To be honest, I’m never bored. I’ve more ideas that I want to explore, more stuff I want to do and make than I’ll have ever time for. That is, if we won’t be getting any older than the average life expectancy is now. I’ve the feeling we will all get way older soon. It shouldn’t take that much longer to figure that out though, or it won’t be of any use to me. This is also one of those ideas that I want to investigate and write about. So in order to arrange all these ideas and other things, I thought I would create one big repository that’s accessible in the form of a blog.
There’s roughly three subjects I want to focus on. First there’s all my societal discourse that I want to try and put into words, so that all my reasoning about a subject has an overview. That it is put into clear wording and can be used as a reference and information source – for myself and others – about the topics I like to talk about.
Second, there’s the stuff I make, like origami, poems, digital artwork and other random things, such as embedded systems for home automation to take an example. Put together, all my creative work apart from writing.
That’s the bridge to my third theme and that’s tech. I read a lot about everything from programming languages to building stuff in the rearward that connects back to something in IT. It’s not that I myself have a lot to say about this stuff but it’s more of a collection of the things I read and find interesting for later digestion and might want to share.
And books! Of course books! Lots of books! Literary works, self help, fantasy, science fiction. You name it, the whole shebang.
Then there’s also the essays that me and my family work on now right now. That might not be the most interesting for other people to read or even be the most smart thing to put out in the open. But, as a compendium and overview what has been written already, and to show it in some sort of timeline might be a good addition.
What I am also contemplate of grouping together is all the homework I did for school. Maybe behind some sort of password, or make it non-indexable by search engines so I won’t run into any problems with the school.
§ The name
My first idea was to call this blog:
Things I would like my friends to know, or https://thingsiwouldlikemyfriendstoknow.com
This way I would be able to point people to my blog, for a more precise reasoning. But after I slept on it for a bit and also practical reasons - it’s way too long for a web address and there’s no good abbreviation for that sentence - I decided on ruminate.it credits go to my friend Tsrohrab for the idea.
Since this will be my personal library, I wanted it to be named after a library and what’s the most well known library of all? The great library of Alexandria of course, so I reasoned it should at least include a part of that in the title. Also, it had to be something catchy, since, well, it’s gonna be huge :P, people will have to be able to drop it in a conversation and it needs to stick with people so they’ll go home and look up my website :D.
I’ve been dabbling with portmanteaus as of late so I tried to knit library and Alexandria together. That went from Librexandria to Liberxandria. Librexandria sounds too much like it is about the Brexit and we won’t have that. Liber also means book and it also means free. I plan to write a lot about society as a whole and of course that includes freedom, I see myself foremost as a liberal person.
So there we have it! LIBERXANDRIA my weblog. Please leave me some comments on what you think.
Here’s some trustworthy sources1 to back up what I just said.
Library < Late Middle English: via Old French from Latin libraria ‘bookshop’, feminine (used as a noun) of librarius ‘relating to books’, from liber, libr- ‘book’. –Oxford Dictionary
Liber < Latin the (m) [libri] book –Van Dale
Adjective
līber (feminine lībera, neuter līberum, comparative līberior, superlative līberrimus, adverb līberē); first/second-declension adjective (nominative masculine singular in -er)
I. free, independent, unrestricted, unchecked
II. open (not decided or settled)
III. unbiased (pertains to lawyers)
IV. exempt, void
§ For friends
I like discussing topics that are close to my heart. A lot of my friends can attest to that. They are my friends because they like talking to me, I hope, most of the time. Sometimes however, it’s time to stop talking and think things over. At these moments it would be handy, in my mind when an heated discussion has come to a slow, to refer to my website, where I’ve elaborated on certain points I just so inccesantly tried to defend.
In this way both my friend and I can take a step back. Think about the stuff that’s been said, rephrase the argument. And if someone is willing to go the mile they can see what I ment in more depth on the blog. Which arguments I forgot to give them in person, what the rebuttals could be to counter-arguments that haven’t been touched on or just to rewind a discussion.
In my experience when you throw the bat in the hen house, more often then not, all hell breaks loose. If people you don’t know are confronted with ideas that don’t fit their mental model they are nearly certain to lash out. In these moments it’s best to take a breather and talk about little cows and calves.
§ Cognitive dissonance
This leads me to allude to something that’s called cogitnitive dissonance. I love the sound of these two words in concert and what they try to convey. This subject might probably warrant another article by itself by I’ll try to keep it short and why I would talk about it in this context.
As I said before, sometimes new ideas have the property to unsettle people. This is what I mean with ‘cognitive dissonance’. When confronted with a world view that doesn’t fit the the frame of mind of a person he or she will react in such a way that – while normally a rational person – there’s no reasonable further discussion possible. My experiences show this happens quite a lot over the years. I’ve seen it while studying philosophy and when debating my favourite subjects with random people.
This reaction, of taking a super defensive stance and rehashing things that have been said before without bringing in new grounds that would make you understand someones casus is fairly typical. In these instances it mostly just boils down to, it is so, in dutch; dat is gewoon zo and the dialogue stalls and is fatal for any civilised discussion. I try to be the wiser person and leave it as it lays. With the hope I’ve disseminated some new ideas that might find a fertile ground.
Maybe circle back to it after a year or so, probably someones next birthday and see if the seed you planted has germinated. A lot of times people have acclimated to the previously uknown idea and are more open to discuss them. See the merits for what they are and try to be more articulate as of to why they might want to consider something or not.
To my surprise, more often then not that is the case, people have at least engendered some kind of acceptance an initial controversial idea I had the pleasure to introduce them to. In a years time after we broached this same topic that had them foaming at the mouth at first, it is now a subject that has gotten their attention and they thought about it. In that year of getting used to the new concept, they’ve seen items about it, they’ve heard suddenly other people talking about it and have come to be more open to it and view it as something that might even be possible in a certain kind of world.
I say this, not because it is always me that introduces other people to new ideas. Certainly not, a lot of my friends and all different kinds of people have opened my eyes in other ways and new aspects to life. That’s why I love talking to people, that is why I love my friends, because they are smart and kind people that take the effort to talk to me and help me get a deeper understanding of what’s going on in the world around me.
§ Plans for the blog
Ideally I will add a comment system so people can share their own thoughts concerning the things I post. In the best scenario it would be able to let people point out mistakes in my articles in the way you do it in word or google docs when you are edit a document. Or similar to a wikipedia like system. This probably has to be a long term goal since it probably has some hurdles to overcome, there might be pre existing solutions for this but I’ll have to adjust them to my own needs.
There’s a lot of typograhy that needs work in my opinion. I’ve some stuff from markdown themes and examples from other blogs that I would like to implement.
- h1 centered
- categories big when selected
- blog posts and categories look the same
- tags
§ Smart
All of this needs to be not a total distraction from the more pressing matters I’ve to attend to. To try to cope with this well known problem that might arise there exists a thing called smart and I’ve found, it is pretty useful to adhere to in my daily life. How do I set priorities that are realistic and well, smart. To apply it to my new blog would look something like this.
It needs to be Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timely. Wow, I wanted to keep this short but lets see what else goes into this. Remember, I write this not only for my readers amusement, but also as a keep sake for myself.
§ Specific
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Who are the participants, what is the action.
6W. Who, what, where, when, which, why.
- So who, that are me my friends and people that I’ve had a constructive discussion with and are interest in further bickering. :open_mouth: :small_airplane:
- The action is the building of the webpage and the actual writing of the articles I envision about explaining things I would like my friends to know. That are ethical, socio-eocnomic explanations and some creative outlet.
- Where is the blog
- When is during my free time
- Which are the subjects I just mentioned
- Why is because I like to talk to my friends, value their input and opinion and sometimes it might be handy to check of we know the same things and are actually talking about the same thing.
§ Measureble
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Quantity of change.
How much? How many?
How will I know when it is accomplished?
- Can I see pageviews? Maybe people will tell me they have read something.
- It is succesful if people who’ve read something come to me and want to talk about it because they agree or disagree or have further questions or comments.
§ Achieveble
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Achieveble and realistic. Objective first, within the amount of time and resources available.
When you identify goals that are most important to you, you begin to figure out ways you can make them come true.
- So I translated an article which should be the blue print for future writings.
- Will I have enough energy to do research and come to actual writing when I work a job.
§ Relevant
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Relevance, this step is about ensuring that your goal matters to you and it also aligns with other relevant goals.
To be realistic, a goal must represent an objective toward which you are both willing and able to work. Be sure that every goal represents substantial progress.
- My goal is to be able to articulate myself better, that I have a basic framework I can build my own opinion on. At the same time want to encourage discourse between like minded people, that can teach each other and in this way are able to gain new insight.
- Also to have an outlet for my creative outburst. Because at least creating things fills me with a sense of purpose.
§ Timely
-
Timeframe within said object needs to be achieved.
Also tangible, taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing. When your goal is tangible you have a better chance of making it specific and measurable and thus attainable.
- I plan to release at least once a month a decent sized article, lets say 2500 words about on a topic.
- In the meantime I will work on the blog as a way of learning new webdesign skills and as a show case of what I am capable of, both as a developer a writer and as a creator.
- So in six weeks from now I want to have one well researched article about MMT online and a gallery of some mediocre drawings I made.
- Today I will fix the favicon and collapsible text box.
§ Subjects I wanna talk about
To indicate I am in no way at a loss for topics I’ve something to say on, here’s a list for the things I plan to write about. Expect enough content, if I can find the time, coming soon.
§ Topics blog
§ Tech
- Best hacker news posts
- What I read last week compilation
- Book review
- Setup
- terminal
- Brew dump
- keybindings
- vim?
§ Society
- stokpaarden
- holistisch // hoe valt het allemaal samen
- drugs
- basisinkomen
- biologisch voer
- vluchtelingen
- buddy systeem tegen eenzaamheid
- economie
- banken
- huizenmarkt
- nutsbedrijven
- bedrijven, farmaceutische industrie // kleine bedrijven steunen, uitwassen grote bedrijven tegen gaan, verantwoordelijkheid en moraliteit, rechtvaardigheid
- grondstoffen schaarste
- filosofie
- persoonlijke vrijheden
- roseau sociaal contract
- wat is het doel van de overheid? // pechdemper, enabler tot bloei komen van personen
- wat moet de focus zijn van de overheid, voorbij de waan van dag
- waar loopt het spaak bij de overheid
- vernieuwing bij de overheid, voorkomen van perverse prikkels
- incentives
- democratie // stemmen, incentives
- patenten
- energie, tijdverdeling, life hacks
- persoonlijke krachttraining?
- School, geloof <-> wetenschap
- Randomness, Gradient
- climate change
- bio industrie -> belasting
- groene energie?
- pros cons
- panelen
- getijde
- kernenergie
- pros cons
- voedsel
- sport
- e-nummers
- antibiotica
- ouders en kinderen, hmm 1 max?
- Grondbeginselen, aka waarom vind ik iets
- ethiek onderbouwing
- rechtvaardigheid
- politiek en sociale filosofie
- ethiek onderbouwing
- Book reviews
- Self help
- fantasy
- webnovels
- literature
- Drawings
- data,
- explainers
- grafieken
§ Read my next piece
Have you made it this far? No way! 😃 Please read my first post in Dutch on the Myths or Bakerpraatjes about Organic agriculture compared to conventional farming. I translated it from English to Dutch as an exercise, and to internalize the arguments. Here’s a link to the original blog post if you’re wondering how I butchered this up.
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https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/liber#Latin ↩