That was wonderful writing. As we go through the daily grind of life, we forget how privileged we are to be alive.
I found the following two paragraphs truly incredible.
> All of us begin in the same place. Whether sinner or saint, we are not owed our life. Our existence is an unnecessary extravagance, a wild gesture, an unearned gift. Not just at birth. The eternal surprise is being funneled to us daily, hourly, minute by minute, every second. As you read these words, you are rinsed with the gift of time. Yet, we are terrible recipients. We are no good at being helpless, humble, or indebted. Being needy is not celebrated on day-time TV shows, or in self-help books. We make lousy kindees.
> I’ve slowly changed my mind about spiritual faith. I once thought it was chiefly about believing in an unseen reality; that it had a lot in common with hope. But after many years of examining the lives of the people whose spiritual character I most respect, I’ve come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. The beings I admire exude a sense of knowing they are indebted, of resting upon a state thankfulness. They recognize they are at the receiving end of an ongoing lucky ticket called being alive. When the truly faithful worry, it’s not about doubt (which they have); it’s about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful by squandering their ride. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. This is the meta-miracle: that the miracle of gifts is so dependable. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.
> I’d like to think that I would without hesitation drive far out of my way to bring a sick traveler to the hospital (in the Philippines), but I am having trouble seeing myself emptying my bank account to purchase a boat ticket for someone who has more money than I do. And if I were a cold drink seller in Oman, I would definitely not give cold drinks away for free just because the recipient was a guest in my poor country. But those kind of illogical blessings happen when you are open to a gift.
For the last few days I was trying to revive an old MacBook Air for a non-techie friend. It had 4 GB of RAM.
It had Catalina on it and was completely unusable. Hovering on anything would bring up the spinner which would take a couple of minutes to resolve itself.
I tried reinstalling the OS, which didn't help. The top recommendation was to revert to Mojave.
Finally, after three days of struggle, I gave up and installed Linux Mint.
The difference is absolutely unbelievable. Even heavy applications like LibreOffice and Zoom are snappy.
Apple makes such good hardware. I felt really sad about the state of their software compatibility with older machines.
So, I don't know about the rest of the world, but I know one more person will be using Linux in 2026!
Yeah I've been running EndeavourOS on my 2015 Air (4 GB) and it is so incredibly snappy and efficient now. Makes macOS look like a lurching zombie of an OS.
The article just puts poverty as a cause of loneliness. But I'm sure there are other factors which also add to it. Culture, shared rituals?
One of the reasons, mentioned in the article, seems to be family members moving away looking for employment.
The definition of loneliness used is - the painful mismatch between expectations of social connection and what happens in reality.
But I'm not sure if people in the survey are also including familial connections there? Would this change between societies of large families versus small?
I just feel that although poverty might be a major cause, there might be other reasons s well?
Yes, but these scrubbers need vast amounts of energy. Most of which emit carbon. We simply need to curb emissions. With the possible exception of basaltic rock weathering, DAC is not practical. Large DAC projects fail to reach forecasts, even when these forecasts for plants costing tens of millions of dollars only aim to extract global emissions of two or three seconds.
That same money could replace a lot more emissions with other sources of energy. How much solar and batteries does it buy? It’s always struck me as a moonshot project for people who don’t understand thermodynamics.
You could probably unstir the cream from the coffee with an elaborate chemical processing system costing more than what thousands of coffee makers and dairy cows cost.
The only CO2 removal project I’ve seen that seems like it might be viable is ocean fertilization. That’s not a thermodynamic free lunch. You’re letting solar powered microorganisms do it. But it needs to be studied and monitored to make sure it doesn’t ruin ocean ecosystems and that enough of the carbon actually does get sequestered to make it actually worthwhile.
I found the following two paragraphs truly incredible.
> All of us begin in the same place. Whether sinner or saint, we are not owed our life. Our existence is an unnecessary extravagance, a wild gesture, an unearned gift. Not just at birth. The eternal surprise is being funneled to us daily, hourly, minute by minute, every second. As you read these words, you are rinsed with the gift of time. Yet, we are terrible recipients. We are no good at being helpless, humble, or indebted. Being needy is not celebrated on day-time TV shows, or in self-help books. We make lousy kindees.
> I’ve slowly changed my mind about spiritual faith. I once thought it was chiefly about believing in an unseen reality; that it had a lot in common with hope. But after many years of examining the lives of the people whose spiritual character I most respect, I’ve come to see that their faith rests on gratitude, rather than hope. The beings I admire exude a sense of knowing they are indebted, of resting upon a state thankfulness. They recognize they are at the receiving end of an ongoing lucky ticket called being alive. When the truly faithful worry, it’s not about doubt (which they have); it’s about how they might not maximize the tremendous gift given them. How they might be ungrateful by squandering their ride. The faithful I admire are not certain about much except this: that this state of being embodied, inflated with life, brimming with possibilities, is so over-the-top unlikely, so extravagant, so unconditional, so far out beyond physical entropy, that is it indistinguishable from love. And most amazing of all, like my hitchhiking rides, this love gift is an extravagant gesture you can count on. This is the meta-miracle: that the miracle of gifts is so dependable. No matter how bad the weather, soiled the past, broken the heart, hellish the war – all that is behind the universe is conspiring to help you – if you will let it.
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