Author: wwlawyer
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What about Disney’s olfactory manipulation?
I saw this article today on Apple News: https://apple.news/AT-wxdA5FSeSSdjzJcJUfpA This is a good story and worth reading, but the summary is that it may be controversial that Disney fairly openly uses scent stimuli to manipulate guests. The article also says, though, that the side effects of this manipulation are mostly positive, with effects of stress…
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Writing prompt: Christ has returned to Earth. He reveals that modern social liberalism has given Him the confidence to finally return and announce that he identifies as female.Writing prompt:
“Dad, are you sure it’s time? It’s… 1996. They’ve had a solid decade to deal with HIV and they still haven’t gotten over dehumanizing people who contract a virus. Don’t you remember last time? I barely got past the “forgiveness” and self-righteousness parts before they killed me. I don’t want to go down again if…
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One liner
It’s funny how when we ship things, they usually go on every kind of vehicle except a ship. Starts in a car, goes to a truck, then a plane, then another truck, maybe a train here and there between if only across the airport. Everything but an actual ship.
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How do I deal with the state of technology and culture now that I understand the neuroscience behind it?
I am still really struggling with this information, what to do with it and how to not just be a crazy crackpot retreating from society. If you’ve been following my posts lately, you’ve seen me talk a bit about themes of manipulation and the neuroscience of arousal and anxiety. The neuroscience knowledge underpinning these ideas…
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Writing prompt about seeking wisdom from “George”
It’s been a long week, like they all seem to be. Work, family… I suppose I could talk at length about all of those things. But the more I think about it, as I slowly coast my bike along the riverside path toward the community playground at mile 6, all of that stuff, my daily…
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Amydgala activation, and why there’s no healthy way to consume social media.
Executive summary: Social media platforms like Facebook etc ultimately have one purpose as a business, which is to sell your attention span to advertisers. They are not concerned with your health, and there is no regulation that compels them to restrain their behavior. They know from data that people are better consumers, specifically in that…
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Update on the plan
For once I’m taking a few drafts before publishing a blog post. I wrote this in kind of a fury last night and realized it is simultaneously too long and lacking context. Today, I am writing from the edge of Denali National Park, at the raft guide camp I’ve been at for a few days.…
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Initial thoughts on Denali
A song that has been resonating in my head this whole trip, and solidly ignored, has been 3 x 5 by John Mayer. It says, today I finally overcame, trying to put the world inside a picture frame; maybe I will tell you all about it in my own way when I’m in the mood…
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Mystery solved!
My camper has been smelling really nice the past few days, but it’s gotten overwhelming. And I just figured out why. As I was driving the Klondike Highway the other day, I saw this empty box on the road. I picked it up, both to remove litter and because, well, it’s kind of a good…
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Travel update, September 1 car 10,000 miles on the road
Last night someone told me that they were grateful for the conversation, one of the most interesting people they’d met, but also said that at first I seemed a little crazy until after I had spoken for five or six minutes. I guess that’s just my reality, and really, I’m theme with this idea I’ve…
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Update on my Facebook presence
I thought that I had already posted this, but just to TikTok I guess. Here’s the video link: I’m gonna summarize this as briefly as I can, though off the cuff because I didn’t think to prepare a post before cell service. For years, one of the core struggles in my mental health has been…
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50 state photos?
I wrote a post purporting to go through photographic proof of my 50 state journey. It was terrible I guess, so I’m not that upset that when I tried to post it here, it didn’t work at all. I’m going to have to put it in Word or something. Maybe I can export it from…
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“I just can’t understand it.”
There exist two different ideas, which I will spell out here explicitly: Sometimes, when someone engages in a course of action that I hear described in a particular way, I cannot comprehend the line of logic that would lead a person to do that. There is no emotional input I can conceive of that, through…
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Some technical details on the Winnebago Hike 100 1316SB
Some detailed photos and component links for potential buyers who are more technical like me, since I’m procrastinating loading up. If you’re like me you may have some questions about equipment and wiring setup and hopefully this post can answer some of your questions. First, some of the basics: Solar charge controller – GoPower GP-PWM-30-SQ…
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I’m finally on the road, what next?
I keep hearing isolated phrases from music that don’t really make any sense in context, just feel like phrases that makes sense to my life right now. From Hamilton… We’re finally on the road, we’ve had quite a run… We get the job done… of course that doesn’t actually make any literal sense in context,…
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“On writing,” but not like Stephen King’s book
I am bilingual. You know, I speak two languages. My languages are “sailor” and “professor.” I can speak eloquently and professionally, diplomatically even. I can tell you to fuck off without telling you to fuck off, but I can also just tell you to fuck off. Seriously, when I don’t think about it, I drop…
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Route planning: the distance and time expectation
Route plan so far, more stops to be added, this just gives me a baseline. The trip will be a minimum of 12k miles and 200 hours of driving. 2/3 of the driving is on the way there, as this route assumed just heading straight home from Denali. Adding a stop at Kenai would add…
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Getting ready to go north
It’s been a while since I took a proper trip. And yet, I have not been staying still. I started traveling essentially as soon as I had control over it. In childhood, my parents tended to center travel around a fixed location, a weekend house they built on the opposite side of the city…
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In memory of Megan Thompson
Today is the anniversary of our friend Megan Thompson’s untimely death on the Oconaluftee River in the Smokies last winter. I almost forgot the day but a news story reminded me – the one year anniversary of war beginning in Ukraine, which happened actually at around the same time. In fact my last message to…
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Just kind of a general long-overdue update
It’s been a while! How embarrassing, it looks like my last post here was as I was wrapping up my first van life experiment, almost two years ago. And it really wasn’t fair of me to ghost the page because there really was a lot going on over that time. I never really recapped the…
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RV for sale
While I haven’t written about it enough on here, I’ve had this lovely 2006 Roadtrek Adventurous RV in my possession for the last two and a half years, but it’s come time to move on. It is a 2006 RV (2005 van) built in Canada by Roadtrek, on a van built by Mercedes in Germany…
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The Biblical argument for Biden (from Facebook)
One of my Facebook friends, a Trump supporter, shared this meme on his Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/levi.hombrelibre/posts/4918530741506195 I made my usual snarky comments, then got this in response: Here is my reply: Sorry for the slow response, as is typical in Facebook “argument” I am being tasked to reply to a lazy meme with detailed research. …
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Update at the apex of my 2020 cross-country road trip
2020 08 20 I feel kind of bad that I haven’t been blogging along the way on this trip. I’ve been updating Facebook and sometimes Twitter and Instagram, so see my personal social feeds for the blow-by-blow. I’ve been on the road for a little over three weeks now, on a trip that will eventually…
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Update and reboot: Some discussion on happiness research
I know I haven’t posted in a while, but I’m going to resist the temptation to update you on all the developments of the last two years. Instead, I’m going to focus on the findings of my research. As most of you know, my main drive in life is happiness, and I’ve spent the last…
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iPhone Xs vs Pixel 3: An observational review
The iPhone Xs I loved the design of the new iPhone X when it came out in 2017, but after trying one out for a week in early 2018 I decided to hold off for the next one. My iPhone 7 was perfectly adequate at the time. Then Apple introduced the iPhone Xs with a…