2026-04-26 02:06:00
There's not a lot to say about this book (I lie, look at this post length!). It is short, a very quick read if you're a reader. I do have some criticisms which I'll discuss because I enjoy being critical.
Mitch reconnects with his former professor Morrie, who is dying from ALS, and they discuss the meaning of life.
I recommend this book. It makes you think about life and what's meaningful. It encourages meaningful and thoughtful reflection. It advocates for goodness, for love, for kindness.
I might have read this book in high school, but then I definitely read it in my early 20s. I believe it hit me fairly differently now than it did back then. Back then I had a much less developed perspective on the challenges and meaning of life, so this book took the role of a wise guru who knows what's right. Now, it strikes me as just a man, who's speaking about his own life, his own experiences, his own sense of meaning - even if much of the language is presented as a teaching lesson to be taken as truth.
On this reading, it was definitely a reflective experience, a lot of nodding along, some criticism of things I didn't have the breadth to criticize a decade ago, and just a slightly stressful experience for reasons I don't totally understand. Any kind of non-fiction or serious book tends to cause me stress, which sucks because I quite like learning things, but I don't like being uneasy.
I have one major criticism of this book, and one more minor one.
The major one, which I've already touched on. The book is written in a prescriptive way: Morrie knows what's important in life, listen to him and take his lessons as your truth.
This tone shines brightly early in the book when Mitch is discussing the OJ Simpson trial and celebrity gossip magazines. The idea put forward by Morrie and by Mitch is that the OJ Simpson trial is not meaningful. That people are wasting their time by spending hours and hours watching the trial, something that has no bearing on their personal lives. The idea is that they should instead be spending this time on "meaningful" things like spending time with loved ones and pursuing passions (but not to the detriment of connecting with people you love).
The prescriptive nature of this perspective is bothersome to me. I watch Olexa, a YouTube content creator who plays Roguelike games. He has like a 15 episode series on Mewgenics so far, and I love watching it. I don't find it meaningful. Its not helping me connect with others. I'm not wanting a parasocial relationship. Its not helping me in my life.
But I like it. I want it to be part of my life, because I just simply enjoy it.
Morrie & Mitch's prescriptive perspective just doesn't acknowledge the reality that ... different people have different tastes and we don't all want our lives to take the same shape.
This is a major criticism I have, but it doesn't de-value the book for me at all. It doesn't keep me from appreciating the reflection encouraged by the book. It doesn't stop me from thinking about what's meaningful to me. It is something I was entirely unaware of when I read it a decade ago.
And a minor (or less major) criticism.
Morrie is extremely privileged. He has a wealth of people who love him, a wife who cares for him, money (or health insurance benefits) for medicine, for modifications to his home (which he owns, I believe), for special furniture, for a hospice nurse, for all the things that make dying better. He is also an accomplished sociology professor, and gets a spotlight on national TV (3-episode miniseries).
He speaks a fair bit about how materialistic our culture is, which I do agree with. And he talks about the issues with pursuing your career to unreasonable ends. I generally agree with his perspective here too. The criticism is really about the fact that his life worked out very well for him economically. He wasn't rich, but he was well-off. He lived well and had the wealth to be cared for in his final days as he didn't work. He also loved his job and from my understanding did give a lot to it, working until about 6 months before he died, even though he was already getting much sicker.
The TLDR is that he was successful in the material things, which gave him the privilege of not caring about material things. I don't think this is cause to dismiss his perspective, and I think his perspective is extremely valuable and worth considering.
I just think it's good to keep in mind the context of his life.
And my big mental reframing of this book was significant for me. As I already said - a decade ago, I accepted this a wise figure giving prescriptive advice. Now, I see it as a story about a man (or two men because the book is about Mitch as much as it is about Morrie) who is sharing what's meaningful to him. No matter the language used, this is still merely one man's story (Morrie's story) about what's important to him, and another man's interpretation (Mitch's interpretation) of that story.
2026-04-25 03:36:00
Most of us are strongly opposed to animal cruelty. Some are more in a grey area where it's okay to hit your animal as punishment to get them to behave how you want them to behave. I find this cruel, but I understand we're not all on the same page on that.
But I think we generally agree that it's not okay to just be cruel to animals, especially without a clear purpose. Dog fighting is banned in the U.S. and people go to prison for it. When a mistreated dog makes local news, there is outrage on Facebook.
People want to punish those who harm animals.
But that line stops hard for most people at pet-animals or other non-food animals. I remember the outrage around the "horse meat at burger king" rumor (which I think was partially true from one meat supplier), and there was (manufactured) national outrage when (false) accusations of cat-consumption were widely spread.
But why horses and not chickens or cows? Why your dog or cat, but not pigs or fish?
For me, it's really just comes down to compartmentalization and just, like, allowing a big empty spot where empathy could lie. It's perhaps that same empty-space that allows me to consume horrible news without shedding a tear - yes they dropped bombs today, yes I think it's horrible and should stop, no I'm not going to shed a single tear.
That refusal to feel was broken for me after I watched Cow, a nearly wordless documentary film about the life of a dairy cow named Luma.
Maybe part of it is that I didn't know. I didn't want to know. And I saw it all as sort of a necessary evil.
"Well we need to put animals in these conditions so we can feed the billions of people on the planet."
Except it's not about nutrition, for the most part. Did you know cows are vegan? And even Black & Brown Bears eat 80% plants. Lots of humans live entirely on plants or primarily on plants.
The thing that keeps us eating meat is a combination of our habits, cultures, cooking skills, and most significantly - personal pleasure.
It's easy to justify causing harm to an animal when that harm is literally the way that you survive. I have a lot of respect for this view, and some of us have to take medications derived from animals or completely lack access to plant-based proteins. We (people) are animals. We do need food to survive. There are many many free (undomesticated) animals that kill and eat other animals. I accept this as part of the cycle of life, and I accept that we humans are part of that cycle too. And in that vein, I'm not actually opposed to hunting - as long as the animals are not over-hunted and they are allowed freedom throughout their life.
But eating meat isn't about your nutrition. Its primary nutritional benefit is protein, which is not as abundant in plant foods, but is still readily available through beans, legumes, nuts, soy, and various other sources. Some things may require supplements like Vitamin B12, but there are plant-based sources for these too. You, personally, may not know how to get your protein from non-meat sources. But you probably know that you can learn.
I bet your biggest reason for eating meat is that you like it. You just like how it tastes. If you didn't, I bet you would learn how to cook without meat very quickly.
I want you to realize that animal agriculture is cruel. Some of this requires education. But it also requires you to accept that you're part of the problem. When a cow is restrained and its skull is burned to prevent horns from growing - this is so you can eat a cow. When cows are kept in cages where they breathe toxic air and develop respiratory problems, where they are afforded no freedoms, where they are regularly forced into pens barely large enough to fit them - this is so you can drink their milk.
It's not because you can't get the nutrients anywhere else. It's because you like cow milk and you like cow flesh. But these cows (& chickens & pigs etc) are living creatures capable of suffering, forced into very restrictive lives so that you don't have to learn how to cook with plants, and so that you can experience the pleasure of their flesh.
It's popular in culture to rag on vegans for how mean or judgemental we are, about how we just won't shut up and let you be.
But how would you act if everyone you knew were eating cats and dogs? Or if everyone you knew were eating human flesh? Would it be "right" to shut up and let them be? Or would you be repulsed every single time you sat down for a meal with them? Would you let them gaslight you into thinking YOU'RE the bad one for being upset?
I'm not asking you to overcome your double-standard today - it takes time. But I do want you to see it, recognize it, and own the fact that you are directly responsible for cruelty to animals every single time you eat meat or dairy or eggs or any other animal byproduct like gelatin-based gummies. I want you to realize that the lines you draw between pets and non-pets are arbitrary, and is just a sort of permission-structure you create for yourself so you don't take responsibility for the harm you cause to animals.
It's the same permission structure when we say "I'm just doing my job" to justify doing something we don't agree with.
No, I'm not innocent. I ate meat for the majority of my life. I'm 33 now and I was only convinced by the animal-cruelty perspective in the last 6 months. But to be honest, I wish more people had talked to me about this, in a serious way, long long ago.
If you're going to continue participating in the mass-cruelty against animals, you should at least watch some films or read some books or articles and know what it is you're participating in. If you're going to choose cruelty, it should at least be an informed choice.
2026-04-19 01:21:00
When Chat GPT was fresh, I used it a little bit. Tried it out. Wasn't thrilled by it. It just wasn't very helpful for me.
Later, I learned about the harmful things about AI & reflected on it more - job loss, energy consumption, water use & possibly pollution, theft of art, and probably other things. So I became a committed AI Hater.
But I've realized more things lately where I think AI would have been immensely helpful to me. Little programming tasks, just to make simple little tools for myself.
One idea is ... So, my state Department of Natural Resources has a webpage with a list of native plants, with their name & each name is a link to it's own page. The plant's own page has a picture and some details about growth height & stuff. There are no pictures or growth info on the list page. I wrote some software to collect this information into a grid, to view everything on one page, and it took about an hour.
It was kinda fun. But I could have done it in 10 minutes, maybe less, with an AI. It was a really simple script. And that probably would have used less power in-the-moment than running my laptop for all that time.
And yes, the training of that AI used a lot of power already. On one hand, I'm complicit if I use it. On the other hand, it's already trained (even though they continue training more more more), and my use or non-use of AI is likely not going to have any meaningful impact on the development of AI.
Governments are spending a lot of money on AI. It's being sold to businesses, to professionals, to amateurs, to everybody. And I just don't feel like my behavior here is having any meaningful impact on the outcome. So why make my life harder to stand on a completely useless principle?
... To feel better about myself? ...
huh. maybe.
...
But I refuse. I stand by being a hater. And so I refuse. But man, it is really tempting sometimes.
(The other idea is a Command Line Tool in which I can save commands. Example, I type clt new and it opens an editor to write a script. I save it, then the tool prompts me to ask what command to save it as. Now a script is saved, and I can do clt help to see a list of available commands. I can type clt command_name to run a saved script. And I can also add options to commands or group commands. Like clp stream start to change any settings and open all the software I'd use for streaming, and clt stream end to close everything.)
2026-04-19 01:14:00
Intention definitely seems to have an impact on what I do and what happens in the world. I aim a dart throw at the bullseye, and my dart does get closer to the bullseye (not that my darts aim is particularly good). I intend to stop at a stop light and I press my breaks.
And that intention feels like free will. It makes me think I have some choice about what happens in the world, but I wonder if it's just my experience I'm choosing. Bear with me.
So, let's assume (strong foundations!) that there are many many universes. universi. universes. And right now you're experience one universe. Imagine your soul as the thing that experiences what you're doing right now. It can all be just a fleshy machine doing sparky chemistry, or it can be an ethereal ghost-like thing or it can be a soul in the sense of any religion.
So the meat sack (brain included) is doing a thing - throwing, breathing deeply, cutting veggies. The soul experiences what is being done. And my general experience is that I am the one doing the thing, not my body, but me, which includes my body. I am in control and I create intention and my actions follow that intention if drugs or addictions or obsessive compulsions don't win out.
And anyway the idea is that the soul, the experiencing part, is not one and the same with the meat sack, but is actually something that can shift between the realities, within narrow limits, and it can basically just shift through intentions.
So it's not the soul having the intention. It's the meat sack, the brain, perhaps even the mind having the intention. What the soul is doing is moving toward the universe where the Reed-meatsack had the intention to write this blog post.
I wrote this blog post because I transitioned into that one universe within the multi-verse. There is another Reed in another universe who did not write this blog post, but I (my soul) didn't experience that Reed. It feels like I chose to write a blog post. But perhaps I just shifted my view into another reality, much like changing a TV channel.
2026-04-18 00:48:00
Over-bright headlights are blinding when driving at night. I took my bestie to the airport yesterday and drove home, partially in the dark. Some of my problem was on the interstate, but I actually had more issues in town.
It's the headlights that are basically pure-white and seem to shoot a beam straight out. Traditional headlights have a yellow tint, and the headlight cover diffuses the light (its like foggy glass/plastic) so the light comes out in a sort of cloud instead of a beam, and makes it much less bothersome to see while driving at night. Traditional headlights also seem to direct their light toward the ground & this newer breed seems to shoot the light straight ahead.
Once I was in a turn lane & straight ahead of me in the opposite-direction turn lane was someone with these extremely bright lights. Once the arrow turned green and I went ... once this car was out of my sight, I notice I had massive blind spots in my eyes for a couple of minutes.
I literally could not look in my mirrors last night because it was literally blinding. I had to lean right so I was more center so that the light from my side mirror wasn't shining straight into my eyes.
There were probably 6 cars in town that pained me during the 20 minute in-town drive home.
I think we need some legislation to fix this. It's bothered me for years, and I've talked to other people who are bothered by it too. I wonder if its a real safety hazard or just a real pain in the ass.
My proposal is for state-level legislation (which I may email my rep about later), along the lines of:
I am comfortable with adding some exceptions for special-use vehicles, and tweaking details above. I am no expert in this space. In crafting said legislation, legislators should be wary of so-called "experts" who speak on behalf of industries.
2026-04-12 04:57:00
Orgasms are great, genuinely one of the best feelings that I think we get to have.
Generally, this is achieved through masturbation or sex, and sometimes some of us might get them in our sleep.
I believe I've woken up post-orgasm once or twice in my life, but I've had many many dreams where I get extremely close. I've had several where I orgasm in the dream but not in real life, and in a way these in-dream orgasms are better than the real-life ones. At least in-the-moment, they are. The satisfaction is short lived, though, and the pleasure soon forgotten.
I've also come extremely close to orgasm several times in my life while awake, while hands-free. Let's not count the water-jet in the pool as a kid, even though that's technically hands-free. (and boy would I like a water jet lol those were so good but also that's super gross)
But I mean just through sheer will. I can't deny the possibility that my closeness came, in part, because of some friction or pressure from the blanket on top of me or underwear I was wearing.
I'm not sure the first time I came close just through will alone, but I do remember one instance, where I was sitting in the dark with my eyes closed. I wasn't dozed, but I wasn't fully there, either. And my little guy does what he sometimes does, spontaneously growing.
And of course that comes with a heightened awareness & a great deal of sensitivity. And boy, I tried to get there without touching it, but I was like 99% of the way there and then the pressure just faded, and the opportunity was lost.
In most of these almost moments, I switch to the usual method (though in this one case, I just gave up). But it's always so disappointing when I do. I go from that peak sensitivity and excitement into a frustrated need to orgasm, and the sensitivity fades, and then I have to go faster & maybe stir up some spicy thoughts.
And I guess it's not sheer will - there's also the flexing of the member itself, which is definitely part of the equation here.
My self-pleasure has pretty much always been very porn and fantasy heavy (depending on the day). But there are rare occasions, where I'm just present in my body. There's nothing, really, in my head. These are some of the best experiences, because I feel everything, much more thoroughly, and I'm not in a rush, I'm just enjoying the moment.
I'd like more of those moments - where it's just purely me with myself - no porn or fantasies with hotties. When I'm really in-tune with myself, there's the internal flexing too. It ceases to be just an activity of rubbing, and becomes something deeper - like I can feel the pressure inside my anus, even though I've put nothing inside my anus. (though sometimes I do and if you're a man, I suggest trying it, with plenty lube. It takes practice.)
It's odd to me that fantasy plays such a large role in something that seems to be a physical phenomena. But so too can you influence your body temperature through your thoughts - stir up some angry thoughts and you might notice yourself getting warmer. And sad thoughts can conjure up tears.
And perhaps if I want to get to the sheer-will-orgasm (I really want to get there), practicing the present-with-myself-orgasm is a good first step.
I also think meditation is part of it. Getting more in-tune with my mind & my body. Learning how to be less in-my-head and more in-the-moment. And, though this is generally not talked about in discussions of meditation, I believe it's a path to greater control over processes that are typically automatic or unintentional.
I don't see any reason why I can't have a sheer-will orgasm. It hasn't happened yet, but it's fun to try so why not go for it?
