In an old music log entry, I shared a song, “Let It Burn” by the rock band Red. In the entry I said that the song kept playing at the back of my head, while my hometown, the city I was born in, was under siege years ago. I was basically asking, “Where is God and why wasn't He doing anything?” But I was wrong about Him not doing anything. He was there in the soldiers and police officers fighting to take the city back. He was there in the first responders trying to treat the wounded. He was there in the volunteers who were trying to provide food and shelter to those who have been displaced by the armed conflict. He was there, I just didn't know where to look.
Fast forward to April 2020 and a similar question can be asked amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. “Where is God in all of this?” He is there, in the healthcare workers who are at the front lines of this pandemic, battling an invisible enemy. He is there in the first responders, who despite the threat of getting infected with the virus, still show up to work every day to keep everyone else safe. He is there in the volunteers who are also risking their health to provide food to the unemployed and the hungry. He is there, and this time around I know where to look.
It's been nearly two full months since I've started Experiment Log – 006. I'll admit that I almost forgot about it. So, today I'll officially end the experiment. Here's what I've learned after trying out different digital tools for weekly planning.
Weekly Planning using Email
This was the most surprising out of all that I've tried. I honestly enjoyed creating my weekly plans using email. Basically, I would write down the plan for Monday to Sunday, then email it to myself. I cannot explain it, but I get a kick out of doing that, sending myself my weekly plan. One other thing I liked about weekly planning using email, is that if I need to make a change, I need to send myself a new email by replying to my original email. It sorts of acts like a basic versioning system wherein you can actually see what the previous tasks were, versus what the new ones are going to be.
What I don't like about it is that I have to make sure I type in the right email address before hitting send. In other words, there is a chance that I will accidentally send someone else my weekly plan. And depending on the contents of my weekly plan, that could be a big privacy/security issue. There's also the fact that my weekly plan lives on an email server in the cloud, which means my email service provider can probably read what I have planned for the weekend. And if for some reason I lose all internet connectivity, then I probably won't be able to check my weekly plan. So, not ideal, but it was a fun way to do weekly plans.
A really interesting read on how dystopian narratives can incite real-world radicalism. By dystopian narratives, think something like the Hunger Games novels.
To test the impact of dystopian fiction on political attitudes, we randomly assigned subjects from a sample of American adults to one of three groups. The first group read an excerpt from The Hunger Games and then watched scenes from the 2012 movie adaptation. The second group did the same, except with a different dystopian series – Veronica Roth’s Divergent (2011-18). It features a futuristic US in which society has split into factions dedicated to distinct values; those whose capabilities cross faction lines are viewed as a threat. In the third group – the no-media control group – subjects were not exposed to any dystopian fiction prior to answering questions about their social and political attitudes.
What we found was striking. Even though they were fictional, the dystopian narratives affected subjects in a profound way, recalibrating their moral compasses. Compared with the no-media control group, subjects exposed to the fiction were 8 percentage points more likely to say that radical acts such as violent protest and armed rebellion could be justifiable. They also agreed more readily that violence is sometimes necessary to achieve justice (a similar increase of about 8 percentage points).
It's a beautiful Friday today. Well, it looked beautiful outside, based on what I saw from when I went out to bring in some packages. We are still very much under stay at home orders here. Still very much working from home. Anyway, let's listen to some music shall we? I have 3 songs for today. Let's get started.
To start off, we have “Crawling” by the band Dream State. This is a cover of Linkin Park's original track. It starts out slow, almost like a somber cover of the original, mourning the loss of Linkin Park's Chester Bennington. Thankfully the band does the song justice when it brings in the guitars and the drums and lets the song soar at the end. This is a proper rock cover of the original.
Yeah the world is contingent and everything in it. It comes to be, it passes away. What does that tell us? It tells us that nothing in the world contains within itself the reason for its own existence. Nothing in the world explains itself. If it did, it would always exist. It would have within itself the reason for its being. So, since it comes into being and passes away, we know it doesn't contain in itself the reason for its own existence.
Therefore, by a very healthy instinct, and every single scientist in the world knows this, by a healthy instinct we begin to look for... causes.
– Bishop Barron
All it took was for me to watch the intro to this video and I was hooked. You don't even have to be religious to be intrigued by what was said in the intro. Bishop Barron doesn't even mention the word “God” until the last 2 minutes of the video.
He goes on to discuss about contingency and contingency of the world. I was blown away. It's something I've never even considered or much less thought of.
In today's Gospel Reading, Jesus visited the disciples, who were locked in a room, not once, but twice. In light of the current lock-down due to the pandemic and not being able to attend Mass in person, I had some realizations on this that I wanted to write down.
First, Jesus comes to His people wherever they are. We might not be able to attend Mass in person, but it doesn't mean that Jesus cannot be with us. The Church is the house of God yes, but that's not the only place that you can find Jesus at. If you call out to Him, He will find you, wherever you are. You don't have to be at Church, or in the case of the disciples, at the temple, to find Him. The Church is the people and so Jesus will find His people wherever they are.
Second, because Jesus will find His people wherever they are, this means that in our current situation, where we cannot go to Church to attend Mass, it is okay to attend Mass from home via television or via the internet. He is there, with you, when you attend Mass in your bedroom or living room.
After a very hectic week where I had to work overtime to finish my task, yes just one task for a single 2-week sprint, I'm so glad that it's Friday and that we're on a new, hopefully, much less stressful sprint. I'll celebrate by writing a music log entry for one of my favorite rock bands, Finch.
It all started with this track, “What It Is to Burn?” This song was my first introduction to “Screamo” back in the early 2000s. I've heard of other emo, post-hardcore bands back then, but no one combined screaming with beautiful melodies like the band Finch did. When I first heard the song, I was amazed that a band could make a song sound so good even when it featured some all-out screaming vocals. It sounded insane and blissful at the same time.
Finch was one of those bands that got me through a tough time in college. Their music was basically the soundtrack of my life then and it served to form the basis of my musical tastes going forward. While I'm still very much into pop-rock and pop-punk, I would never be listening to post-hardcore and metalcore bands nowadays if it wasn't for Finch.
Work from home setups. And really beautiful ones at that. I'm too embarrassed to share my setup at home, but the ones on this page are definitely worth looking at.
Great reminder and a coincidence, because lately I've been asking myself the question, “does what I post on my site provide value to others?”
I found that if I try really hard, I can easily spin it to a point where whatever I post, provides value to others. I can even spin it to say, I'm providing value to myself. But am I really providing value to myself? Or am I just trying to satisfy a need to post online?
I've said it in my About page that I intended for this online journal to be an alternative for posting status updates that I would have been doing on social media platforms like Facebook. So am I really producing or just scratching the itch to post or share something online? I don't know, but this was a good post that made me once again, stop and think about what I'm trying to accomplish on here.