Oxryly

I don't think suffering by itself can really be enjoyed, but it can be a way to realize or learn things about yourself. Pain is a very subjective sensation, and severe pain can cause you to close up and recoil from or fear that sensation. But it can also be an opportunity for you to face the pain and feel it and all that in implies; it can bring up past suffering or traumatic incidences that bother you and in that context provide the opportunity to heal and move on.

Suffering in many ways is getting closer to death, and death provides the opportunity to be begin anew. It's an abstract concept but can be applied to everything you encounter as a living being.

In fact when you try to avoid suffering you close yourself off from so much experience. You could even say that to avoid suffering requires to live as a small subset of yourself, within a very confined sense of self. Expanding out from that will entail suffering but that's only a very small part of the story and it will lead to experiences you can't yet imagine.

I appreciate your enlightened thinking. I hope that it does not fall on deaf ears.

I believe this sort of analysis can only be written in retrospect. And I'm not sure it's very accurate.

TiVo faced a wide array of business challenges and I doubt they would have avoided any of them if they had release their device as some sort of "tape-less VCR". It would have seemed silly and probably wouldn't have fooled anyone. The cable and media companies would still have smelled blood in the water and the early adopters would have been put off by the silly positioning.

Tragically, it's necessary but not sufficient.

Yes, you simpering vole.

Oh, I think I need to wash my hands after posting this.

http://www.technomancy.org/google-suggest-venn/#start=Why+ar...

Good list. I think it'd be hard to overstate the importance of #4. The mind relentless tries to make sense and rationalize everything around it, whether in creative work or anywhere else. Unfortunately the world exists in a state of ambiguity, confusion, and even paradox. Being comfortable moving in that kind of state will increase your effectiveness in just about every way.

I do fear the paperclip maximizer.

And did they have to make it solar powered? When will people learn?!?

When a house is sold at a loss that particular stream of mortgage payment dries up entirely. Essentially all of the non-paid off loans had their collateral (houses) sold and were declared closed. At the point no money will ever flow into the asset ever again. It's dead.

Get a head start ruining a second planet because we're going to finish ruining our first pretty soon..? ;)

Is there any context for this video?

What a load of crap! This is some strange entitled rationalization of his friend's fear of commitment. And it's an attempt to legitimize the author's own fear of commitment.

> I’ve worked for a handful of companies over the course of the last 6 years. I started all of them with a fair amount of enthusiasm, but within 5 months of each I dipped into a depression. By 7 months the work was having a tangible effect on my mood and outlook, and by nine months, I’ve quit almost every job I’ve held.

Does the author really think that the next job will hold something different? That somehow there's some magical workplace around the corner where reality never sets in and the inevitable drudgery of "work", creative or not, can be put off forever. Pure fantasy.

"Ownership" is missing the point. If you believe you must define your creation or contribution in terms of some neatly measured production (like code or design) you are missing the point of your own existence. If you think that there's some fixed body of work you have control and ownership over -- that you must defend and slave over -- you are missing the point.

Every second you exist at your job (and everywhere else for that matter) is an opportunity to create the world as you see it. Every second is an opportunity to be creative, to express the person that you are in see that borne out in your work and with your coworkers.

The depression and negative outlook the author points to is a failure to be. It's a shrinking away reality -- the reality of the opportunity and commitment that he faces each day he comes to work. He does himself and everyone around him a great disservice by shrinking and turning away like this instead of waking up to what is in front of him.

I've been at my job for 8 years and there were many times I wanted to storm out in disgust or just not show up in the morning. But then I realized that every job will be like this if I do quit, that I was bringing my own fear of being or committing with me wherever I go and finding perfect opportunities to manifest it.

I stood up and took responsibility for these fears and the negativity and said "enough". I still occasionally find myself doing work that doesn't "inspire" my "muse"... but it really is only a matter of perspective. My muse can be inspired by change in attitude, but a positive conversation with a coworker, by seeing change manifest around me as it manifests in me.

I'm no longer defeated by this negativity. I no longer seem my work neatly delineated -- I no longer need to defend anything or pour enormous effort into some limited creative endeavor. The opportunities in front of me are always limitless. Every second is created anew.

boo Godwin.

I don't thing the metaphor holds up. If you vaccinate your child, why do you care if other children are vaccinated or not? Your kid is immune...

Hmm... I thought the scourge of 1975 programming was ignoring the vast and growing gap between the speed of the processor and the speed of RAM.

2010 programming has to deal with the fact that chasing a (non-cached) pointer can consume hundreds of processor cycles. So much for trees...

Self could be your mind/attention, but there's no reason you can't expand your idea of self to include your ego, mind, entire body. I suppose the question is: will you take responsibility for what goes on within your skin?

If you're not in control of yourself, who is?

That looks interesting... funnily enough zen is my current practice, and it's impact on my living has been and continues to be profound.

Look in the mirror. (apologies for the glibness)

Fully realize who I am, what I have, and what I am capable of.

You do that every day...

Have you tried meditation? Specifically vipassana or zen meditation are probably good ways to start tackling the whole package...

Take full and complete responsibility for the fuck-ups and people will give you a break. No hedging, no explanations... nothing that can possibly be interpreted as rationalization.

Express only pure remorse and gratitude and the mood will change immediately.

I'd say that becoming a parent will definitely come between you and your idea of happiness. You'll have to re-evaluate your relationship to happiness and satisfaction (and sleep and pain) and that in itself is difficult and not fun.

In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.

Seems like they have developed a good approach to the problem. Hopefully people can smooth their ruffled feathers enough to discuss the meat of the problem.

Nobody trusts programmers to scale a Lisp codebase up as the company grows at rate that satisfies stockholders.

You just need to develop some sort of "liquid battery" and pump it in some sort of receptacle, or tank, in the car.

IIRC the Top Gear segment was "produced" to show the car out of juice... i.e. don't draw any battery life conclusions from Top Gear's methods!

Anyone actually read all of this? Some strange theories there, and it's hard to see if they're true/useful or not.

"I would not expect any new major software effort to be written in Lisp."

How many companies have purchased companies whose flagship is developed in Lisp only to shutdown or redo all Lisp work? WTF is this pattern? Is there a name for it?

(and that doesn't count the companies that did it to themselves like Amazon)