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Notes -
I recently saw an item in my newfeed about The American Exchange Project:
There was some positive feedback in the news article I read. I found it a bit surprising just how much the rural/urban divide has grown. I've often lived between the two areas with my schools often having kids living in high density housing along with kids raising barn animals. My parents preferred living rurally, but still had to live close to cities to find jobs.
I've been on two exchange programs myself. One as a middle/high schooler going to Europe with Student Ambassadors (a now dead org). And the second as more of a work exchange trip going to the company's India office. There is something undeniably effective about just having very different people sit down and talk/interact with each other in a non-violent setting. Not that I really disliked either set of people before visiting them, but I felt I definitely understood them better afterwards. There are coincidences of living, and the things you see living in an area. They just sorta seep into your conscious. My young middle school self noticed that Europe generally did not give a crap about topless women. Tits galore on billboards and beaches in Spain. Europe was also pretty open with alcohol, and the 15 year old in the German family I stayed with openly told her parents about the drinking party she was going to. They had to remind her that I wasn't allowed to go, and American drinking ages had to be explained. Bunch of things I noticed in India as well, main one was just the sheer volume of people.
Had a shower thought today about how some people (like Joe Rogan) thought Covid would bring us closer together as we worked to solve and fight a collective problems. I think we maybe mostly agree that did not happen. I'm starting to think that covid was the opposite kind of problem we need. To get that kind of problem solving, humanity coming together juice, I think more people need to be offline, meeting in person, and ignoring things happening too far away from them.
Staring at the sun today.Watching the eclipse today, reminded me about solar flares. I'd predict that a widespread solar flare that knocked out communication networks would probably leave us all a little happier than Covid. It would probably be very bad for some people, but we'd know less about those people.It probably would, insofar as we can't really account for the feelings of the dead. But if we're going down the "we need a good war" line of thought, is our condition really so tragic as to demand catastrophe that we may be motivated? Can't we just get along...by going to Mars or something?
That's a much better idea, I have to admit.
And we do have a massive humans-to-Mars project getting underway, so a quick examination of the public discussion of it will surely reveal just the culture-war-free cameraderie we're looking for. Let me do a web search now, right after taking a big sip of water...
Alas, poor Yorick!
But really, I think if anything can still do it that isn't a war it's that thing that Nick Land calls the "Lure of the Void". Western man is constitutionally lusting for the infinite, and what's more infinite than space?
Based essay:
"The inexorable logic of techno-industrial efficiency, on its anti-gravity vector, means that the only consistent motivation for leaving the earth is to dismantle the sun (along with the rest of the solar-system), but that doesn’t play well in Peoria"
I am at least down with giving the Sun something of a lipectemy (heliectemy?) to extend its life. Would prefer it never be completely dismantled, for sentimental reasons. Maybe convert it into a constellation of red dwarves.
Uhh, a stable configuration of stars close by ?
I don't know about that. Even just two stars rotating around each other lose energy and end up in a gamma ray burst inevitably.
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