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WELCOME TO PAGE 7 OF THE NICKSPHERE!

Hello and welcome to my journal! Here I write about my own ideas and promote others' ideas. I mostly talk about computing, philosophy, spirituality, privacy, and society but this journal is not limited to those topics.

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Journal Entries

Legalize All Drugs

Date: 08 November 2020

Read time: 16 minutes

Summary: The war on "drugs" has been one of the greatest moral failures of our time, a colossal waste of money, time, resources and human life that could have been better spent on literally anything else. It's high time we put an end to it.

The Eternal Here and Now

Date: 02 November 2020

Read time: 6 minutes

Summary: In the subjective sense there's only one time and place for everything to happen. Memories from the past and thoughts of the future occur in the present moment. The mind's eye is the only place where things are seen. The mind's ear the only place where things are heard. It's all here and now.

Site Update 001

Date: 30 October 2020

Read time: 2 minutes

Summary: Find out what's new on my blog.

Using Email

Date: 29 October 2020

Read time: 13 minutes

Summary: Most email users are using email the worst way possible. Let's talk about the right way to use email.

Use Free Software

Date: 20 October 2020

Read time: 11 minutes

Summary: Free software is defined by the four essential freedoms. Learn why each freedom is essential and how they work together to protect users.

Metaethics

Date: 11 October 2020

Read time: 21 minutes

Summary: Philosophers have argued for thousands of years about how we should think about ethics, how to decide what's right and what's wrong. The range of answers has been extensive. I explain why we should abandon traditional moral theories entirely and instead opt for a reductionist, pragmatic approach to morality based on hypothetical imperatives.

Thoughts on Blogging

Date: 22 September 2020

Read time: 7 minutes

Summary: This post is about good rules of thumb and things to keep in mind when running a blog.

SIUe Unauthenticated SMTP Server

Date: 21 September 2020

Read time: 2 minutes

Summary: American colleges and universities are institutions with some of the weakest cybersecurity where you would expect better. This makes them easy targets for hackers. The reason is they don't have strong incentives to do better. Unless having poor cybersecurity is going to lose money, business as usual will continue and unauthenticated email servers will stay online.

Networked EV Charging Stations

Date: 09 September 2020

Read time: 7 minutes

Summary: Networked EV charging stations are a threat to democracy and national security. Collecting the locations on millions of law-abiding citizens is a capability no government or private entity should be allowed have. When I was attending SIUe in October of 2019, I emailed the parking services staff about the privacy concerns I had about the new Chargepoint stations that were being installed and encouraged them to install non-networked stations instead.

Free Will is Incoherent - Part 2

Date: 22 August 2020

Read time: 14 minutes

Summary: In part 1 I showed that free will is incoherent. In part 2 I discuss the implications of that fact on responsibility, compassion, justice and interpersonal relationships.

Ego Traps

Date: 02 August 2020

Read time: 8 minutes

Summary: Remember when you got stuck thinking about something but you didn't realize you were thinking until after? Even if you don't know what I'm talking about you've almost certainly had that experience before. Ego traps are the self-reinforcing thoughts that set you on the path of thinking without awareness of thinking.

Back Up Your Data

Date: 26 July 2020

Read time: 10 minutes

Summary: This post is a public service announcement about backups inspired by the post I lost. I've had my own backups for over 5 years, and never have I lost any data from those backups. The following advice is meant for individuals, not a corporate or business setting.

Why I Left ITS

Date: 02 July 2020

Read time: 7 minutes

Summary: This is the story of how I learned about free software, wrestled with my conscience and ultimately quit my job as a labs and classrooms technician at SIUe because I couldn't justify supporting the proprietary software anymore.

Free Will is Incoherent - Part 1

Date: 19 June 2020

Read time: 10 minutes

Summary: I present a formal, objective knock down argument against free will refuting the common arguments for it and show how lack of free will is actually liberating, not nihilistic.

Doublethink

Date: 14 June 2020

Read time: 15 minutes

Summary: What doublethink means in the context of this post is to feel a certain way about how you feel. It means to have an opinion of your own thoughts. It normally goes by the name metacognition. As novice practitioners of meditation quickly realize, you can "go meta" infinitely about your own thinking to the point that your mind becomes twisted into a complicated knot. In this post I talk about common ways the mind-knot is tied.

Unless otherwise noted, the writing in this journal is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Copyright 2019-2021 Nicholas Johnson