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431: I sang every day for two months, unplugged (still going)

Ep. 431

What do you do if you use less power? No social media? No listening to music? No TV?

Sound like a fate worse than death?

Inspired by guests on my podcast who find amazing activities to live by their environmental values, I committed to turning off all my electronics to sing every day. I've almost never sung in my life beyond Happy Birthday and The Star Spangled Banner so I'm mortified to play my remedial results live, but I love it. I know I'll keep going so today's recording isn't the end.

I recorded singing a couple songs at the beginning. to record I opened the laptop, all other times I sang with the power off. At night I had to open the door to the hallway to read the words until I started singing outside during my daily walks picking up litter.

So far I've spent zero dollars on it. The first two weeks I sang fifteen minutes a day. Later I shifted to at least one song, so a few minutes a day.

Today's episode starts with my describing the experience and a few stories, then with neither pride nor shame, I play the "before" recording, then the "after."

The track listing:

Before

  • 14:42 The Beatles, Across the Universe
  • 19:30 The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps

After

  • 22:40 The Beatles, Across the Universe
  • 26:28 The Beatles, While My Guitar Gently Weeps
  • 28:44 John Denver, I'm Leaving on a Jet Plane
  • 31:26 Joni Mitchell, Big Yellow Taxi
  • 33:01 Spandau Ballet, True
  • 36:12 The Cure, Pictures of You
  • 38:54 Earth, Wind, and Fire, September
  • 42:19 Woody Guthrie, This Land Is Your Land

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Friday, May 19, 2023

686: Gautam Mukunda, part 1.5: Is Technology Necessarily Good?

Ep. 686
In the first part of our conversation, we start by reviewing Gautam's commitment to sailing, which seemed and still seems a good idea to him. but maybe too much for now. We revisit what motivated him and come up with a new commitment.The second part gets more exciting. Gautam expresses that we need to develop technology to help people who aren't living as well as us so we can help them. (I may not have summarized accurately; listen to his recorded words for his precise meaning.) This view is like waving a red flag to me since I used to think things like that but now see otherwise.We engage in different views on technology, progress, how humans used to live versus how we live today, values, and such.In other words, we openly talk about the underlying beliefs driving our culture and individual behavior we don't question or talk about, but that guide our decisions and behavior. If we can only imagine a world working a certain way, we can't change course. If that course leads to billions of people dying, being stuck in beliefs is a problem.I greatly appreciate a civil, productive conversation on topic that many find inflammatory.The paper on human lifetimes: Longevity Among Hunter- Gatherers: A Cross-Cultural Examination, by Michael Gurven, Hillard Kaplan. Michael Guvern was a guest on this podcast. Quoting from the paper:The average modal age of adult death for hunter-gatherers is 72 with a range of 68–78 years. This range appears to be the closest functional equivalent of an “adaptive” human life span.