Avoid the digital screen where feasible. Replace with an analog alternative. Myopia menaces the world. Habitual dependence goes without saying. That means books, paper, external cameras and music players. If by no other means, emulate a Shabbat regime eradicating the digital screen for a day.
Palms and cacti, contrary to my prior intuition considering their counter properties, apparently coexist side by side in both hot and humid environments such as Curaçao, as well as temperate and dry (and substantially deforested) as central Mexico. Don’t know why this amazes me such.
Concerning language development and maintenance, must prioritize and for a time sacrifice much unrelated content, given 1) our limited energy and time and 2) the consideration for the digital screen limitation rendered above. How does one manage with all these languages? Sacrifices such as these.
The merits of strength and resistance training are of increasing importance with each passing year.
I’ve spoken of genealogical research. It’s worth adding that it’s a waste to let the already estranged family lines further sever.
Reads unaddressed elsewhere:
- Pushkin’s Капитанская Дочька, the only finished novel/novella: entertaining, historically insightful, but hardly memorable.
- R.L. Stevenson’s short stories Markheim, A Lodging for the Night, The Suicide Club: engaging, but not innovative. Feels like territory already chartered.
- Alan Ginsberg’s Howl, Sunflower Sutra, America: sublime, meditative, powerful mantras. But severed of the circumstances under which they were composed, demands a particular mood to appreciate.
Reads of the year:
- Moliere’s plays
- Gogol’s Тарас Бульба
- Voltaire’s Candide
- Apollinaire’s Alcools
- Marcel Schwob’s Vies Imaginaires
Bob Dylan has acquired considerable stature in my music exploration.
The difference in dynamics between digital and analog photography is worth reiterating. However much more seamless the former to organize, propagate and share, it also conveys something aleatory, circumstantial, unimportant, and thus all the simpler to neglect or entirely surrender to the digital ocean.
Where does one draw the line with ChatGPT? Still working on the predicament.
Energy and resource waste (ie unnecessary plastics, paper, consolidated garbage, fossil fuels) proves as bothersome as ever. Also worth placing our own energy reserves in perspective.
The more AI, assistive technology, electric vehicles, seamless payment methods, marginally beneficial but usually superfluous and byproduct generating applications and ever more powerful hand-held computers - the more I seem to appreciate such older traditional tools as wrist watches, button phones, email, old internet, vinyls and CDs, MP3 players, notepads and books. Oh, and silent films.
The older technologies deliver far longer than newer solution promotions and propaganda falsely lead to perceive. It’s usually artificial factors that render them obsolete (ie restricted mobile bands or some contrived app incompatible with an older OS version), rather than mechanical wear and tear or legitimate power inadequacy.
As a guideline, avoid eating less than three hours before anticipated bedtime. Must have already stated a dozen times.
Avoid heavy sugar based foods like mosquitoes, second hand smoke, heroine and unsolicited news.
With respect to travel: still hardly fed up in and of itself. Could continuously occupy the ever changing settings, furnishings, beds, kitchenware … Could engage a constantly changing flux of tenants. But the logistics irritate: the packing, the transport, the delays. Hence it makes sense to find an optimal balance, the optimal settlement-movement coefficient, all the while minding not to exhaust the investment in the surroundings.
Questions, comments? Connect.