Do you find yourself dreading the holiday season, or just not excited about it? If so, I promise you're not the only one. 🎄❌
One report from the National Alliance on Mental Illness suggests that 64% of people with mental health issues feel worse during the holidays.
Whether you have a diagnosed mental illness or not, you might just be sad, depressed, or anxious during this time. This is ... normal.
Read More
Highlights: in the year 2050, we still haven't met the aliens, Zoom is like Myspace, and American football goes away. There's much more in the post.
Last year I read Remembrance of Earth's Past, a science fiction trilogy by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The total length runs to more than 1,300 pages, but I loved it so much I would have kept reading if there was another book in the series.
The story has several themes and takes place across tens of thousands of years. Repeatedly, scientists and political leaders living in one point of history are trying to plan for something that will occur hundreds of years later, long after they'll be dead.
It turns out that trying to predict the future is tough!
Read More
Even if you've never read Homer's Iliad, you're probably familiar with parts of the story. Much of it is about heroism and valor, but it's also about choice.
Here's an alternate history interpretation of a choice that Achilles faces:He gives this speech, this response that is weird, where he says, effectively, “The prophecy is that if I go back to fight here, I will die here. My name will be immortal. If I don’t go back to fight, I’ll go home and live a long life and will be forgotten.” He chooses to go back and be forgotten. Then, later, he changes his mind because his friend gets killed. I think the existential examination of this Greek warrior and this heroic culture that clearly valorizes heroism and deathless fame and everything, and who is, canonically, the most famous heroic warrior and the one with the most deathless fame, he’s the one who says, “Nah, I’d rather go back and live a long life on my farm.”Read More
43 Comments
Here in the Spring of 2009, it's easy to say that the financial crisis has decimated the global economy:
*Unemployment in the U.S. (and many other countries) is at a 25-year high
*An average of 40% of wealth has been lost by investors around the world
*Consumer spending is down almost everywhere
*Federal Interest rates are close to 0%
The gloom-and-doom is getting serious, people. Are you all ready to go down in the storm shelter and start putting gold under the mattress? Hopefully not, because we have something important to talk about today.
I’m not trying to make light of hardship in any way. I’ve previously explained that the recession sucks. All of us have been affected one way or another. If I had the choice, I’d prefer to have 15% gains for no work every year. Bring back the bubble!
Read More