I'M SO EXCITED!!

I get messages all the time redirecting my attention to terrible articles about people who irresponsibly sort-of-try polyphasic sleep, don't keep to a schedule, fail to adapt, get terribly sleep-deprived (and then half the time, blame me or polyphasic sleep for that :/) … and I get emails regularly asking me to be ( Read more... )

…Actually, I said that too gently (wow, never happens, right?) - I feel downright unsafe in all-female spaces, ALL OF THEM.

I feel unsafe in all-female spaces for two reasons, which I'm gonna be super, SUPER clear about right here, up front, so there can be no mis-readings because after this I'm about to swear a lot:

REASON ONE:   ( Read more... )

Aw, man.  It's that time of year again - that festive semi-annual holiday where I get to be stared at like my favorite accessory is a tinfoil hat.  But history will bear me up:  You may think it's weird that I boycott following the Olympics, but in another couple (years? decades? generations? who knows) I'll get to be one of The Few that, even ( Read more... )

I saw this again today, in a comment on a Taoist forum:  "I'm a Christian, but I'm also a Taoist!  Some people may see a conflict in that, but it works for me!"

Well duh it works for you, homie.  You're a member of the default, popular, nearly-politically-mandatory religion in this country, which gains you a huge wad of social cred and ( Read more... )

I've learned three really cool new phrases lately, in my studies of the nature of void!

(shut up, we've all got hobbies)

1.  Spacetime foam:  The term for what space and time look like on a quantum (teeeeeeeeny) level, such as in the first moments after the big bang, when they (space and time) blur together in a way that scientists ( Read more... )

Today is a big day, yet, other than this post, it will receive no fanfare.  Today I'm going to break an addiction.

I'm not going to say what the addiction "is to", because what I want to put down here should be equally useful for dealing with all of them, and I really want people to think about how many there are and how profoundly they ( Read more... )

This week, I did a thing *in the manner that my kungfu / philosophy training would have me do it*, even though that was really backwards from how I normally would act, and how I fairly desperately wanted to act. It felt nifty, in that it felt like being deliberate and humble and aware and correct, which are peaceful and powerful feelings; but ( Read more... )

So one time this culture discovered that a readily-available plant had a really tasty component, and they began harvesting, and then cultivating and later, processing and refining and making all kinds of analogs and variations on the tasty stuff. Everyone loved it, and it sold like gangbusters, and the refineries and plantations and products ( Read more... )

For more than a decade, I've been asked regularly for tech-job advice, as someone who started young and worked their way up self-taught from basement mechanic to manager, fighting the women-in-tech battle the whole way.

Today I tried writing down my situation the way I would if I were coming to myself for advice the way so many others have ( Read more... )

That's it - it just hit me, walking home.  What happiness is, and why it's so hard for almost everyone to find it, but almost indestructible in the people who do find it.

Happiness is not a thing - nor a feeling.  It is a lack of things and feelings.  It is space, where usually there's other things, things that cause pain and suffering.

( Read more... )