Andy Lowry @AndyLowry@qoto.org
Retired SysAdmin living in the high country of Arizona, USA. I enjoy learning about physics, cosmology, genetics, neurology, and suchlike. Deeply confused by worldwide trends towards authoritarianism. I thought we'd already learned about that stuff. But I guess not.
Joined Nov 2022
@jayarava
I've just spent the last half hour trying to find a way to buy a copy of Old School Emptiness, as both your mentions and a review at the Cambridge site make it seems like something I'd get a lot out of. None of my usual methods, like finding a seller via the ISBN number, is working.
Since you're apparently acquainted with the author, I thought I'd ask if you have any suggestions that would help me purchase the book. Digital format is ideal for me but I can certainly settle for physical paper if need be.
Thank you.
Andy Lowry
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"A sense of wonder is desperately important."
Jane Goodall
#Quotes #EmotionalIntelligence
Andy Lowry
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Republicans are OK with 10-year-olds giving birth, just as long as they're not allowed to read a book about it.
Andy Lowry
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The ret-conning of Benedict resigning due to 'ill health' and not due to his decades of complicity in protecting child abusers at the expense of children is in full force today. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/24/former-pope-benedict-statement-child-sexual-abuse-inquiry He didn't 'fail to act' he actively covered up child abuse and gave the abusers repeated access to new victims *even after one was convicted*.
@jayarava
Your mention of the Walser "Genealogy" book in your recent "The Cessation of Sensory..." sounded intriguing, so I looked at the description from the publisher. On seeing the subject matter, I snapped it up in a flash-- I've been looking for exactly this kind of thing on the origins of Mahayana for a long time. I had thought that Paul Williams' "Doctrinal Foundations" would have covered the history of the emergence of the school, but ha! fooled again. Looking forward to jumping into this one! Thanks for the happy happenstance. 😋
Andy Lowry
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Andy Lowry
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RT @LynzforCongress
Hey Secretary @PeteButtigieg—make sure you ask @SouthwestAir about calling in law enforcement to arrest customers they’ve stranded at airports. https://twitter.com/bradbatt/status/1607973979934834690
Andy Lowry
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RT @BernieSanders
Corporate greed is Southwest getting a $7 billion bailout during the pandemic & spending $5.6 billion on stock buybacks to enrich wealthy shareholders, while stranded passengers are threatened with jail time for the crime of trying to rebook canceled flights during the holidays.
Andy Lowry
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"I only go on Twitter to find people's Mastodon account info" is the new "I only use IE to download Chrome".
Andy Lowry
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GRETA, NOW DO ELON.
Andy Lowry
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Imma keep it PURPLE this #BlackFriday with Prince and The Revolution - “Let’s Go Crazy” 💜
Come on now, y'all know this the jam!
Andy Lowry
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Andy Lowry
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Why is lying on your resume a fireable offense everywhere but in Congress and Supreme Court hearings?
Andy Lowry
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"By banning some of us, Musk is sending a message to everyone else: Comply with the dictator or lose access. Twitter has become a virtual simulation of authoritarian rule."
"But Musk didn’t build Twitter. We, collectively, turned the bird app into a consequential power. If it remains under the control of a man who sees journalists as enemies, we have a moral responsibility to fly the coop."
--@gilduran on getting banned from #twitter.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-musk-twitter-ban-censorship-17680044.php
Andy Lowry
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I'm hearing that low-life Andrew Tate was arrested through the actions of "the Group of Experts on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings"... or GRETA. 🤣
Andy Lowry
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During the American Civil War, the South thought they could blackmail the British into supporting them by restricting the supply of cotton. Without cotton the mills of Lancashire would close and there would be real hardship. However, the mill workers of Lancashire opposed slavery, and the British eventually got new sources of cotton like Egypt. #history shows the commodity weapon Putin thinks he has, isn’t all that. #politics #SlavaUkraini
Andy Lowry
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810 million websites are self-hosted with WordPress.
Imagine if all those websites had this ActivityPub plugin installed.
Those websites would then become 810 million Fediverse instances.
@jayarava
(As it seems unlikely that you would be aware of it, I should probably mention that this view of everything being continually re-created, moment by moment, though with obvious tendencies of continuing on the paths of least resistance, is a Zen orthodoxy with a lot of Soto practitioners. I can probably track down some references for it if you like, though I've mostly encountered it in dharma talks rather than literature.)
I know of at least one relatively well-known teacher with several books under his belt who likes to suggest that this is what the Buddha meant by "rebirth"-- the continual refreshing of all that is, with a lack of carried-over "identity" from one movie frame to the next. Ah, just remembered that the Japanese call each segmentary moment a "nen." Masao Abe wrote about it some, though I no longer have his book to look it up in.
Do I think every moment is a new world? Ultimately, yes, though to actually perceive even hints of it is rare. It's mostly just something interesting to think about, for me. Einstein also seems to have had some similar thoughts, based on some quotes I've seen.
Does it affect my everyday life in any way? Nope. Doesn't matter if it's actually an accurate assessment and has nothing to do with the actual work that is set before me. 😎
Andy Lowry
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Serotonin is such an enigma.
In a fresh paper by the lab of Mark Andermann it is shown that serotonin gates the information flow from retina to thalamus.
https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(22)01079-0
Trying to understand the bigger picture, we have recently proposed that serotonin has a central role in digesting information. Our paper w @macshine @DrYohanJohn @claireocallaghan and others can be found here: https://shine-lab.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/2022_brain.pdf
Andy Lowry
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Noel Coward said that having to read a footnote "resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love" (according to the back-cover blurb on Anthony Grafton's The Footnote), but I'd say it's more like being invited downstairs by the erudite widow below, who has a superb library and a broad oak desk covered with papers and file folders and a typewriter, and brews coffee while discussing her approach to an intricate historical problem she's currently writing about
Retired SysAdmin living in the high country of Arizona, USA. I enjoy learning about physics, cosmology, genetics, neurology, and suchlike. Deeply confused by worldwide trends towards authoritarianism. I thought we'd already learned about that stuff. But I guess not.
Joined Nov 2022
