When I was in college, I remember massive protests on my campus against the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq, and at the time I remembered thinking that the protests were rather pointless; the decision had already been made, and there was no way to undo it. The Congress had already approved an authorization for use of military force so broad that it arguably covered...
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Until I consciously decided to stop using my smartphone to keep myself amused when I became bored, I didn't realize just how much of my life consists of waiting. Waiting in line, or waiting for a bus, or waiting until something opens so I can enter. I can't clearly remember now what it felt like to be without a smartphone and simply wait for things...
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Some time ago I came to the conclusion that modern life as currently structured is a poisonous thing. The inter-connectedness made possible by technology allows us to maintain the illusion of being sociable without actually going through the messy, sometimes ugly, process of sociability. I don't know whether it warps us or not, but I felt that it warped me by allowing me to pretend...
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I'm non-monogamous, in a sense. My early experiences with polyamory were, fundamentally, rationalizations for my own selfish behavior; I didn't know what I wanted because I hadn't done the hard work of thinking about it, and as a result I used non-monogamy as an excuse to avoid committing to someone out of fear that I would commit to the wrong person. As I've grown up...
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One of my odd pleasures is revisiting places from my past, to see if they still exist and, if so, to see how they've changed, if at all. The best example of this is that, when I was in my last year of college, I had a girlfriend who had a lovely little apartment in West Campus in Austin. Even though the relationship didn't work...
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