#metaphor — Public Fediverse posts

Nine of my learnings from the first Meeting Design Practicum — 30 meeting designers together for 48 hours in Utrecht, The Netherlands

https://www.conferencesthatwork.com/index.php/event-design/2016/02/nine-learnings-from-the-first-meeting-design-practicum

#meetings #EventDesign #Practicum #learning #ElementaryMeetings #metaphor #Druids #EscapeRoom #fun #eventprofs

Broken Chair

I rescued the chair from outside someone’s apartment with the hope of fixing it and having it become a welcome member of our family.

But, as often happens, it sat around in various places waiting for me to find the time to repair it.

Finally, I decided it was one more project I did not have time for, and so yesterday I put it out on the sidewalk in the hopes that someone would take it home.

It sat out there all through yesterday in the rain and the sun, lonely, awaiting a new friend. A few people paused to look but then drove away. Periodically I would look out my window to see it still sitting forlornly there.

Then this morning I noticed an older gentleman walking past who began to inspect the chair. He picked it up, put it on his back and walked away.

It is a beautiful chair. It just needs to be repaired, and I am sure its new owner will do just that.

I don’t know about you, but I feel a lot like that broken chair, waiting for the gentle hands of someone to put me back together again.

I wait, broken, with the hope that those hands will touch me, I will be healed, and I can have a purpose again.

July 10, 2015

Vincent, or: Theo

A Sijo

EPIGRAPH:

You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything.

–Vincent van Gogh (1853 – 1890)

the life we painted—over;
blank linen upon my easel;
this choice feels almost sacred;
one false first stroke would skew my course;
still, memory steadies my hand;
old lessons guide the brush I raise

Sijo?

A Korean verse form related to haiku and tanka and comprised of three lines of 14-16 syllables each, for a total of 44-46 syllables. Each line contains a pause near the middle, similar to a caesura, though the break need not be metrical. The first half of the line contains six to nine syllables; the second half should contain no fewer than five. Originally intended as songs, sijo can treat romantic, metaphysical, or spiritual themes. Whatever the subject, the first line introduces an idea or story, the second supplies a “turn,” and the third provides closure. Modern sijo are sometimes printed in six lines.

Let’s write poetry together!

When it comes to partnership, some humans can make their lives alone – it’s possible. But creatively, it’s more like painting: you can’t just use the same colours in every painting. It’s just not an option. You can’t take the same photograph every time and live with art forms with no differences.

–Ben Harper (b. 1969)

Would you like to create poetry with me and have a completed poem of yours featured here at the Skeptic’s Kaddish? I am very excited to have launched the ‘Poetry Partners’ initiative and am looking forward to meeting and creating with you… Check it out!

🐟🕶️ Ah yes, because comparing a Fortune 500 company to a blind cavefish is the perfect #metaphor for corporate strategy. Apparently, once you're successful, you should stop seeing where you're going—it's the latest trend in business innovation! 🙈#CorporateWisdom
https://ianreppel.org/how-successful-companies-go-blind/ #CorporateStrategy #BusinessInnovation #BlindCavefish #Fortune500 #HackerNews #ngated

There's A Reason Zombies Are Everywhere This Decade (Someone's Getting Rich)

https://youtu.be/-XgCFn6Vbnw?si=ZpDFEfCuEtvebmdZ

#AttentionEconomy #BarrysEconomics #economics #Inequality #SocialJustice #BehaviouralEconomics #shorttermism #research #neuroscience #VideoEssay #doomscrolling #metaphor #Zombies

Distinct, Not Distant

https://getawaywithhamza.wordpress.com/2026/04/27/distinct-not-distant/

✮ Out of Gas ✮

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I am writing an open #letter to all #political sides as an #introduction to #hope I wish to turn #hurt away from and closer into as such through #affirmative #action accordingly if at all possible.

Let me start out by saying, that I #believe in the #power of real human prayer as #unbound #energy finding its way through us. And in turn, I'm no #religious #person by and large, but I am going to send this #prayer out there anyways because I feel it needs to be #said as is.

This will be a prayer covering several #topics of conversation that I #feel are important and significant enough to relay as one broadcast.

#extremism

To all #people I #pray that:
You realize living on your own #political #island sounds great in theory, be it on the #left or the #right of the spectrum. Or even at the #top or #bottom of it as well. But being unable to find or care for the #center of it, leaves you #vulnerable to #attack more so than anything else. And that is not a state of things I #desire for you to have to #live by.

#awareness

I pray that:
As #individuals you #collectively and #personally #understand that there are differences between the #perception of how you come across to others, and how others #perceive you in turn. It is okay to have a #difference of opinion, but to be #blind sighted by this, leaves you open to being #weaponized and I do not #wish that for you to have to #experience at all.

#sovereignty
I pray that:
You can #recognize how someone wants to be able to experience #respect without having to diverge or divulge your #interest in a #potential #conflict as such. In order for us to be able to #trust each other, we have to #remember how to #treat one another as #equals rather than constantly #competing for #dominance based on denying that there #exists a spectrum of #agreeability at play that we are all apart of.

#CommonSense
I pray that:
We keep building upon #frameworks that do not need to become a totally separate #foundation that exists just to serve you. But rather, exist as #modular #blocks that can join and detach from one another as already built #structures full and complete. This way, we are not trying to conflict over what block we have to share space with someone else in prioritizing. Because the entire thing is ours to shape in our own way. And so as a #metaphor, I feel it is #important to attach to the idea of having a sense in common, as opposed to a common sense where applicable, of things that cause us to #fight over how #relevant it is to most of us around the #actual or #planned #change currently in motion.

#battles
I pray that:
We are able to tell when to be #still and when to #move upon any #focus that #captivates us in part. Whether it exists as apart of a #whole or not. Doing so will help us make the best #impact #possible for the change we want to make a #reality for the #cause we are #concerned for.

And ultimately, I pray that we can move past the blatant need to have an #existential #crisis be on full display at the #crossroads of #agendas being carried out as they are each in turn, #instigated by #georegional #tribalism that serves nobody accept to put #humanity as a whole last, not first, as I intend to do.

All of these things are #real and can be #fixable and #doable as such. And I want to make sure, that this reality does not have a chance to get far out of #control the way it currently has.

For it is #outcomes like this, that #incomes should never have appropriately #manifested into #place that I want to #avoid and keep #preventable from ever #happening again.

To me, I find it very #unfortunate that we are living through #times of such blatant #hardship that should not have to be so unnecessary in today's day and age. For in this latest #protest #style #news #video we see this very inteersection of mounting, preventable #activities #culminating all at once in a display of #violent #behaviour best #repurposed for other #interests in my #opinion acordingly.

#posted by #YouTube #reactor and #media #podcaster #RebelNews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjT3kK5lHKk

In #America #israel and #Canada or anywhere else in our #world we should not have to worry about #migration #problems at home #effecting the #symptom of #indifference at the #core of #ineffective #deference as such. Rather, if we simply #agree to #adapt our time towards #focusing on the #things we can #bear #witness to as our own #personal #legacy then I say we have done enough for our #community be it or we tied to a particular #faith or not.

I say this, in my own #human name for all it is worth. Because that is who I am now, and if any #guardian #angel believes this to be #true then all I ask, is that you add yours to this prayer and pass it forward.

Thank you for your #attention to this #matter as such. I #appreciate it and you very much for the #blessing that you are.

“The development of #consciousness in #humanbeings is inseparably connected with the use of #metaphor.” open.substack.com/pub/theconvi... #language

Owning Our Words: Sounding the...

People speak of the '#dark heart of the #city' as a #metaphor for the rat race and concentration of power
But that's because they have not stood before it
Have not heard its piston thump, buildings shaking and taxis swerving in sync with it
Be glad you haven't seen it
It's better that way

#London #architecture #photography #TellingStories #nightPhotography #streetPhotography #psychogeography

https://www.fromoldbooks.org/Various-HomeWords/pages/063-oiling-the-wheels-picture/

Those of you lucky enough to be going to #declarativeAmsterdam will get to see this picture used in a talk i’m giving - who will maintain XML systems when we have all retired?

#oilingTheMachinery #XML #victorianMachinery #vintageArt #fobo #GIMP #GIMP3 #Gimp_3 #engraving #metaphor

“oil is certainly not more necessary for machinery than for the comfortable and easy working of the complex and wonderful framework of our moral nature.”

@Aphelion

Dust we start and end,
Universe's Etch-A-Sketch,
Life's hourglass beauty.

#haiku #senryu #poem #ShortPoem #SmallPoem #life #beauty #time #philosophy #metaphor #hourglass #EtchASketch

tech in a bottle

#MacroPhotographyStyle #CircuitBoards #Bottles #Technology #Metaphor #Traditional #Encased #Img2Img #AiArt #AiaArtists #StableDiffusion

#Editorial | Fire Israel's Far Right

Sunday’s remark by Heritage Minister Amichai #Eliyahu (Otzma #Yehudit), who said that dropping a #nuclearbomb on the #GazaStrip is an option, is a problem not for #Israeli public diplomacy but rather for Israeli reality.

The problem is not any particular statement, but rather the power and legitimacy enjoyed today, in Israel as a whole and in the government, by the #Kahanist, messianic Jewish far right, which supports# annexation and #occupation and Jewish prayer on the #TempleMount, sees the current war as an opportunity and scorns the international community, international institutions and the laws of war.

This was not a slip of the tongue. In an interview with Radio Kol Barama, Eliyahu said that “there are no uninvolved [civilians]” in the Gaza Strip. Asked by his interviewer whether that meant Israel should drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip, he responded, “That’s one way.” And his subsequent “clarification” – “It is clear to anyone who is sensible that the nuclear remark was metaphorical” – is ridiculous. A #metaphor for what?

Nor is he a lone exception. Eliyahu’s party colleague, lawmaker Yitzhak #Kroizer, told Army Radio on Sunday that “the #Gaza Strip should be flattened, and there should be one sentence for everyone there – death. We have to wipe the Gaza Strip off the map. There are no innocents there.” Entire swaths of the government belong to the dangerous far right: Bezalel #Smotrich, Itamar Ben-#Gvir, Simcha #Rothman, Orit #Strock, Avi #Maoz, Zvi #Sukkot, Limor Son Har-#Melech and their confederates.

Prime Minister Benjamin #Netanyahu’s response was lame. Eliyahu’s statement, he said, was “disconnected from reality,” and the minister will be barred from cabinet meetings until further notice. He ought to have fired Eliyahu, but he chose not to do so; he prioritized preserving his government over preserving Israel.

Netanyahu isn’t the solution, but the problem. He has legitimized Kahanism and the far right. During his years in power, Israel has grown more extreme, and people who used to be loathsome #pariahs are now senior cabinet #ministers. Ideas and values that used to be outside the consensus, such as “transferring” Arabs from Israel, a second #Nakba and Jewish prayer on the #TempleMount, have been normalized under Netanyahu’s irresponsible #leadership.

He is the one who lent legitimacy to political alliances with admirers of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the mass murderer Baruch #Goldstein and the murderer of the #Dawabsheh family. Under his leadership, the settlers have begun setting their sights on the #WestBank’s Area B, which under the #Oslo Accords is under #Israeli security control and #Palestinian civilian control. And the settlers’ radical “hilltop youth” have moved from being intelligence targets of the Shin Bet security service to serving as ministers, #Knesset members, aides and advisers.

The far right’s membership in the government has painted the entire government, and all of #Israel, in far-right colors. The only way to solve the problem is to remove the far right from the government, and from the bounds of Israeli legitimacy. The only way to repudiate Eliyahu’s statement is to repudiate him and those like him. The Otzma Yehudit and Religious #Zionism parties must be fired from the #cabinet immediately.

The above article is Haaretz’s lead editorial, as published in the Hebrew and English newspapers in Israel.

https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/2023-11-06/ty-article/.premium/fire-israels-far-right/0000018b-a11c-dc0b-a1cb-e5de69890000