Despite being fascinated by history, I don’t have a particularly strong desire to own it. I can appreciate the process of finding old things for a collection, and I can appreciate seeing the things themselves, but the acquisition always makes me a little uncomfortable. How badly do I want a basement full of old stuff? […]
Category: Culture
Life Engineering: Stability and Fragility
We have an astronomical number of choices in life, but most of these choices are restricted by culture. Some of these restrictions are good, but many of them are bad. Culture gives us defaults for our expectations, hopes, dreams, and desires, but some of these can lead to great pain and suffering. I’m up for […]
Other People’s Problems
When I was younger, in my late teens and early 20s, it was popular to have passion for a cause, and one way to stand out from your peers was to latch onto one cause or another and really sink your teeth in. “Oh, I’m just SO passionate about [XYZ]!” I’ve probably been on different […]
Expensive Hobbies
When I was in middle school and high school, I was always confused by the things my wealthier friends did with their time. It seemed that many of these families had nothing better to do with their lives than constantly try new and expensive activities. We didn’t really have the money for those things, but […]
Life, Work, and YouTube
If I had to summarize what I’ve learned from YouTube over the past 3 or 4 years, I would say this: Life is short; the world is big. I still have a soft spot in my heart for those tall geography books, with pictures from across the world, maps galore, and interesting facts. But honestly, […]
The Revolving Door of Stuff
The bookshelf has gotten stuffy lately, I have some clothes to get rid of, and some of my unused kitchen crap is slated for sacrifice to the thrift stores. I’m eager to find things to get rid of. These cycles. Why do they happen? The only reason the quantity of my possessions is fairly stable […]
Reflections on Anger
Several weeks ago, I started thinking about the anger in my life. I’d written my fill of words on this blog expressing several of the things that really make me angry, but the only thing to return back from the great void of expression was a simple question: now what? At the macro-scale, the things […]
White Savior
Many years ago I signed up to volunteer with a refugee organization in Denver. I guess I had this idea of which ethnicities I preferred to work with, like picking things out of a catalog, or browsing which classes I wanted to take next semester. So I was surprised when instead I was assigned to […]
Thoughts on History
The difficulty with reconstructing history is man-hours. For example, let’s consider the world right now. The interwebz tells me that there are about 7.7 billion people in the world, and 1.3 billion work full-time jobs. Even forgetting that there are competing definitions of full-time work, and not all work can be accounted for, this means […]
Adventures in Tax Law! – International Part 1
If I were any good at cartooning, I would draw the following scene, stick-figure style: an agent stands guard. Out of nowhere he’s attacked by a mysterious enemy. He fights back. The struggle intensifies. It takes the two up flights of stairs and near harrowing ledges. Finally they are on the rooftop. With a split-second […]