Author: Anne Z
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Day 345 of 1000: Marxism in the (post-) Modern Era
Considering Marxist ideas, financialization, and what happens if AI causes extreme unemployment.
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Day 343 of 1000: Self as a Verb | Selfing and Unselfing
Ideas from three dharma talks about selfing and unselfing from Ines Freedman and Gil Fronsdal. The freedom unselfing brings.
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Day 342 of 1000: What I don’t Want to Do
Finding your own path often involves doing things that feel weird, and that feel wrong too. Time to bust out of the shackles of what society tells you to do.
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Day 341 of 1000: Affirming Abundance
I got a new rug cleaning machine today, to complement my four vacuum cleaners. Have I reached enough yet? Is this abundance?
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DAy 340 of 1000: The 11,000 Day Project next?
What if I finish this 1,000 day blogging project without feeling transformed? Maybe a 30-year blogging project is next.
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Day 339 of 1000: Aspirational and Non-Aspirational Transformation
Some transformations involve Callard-style aspirational proleptic reasoning, and some just unfold.
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Day 338 of 1000: Borrowing Wisdom about Not Borrowing Wisdom
Taleb writes only from what he can call forth from his mind without effort, including quotes.
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Day 335 of 1000: Confidence in the Future
Meditations on having what you need — not to include $10 million in retirement.
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Day 334 of 1000: The Craft Rich Lifestyle
Devoting my life to craft: writing, options trading, dog walking, painting. The wealth that comes from manual skilled labor.
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Day 333 of 1000: My Skull-Sized Queendom
One-third of the way through my 1000-day project, which might be about reinvention and might not, I reflect on swimming in the waters of the achievement society.
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Day 332 of 1000: Liquid Modernity and Consumerism
Bauman said that after modernity comes liquid modernity, in which we build our identities via consuming not producing. What to do instead.
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Day 331 of 1000: On Becoming a Primary Source
I don’t simply want to explain and reinterpret other people’s ideas. I want to develop and share my own independent philosophy.
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Day 330 of 1000: Vision Quest, part 2
Ideas from Frank’s The Wounded Storyteller, and reflections on my visual disability.
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Day 329 of 1000: Optimistic, Pessimistic, or a Third Way?
Is Nietzsche’s idea of eternal return optimistic or pessimistic? Perhaps it is neither.
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Day 328 of 1000: Affirming a Chosen Midlife
Nietzschean ideas of affirmation instead of nihilism. Walking to win thoughts. Choosing not to do things.
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Day 327 of 1000: Changing the World for One Person
The attention economy says that what counts is how many followers you have. Instead, what about inspiring just one person?
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Day 325 of 1000: Vision Quest
Applying Frank’s ideas from The Wounded Storyteller to my new visual disability. The quest narrative and suffering as life itself.
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Day 324 of 1000: AI Disillusionment Amid Ongoing AI Equity Euphoria
On Twitter, commentators are questioning the fitness of AI for writing and agentic tasks. Meanwhile AI stocks continue to soar.
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Day 323 of 1000: The Vita Negativa
Taleb says “knowlege grows by subtraction.” Expanding upon this to a sovereign lifestyle of saying no to the achievement society.
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Day 321 of 1000: Authenticity in Later Life
Charles Taylor and Iris Murdoch on what’s good and meaningful. Authenticity not simply as individualistic pursuits.
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Day 320 of 1000: Choosing to Be Single
In which I share ideas from Bella DePaulo’s book Single at Heart and how a choice to be single can arise via positive disintegration.
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Day 319 of 1000: Positive Maladjustment
Reflecting on Dabrowski’s idea of positive maladjustment, and how Nietzsche and Kierkegaard are exemplars of that phenomenon.
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Day 318 of 1000: Overexcitability, in cooking and in investing
Dabrowski proposed that intellectual, emotional, and other overexcitabilities can provide fuel for personal development. Applying it to cooking and investing.
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Day 317 of 1000: On Being Idiotic
Loved Julie Zhuo’s article on being an idiot. Didn’t like the tie in with artificial intelligence.
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Day 316 of 1000: Transcending Self and Culture
Flow psychologist Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas about how individuals can influence cultural and social evolution. I’m skeptical.
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Day 315 of 1000: How Culture Distorts Reality
Culture obscures reality so that we can’t see it accurately. Ideas from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
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Day 313 of 1000: Aspiration as an Alternative to Ambition
Philosopher Agnes Callard contrasts ambition and aspiration. Ambition seeks understood goals. Aspiration seeks new values.
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Day 312 of 1000: Aspiring to Be Someone Different
Philosophers Agnes Callard and L.A. Paul write of personal transformation. How it applies to my reinvention.
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Day 310 of 1000: Reviewing my Old Website
Considering my other reinvention blog which is no longer active. Should I renew its hosting or decommission?
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Day 309 of 1000: Inefficient Preparation & Accepting Incompetence in Midlife Reinvention
Ideas from Henry Oliver’s book Second Act about midlife reinvention. On not having goals and objectives and accepting a lack of expertise when you start.
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Day 307 of 1000: My Interests this Week
In Sunday planning, I review the week ahead. In today’s post, I also report on the current state of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
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Day 306 of 1000: A Different Approach to Leash Reactivity
From a video by dog behaviorist Dr. Melanie Uhde, using “dynamic interactive engagement” when a dog spots another dog while on leash.
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Day 305 of 1000: Spiraling Back, Spiraling Forward
I’ve agreed to foster a big dog who needs help. Is this moving backwards or forwards in my life?
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Day 304 of 1000: Why the U.S. Needs NATO, but Trump Does Not
Michael McFaul of Stanford and the Hoover Institution says the U.S. still needs NATO. Unfortunately, the current U.S. President does not.
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Day 303 of 1000: Writing About History, in Pseudoscientific Ways
While academics may call the theory of the four turnings pseudoscientific, I find it an enlightening way to consider current events.
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Day 302 of 1000: Modelski’s Long Cycles Theory
George Modelski proposed that world leadership plays out in long cycles of roughly 100 years each, divided into four phases. We’re in the last phase.
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Day 301 of 1000: Hope and the Other
Imagining resolutions to our current fourth turning crisis. Calling on hope, faith, and love.
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Day 299 of 1000: Fundamental Tiredness
Byung-Chul Han and Peter Handke on tiredness — the divisive kind and the uniting kind. The kind I am feeling today.
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Day 298 of 1000: Crossing a Threshold
Reflecting on my life, and the support I have from my family, at a crossroads.
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DAy 297 of 1000: The U.S. is Not Immune to the Effects of the Strait of Hormuz Closure
The United States is not immune to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz just because we are net energy exporters. Consider plastics and food.
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DAy 296 of 1000: Writing about Investing
I’m early in my journey of figuring out who I am as a trader. It’s so idiosyncratic and personal that I don’t want to write about it.
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Day 295 of 1000: Everydayness vs. Festiveness
Byung-Chul Han on Heidegger’s concept of everydayness, and how it should be complemented with festiveness.