All posts
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On addiction, crime, Buddhism, and exorcism.
If we want people to heal, we shouldn’t keep them inside bleak boxes.
abuse, addiction, agency, Buddhism, child molesters, Demon, demons, drug dealers, exorcism, free will, gang murder, Harvard commencement, hurt people hurt people, I Will Find You, incarceration, J.K. Rowling, jail, Jason Shiga, Joanna Conners, liberation rite, mythology, nurture, parenting, penitence, poverty, prison, prison rape, Rowling, sex offenders, solitary, Tibetan mythology, trauma
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On goals and Jack Gilbert’s “Failing and Falling.”
We either fail to reach our goals … or they fail us. Striving is fine, but we should enjoy the process of life.
Adam Alter, beauty, death, exercise, Facebook, Failing and Falling, fulfillment, goal-oriented, goals, growth, Icarus, Instagram, Irresistible, Jack Gilbert, Jack Vance, jail poetry, meaning of life, Pattiann Rogers, poetry, prison poetry, process, process-oriented, rec yard, tech companies, The Demon Princes, The Greatest Grandeur, The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, unhappiness, University of Phoenix, withdrawal
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On Edward Dolnick’s ‘The Seeds of Life’ and artificial wombs.
Among the smooth guardian frogs of Borneo, females croon to the males, attempting to woo a mate. This is abnormal for frogs: usually females are serenaded. But males of this species are the most devoted parents – they guard the fertilized eggs and carry tadpoles from pond to pond after they hatch. Whereas the females…
creator gods, Drona, Edward Dolnick, Egyptian mythology, evolution, feminism, Hindu mythology, Indian mythology, mate choice, mating practices, mythology, myths, parental effort, paterogenesis, pregnancy, semen, smooth guardian frogs, The Seeds of Life, unilateral reproduction, Wendy Doniger, Women Androgynes and Other Mythical Beasts
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On the Silk Road, Nick Bilton’s ‘American Kingpin,’ and the difference between being clever and being wise.
If someone is clever enough to build a billion-dollar website, should that person also get to decide who lives or dies?
addiction, American Kingpin, anarchist, anarchy, barter, clever, commissary, Dread Pirate Roberts, FBI, H, heroin, honey buns, intelligence, jail, jail bartering, jail economy, kinesthetic learners, libertarian, libertarianism, Nick Bilton, opiates, prison, property rights, Ross Ulbricht, spoons, The Silk Road, types of intelligence, Ulbricht, Variety Jones, violence, War on Drugs, wisdom, withdrawal
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On Liu Xiaobo, monster hunter.
“If you be good and grow strong, you can help your father fight the monsters.”
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On prosecution.
Prosecutors can wield their tough reputations to push problems elsewhere … but that’s not the same as fixing them.
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On Finn Murphy’s “The Long Haul” and our dying towns
U.S. economic inequality has caused much of the country to crumble … but the devastation won’t *stay* where it started.
A Trucker’s Tales of Life on the Road, addiction, ambulance fees, automation, Bloomington, capitalism, college town, drug addiction, drug use, drugs, Empire State, fentanyl, Finn Murphy, Flying J, free markets, government intervention, guaranteed basic income, heartless in the heartland, heroin, highways, homelessness, hospitalization, Indiana, inequality, Jason Shiga, marijuana, meth, meth labs, methamphetamine, opiates, overdose, poverty, property rights, public works program, Robert Reich, Saving Capitalism, seeing America, shooting up, spice, synthetic marijuana, The Long Haul, traveling by bus, unemployment, unhoused
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On scrutiny.
Nobody’s perfect — if you look hard enough, you will always find flaws. The trick is knowing not to diagnose those flaws as “disease” or signs of criminality.
age-related disease, attention, cancer, cell division, Craig Venter, DNA, DNA replication, greed, greedy doctors, Health Nucleus, image analysis, information inequality, John Steinbeck, olfaction, physical exam, physicals, polymerase, pre-cancer, pre-criminals, prejudice, preschool suspension, school to prison pipeline, sensory overload, The Pearl, tumor
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On idle time, coincidence, and Vivek Shanbhag’s ‘Ghachar Ghochar.’
An idle mind often reads supernatural portent into every coincidence.
45, Annie Jacobsen, atheists in foxholes, author as God, CIA, coincidence, conspiracy, conspiracy theory, curse, Donald Trump, foreshadowing, fraud, germination of supernatural belief, Ghachar Ghochar, hewn stone, idle, idle mind, jubilee, lost car keys, Magic, numerology, Phenomena, PotUS, precognition, prophecy, Puharich, science, speculation, Srinath Perur, statistical manipulation, statistical significance, supernatural, Trump, Vivek Shanbhag, wealth
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On changing a life.
We can’t be *forced* to change … & sometimes it takes a jolt to realize that we want to.
AA, addiction, Alcoholics Anonymous, Becoming Ms. Burton, Cari Lynn, drug use, drugs, getting sober, halfway houses, heroin, I Felt Your Presence in the Absence of Time, incarceration, jail, jail dormitory, John-Michael Bloomquist, junk, Max E., meth, methamphetamine, Monster House Press, New Leaf, New Leaf New Life, opiates, Poems from the Jail Dorm, poetry, prison poetry, recovery, rehab, release from prison, San Diego 1985, shame, sober, Susan Burton, teaching, teaching in jail
Frank Brown Cloud 