Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs, introduced in his 1943 paper "A Theory of Human Motivation," is a foundational motivational theory in psychology. It posits that human actions are driven by a series of physiological and psychological needs, typically visualized as a pyramid. Maslow, a humanist, focused on what contributes to human happiness and believed in an innate drive towards self-actua...
Effects on the Mind and Control Through Stories/Narratives 1. Imposed Purpose and Conditional Worth: The mind can be conditioned from childhood by narratives that intertwine value with function . Messages like "Play, but with purpose" and "Be good, but for a reward" instill the idea that one needs to "deserve to be here" or "earn love". This creates an internal "ego manage...
Navigating a World of Narratives: The Impact of Stories on Mind and Spirit Stories are not just entertainment; they are the architecture of our understanding. Throughout history, from ancient myths to modern-day algorithms, narratives have served as powerful tools. They can be beacons that guide us toward wisdom and self-realization, or they can be chains that bind our minds, dictat...
The End of the Distro Hop: A Confident Return to Debian 13 After years of searching for a truly stable Linux host, I have finally found my way back home. My recent migration to Debian 13 was not just a successful install; it was a testament to the enduring principles of an operating system that has served as the backbone for countless other distributions. What was most surprising, h...
Tired of Manual Mounting? There's a Better Way. If you're a Linux user who works across multiple machines, you know the pain of constantly having to log in and copy files. Using SSHFS is a powerful way to mount remote directories as if they were local, but doing it manually every time you reboot or reconnect is a chore. This guide, based on my own trial-and-error, provides a simpl...
The Nature of Consciousness and Reality All matter is energy, a small cloud of probability. When this energy interacts, it vibrates, and these vibrations are the underlying process we perceive as light, matter, and ultimately, consciousness. Consciousness is not a special gift bestowed only upon humans; it is an emergent property of all interacting energy. A rock, a tree, a star—all po...
The Clock is Ticking In October 2025, Microsoft is scheduled to end support for Windows 10. For millions of users, this isn't just an inconvenience; it's an apocalypse. They will be faced with a choice: buy a new computer that meets the arbitrary and restrictive requirements of Windows 11, or continue using an unsupported, insecure operating system. I believe there is a third, b...
The Other Half of the System In my Dashboard TUI article, I introduced the Dashboard TUI, a fast, keyboard-driven menu for running homelab scripts. The power of that tool comes from its data-driven design: the menu is built dynamically from a MySQL table. But how do you manage that table? While any database client would work, a dedicated tool makes the process fas...
Taking Back Your Data: The Simple, Secure Address Book In a world where our most personal data—the names and numbers of our family and friends—is routinely harvested and monetized by large corporations, the idea of a simple, private address book feels almost revolutionary. The "free" services offered by tech giants are not free; we pay for them with our privacy. This is a price...
A Return to Speed and Sanity In a world of bloated graphical interfaces and features that get in your way, sometimes the most powerful tool is the one that is the most simple. I've spent decades working with systems, and if there's one thing I've learned, it's that your tools should be an extension of your will, not an obstacle to it. That's the philosophy behind the Das...