nagaram

What's your go to easy meal?

For me its Golden Curry. Just dice up some veg, boil in veg/mushroom broth, and serve with rice.

It takes probably 20 minutes and is very inactive.

It also has the plus that I can use basically any veg combo, but I don't really stray far from the OG carrots, potatoes, and onions. I do often add broccoli or cauliflower.

Bonus points for beanless and cornless recipes. Fiance can't have either :(

I love bad books. Popular bad books. Non-fiction bad books. Any bad book is worth a read every once in a while.

Bad books aren’t objectively bad in my opinion just books that might not be for me or I even disagree with. The best bad books are the books that I want to enjoy because they’re popular or because the premise is fun. And what makes them bad is equally fluid and often just my own bias.

Why Bad Over Good?

Good books are good books. What is there to talk about? What do we even do in a Tolkein book club? Make sure everyone has read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Then divide the room into people who preferred the Hobbit or thought LOTR was too long but still good. Then we share the same fun facts about the extended edition of the movies?

Boring. We get it. Essential reading for the book lover.

Now a shlocky Romantasy that very clearly ripped scene from other Young Adult novels and then put the “Fuck” word or act in there (with adults of course). Now we’re talking! How many different books do you recognize? Is this transformative? Are we out of original ideas? Does the sex add anything? Is she a good writer because I felt the intended emotion even if the scene is stupid? Can I do better than this? I should try!

A proper bad book where the flaws are glaring enough that I, a simpleton, can see them and talk about them is so much fun. There’s a discussion, there’s room for disagreement, there are no stakes! There may even be diamonds in the rough….

Finding Good ideas in Bad Books

It’s no secret that I love Slavoj Zizek and his writings, but not because they’re good.

Zizek is a load of fun to read because it really is a cacaphony of references and jokes interspersed with “And now to contradict myself!” that makes it feel profound. If I was smarter I think I’d call any Zizek book the philosophy equivalent of “Finnegans Wake”. The books are non-sense but there is a hidden idea that you, the reader, must decode. Maybe you disagree with the meaning, maybe you found a different meaning than what was intended, maybe the referenced book sounds interesting so you start reading Judith Butler instead (a good author).

Bad philosophy books are stimulating in that they triggered the part of your brain that wants to “philosophize” in that you want to express why you feel the way you feel. Be it the author made a good point in a bad way or maybe they made a bad point and you want to really think out a rebuttle they will never read.

Allowing a transgressive thought to make you reflect and expound upon is the correct way to use offensive content. There are obviously exceptions to this idea in that some people write books explicitly to be useless propaganda.

Bad Books verses Unreadable Books

I think the defining feature of a bad book is that it is genuine in it’s attempt to do whatever it is trying to do.

I love Rebecca Yarros “Fourth Wing” not because it’s good fantasy (or even exceptional porn) but because it feels like she’s trying to write an entertaining book. It feels like a genuine attempt at decent world building. It’s a flawed story and the world doesn’t make any sense when you think about it trying to be anything other than an explanation for why everyone is so horny.

Zizek is living far too modestly for someone who is simply a political grifter leveraging memes and podcast interviews to sell suplaments to a guilable audience. He’s even said he’d rather write the occastional Ambrocrombe and Fitch ad if it means he’s not married to a publisher or Patreon account. And that makes his work feel more genuine. I am convinced this is how he really feels and thinks.

Now, on the other end, I’ve read a lot of political writings from people I hard disagree with. I’ve read theological works from people who seemingly just like that they are a “published author”.

I used to worry that I was easily influenced and that I would just agree with or enjoy any book because I invested the eight-ish hours it takes to read one. Then I read a book I thought was interesting, and the point was one I agreed with, but it was so painfully obvious that this author had nothing new or interesting to add. It read as if they were a high schooler who had Chat GPT write a paper on something controversial, but it was pre-LLMs and I think ChatGPT would have been more interesting.

This was the first time I found a Liberal leaning grifter since I did find their podcast and heavily pushed merch store. It was embarrassing to see.

I’ve since given a lot of people I would disagree with a chance. I read Charlie Kirk’s ghost written slog feast, Ben Shapiro’s argument-less book on “Bullies”, and a book by Glenn Beck? I guess he was a Proto-Stephen Crowder.

“Authors” like that really helped me solidify the difference in my mind between “Transgressive” and “insubstantial but I’m triggered.” They’re so hard to talk about because there is very little to pull from. I was hoping to find a real argument to look into. I was giving them a fair shot and not just be angry monologues and accusatory language without any reflection.

Every arguments seems to have been “The Libs accuse us of being classist, homophobic, racist, sexists who use slurs and dedicate all our time to making life worse for minorities, poor people, and the Libs. But by calling US fascists, they show that they are the REAL FASCISTS!” And then just a bunch of examples of times someone got punched for saying a slur in public and crying “See, free speech haters!”

I don’t want to hang on this too long. It’s just the most egregious example of “Unreadable books”.

Books are Easy to Make

Yes I know it’s not that easy, especially if you want a good publisher, but book writing is so accessible these days that anyone can be a published author in hours with an Amazon Kindle account and a ChatGPT subscription. Maybe not a Good author or even a defendable Bad Author. You’d be an awful author but an author in the technical sense.

However, it is this accessibility of writing that I think allows for a diverse range of written works to exist. We no longer have the traditional filters that ensure only good or readable books are available. And I worry that the awful authors have soured the world of reading.

It is so easy to say any book that even begins to offend is trash and should be abandoned as a “Did Not Finish”. And with authors like the ones mentioned and the AI slop farms poisoning our book supply, I can’t really blame someone for not wasting their precious time on this earth with a Bad Book.

Yet, even with my bad experiences, I love the things I’ve learned about myself and the world at large because of bad books. I will continue committing way too much time to authors who probably don’t deserve the fame or my money.

I love bad books. Popular bad books. Non-fiction bad books. Any bad book is worth a read every once in a while.

Bad books aren’t objectively bad in my opinion just books that might not be for me or I even disagree with. The best bad books are the books that I want to enjoy because they’re popular or because the premise is fun. And what makes them bad is equally fluid and often just my own bias.

Why Bad Over Good?

Good books are good books. What is there to talk about? What do we even do in a Tolkein book club? Make sure everyone has read Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. Then divide the room into people who preferred the Hobbit or thought LOTR was too long but still good. Then we share the same fun facts about the extended edition of the movies?

Boring. We get it. Essential reading for the book lover.

Now a shlocky Romantasy that very clearly ripped scene from other Young Adult novels and then put the “Fuck” word or act in there (with adults of course). Now we’re talking! How many different books do you recognize? Is this transformative? Are we out of original ideas? Does the sex add anything? Is she a good writer because I felt the intended emotion even if the scene is stupid? Can I do better than this? I should try!

A proper bad book where the flaws are glaring enough that I, a simpleton, can see them and talk about them is so much fun. There’s a discussion, there’s room for disagreement, there are no stakes! There may even be diamonds in the rough….

Finding Good ideas in Bad Books

It’s no secret that I love Slavoj Zizek and his writings, but not because they’re good.

Zizek is a load of fun to read because it really is a cacophony of references and jokes interspersed with “And now to contradict myself!” that makes it feel profound. If I was smarter I think I’d call any Zizek book the philosophy equivalent of “Finnegans Wake”. The books are non-sense but there is a hidden idea that you, the reader, must decode. Maybe you disagree with the meaning, maybe you found a different meaning than what was intended, maybe the referenced book sounds interesting so you start reading Judith Butler instead (a good author).

Bad philosophy books are stimulating in that they triggered the part of your brain that wants to “philosophize” in that you want to express why you feel the way you feel. Be it the author made a good point in a bad way or maybe they made a bad point and you want to really think out a rebuttle they will never read.

Allowing a transgressive thought to make you reflect and expound upon is the correct way to use offensive content. There are obviously exceptions to this idea in that some people write books explicitly to be useless propaganda.

Bad Books verses Unreadable Books

I think the defining feature of a bad book is that it is genuine in it’s attempt to do whatever it is trying to do.

I love Rebecca Yarros “Fourth Wing” not because it’s good fantasy (or even exceptional porn) but because it feels like she’s trying to write an entertaining book. It feels like a genuine attempt at decent world building. It’s a flawed story and the world doesn’t make any sense when you think about it trying to be anything other than an explanation for why everyone is so horny.

Zizek is living far too modestly for someone who is simply a political grifter leveraging memes and podcast interviews to sell suplaments to a guilable audience. He’s even said he’d rather write the occastional Ambrocrombe and Fitch ad if it means he’s not married to a publisher or Patreon account. And that makes his work feel more genuine. I am convinced this is how he really feels and thinks.

Now, on the other end, I’ve read a lot of political writings from people I hard disagree with. I’ve read theological works from people who seemingly just like that they are a “published author”.

I used to worry that I was easily influenced and that I would just agree with or enjoy any book because I invested the eight-ish hours it takes to read one. Then I read a book I thought was interesting, and the point was one I agreed with, but it was so painfully obvious that this author had nothing new or interesting to add. It read as if they were a high schooler who had Chat GPT write a paper on something controversial, but it was pre-LLMs and I think ChatGPT would have been more interesting.

This was the first time I found a Liberal leaning grifter since I did find their podcast and heavily pushed merch store. It was embarrassing to see.

I’ve since given a lot of people I would disagree with a chance. I read Charlie Kirk’s ghost written slog feast, Ben Shapiro’s argument-less book on “Bullies”, and a book by Glenn Beck? I guess he was a Proto-Stephen Crowder.

“Authors” like that really helped me solidify the difference in my mind between “Transgressive” and “insubstantial but I’m triggered.” They’re so hard to talk about because there is very little to pull from. I was hoping to find a real argument to look into. I was giving them a fair shot and not just be angry monologues and accusatory language without any reflection.

Every arguments seems to have been “The Libs accuse us of being classist, homophobic, racist, sexists who use slurs and dedicate all our time to making life worse for minorities, poor people, and the Libs. But by calling US fascists, they show that they are the REAL FASCISTS!” And then just a bunch of examples of times someone got punched for saying a slur in public and crying “See, free speech haters!”

I don’t want to hang on this too long. It’s just the most egregious example of “Unreadable books”.

Books are Easy to Make

Yes I know it’s not that easy, especially if you want a good publisher, but book writing is so accessible these days that anyone can be a published author in hours with an Amazon Kindle account and a ChatGPT subscription. Maybe not a Good author or even a defendable Bad Author. You’d be an awful author but an author in the technical sense.

However, it is this accessibility of writing that I think allows for a diverse range of written works to exist. We no longer have the traditional filters that ensure only good or readable books are available. And I worry that the awful authors have soured the world of reading.

It is so easy to say any book that even begins to offend is trash and should be abandoned as a “Did Not Finish”. And with authors like the ones mentioned and the AI slop farms poisoning our book supply, I can’t really blame someone for not wasting their precious time on this earth with a Bad Book.

Yet, even with my bad experiences, I love the things I’ve learned about myself and the world at large because of bad books. I will continue committing way too much time to authors who probably don’t deserve the fame or my money.

Gods and worship have been quintessential aspect of the human experience since all of known human history. Yet, there are those of us who have chosen to defy these well established rules of society. Why you have chosen to abandon a creator framework for life is, to me, irrelevant, but I do want to make a claim that the conception for god is a useful tool for navigating life and our journey of self discovery and self improvement.

Why should I care about “god”?

Gods have always been a societal tool and a personal tool in my eyes. It’s an abstract rallying point that gives common language and experience between otherwise wholly unrelated humans. Think of a modern Church, Synagoge, or Temple of any sort. They are less interesting as a lecture hall on a thousands year old book than they are as communal halls to give people from all walks of life a reason to interact with each other. It’s a neutral ground where teachers, laborers, bankers, and so on may meet and form relationships that may have otherwise never happened.

You have a language with which to describe feelings and an actionable framework with which to define “doing good”. You have a place to talk about experiences of your higher self in a, ideally, judgement free space. Take the Unitary Universalist service experience for example. The idea there is to just share art and poetry that inspires you to do good and feel the warmth of being a kind person. The sermons are similar in that they simply promote what their community views as virtues that make you feel good.

Is it correct to say you felt god channeling through you when you did a good dead? No probably not, but it communicates the idea that you felt really good while doing the good deeds. It’s actually a pretty complex emotion that is highly personalized, but by abstracting it in a vague language of a religion one is able to share those feelings easier with the subtext of this complexity.

Now yes I do understand the more cynical readings of a religious community. Believe me, I’m well aware of the stats of abuse and brainwashing that goes on there under the guise of maintaining Communal Cohesion or maintaining the community. But this work is to highlight the good parts of a religious community and further a conception of god.

Gods are as much a personal tool as a community tool. In a personal practice, I like to call gods an “Ego Saver.”

My favorite atheist debunking of religion is The Milk Jug Experiment. For those unaware, the Milk Jug Experiment is this logical thought process to debunk prayer. Imagine, when you pray to god there are three possible answers to your pray: yes, no, maybe. Yes, god has favored you and will assist you. No, god does not think you deserve the outcome or this is part of his plan so it must happen. Maybe, it might be granted but not in the way that you intended. The idea is that these are just how probability works and praying to a Milk Jug will garner the same results so long as you still ascribe the outcome of those prayers to the Milk Jug.

Now, the point of that exercise is to demonstrate the pointlessnes of prayer, but I think it demonstrates the abstract benefit of prayer in that you now have a scape goat to save your ego.

Ego and gods

Consider the convenience of blaming your problems on someone else. Sure, it’s a dick move to throw someone under the bus, but it really is a convenient mental load balancer if you don’t have a conscious or you hate that other person. You have worked hard to reach a goal, but that goal was always dependant on many stars aligning that are far outside your control. You can only do so much to manifest the outcome that you desire physically but you have no control over these, from your perspective, completely probabilistic events. This is where Prayer comes in.

Random Chance is just a fact of the universe in terms of our perception. Sure most all events could theoreticalyl be controlled but the effort to do so is cartoonishly high. The example I like to give is a sports event. You want to win the sports event so you spend months training for it, but all of that effort may be for nothing if you say, get sick, you’re out trained, or you’re simply off your game at show time. That randomness causes uncertainty that can be anxiety inducing. Yes, obviously you could just accept this is part of the joy of these types of events, but I’m proposing Prayer to a god as a means to displace this anxiety as well.

“Please, Lord Cthulhu, let me win this Ping Pong Championship”

You have now psychologically tied your odds of winning to the will of a probably fictitious Old God. The act of this alone should be absurd enough to calm someone’s nerves. Yet, now you have someone to blame other than yourself if you don’t win and that is the ego saver or atleast the absurdist grounding technique to not ruin your self esteem. You now have a thing to blame when forces outside your control do not go your way instead of only stressing about not being good enough, not being worthy, and so on.

There’s even something to be said for the perks of ritual worship.

Habits, Rituals, Gods

A feature of mine if my love of occult rituals and the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear. In “Atomic Habits”, James talks about affirmations and “Habit Stacking”. The idea is that to reach a goal, you are more likely to achieve that goal if you build a solid habit around working towards that goal and those are two tricks to building those habits.

Affirmations are pretty ubiquitous these days, but according to James Clear there is research that indicates saying out loud often what your goals are and affirming you will reach them, does in fact increase the likely hood you will do such a thing. Habit Stacking is similar in that the idea is to do something small to trigger a mental response to then do what ever good habit you want to complete. For me, I use my altar as a ritual habit catalyst. I light a red candle to symbolize focus and burn a rose scented incense because I like rose scented incense. This is no different to Pray or Spell casting.

I used to play football for a church league (which was interesting since I did not attend any of these churches). In that league we would pray before every practice and every game. We prayed for protection from injury and for success in either training or on the field. This was always a good mental focus on working out since before I’d be horsing around with the other boys and we would all get serious after the prayer. It also had this interesting mindfulness aspect in that we were aware that you can get injured and this was just as much asking to not get hurt as it was to gain something from the event.

So we used prayer as a affirmation and as a habit stack. So why not use it secularly? Except now our options of prayer targets is grand since it doesn’t matter who, it’s the action that matters.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/31913884

Meditation Sitting positions

I'm a large guy 6 ft 1 in and 280 LBS.

I struggle to sit criss cross for an hour because my legs get tired and my thunder thighs sorta push me off kilter and I wanna lean back.

So I've been sitting on my shins instead and this is way better for maintaining posture but I have just barely 20 minutes before my legs fall asleep and then it hurts once I get up to journal.

I don't want to use a chair or a pillow because I travel a lot and there's no guarantee I'll have those with me.

Any position suggestions? Maybe I'll look into a pillow or mat.

I'm a large guy 6 ft 1 in and 280 LBS.

I struggle to sit criss cross for an hour because my legs get tired and my thunder thighs sorta push me off kilter and I wanna lean back.

So I've been sitting on my shins instead and this is way better for maintaining posture but I have just barely 20 minutes before my legs fall asleep and then it hurts once I get up to journal.

I don't want to use a chair or a pillow because I travel a lot and there's no guarantee I'll have those with me.

Any position suggestions? Maybe I'll look into a pillow or mat.

Context: During the second Punic War, Hannibal kinda just vibed on the Italian peninsula for 5 years making alliances that weren't very stable and not doing anything except cause chaos.

Eventually he decides to march on Rome in 211 BC making camp about 3 miles away from the roman walls.

There was a cavalry skirmish and serious panic from much of Rome as Hannibal had just delivered some crushing blows to Roman morale during his adventurers in Italy.

However, the march on Rome was mostly a bluff. Hannibal was well equipped and skilled at field combat between armies but had almost no siege capabilities.

So his plan was to march on Rome before their annual army raising ceremonies. Except, he got there the day a 10,000 man army was sworn in.

The romans, however, are stupid and were ready to field an army against Hannibal, but a heavy storm was viewed as a bad omen/auspice by both sides. So they rescheduled for the next day, but it stormed again.

At this point Hannibal made some excuses and decided to leave.

Interestingly. The field he camped in was auctioned off while he was there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannibal%27s_March_on_Rome

I was away on business so my normal space wasn't there and the hotel room wasn't doing it for me.

This was in Mazarick Park in Fayetteville NC.

I thought it was quite nice. Not home but reminded me enough of it that I cried a little.

cross-posted from: https://startrek.website/post/30668562

I'm fascinated by rituals. Especially rituals that have physical outcomes.

Praying, spells, sigils, etc anything to affect a metaphysical conception of probability or god.

This is how I understand most magic rituals to promise to help affect change. Say I want to become a successful author.

Nearly every magic or religious system (which I don't distinguish as different) promises that you can affect the probability of success so long as you devote yourself to your practice. Do the right rituals. AND, importantly, physically work towards that goal.

No system promises that you can simply wish to be a good author without you having to actually write. No, all serious systems promise that so long as you work on your writing and stay devoted to your system, then there is a chance that the cosmic controller of probability (god) will favor you.

Now this I think is a wonderful strategy for protecting the ego in that you now have two things to blame before you have to blame yourself.

"I must have performed the rituals wrong and displeased god"

"The gods don't want me to be an author yet"

"I'm a terrible author"

Now, I think there's an argument for both why this is good and bad.

Maybe you genuinely are deserving of whatever outcome you desire and it simply is out of your control that this didn't happen. Maybe you finally finish your magnum opus and your house burns down or your files were stored on an AWS US East server and you missed the submission deadline.

That I think is a moment where the ability to stoicly accept what happened and move on is good.

On the flip side there is the problem where god and ritual are shielding yourself from introspection. Maybe your AI generated in universe spin off of Sherlock Homes: Watson invents Anime series just genuinely isn't good. But it takes several rejections from publishers and a mountain of bad reviews on your self published amazon page to think "Maybe I've done the ritual wrong."

You're missing the problem because the layers of cope are too powerful. You have too many other thoughts before you even have to consider this probably is your fault.

To me, I think the bad ending is avoidable by simply constantly self reflecting. Being aware of myself and being aware of the sorta mental traps I can fall into.

Dogmatic religions I think lead to the bad ending here because its expected of X, Y, Z conditions are met then god will bless you. And then when you've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas, the world is impossible to survive and becomes scary.

You can also certainly get the good ending without a religion per se, but I'm really proposing the Milk Jug experiment in a different way. Does it matter if praying to the milk jug actually does anything if it makes me feel better ?

I'm fascinated by rituals. Especially rituals that have physical outcomes.

Praying, spells, sigils, etc anything to affect a metaphysical conception of probability or god.

This is how I understand most magic rituals to promise to help affect change. Say I want to become a successful author.

Nearly every magic or religious system (which I don't distinguish as different) promises that you can affect the probability of success so long as you devote yourself to your practice. Do the right rituals. AND, importantly, physically work towards that goal.

No system promises that you can simply wish to be a good author without you having to actually write. No, all serious systems promise that so long as you work on your writing and stay devoted to your system, then there is a chance that the cosmic controller of probability (god) will favor you.

Now this I think is a wonderful strategy for protecting the ego in that you now have two things to blame before you have to blame yourself.

"I must have performed the rituals wrong and displeased god"

"The gods don't want me to be an author yet"

"I'm a terrible author"

Now, I think there's an argument for both why this is good and bad.

Maybe you genuinely are deserving of whatever outcome you desire and it simply is out of your control that this didn't happen. Maybe you finally finish your magnum opus and your house burns down or your files were stored on an AWS US East server and you missed the submission deadline.

That I think is a moment where the ability to stoicly accept what happened and move on is good.

On the flip side there is the problem where god and ritual are shielding yourself from introspection. Maybe your AI generated in universe spin off of Sherlock Homes: Watson invents Anime series just genuinely isn't good. But it takes several rejections from publishers and a mountain of bad reviews on your self published amazon page to think "Maybe I've done the ritual wrong."

You're missing the problem because the layers of cope are too powerful. You have too many other thoughts before you even have to consider this probably is your fault.

To me, I think the bad ending is avoidable by simply constantly self reflecting. Being aware of myself and being aware of the sorta mental traps I can fall into.

Dogmatic religions I think lead to the bad ending here because its expected of X, Y, Z conditions are met then god will bless you. And then when you've tried nothing and you're all out of ideas, the world is impossible to survive and becomes scary.

You can also certainly get the good ending without a religion per se, but I'm really proposing the Milk Jug experiment in a different way. Does it matter if praying to the milk jug actually does anything if it makes me feel better ?

So I have a a mini rack.

I have about 1.5 U of rack space and a model for a 4 bay 3.5 inch BOD

HOWEVER, no idea how best to connect them to a computer.

I'm thinking right now just plugging them into a Think center m715 with a powered USB hub.

I'm also thinking get a Raspberry Pi 5 and a nvme to sata hat, but I'm not aware of a way to power those 4 drives other than extra internal power supply. It would be convenient to just use like a wall wart or USB 2 power.

Thoughts? Best practices?

I've started reading Rene Descartes and I'm intrigued by his idea of "god".

Descartes is famous for his " I think there for I am." He doubted everything in life to such a degree that he believed the only thing he knew for sure was that when he was thinking then he existed. However, the second thing he deduced is that he knew this world he existed in, real or demonic deception, was imperfect by virtue of the fact that he can doubt it exists. So he knows he exists while thinking and has a conception of imperfections therefore perfection exists and the idea was given to him.

This perfection is god.

God is perfect in all ways. They are beyond deception because a perfect being wouldn't need to lie, their reason alone for you needing to believe something is enough.

And to me that's an interesting conception of god. Its a lot more sterile than the normal Christian stance that god is Love which has a emotionally textured connotation. It positions god as having feelings with which we can relate as opposed to Descartes perfection that is simply beyond our reasoning but also (conveniently) not malicious.

As an atheist, god as love makes more sense. God is the feeling of communal love that comes with a religion. People who care for each other for no reason other than because they're in the same community has always been beautiful to me. God as mislabeled inclusion and comradely behavior males perfect sense.

What is your god or gods like?