Klawock, Alaska

Last Updated on Dec 13 2019, 10:53 am AKST

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Caveat: Poem #1230 2019-12-13
Caveat: Tree #344 2019-12-12
Caveat: Poem #1229 2019-12-12
Caveat: Tree #343 2019-12-11
Caveat: Train Canon 2019-12-11
Caveat: Poem #1228 2019-12-11
Caveat: Tree #342 2019-12-10
Caveat: Poem #1227 2019-12-10

He aquí los pensamientos aleatorios de un epistemólogo andante.
피할수 없는 고통이라면 차라리 즐겨라
As of June, 2013, I have assumed a new identity: I am a cancer survivor. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance: it is the work only of some dependent, inferior deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, from the first impulse and active force which it received from him.
- David Hume, in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, 1779
A blog, in the end, is really not so different from an inscription on a bone: I was here, it declares to no one in particular. Don't forget that.
- Justin E. H. Smith
재미없으면 보상해드립니다!
All things are enchained with one another, bound together by love.
- Nietzsche [really!]
Leviticus 19:33-34
Business is a good game - lots of competition and minimum of rules. You keep score with money.
- Nolan Bushnell
What if we're not conscious, we just think we are?
Donc, si Dieu existait, il n’y aurait pour lui qu’un seul moyen de servir la liberté humaine, ce serait de cesser d’exister.
- Mikhail Bakunin
Solvitur ambulando.
Only thoughts reached by walking have value.
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Los Angeles is to America what America is to the world.
- someone on the internet
Art is not a projection of self, it is an utterly alternate self.
Loneliness. Did ya know that loneliness will kill you deader than a .357 Magnum? Did ya know that?
- Andrew Sims (Rapper)
Sometimes I wonder why I even bother to soliloquize. Where was I?
- the villain Heinz Doofenshmirtz, in the cartoon Phineas and Ferb.
Is seer periculeus voor de onbekende, om aan te doen.
- Hendrick Hamel
Liberty and justice for all
Offer not available in some areas
Prices subject to change
- internet meme
I will buy a 32 foot ladder at home depot, and I will make America pay for it.
- a Mexican
Psalms 51:17
Do unto others 20% better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error.
- Linus Pauling
I dream of a world where chickens can cross the road without having their motives questioned.
여유있는 태도를 잃어서는 안 된다
Blogging online since 1965

My name is Jared Way. I was born in rural Far Northern California, and became an "adoptive" Minnesotan. I have lived in many other places: Mexico City, Philadelphia, Valdivia (Chile), Los Angeles. And for 11 years, I was an expatriate living in South Korea. In the summer of 2018, I made another huge change, and relocated to Southeast Alaska, which is my uncle's home.
For many years I was a database programmer, with a background in Linguistics and Spanish Literature. Then in Korea, I worked as an EFL (English as a Foreign Language) teacher.
In June, 2013, while I was in Ilsan in South Korea, I was diagnosed with cancer, and underwent successful treatment. That changed my life pretty radically.
Currently, you could say I'm "between jobs," somewhat caretaking my uncle (to the extent he tolerates that) and getting adapted to life in rural Alaska after so many years as an urban dweller.
These bloggings, then, have been my random jottings on the subject of my mostly pleasant life among the Quasi-Confucian Cyber-Industrial Paleolithic Peninsulites of Lower Far Siberia.
I started this blog before I even had the idea of going to Korea (first entry: Caveat: And lo...). So this is not meant to be a blog about Korea, by any stretch of the imagination. But life in Korea, and Korean language and culture, inevitably have come to play a central role in this blog's current incarnation.
Basically, this blog is a newsletter for the voices in my head. It keeps everyone on the same page: it has become a sort of aide-mémoire.
For a more detailed reflection on why I'm blogging, you can look at this old post: What this blog is, and isn't.
If you're curious about me, there is a great deal of me here. I believe in what I call "opaque transparency" - you can learn almost everything about me if you want, but it's not immediately easy to find.
A distillation of my personal philosophy (at least on good days):
I have made the realization that happiness is not a mental state. It is not something that is given to you, or that you find, or that you can lose, or that can be taken from you. Happiness is something that you do. And like most things that you do, it is volitional. You can choose to do happiness, or not. You have complete freedom with respect to the matter.
"Ethical joy is the correlate of speculative affirmation." - Gilles Deleuze (writing about Spinoza).

Like most people, I spend a lot of time online, although I try to limit it somewhat. Here is a somewhat-annotated list of the "places" where I spend time online.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Knowledge and News
- I spend about half of all my time online reading Wikipedia. It's why I know stuff.
- I get most of my world news from Minnesota Public Radio which includes NPR, BBC and CBC, depending on when I listen.
- Korean news: 네이버 뉴스
- Korean news in English, with a conservative bias thrown in for free: The Korea Herald.
- I use the Korean dictionary many times every day: Daum 영어사전.
- Humor and Tech News: The Register.
- Understanding our postmodern world: Television Tropes.
"Social Media"
- I don't really "do" social media. I have a membership at Facebookland but I never log in there. I don't like it.
- I have a membership at The Youtubes but I mostly use it for work. I also listen to music on youtube, frequently - I prefer it to typical streaming services, for example.
Humor and Cat Videos
- Cat videos and other internet novelties: Laughing Squid.
- I have no idea why, but I enjoy legal humor at Lowering the Bar
A Diversity of Blogs - I read these a lot.
- Economic and centrist politics: Marginal Revolution.
- "Rationalism" and vaguely libertarian politics: Slate Star Codex.
- Liberal Politics: Lawyers, Guns, Money.
- Some linguists: Language Log.
- Philosophy (with liberal political slant): Crooked Timber.
- Philosophy (with libertarian political slant): Bleeding Heart Libertarians.
- Korean culture: Ask a Korean.
- Excellent writing: Justin Erik Halldór Smith. Philosophy, random linguistic and political observations, expat life of a Californian of my generation.
- More excellent writing: Blogarach. This is the reincarnation of IOZ, which is referenced in many of my blog posts from years ago.
- Design history and bibliophilic pursuits: Ptak.
- Amateur visual arts: DeviantArt.
- Semiotics: New Savanna.
Blogs of people I actually know
- Yuletide - a blog.
Geofiction - this has evolved into a significant "hobby" for me. I like to draw imaginary maps, and there is a website that has enabled this vice.
- I worked as a volunteer administrator for the site OpenGeofiction on and off for a few years. I created (but no longer maintain) the site's main wiki page: OGF Wiki. I am not currently working as administrator but I remain active on the site.
- The above work has required my becoming an expert in the Openstreetmap system. Openstreetmap is an attempt do for online maps what wikipedia has done for encyclopedias. I have considered becoming an openstreetmap contributor, but I feel that my current location in Korea hinders that, since I don't have a good grasp Korean cartographic naming conventions.
- Starting in April, 2018, I decided somewhat capriciously to build my own "OGF stack" on my own server. This was not because I intended to abandon the OGF site, but rather because I wanted to better understand the whole architecture and all its parts. I built a wiki on the Mediawiki platform (the same as wikipedia). This wiki has no content. I built a map tileserver and geospatial database, which contains a very low resolution upload of an imaginary planet called Rahet. And I built a wordpress blog, which is a separate, low-frequency blog intended to focus on my geofictional pursuits rather than this more personalized, general purpose blog. All of these things can be found integrated together on my rent-a-server, here: geofictician.net
TEFL - my "profession," such as it is.
- Online English Grammar reference Grammarist. Useful for settling disputes over grammar.
- I get ideas for debate topics from debate.org and from Intelligence Squared - Debates.