I'm a grumpy person in the mornings. I've trained myself to be a “morning person”, but it does not come naturally for me. At night, I feel great, even If I'm really tired—my wife, exactly the other way around.

She complained about waking up every day with a grumpy person — not a great way to start. I understood, rationally. At the same time, I felt there was nothing I could do about it; it is not like I wanted to be a grumpy person, I just could not avoid it.

One day, she asked me: “as soon as you're awake, smile, at least smile when you look at me”.

Okay, that sounds doable, it was an actionable and specific request, nothing compared to “stop being grumpy”. Furthermore, she said: “look at children; any child wakes up with a big smile on her face”. She was right. Children are happy and energized after sleeping (probably way too happy and way too energized for the misfortune of the parents).

So I did it.

And eventually, my mornings were different.

I cannot say I'm not grumpy anymore. But that trivial change made me feel better, and apparently, that was more than enough to please my wife well.

I don't believe in “positive thinking”, or “visualization”, or any of the recipes offered by the wellness industry. But I do think there is a body-mind interrelation, that is, that my body affects my thoughts and feelings, and the other way around.

Detailed knowledge about the body-mind is part of canonical Buddhist teachings — developed more than 2,500 years ago. Recently, there has been copious scientific research in this area as well. But above all, it is something anyone can experience. When you have anxious thoughts, you can feel them in your body as well. You can also notice that your mind is clearer after a workout session. You don't need to (and should not) blindly believe in Buddhism or Science. Get a first-hand experience!

A second observation is on the importance of being actionable and specific with our requests. When my wife complained about my grumpiness, I got stuck. It was not that I did not care; I did not know how to change that — or if it was even possible. It was a great move of her to change that to “smile as soon as you wake up”. Okay, that I could do. It was fake at first, but you know what they say: “fake it 'till you make it”.

#100DaysToOffload #Negativity (74/100) P.S. This post is part of an experiment about negativity (read about it).

The “best browser” is a never-ending and often very heated debate that occurs often in the privacy community. When it comes to desktop, it’s generally agreed upon that either Brave or Firefox (with honorable mentions for Tor and Ungoogled Chromium) is best, depending on how you feel about the companies behind each and what you’re looking for. Once you take the debate to mobile, the argument changes considerably, particularly with iOS. One advantage that Android enjoys over iOS is a very relaxed environment. This can be problematic for security, but for privacy it means more access to various apps that typically offer more flexibility and freedom. For example, in Android you can run Firefox with all the same plugins as desktop (and I recommend that). With iOS, you can only run stock Firefox. Even I will admit that without my set of recommended plugins, I’m hesitant to label Firefox the best choice.

So what is the best browser for iOS for those of us who want privacy? Well, that’s been on my mind a lot lately and I decided to finally figure this out myself with empirical evidence. So this week, I downloaded Brave, DuckDuckGo, Firefox Focus, and Safari onto my iPhone 6S put them through a series of objective tests. I will be organizing each section by alphabetical order (Brave, DDG, Firefox, then Safari). This is not order of preference. Keep in mind that results may vary based on your own device and configuration.

Privacy Policy

I firmly believe that privacy policies are always the best first place to start when it comes to vetting a new app. They may not always be telling the truth, but if Company A has a privacy policy a mile long that basically says “we collect and share everything we can get our hands on” and Company B has one that says “we try to collect and share as little as possible unless ordered to by a court,” that’s a pretty indicator where to start. With that said, Apple recently gifted us non-lawyers with a pretty rad little tool called “Privacy Labels.” So let’s start there.

Brave

Brave claims – according to their privacy label – to collect only two pieces of data: “Other Usage Data” and “User ID.” User ID isn’t a big deal as based on Apple’s explanation of the categories, this likely refers to information you voluntarily provide like a Brave account name, but “Other Usage Data” is very vague as Brave doesn’t overtly say in their complete privacy policy what information that details.

DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo says it collects “Product Interaction” and “Other Usage Data,” “Other Diagnostic Data,” “Crash Data” and “Performance Data.” The big one here that really bugs me is “Product Interaction” data. While it is useful for a developer to have this information, if one claims to be a privacy-respecting service you have to expect that you’re going to have do without that data. Again, according to Apple, that includes “app launches, taps, clicks, scrolling information, music listening data, video views, saved place in a game, video, or song, or other information about how the user interacts with the app.” Not very privacy respecting. The crash analytics I don’t really mind – it’s important for a developer to be able to identify why a service isn’t working to fix it. “Other” data and “Performance” data are also vague and tip off a small red flag.

Firefox Focus

Firefox Focus’s privacy label is more or less similar to DuckDuckGo’s, just in different categories. As with DDG, I don’t like that they collect “Product Interaction” data. I also don’t understand why they collect “Crash Data” as part of their analytics rather than app fuctionality. According to Apple, analytics are used to understand how users interact with the app and improve it, functionality would include minimizing crashes, performing customer support, and other such uses that would be more acceptable in my opinion. Then again, maybe Mozilla just didn't know which category best fit and decided it made more sense in analytics. I guess the actual use matters more than the label. A rose by any other name is still a rose.

Safari

The fact that I had to take two screenshots to capture all of Apple’s collected data should tell you everything you need to know right off the bat. Safari offers virtually no privacy, collecting “User Content,” “Device ID,” “product interaction,” “Browsing History,” and even “Coarse Location.” I’m not even gonna bother going into detail here. Safari is obviously out.

Winner: Brave

Loser: Safari

Brave is the clear winner by collecting so little data, and most of it being voluntary. While DuckDuckGo and Firefox Focus aren't as good, they're still miles ahead of Safari's invasive policies. And Apple is marketing themselves as a privacy-respecting company...

Browser Fingerprinting

But protecting your data from Apple is probably the lowest concern, honestly. Apple conceivably could already have access to everything on your device. How does your browser protect you from others? For this portion, I used EFF’s Cover Your Tracks to test the level of browser fingerprinting each browser revealed. I chose this tool because unlike other tools, it doesn’t give you a result based on other visitors – which is obviously a biased result (the vast majority of people don't visit those sites, so you're getting a skewed sample right off the bat) – but rather based on commonly used and known tracking technologies to give you an objective score based on how many points of data you leak. So in other words: the less points of data, the better.

There isn’t much to say about each section, I didn’t want to go into detailed results, so instead I’ll just list them. Surprisingly, Safari comes out on top here with only 15.7 bits of information. An interesting thing worth noting: when I originally ran this test, I forgot to shut off my AdGuard DNS and tell Firefox Focus not to integrate with Safari, which resulted in a much higher number (16.02, if I remember correctly). So remember that sometimes doing too much makes you stand out more.

Brave: 18.03 DuckDuckGo: 16.03 Firefox Focus: 16.02 Safari: 15.7

Winner: Safari

Loser: Brave/DuckDuckGo

The reason I call the loser here a toss-up is because it turns out that Brave has a built-in fingerprint randomization feature. So while Brave technically leaks more bits of data, that data should – in theory – be different every time, making it effectively useless for tracking. Personally I would prefer my browser simply leak as little data as possible, and if you agree then Brave is the clear loser here. However, if you see the value in a randomized fingerprint – which I think is a clever solution to the problem – then DuckDuckGo is the loser here by a narrow margin.

Browser Speed

For my last objective test, I decided I wanted to see what browser was fastest. For this, I used Speedometer 2.0, a general browser speed test developed by Apple that simulates a variety of user actions and measures the speed of various points like CSS, JavaScript, and DOM APIs. The results are measured in “runs per minute” with a margin of error. As with everything on this list, your exact speeds may vary with your hardware and internet connection (I used an iPhone 6S on a gigabit wifi network), but I tried my best to pick a service that would remove those variables as much as possible from the equation.

Brave: 49 (+/–.53) DuckDuckGo: 54.4 (+/– .81) Firefox Focus: 53.86 (+/– .5) Safari: 51.8 (+/– 1.9)

Winner: Brave

Loser: DuckDuckGo

Features

Now let’s get down to some subjective features that are harder to quantify.

Brave

Brave has the unique feature of being built privacy-first. Brave ships by default with an ad-blocker and HTTPS Everywhere, meaning it will automatically upgrade all sites eligible to a secure connection, as well as some light script blocking. That’s definitely something most browsers can’t say. However, the ad-blocking can be easily replicated with the mobile DNS of your choice, and HTTPS isn’t really necessary in today’s day and age where 95%+ of the average user’s time on the internet is encrypted. I do have a couple of deal-breaker issues with Brave, but based on my research I think these are bugs (possibly based on my having such an older device) rather than actual shortcomings. First is that I was unable to easily find a way to clear my entire history. I think it’s been removed in the newest mobile version for my device. Personally I view having web history in general to be a huge risk. Past malware – both desktop and mobile – and malicious apps have been able to scoop that up before. So for me I value having a browser that will clear my history without me thinking about it. One way to get around this – which brings us to my second issue – is to use Private Browsing, however as soon as you close and reopen the app you end up back in regular browsing mode. Others have not reported this issue – either the history clearing or the private mode – but this ticket shows that I’m not the only one with this issue.

DuckDuckgo

DuckDuckGo has a few unique features that I actually like, and I don’t really have anything to knock it for. I’m sketchy of DDG as a company overall, if we’re being honest, but they seem to have built a really solid browser. First off, DDG is another company that like Brave was built with user privacy in mind. The browser comes prepackaged with tracker blocking software, as well as HTTPS Everywhere. In fact, DDG and EFF recently teamed up to use DDG’s web-crawling bot to make HTTPS Everywhere even more effective and comprehensive – constantly learning via AI rather than occasionally updating with crowdsourcing. And DDG has two ways to clear your browsing data: automatically (upon app exit, optionally with a time delay) or manually with the simple tap of a button. As a neat little UI feature, they also tell you everything they’ve blocked on each site (though Brave does also give you both a site total as well as an overall total when you first open the app).

Firefox Focus

Firefox Focus is a pretty standard browser with a couple of drawbacks that I could live with but would prefer not to. First the good side: it automatically clears data on close without any prompting, and it offers to integrate with Safari so that anything that opens in Safari will benefit from Mozilla’s tracking protection. The downsides: there are no tabs (you only get the single page you’re on), you can’t download images by holding them and saving them to the camera roll, and Mozilla has straight up said that Focus is a low priority for them, so even though it claims to be extra focused on privacy (no pun intended), it rarely gets updates, which includes the tracking protection lists. For example, the last four update versions at the time of writing were released as follows: April 13, 2021; November 13, 2020; September 1, 2020; and February 26, 2020. DuckDuckGo, by comparison, seems to push out updates at least once per month, usually two or three times. All this to say that while Firefox Focus is not a “hard pass” for me, I don’t think it’s the best choice.

Safari

As far as I’m concerned, Safari only has two things that make it worthwhile: it naturally integrates very well into the iOS platform, and the private mode stays active even when you leave the app. If I set Safari into private mode and close it, when I re-open it it will stay in private mode (remember that for most users, Brave will do this, too, but if Brave doesn't for whatever reason Safari should). I will still be responsible for manually closing out my tabs, and I will have to enable HTTPS Everywhere via the menu. Likewise, I will need to use an alternate DNS if I want to block any ads. As of iOS 14, Safari does block some third party trackers so there is a baseline level of privacy there. The only major ding I can think of on Safari is that the app integration doesn’t preserve Private Browsing. For example, if I peruse Mastodon and see a link I want to click on, the link will natively open in Mastodon but will not open in a private browsing window, meaning that link now goes on my browser history and the data gets preserved until I manually go in and clear my browsing data, at which point I have to also set back to a private-browsing tab.

Winner: Brave/DuckDuckGo

Loser: Firefox Focus

Putting aside my personal bugs that I experienced with Brave, I think Brave and DDG both offer competitive results in terms of features. Tabs, ability to clear history automatically, built-in security and privacy features, etc. I think the only small edge DDG has is the one-click burner button that allows you to clear your current session instantly (and maybe the fact that it doesn't save your history by default, though I guess some people may want to save their history for whatever reason). With Brave you would have to close it out and re-open it to simulate the same effect. Firefox is clearly the loser here as it has almost no features or advantages and in fact has a few drawbacks (the lack of image saving and the single tab).

Final Verdict

Winner: Brave

Brave won the privacy policy section, but only by a thin margin (compared to DDG and Firefox Focus). Safari won the fingerprinting section by an impressive shot, but I think Brave’s low performance can be excused when you remember that the fingerprint is randomized every time, meaning that tracking is considerably more difficult and the bits shared may vary depending on the fingerprint used. For the speed portion, Brave blew everyone out of the water. However, I think the features section is where things start to get muddy. Due to the major issues I – and others – have with Brave’s functionality, I do want to list my suggested runner-up: DuckDuckGo. While DDG scored mediocre on most of the tests, I found the wide range of features and functionality made it superior to Firefox Focus, and compared to Safari you lose almost no features but gain a massive privacy improvement. If Brave works correctly for you (ex, clears your history and allows for always-private mode), I think Brave is the winner. But I think DDG makes a very close runner-up and is acceptable if Brave doesn't work for you for any number of reasons.

“But WebKit...”

There are two main arguments for why you should just use Safari on iOS as opposed to any of the other popular choices, and while I know this blog is getting long, I want to address them here and now.

1) “It’s all WebKit.” Basically, Apple has locked down their ecosystem so tightly – at least in part due to security – that all browsers are essentially just forks of Safari. This is true. But the logical assumption is that because it’s a fork of Safari, Apple can see anything you do on that browser as well. As far as my research can tell, this does not happen. I was unable to determine if that’s due to Apple’s policies or due to technical limitations, but at this point in time unless someone comes forward with an empirical, documented case and not just anecdotal evidence or hypothetical conjecture, I’m forced to conclude that this is a non-issue. I don't like to spend too much time on unsubstantiated “what-ifs.” It makes things paranoid and untrustworthy very quickly.

2) JavaScript. Once upon a time, Apple would hamstring competition by forcing them to use WebKit’s older version of JavaScript instead of the new JavaScript Nitro, which was reserved for Safari alone. This however stopped being true as of iOS 8. Therefore this is also a non-issue.

Conclusion

The entire idea of a mobile browser is that you use it in emergencies, limited situations, or as an alternative to an app. Ideally, you should use your mobile device as a whole, including the browser, as little as possible. Rather, you should browse on desktop where you have significantly more control over things like blocking JavaScript, using Containers, virtual machines (if necessary), and stronger anti-virus. I realize that for some people that’s not an option, but for those who do have that luxury, use it!

I realize that browsers are one of those areas where everybody’s going to have an opinion. It’s also important to remember that what matters to you remains a critical factor here. In my situation, Brave wasn’t the winner – despite objective superiority – due to bugs. In your situation, you may prefer Firefox because you don’t trust Brave or DuckDuckGo. Some people may be willing to give up some privacy for Safari so they can have the integration or sync across the Apple ecosystem for whatever reason. My goal with this site was never to tell you what to think, only to give you the tools you needed to make an educated decision. You now have some information. Good luck!

Instead of catching up with Web 2.0 economy and society, Europe should embrace Web 3.0 to gain geopolitical, economic and social benefits in its ongoing pursuit of digital sovereignty. Here's how this might work out.

The recent wave of discussions about digital sovereignty among policy and industry decision makers accelerated from the second half of 2019 (variations of this took place many times since the 1960s however). It is meant to represent a desire to control data in a self determined way that is driven by political, security and economic reasons.

It is also an equal part a values based pursuit with respect for privacy and openness. “Neue Technologien kommen, aber unsere Werte bleiben” (“new technologies arise but our values remain”) wrote the president of the European Commission on the day of announcing the EU’s first digital strategy.

Since then the EU has committed €160 billion for tech development including chip manufacturing, took multiple steps towards democratic market and technology regulation and put forward a Digital Compass agenda with ambitious tech capabilities to meet within a decade and individual countries extended €190 million in funding for use cases on top of GAIA-X, the European federated cloud infrastructure project. While this is great, the momentum behind the call for digital sovereignty can be used for something greater and bigger. To better grasp the context for what I mean by this, here's a brief history of the internet.

Internet waves

Internet tools and programs, ways and philosophy of interacting with it and the hardware and devices that power it came (and continues to do so) in waves.

With low bandwidth speeds and limited hardware to access it in the late 1980s-90s, the first generation internet (Web 1.0) was primarily available for commercial and academic purposes. Slowly afterwards, the first generation of communication and payment via email or chat rooms and static websites became accessible to more and more people who joined the network.

The second generation – from early 2000s to late 2010s – normalised money-, communication-, education-, news-, trade-, love- and politics over IP. It also centralised these very functions in the hands of a handful of privately owned public utility companies that are politically powerful. Moore's law in full speed brought the cost of manufacturing advanced devices down and sped up telecommunications – helping billions of people and devices be online and create data.

Web 3.0 – which is happening as we speak – is powered by a number of new technologies and a different philosophy to guide them. Connected devices and data inputs from users and machines run on a decentralised layer and bring new meaning to the massive amounts of data produced as a result. Second and third layers of behavioural and anticipatory data is produced by artificial intelligence systems that run on top of these for its creators' benefit – be that monetisation, cost reduction, manufacturing efficiency...etc.

Whereas Web 2.0 socialised and univeralised the possibilities of the internet but privatised and politicised the rewards, Web 3.0 has the potential and technology to make the individual user – who is the rightful owner – view, control, permission and profit from their data at any moment in time and without intermediaries.

The European way

There are at least “two models” of internet services. The American way that relies on surveillance capitalism and which gave rise to the biggest tech companies today – and the Chinese way which centralises data in the hands of super apps and involves government oversight. Both models ultimately do a lot of harm to individual privacy and the open web.

It is against these models that digital sovereignty was voiced by the German Chancellor and the French President. Where the utterances become vague is in how to operationalise this vision in a lasting way. In other words, the previously mentioned programs and tools set up to address it – do so within the Web 2.0 framework where other countries have first or early mover advantage and economic and network lock in moats.

The redistribution of data ownership and rewards while maintaining its security is the defining characteristic of Web 3.0 and it is here where Europe's digital values and those of this generation of the internet can converge to define digital sovereignty based on decentralised technology.

Data commons as those piloted by DECODE, GAIA-X's cloud interoperability protocol, a wide spread implementation of the Solid protocol and its variants for identity and data management and sharing across public services and the creation of public utility platforms with the user experience and appeal to match their lifetime adoptability and speeding up of research on European digital currency – are just some of the ways in which this scenario can take place.

Building national Web 2.0 champions and unicorns is great. What's even better is to create the circumstances, laws and system readiness to build national and global Web 3.0 technology champions that redefine the rules of the internet all together and chart Europe's way there.

#000515 – 15 de Maio de 2021

Pinga a chuva nos carris. Escuto uma voz com pronúncia eslava a desfiar teorias paranóicas. Que o presidente é escravo dos satanistas, que os poderosos nos usam porque os robocops são muito caros. De três em três minutos a segurança responde a uma pergunta, com voz embaraçada, luvas?, não, não trouxe. Os pássaros sobrepõem a sua chinfrineira ao escorrer da água. A neblina é espessa, esconde o céu e molha todos, não só os tolos.

Marikina River Park is an unexpected green space in Metro Manila. It's a vast system of parks, trails and open spaces along the Marikina River. It was developed in the nineties and relived the river banks after decades of negligence and pollution.

The recreation facilities stretch over 11 kilometer. The park covers an area of 220 hectares. It contains the Riverbanks Center, a mall and office complex. Throughout the park, different kind of facilities are scattered. Among others an amphitheater for 20.000 people, floating stages for cultural events, a Roman dome, a Chinese Pagoda, a gazebo and picnic grounds. The sports facilities include a baseball field, a basketball court and a skating rink.

On the riverbanks urban farmers plant vegetables and hold animals in the so called salamyaans. Elderly come together and spend time together.

The park and river banks are bringing people together and are strengthening the community. That was also one of the objectives of the 'Save The Marikina River' (.pdf) program, the initiative that shaped the river park in the nineties. The rehabilitation program was launched in 1993 and had different aims: reduce flooding, improve the eroded riverbanks, resettling informal settlers and create an environment for community building, leisure and sports.

A dead river By the 1970's the Marikina River was heavenly polluted with domestic sewage and industrial waste. The river was practicaly dead. On the river banks 2.000 informal settler families built their house in an area that was often flooded. The quarrying of the river and its banks resulted in erosion. All this lead to more flooding, to poor water quality and hygiene problems. Moreover Marikina lies in an earthquake prone area.

From 1992 on the government took a series of resolutions and actions to rehabilitate the river and prepare the city for the frequent flooding and earthquakes. The informal settlements were removed through a relocation program. The decade long initiative was a success. The Asian Disaster Preparedness Center summarizes the program in a leaflet titled 'Flood Disaster Mitigation and River Rehabilitation by Marikina City, Philippines' (.pdf) It received also the Galing Pook Award (.pdf).

Success A lot of initiatives are taken. Often with the best intentions. But that doesn't guarantee success. Marikina made sure that inhabitants and – important – the informal settlers were convinced of the project. Mayor Bayani F. Fernando (.pdf):

“The people have to touch and smell the water. It is hoped that this experience and exposure will galvanize them to muster enough political pressure for the government and the rest to act and conserve the river.”

The rehabilitation plan contained:

• Building access roads to allow men and equipment to go near the river and undertake the necessary cleaning and clearing operations
• Clearing the banks both of its informal settlers and other encroachments
• Improving the river water quality by demanding industries to set up and maintain water treatment facilities
• Creating sports facilities, historical and cultural structures
• Enhancing the aesthetic appeal of the river environment by planting various flora and trees

Today, the park is the center for community activities and sports. Thousands enjoy walking, biking and jogging. The restoration created job opportunities, relived the spirit of Marikina and empowered the community. Marikina River is not healthy yet, but awareness has been created. Hopefully neighboring cities will start seeing that enhancing a river can lift a whole city.

#marikina #philippines

<!DOCTYPE html>

Good morning

#random

Yes except this is a bad therapists wet dream. Because it enables a perpetual therapy loop.

The spiral is the multiverse of human experiential canvas and can be continually re adjusted during ones lifetime.

***It does not have to be just one thing. ***

This very concept is incredibly difficult to grasp and execute for upwards of 80% of the general population, for good reason-

the fear circuitry of the mind has to be entirely disabled or broken by the will to free the conscious mind up enough to allow for this play in the subconscious and within the experiential canvas of the person.

(Imho.) your mileage may vary.

Belated thanks for the shoutout John Doe:

CJ Eller's post about analog hyperlinks reminded me of an article's fragment I came across a few weeks ago:

“If you experience something — record it. If you record something — upload it. If you upload something — share it.”

These days it feels like all valuable experiences must be recorded, otherwise, they have no value — like they never even happened. CJ Eller was spot on when he realizes (or reminds) the real value of human interactions — an analog hyperlink — even if they are not translated into bits flowing through the web.

I believe our constant need for sharing and getting feedback in today's world is a distraction, and that makes us lose sight of what is truly important.

What happens when you share an idea and don't get any feedback? Is a human connection possible?

I believe it is.

It took me a while to respond directly but all the while I carried your thoughts in my head — mulling over how “sharing an experience” can be reduced to uploading it to the internet for others to see and how that flattens said experience, how feedback doesn't tell the whole story of interacting with someone's writing, how I can read something and hold it in my mind without giving feedback (like this post) and think it over for days on end, how that experience is impossible to put in a “Like” button.

Is that not worth more than a single comment?

What is Love // Society's Bastardization of Love

Imagine you are walking to a baseball game. Many times cities do not have adequate parking for their spectators, so the fans have to park all over the city. During the walk to the game, you see a lot of different things. First you might see a single man selling “PEANUTS! HOT DOGS! GET YOUR HOTDOGS!”. Second, you may see a couple selling their wares, probably a t-shirt or a 3 for 1 hat deal with your favorite team on them. Finally, you most likely will see a panhandler asking for money.

I don't make it a habit to give to panhandlers, most of the time it will not be used for a necessity, but it will be used for pleasure on their part; however, many people that wish to be kind will give them a dollar. It's their prerogative to do that, it's their money. We should not confuse love with kindness however.

But, Michael, isn't that loving to give money to a poor person?

Not necessarily, here's another more contentious example. Imagine you have a child. You make a pact at the beginning of this child's life never to discipline him with negativity. You will never yell, you will never grab, you will never take his toys away. You will always simply talk to him and only tell him “No” and explain your actions.

Unfortunately, for a child this manner of correction does not work. The child continues to cause problems. You continue to stick by your covenant, that you will never be “mean” to the child. You say it is the only way to love someone is to not be mean to them. Or your definition of mean, so you tolerate the child's actions and therefore the child thinks these actions are ok and demean anyone who tries to correct said child without you in a different manner than you, when that child does not conform to local cultural standards.

We are told by leading psychologists that love is tolerance and kindness. But I measure a guess, at least in most people, no one would actually agree to that. Why is that? Let me explain.

I will use a graphic example but it is necessary for this post. Let's say an immediate family member was shooting up heroin daily, and you know this. Do you let him continue without confronting him about it at least a few times? Or do you give him money to continue with this habit that will eventually kill him? While you see him lay there high out of his mind, do you watch him with a smile knowing that you're showing him love by letting him continue this habit?

OF COURSE NOT

Love, true love, is beating down the doors. It's calling the police when necessary. Love is caring about another person so much you want them to see the right way to accomplish things.

As Christians, we are taught constantly God is love and that God is our Heavenly Father; however, many Christians I think would like to think God is our Heavenly Uncle who is nice and gives us things and never holds us accountable for our actions.

Society itself not only doesn't hold accountable vile actions, it allows them to be celebrated in certain aspects. Rioting, Looting, Pedophelia (yes, even pedophelia), uncouth speech, emasculation, etc. are all things being celebrated and we're told to “love” all these people who do these things and not to point them out. To just “let them live their lives” or “they were mad” or excuse, excuse, excuse.

Love isn't allowing someone off easy. Love isn't tolerating bad things.

Love is correcting the bad things and showing people how to do good things

That is love, and that is God's love.

Kindness is simply a way to make oneself feel better that they did something nice for someone else. Kindness with Love is showing someone that you care.

Tolerance is almost opposite love. Tolerance enables bad things to happen, because to cause change to correct the bad course of action takes too much work. We must then accept that that one person will continue to pervert society's original and God's imposed standards, because they are then validated in doing so. ** THAT'S NOT LOVE **

So while we will go over the different types of Love and the examples of true love in each, I do want to clarify a particular point.

Love is a choice, not a feeling

If we are made in the image of God, and we have the ability to emulate God, then we can glean a few things from how God loves.

When God chose Abraham, He chose to love him and his offspring, soon to be nation. When we are commanded to do things in the Bible, we are commanded to Love. If love was a feeling we wouldn't be commanded to do it. After all, Society always tells us that “You can't help who you love”.

So a sinful society that doesn't know God is telling us one thing and God is commanding us to do another.

if God knows we can love through His own commandments, then Love is a choice. Since love is a choice, we can then decide who, what, when, where, and how to love.

1 Corinthians 16:4 tells us quite plainly “ Let all you do be done in love.” We can't force ourselves to feel, but we can choose to do an action.

A reminder, when faced against the power and strength of society forcing down your throat the very opposite definition of love:

“Love is patient, love is kind. Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not arrogant, is not rude, is not self-seeking, is not irritable and does not keep a record of wrongs. Love finds no joy in unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” – 1 Cor 13:4-7 CSB.

So yes, as a Christian, poke holes in society, point out what is wrong. Do not rejoice in unrighteousness (as our savior already paid the price for that) and stand firm in love. Remember the definition above, keep the faith and all things will work together for good.

Part three is coming soon- “What is love // The definitions of love”

Part one- “What is love // Man's purpose on this earth“

#000514 – 14 de Maio de 2021

Ficção. Da oralidade à argila e madeira, ao papiro e pergaminho, das imprensas às máquinas de escrever, dos ecrãs às canetas de tinteiro. A imaginação é a forma de inventar uma mudança, é a realidade em gestação. A ficção contém as fórmulas, o encantamento. Magia semiótica. Fraco poder para mundo tão sólido. E, ainda assim, indestrutível.

thanks to abebooks.com versus paying 24.99 on amazon.. :–) #supportindependentbooksellers #abebooks #reading #spirituality #consciousness all that manner of things..

great text, was given to me by an old san francisco neighbor, and i have not seen my copy in 7 years, and have been itching to read it again. so it will be here in 4-12 days. =woohoo= !

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excellent book. if you haven’t read this i highly recommend it.

An important lesson learnt during this negativity experiment is how harmful it is to compare myself with others.

It is a painful habit. Why do I keep on doing it?

We are bombarded with messages such as: “Be yourself”, “Live your own life”, “Do it your way”, and so on. Okay, great, but how?

An idea: dial down the noise.

The Internet is a powerful noise amplifier. One big mistake is to believe that we can ignore the noise. I can't. I need to turn it off.

LinkedIn and Mastodon are the only social media I use, and I spend less and less time on them. As I read about the struggles some people had gone through with social media, I'm glad I stayed away from it. Social media is mostly noise.

Family, (IRL) friends, colleagues might also contribute to the noise. Don't turn them off permanently, but it is okay to mute them sometimes. Give yourself the space to look at your life with some perspective, without the pressure from others and the world.

As the noise goes down, I find myself less prone to chase absurd goals frantically. I care less about what other people have achieved in their lives, I'm even genuinely happy about it. I don't have this constant need of feeling special. Being the number one (in whatever category I'm interested at the moment), for what? what does that even mean?

Is the voice in my head that says I'm “not good enough” quiet now? Not at all. He sometimes whispers, other times yields at me. I don't fight him anymore, I simply dial down the noise.

#100DaysToOffload #Negativity (73/100) P.S. This post is part of an experiment about negativity (read about it).

It has been a minute since I have updated the blog! Not much going on really, just the normal daily stuff. Anyway, I just wanted to write about the book I have been reading lately and it is the Invincible comic book series.

I really am enjoying these comics, I have been reading them on my iPad and they are an awesome and different take on the superhero genre. There are a ton of twists and turns that you really aren’t expecting.

Mental health is a huge issue in these comics also. The main character Mark, has the weight of the world on his shoulders and he lets it get to him quite often. It is quite amazing to see him fight through it though. I know he is a super hero and all but his struggles were very similar to my own. An internal struggle that felt like there was no end.

The dynamic between Mark and his father is also an interesting relationship. Not going to give anything away but there is a huge twist here that I did not see coming. I highly recommend you stay off searching for information about this book online. There are a great deal of things that made me say “WHOA!” out loud.

Check out the book if you are interested in comics and the super hero genre. It is really good and thought provoking.