The premise of this piece — stop using the acronym “IRL”! — is thin, but its substance resonates with the way I use (and love) the internet.

8. When you spend your online time on what really matters to you, you experience your time online as an authentic reflection of your values.

9. When you embrace online conversations as real, you imbue them with the power to change how you and others think and feel.

(via disassociated)

Jane McGonigal, whose TED talk I linked earlier this year, tells the story of how she implemented the idea of making the real world more game-like to recover from a concussion.

(via kottke)

Troy Patterson pretty much nails what’s great about the best new show on American TV:

It is as if, beneath the anger that every good comedian must cultivate and cherish, he’s achieved a kind of philosophical peace. Having meditated on the world’s absurd injustices, he greets them with absurdity in kind. In all, the outlook qualifies him as a kind of existential hero.

Recent studies have found that conventional running shoe fittings yield more injuries than shoes assigned at random.

About half of the runners received shoes designated by the shoe companies as appropriate for their particular foot stance (underpronators were given cushiony shoes, overpronators motion-control shoes and so on). The rest received shoes at random. All of the women started a 13-week, half-marathon training program. By the end, about a third had missed training days due to pain, with a majority of the hurt runners wearing shoes specifically designed for their foot postures.

If, like those “talented” kids who grow up lazily shielding the dubious glory of their intelligence, you buy your own hype, you might come to believe some weird things. If other people bow before the awesome power of your brain, for instance, then what could you ever stand to gain from interacting with other people? They’re worshiping you, after all. You’re a god to them! The assumption that you only need your projects, your own brain and maybe the friendship of the 99th percentile most like-minded and demographically similar people in your region.

It comes in five parts:

• I: Put it Out There
• II: Carnegie Knew Everything
• III: The Problematic of the Dale Praxis
• IV: The Secret Ingredients of Failsauce
• V: Everything is a Collaboration

Troubling article in last week’s Ideas section about how globalization has changed the way militaries take over and assert power against civilian governments.

Militaries today find it is easier to function as kingmakers rather than kings, while still maintaining the fiction that the armed forces are neutral in politics. The armed forces walk this fine line by using their influence, in the background, to keep governments in power or topple them. At other times, the military uses its expertise in handling dangerous security threats like drug trafficking or terrorism to build up its power again.

This is fantastic. Colin Marshall (who does much good work) took a bunch of Ask Metafilter threads about advice for life and edited them down to the most interesting and surprising.

Rational arguments pretty much never persuade anyone of anything. Don’t waste your time arguing with True Believers. Don’t waste energy wishing someone else was acting differently. You can’t make anyone do anything. You can only choose your own actions.

Advice from others means absolutely nothing; fucking up is what teaches you something. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. Realize that most people older than you really don’t know any better. Figure out what your fears are and take steps to get over them.

(via TCWCYL)

This is fantastic. Colin Marshall (who does much good work) took a bunch of Ask Metafilter threads about advice for life and edited them down to the most interesting and surprising.

Rational arguments pretty much never persuade anyone of anything. Don’t waste your time arguing with True Believers. Don’t waste energy wishing someone else was acting differently. You can’t make anyone do anything. You can only choose your own actions.

Advice from others means absolutely nothing; fucking up is what teaches you something. Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t. Realize that most people older than you really don’t know any better. Figure out what your fears are and take steps to get over them.

(via TCWCYL)

“Detached openness” is a phrase I invented (or encountered, one can never be certain about such things) a few years ago. It is a shorthand of the disposition I thought (and think) ideal for moving through the world and being happy doing so.

While that alone may be enough for your understanding, let me clarify my understanding of these two words, as the standard definition of each is unlikely to illuminate what I think I mean.

Detachment, Buddhists caution, should not be mistaken for the ideal of non-attachment. While there’s certainly wisdom in that distinction, my understanding of detachment isn’t so narrow. The quickest way to differentiate the cautioned against detachment and what I mean by detachment seems to be these quotes from the Wikipedia pages for emotional detachment and detachment respectively.

[Emotional detachment] refers to an “inability to connect” with others emotionally, as well as a means of dealing with anxiety by preventing certain situations that trigger it; it is often described as “emotional numbing” or dissociation, depersonalization or in its chronic form depersonalization disorder.

Detachment, also expressed as non-attachment, is a state in which a person overcomes his or her attachment to desire for things, people or concepts of the world and thus attains a heightened perspective.

This proper understanding of detachment means knowing that not getting that promotion will not be the end of you. Exercised more strongly, it means knowing that the success or failure in this promotion process should in no way affect your self-worth or career objectives. At best, it means never even entertaining any of those thoughts. In this situation, one should understand the lower form of detachment as refusing to even try to get the promotion for fear of all the mentioned turmoil.

Openness here is understood as not dissimilar from optimism. It is being open to the possibility contained in every minute and seeing the good that can come out of seemingly bad things. It consists in being able to see the beauty in a piece of trash, the possibility in everything. I reach here for a quotation from Henry Miller:

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or as heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

I fail to see much with which I can supplement that.

The combination of these may be clear to you, but some illumination: detached openness recognizes the beauty in a sunset without striving to make it last in any way. It recognizes that the uncapturable ephemeral should not be held onto jealously or regretted when gone. Neither of those actions it helpful to your current mental health, nor do they enhance what was.

Ideally, we do this with all thing. We strive to see what good is unfolding without seeking to shape or change what we cannot. When something changes over which we have no control, we recognize it and seek to find good in the new order of thing. When something doesn’t change that we want to, we reassess and accept the unchanged situation without getting emotional. (Yes, I did basically steal this from the Serenity Prayer.)

I would make clear that I am no master of this disposition. I am prone to practicing the inferior form of detachment. I regularly find things ugly or infuriating or just plain bad. And I’m not always able to practice detached openness when attempting to correct these flaws.

Nor is this the only thing one needs. Other things certainly matter in life beyond your basic disposition to the world. Staying present for what is happening, to choose just one example, can get you at least as far.

But I feel rather certain that this disposition is the most healthy and useful one I’ve encountered in my life. Beyond pessimism or optimism, I believe detached openness is the secret to what mental balance I have and what happiness I find.

Take a woman and her housekeeper, capture them removed from any recognizable context, and leave people wondering which is which. The linked PDF begins with an explanation (en Español) of the project, photos begin on page 23. Contexts.org provides some details for those of us better at English than Spanish.

(via Bobulate)