Ted Goia on fourteen signs that you are living in a society without a counterculture. This is true. It is, however, ironic that the article takes the form of a listicle consisting of screenshots of tweets. As Cory Doctorow says, the internet has become “five websites, each consisting of screenshots of text from the other four.”

Clive Thompson on the words he has never spelled correctly. Likewise. I’m a good speller but words with double consonants—especially pairs of double consonants—get me every time.

I believe the amount of anger in the world could be reduced if everyone had the freedom to take short naps as needed. And yeah that’s funny but I’m also serious.

It appears we have ourselves a holy fool skating along the boardwalk in San Diego: “Slomo: The man who skated right off the grid”

Patrick Rhone: “The first approximation of others is ourselves.” Along these same lines, the most (the only?) profound thing I have ever heard in a corporate training session is that we always, always fail to realize how differently other people see the world.

I picked up The Zombies on picture disc for Record Store Day. Meanwhile, at home, a squirrel is monitoring Rachel’s activities outside.

Plans for our family vacation this summer are starting to come together. I was initially trying to include too much and it was complicating the logistics. We’ve all talked it over and we’re settling on a couple of days in San Francisco, including a visit to Muir Woods, and then the rest of the week in Carmel and Monterey. Let me know if you have any suggestions.

My reading has also started honing in on California. I was already reading Robinson Jeffers’ poetry (who lived in Carmel and whose home I plan to visit). I’ve had High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica, and Visionary Experience in the Seventies on my to-read list for a long time and I’m finally getting around to it. The events covered by the book center on California. Finally, I decided I was long past due to read some John Muir. I picked up a collection of his writing titled Essential Muir: A Selection of John Muir’s Best (And Worst) Writings - which interested me because it attempts to balance out his status as a green icon with a frank admission of his racism.

It’s as if people respond better to a welcoming - as opposed to punitive - environment: “New York City Libraries End Late Fees, and the Treasures Roll In”. I think something similar is going on with two local Humane Society locations. One is perpetually struggling while the other has people stopping in just for the hell of it. The employees at the former are notoriously grouchy, charge fees for everything, and their location has all the charm of a medieval dungeon; the latter has a friendly staff and an open, airy, bright place where you can interact with the animals.

Last night I was walking through Donaldson Woods, one of the few remaining stands of old-growth forest remaining in Indiana, and thought to myself, “What’s new with pantheism?”

So once I regained cell phone reception, I found this book by Mary Jane Rubenstein. Also, this video of her is well worth a few minutes of your time: “Why We Need Pantheism”.

From David Cain: