“the pain you feel is capitalism dying”

Samuel Alexander wrote:

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climate troll vaporized by Katie Mack



Short bio:
Dr Katherine (Katie) Mack is a theoretical astrophysicist. Her work focuses on finding new ways to learn about the early universe and fundamental physics using astronomical observations, probing the building blocks of nature by examining the cosmos on the largest scales. Throughout her career as a researcher at Caltech, Princeton, Cambridge, and now Melbourne University, she has studied dark matter, black holes, cosmic strings, and the formation of the first galaxies in the Universe. Katie is also an active online science communicator and is passionate about science outreach. As a science writer, she has been published by Slate, Sky & Telescope, Time.com, the Economist tech blog "Babbage", and other popular publications.

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bearing witness: the story of StoryCorps


TED Talk by Dave Isay of StoryCorps [deyv AHY-sey ov STAWR-ee kawr] in March 2015
All we know is stories. Some are helpful, some not. These are.

at 14:45, from the transcript:

I'm going to tell you a secret about StoryCorps. It takes some courage to have these conversations. StoryCorps speaks to our mortality. Participants know this recording will be heard long after they're gone. There's a hospice doctor named Ira Byock who has worked closely with us on recording interviews with people who are dying. He wrote a book called "The Four Things That Matter Most" about the four things you want to say to the most important people in your life before they or you die: thank you, I love you, forgive me, I forgive you. They're just about the most powerful words we can say to one another, and often that's what happens in a StoryCorps booth. It's a chance to have a sense of closure with someone you care about -- no regrets, nothing left unsaid. And it's hard and it takes courage, but that's why we're alive, right?


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being well

see footnote

being well is doing well by doing nothing more than need be done to be and let be*

if you know that already, you also may know this:

All we know is stories. Some are helpful, some not. None are reality. Reality is not a story. Reality is what is. And this is beyond words.

that said, want nothing, be well, tweet or retweet this, and otherwise spread the word – paradox alert! – however you want to

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image: juvenile barn swallow being fed – Magnus Kjaergaard [CC BY-SA 3.0 or GFDL], via Wikimedia Commons
*with loving-kindness, compassion, empathic joy, and equanimity

there is no other …

there is no other being than this being: all that is happening now

thoughts of past and future and of whatever else is thought are in the mind, recalled – or not – only in this moment, the present

there only ever is this moment, the present, this being: all that is happening now

nothing is other than this

no one is

there is no other being

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want nothing, be well

Abenomics enters new phase

In early August, Abenomics entered a new phase as the government detailed a fiscal stimulus package of 28 trillion yen (US$265.3 billion), roughly six per cent of Japan’s economy.

Compare with $100 billion as reported in the July 31 post on this topic, infrastructure: finance as everyone’s business


two-thirds of all Canadians back a guaranteed income of $30,000

Pierre Trudeau and Richard Nixon flirted with guaranteed minimum
income plans. Canadians of 2016 skeptical about cost

As many as 67 per cent of respondents backed a guaranteed income set at $30,000, provided that the payment would “replace most or all other forms of government assistance.”

However, nearly as many (66 per cent) said they would not be willing to pay more taxes to support such a program, and 59 per cent said it would be too expensive to implement. 

A further 63 per cent said it would “discourage people from working.” Among Conservative voters, this sentiment jumped to 74 per cent of respondents. But even in the NDP camp respondents were split 50-50.

Finland will soon be debuting a plan to pay every citizen $1,100 per month, and scrap all other benefit programs.

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a good death: “the kind most people would choose”

Nino Sekopet, an extraordinary end-of-life counsellor, on the questions he most often faces

from the article the tweet links to:

A Dutch actress with terminal cancer came to see Sekopet, along with her son. She was unflinchingly realistic and decided that in order to avoid lots of “bulls–t,” she wanted to end her life with VSED. Their conversation was almost buoyant with laughter, simply because that’s where that family was. “That’s a very light, almost funny, cheerful death that’s stayed with me,” Sekopet says.

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lightly edited copy from DWD Canada:

  • It is legal to end your own life in Canada and has been since suicide was removed from the Criminal Code in 1972
  • You have the right to refuse any and all treatment, even if refusal might hasten your death
  • You have the right to stop treatment after it has started. Ethically and legally, there is no distinction between discontinuing treatment and refusing it in the first place
  • In Canada, nutrition and hydration by tube is considered medical treatment. You have the right to refuse or stop it
  • You also have the right to turn down food or drink and the right to refuse to be fed or given drinks by others
  • The above is referred to as Voluntary Stopping of Eating and Drinking (VSED) and is supported by many palliative care providers

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Be sure to choose palliative care that includes informed use of glycerin swabs to relieve thirst, and so on. With no fluid intake you are likely to lose consciousness in a week or so and – without intervention – never regain it. Please read this Guardian piece: 'It was a good death, the kind most people would choose' (Sophie Mackenzie on why her family backed her mother's decision to stop eating and drinking when faced with terminal cancer).

from this page on the DWD Canada website:

Document your wishes. When it comes to end-of-life decisions, what you've put in writing will carry more weight than something you've mentioned in passing. Clear, written instructions will also make it easier for your substitute decision-maker to act on your wishes. So write them down! You can use the forms in our Advance Care Planning Kit or have a lawyer or notary draw up your documents. It's up to you.

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the being known as you

recommended: the transcript the tweet links to

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the being known as you

this present is all that is;
past and future are in the mind

nothing is other than this being,
in every form, in the mind or not

any form needs other forms to be;
all forms of being are in flux

nothing depends on nothing;
nothing does not change

nothing is other than what is,
this being, this present:

this being forming this present;
this present forming this being,

… forming the being known as you

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want nothing, be well


usage note: being – in the sense here of existence – is a mass noun, like water