Creatures, TortoiseCVS, TheyWorkForYou, WhatDoTheyKnow, Memrise.
I mostly post about technical and open source stuff here. Find me over on Twitter for mind and post-rationalist stuff: https://twitter.com/frabcus
| Website | https://www.flourish.org |
Land Talks #5 is soon! I'm running another evening of lightning talks about land policy.
This one's got quirky stuff about the impact of driverless cars on land, and crunchy stuff about how liberalising planning can reduce trust and cause more problems.
Come along!
Anyone do urban gaming, like this
Excited to announce we're running a second season of Land Talks! Evenings of lightning talks in London about radical land policy.
Come along to the first one two week's tomorrow (Monday):
https://luma.com/ba8uvclo
Or follow us on Luma for updates as we announce speakers for all of them!
Pleased with Vynn and my new episode of our podcast "Imagine an apple".
We talk with Jess - who organises JessCamp where Vynn and I met! - about the inner experience of meditation.
I think meditation is a particular area where more comparison to the variety of normal experience is important. Everyone's mental experience before they meditate is so different, it makes lots of the conversations confused esp. about early stages.
Find in any podcast app or at https://zencastr.com/z/gbMzgVr6
What’s the detail of the inner experience of meditating? What do you see while body scanning? How does noticing more details of inner experience alter your beliefs about your mind? Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”! Today, Vynn and Francis chat with meditator Jess (also known as Frideswyth on Twitter) about the granular detail of her attention and visual imagery while meditating. Timestamps: 02:07 Why Jess started meditating 08:24 Body scanning 17:28 Visual imagery while body scanning 22:28 Imagery and inner voice every day 25:16 Horror movies 29:36 Phenomenology of emotion 32:13 Changes due to meditation 36:19 Koaning 40:34 "First awakening" 49:09 Thinking nothing 53:15 Meditation is phenomenology 55:04 Each aspect of mind is already missing in someone Show Links: * The Power of Now [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Power_of_Now] - by Eckhart Tolle * Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha [https://www.mctb.org/] - by Daniel Ingram * Liberalis Events [http://www.liberalis.events/] - for more about JessCamp * Tales For The New Future [https://frideswyth.wordpress.com/] - Jess’ blog * @frideswyth [https://x.com/frideswyth] - Jess’ Twitter Contact Details: Please follow us, get in touch, tell us about your inner experiences! Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Email: [email protected] Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]
The following is much more personal than I usually choose to be on this account, but I am sure some of you would like to know it, sad as it is.
My friend and colleague @mhl20 died last night after a short illness. Characteristically he announced the news of his illness on his blog, illustrated with a relevant graph. https://longair.net/blog/2026/01/03/health-update/
Although his death was announced in a comment on that blog post this morning, I suspect many of his friends have not yet heard of it.
I have no additional information not mentioned here, but I know many of you will share my sadness at this tragic turn of events.
I've had fun running Land Talks this year, and we're ending it with a pub quiz.
If you're in London two weeks on Tuesday, and fancy a more relaxing and social evening, with people who want to improve Britain's land system, and you like tenuously land-linked quizzes...
Hope to see you there!
Really happy to interview @michaelashcroft.com on my podcast "Imagine an apple" about the inner experience of Alexander Technique.
What is it like to experience “open awareness”? What’s the difference between doing and non-doing?
Really enjoyed this one!
What is it like to experience “open awareness”? What’s the difference between doing and non-doing? What is “thinking”? Welcome to another episode of “Imagine an apple”. In this episode, Vynn and Francis talk with Michael Ashcroft about what it is like to do Alexander Technique, an awareness-based skill which he teaches. Twitter: @imagine_apple [https://twitter.com/imagine_apple] @SurenVynn [https://twitter.com/SurenVynn] @frabcus [https://twitter.com/frabcus] Timestamps: 01:00 Michael’s introduction to Alexander Technique 03:00 The origins of Alexander Technique 05:32 Internal Awareness 05:40 Michael Imagines an Apple! 06:44 How does AT make people aware of their awareness? 08:01 Coming back to the world 09:15 Being in the world 11:06 Attention in the world 12:10 Flow states 14:25 Non-doing 17:39 Habitual responding and not responding 19:29 Actively not doing vs just not doing 20:28 Mind and body are one process—Bodymind 23:20 Inhibition 24:26 Practice 26:20 Feeling “it” for the first time 27:31 Letting go of control 28:42 Meditation and Alexander Technique 34:15 Exercises in Alexander Technique 37:34 Thinking 39:54 What do you mean by thinking? 41:52 Conceptual thinking and subconscious thinking 43:10 Conscious cognition and nonconscious cognition 44:20 Parallel processing 45:44 Thoughts, feelings, IFS parts 47:14 AT mode 24/7 50:30 Technology and contracted awareness 52:15 Wrapping up 54:28 Tips about Alexander Technique 55:52 Francis’ experience of AT Links: * South Bank Alexander Centre [https://www.alexandercentre.co.uk/] - school Michael first went to * ”Unthought” [https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo25861765.html] - book by N Katherine Hayles * Expanding Awareness [https://expandingawareness.org/] - Michael’s Alexander Technique site * Fundamentals of Alexander Technique [https://expandingawareness.org/courses/] - Michael’s beginner course * Michael’s YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/c/MichaelAshcroft0/videos] * @m_ashcroft [https://x.com/m_ashcroft] on Twitter * Michael Ashcroft [https://michaelashcroft.com/] - personal website Theme written, performed and recorded by @MJPiercello [https://twitter.com/MJPiercello]
Love the "myths about Freesom of Information" section that's (new?) on the WhatDoTheyKnow website.
If you don't know about getting information from public bodies, it explains how simple it is, and the catches there are, very clearly.
@frabcus I mean not that hot in that I 100% agree with you, she says on mastodon :P
I do think we need to be careful throwing baby out with bathwater. I really like what google+ did with circles and I think that # are a way we created same mech on twt back in the day.
That being said with dead internet ect... I do think we may want to put a bit more smarts in places use good tooling which sometime will include recco algos but I think bsky has good ideas on this in theory not in practice
robinhouston
Claire Blackshaw