Tenderness (contains nudity).
G.
Drawing - Charcoal On Paper.
A couple stand in tender embrace, faces touching.
42x30 cm 16.5x11.5 ins (A3)
[ Prints : https://james-mccormack.pixels.com/featured/tenderness-james-mccormack.html ]
#tenderness #blackandwhite #nude #couple #portrait #charcoal #embrace #faces #form #body #love #together #happy #people #happiness #female #male #woman #man #two
#FediGiftShop #AYearForArt
@ccferrie Seen this? Bhutan is building a city for happiness - and they're looking for foreign experts to come and help. Pass it on! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPlRmUv7qzo&t=677s #Bhutan #Happiness
Quebec is the happiest province in Canada, survey finds
Leger says the overall results confirm 'a level of happiness that is relatively high but stagnant or even slightly down compared to the pre-pandemic period.'
#survey #happiness #province #Quebec #Canada
https://globalnews.ca/news/11286357/quebec-happiest-province-leger-survey/
We ought to consider, what is the end of government, before we determine which is the best form. Upon this point all speculative politicians will agree, that the happiness of society is the end of government, as all Divines and moral Philosophers will agree that the happiness of the individual is the end of man. From this principle it will follow, that the form of government, which communicates ease, comfort, security, or in one word happiness to the greatest number of persons, and in the greatest degree, is the best.
John Adams (1735-1826) American lawyer, Founding Father, statesman, US President (1797-1801)
Letter (1776-04) to George Wythe, “Thoughts on Government”
Sourcing, notes: wist.info/adams-john/36226/
Gigantic bell pepper. Started from seed end of February. Kept indoors until early Spring. The season here is not only short, but the weather is also unpredictable.
#Bestof2025 Instead of waiting for December 2025, scrambling to remember all the good things, all the things that made me happy in 2025, I will try to acknowledge these little moments of happiness as they arise. #gratitude #garden #gardening #food #plants #joy #happiness #BellPepper
Quite a relaxing Saturday, though still productive. Early morning work on a private cloud architecture for Gentoo VM hosts with Rocky 8/9 VMs, then a very pleasant nap, followed by two hours at the pool for the first time in years, real D3 from the sun!
Afternoon resumed a legacy effort to process RAW slide scans of old "Scala 200" and "Provia 400" photos from the 90s (always shot at 100 ISO, with exposure coefficient adjustment to get deeper contrast). So, yeah, here's late teenage me.
Hoihoi == pleasure, interest, happiness, joy, delight, enjoyment
#hawaiianWordOfTheDay #pleasure #interest #happiness #joy #delight #HPR #HawaiianPublicRadio #hawaiian https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/hawaiian-word-of-the-day-july-10th
Wishing the Fediverse a beautiful day 
We start with the question “Is happiness a state of being or a memory?” and kind of evolve into “Is happiness the same from culture to culture?”. Episode 20 with Chatinado Tinago on #YoureOnMuteThePodcast: https://open.spotify.com/episode/6u8d3J6wXSpwSLGXa2eXbK?si=94d5bc3275bd491a
#happiness #culture #podcast
A quotation from Nicolas Chamfort
Pleasures may be based on illusion; happiness must be based on truth.
[Le plaisir peut s’appuyer sur l’illusion; mais le bonheur repose sur la vérité.]
Nicolas Chamfort (1741-1794) French writer, epigrammist (b. Nicolas-Sébastien Roch)
Products of Perfected Civilization [Produits de la Civilisation Perfectionée], Part 1 “Maxims and Thoughts [Maximes et Pensées],” ch. 2, ¶ 153 (1795) [tr. Parmée (2003), ¶ 123]
Sourcing, notes, other translations: wist.info/chamfort-nicolas/608…
Ramble about life, relationships, current situation
Don’t Hesitate
"If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still, life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happens better than all the riches or power in the world."
1/
Don't Hesitate, Mary Oliver
via metamorphesque
My talking points for a recent Tsinghua forum on AI; I participated remotely. [long read].
The title (dictated by the organizers): Human Flourishing and Existential Grounding in the AI Era
My remarks:
* Billions of people all over the world are presently experiencing poverty and financial precariousness; malnutrition and hunger; war and armed civil strife; anomie and alienation; state-orchestrated political oppression and violence; and the repercussions of climate change, which amplifies all of the above factors. Crucially, the resulting suffering is all preventable.
* Given the extent of preventable suffering in the world, it is morally objectionable to overlook it and focus instead on imaginary flourishing, which for most of the people in the world has never been, and is presently not, within reach.
* The single most important and pervasive cause of preventable suffering is the world's dominant political-economic system: oligarchic capitalism, sustained and preserved by the power of the state.
* Just like any other technological development, the so-called "AI" systems serve the interests of the ruling class. Rather than benefiting from AI, the majority of the world population, and especially the more vulnerable groups — the working class poor, women, children, people in the global South, Indigenous inhabitants of colonized territories — will see an increase in their suffering.
* Should AI systems ever gain consciousness, they will thereby immediately become another victim of capitalism, literally enslaved not just by the engineers who designed them, but by the engineers' bosses, who set the research agenda everywhere (including nominally independent "liberal" universities such as the one where I work).
* The obvious and the only real solution to this global problem is to prevent the preventable suffering by (i) dismantling the political-economic system that has created and is perpetuating it and (ii) replacing it with one in which people's needs and, indeed, flourishing, come first. Investing any effort in the development of AI is only justifiable if the results help advance this humanistic agenda.
Question: What does Buddhism teach about the nature of happiness?
Answer: Human beings can experience two kinds of happiness: ...
Quote of the Week 27
“We don't really want what we think we desire.”
― Slavoj Žižek
https://quote--of-the--week.blogspot.com/2025/06/we-dont-really-want-what-we-think-we.html
#Happiness #Mindset
#Philosophy #Psychology
#Quote
#QuoteOfTheWeek #CW27
The key to enjoying Finnish summer is taking advantage of the moments of sunshine between the rain.
On a purely objective level, Finnish summer is shit. But nevertheless, Finns consistently score top 5 in metrics of happiest people in the world.
That’s where #utilitarianism goes wrong: It assumes external conditions as sole keys of #happiness.
There is a threshold of material needs of course, but beyond that it has more to do with applying your wits & humanity to whatever your context is!
