Dec. 27 2011

"...all human interaction is exchange, and therefore, all ongoing relations are debts."

theatlantic:

“Anyway it only makes sense if you assume those premises; that all human interaction is exchange, and therefore, all ongoing relations are debts. This flies in the face of everything we actually know or experience of human life. But once you start thinking that the market is the model for all human behavior, that’s where you end up with.”

—

This interview with David Graeber on “What Is Debt?” is one of the most thought-provoking things published this year about the premises of finance. (via moorehn)

i do this sometimes.

Dec. 06 2011

dailybunch:

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will, you know if you push in, something will pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing. It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

I think that’s very important and however you learn that, once you learn it, you’ll want to change life and make it better, cause it’s kind of messed up, in a lot of ways. Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again. [via]

it took me about a week to read steve’s bio between my iPhone and iPad (both creations of his company, Apple).

it was an impulse buy at SFO when i found out there was no wi-fi on my cross-continental flight. what gripped me the most were the interesting historical context to the early days of anerican computing as well as stark business lessons (which we all know are, generally, correct).

i’m not going to say that he’s a genius. yes, he’s very smart. but, listen to this clip. he just figured something out and stuck to it. he refused to compromise how he wanted to live his life and the result is obvious.

it’s a real simple equation that doesn’t need grandiose aspirations. he led a fulfilling life and constantly chased his interests with this perspective. that’s all it takes. arguments for the “next steve jobs” are frivolous.

just have some guts and believe that you are here for a reason. if you do that, you’ll be okay.

(Source: youtube.com)

Aug. 03 2011

Life is like wandering around in a desert with a bag over your head, being bumped into by people who rob you as they bore you.

Dylan Moran (via homeofthevain)

accurate.

May. 17 2011

No matter how careful you are, there’s going to be the sense you missed something, the collapsed feeling under your skin that you didn’t experience it all. There’s that fallen heart feeling that you rushed right through the moments where you should’ve been paying attention.

Chuck Palahniuk (via saddest-summer)

all the time.

May. 01 2011

mark it 8, dude.

a few recent notes…

oh yeah, we now have an ipad.  i don’t know if i’m into it yet.

long story, short; peep flickr soon.  slowly but surely getting back to making things again.

Apr. 27 2011

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them… Actually the laboring man has not the leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine. How can he remember his ignorance – which his growth requires – who has so often to use his knowledge?

Henry David Thoreau (via azspot)

program or be programmed.

Feb. 25 2011

10 Lessons

photojojo:

Take note on these lessons from Wieden+Kennedy’s Executive Creative Director, John C Jay:

via SwissMiss

  1. Be authentic. The most powerful asset you have is your individuality, what makes you unique. It’s time to stop listening to others on what you should do.
  2. Work harder than anyone else and…

i adjusted the title slightly because this applies to everyone as a person.  not just folks who have foot in creative professions.  if you don’t try to stick to some or all of these tenants, you’re probably not happy in life.

Feb. 04 2011

Naturally, I also plan to continue asking as many impertinent questions as possible.

Exclusive: Deborah Solomon Out at New York Times Magazine | The New York Observer

this afternoon has been full of bummers, and this is one of them.  virginia left too, which i hadn’t heard earlier.

i’ve had conversations with ma dukes about the magazine.  i grew up with it.  first, i never read it because i never related to it (not because it didn’t intrigue me) but then i slowly started becoming interested.  who knows if this was an effort of the times or an effort of my own curiosity but, while this was happening, my mother’s criticism was growing.  it wasn’t the magazine she knew and the prose wasn’t there anymore.  this was around the time they were doing those boring comic strips.

within the past few years, i’ve probably read, enjoyed and linked to deborah & virginia’s pieces the most.  i looked forward to them and, quite frankly, it sucks that their voices won’t be there anymore.

full circle, huh?

…

the great thing about transition is the act itself.  what one or one’s ideas and missions become.  those who work hard, honest and are good at what they do will always have light shining down.

Oct. 31 2010

Little Times

Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.

- Andy Warhol

(via Liz Danzico’s CreativeMorning talk this morning)

having 930a calls everyday means i’ll likely not make it to a creativemorning anytime soon. for shame, but, i’m glad tina posted this - i can relate to it a lot lately. sure, it talks to paying attention to detail but it also goes with something that’s been in draft for a while:

waiting for other shoe to drop matters less when you’re okay with where the next step takes you.

it’s weird trying to come to peace with the inevitable, especially when you don’t know how it will unfold. or, you know exactly how it will work but you can’t place your finger on the right trigger/decision to make.

i know this is vague but it’s a post that is referencing lots of intertwined items.

what else is new, right?

(first item posted directly via Instapaper)

Oct. 25 2010

Life is lived anecdotally, not algorithmically. And anecdotal evidence is not allowed in the new digital corpocracy. As one poster on Democratic Underground put it, “Anecdotal now has this enforced meaning such that no one is supposed to believe what they experience, what they see, hear, taste, smell, etc. The Powers That Be have basically extinguished the notion of inductive reasoning. Everything has to be replicated in a laboratory and since 90% of all the labs in this nation are operated by Corporate Sponsored monies, not much truth comes out of them.” The trouble with the algorithmic age is that life is not a finite sequence of steps that define and contain the algorithmic concepts used. Even when created with the best of intentions — and we can all agree by now there were few good intentions at Goldman Sachs when they were creating and bundling these mutant investments — they cannot account for our uninsured sprinkler installer getting cancer, or divorcing the other half of the household income — or the end of America’s residential construction orgy.

Joe Bageant (via azspot)

first sentence hits.