stuff tagged with "community"

wound(s)

🔗 a linked post to whygodwhy.com » — originally shared here on 2025-10-10

I did go to urgent care. And while I was sitting there for an hour (accidentally bleeding on their carpet) I was reflecting on my rush to comfort the people around me for having to react to my injury, and remembered my one and only interaction with the school counselor in 6th grade. Back then elementary schools didn’t have counselors, psychologists, all that. 6th grade was the first time this concept was introduced, and I imagine his mandate was to meet with each kid at least once that year.

So I got called in, and I’m already semi-wondering if I’m in trouble for something, because I was always worried I was in trouble for something. He has me sit down and asks how I’m doing. I immediately have to hold back a flood tears. No one has ever asked me this. I don’t even know what’s happening in the moment, I just know that whatever emotions and feelings he accidentally scraped loose need to be locked down. My instinct was: I don’t want this guy I am meeting for the first time to have to worry about me or take care of me. So I just say “I’m fine, I’m fine, nothing to report, everything’s fine,” desperately trying not to leak tears all over myself, until he sends me back to class. And that was the last time I thought about that until now.

What’s that about one might wonder. Not me though.

When I got laid off last year¹, I vividly remember this sense of serenity, of total calmness, as I walked into work that morning.

I knew it was coming. And I knew it was gonna hurt my boss just as much as it hurt me.

During the entire brief meeting, I found myself genuinely asking him how he was feeling, how I could help him, despite the fact that I was the one who needed to figure out how I would feed my family.

I wonder if there’s a psychological term to describe that tendency. Like, a combination of altruism and shock.

Everyone I know is worried about work

🔗 a linked post to rojospinks.substack.com » — originally shared here on 2025-06-12

When you accept that the future’s security may not come only in the form of a steady ascent up a pay scale, something shifts. You may not quit your job, but you reorient your time and professional priorities around independent people and relationships, not prestigious companies or brands. You may adjust your lifestyle, outgoings, consumption patterns, and sources of meaning so that they aren’t so reliable on a certain compensation package. You see the value of expanding your abilities and skills beyond merely looking employable online.

At least some of the work here, I think, goes back to what I wrote in November: keeping a foot in both worlds, Here and There. If, like almost all of us, you still need a high-paying job to sustain your life, then think about the idea that it might not be there forever. What are you doing in preparation for that day? What skills are you building that will be useful to others? What lifestyle are you becoming accustomed to in the meantime? And what people are you helping and investing in until that day comes?

The Real-Life Diet of Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, Who Runs 100-Mile Races When He’s Not on Tour

🔗 a linked post to gq.com » — originally shared here on 2025-06-09

This burpees and sit-ups challenge is the major driver in my life right now¹.

I really can’t explain it other than I feel like I don’t suffer enough, so I’m fortunate enough to be in a position where I have to force myself to suffer.

Because suffering is important. Suffering means growth, new perspectives, a fresh beginning with a renewed sense of purpose.

And it’s wild to me that Ben Gibbard perfectly articulated why I used to love ultrarunning. When will science catch up and make a surgery that will replace my meniscus?

Oh, and this quote also got me to pop pretty hard:

When we were heading out on the first leg of this [Death Cab and Postal Service] tour in the fall, people were like, “How are you going to do that? You're going to be so exhausted.” I'm like, “Motherfucker, I run 50K on the weekends! I run 30 miles for fun!”

Code is a joy

🔗 a linked post to aramzs.xyz » — originally shared here on 2025-06-03

The thing is, each cycle, it happens again. New artists, new art, new weapons, new masters, new ways to crush joy into little boxes that can serve the status quo.

This time around, let us use the joy of creation to bury them. This time around, let's break the cycle the only possible way: by working for everyone, by bringing everyone along. By avoiding the fist, ignoring the invisible hand, and instead linking arms with each other to rise above.

With joy.

Eight Words Instead of Six

🔗 a linked post to staticmade.com » — originally shared here on 2025-05-30

When someone asks if you “need” something, there’s an implicit weight to that word. Need suggests dependency, maybe even weakness. It’s the difference between someone offering you food and asking if you’re hungry. One feels generous; the other feels like you have to admit to a deficit.

So I changed the question: “What’s the most important thing I can help you with this week?”

Noting this for the future.

This doesn’t just apply to the workplace, either. I’m in an era where my friends are having their second (or third+) child, and adding more burden on them by making them decide how I can help them with their burdens feels counterproductive.

Another case: my wife’s been busy with graduation at her school. Instead of asking her how I can help her deal with organizing the caps, gowns, diplomas, and tassels for 600+ students, I should have asked her what’s the most important thing I can help with.¹

The Who Cares Era

🔗 a linked post to dansinker.com » — originally shared here on 2025-05-28

In the Who Cares Era, the most radical thing you can do is care.

In a moment where machines churn out mediocrity, make something yourself. Make it imperfect. Make it rough. Just make it.

As the culture of the Who Cares Era grinds towards the lowest common denominator, support those that are making real things. Listen to something with your full attention. Watch something with your phone in the other room. Read an actual paper magazine or a book.

Be yourself.

Be imperfect.

Be human.

Care.

At 9,000 Feet

🔗 a linked post to vimeo.com » — originally shared here on 2025-03-29

Permaculture has three main ethics: care of people, care of the earth, and ‘fair share’, or re-investing surplus back into the first two.

We do a lot of caring for the earth, and what the interns have taught me is how we can actually care for people. And through doing that: find ways of re-investing in ourselves.

What to blog about

🔗 a linked post to simonwillison.net » — originally shared here on 2025-03-08

If you do a project, you should write about it.

I recommend adding “write about it” to your definition of “done” for anything that you build or create.

I disagree

🔗 a linked post to jamie.ideasasylum.com » — originally shared here on 2025-01-25

With you. With my wife. With my kids. With my parents. With my boss. With everyone I work with. With every other Rails developer. With everyone on BlueSky. With everyone.

At least, on some things.

And that’s ok.

I should print this entire article out and hand it to everybody I know. Required reading for anyone who is trying to understand how to articulate the meaning of empathy.

One thing I’ll add: I recently listened to a podcast where they talked about the significance of music played in a church. Basically, at any point prior to the last ~150 years, if you wanted to hear music, you either had to make it yourself or physically go somewhere to experience it.

There was no permanence about music other than maybe sheet music and your memory of it.

Any time prior to 2010, I loved hearing Ignition (Remix). I heard it again the other day and had a visceral reaction against it. I turned it off and moved on.

It’s okay that I used to like the song, and it’s okay that I do not want to listen to it now.

And it’s okay that if I do hear it, I can choose to remember the good times happening all around me with that song as a background track instead of the artist.

This part was also fantastic:

When I type rails c it sure doesn’t feel as if I’ve just given a big thumbs-up to whatever shit-take DHH has just published on his blog. I’m not over here running bundle install fascism.

The thing is, I don’t care about literally anything DHH has to say that isn’t 100% about Rails. I don’t care what sort of moment he’s having or which extreme view he’s decided to cosy up to today. I don’t care about his social commentary. I don’t follow his blog or subscribe to his feeds. I’m only aware of any of his views when those outraged by it decide to push it into my life. It’s those people who are giving him more power, and elevating his status, outside of the one narrow place where he might deserve it.

modernity is stupid: a rant not about politics

🔗 a linked post to phirephoenix.com » — originally shared here on 2024-11-25

Every way I turn I am having to scale back on my ambitions of what I can accomplish. I am simply not going to be able to maintain a suite of healthy and fulfilling friendships and nurture a loving marriage and raise a teenager I wasn’t expecting to raise and be great at all of my hobbies while also participating in direct action mutual aid and harassing my elected representatives for being shitheel cowards and working a full-time job and keeping up with new frontend frameworks in my spare time and I guess learning Rust because apparently that is the thing that will optimize my employability once AI has eaten my corner of the software world. I do not have enough time in the day. No one has enough time in the day! The thing about getting older is that it is a process of accumulation, you accumulate people and stuff and responsibilities and moral obligations, and you can only Marie Kondo yourself out of so much of it. My dentist gets on me about flossing and I want to be like, motherfucker when? I know it’s only a couple of minutes a day but do you know how few minutes we all have?? Did you know the earth is going up in flames??? And you want me to FLOSS???? And host my own read-later service????? Why is this the reality we live in??????

I put this as a reminder in my phone to share a couple weeks ago, and I keep re-reading it and lolsob’ing every time I do.

This perfectly encapsulates life in the 21st century. 11/10 rant, A+++, would read again.

The Cleanse

🔗 a linked post to randsinrepose.com » — originally shared here on 2024-11-16

I’m in the midst of a media cleanse. This started before the election when I canceled my Washington Post subscription. Jeff Bezos can do whatever he wants with the Washington Post, and he’s 100% correct that I don’t trust large media organizations.

After the election, I removed all news sources from Feedly except the Atlantic because I find their writing informative and compelling.

A friend calls this turtling. Pulling your head inside your shell and hiding. It’s quite comfortable here. With most of my free time, I’m leveling a dragon Holy Priest in World of Warcraft. #ama

I’ve slowly retreated from all social media with the exception of LinkedIn since around the time of the first Trump presidency.

Today, my only social presence is on LinkedIn, and even there, I’m not nearly as active as I used to be.

I think it’s mainly because when I would share an article like this one with my thoughts, I’d get next to no replies to it. There’s very little incentive for me to want to share things if I’m all but guaranteed no one will see it.

On here, though? I’ll at least get an occasional message from someone who liked an article I shared. In fact, it’s way more meaningful when I do, because it always leads to a deeper conversation.

Reading blog entries and books and long-form essays like those shared on The Atlantic are like eating salad compared to the fast food that people keep trying to cram down our throats in the form of incendiary attacks on people who are different from us.

I've missed Sam for a long time (or: Pick Your Battles)

🔗 a linked post to gkeenan.co » — originally shared here on 2024-10-08

I left that conversation admiring his conviction, as well as feeling overwhelming self-consciousness that I was—I dunno, too acquiescent? Hearing him speak so confidently—his assuredness ignited envy within me. Embers that smolder to this day. The older I get, the less confident I feel about anything. The less I want to fight. The less I want to debate. I used to burn so hot. I could argue online for hours. Now, the thought of it makes my skin crawl. It's not that I don't feel strongly, but I don't feel so strongly that I want to spend my days mired in anxiety and rage trying to make people see reason.

But Sam, the older he got, the more he seemed to dig in. Why was he so willing to fight? Why wasn't I?

A heart wrenching story about two cousins who slowly drift apart due to our ever-increasing disability to have civilized, polite disagreements with one another.

Getting older brings a certain sadness with realizing the things you once thought were true and unimpeachable were actually broken all along.

And while that may be a truism, it’s how we accept and appreciate the things we have while we have them which makes life beautiful and bearable.

After 34 Years, Someone Finally Beat Tetris

🔗 a linked post to m.youtube.com » — originally shared here on 2024-08-01

An internet friend sent this to me when it happened, saying, “this seems like something you’d watch.”

This was so delightful. I love these nerdy, competitive communities who all rally around joy.

This joy was noticeable when Fractal was live streaming his reaction to when Scuti got the crash. He didn’t look mad or disappointed. He looked proud, excited, and happy for his competitor.

Supremely feel good nerdy content right here.

TikTok Has Made Shoegaze Bigger Than Ever

🔗 a linked post to stereogum.com » — originally shared here on 2024-06-30

In early 2023, an 18-year-old college student decided to make her first-ever shoegaze song. Her friend sent her a “beat,” a grungy shoegaze instrumental crafted by the producer grayskies, and she spent two hours recording herself singing over it into her phone, using her everyday Apple earbuds as a microphone. No guitars were strummed, and no reverb pedals were stepped on. The next day, she titled the song “Your Face” and uploaded a snippet of it on TikTok, posting under the artist name Wisp. The video gained 100k views overnight, so she made another. That one got 600k views. She made another. That one quickly racked up 1 million views. Soon after, “Your Face” was being streamed millions of times on Spotify, and before Wisp even released a second song, she had signed a deal with Interscope Records.

Fast-forward eight months later and “Your Face” has been streamed nearly 30 million times on Spotify, almost twice as much as My Bloody Valentine’s classic Loveless closer “Soon.” The official sound snippet has been used in 126k TikTok videos, almost as many as Mitski’s runaway TikTok goliath “Washing Machine Heart” (174k videos). In the real world, Wisp sold-out her first-ever show in less than a half hour, and then her second just as quickly.

Consider this article a bit of a “shot, chaser” to my previous post.

I’ve been really into shoegaze lately. This article does a fantastic job of highlighting how zoomers used TikTok to give the genre a renaissance.

It's a good reminder that social media isn’t innately awful. It warms my heart to see the children using these incredible technologies to unite under the banner of ethereal and somewhat depressing tunes.

Go check out Duster's album Stratosphere.

This Freeway Sucks -- Let's Decommission It

🔗 a linked post to m.youtube.com » — originally shared here on 2024-05-08

If you’re here in the Twin Cities and are not aware of the history of I-94, this video is a great launching point to learn about it as well as to learn what groups like Our Streets are doing to imagine a better use of this space.

By the way, I was one of the participants of CityNerd’s event here in Minneapolis a month ago, and if you look closely in this video, you can see me in the front row of the session. I signed up too late to join in the bike ride though, which really bummed me out.

The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok

🔗 a linked post to wired.com » — originally shared here on 2024-04-01

Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

I call this enshittification, and it is a seemingly inevitable consequence arising from the combination of the ease of changing how a platform allocates value, combined with the nature of a "two-sided market," where a platform sits between buyers and sellers, hold each hostage to the other, raking off an ever-larger share of the value that passes between them.

If you’ve spent much time in the same tech bubbles as me this past year, you’ve probably come across this article already.

At a bare minimum, I’m sure you’ve seen the phrase “enshittification.”

Once you understand the concept, you do start to see the pattern unfold around you constantly. ¹

While there are countless examples of this natural platform decay within our virtual world, what about the physical world?

Is enshittification simply human nature, an inescapable fate for any collaborative endeavor above a certain size?

And if enshittification is not inevitable, what are the forces that lead to it, and how can we combat them when building our own communities?

TikTok and the Fall of the Social-Media Giants

🔗 a linked post to newyorker.com » — originally shared here on 2024-03-13

The era of social-media monopolies has been unhealthy for our collective digital existence. The Internet at its best should be weird, energetic, and exciting—featuring both homegrown idiosyncrasy and sudden trends that flash supernova-bright before exploding into the novel elements that spur future ideas and generate novel connections.

This exuberance was suppressed by the dominance of a small number of social-media networks that consolidated and controlled so much of online culture for so many years. Things will be better once this dominance wanes.

In the end, TikTok’s biggest legacy might be less about its current moment of world-conquering success, which will pass, and more about how, by forcing social-media giants like Facebook to chase its model, it will end up liberating the social Internet.

I saw Cal reference this article in his most recent post, and I’m glad he mentioned it because I must’ve missed it a couple years back.

I have been grossed out by TikTok’s blatant predatory behavior ever since hearing how their algorithms work.

Sure, most major social media companies have resorted to similar tactics, but there was something brazen about the way TikTok does it which feels egregious.

Cal’s analysis seems spot on to me. TikTok represents what happens when you’ve won the race to the bottom, or when the dog catches the tire.

As soon as you’ve got the thing, what else is there to do? Where else is there to go?

It’s all sizzle and no steak.

I’m sick of having my attention stolen from me under the guise of “connectedness.”¹ Real connections require compromise, empathy, and growth. Sure, I get some dopamine hits when I see a funny or enraging video, but I don’t seem to get much else.

An Unreasonable Investment

🔗 a linked post to randsinrepose.com » — originally shared here on 2024-01-07

You want some free leadership advice? You build yourself by building… by helping others. The selfless act of helping humans will teach you more about being a credible leader than any book.

Your career is not your job. It’s the humans you help along the way.

Will AI eliminate business?

🔗 a linked post to open.substack.com » — originally shared here on 2023-11-16

We also have an opportunity here to stop and ask ourselves what it truly means to be human, and what really matters to us in our own lives and work. Do we want to sit around being fed by robots or do we want to experience life and contribute to society in ways that are uniquely human, meaningful and rewarding?

I think we all know the answer to that question and so we need to explore how we can build lives that are rooted in the essence of what it means to be human and that people wouldn't want to replace with AI, even if it was technically possible.

When I look at the things I’ve used ChatGPT for in the past year, it tends to be one of these two categories:

1. A reference for something I’d like to know (e.g. the etymology of a phrase, learning a new skill, generate ideas for a project, etc.)
2. Doing stuff I don’t want to do myself (e.g. summarize meeting notes, write boilerplate code, debug tech problems, draw an icon)

I think most of us knowledge workers have stuff at our work that we don’t like to do, but it’s often that stuff which actually provides the value for the business.

What happens to an economy when businesses can use AI to derive that value that, to this date, only humans could provide?

And what happens to humans when we don’t have to perform meanial tasks anymore? How do we find meaning? How do we care for ourselves and each other?

The super-rich ‘preppers’ planning to save themselves from the apocalypse

🔗 a linked post to theguardian.com » — originally shared here on 2023-07-12

What I came to realise was that these men are actually the losers. The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where “winning” means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust.

Yet this Silicon Valley escapism – let’s call it The Mindset – encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind.

Humans got to where we are by a mix of individuals driven by a bootstrapper mentality and groups driven by a sense of cooperation.

I’d rather take my chances in gen pop than go at it alone in solitary confinement… but to each their own.

Compounding Optimism

🔗 a linked post to collabfund.com » — originally shared here on 2023-06-14

The core point of this article (incremental progress is vastly underestimated and compound growth is hard to fathom) is solid, but it’s this part that stuck with me:

If you view progress as being driven by the genius of individuals, of course it’s hard to imagine a future where things are dramatically better, because no individual is orders of magnitudes smarter than average.

But when you view it as one person coming up with a small idea, another person copying that idea and tweaking it a little, another taking that insight and manipulating it a bit, another yet taking that product and combining it with something else – incremental, tiny bits, little ideas mixing, joining, blending, mutating, and compounding together – it’s suddenly much more conceivable.

This must be why I’ve been so drawn to finding a community lately.

I find it exhausting and boring being stuck all by myself, chugging through a coding problem with no one to talk to.

Mutating and remixing ideas is what gives me energy. Taking someone’s thought and tweaking it to make it better in some meaningful way. It’s the part of my job I love the most.

Hope Beyond Rugged Individualism

🔗 a linked post to explorewhatworks.com » — originally shared here on 2023-04-17

Rugged individualism is still deeply enmeshed in American culture.

And its myth is one of our biggest exports to the rest of the world.

What could happen if we replaced the philosophy of rugged individualism with a philosophy of rugged cooperation? What if we swapped out the scripts we’ve learned in an individualist culture with the curiosity and care of a collaborative culture?

And how would your business or career shift if you approached it not as your best way to climb to the top in a flawed system but as a laboratory for experimenting with ruggedly cooperative systems?

The Inside Story of The Simpsons’ Remarkable Second Life

🔗 a linked post to gq.com » — originally shared here on 2023-02-20

Lest you think I’ve just been watching YouTube all night, here’s a really compelling article about The Simpsons.

This pull quote spoke to me:

“America has certainly turned into Springfield,” says Matt Selman, who is, along with Al Jean, the current showrunner. “I’m gonna generously say: Good people are easily misled. Terrifyingly easily misled. That’s always been in the DNA of the show, but now it’s in the DNA of America. It was a show about American groupthink, and how Americans are tricked—by advertising, by corporations, by religion, by all these other institutions that don’t have the best interests of people at heart.”

I’ve been rewatching clips from the first ten seasons sporadically over the past few months, and I think that’s an astute point that I hadn’t really considered.

The pro wrestling world has a term for fans who know quite a bit about the backstage politics which makes the show possible: a “smart mark” (with “mark” being a carny term for someone who can pull one over on).

But much like internet trolls, the only way you could ever “win” as a pro wrestling fan is by not engaging. By consuming the content, you’re still a mark (even if you are a smart one).

Perhaps the reason so many people are drawn to The Simpsons is similar: you feel like you’re in on the joke, even when you can’t escape the gravitational pull of the society which the show is lampooning.

How Olympians Embraced Mental Health After Biles Showed the Way

🔗 a linked post to nytimes.com » — originally shared here on 2022-12-03

The American ski racer Alice Merryweather sat out the 2020-21 season while confronting an eating disorder. She had gone to a training camp in September, hating the workouts and the time on the mountain, wondering where her love of skiing had gone. A doctor diagnosed her anorexia.

“I just kept pushing and I kept telling myself, ‘You’re supposed to love this, what’s wrong with you?’” Merryweather said. “I’m just trying to be the best athlete that I can be.”

Merryweather said that she began to open up to friends and teammates. Most knew someone else who had gone through a similar experience. “I realized, why do we not talk about this more?” Merryweather said. “I am not alone in this.”

The more I deal with my own pressure and anxieties, I wonder this same question myself.

Why don't we talk about this more?

Why is stoicism the preferred method for dealing with mental health struggles?

Why do we pretend that the things we want at the end of the day are different from most any other human?

And when will we learn that the only truly sustainable way to really get the things that you want (and the things that truly matter) is through cooperation?

Rewilding your attention

🔗 a linked post to uxdesign.cc » — originally shared here on 2022-09-01

Instead of crowding your attention with what’s already going viral on the intertubes, focus on the weird stuff. Hunt down the idiosyncratic posts and videos that people are publishing, oftentimes to tiny and niche audiences. It’s decidedly unviral culture — but it’s more likely to plant in your mind the seed of a rare, new idea.

Examples of idiosyncratic communities in which I’ve been trying to increase my participation:

• an offshoot of a online community I was very into back in the early 2000s
• a YouTube series where a guy rewatches old episodes of Monday Night Raw and Monday Nitro and compares them head-to-head, deciding who won each week of the Monday night wars
• a Reddit community who cares deeply about dates being expressed in the ISO-8601 date format
• another Reddit community that posts highlights from a mobile app football game that I am really into

‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative

🔗 a linked post to aidanmoher.com » — originally shared here on 2022-06-03

If women are “bitches” and “cunts” and “whores” and the people we’re killing are “gooks” and “japs” and “rag heads” then they aren’t really people, are they? It makes them easier to erase. Easier to kill. To disregard. To un-see.

But the moment we re-imagine the world as a buzzing hive of individuals with a variety of genders and complicated sexes and unique, passionate narratives that have yet to be told – it makes them harder to ignore. They are no longer, “women and cattle and slaves” but active players in their own stories.

And ours.

The Startup Chat 376: Learning to Ask for Help

🔗 a linked post to thestartupchat.com » — originally shared here on 2019-01-12

I really like how Steli and Hiten challenge the inner dialogue that we all have around asking other people for help. If you do your homework in advance and ask for considered advice or feedback, more often than not, people will be glad to offer it.

I heard on a different podcast a few weeks ago that people love to be asked for their advice and assistance, and in doing so, you're honoring them by making them feel valued and needed.

We can all use help from time to time, and if there's ever anything I can do to help you, dear reader, then please don't hesitate to ask.

The Joe Rogan Experience - Ted Nugent

🔗 a linked post to podcasts.joerogan.net » — originally shared here on 2018-08-10

I consider myself to be a podcast enthusiast, but I will be the first to admit that I have not listened to many of the most popular podcasts.

I've been a fan of Joe Rogan ever since NewsRadio, and I've seen some clips here and there of The Joe Rogan Experience, but I've never sat down and listened to an entire episode of his podcast. I had a feeling that his political views were more libertarian, but beyond knowing that he's a proponent of weed, I didn't know much about him on a personal level.

With that in mind, I went through the most recent episodes of his podcast to see if there was an episode that would help me learn what he was all about.

I can't be the only one in the world who thinks the political scene in 2018 is incredibly draining and makes me feel ultimately powerless. As soon as I saw that Ted Nugent was on an episode, my initial reaction was, "ugh, why the hell would I listen to this crap and subject myself to more of that same feeling?"

Before listening to this episode, here was the sum total knowledge of facts that I knew about Ted Nugent:

• He was a musician of some sort
• He wasn't popular in my Twitter bubble
• He tends to speak in brash, general, and oversimplified statements

In an effort to remove myself from my bubble, I thought, "you know what? A lot of folks seem to love Ted Nugent, so I'm gonna listen with an open mind and see what it's all about."

The episode was pretty long (over three hours), but if you've got the time, I highly encourage you to give it a listen. A few things I took away:

• I didn't realize Ted was all about hunting, and I noticed myself nodding my head in agreement during the discussions around being responsible with nature and treating the circle of life with respect.
• The discussion around the vegan lifestyle was also illuminating. I know a few folks who try to do the vegan thing, and it's interesting to look at it from the perspective of "look at the number of animals and plants you need to kill with pesticides in order to keep them off your land so your tofu can grow."
• The first hour or so is mostly Ted and Joe talking about how misunderstood hunters are. Of primary note is a part where Ted says that people think hunters are all fat, sloppy rednecks who go out and hunt down hundreds of animals at a time. He says that if non-hunters would actually talk to a hunter and see the world from their perspective, it would really make things better. I thought this was a profound point, which was made completely ironic by the next observation:
• No fewer than 50 times in this episode does Ted identify a group of people (liberals, politicians, the DNR, bureaucrats, anti-gun folks, illegal immigrants), caricaturize them, and berate them for their "ignorance."

Joe spent a lot of the episode silent, because Ted just would get on a rant and keep going. However, I think Joe did do a great job of holding Ted's feet to the fire a bit over some of his statements.

My favorite part of the episode was when Ted went to the bathroom, Joe monologued about how messed up the gun situation is in our country and that he doesn't have any answers for it. It was refreshing to hear that, since everyone seems to have an answer that wouldn't work in practice.

Like I said above, the episode was long, but I found it to be absolutely illuminating, and I will be seeking out more podcasts like this in order to make sure my perspective on life isn't being persuaded by only one type of voice.

If anything, the biggest takeaway from this episode for me was that what we need right now as a country is to find a way to come back to the table together. Social networks seem to thrive off of exploiting the worst in us as humans, and even though the first word in that phrase is "social", it has made us anything but.