In Summary: * The day started VERY early for me. I was standing at the curb well before sun up, hauling tall trash bags out of my big brown trash bin before the trash truck came to collect it. I was worried that I might have mistakenly thrown away something I shouldn't have. Now I get to go through each of those bags again, very carefully, and look for an old photo album of the wife. Better safe than sorry, ya' know.

Prayers, etc.: * My daily prayers

Health Metrics: * bw= 227.19 lbs. * bp= 168/100 (61)

Exercise: * kegel pelvic floor exercise, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:20 – 1 pb&j sandwich * 09:35 – 1 cheese & seafood salad sandwich * 12:30 – bowl of home made chicken noodle soup * 15:40 – 1 fresh apple * 19:00 – ½ Wendy's Junior Cheeseburger, chicken tenders, 1 chocolate milkshake

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:00 – listen to local news talk radio * 04:40 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:00 – pull trash for resorting * 05:45 -read, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials * 10:00 – start my weekly laundry * 14:00 – finished folding the last of the laundry * 15:00 – listening to The Jack Riccardi Show * 16:00 – tuned in to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's NCAA men's basketball game between the Siena Saints and the Indiana Hoosiers...and the Hoosiers win 81 to 60. * 19:00 – watch old game shows and eat dinner at home with Sylvia * 19:30 – time now to wrap up the night prayers, listen to relaxing music, and quietly read my way to bedtime.

Chess: * 14:55 – moved n all pending CC games

The first thing I did was download the ISO image for Ubuntu 24.04.3 LTS. Then I used balenaEtcher to create a bootable USB drive. I got an error when doing this on Windows 11, and after some searching, I found that the solution was to run balenaEtcher as Administrator for the image to work. Even then, I still got another error, I don’t remember exactly what it was. In the end, I switched to Rufus to create the bootable USB, and that worked.

I managed to create the bootable USB and installed Ubuntu on my old ASUS VivoBook Pro laptop. All the hardware worked out of the box, which was great. Even the NVIDIA graphics card was recognized and installed automatically.

So far, I've tested:

• Wi-Fi/Sound/keyboard/mouse/monitor: no issues at all
• Bluetooth: worked well with Jabra Evolve headphones
• Firefox Browser: perfect
• Standard Notes: I installed the app and it works beautifully
• Nirvana: web based and works perfectly as a PWA app
• Steam: installed it and played Banished. It ran even better than on Windows, with more options to adjust zoom, scale, and font sizes
• Deezer: installed an app and listened to music with my headphones
• Calibre: successfully installed for e-book management. I still need to explore using it to open library e-books shared in the Adobe Digital Editions .acsm format. The internet suggests this is possible with some plugins
• LibreOffice / OnlyOffice: great alternatives to the Microsoft suite, it will be easy to switch
• pCloud: created a free account to test it out (seems pretty good!)
• MEGA: created a free account to test it out (didn’t like it that much, for some reason)

Things that I tried but did not work:

• Installing Dropbox and getting it to integrate with Nautilus (did not work at all!)
• Setting up GNOME Online Accounts for OneDrive: I kept getting an error saying the service could not connect
• Installing the MEGA application on Linux: nothing happened, and it didn’t work out

Things I want to test:

• Plugging in my Kobo to see if Calibre recognizes it (I forgot to test this)
• Dropbox: I still have a Dropbox account, and it was the first option that came to mind to replace OneDrive. I read that Linux support is good, but on my first attempt I couldn’t get the native app working. I’ll revisit this
• pCloud Drive: this seems like another solid alternative to OneDrive. I tested it on Windows, and it worked great; now I want to see how well it integrates with Linux
• Discord: there’s a Linux app available. I still need to try it
• Lenovo Universal Dock: I have a ThinkPad dock that I use to connect my monitor and peripherals to my other laptop. I expect it to work with Linux on my ThinkPad X1, but I also want to see if I can get it working with the ASUS laptop. The internet seems to agree that it should work, but I still have to figure it out.
• Emails in Mozilla Thunderbird
• I started with Ubuntu, but I'm intrigued to at least try out Linux Mint. I am not sure if I liked the GNOME desktop environment. It could be because I didn't actually do any customization. Something to explore.

Something I want to do first, before I continue more testing

• The ASUS laptop I'm using to test Linux has a 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD. I made the mistake of installing Ubuntu on the HDD, instead of the SSD, so Ubuntu didn't feel that smooth, it's a bit sluggish (still better than Windows 10, tho). So before I continue any explorations, I will start over and do a full reinstallation on the SSD.

Banished on Linux

Note: I wrote and published this post on Linux 🙂

#linux #tech

Depuis quelques semaines avant qu’Amazon décide de tirer un trait sur la série “Wheel of Time”, j’avais décidé de proposer une adaptation du monde de Robert Jordan en jeu de rôles. L’équipe de Geek Fabula avait fait un actual play dans cet univers, ce qui avait bien évidemment fait écho à une période importante pour moi où je jouais la campagne Prophecies of the Dragon toutes les semaines avec des amis dont certains sont décédés aujourd’hui. Qu’importe le passé, l’univers de la Roue du Temps a cette capacité de mêler le côté martial et royaliste des univers médiévaux au mélange des cultures beaucoup plus contemporains, et la série a encore poussé d’autres crans dans la représentativité et l’inclusivité (pour le meilleur ou pour le pire). Il fait partie de ces univers qui utilisent le surnaturel à petites doses en s’appuyant sur les intrigues très humaines de nations en déroute.

Un monde où chacun ne peut compter que sur ces ressources est un monde où les compétences valent plus que le hasard. J’avais d’abord opté pour le système engrenages qui a de nombreuses qualités pour motoriser la Roue du Temps : il donne autant d’importance au social et au mental qu’au physique, il s’appuie largement sur les compétences mais aussi sur des particularités uniques (les traits), il est simple mais avec beaucoup de sous-systèmes en option.

Mais depuis que j’ai découvert le système de Damien Coltice, auteur de Zombiology qui a repris le d100 pour proposer avec un système moderne, j’ai envie de l’utiliser dans de nombreux contextes. Et le système de stress, associé à la gestion des émotions et des blessures psychologique, se prête tout autant à du survival horror qu’à un monde fantastique où une divinité maléfique serait en train de corrompre les esprits et les créatures. De plus, l’organisation de la création de personnage en formations se plie également fort bien à un schéma origines + métier + aventure. C’est donc acté, je réécris petit à petit tout mon texte pour motoriser la Roue du Temps avec le système de Zombiology. L’auteur nous a promis un vrai nom pour son avènement en licence libre. Pour l’instant je l’appelle Adrénaline.

GO HOOSIERS!

I'm tuned in to The Flagship Station for IU Sports ahead of tonight's NCAA men's basketball game between the Siena Saints and the Indiana Hoosiers. The plan is to stay with this station and listen to the call of the game.

And the adventure continues.

This year, I find myself in an unusual circumstance. I don't necessarily have that holiday spirit but I've got ... something. I might even put up a tree this year.

As a consequence of my uncharacteristic mood, please enjoy this holiday stroll through old favorites and new ones too.

Those jingle bells

Image by Bianca Van Dijk from Pixabay

I've never been so much of a Grinch but I'm not really into Christmas. I've only got so much patience for holiday music. Music gets stuck in my head easily and getting Little Drummer Boy stuck in my head even once is intolerable. It might be surprising to hear that I'm kind of grooving to the Worst Christmas playlist by the Effin Birds creator. Some of the songs in it are old favorites. Some are cynical cash grabs. Some are well-intentioned but flawed attempts. I'm not going to say which I think Christopher Lee's heavy metal Christmas album. After a few hearty laughs, I still enjoyed his rendition of Silent Night.

Some of the best holiday music written in the past century has close ties to Holiday Specials. Somehow, Christmas doesn't seem like Christmas without Vince Guaraldi's A Charlie Brown Christmas or the music from How The Grinch Stole Christmas! While Boris Karloff's You're A Mean One, Mr. Grinch is a crowd-pleaser, I think Welcome Christmas is the real musical star of the original Grinch special.

Tis the season

I don't usually say so unprompted but my favorite Christmas movie is Gremlins. It really is a Christmas movie. It's not quite cynical but it's also not really the kind of thing a major Christmas enjoyer would recognize as a Christmas movie.

It's A Wonderful Life is my runner up. A movie that's not really so much about Christmas as it is about working class communities supporting each other in the face of the real villain of the Holidays: obscenely wealthy guys.

Over the past few years, I've watched some new Christmas movies and some that aren't quite new but are new to me.

A Christmas Story and Silent Night, Deadly Night are two of the latter. I've heard a lot about A Christmas Story over the years. The reality wasn't anything like what I'd imagined. I try to go into movies knowing as little as possible. Basically everything I had heard was about the protagonist being told he would shoot his eye out if he got a BB gun for Christmas. That was a part of the story but it was really more a series of vignettes based on stories written by Jean Shepherd about his own life. It's not a bad movie but, kind of like my experience with The Goonies, I had to have been there (at the time the movie was in its heyday or at a similar time in my own life). I really wasn't so it's not for me.

Silent Night, Deadly Night is a horror movie. More particularly, it's a slasher horror movie. It's thematically a Christmas movie in that it takes place around Christmas and the slasher is dressed up in a Santa Costume. There were a curious number of lies told about the movie when it first came out. Santa is, for sure, not murdering people in that movie. Some very respected reviewers gave it nonsensically bad reviews. Is it high art? No. It doesn't need to be, though.

Three movies that are actually pretty new and Christmas related are: Anne and the Apocalypse, 8-Bit Christmas, and Happiest Season.

Anne and the Apocalypse is a zombie Christmas musical. The songs were great. The stories were great. The way they were combined ... someone needed to have seen a few more musicals before taking a pass at this. The leads give really understated performances in the songs themselves which is ... distracting if you've seen more than one musical. Still, it's a great zombie movie, a pretty good musical, and it's got some Christmas in it too. If that sounds fun to you, give it a shot.

8-Bit Christmas is a 80s nostalgia piece that's kind of cashing in on the 80s nostalgia we see in places like Stranger Things. It also tells a very Goonies like story of a group of kids in the 80s getting up to an adventure around Christmas. While it is banking on a certain type of nostalgia, it never gets distracted from the point: telling a good story. How cheesy and underwhelming the NES would be today is absolutely an element of the enjoyment of the movie. It's a great way of reminding us adults that the stuff we were obsessed with was pretty cringey too when were that age. It won't join my yearly roundup but I think it's worth a watch.

Happiest Season is something I've been after for a long time: A cheesy budget holiday movie for queer folks instead of specifically for people who are telling themselves they are impossibly straight. Clea DuVall directs and co-wrote the screenplay. Kristen Stewart and Mackenzie Davis play partners who are this close to getting married but one of them is in the closet. Daniel Levy plays a familiar role for him but his character has a much healthier perspective than in Schitt's Creek. The story beats are familiar but it's a fresh take and not just because many of the characters are queer. Saying more would be a spoiler. This was exactly what I wanted it to be and some times that's the exact right thing.

Wrapping this up

I've got guesses about what has me in a holiday mood. That's more a topic for me and my diary, though. At least for once, I can be a little less of a bah humbug about the whole thing. If you've stuck it out this far, thanks for joining me. Merry Christmas, you old savings and loan!

Oh, and hey, I did end up putting up that tree.

Speaking of the season, I have a guest blog about another point of winter nostalgia which will go live on Long and Short Reviews on Boxing Day.

Support the author

I've got two books out in the Vay Ideal series. It's a science fiction adventure series built around an eclectic assortment of travelers who find themselves running an independent ship. I'd love it if you'd check them out. While you can buy them on Amazon, the cover links will take you to a landing page which will let you choose any one of several other stores also.

#Christmas #Nostalgia #movie #music

JOURNAL 22décembre 2025

Après le service on est venues discuter avec les clients. Ils étaient curieux de savoir nos liens de parenté, ce qu’on faisait en dehors etc. On a parlé de la France forcément, de mon travail, de l'activité de A au ministère? Ils sont intéressés par ce qui se passe en Ukraine, tout ça, bref trois heures ! On sort du onsen la nuit est magnifique, plus un nuage ici, on voit toutes les étoiles de l'univers c’est fantastique, ça m´hypnotise. Notre chambre est à l'écart mais elle est belle, les tatami sentent bon et c’est bien chauffé par le sol.

I am enjoying my time off

There’s no snow, but a thin layer of frost is covering the land, giving the fields the impression of a badly shaped princess cake, were the marzipan brownish yellow instead of green.

The sun shines brightly however, and today the moon sickle was thin like on the flag of some Muslim country, and the sky was pink and purple

And pure white smoke rose from chimneys of the factories as we passed them in our 2015 volvo, which with it’s diesel engine, social democratic red colours, and inside coated with dog fur felt like an accidental statement compared to the teslas and polestars crowding the treacherous roads, slick with ice.

And in my heart I felt OK

Aaaand the last MVP feature is implemented. Today I've added a photo upload for each entry. The user can add 5 images to each entry and can choose one main photo, which is then displayed on the entry list. And the user can remove the images as well.

This gives the app a nice personal touch. I hope that I don't reach any limits soon with this in Supabase. I never used the file storage before. It's a bit exciting; there are a lot of first times in this project. 😀

👋

---

80 of #100DaysToOffload
#log #AdventOfProgress
Thoughts?

Beginnings require only observation, from there, slow or fast, motion comes as does the day.

8:50 am sat WET

Today comes, not with a bang, but persistent intention to be drunk with life.

We are staying with friends for a few days in Porto, Portugal.

The apartment building isn’t attractive. Built in the last 15 years, it is blocky and devoid of visual interest. An absolute contrast to the care and ornament of the old city.

The interior of the apartment is warm and welcoming though. Very large rooms. a stark contrast to what I am used to. Warm wood floors, and in the living room, a floating rock wall. On the wall are tiny sea urchin shells and life sized Indian honey bees crafted from metal. The shells gathered from walks on the beach here; the insect effigies acquired from artisans in India, where our friends lived for five years.

Our room, when I wake at 8:30a is pitch black. Here they have incredible steel shutters that close to protect against storms, break-in AND light when completely closed. My body is alive and excited to tell me it is morning and time for life, but from a photon’s perspective, this is a closed book. I may as well be lost between galaxies— but even then, I’d have starlight.

Darkness

This place is utterly dark!

In this living womb, it is a space of rest and imagination. And my mind travels far away from here to familiar smells and faces, indulging where reality prevents. It brings a smile and glow to me that only I can see. Even angels could not peer into this moment that is wholly mine in which to bask.

The dark be damned! In this moment, I become my own brilliant day star, power med by thoughts of another.

But, fantasy cannot sustain a life—only occasionally supercharge it.

Peeling my form from the bed, I stumble to tend to the needs my aging body demands first thing in the morning. Finally fully awake, I step out onto the deck to greet the day.

Outside

The sky is not glorious, but the bakery below is always a welcome sight. And smell.

A woman in a gunmetal puffy coat with little tennis shoes saves out of Snopoas, the little restaurant/bakery I can see, and scoot-runs to a little silver car with black wheels, no hub caps, two door hatch back. She must have been cold, people don’t dash off and then just sit there for 90 more seconds. He is probably fiddling with his phone while she savors the wash of hot coffee.

As they zip away, i notice an older couple have come out to walk their dog. It is a large German shepherd whom they have proved a wheelchair for. The dog walked tiredly on jots front legs while dragging its useless hind legs as they dangle from the contraption.

No doubt they love the dog, but it seems selfish to let it suffer this way. It is a dog. I love dogs, but they are not designed for an existence beyond their 10 or 15 years.

The kind thing would be to put it down and rehome a new dog. 😔

It’s kind of sad. I think they may have replaced the affection they had for a child, with this dog.

I turn to shower and dress. The beach is calling to me.

And so I must go.

United States Air Force Colonel Barbara Cho, spokesperson for the Pentagon, made a shocking announcement today whether to reconsider their relationship with Santa after allegations of divulging classified information to a group of children during a Zoom meeting.

Stephen Willis, the father of a 14-year old daughter, were both present during the online call. He said during the interview, “It’s crazy. Santa’s face was bright red, his speech slurred, and he ranted that his sleigh was a prototype based on alien technology constructed at Area 51.”

Colonel Cho has denied all allegations of Santa’s sleigh being based on alien technology, that Area 51 exists, and that an alien craft landed on Roswell back in 1947. She referred to Project Blue Book, a decade long plus study that concluded all allegations of alien UFOs have been proven false.

In a final statement, Colonel Cho said, “We take this matter of national security seriously and hope to settle this matter for the sake of our children.”

DOJ spokesperson Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Ana said that an investigation is underway and wouldn’t comment any further until the investigation is complete. He also said, “We’re also investigating the father, Mr. Willis, why his daughter still believes in Santa Claus.”

Santa declined an interview and has denied all allegations about the matter.

#news #parody #santa #airforce #doj

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, Titi. This week's subjects: Corporate Christmas Chic: The Accra Girl’s Playful Guide to Slaying the Festive Office Season, 2026 Fashion prediction, Wedding rings, and Level Bar and Lounge

---

Corporate Christmas Chic: The Accra Girl’s Playful Guide to Slaying the Festive Office Season. Ah, Christmas in Accra — where the harmattan breeze is giving “soft life,” the traffic jams sparkle with fairy lights, and every office turns into a runway for festive corporate slay. If you’ve been wondering how to blend professionalism with a sprinkle of holiday magic, gather round, sis. It’s time to unwrap the corporate Christmas fashion trends taking over Accra this season! The Christmas-But-Make-It-Corporate Colour Palette: If you think red and green are the only options, think again. The Accra corporate girl is remixing tradition: Champagne gold blouses tucked into crisp tailored pants. Emerald pencil skirts with neutral bodysuits. Berry red suits for the daring queen. Metallic accents here and there because why not? It’s giving glamour without shouting “I’m the office Christmas tree.” Tip: Harmattan dust + white clothing? Choose wisely. Or carry wipes. You know your enemies. Ankara… But Festive! Nobody does Christmas creativity like the Accra fashionista: Ankara with gold foiling. Wax prints featuring deep greens, burgundies, or navy. Subtle shimmer woven into patterns A dramatic peplum top here, a structured blazer there. This is the season to let African prints mingle with corporate silhouettes. From Makola to the boardroom, the slay is intentional. Statement Sleeves With Corporate Discipline: Puffy sleeves, bishop sleeves, ruffles — the girls are not holding back. But of course, we balance it with: Straight-leg trousers. Midi skirts. Minimal accessories. Let the sleeves do the talking while you close deals like the star you are.

2026 Fashion prediction. People will change the colour of their hair frequently, at great cost and using all sorts of poisonous chemicals, to suit the colour of the dress they are wearing. Please mention me to friends when you see it happening.

Wedding rings. We're coming to the end of the year and many of us look at our achievements and failures. I decided to do some cleaning up in my phone. And found that almost 6 years ago Covid started in Ghana and the rest of the world. Memories of the lockdown, most of us lost some friends, the security guys at the supermarkets became all powerful and measured your temperature (they didn’t but anyway they pointed something at you) and it was legal to enter a bank with a mask on your face. And worldwide discussions about vaccines which are still ongoing today, and some claim it never happened, that it was just something like a common cold. Meanwhile the West tried to keep the show going by injecting monies into airlines that were not flying and restaurants which were closed, and today we have not yet solved the problem of how to get that money back and one can say that the world is in a recession of which the end has not yet been seen. As a safe haven people now put their money into Gold which's price has skyrocketed so that the average person cannot afford a golden wedding ring any more. Covid.

Level Bar and Lounge, Asafoatse Tempong Street, Kuku Hill Crescent Osu, Accra. It’s in the same street as the Republic Bar. We went there to scout the place, next evening Accra Fashion Week @ 25 was to have an event there, and I wanted to be sure I could find the place. The interior is worth going for, and it is big, you can be out or in. We were there on a Tuesday evening around 9 pm, and were the only customers. In that big place. They only have the QR code menu, I don’t like that, unfortunately you see it more and more. I told my guest to make a second choice because I expected most of the things on the menu not to be there. But to my surprise all went well, the service was good, we had Chicken Marocain with couscous, nice and different, seafood fried rice which was nice, and shrimp tempura which I will come back for. Prices are reasonable, but bring change, they don’t have it, next evening again they had no change. This is one of the things HE John Dramani Mahama was talking about, poor customer service, and not having change is an endemic one. If you are the owner and you see you have no change you go to the bank in the morning and get change. You’re supposed to bank your earnings from last night anyway.

Lydia...

Do not forget to hit the subscribe button and confirm in your email inbox to get notified about our posts.

I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution. for the time being, you can mail me at wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, and people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.

[22.xii.25.b : lundi / 7 December] to find (in this case) is not a matter of chance, but of formulation … after a period of reading, meditation, prayer, composition, and contemplation : just at the point where the growth of my private library has been limited by material concerns, that is the moment when the ship can drop anchor, I can suit up, and prepare myself for a descent in the abysses. Fiction is an ethical expression, a way of living in the world, distinct from the strictures of realism. Fiction is the world in which we practice the art of escape, but not escape from, but an escape into the innermost, the highest. Just as I don’t need anyone to witness my reading, my meditation, my prayer, my contemplation, I don’t need anyone to witness my composition : but when taken altogether, the object is to reach a reader, to make contact : the symbols work both ways. When the Parson says, “Contact has been made,” he could be speaking for the Zebrafish and not on behalf of the Nucleus of the Swarm. What the Story shows is the defeat of “I see evil everywhere”. Some call it surrealism, but it’s good old fashion true fiction.

It’s funny thinking about V.W.’s anxieties, concerning the value of her work, I mean. Looking back … who knows what the future holds? V.W. writes:

“Robert Bridges likes Mrs Dalloway: says no one will read it; but it is beautifully written, & some more…”

better to be beautifully written than to be read … still it’s worth reading, esp. in that beautiful annotated edition.

Here’s the beginning of V.W.’s theory about fiction: “I don’t think it is a matter of ‘development’ but something to do with prose & poetry, in novels … Reality [is] something … put in at different distances … One would have to go into conventions; real life; & so on. … And death—as I always feel—hurrying near. 43: how many more books?”

I take “development” here to be progress in the sense of new approaches, new techniques … like what scientists & technologists are always going on about, what’s new! coz new sells. Just read Don Quixote. That could have been written yesterday. Not that I don’t think Anaïs Nin’s critique of the novel, her desire for a novel of the future, is on point. Novels are just a concept. Why should we buy their distinction between prose & poetry? Why is this not a poem? Is it that the one with the largest collection of the tiniest boxes wins? What kind of game is that? Not to mention the strain on the eyes.

Death. Death? Where is your … ding! time’s up!

Keep the books comin’ I say.

They called me the Ice Queen:

a framework of discarded beauty
     hung on a battered shape
     with firmness of flesh & blue of eye
the formidable manner has gone

the sun coming out
               having had my cry
     now, to write
            a list of Christmas presents

Good and evil are very powerful concepts, and they can slot themselves very eagerly at the centre of anyone's system of ethics, making them profoundly important to have a good grasp on. Generally most people's view of ethics aligns with either the solid absolutism of divine command (the way eg. of Abrahamic religions), or similar universalism (see: Kantian ethics), while a different take (eg. postmodern ethics) poses a more fundamental relativity to ethics, which necessarily take different faces with different cultures or even with different individuals. While I'm generally supportive of a position of ethical relativism, in itself it is a vacuous take, and it requires more nuance, or at least some heuristic model, for actually orienting ourselves in the daily life. In the interest of providing one, I'll take the long view.

We start out with simple matter: plasma was one of the first products of the Big Bang, its mere existence a miracle compared to what preceded it—nonexistence. Something from nothing. Being instead of non-being. And yet, such conditions of extremely hot and disordered matter are antithetical to all earthly life, and even after the cooling down it would become mere inanimated matter, the existential baseline that we call death. A miracle of miracles at the time, and yet things have moved so much further from there.

Eventually Earth developed life on it, starting with the unicellular being, capable of the basic life functions of eating, reproducing, and spreading. And its uncontrolled and global spread meant that Earth finally managed to get colonized by life! If such a thing happened today, such an overbearing spread would be called a plague.

After life on Earth got its wish to widely exist fulfilled, it then moved on to grander aims: no longer to merely exist, but to coexist! Life diversified, single cells gathered together to live as one greater whole, more complex beings emerged time after time, and more complex systems and ecosystems with them. Driven by the external factors like survival, competition and efficiency, life ever grew more complex, more organized, more interwoven. Across countless species, life on Earth self-organized not just to propagate but to regulate themselves and other life forms around them and the system as a whole (like lichens slowly turning stone into living matter, plants anchoring the earth to prevent landslides, or beavers slowing down the waters' flow to create widely accessible wetlands).

And all throughout, the old has not been subsumed: matter remains the foundation of existence. Unicellular beings remain the most prolific on Earth. Every next phase builds upon the last, not replacing but integrating. However hard-won, each piece of progress brings a greater, more complex harmony, taking the existing voices and weaving them into yet more intricate compositions. Notes into chords, and chords into symphonies.

As humans, we have picked up the very same torch—we call it by names like evolution, progress, advancement—and we've added layers of our own to the system, one after the other. We can see the same patterns at play in our technological advancements: each technology has empowered us to live in a more complex and refined way, and it has also in turn allowed us to achieve a yet further advancement, previously out of reach.

And each time this happens, we see the previous achievements as crude, wasteful, obsolete. The first car was steam-powered! Imagine the scene it would cause to stroll atop one on modern streets.

What we eg. understand nowadays as an universal good (access to internet) was not just unachievable, but unthinkable a mere 100 years ago. As times changed, we've adjusted our lifestyle, and with it our expectations and our dreams both. We change what we think is reasonable, and we change what we dream of to move yet further.

And this is recognizable as a fundamental quality of existence—we do not only merely live, but we reach for more. In Tarot, it is the fundament, the card zero: The Fool. Some term it the unstoppable march of progress, some the indomitable human spirit. Terence McKenna put it as the Universe's inexhaustible search for novelty, acting as a universal attractor towards some future point/state of being. This force we recognize as common to all of us, in our capacity to wish, to dream, to want, to pursue.

But, even though as we can be said to move in a single general direction, as much as we possess one broadly common goal, the process is still not obvious, and it doesn't happen all at once. Progress/evolution is a careful and gradual coaxing of the future out of time, and it happens piece by piece. Leonardo da Vinci dreamt of the helicopter, but only in the XX century did we become able to bring the technology to actually etch the dream into the concreteness of matter.

Not all dreams are suited to all times; life was unachievable shortly after the Big Bang. Same-day shipping of global products was a hard sell at the time of horse-drawn carriages. Each goal must be filtered through the bottleneck of present reality and tested through the limitations of current space-time. To the forward force of progress is paired its necessary nemesis: the attrition of present circumstances. This takes on many forms, such as material possibilities, tradition, conservativism, fear for the future, and the inertia present in both matter and souls.

This is a necessary counterbalance, for dreams can be excessive; they can be anachronistic; they can be misshapen. Or, they can be taken not seriously enough, for to condense a dream into reality is hard, long and laborious work. Dreams can be overvalued and they can be underestimated, and each of these situations makes them dangerous, for to bring an unfit dream forward is an act of violence, that takes apart the past to build something worse in its place. To pursue change for its own sake is mere disruption, and I bet most people in the tech space have gotten sick of the term by now. The forward march of progress is more like a game of attack and defense, a counterbalance between the impetus for the new-or-different and the resistance to change, which in its healthy functioning serves as a filter for worthy dreams.

As progress draws on, some dreams become too obsolete, too small to count as actual progress. To make an example of this, we can look at the modern economy. To chase the dream of individual profit and personal power, some people have ammassed power unto themselves, and used this power to make it easier for them to ammass more power, in an upwards spiral that reached modern heights of entire branches of present-day economy being dominated by monopolies, or more commonly organized oligopolies, where they are the only game in town and they have the power to keep that being the case, and such they decide their product quality not based on what can be done for the customer, but what the customer will not reject; and their prices not based on the manufacturing cost, but based on how much can be extorted out of each buyer. This has generated a global malaise that we all recognize, out of a dream that we can understand being unfit for our times.

Some dreams are too small for a circustance, and some are too big, and both are, in that moment, to be discarded. Good and evil, as such, become a matter not of what must be achieved but what can be achieved. Which, at the end of the day, is one of the most obvious moral concepts, that of doing one's best; however, it must be guided by the presence of mind that is able to tease apart the Possible in each singular circumstance. As it is called sometimes, such presence is the practice of truth seeking.

The propelling force behind the forward push for progress is the force for integration, for weaving parts into a coherent whole, pieces into a new machine, to order sounds into music, libraries into a tech stack, individuals into a community, a union, a family, a collective, a movement. “When two or three are gathered in my name, there I am,” where that “I am” was not about the man but the essence of the man: the common cause, the harmonizing factor; the divine amongst beings, resulting by the mere coherence of intent.

To bring about this further integration is the work of our highest faculties: consciousness, creativity, imagination and love; and it is a work that is always going on and never finished.

I disappeared for two days. Not in a dramatic way. No mystery. No blood. Just Abu Dhabi.

Apparently, when you don’t go out for a while, your friends decide to drag you across an emirate as if fresh air might reboot your personality. The plan was the Zayed National Museum. It didn’t work out, because plans rarely do. So we went to the Zayed Festival instead.

lights, noise, so much noise. too much people, We stayed until midnight, which already felt like a small act of rebellion against my usual habits.

They told me to sleep over. “Then tomorrow we go somewhere else, then we drive back to Dubai.” That sentence had no clear meaning, but I agreed anyway. Tired people agree to stupid things.

The night passed. Nothing poetic happened. Just sleep. Disappointing, I know.

The next day we went to the Natural History Museum. Finally, something that made sense. Animals. Bones. Creatures that lived, survived, and died without pretending to be interesting on social media. I liked that. Animals don’t lie. They don’t explain themselves. They just exist, eat, kill, sleep, repeat. Efficient. Honest. Relatable. I didn’t write during those two days. Not because I was busy discovering myself or whatever people say. I just didn’t feel like turning moments into sentences. Sometimes living is enough, and sometimes it’s just living.

After that, I drove back to Dubai. Home. Same roads. Same thoughts. Same quiet that follows you no matter how far you drive.

I’ll write about it properly later. Or I won’t. Not everything needs to be meaningful to be remembered.

Sincerely,

still unimpressed,

Ahmed

Asle Toje har fått en slags nasjonalkonservativ nyttårstale på trykk i Aftenposten, som fortjener et godt tilsvar. Trump-administrasjonen hevder at Europa står overfor “sivilisasjonskollaps” på grunn av innvandring og diverse “indre fiender”. En påstand de færreste europeere og nordmenn vil si seg enig i. Men Toje er ikke så sikker. “Har de rett?” spør han retorisk i innledningen, og resten av teksten er et dårlig innpakket og svulstig “ja”.

Inne i denne reaksjonære tåkeheimen av en tekst finner vi odiøse fraser som “Når individualisme settes over fellesskapet, nytelsen over forpliktelsen, tømmes samfunnet for samhold”, “kjærlighet til fedrelandet (...) er en plikt” og “en nasjon er et skjebnefellesskap”. Dette skjebnefellesskapet er truet av “selvopptatte minoriteter” og “eliter som synes å ha glemt hvem de representerer”.

“Spørsmålet er ikke hva som truer oss utenfra”, hevder Toje, mens Putin truer i øst og Trump truer i vest. Virkelig? Hvordan kan det IKKE være spørsmålet, mens Europa jobber på spreng for å ruste opp mot Russland i fraværet av en troverdig sikkerhetsgaranti fra USA, og USAs president nok en gang signaliserer at han vil annektere Grønland? Skal vi møte denne trusselen med å pirke i navleloet og dyrke nasjonalkonservative idealer fra obskure filosofer fra slutte av 1800-tallet?

Hvem andre er det som vil at vi skal vende blikket innover, mistro våre “illegitime” eliter og gjøre nasjonale minoriteter til syndebukker? Jo, det er jo de selvsamme herrer Putin og Trump. Om vi skal tro USAs nye sikkerhetsstrategi er amerikansk utenrikstjeneste klare for å slutte rekkene med russisk etterretning for å styrke isolasjonistiske, reaksjonære og autoritære krefter i Europa. Om Trump ikke fikk fredsprisen, får han i alle fall en hjelpende hånd fra komitéens nestleder.

Toje har lenge kritisert Norges støtte til Ukraina, som han ikke oppfatter som “vår kamp”. Han har også vært mer enn forståelsesfull overfor Trump (“ein mench”, i Tojes egne ord). I den grad Norge skal dyrke samhold og være på vakt mot indre fiender om dagen, bør vi nok først og fremst være på vakt mot dem blant oss som forsøker å avlede oppmerksomheten mot de reelle ytre truslene vårt åpne, liberale demokrati nå står overfor. Se mindre

#NSFW

This post is NSFW 19+ Adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

---

https://soundcloud.com/hustin_art/sets/ai_kurosawa/s-MliRse6HgVa?si=d8976e6aefb2412faed684d5f1eccdc7&utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

In Connection With This Post: Ai Kurosawa https://hustin.art/ai-kurosawa

Ai Kurosawa boasted a characteristically Japanese, cute yet distinctive face, an extreme wasp-waisted hourglass curve, and voluptuous breasts. She was a rare hybrid actress combining a mature Western silhouette with an Eastern scale. …

---

---