< Notes...

I visited a prison yesterday. Spent most of the day on the road, driving to the middle of nowhere, and then visiting an inmate for as long as it was possible. Prisons are very, very sad places, where people spend chunks of their lives at a time confined, according to their punishment. Some simply spend the rest of their lives in them.

It is interesting to see the camaraderie that forms amongst the regular visitors; in a way they are a big family. They all have a loved one behind bars binding them together: husbands, fathers, sons, closed family, friends. Each with a story, and each cared for enough to merit visits, with some visitors often traveling from far, far away.

I don’t have a solution for correcting people for their wrongdoings. Based on what I have experienced so far, prisons are not. At least not the way they are run today, or around here.

After my dad died, we found the love letters
https://www.jenn.site →

“My parents were not a love match. At 27 and 26, they were embarrassingly old by the standards of their small chinese port town. All four of my grandparents exerted enormous pressure to force them together.”

That blog post was hard to read. I couldn’t help feeling sad for the OP, their mum, their family. It left me feeling very melancholic.

Coming across Horsie’s many boxes and paper piles brings reflection. If it was up to me they would be gone long time ago. They are… attachments. I want to believe they are. Anyway, for that reason an old Mark Pilgrim’s blog post came to mind, and I had to go hunting for it.

“I had been waiting for the facts inside these boxes to change. Of course facts do not change; only people change. And with that, I dumped them in the trash and hauled them to the curb, still unopened after all these years.”

Will that time come for Horsie? I am going to work harder now to get rid of things I might have accumulated and left unused for years. If anything so that others—specifically loved ones—don’t inherit that burden.

“In the struggle for existence, it is only on those who hang on for ten minutes after all is hopeless, that hope begins to dawn.”

I heard this on NPR today while driving. They were talking about aphorisms, and the guest was asked to say his favourite—the above—one. It is from G.K. Chesterton. When feeling this despaired, I will think of this.

Came across Wealth which was illustrative, rather accurate, and super easy to read (and I loved the page design, and font, but I digress). Though still not fully set, Horsie set us at an upper ↑3. That is:

“If they lose their job, it’s financially stressful, but they can make it a few months without income. Upper ↑3 could even make it a year if they maxed out their credit cards. They generally can choose where to work, and to leave terrible work environments. Their hours are dictated.”

I pinged a retired friend about it, sending him the link, and asking “Pick your ↑X Wealth 🤑”. He replied:

Yes, I’m #6 (Rich) and am striving to be #7 (Ultra Rich). 🤑 I found 6 figures to 7 figures and to 8 figures fairly easy to obtain, but that jump to 9 figures ($100M) seems like an incredibly huge mission that I don’t think I’ll see in my lifetime. Hopefully the Dynasty Trust I leave to my heirs will someday reach that level. 😇👍

➝ Via Hacker News.

Eating out is something that I am giving more and more thought, before I do it. We used to go out to eat at least once a week (weekends), but prices have gone up everywhere, and portions have shrunk, and quality has diminished. Yeah, “times they are a-changin’”.

Truly enjoyed reading “Death and what comes next”. Some of the comments on its submission to Hacker News are food for the brain, and the closeted philosopher in me loves them!

“Astonishing”, said Death. “Really astonishing. Let me put forward another suggestion: that you are nothing more than a lucky species of ape that is trying to understand the complexities of creation via a language that evolved in order to tell one another where the ripe fruit was?”

➝ Via Hacker News.