forsmallcreatures-blog

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After all, what do you really want? Not perfection; you are already perfect. What you seek is to express in action what you are. For this you have a body and a mind. Take them in hand and make them serve you.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj (via lazyyogi)

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Antlers by Sirli Raitma

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Philip Seymour Hoffman and the Tragedy of Addiction

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My mother works so hard And for bread she needs some lard. She bakes the bread. And makes the bed. And when she’s threw She feels she’s dayd.

Two poems David Foster Wallace wrote during elementary school.

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As someone who has been working on naming a project, I appreciate the fact that FiftyThree addressed this and their concerns here.

EVERY STORY HAS A NAME

FiftyThree’s story began with Paper. What began with three guys building an app out of a New York City apartment has gone on to become one of the most celebrated applications on iOS, defining mobile creativity and winning Apple’s 2012 iPad App of the Year. Paper embodied our belief that technology should support the human need to create. It’s a beautifully simple app that lets anyone capture their ideas and share them over the web. For millions of creators around the world, Paper is where they call home for their ideas—100 million, in fact, over the last two years. Paper has come to represent endless creative potential, and we couldn’t have asked for a better beginning to our story.

Stories have twists.

So it came as a surprise when we learned on January 30th with everyone else that Facebook was announcing an app with the same name—Paper. Not only were we confused but so were our customers (twitter) and press (1,2,3,4). Was this the same Paper? Nope. Had FiftyThree been acquired? Definitely not. Then, what’s going on?

We reached out to Facebook about the confusion their app was creating, and they apologized for not contacting us sooner. But an earnest apology should come with a remedy.

Stories reveal character.

There’s a simple fix here. We think Facebook can apply the same degree of thought they put into the app into building a brand name of their own. An app about stories shouldn’t start with someone else’s story. Facebook should stop using our brand name.

On a personal level we have many ties to Facebook. Many friends, former students and colleagues are doing good work at Facebook. One of Facebook’s board members is an investor in FiftyThree. We’re a Facebook developer, and Paper supports sharing to Facebook where close to 500,000 original pages have been shared. Connections run deep.

What will Facebook’s story be? Will they be the corporate giant who bullies their developers? Or be agile, recognize a mistake, and fix it? Is it “Move fast and break things” or “Move fast and make things”?

We’re all storytellers. And we show care for each other by caring for our stories. Thanks for supporting us.

Georg Petschnigg Co-Founder and CEO FiftyThree

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Michael White, drawing on the work of Barbara Myerhoff, has proposed the metaphor of membership for examining the relationships that shape our perceptions, intentions, and actions. He describes how knowledge arises in communities of knowers; how different things are...

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Photo by Kristine Langelund/MSF

In the Philippines: “I asked children to draw a picture of their community before and after the typhoon, and another as they would like it to be when it has been rebuilt. Then we make the paper into a boat and set it out to sail on the sea with a wish…Where I am from in Brazil, this is something that we do at this time of year, hoping that the New Year will bring good things to everyone.” -Ana Cecilia Weintraub, MSF psychologist  Read more: http://bit.ly/1i4GtqB

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If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

Buddha (via lazyyogi)

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Own your shit, Tumblr users. I occasionally click through to the people that like or comment on posts and I see a lot of “here’s my shitty drawings” or “I made this awful music” and so on. Stop it. You made that shit, you’re probably into that shit, be into that shit. Don’t...

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And why should you feel anger at the world? As if the world would notice!

"Meditations" by Marcus Aurelius (via pluribusmundi-unusanima)

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We’re all just walking each other home.

Ram Dass (via lazyyogi)

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Stress is a daily hindrance for many people. And while some distract themselves through both diversionary vices such as Television and productive vices such as exercise, often times the stress comes back the moment those activities are over. It’s not because they are unhealthy or counterproductive, but because they don’t address the underlying issue.

Unknown to many, stress is the cause of countless health-related issues: from lowering the immune system to increasing the pain of previously existing conditions. One of the recent meditation studies3 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison goes as far as showing a link between meditation and boosted immune function. In the study, 149 individuals were divided into three groups. One group practiced meditation, the other exercised, and the last group did nothing. The study’s results were nothing short of extraordinary.

Those who meditated were absent for 76% fewer days of work than the control group while exercisers only 48% fewer. Additionally, the duration of illness experiences were reduced by 50% for people who meditated and only 40% for the exercise group. Therefore the study not only demonstrated the preventative aspect of meditation but also its effectiveness as treatment.

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“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”~ Alan Watts

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For the tenth day of 12 Days of Holiday Bullshit we donated everybody’s money to DonorsChoose.org. Here’s how we spent it.

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Carl Sagan, who died on December 20, 1996, on the meaning of life

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A couple months ago, this “gift guide for men” emailed us and asked if we would write a forward to their stupid book. We wrote them back with a draft of a forward that trolled them and sent it back, expecting that to be the end of it.

But much to our surprise, today we got a box of gift guides for men with our troll intro printed in each one. The cover even advertises, “WITH A FORWARD BY THE CREATORS OF CARDS AGAINST HUMANITY.”

Here’s the intro that they actually printed:

We, creators of popular-for-men party game Cards Against Humanity, designed our game with one purpose: to restore manliness to the world. In the centuries since Lady Montagu first christened man “the fairer sex,” people have lost sight of the four cardinal virtues of manhood: Piety, Purity, Submission, and Domesticity. In decades past, choosing the proper gift for a man was a delicate dance of rewarding these virtues, not the consumerist farce it has become today.

This year, the Cards Against Humanity team made an important discovery. Digging through the archive of Men’s Studies at the University of Chicago, we found a pamphlet entitled A Primer on Buying Gifts for Men, written in 1882 by John Shingley. The following excerpt of do’s and dont’s is a snapshot of manhood at its purest, and a cogent argument for the role of gift-giving in the foundation of the virtuous family:

Avoid potentially shocking gifts. Men are frail and quick to blush. Gifts such as noisemakers, personal type-writers, and putties may embarrass the recipient or send him into a faint.

Prefer the gift that is instructive and useful, e.g. some yarn, a block of wood, earmuffs to keep the Devil out. It may be tempting to flatter your delicate moonflower with brooches and filigreed cameos, but hold firm to your values! You must guide his moral development as the falconer guides the kestrel’s gyre. 

Avoid gifts that promote idleness or whimsy. Men are prone to weak affectations and dispositions of mind. Sweets are inadvisable in this regard, as are marbles, bilbo catchers, leather balls, and quoits.

Do not buy him books! Men are incapable of logic and not amenable to reason.

There’s no such thing as too many aprons. Trying on that muslin smock is the perfect excuse to spend more time at stove and table, where a man’s true gifts unwrap themselves. 

There’s more to man’s world than the kitchen. There’s also the scullery, the pantry, and the nursery. As the “angel of the house,” your darling cherub is sure to thrill at any appliance that assists him in the holy task of keeping house and home. 

Ultimately, your happiness is his happiness. Buy yourself a gift instead, and give your man the joy of seeing you smile.

Homes may no longer have sculleries, and bilbo catchers may have been outlawed years ago, but the sentiment remains the same. The battle for man’s soul rages on, and the chief weapon is gift-giving. Though we at Cards Against Humanity haven’t gotten around to reading Gifts for Men, we’re sure that it’s a fitting successor to John Shingley’s Primer. We’d like to think that the book is not only edifying, but practical. Every minute you save on choosing a gift for your man is a minute you can spend writing him poetry, massaging his earlobes, and singing hymns over his sweetly sleeping body.