BURNING
because I turned up the heater

or

ALL I HEAR IS SCREAMING
from my tv

or even

THIS IS GOODBYE BECAUSE WE’RE EVACUATING
the dancefloor

or

I’M UNDER THE BED IN THE DARK I CAN HEAR THEM COMING FOR ME
I might lose this game of hide-and-seek

via unwinona

…the age of lawsuits.

you thought this would involve SPACE, didn’t you?

• Cap Watkins
• Duncan Davidson
• Adam Savage’s presentation
• Anil Dash : live transcription (gdoc), later broken up on his blog

Dynamite Fireworks via PBP

This rambling illustrated reflection on Serafini, with translations of some of the writings in the Decodex and posted from across the street from Luigi’s house, is a perfect example of why I love 5¢ense. (Throw in some of the monomania of Kane X. Faucher and you’d have a dangerous decoding machine for all of mod society.)

A great multi-sided discussion from the AFP blog, with at least three incompatible views worth considering (and unifying in one moral code, if you’re looking for a challenge).  

How should artists set expectations for how large popular shows and venues play out, when they each draw on dozens of performers, from pick-up –> auditioned one-night –> well-known drop-ins from past collabs –> long-term tour staff?

PLAY IT NOW. from unwinona (and un coeur)

Listen and enjoy.

* Here written S.L., but no less superterrestrial

Two of my favorites from her portfolio:

For more, see the Exoskeleton Cabaret.