Updated on 18-Jul-2024
Hello, my name is Israel Bravo and I'm a University of Cincinnati graduate with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. I have experience in native development, full-stack web development, build systems, and the software lifecycle. I'm currently working as a Software Engineer at SIEMENS where I have a variety of responsibilities. I'm passionate about learning and mastering my skills, and I'm always looking for new opportunities to aid me in such.
I'm Israel. My hobbies are running, rock climbing, listening to music, cooking and brewing, and playing video games.
I enjoy the bar scene and a good beer and book to go along.
My interests include philosohpy of mind, Bhuddism, psychology, ethics, political history/philosophy, and (recently) novels of all sorts.
I love meeting new people and good conversation, and I'm keen for different perspectives.
I'm a naturalist, humanist (vegan), optimist, and a lover of life and learning. I believe that the center of the plate for philosohpy is
wisdom and the good life.
You know me well.
"For there is a growing apprehension that existence is a rat-race in a trap: living organisms, including people, are merely tubes which put things in at one end and let them out at the other, which both keeps them doing it and in the long run wears them out. So to keep the farce going, the tubes find ways of making new tubes, which also put things in at one end and let them out at the other. At the input end they even develop ganglia of nerves called brains, with eyes and ears, so that they can more easily scrounge around for things to swallow. As and when they get enough to eat, they use up their surplus energy by wiggling in complicated patterns, making all sorts of noises by blowing air in and out of the input hole, and gathering together in groups to fight with other groups. In time, the tubes grow such an abundance of attached appliances that they are hardly recognizable as mere tubes, and they manage to do this in a staggering variety of forms. There is a vague rule not to eat tubes of your own form, but in general there is serious competition as to who is going to be the top type of tube. All this seems marvelously futile, and yet, when you begin to think about it, it begins to be more marvelous than futile." — Alan Watts
"What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking. [...] Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouserlegs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head. It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world." ― Douglas Harding, On Having No Head