Millions of people are unable to work because of a disability, but [that has as much to do with the changing nature of work as with the disabilities themselves](https://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/490/transcript):
> When I said things like, what about a job where you don’t have to lift people, or a job where you don’t have to use your shoulder or where you don’t have to stand all night long, or just simply, have you thought about other jobs that you could do, people gave me such bewildered looks. It was as if I was asking well, how come you didn’t consider becoming an astronaut…
> Being poorly educated in a rotten place, that in and of itself has become a disability. This is a new reality. This gap between workers who are fit for the US economy and millions of workers who are increasingly not. And it’s a change that’s spreading to towns and cities that have thrived in the American economy.
It’s sadly ironic that while tech workers are proud about [the health benefits of their new standing desks](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-b-trafecanty/the-benefits-and-consider_b_9996782.html), people with real health issues can’t get jobs that allow them to sit.
I thought I’d posted about this before, but I’ve always been intrigued by the idea of the [“B-Theory” of time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-theory_of_time), and [world lines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_line), and the possibility of our actions in the present forming something visible outside of time. So here’s a post that includes all those words that I can add to when I find new stuff.
- The Growing Block universe is another formulation: “The present is an objective property, to be compared with a moving spotlight. By the passage of time more of the world comes into being; therefore, the block universe is said to be growing. The growth of the block is supposed to happen in the present, a very thin slice of spacetime, where more of spacetime is continually coming into being.”
[
](
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20784)
“Pretty good. The ending was a bit predictable.”- [New Yorker](
http://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/a20784)
An evolving list:
* What exactly *is* the decision we need to make?
* Who is responsible for making the final decision?
* When must we decide?
* Is this even important enough to act on now?
* Do we have good enough options?
* Do we have the right information about those options (e.g. their effects)?
Social connection is more important than many other resources in surviving crises:
>Throughout the city, the variable that best explained the pattern of mortality during the Chicago heat wave was what people in my discipline call social infrastructure. Places with active commercial corridors, a variety of public spaces, local institutions, decent sidewalks, and community organizations fared well in the disaster. More socially barren places did not. Turns out neighborhood conditions that isolate people from each other on a good day can, on a really bad day, become lethal.
Also: The biggest threat facing middle-aged men is loneliness.
Carson tonight, from under a towel:
> Dad, I can’t see anything! I can only see everything.
He must have been reading [William Blake](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3296) and [Wallace Stevens](http://bob.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=5547).
Love [this framework from Charley Scandlyn on how to apologize](https://alldayeverywhere.com/2015/01/21/six-steps-to-sorry):
> 1. I did this (Acknowledgement)
2. It was wrong (Understanding)
3. I’m sorry (Remorse)
4. Please forgive me (Request)
5. I commit to new behavior (Repentance)
6. I will do the work I need to do to repair the damage I have caused (Restoration)
One of my favorites from the new SFMOMA exhibition, [Sohei Nishino’s Diorama Map of London](https://www.sfmoma.org/exhibition/new-work-sohei-nishino/):
So much for futurism?
They constantly try to escape
From the darkness outside and within
By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.
But the man that is shall shadow
The man that pretends to be.
– [T.S. Eliot](http://www.tech-samaritan.org/blog/2010/06/16/choruses-from-the-rock-t-s-eliot)
> In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;
But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four hills and a cloud.
– [Wallace Stevens](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/surface-things)
Her [obituary in The Economist](http://www.economist.com/news/obituary/21714964-foreign-correspondent-was-105-obituary-clare-hollingworth-died-january-10th) reads like one of [those Dos Equis commercials](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3VIJjdjbxw):
> She gained the first interview with the last Shah of Iran in 1941; after his fall in 1979, he said he would speak only to her…she commandeered a British consulate car and drove into Germany from Poland. A gust of wind lifted a roadside hessian screen, revealing Hitler’s army, mustered for the invasion…Aged nearly 80, she was seen climbing a lamppost to gain a better look at the crackdown in Tiananmen Square.
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