Notices by hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com), page 7
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hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Thursday, 20-Dec-2018 04:39:12 EST 
hosh
The long read: Google’s Earth: how the tech giant is helping the state spy on us
TL;DR The G in Google stands for Government and the Os are its eyes
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/googles-earth-how-the-tech-giant-is-helping-the-state-spy-on-us/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Dec-2018 11:53:27 EST
hosh
My first computer I owned was the Osborne 1, though the one I purchased was already several years old and a bit old fashioned by that time - probably it was in the late 1980s. I even bought a second model for parts.
The Osborne 1 was the world's first truly portable computer. It was really innovative, in that the main unit and keyboard folded up together for easy carrying: folded up it had a similar weight to a portable sewing machine. It was invented in 1981 by Adam Osborne (1939-2003).
I have just learned that Adam was the son of Arthur Osborne (1906-1970) a British academic and writer who lived for a time in India and was a follower of Ramana Maharshi. His family home adjoins that of my friend in Tiruvannamalai, who I hope to visit again very soon.
According to Wikipedia, Adam wrote a bestselling book about his experiences together with John C. Dvorak, Hypergrowth: The Rise and Fall of the Osborne Computer Corporation. In later life, he returned to India, where he lived in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/adam-osborne-and-his-computer/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Wednesday, 19-Dec-2018 02:29:17 EST
hosh
It's interesting to visit close family and observe that traits which one had taken to be individual are apparently in the blood. My lifelong dislike of garlic and its after-taste; dislike of crowds and feeling of being confused and overwhelmed by shopping malls, shared by my brother.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/genetic-markers/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 17-Dec-2018 12:47:49 EST
hosh
My son says: display:inline-block text overflow:ellipsis; and overflow hidden on the wrapper -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 17-Dec-2018 11:45:04 EST
hosh
try to focus on the breathing -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 17-Dec-2018 11:24:08 EST
hosh
Thanks @Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum) I will check - that probably resolves my problem. But meanwhile I've edited what I wrote above because "HOW TO CLONE MY IDENTITY" got removed in the original text as it was bracketed like a tag. Does that section actually exist somewhere in the help files? If so, is it possible to create an actual link to it? -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 17-Dec-2018 11:16:48 EST
hosh
When I lived as a teenager in the U.S. it seemed to me that the people around me were modeling their behavior and way of expression on what they had seen on TV. Years later, as an occasional visitor, I think their behavior is just as conditioned by conventions. Perhaps social psychology or similar disciplines have developed ways of evaluating and describing this phenomenon more successfully.
For some reason, I feel like an outsider here more than in most other countries, even though, on the basis of my life history, language and culture, this is where I could be expected to feel most at home. Yet I have this feeling of having stepped into a dystopian movie like the Truman Show or The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I'm really grateful that I don't have to live in this country - I would probably go crazy.
Source: http://www.vikshepa.com/alien-being/ -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 17-Dec-2018 09:56:21 EST
hosh
@Hubzilla Support Forum I've done it before, but have forgotten how to clone my identity. I'll figure it out, but what I've noticed is that in the help files, there's a line that says: "For a full explanation of identity cloning, read the .
But there's no link to that, and I wasn't able to find it either in the help files or even in a Google search. This is Hubzilla's premier feature - should be easier to do this.
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hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Sunday, 16-Dec-2018 12:08:54 EST
hosh
@Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum) reading through your post about metaphor it was not so easy for me to wrap my mind around these intellectual concepts and conceptual patterns, but it strikes me that metaphor is a bit like sandpaper. A character in Vikram Seth's An Equal Music says that the function of sandpaper seems to be to make some things rough and other things smooth. Sometimes metaphor brings truths into sharp focus, while at other times it seems to cloud the issue. These "conceptual metaphors", in the examples sited in the article, often place together concepts that really do not belong together and ought to be kept rigorously apart. Whereas the Vietnamese zen buddhist master/poet Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, constantly uses metaphor to illustrate the truth of "interbeing".
In Indian philosophy there is the understanding that metaphor, concepts and symbols may be useful in the domain of relative reality, but that eventually one must break free of them in order to perceive reality directly. The worship of idols is tolerated as long as it is understood that the godhead is not contained by the idol; in order to point out a faint star in the sky, one begins by pointing to a brighter star that is more easily identified. So truth is described as "existence - consciousness - bliss" but there is the understanding that these are only approximations, intellectual crutches, which will later need to be dropped.
Arthur Frawley, who I no longer trust, but who expresses some interesting thoughts, claims that in an earlier, less intellectual age - maybe a shamanic age - people had an innate sense of the imminence of the spirit within everyday matter. The Vedas, which are among the oldest "books" of humankind, were composed in a symbolic language in which deeper meanings constantly seem to be hidden in plain sight. As we move forward in the timeline of the literature, the texts tend to become more rational and understandable to our modern intellects, but also lose something of the original gloriously intuitive vision.
I suppose our minds in a way replicate reality by imposing artificial correspondences of meaning. We attempt to lay a net in which to capture the multitude of fishes in our sea so that we can impose order upon our universe. But in the pre-conceptual reality, the correspondences are imminent immanent rather than conceptual, due to their mutual dependence upon an underlying unity. Ekam sad vipra bahudha vadanti: that oneness which the wise describe as manifold. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Sunday, 16-Dec-2018 08:32:24 EST
hosh
@Haakon Meland Eriksen (Parlementum) this is almost a taoist statement in itself. But in my more inspired moments I feel that I'm able to stop the constant self-rating process; the process which, even when we are engaged in putting ourselves down, is actually strengthening our feeling of self-importance.
Yes, there are no others; only brothers, sharing a common path. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Saturday, 15-Dec-2018 11:48:02 EST
hosh
When I think back to the times that I have found real inspiration in art and culture it has usually been when I found it in situ: the prehistoric art in the caves of southern France; the hieroglyphic paintings in the tombs of Luxor, now wandering the marvelous winding streets of Rome. It's as if, like certain foods, art doesn't travel very well. Sometimes in these cases, guides have added a great deal to my sense of appreciation - mainly when their own reverence for their subject could be sensed. Guides who work purely for commercial motivations should be at all times shunned. In Modena someone introduced us to a Pietre Viventi volunteer who took us around the cathedral. He was able to convey, much more successfully than any commercial guide, the spiritual motivations behind the beauty that we were witnessing. There was recently in the news the plaintive story of the Easter Island residents who traveled to the British Museum to ask for the return of their Moai: "We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” one of them said. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Saturday, 15-Dec-2018 06:42:38 EST
hosh
Jesus Christ, assuming that he existed, inhabited a world almost as far removed from your modern Spain as the Buddha. He was similarly an oriental mystic from a foreign culture. His teachings have been appropriated in the service of a civilization with a different set of needs and values, much as modern business people try to adopt techniques derived from zen buddhism. The main obstacle in approaching spiritual teachings may not be cultural at all. The approach depends more on our ability, based on inner experience, to go beneath the surface reality and connect with a deeper meaning.
About the Tao, Lao Tsu supposedly said,
The wise student hears of the Tao and practises it diligently.
The average student hears of the Tao and gives it thought now and again.
The foolish student hears of the Tao and laughs aloud.
If there were no laughter, the Tao would not be what it is.
This isn't just mystical hokum. Our main problem today is that we are destroying the planet due to greed, competition, and a whole bunch of traits that are based on false notions and a flawed vision of the nature of our reality. The basic flaw is in the objectification of the world and the conviction of our subjective separation from it. Spiritual teachings, from Shamanism to Jesus, offer various solutions to this problem, and the answer may be discovered without resort to any teachings, provided that the inclination is there. The keys to understanding are self-inquiry into the nature of the I, quiet and sustained observation, the readiness to put aside what we "know", etc. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Dec-2018 19:30:31 EST
hosh
I don't have a clear sense anymore of "ours" and "theirs" with regard to culture and especially spirituality. The main differentiation I feel is between those who are motivated to explore the mystery of our existence and those who lack such motivation.
Yesterday on a plane between New York and Washington I sat next to a young American woman who spent the whole flight playing silly games on her phone, and I felt as if we were inhabitants of different solar systems. On the previous plane I was sitting next to a Dominican Republic liberation theology activist with a love of Isaac Asimov, Paulo Freire and Noam Chomsky. I definitely felt closer to him, though he had to explain to me where his country was. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 14-Dec-2018 18:56:44 EST
hosh
In my grandson's kindergarten in Italy, I saw they place all the toilets in a single room so for the children evacuation becomes a social activity. This reminded me of the Luis Bunuel film in which people are seen sitting together in a formal gathering on toilet bowls. (One of them excuses himself, goes off to a small room and has something to eat.) -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Dec-2018 14:08:41 EST
hosh
(Theatre of Pompey, Rome) -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Monday, 10-Dec-2018 19:58:20 EST
hosh
Global team of scientists find ecosystem below earth that is twice the size of world’s oceans
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/dec/10/tread-softly-because-you-tread-on-23bn-tonnes-of-micro-organisms -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Sunday, 09-Dec-2018 23:51:11 EST
hosh
I find myself feeling uncomfortable again with the spiritual approach of Ramana Maharshi and others.
I think the basic problem that we face is one of perception. A perception based on separation of ourselves as the viewer, the experiencer, the enjoyer, the one who suffers, etc. This is what makes us attempt to control, and eventually destroy, our world. Our interference results in destruction. The destruction of other species and ecosystems. It results in speciesism. Any philosophy that helps to create non-interference, cooperation with the natural world, is preferable to ways of action that are based on interference, domination, subjugation, etc. Right now the best thing that we could do for the universe would be to disappear and let the earth slowly recover from our presence. Unless we are serving a divine plan that intends the reduction and eventual collapse and reenfoldment of the 'sarvani bhutani' back into a single unitary consciousness. Such a grand plan cannot be ruled out and would reflect the cyclical vision of the kalpas.
I cannot know the divine plan, but my feeling is that what we really need to do is to reach the unitary consciousness now, to shift our vision away from the I. Here in Florence, I learned two main lessons: that the great renaissance artists painted and sculpted themselves into their creations; they saw themselves as participants rather than being outside of what they experienced. And that eventually Michaelangelo begged forgiveness for "wasting" so many years on his art, and eventually sought only spiritual reconciliation.
I don't think it is going to help to focus on self-inquiry into the nature of the I, or to try to reduce the I through worship of the divine. What seems to be needed is silence of the mind through non-distraction, quiet observation, reduction of needs, integration and cooperation with nature, non-intervention. Some of these must be learned. Some of what I wish to do requires new learning. We are given human intelligence in order to use it, but to use it in a correct manner, as did Fukuoka. The early Taoists were the highest exponents of this philosophy, and Fukuoka showed some ways to apply it today. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 30-Nov-2018 21:22:55 EST
hosh
Twitter's earlier message length limit had one thing going for it: it kind of forced everyone to choose exactly the right words to get their message across. Much of the fediverse activity stream looks like unintelligible garbage. It lacks clarity or sufficient context to be understood. No one is going to click on a link without knowing what to expect; no one is going to waste time trying to figure out unclear messages. We skim, shrug and move on, but I think many people simply give up and go somewhere else. -
hosh (hosh@hub.vikshepa.com)'s status on Friday, 30-Nov-2018 00:51:54 EST
hosh
@Charles Roth MPC Yo! Object lesson for me: Must Make Clone.
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