Journal thought starter: Transformation and Reflection

I just heard this quote from the movie Honey Boy “You know, a seed has to totally destroy itself to become a flower. That’s a violent act, honey boy.”

The last 4 years have been really tough for a lot of people and, conversely, celebratory for others. All of the division, tribalization, anger and tension escalated as we collectively dealt with a pandemic and then a bitterly contested election then came to a head with a violent attack on the US capital.

What comes to mind as I say this is that there’s a large number of people who would disagree with my characterization of what happened or dig into whataboutisms regarding Black Lives Matter Protests earlier in 2020. I won’t get into the weeds right now but let’s agree that this last year was difficult. Difficult enough that 2020 as a year has become a meme more than a time frame.

However, transformation usually requires destruction. Earlier in 2020 I was saying that it was the year of the Tower. A time when structures we thought were invincible came tumbling down, revealing the ugly, dirty sides of how such a tower is built and throwing the mighty to the ground as much as the weak.

The Tower is necessary to create space for something new.

Now is a time to reflect on what our society was (and still is) built on and try to build a new, better, more inclusive and more beautiful society to take its place. Look at the rotten wood that became the framework of our reality and tear it out. Look at how we allowed our beliefs and structures to become infested with moral termites and ants.

I’m reminded of when I lived in a place infested with an invasive species of ant that we just could not get a handle on. No matter what we did, they just kept coming back. This species of ant is cooperative, meaning new ant hills will work together rather than fighting with their progenitor hills. It’s an amazing adaption and incredibly effective.

One day we were given a type of chalk that was actually outlawed decades previous because it looks like sidewalk chalk and toddlers were putting it in their mouths. Seems to me like the issue had less to do with the product than … anyway, it worked. We applied it, kept the cats in a bedroom and left to go run errands and such and when we came home at the end of the day the ants were gone.

Interestingly enough, a few days later our house was covered in dead termites as well. It turns out the ants like to eat termite eggs, it’s one of their favorite food. All houses in that area have at least some termites, so when the ants disappeared the termites blossomed and when they came out, they also ate the chalk and spread it to each other and had a mass die-off. All over our kitchen.

The building we lived in was our home, our refuge to escape the world to feel comfortable and safe. The ants were like the outside world getting in and literally “bugging us” forcing us to attend to them whether we wanted to or not. Our solution was destructive, potentially dangerous and had unintended consequences.

In the end, it worked out for the best. We had to go through the worst of it to get to the best.

What’s that phrase? The fastest route out of hell is through? That’s 2020. We needed the nasty, worst parts of our society to come forward like pus rising to the surface of an infection. We needed to see it in ways that were impossible to ignore. We needed it to hurt and burst and to spread so that we would take it seriously.

Looking back on 2020, I’m actually hopeful. I’m hoping that we can come together to clean the wreckage, reflect on what happened and move forward together.

I’m also aware that there will be hang-ups. One big one is that “together” won’t include everyone. Some people will insist on clinging to violence and disruption and hate. The good news is that we win against that. We have in the past and we will this time. Battles are sometimes quick and sometimes hard-fought.

My cup is half-full and I’m aware the glass is dirty and chipped. It’s time for a new cup.

Headaches and Food… and muscle cramps?

In my effort to save articles and links to information I’m interested in and may want to look up later, this time I’m looking at one of those “fluffy” list-driven articles-

The Best (and Worst) Foods for Headaches

Headache pain and sufferingI’m not a fan of list articles  because they so often tend to be more click-bait than substance and yet, at the same time, I have to admit that the reason they’re so successful as click-bait is because they provide information can be scanned quickly and, honestly, discarded just as quickly. For me, a lot of them are discarded because they’re just regurgiated, obvious information that everyone already knows and was just published to get your eyeballs, and possibly mouse, to click on ads.

BUT… occasionally somthing in list articles will jump out at me. In this case, the author listed almonds and milk as potentially good foods for headache sufferers. Okay, good news for me, I like both. More interesting though, is that they give some small amount of information about why almonds and milk might be beneficial.

Almonds, it turns out, are high in serum magnesium. From the article-

While research specifically looking at the impact of magnesium-rich foods (like almonds) on headaches is scarce, studies suggest that supplementing with 600 mg of magnesium each day reduces the frequency of migraines. While you may need a supplement, we suggest trying a food-first approach, and if you’re not into almonds, try leafy greens, seafood, pulses, and other nuts and seeds.

Okay, let’s look at milk-

Like magnesium, the other two major bone-building nutrients, calcium and vitamin D, seem to play a role in headache prevention. One study found that a combination of calcium and vitamin D supplements significantly reduced migraine attacks, while patients in another study saw significant improvements in just 4 to 6 weeks. Vitamin D does seem to play a bigger role than calcium, but you can get your fix of both from fortified products like dairy, soy milk, eggs, and orange juice.

What’s interesting for me personally is that I not only have suffered from headaches and migraines, I also sometimes get terrible cramps in my feet, and we’ve relatively recently found that chugging a bit of Cal-Mag liquid calcium and magnesium supplement alleviates the cramped muscles right away.

Could it be that my life would have been body-ache and headache free if I would have had a better balance of calcium, magnesium and vitamin D? Possibly. Now is a good to find out, right? 🙂

“The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.”

Brain Stuff

I’ll post links about brain stuff and how we think on this page.

Recently I’ve become really interested in how people are talking about embodied cognition. This Scientific American article is a nice starting point.

A Brief Guide to Embodied Cognition: Why You Are Not Your Brain

I also just found out about Benjamin Bergan’s book Louder Than Words from an old episode of the Brain Science podcast.  From the excerpts I’ve seen, he does a great job describing how the assimilation of language is a full-body experiential process. I’m looking forward to reading the whole book.

Politics

I’m calling this page politics but it likely will have an interesting variety of items.

First up, The Rebels Have it.

I recently had a conversation with Jennifer Hoffman, the fantastic creator of the Americans of Conscience Checklist– a resistance newsletter that she has built with more strategy and forethought than most. Jen introduced me to an academic I had never heard of before- Erica Chenoweth, and her studies that show that civil resistance campaigns succeed when 3.5% of the population actively and sustainably participates.

3.5%. That’s 11 million Americans.

Wow… 3.5%. I think the most interesting part of this is that non-violent resistance seems to work far, far better than violent resistance.Wow… 3.5%. I think the most interesting part of this is that non-violent resistance seems to work far, far better than violent resistance.

Essentially, what Chenoweth and Stephan found in their study, “Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict” is that, looking at every major violent and nonviolent resistance campaigns from 1900– 2006, nonviolent campaigns succeed 53% of the time compared to violent campaigns which only succeed 26% of the time.

Great stuff, check it out.

 

GDPR-General Data Protection Regulation

The GDPR represents the most significant change in data regulation in 20 years. Fines for GDPR noncompliance can reach 4 percent of a company’s global revenues, so it’s critical that companies know how to operate under and comply with this new regulation. Our guide serves as a practical resource for people from the boardroom to the IT department to understand and ensure their organization’s compliance with the GDPR’s complex requirements.

Understanding the General Data Protection Regulation: Frequently Asked Questions

This is a follow-up to Protiviti’s GDPR webinar and roundtable series produced in partnership with Robert Half and the multinational law firm Baker McKenzie to help organizations understand, prepare for and operate under the GDPR. This guide covers the GDPR basics and focuses on critical areas such as third-party risk, data-privacy rights, consent management and privacy notices.

Topics of interest to Dave

I’m always seeing things of interest and then losing track of them and, while I could just save them to Evernote or some similar application, I’ve decided instead to keep them in posts on this website by topic so that they can be browsed by others as well.

The first topic will be GDPR, of interest to me because of working on websites and working with Protiviti, an audit and risk-management company, and because I just saw a great FAQ document. Other topics will pop up purely according to whim, but will probably include items related neuroscience, UX, behavioral sciences, games, and whatever else pops up in my screen.

SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!

I came in today, a Sunday, to get caught up on various items I need to get done and found that I’m not able to access the items that I wanted to work on. There was probably an announcement about this that I ignored thinking that outages on Sunday wouldn’t affect me.

Oh well. I’ll do what I can and then get on with the rest of my weekend; some hiking, some writing and a session in a sensory deprivation float tank. My second time doing a float and I’m looking forward to it.

I’m also ruminating on how a man influenced such a huge chunk of society by repeating a single day-name 3 times.

“Sunday! Sunday! Sunday!”

Jan Gabriel, orator of the NASCAR SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY catchphraseChicago native Jan Gabriel started out as his performing career billing himself as “Chicago’s youngest teenage DJ” at record hops (also called sock hops, those informal sponsored dance events in the 50’s.) and then took his DJ skills and his love of racing and managed to get a job as an announcer for the Santa Fe Speedway in Hinsdale, Ill. Only, unlike most monotone announcers high up in a booth, he took his job to a stage in the middle of the track and really amped things up.

In 1968 a track owner in Hobart, IN. to promote the fact his drag strip was open on Sundays and enlisted Starbeat Recording Studios to create his advertisement. Gabriel beat out more than 50 other announcers for the job based on his deep, vibrant voice.

From there he had a syndicated show that got NASCAR on television and became “that guy!” to all of the racing fans.

His “SUNDAY! SUNDAY! SUNDAY!” promotion announcement got national attention and pretty soon it was the catchphrase for announcing anything happening on a racetrack.

This guy decides he has a love for something and follows it wherever it can lead him and then lives a life others only dream of.

But, that was then, right? These things can’t happen now.

Check out one of my personal heroes, the late Wesley Willis who had the Wesley Willis - A personal hero of mineENTIRE DECK stacked against him and then some, but decided he wanted to become a rockstar and truly did. You may not know him, but he’s well known to the music industries and his fans included people like Eddie Vedder, Henry Rollins, Mike D., Jello Biafra, members of White Zombie and Rick Rubin of American Recordings.

But, that was the 90’s. People could still act crazy following their passion and make a career out of it, it can’t happen now, right?

PewDiePie is not a hero of mine, but still a great example of doing something you enjoy and making a career of it to the shock and surprise of everyone, including and especially himself.

Gravity GlueA friend of mine in Boulder Colorado has made an international name for himself balancing rocks in seemingly impossible ways. Check out his work and you see how a guy who stacked rocks in a creek became famous.

The world is full of potential and possibilities, even for just busting out some craziness on open mic night, playing video games, balancing rocks or repeating “SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY!!!”

It’s somehow fitting that Jan Gabriel pass on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 and services were also held on the following Sunday. Rest peace, Jan and Wesley.

Testing a new website functionality. Feel free to ignore this.

Dave says "Ignore me!"

Life Gets in the Way: Staying on Track

Life gets in the way sometimes.

I have a trait. Sometimes, I build up momentum on a thing and I ride it like crazy with little regard to details and consequences.

It’s a strength, and a weakness.

For example, several years ago, I had an idea while driving for a webcomic, so I wrote it up and put it on the dub-dub-dub as alienses.com because it amused me. Turns out, it amused a number of other people and attained a respectable place on the webcomics charts for a while.

Alienses

Sounds like a strength, right?

But man, so many typos and mistakes. So much momentum, so little regard to details. These days I’m far better about proofreading and attention to quality, so that much has improved at least.

But it’s also a fragile thing, this momentum. A bump in life disrupts the momentum and then I have so much trouble getting back to it. For Alienses, it was my dad’s passing and the circumstances surrounding it, so that’s a bit extreme, but for other projects, it could be just simple day-to-day life.

The most recent example is Dungeons & Dave, the website I threw together once I started writing D&D products. I was posting pretty regularly and starting to get somewhere with it and then I just got busy at work and then got sick for a couple of weeks, and then… Momentum: destroyed.

After that, another death, a friend and neighbor this time, kind of completed the crash.

Life gets in the way. It always does, and always will.

These should be Seven of Wands moments, not The Tower.

The Tower, Tarot
Downfall, Endings

Seven of Wands, Tarot
Defiance, Conviction

 

 

 

 

 

It’s time to gird the loins and get back to it.

(Was anybody else ever confused by the phrase “gird your loins”?)

((I know I put the question mark outside the quotation marks. I actively disagree with the rule about putting it inside and in my personal writing I will continue to protest it.))

(((I wonder if these would be better as P.S. and P.P.S and P.P.P.S’s instead of parantheseseseses… wutevs)))

(((( This post is going under the category of “Advice” because I don’t have one for random ramblings. Here’s the advice – Don’t get crazy with parantheseseses. No good will come of it.))))))

D&D Stuff moved to Dungeons & Dave

I decided to move all my D&D stuff to its own website, www.dungeonsanddave.com.

I’ll let this site focus on all ov my other unfocused odd thoughts ov thee moment. Not sure why I slipped in TOPY-speak just now…