A good intro for anyone who isn’t familiar with Reddit
thread hound
Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides
› Every Black Hole Contains a New Universe
It’ll be interesting to see how people approach this one
(via pannerrwonderrific)
It is better to be hated for what you are than loved for what you are not. ———————————————- Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it. ———————————————- Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore. ———————————————- The color of truth is grey.
Andre Gide
An insightful talk from Sam Harris at the Global Atheist Convention 2012, in Melbourne Australia. There’s an excellent introduction to mindfulness starting around 30:00 and ending about 37:00.
Next time you spontaneously remember something stupid you did years ago, know that it’s just the Shame Fairy being a dick.
…it is better to be bad of one’s own free will than to be good through scientific brainwashing
Anthony Burgess on writing A Clockwork Orange
Hands-free motion control, a technology pioneered by Nintendo’s Wii and later improved upon by Microsoft’s Kinect, just took a very big leap forward. Industries from gaming to surgery to architecture, engineering, and design may never be the same.
With the unveiling today of its Leap 3D motion control system, a San Francisco startup called Leap Motion has, well, leapfrogged the state of the art in this young field, giving users the ability to control what’s on their computers with hundredth of a millimeter accuracy and introducing touch-free gestures like pinch-to-zoom.
Leap, which comprises both a small USB input device and a sophisticated software platform, is expected to cost $70. But while users will have to wait until early next year to get their hands on it, what the company is showing today seems likely to get developers and users in a wide range of industries very, very excited.
Cosmos by Carl Sagan.
(Source: questiontheobvious, via godlessscience)
Terence McKenna - Reclaim your mind
The Illusion of the Self: An Interview with Bruce Hood
“…the self illusion is probably an inescapable experience we need for interacting with others and the world, and indeed we cannot readily abandon or ignore its influence, but we should be skeptical that each of us is the coherent, integrated entity we assume we are”
I think it only makes sense to seek out and identify structures of authority, hierarchy, and domination in every aspect of life, and to challenge them; unless a justification for them can be given, they are illegitimate, and should be dismantled, to increase the scope of human freedom
Noam Chomsky (via randomglory)
…The distance in time and space is so long that many of the galaxies we see from a great distance away actually no longer exist. The light we see is just a ghost of stars that have consumed themselves billions of years ago. All stars eventually use up their fuel and explode, vaporizing anything and everything around them. One day, billions of years from now, our sun will explode and destroy the Earth, annihilating every trace that anything — sentient or stone — ever existed. That humanity itself will one day cease to exist is a foregone conclusion. 99.99% of all species that have ever existed on Earth are extinct. The Earth has had several major extinction events in the 2,000,000,000 year history of life, and if we don’t kill ourselves first (and I think it is almost certain we will) one day all of our progress and dreams will be eradicated by nature: a super volcano, an unimaginable earthquake, or a sudden and unexpected guest from the asteroid belt introducing itself to us at 28,000 miles per hour. As a speck of microcosmic dust, in the scheme of the universe you are — almost literally — nothing. The universe would not so much as bat its eyelash if the Earth was annihilated tomorrow, and would continue about its routine as if nothing unusual had happened at all, which, strictly speaking, hadn’t…
Some great perspective - The Beauty of Insignificance
The yogi is able to place the candle of his awareness, or his attention, in a niche within himself
where the winds do not make the candle flame move. That is where a sound, or a sight, or a smell,
or a taste, or a sensation on the skin does not distract him.
What is left to distract him, of course, are still his own thoughts, his memories, his plans.
And it is here that the discipline that the yogi must impose upon himself becomes exquisitely difficult, and something requiring an extraordinary amount of patience.
Ram Dass
