The Scourge of Adblocking software

Back in the day, visiting a website often involved being exposed to some random advertising in a banner across the top of the page.

Something like this.

Over time, online ads began to creep down pages, filling first the left margin and then the right.

I know that article I'm looking for is in here SOMEWHERE

Of course, we had been able to ignore the banner ads after a time, and eventually were able to ignore all the kibble surrounding the content we sought. So the advertisers escalated their pitches. Ads flashed, jiggled, popped up in middle of your screen, marched around over the page. Much harder to ignore, and should you break down and click on one of them it did not make them stop on your future visits. If you bought every single item being advertised there, you would still be facing that mess on every visit.

Then came the video ads. These are sneaky because they may not be there when you open the page. But the advertising feed on that page will serve them up randomly, and they play immediately. Some arsehole just woke the baby, scared the shit out of you, and froze your computer squawking about paper towels.

If that wasn't enough to drive you into the arms of your nearest adblocker, this did. Doing research, surfing, shopping, looking at newsfeeds or working on the web only to suddenly have every page you visit covered with ads related to what you have been looking at. Now conventional wisdom says that targeted advertising is much  better than just random products, and we are all pretty much aware that our web usage is tracked and reported. But having your nose rubbed in it is creepy as hell.

And do NOT get me started on commercial shopping sites that have obnoxious ads flashing and popping up all over the place WHILE I AM TRYING TO BUY YOUR DAMN STUFF.

So - THAT is why my lazy butt took the time and trouble to find and install an adblocker. Because the escalating war for my attention was actually becoming nauseating. And since webpages I have contacted about it disavow any control over their ads, I am going to have to just skip them.

Can we go back to this? This was nice.

Dreams and cogitations

As a child, she was surprised and wounded by the first rock that struck her. But she picked it up and put it in her pocket, and contemplated it later.

As the years passed, the rocks became more frequent and her collection grew. She was no longer surprised by them, but still dreaded each one. Her collection grew into a little wall that she could shelter behind when she needed it.

Over time, her wall grew into cottage where she could go for safety, a place to breathe and just be.

Decades passed and the rocks sometimes became less frequent, but were often larger. Her cottage began to take on the aspects of a Manor. There was not just room for herself there, but offer safety and comfort for those she loved as well.

By the time she was old, she had created a Castle. Within its walls she could provide shelter, compassion, and safety for any who required healing. The giant stone fireplace contained a roaring fire where she could tell stories and share wisdom. Children play in the gardens of that castle, and it is a rare stone that makes it over the wall.

Worlds and stories and songs, the strata of all that we have been and all that we believed of ourselves layered and overlapping. Pangaea, Laurasia, Gondwana, Panthalassa. Primeval forests teeming with life. Vast plains of flora and fauna competing, breeding and dying.

Dark World below Blue World below Yellow World below White World. Shambala, Eden, floodplains and mountain valleys. Deep caves with ashes from countless fires and energetic shapes dancing across the walls in their flickering light.

Vast kingdoms spreading across plateaus, blood soaked battlegrounds and rivers running red with blood. Troy, Ur, Atlantis, Pompeii, Alexandria, Timbuktu, Giza, Babylon, Teotihuacan, Cairo, Carthage.

Each layer covers the one below, and yet those beneath are sometimes incorporated into those above. A pyramid pierces them all, thrusting up into today, still reaching towards the sun. Some things are lost, and some things break out at unexpected times and places.

The strata of all that has come before sits below the plane of now.

And the World Tree, in whose shadow and branches and roots we make our way, has a taproot that extends down through every layer.

Some New Year's Makeover hints for 2016

We are fast approaching the new year, 2016. Twelve months bursting with potential and promise stretching out ahead of us. In the spirit of the New Year's Resolution tradition, I offer some suggestions for some easy tweaks to beautify your world and your lighten your soul.

Weight loss is easily accomplished by dumping all the baggage currently hauled around intended to weigh and judge whether those in need are deserving of help.
By dumping the requirement that people have "earned" compassion, the ability to reach out and help everyone who needs help is achieved. Feeding people because they are hungry, comforting those who are in pain, offering healing to the sick, and a roof to the homeless. Without worrying about anything besides identifying the needs.



Work out more by exercising your right to vote in every election. Strengthen our democracy by making your voice heard on every issue that is important to you. Email your legislators, petition your government and make your representatives accountable to you.
Get your heart rate up by doing things that scare you, that make you feel uncomfortable and that push your boundaries. 




Increase your vocabulary by having conversations with people who are different than you are. People with different interests, different backgrounds, different beliefs. Speak up about your values, and discover how enlightening assuming the best of people's intentions can become. Add the words "why not?" and use them frequently to follow any statement that contains the words "of course we can't"...



Meditate on the awesome smallness of specks of stardust, and the hugeness of the universe. Open yourself to infinite possibility. Wrap yourself in the patchwork quilt of humanity, in all its beautiful variations.



And in the words of the great philosopher Wil Wheaton: Don't be a dick.

Another shout into the void

*Disclaimer: I do not identify as religious, but I am very spiritual. I belong to no organized religious group, and prefer to choose my teachers based on their teachings rather than on their sect. I live in a culture that identifies predominantly as white, western and Judeo/Christian. I also write this stuff primarily to organize my thoughts and make them easily accessible, not to advise others on how to relate to the ineffable.*

Religion does not cause violence. So many folks believe this to be the case, make art and write songs about how getting rid of religion would make a peaceful world. Sorry.

We create religions as a means of sorting "us" from "them". Because as trooping primates, that is what we do. Identifying who we fuck versus who we fight.

National borders are there to mark where our troop has staked a claim on the local resources. If those resources start to get low, we go to war with someone who has more of the resources we need. It is more obvious when we were fighting with rocks and clubs - but it is still what we are doing. We create political constructs to explain why our region of resources is vastly superior to the other guy's. And it makes a handy excuse when we need to go "liberate" his resources for the use of our own.

When any of these groups get too big, whether they are religious or secular, schisms have to occur to allow smaller subgroups to form that are viable units to maintain what has been termed the "monkeysphere" Dunbar's Number.

We will use religion, or political systems, or historic grudges, or assumed territorial violations to rationalize war against the "other". But ultimately it is always just some variation on a resource grab.
Even the seemingly stateless terrorists we see today are quick to declare a "state" and to start attempting to move into and take over regions to acquire their resources. They recruit women to populate those regions with their offspring. Same old story whether it is chimps, Visigoths, or Exxon.

We have evolved socially and culturally quite rapidly, and now with technology our culture is evolving even faster. Our bodies and brains are on a MUCH longer timeline. So no small number of our impulses, coping mechanisms, instincts, etc were developed in a vastly different environment.

And our drive to name, to categorize, to sort is a product of this need to identify what constitutes a threat versus what is "us".

Survival as a species is going to require us to understand and accept this, and to utilize that knowledge using the beautiful large frontal lobes we now possess to guide us going forward. Maybe there are just too many of us and we are not ready for a monkeysphere that encompasses the entire planet. It could be that we will wind up decimating our populations via war-related disease and famine back down to a size that has enough space to keep the current model.

If you assume you are in a group likely to survive, it probably doesn't sound so bad. And hey, maybe it won't happen in your lifetime.

Right?

For the Lost

Grieving for all those lost to hatred.

Those whose lives are lost in acts of hatred

Those who are lost fleeing hatred

Those who are lost seeking sanctuary from hatred 

And those who have allowed hatred to turn their hearts to cold stone.

May I be strong enough to protect my own heart from that fate.

I think we need a bigger stick...

The unique talent that we possess as tool using primates is not so much the ability to pick up the stick lying nearby and poke it down a termite mound to access the tasty inhabitants. Our talent lies in the ability to generalize from that discovery, and use the stick to access other termite mounds and ant hills as well.
A hurdle we still have not overcome is the tendency to generalize TOO much and try use that same tool to solve every problem. We keep poking that stick down into the tiger den and being surprised by the results!

Broken and Unashamed

After mothballing a long ass rant on all the ways our system is fucked up, I decided to get with the times and do something short and snappy.

Because the message of shame, from without and within, pervades every aspect of our lives: