I’m convinced there’s some kind of vortex in or near my dryer that opens up during loads and sucks up socks and wool balls. I’m down to one wool ball. I also don’t have a single pair of matching socks anymore. How does this happen? Is it a curse? Is there some kind of portal in my laundry room? Have the underwear gnomes expanded their business ventures?
I have questions.
Been in the mood to play around with CSS so both my main site and my micro.blog got a fresh coat of paint. Happy so far though I’ll probably keep playing around with it because it’s fun. Watch your step.
Renewed one of my WoW subscriptions since it’s Comp Stomp week and I still haven’t gotten that mount from Tazavesh. For my second account I bought an overpriced WoW token for 333K gold (ouch) but I’ll leave it in my bags for now. I might let the second account expire, so I’m currently going character by character making sure there’s nothing in the mailbox. Though knowing myself I’ll probably wind up posting auctions anyway. Need to make back those 333K somehow (sob).
As Mary K. Greer explains, in a 1933 lecture Jung went on at length about his views on the Tarot, noting the late Medieval cards are “really the origin of our pack of cards, in which the red and the black symbolize the opposites, and the division of the four—clubs, spades, diamonds, and hearts—also belongs to the individual symbolism.
They are psychological images, symbols with which one plays, as the unconscious seems to play with its contents.” The cards, said Jung, “combine in certain ways, and the different combinations correspond to the playful development of mankind.” This, too, is how Tarot works—with the added dimension of “symbols, or pictures of symbolical situations.” The images—the hanged man, the tower, the sun—“are sort of archetypal ideas, of a differentiated nature.”
Our brains evolved to care deeply about social status. When we sense we’re being observed, our neural networks shift into “performance mode,” prioritizing social approval over personal preferences. The regions associated with intrinsic motivation quiet down while areas processing social feedback light up.
This neurological shift explains why an audience changes our decision-making. We start choosing safer options, more impressive goals, more socially acceptable paths.
One outlandish feature of the world of the paranormal is the idea of portals popping up in various places. These portals are said to lead to other locations or nowhere at all, and sometimes are even said to act as doorways to other worlds that sometimes allow things from the other side to come in. Portals seem like something one would be more likely to find out in the wilderness or remote areas, but it seems that sometimes these phenomena can happen right in the safety of our own homes.
🔗mysteriousuniverse.org/2025/07/S…
I tried sublime.app and it’s very cool. You clip things you find interesting and it pulls up related clippings that others have added. Other people discover new things because of what you post and you discover new things because of what other people post.
Last night I discovered bearblog.dev and it seems like an excellent blogging platform alternative. Super fast. Super simple. Stripped down to the “bear” essentials. I really like the “discover” page with the trending posts. I added the RSS feed to News Explorer and had a really good time reading through a lot of different blogs.
Something I think people struggle with is finding content to read and the upvote feature helps to make content discoverable without getting sucked into the algorithm.
I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
Currently reading Joan Westenberg’s “How to Make People Give a Damn” and thinking about how authenticity will only continue to grow in value in the years to come.
Earnestness is radioactive. People sense it through the screen. If you’re saying something because you believe it, people may not agree, but they will listen longer. If you’re saying something because you think it will work, they may like it, but they won’t love it. There is a difference between engagement and emotional investment. One gets clicks. The other gets belief.
This is why a weird, typo-ridden essay on Medium about quitting law school to raise goats can outlast a perfectly edited corporate blog. Because someone meant it. The audience, whether they admit it or not, is starved for sincerity.
There is a reason why the Stoics are back in fashion, why Viktor Frankl sells more copies today than in 1980, and why YouTube is flooded with young men reading Marcus Aurelius to synth music.
People are seeking meaning.
It reminds me of a quote by Harold Kushner in When All You’ve Ever Wanted Isn’t Enough: The Search for a Life That Matters:
“Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power […] Our souls are hungry for meaning.”
I’ve been using News Explorer for all of my daily RSS reading, and I love it, but it’s forced me to tweak my workflow. Since I like to use Readwise Reader as my Read It Later/highlighting app of choice, I’m having to take the scenic route by using Instapaper as an intermediary.
News Explorer → Instapaper → Readwise Reader
Sounds clunkier than what I was previously doing which was using the share button to send articles to Reader, but it’s actually much smoother thanks to the integrated swipe action.
Notes
