THIS IS WATER! by David Foster Wallace

When I arrived as a foreign-exchange student in Dijon, France, I was bombarded with war stories about run-ins with the infamous French bureaucracy. I got my first taste of it standing in line to enroll in my classes. You stand in line for three hours to see somebody at a desk tucked away in a narrow corridor just off the large entrance hall. You finally get to the front only to be told that this is the line for non-EU students, and that the much-shorter line for European "Erasmus" students is adjacent. Of course, both desks are hidden since the corridor is filled with people, so you cannot see the purpose of each line until you are at the front. Once you are there, you must present a number of documents, proofs of identity, and a photocopy of an EU Health Insurance Card (which was not on the list of required documents you were sent and which you must show even if you have on your possession the physical card). The point of all of this is to fill in a form at the desk and make an appointment for one week later, when you will bring in all of the documents that have just been checked so that they can be checked again. Officially. [1] [1] - [LINK] [VIDEO]

I'm reminded of Nick Bostrom's story called "The Dragon Tyrant"[0][1] and David Foster Wallace's "This is Water"[2]. The dragon became so normal in our lives that we do not even question it, like a fish does not question what water is. That we've created a society around this how to deal with this inevitability. But at the end of the day if we could, killing the dragon would be more beneficial and reduce harm by a significant amount. I see several people in this thread complaining about the economic analysis here or how old people are messing up our world and thus we should fix those things first. For the former question, I see this analysis as adding ammunition to the debate, because many people that determine where we should fund base their decisions on economics. This paper isn't aimed at you, it is aimed at them (speak to your audience). For the latter, I question the premise. Culture has moved too fast that it cannot be purely explained by younger generations dictating the change. This also falls counter to old people controlling everything. So I don't buy the premise. The truth is that if people were living to a thousand years old that society would fundamentally change. Who we consider children and adults would fundamentally change. The truth is that we don't know what this society will look like until we open the box, and until the dust settles. We should be questioning if this is good or bad (we should challenge all ideas) but we need to recognize that this would be

I read “Deep Survival” a few years ago pre-pandemic and was pleasantly surprised it wasn’t a book of survival stories. The main takeaway for me was that sure, nature doesn’t care if you live or die, yet surviving in modern life is an illusion - a papering over of the brutal, unfeeling and inescapable “nature.” The author wrote of survivors coming home after a harrowing near-death experience and realizing that survival is one day at a time, even in the comfort of your own home. Once you taste true survival it may haunt you. Survival is an easy concept with subtle and deep physical and mental consequences. Kind of reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s “This is water” - [VIDEO]

Ok but what if the result of contemplating this is overwhelming existential dread? This comment kind of reduces life to a give and take philosophy. One where everything you do is to accomplish a task. I'm not sure that has anything to do with Buddhism. It's my understanding that part of Buddhism is the removal of the self, and appreciating the moment. I agree that focusing on the end result can detract from appreciating being in the moment, but this sounds sounds more like self-deception. I prefer the Japanese concept that, and I'm paraphrasing here, "every action has a purpose." Putting value on the actions themselves adds an appreciation for the moment you are in, and the process you are doing. It then becomes a sign of respect for you to do everything in your life to the best of your ability. There's a whole philosophy about this, but the name of it escapes me. A few things I've found that are related: "The was of the peaceful warrior" - Book This is water - [VIDEO] Sorry if this is a little rambly, I have ADHD and my adderoll is doing its thing.

In macro photography, taking an extreme closeup of something like an insect necessarily has a very, very thin depth of field due to its high magnification. To get the entire insect in focus, you use a technique called focus stacking where the focus changes by tiny fractions of a millimeter on each exposure. You can literally take 100 to 200 of pictures for one subject. If I do 10 of these in a day, I've reached one percent of OPs forever photo volume. [LINK] Time lapse photography is taking a photo every X seconds/minutes/days. If you want the video to look smooth, you need 24-30 shots per second, so a 30 second video has 720 exposures. So again, failed three time lapse attempts and I'm at 1% of OPs forever exposure count. There's an awful lot of judgment in your comment, and the issue certainly seems like a lack of understanding on your part, rather than OP's "psychological issue" or "lying." I'll refrain from my own judgements, and suggest you watch David Foster Wallace's "This is Water," and when you're done, please watch it again. [VIDEO]

Respectfully, if you see the comment as critique, that’s on you. It could just as easily be described as “unsolicited advice” or “unsolicited tips”. The communicator does have responsibility on how their message comes across, thought not all of it. It’s on the receiver to also make an effort to understand what was meant and not take unnecessary offence. The comment reads pretty much neutral, apart from a post scriptum which is explicitly about the author’s preference. It’s up to you to inject the writer’s feelings as either “this code sucks, here’s how you do it” or “congratulations on making something cool, here are a few suggestions”. My experience is that life is much better if you take the latter approach. Default to empathy. Consider listening to “This is Water” from David From Wallace. [VIDEO]