All Thoughts Being Equal

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage by Alfred Lansing My rating: 5 of 5 stars Shackleton's doomed voyage―an attempt to cross the Antarctic continent―pretty much can't be described in any other way than "incredible." The preface to the book tells us two remarkable facts: first, that what Shackleton and his expedition were attempting to do would not actually be accomplished until the 1950s, with the full gauntlet of modern machines and electric heat; and second, that no human being died or even suffered grievous physical injury over the course of the entire ordeal. Then we dive in to the narrative itself, and as soon as the Endurance becomes ironically trapped and crushed by ice floes, it's just one damn thing after another. Even having been assured by the preface that everyone survives, you swear up and down, even shout aloud, "No! Someone's going to die! Nobody can survive that!" Reading what the expeditionary force end...

This post is third in the Summer camp for "adults" series: See part 1 and part 2 . How long can I go in critiquing another, more transparently corporate-retreat-aspiring "summer camp for grown-ups" before giving up and yelling "fuck off"? Read and see! I. At the end of last summer I wrote two posts about Camp RAHH, "Seattle's summer camp for adults." And my feeling by the end of it was less rage than bleakness and despair, except for the one hopeful fact that they were paying money to their host camp, Camp Kirby, and that Kirby is a lovely place that deserves all the money it can get. Now I've come to learn about the broader trend of adult summer camps, and I'm angry again. I think I have a Facebook sponsored ad to thank for this, but first, here's a TIME article from 2013: Like cartoons and cupcakes, summer camp is becoming one of those things adults just won’t leave to the kids anymore. “Glamping” — that is, stay...

Something I thought up the other day. Heading in a weird noirish direction with pulp-fantasy trappings. Any feedback is, of course, appreciated. --- This world was not made for us. Well, not specifically for us. I'm sure there was a line item or two in the Grand Design, earmarked for "humankind," some tiny fraction of the cosmic budget allotted on our behalf. Sure, we've done alright for ourselves in those intervening millennia. But every day―every fucking day―we're reminded that there are more philosophies in heaven than ever dreamed of us. Because the gods are real. Some of them are even ours. But most aren't. And all of them don't seem to give two divine shits about us. "Shit." Definitely one drink too many. No other explanation for my black anti-theistic mood. Well, last call was I-don't-know-how-many minutes ago anyway. Three fingers waggled to the bartender and I sent him back to the cashbox with exact change, as usual. ...

I've informally decided to allocate roughly ten percent of my gross annual earnings to donations, in the spirit of Effective Altruism and the "Giving What We Can" pledge. As public reporting of contributions is rather in line with the EA philosophy, I'm keeping a record of what I've done. Maybe it will inspire people to imitate or critique my donation choices! I donated a total of $500 in December 2015. This year, since I didn't earn a lot of money, was mostly about starting to give , and establishing a baseline from which I can iterate and move towards a more satisfactory and effective contribution portfolio. So in future, I suspect that my contributions to, say the "De Facto Subscription" category will stay flat while donations to actual charities will increase. You might ask: why are you publishing this? The answer is: Other people have. Also, why should charity be secret ? Humanities Donations: 5% In 2015, I donated $25 to...

Now that we've seen why Western Washington University decided (and was justified, in my view) to cancel classes for Tuesday, 24 November 2015, in response to racist and threatening comments on the anonymous social media shithole application Yik Yak, let's look at the reaction from the students and the community. Was their response justified? I don't think so. This post is a partial follow-up to: On the rigged-world fallacy and pullback error , Rhetorical imperialism I. Let's get this out of the way first: of the two "camps," so to speak, of students who disagreed with President Bruce Shepard's decision to suspend classes, the ones who thought classes shouldn't have been suspended have a very weak position. Now, there wasn't a lot of publicity of the various posts made, so I can understand why—at the time—some people might have thought the class cancellation was the wrong call. I hope that since those posts have come to light, those peop...