So we got an Amazon Echo and we changed the wake word to “Computer” and now I feel like I’m on the Enterprise all the time. Additionally, whenever I watch Star Trek, she only responds to “computer” when Data says it and it’s kind of adorable. Not Picard, not La Forge, not Troi, not Dr. Crusher, not Riker. Not anyone but Data. The other night Data asked his Computer what the time was and my Computer told him it was 10:47. Watching Star Trek is even more fun now
1. Be patient. No matter what.
2. Don’t badmouth: Assign responsibility, not blame. Say nothing of another you wouldn’t say to him.
3. Never assume the motives of others are, to them, less noble than yours are to you.
4. Expand your sense of the possible.
5. Don’t trouble yourself with matters you truly cannot change.
6. Expect no more of anyone than you can deliver yourself.
7. Tolerate ambiguity.
8. Laugh at yourself frequently.
9. Concern yourself with what is right rather than who is right.
10. Never forget that, no matter how certain, you might be wrong.
11. Give up blood sports.
12. Remember that your life belongs to others as well. Don’t risk it frivolously.
13. Never lie to anyone for any reason. (Lies of omission are sometimes exempt.)
14. Learn the needs of those around you and respect them.
15. Avoid the pursuit of happiness. Seek to define your mission and pursue that.
16. Reduce your use of the first personal pronoun.
17. Praise at least as often as you disparage.
18. Admit your errors freely and soon.
19. Become less suspicious of joy.
20. Understand humility.
21. Remember that love forgives everything.
22. Foster dignity.
23. Live memorably.
24. Love yourself.
25. Endure.
John Perry Barlow
Found on Open Culture, JPB’s 25 rules for being an adult.
Barlow
(that’s what most of his friends called him) flaunted his complexity.
He advertised himself as a Republican Deadhead, as a cowboy hacker, a
spiritual rationalist, a womanizing feminist, a technological hippy. He
had a remarkable gift of conforming himself to the contours of whomever
he was arguing with, so both sides could violently agree and civilly
disagree. His full embrace of his own cognitive dissonance allowed him
to craft outrageous statements and manifestos that he truly believed to
be true and also knew were wholly fictional.
It may be truer to say the most of what he wrote and said was
less an attempt to nail reality as it was to reshape reality. He was an
unashamed aspirationalist. In that regard, Barlow had much in common
with many prophets, gurus, visionaries, magicians, innovators,
charlatans, and politicians in that he placed greater emphasis on what
could be rather than what is. And he believed, as those just mentioned
do and most journalists and scientists don’t, that you can create
reality with your words.
I always thought of Barlow as the Mayor of the Internet. He saw
very early that the internet was a political artifact that would require
the same kind of idealism, compromise, and civics that prosperous and
free societies needed. Nobody elected him, but if we did vote for a
Mayor of the Internet, he would have won because everyone – no matter
their stripe or color – thought of him as a good friend (and he was a
good friend to thousands). I think he would have done a decent job as
Mayor, rallying our better natures to make a better internet city on the
hill.
If there had been no Barlow, I believe the internet would still
be hunting for its own identity, it would have far fewer heroes guarding
fragile rights and responsibilities in this new realm, it would lack
some of the most poetic descriptions of technology written, and we would
not have had the rawhide character of Barlow, the free-spirit no one
could domesticate, always ready with a satisfying turn of phrase to
illuminate the horror and glories of our new world.
One thing certain you can say about him: He out Barlow’d everyone
to become singular and original. There was no one else like him. In the
digital calculus of infinite possibilities, that is the highest form of
success.
Robyn Dial is suing White County, Tennessee Sheriff Oddie Shoupe for
excessive force in the killing of her husband Michael Dial, who was
shot in the head after he drove away at low speed from a traffic stop
while towing a heavy trailer behind his 40-year-old pickup truck;
Sheriff Shoupe was captured on bodycam mics ordering his officers to gun
down Dial rather than run him off the road and risk cosmetic damage to
their cruisers; after he arrived on the scene and observed Dial’s
corpse, he was recorded saying “They said ‘we’re ramming him.’ I said,
‘Don’t ram him, shoot him.’ Fuck that shit. Ain’t gonna tear up my cars.
I love this shit. God, I tell you what, I thrive on it. If they don’t
think I’ll give the damn order to kill that motherfucker they’re full of
shit. Take him out. I’m here on the damn wrong end of the county.”
On the Senate floor tonight, an extraordinary event. Senator Mitch
McConnell (R-KY) led a vote in which 49 GOP Senators chose to silence
Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for reading aloud the words of Coretta
Scott King, civil rights activist and the wife of slain civil rights
leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Warren was reading King’s historic letter protesting the confirmation
of noted white supremacist Jeff Sessions as a federal district court
judge in the Southern District of Alabama.
“She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she
persisted,” said Mitch McConnell about why Republican senators
basically told Warren to shut up.
Perhaps the good Senators from the party of Trump will do themselves a favor and Google the phrase, “Streisand Effect.”
Too late.
The letter is here in full, embedded below, and is hopefully about to be shared and read aloud in many other places.
