How Steroids Produce Rage in Users

I pride myself on never losing my cool I've never screamed at anyone I've never gotten physical with anyone but the ideas in my head that tell me to do things tell me to do unspeakable things like what they're unspeakable I'd have to speak them you really want to know Mum I'm also [ __ ] weird so just remember that no we bit most people uhprobably don't have this severity but I'll read a comment on social media directed at me I guess about me um and it's from like you know nameless faceless ...

 What is Prosochē?

The brief definition offered above provides some insight into the Stoic concept of prosochē; however, I do not think it draws out its full meaning and richness. My own understanding of the concept was furthered by the following descriptions of prosochē from various authors: A “fundamental attitude” of “continuous attention, which means constant tension and consciousness, as well as vigilance exercised at every moment.” Being “perfectly aware not only of what [one] is doing, but ...

 Aurelius Quotes on Mindfulness

2.8 Rarely is a person seen to be in a bad way because he has failed to attend to what is happening in someone else’s soul, but those who fail to pay careful attention to the motions of their own souls are bound to be in a wretched state. 2.11 Let your every action, word, and thought be those of one who could depart from life at any moment. 3.4 Do not waste what remains of your life in forming impressions about others, unless you are doing so with reference to the common good. For you are...

 AI as Longterm Memory

The current state-of-the-art Gemini model can fit roughly 1.5 million words in its context. That’s enough for me to upload the full text of all fourteen of my books, plus every article, blog post, or interview I’ve ever published—and the entirety of my collection of research notes that I’ve compiled over the years. The Gemini team has announced plans for a model that could hold more than 7 million words in its short-term memory. That’s enough to fit everything I’ve ever written, p...

 Withdrawing Attention is Civil Disobediance

Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention. But doing that by loudly quitting Facebook and then tweeting about it is the same mistake as thinking that the imaginary Pera is a real island that we can reach by boat. A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once-and-for-all” type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to en...

 Nothing is Harder to do Than Nothing

Nothing is harder to do than nothing. In a world where our value is determined by our productivity, many of us find our every last minute captured, optimized, or appropriated as a financial resource by the technologies we use daily. We submit our free time to numerical evaluation, interact with algorithmic versions of each other, and build and maintain personal brands. For some, there may be a kind of engineer’s satisfaction in the streamlining and networking of our entire lived experi...

 Web Gardens and Streams Elaborated

Caufield makes clear digital gardening is not about specific tools – it's not a Wordpress plugin, Gastby theme, or Jekyll template. It's a different way of thinking about our online behaviour around information - one that accumulates personal knowledge over time in an explorable space. Caufield's main argument was that we have become swept away by streams – the collapse of information into single-track timelines of events. The conversational feed design of email inboxes, group chats, and...

 Sex Makes Life and Should Not Be Shunned

If there is a perverse man who could take offense at the praise that I give to the most noble and universal of passions, I would evoke Nature before him, I would make it speak, and Nature would say to him: why do you blush to hear the word pleasure pronounced, when you do not blush to indulge in its temptations under the cover of night? Are you ignorant of its purpose and of what you owe it? Do you believe that your mother would have imperiled her life to give you yours if I had not attached ...

 Know Then Thyself

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, The proper study of mankind is Man. Placed on this isthmus of a middle state, A being darkly wise and rudely great: With too much knowledge for the Sceptic side, With too much weakness for the Stoic’s pride, He hangs between, in doubt to act or rest; In doubt to deem himself a God or Beast; In doubt his mind or body to prefer; Born but to die, and reas’ning but to err; Alike in ignorance, his reason such, Whether he thinks too little or too much...

 Treat Children as Rational Creatures

But if you take away the rod on one hand, and these little encouragements, which they are taken with, on the other; how then (will you say) shall children be governed? Remove hope and fear, and there is an end of all discipline. I grant, that good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature; these are the spur and reins, whereby all mankind are set on work and guided, and therefore they are to be made use of to children too. For I advise their parents and gove...