BC SOCIETY
Saved by @CodyyyGardner

when I was a teenager, the dominant criticism my closest friends had of me was that I was too arrogant, and they were right. I was too caustic, abrasive, eager to nitpick, quick to criticize, and I was way too certain of myself. I spent my entire 20s trying to correct for this

 the social niceties stuff were relatively trivial for me to address. learning to be gracious, patient, I could manage all of that. But "too certain of oneself" goes order of magnitudes deeper. It goes into philosophical territory about risk, certainty, the nature of knowledge
I very seriously experimented with beliefs like "almost everything I know is wrong to a degree I do not understand", "my mental models are contaminated beyond repair", "I have been indoctrinated and need to be deradicalized", I subjected myself and my mind to radical rewrites
Over 8+ years I wrote over 800,000 words of introspective journaling, investigating my own mind, investigating the investigator. I read & talked to thousands of people from around the world to seek out different ways of thinking, seeing, being, believing, knowing, understanding
I tried to think of myself as a robot that needed debugging. I actually made substantial progress with that

I tried to think of myself as a garden that needed tending. I made substantial progress with that

I tried not to think of myself at all, and I transcended progress itself
I experimented with trying really hard, and I experimented with not trying at all

I experimented with scheduling and calendaring my life, and I experimented with throwing everything to the wind

I questioned everything several times over, and I questioned nothing
And... at the end of it all... in the middle of it all... I attained a level of calm clarity that, ironically, gave me even more of an aura of "certain of himself" than ever before

I know how it looks, I know how it sounds

but my priority is to live and speak honestly
it's not that I don't make mistakes
it's not that I don't get things wrong

I do

but I am like a musician who's skilled at improvising – I recover from my mistakes gracefully, I work them into my playing

what troubles some people is that I am insufficiently self-deprecating
and I am not a "natural" at this – this skill is something I've picked up from a 15+ years of practice and study, the way a skilled musician would

and I talk about it openly because when I was a kid I wished someone would tell me this stuff, and nobody did, not quite
I can return now to my friends' original criticism and discern what they were trying to say, that they couldn't quite articulate properly. there are many different latent messages encoded in a statement like "you are too certain of yourself"
1. your frames are too rigid → this is something you can fix by learning to be more flexible with your frames

2. you are too confident → this conflates bluster and bravado (bad) with the casual, sleepy ease of having deep knowledge

https://t.co/L3uYqiJzFA
I have rebuilt myself from scratch in the absolute wilderness, in total isolation, in the dark night of the soul

twice

having done it before, I know I can do it again

the result is a kind of fearlessness that attracts some people and repels others

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
recent meditation has made me realize that I have been trying to mask this, trying to suppress this, to be polite. to be civil. to not be arrogant. to not intimidate and scare people.

but this is dishonest of me, and I want to live an honest life

https://t.co/5H9H62Afwl
btw, here are some of the things that my friends were telling me I was cocky and arrogant about:

1. that I was going to marry my first girlfriend (I did)
2. that I was going to build an international audience (I did)
3. that I was going to make a decent living without going to university (I do)
4. that university professors would want to hang out with me, an autodidact (they do)
5. that I was going to be hired for somebody who respected my idiosyncrasies, without a resume (I was)
6. that I would have a successful business and be invited to speak/lecture at universities (done that)
7. that my band would play at the esplanade powerhouse stage, despite not being great musicians (we did)
8. that I would be the #1 search result for my first name (pretty much?)
9. that I would write and publish books that hundreds of people would want to buy and read (yep)

I could go on.

Looking back, I think the right frame is: they witnessed me disregard their internalized shared limiting beliefs, and saw this as a status violation on my part
looking back, I'm not sad that they were wrong about me

I'm sad that I allowed them being wrong about me to let me be wrong about myself

I definitely allowed their thinking to contaminate mine

hanging out with unambitious people definitely dimmed my own ambition

never again
also, they never admitted to being unambitious – a thing that I might've been angry/mad about a few years ago, but now kinda chuckle about. it's absolutely fine to be unambitious. you can live a good, simple, worthwhile life.

the worst thing here is the *pretense* of ambition.
people who *pretend* to be ambitious waste the valuable time and energy of actually-ambitious people, sucking them into their sitcoms and distracting them from the actual adventures they ought to be going on

https://t.co/JFXNGWhMez
but, yknow. people gonna people. there's no sense in getting mad about it. the thing is to focus on finding the people who get you. https://t.co/oKn7C21lVv
I am not looking for people to affirm me, tell me I am so great, agree with everything I say, etc. I don't want that. I don't want fanboys or haters (who are fans too). I'm looking for other creative, ambitious, playful people to play with, folks who prioritize doing cool things
I am here to find the others. Part of doing this means volunteering to be hyper-visible, which means being vulnerable to attack. I debated with myself internally, extensively, for years. I didn't feel worthy, and simultaneously, I was afraid

https://t.co/NMS7nWz07e
but when I see the friendships that people forge with each other in my mentions, I realize it is the right thing to do.

I would honestly kinda prefer it if there were someone else I trusted to take the lead... but nobody sees things quite the way I do.
a cheesy-yet-true answer is "I think of the children". I think of the curious kids who are miserable, stuck in shitty social graphs, who could do wonderful things if someone just showed them how. I was one of them; I am being who I wished I had in my life

https://t.co/mKj6ygOWVq

More from visa is damp and cold 🌧

visa is decluttering old drafts
visa is decluttering o...
@visakanv
my adhd coping mechanism is I talk to tens of thousands of people so they'll follow me back, then I livetweet my daily activities and get that lil dopamine hit or whatever when they click the heart when I type "ok just sent that email I been procrastinating on"

I'm currently writing the event description for my feb 14 salon which is on romance and eroticism, so I absent-mindedly googled "eroticism salon", and, uh, I found this strange and magnificent photograph. I want a painting of this


wait, I have that app on my phone that's how I made my profile picture

progress on my email is not being made. but who cares about my email. (well, anna does... but never mind her for now, i'm sure she'll forgive me). ART is currently being made. art comes first

art takes time
SOCIETY
visa is decluttering old drafts
visa is decluttering o...
@visakanv
motivating myself by reminding myself that I created my youtube account in 2005 so I can extend the graph all the way back and make it look really exciting


the less exciting but more useful graph


now I am going to make a plan for my next 200 youtube videos and then ignore them entirely. but first I have to reply to an email...

well that was quite a detour. now, to google sheets...


gettin' started

feel free to comment

https://t.co/DUpcQwA8kC
FOR LATER READ
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Visakan Veerasamy
Visakan Veerasamy
@visakanv
The courage to be disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Heard good things, let’s dig in


Youth tells philosopher, life is hard and complicated and full of struggle. Philosopher says life is simple. Debate ensues

They discuss the subjectivity of water temperature - 18deg is cool when weather is hot, warm when weather is cold. No escape from your own subjectivity

P: Instead of lamenting about the world’s darkness, you could just remove the dark glasses.

Y: people cannot change. I am suffering because of my inability to change

Narrator: why is Y like this, so determined to refute P? Feelings of inferiority, self-pity, self-consciousness

Y: people want to change precisely because they can’t

P: why are you so adamant about this

Y: I have an incel friend

P: why do you think he can’t go out?

Y: background?

P: so cause and effect? determinism?

Y: ya

P: if determinism were true, wouldn’t everyone be incel

🤔

Y: so u saying past doesn’t matter

P: aye

Y: so there’s no explanation why my friend can’t go out?

P: your friend is insecure so he can’t go out. Flip it: he doesn’t want to go out, so he’s creating the anxiety.

Y: ridiculous. You’re saying he’s pretending to be sick

P: no
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visakan veerasamy
visakan veerasamy
@visakanv
There is an art to replying and commenting, and probably like 60-70% of people I’ve seen on the internet fail at it. The important thing is not to speak your mind, but to “support” the OP. You can support them by disagreeing well & you can “mis-support” them by agreeing stupidly

Every “utterance” (status, tweet, whatever) is a bit of an invitation, a bit of a proposal. “Let’s play this game”. When strangers read the proposal accurately, and support the game, a shared understanding develops. You can make friends this way.

Some people deliberately choose to ignore, misread, disregard or denounce other people’s bids. Others are outright clueless and don’t know how to play, and sometimes cluelessness leads to worse bungling than deliberate malice (JJ’s razor)


I was a lot more belligerent and disagreeable when I was younger, in part because I simplistically thought playing other people’s games was a sheep-like way to live. Why should I support other people’s dumb games? Why not mock them instead? It’s easy, and intoxicating

I learned that you rarely build anything worthwhile that way. The “best” case scenario: you win over other disagreeable people. A few years of this & it becomes the world you live in – surrounded by other belligerent assholes who don’t know or care how to play nice. A cursed life
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Visa\u2019s Vexing Vacillations
Visa’s Vexing Vacillat...
@visakanv
Several conversations with several friends - and also the story of my entire life - is getting me to crystalize some thoughts

The most valuable thing I know is how to make friends

The most powerful + valuable thing I can do is teach it to other people

The most important person you have to be friends with is yourself

Possibly the most important thing in a friendship- including one with yourself, or your spouse, or your child - is attention. Deep, focused, undivided, non-judgemental attention.

To really see + hear the other person, in a world where people constantly feel unseen & unheard


So: the most important thing about the most important thing in life is attention,

and in schools, IMO, we often screw up how we teach it.

If you use threats and coercion to force kids to “pay” attention...

...you set people up for dysfunctional relationships their whole life


becoming friends with yourself:
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Our pretensions to civilization have become very thin. Political violence was legitimized last year and is spreading wildly now. "Might makes right" is clearly the only "principle" behind freedom of speech. That's why Chinese Communists will never be censored by Big Tech.

When every "principle" becomes nothing but a ruthless exercise of power, it's not surprising that a growing number of people conclude they must demonstrate some sort of power in order to be taken seriously. Violence is the crudest exercise of power.

A well-run civilization makes it clear *universally* that violence is absolutely unacceptable. Giving free passes for irresponsible rhetoric and destruction to groups favored by the dominant political ideology of the State undermines that message.

We must also people peaceable means of expressing themselves and controlling their own lives, to relieve the pressures that can lead to violent outbursts and other forms of lawlessness. The less healthy discourse and freedom of action you have, the more pressure builds up.

It's dangerous when large numbers of people begin drawing the conclusion that might makes right, that laws and principles bend easily for those who have the political strength to bend them. Might makes right is the code of anarchy and barbarism, the antithesis of civilization.
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r u abbreving less rn?

Since the switch to 280 characters a year ago, we've seen an increase in people writing out full words and phrases.


All about the please and thank you.

With 280 characters, people are saying 'please' (+54%) and ‘thank you’ (+22%) more.

THANKS!!!!

💬💬💬

280 characters later, there are more ? and replies to Tweets. More room, more conversations!
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el gato malo
el gato malo
@boriquagato
global health policy in 2020 has centered around NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) like distancing, masks, school closures

these have been sold as a way to stop infection as though this were science.

this was never true and that fact was known and knowable.

let's look.


above is the plot of social restriction and NPI vs total death per million. there is 0 R2. this means that the variables play no role in explaining one another.

we can see this same relationship between NPI and all cause deaths.

this is devastating to the case for NPI.


clearly, correlation is not proof of causality, but a total lack of correlation IS proof that there was no material causality.

barring massive and implausible coincidence, it's essentially impossible to cause something and not correlate to it, especially 51 times.

this would seem to pose some very serious questions for those claiming that lockdowns work, those basing policy upon them, and those claiming this is the side of science.

there is no science here nor any data. this is the febrile imaginings of discredited modelers.

this has been clear and obvious from all over the world since the beginning and had been proven so clearly by may that it's hard to imagine anyone who is actually conversant with the data still believing in these responses.

everyone got the same R
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Tammy Bruce
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@HeyTammyBruce
In the 90s I was a host on a talk radio station in LA, the same that aired Rush. I was president of LA NOW, & the liberal wkend host when he visited the station. He was so vilified by my then-crowd, I expected a monster. Instead, I met a remarkable, kind and encouraging man... 1/

He was gregarious & generous when we met. He shook my hand & I was shocked that he was nice & genuinely curious about my radio work and activism. I realized I was going to have a fascinating conversation 2/

There were many events during this time as a radio talk show host that changed me. It was my first job in the medium starting in 1993. My meeting Rush & our conversations made me realize the left had been lying to me about many things... 3/

Rush was not a monster, he wasn’t evil, he did not mean people harm, he wasn’t a bigot, or any of the other smears lobbed against him by my leftist associates. I liked him very much, and while we disagreed on many things (then) he was nothing has he had been painted 4/

In my conversations with him, we talked about the issues and despite the disagreements, he also took time to give me advice about hosting, style, connecting w the audience, etc. He encouraged me and gave me advice that made a huge difference in my career… 5/
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Austin Energy
Austin Energy
@austinenergy
WATCH LIVE: The City of Austin to address the ongoing severe weather and its impact on Austin and Travis County residents, utilities, and service. Follow this thread for live

City Manager Spencer Cronk: This storm is stressing our entire community in ways we can never imagine. We are so sorry for the continued hardships so many in our community have had to endure the past several days. We are getting resources that can help you.

Palmer Events Center is full.
However, there is still limited room available at:
•Del Valle High School, 5201 Ross Road, Del Valle, TX 78617 
•Mendez Middle School, 5106 Village Square, 78744
•Reilly Elementary School, 405 Denson

Cronk: @AustinISD has warming centers. Place for people to warm up and charge essential medical Open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m.
•Lee ES - CENTRAL 3308 Hampton Road
•Murchison MS -  3700 N. Hills Drive
•Joslin ES – 4500 Menchaca Road
•Barrington ES – 400 Cooper Dr,

Austin Water Director Greg Meszaros: We're sorry for the hardships people are experiencing. we never imagined a day hospitals wouldn't have water, large customer base wouldn't have water. We're committed to restoring our system as safely and rapidly as we can.
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A #story from #Thiruvilayadal puranam- one of divine leelas of Bhagwan Shiva

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Koodal Kaandam

Story 21 - it is about how stone elephant came to life and ate sugarcane - When Raja Abhisheka Pandyan met Ellam Valla Siddhar

கல்யானைக்கு கரும்பருத்திய படலம்


Raja Abhisheka Pandiyan went ahead to meet Ellam Valla Siddhar on the premises of the temple.On seeing the arrival of Raja, people surrounding Siddhar moved back. Abhisheka Pandiyan introduced himself to Siddhar &asked about his whereabouts.Also his purpose of visit to Madurai.

Raja asked why he performed magical acts, does he expect anything from him or people of Madurai.

Siddhar laughed & replied to Raja that he was from Kasi. He had heard a lot about Madurai in Kashi.Also told that this place is a Mukti Kshetram,so he had come to stay here.

Siddhar asked Raja if he has the capability &power to give anything that he asks for. Siddhar told King that he has power to do things even if he think of it.Siddhar asked King to ask whatever he wants & it would be provided, whatever these people had asked, they were granted.


Abhisheka Pandyan was shocked to receive such a reply from Siddhar,& he decided to test the power of this Siddhar. By that time, Raja saw a person in crowd having Sugarcane.

Raja took Sugarcane from that person.
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