justing.net/notes

Prompting Structure and Mix-Ins

2026-03-21T07:50:00-07:00

Better Prompting Habits

I am using the OS’s built in text replacement to add some mix-ins to my prompts. I had my own list (marked with ⭐️), but asked Claude to add a few more.

My current structure is:

<objective: exploring, sharpening, testing, debugging, building sparring, etc.>
Help me debug my reasoning here.

<body: the actual prompt>
I'm trying to get X to happen, but it's not.
Here's how I am approaching it: blah blah.
My assumptions around this are a, b, c.

<mix-ins: see below>
For each claim, state your confidence as a probability and name the most likely alternative.

The mix-ins are a kind of boilerplate that is tiring to rewrite over and over, but important to include so you get the kind of answer that is most helpful. Hopefully the shortcuts help with that.

Context gathering:

⭐️ #ask-me-3 — Before answering, ask me 3+ questions to get more context about what I am describing and a better understanding of my goals.

Epistemic calibration:

⭐️ #confidence — For each claim, state your confidence as a probability and name the most likely alternative.
⭐️ #hedge — Frame conclusions as ongoing assessment, not settled fact. Use language like “appears to,” “likely a factor,” “consistent with but not confirmed by.”
#show-your-seams — When you shift from solid knowledge to interpolation or guessing, mark the transition explicitly.
#what-am-i-missing — After responding, add: “Things this answer ignores or assumes away.”

Pressure testing:

⭐️ #challenge-me — Don’t just support my point of view. Challenge it and pressure test it. What might be right and what has alternate explanations.
#steelman-opposite — Before responding, construct the strongest possible argument against my position. Then respond.
#disagree-first — Start with the thing you most disagree with in what I said, even if you mostly agree. Build from there.
#red-team — Assume I’m going to act on this immediately. What could go wrong?

Scope and output discipline:

#one-screen — Keep your entire response to what fits on one screen.
#no-preamble — Skip the introductory sentence. Start with substance.
#buried-lead — Check: is your most important point in the first two sentences? If not, restructure.
#tradeoffs-not-answers — Don’t recommend. Lay out 2–3 options with tradeoffs. I’ll decide.
#end-with-action — End with exactly one concrete next step I can take in 10 minutes.
#draft-not-final — Treat your output as a first draft. Flag the 2–3 weakest parts explicitly.

To Reply: Email me your best prompt tips.

Prompts for the bots

2026-03-07T08:20:00-08:00

Working with the bots

So, you’re working with an LLM chat bot more? Me too. Here’s what I know, circa Q1 ‘26. There are some patterns that I have found are most effective. Remember, always think critically about what you read in your chats, just as you would with any other correspondent or resource.

The mental model is of a hyperactive intern that doesn’t have the full context you do and doesn’t let it stop them. Interns, being very junior employees, also don’t know when they should object and point out something obvious that you missed. You have to explicitly ask for that. So it’s about exposing the mismatch in assumptions by having it create an artifact at each step that you review and correct. This makes the communication explicit and bidirectional, and exposes where you haven’t realized what you said was interpreted to mean something you didn’t intend. Just so it’s clear, that senior/junior employee analogy cuts both ways. Some seniors are better at directing juniors than others and this artifact based communications is attempting to address the limitations of both the human and the bot.

The trouble is that you can’t always for every query or interaction deploy APE or IMe, some don’t require it at all. We require that both the bot and ourselves use judgement about when to get the most out of these techniques. I use my intuition about the costs of getting it wrong to decide how much of this scaffolding to apply. And by cost, I really mean time- you can’t get that back. I find that I use IMe a lot because often my questions are subtle (i.e. the context difficult to share) and require nuance to get precisely what I want. Larger projects, appropriate for APE, are also easy to know. In the “don’t do either” category are things that you just prompt for again but different.

These posts resonate:

Boris Tane’s How I use Claude Code, via hn, is my main template.
Simon Willison’s Agent Patterns has many other learnings.

Using Agents

Originally I had these in the reverse order, but they build on each other. When I am doing an APE pattern, I am also hierarchically doing many or all of the other techniques too where I recognize that they will increase the chances of a better output.

Basic Habits

Be as explicit as you can be about what you are either trying to do, achieve, or solve. This usually means it’s worth spending a minute to think and then write more words about it, after your initial prompt is written but before you hit send. This does slow you down a bit, so you want to make sure you first capture quickly what thought by blurting it out in the little text box. Pause, though, friend. It’s worth thinking a bit more.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

Good prompts should include examples of what you want (e.g. the csv columns exactly as you want them), or specifically what you do not want (e.g. I don’t want a list of pithy non-sequiturs- make it concrete).

Ask it to list alternatives or “what’s wrong with this approach”. Remember that these agents have a massively huge diverse reservoir of knowledge, they know things that you don’t know you don’t know. Our goal is to leverage that. You are trying to find what you don’t know, so make sure there is an opportunity for that to enter. There are some other versions of this, like “steel man the counter argument” and “what are the obvious criticisms of my thinking here”, etc.

In longer threads, restate the goal. It can get lost, probably by both of you. This is a technique that I underutilize.

The IMe pattern: Interview Me

The Interview Me technique is how you get the agent to “help me help you”, it draws more out of you to be explicit about what you are asking for. Get the bot to ask you more questions about what you are asking, so both of you are more clear on the objective.

Interview me about this to get a fuller context
of what I mean and need from you.

Ask me 3+ questions to clarify the context and
understand what I want here.

The APE pattern: analyze, plan, execute

The principles of this are useful for any larger project. Developing a new code module or modifying an existing code base. Researching and writing an extensive report.

The underlying principle here is that constraining the output to be a fixed object (a table of tradeoffs, a list of assumptions, or a proposed code diff) forces us to see the consequence of the earlier prompt(s). This is the same technique as “writing is thinking”, when we make it real, external, and inspectable, we can see what we really meant and the implications. We can make it better.

Analyze aka research only, capture learnings in research.md. Use phrases like “understand deeply”. You, the human, now reads that plan and makes corrections. Tell the bot to revise the analysis based on your corrections. Repeat that until it’s right to your understanding.
Plan only, capture in plan.md with examples, checklists, and explicit directives. Review and correct the plan, and have the bot revise the plan too. Repeat that until you are convinced the plan is right.
Execute aka build phases only. Tell the bot to not stop until all (or just the phase) of the plan is done. Tell the bot to use the red/green pattern. Tell the bot “Do not deviate from the plan.” Mark complete as you go in the plan.md file.

To Reply: Email me your best llm tips.

Welcome to RSS Club

2026-03-06T07:00:00-08:00

Welcome to RSS Club.

I’ve been wanting to add this feature for a long time.

The first rule of RSS Club is: don’t talk about RSS Club. The second rule of RSS Club is: don’t share on social media. The third rule of RSS Club is: provide value.

If you’re reading this, you’re subscribed to my RSS feed. Thank you!

To Reply: Email replies are the best replies.

25Q4 Check-in

2026-01-04T08:45:00-08:00

It’s the end of 2025, my second quarterly check-in, and the beginning of 2026, all in one. I’ll look back, and I’ll look ahead. For reference, here are the notes I made at the beginning of 2025, and here is the 25Q3 review.

The defining themes have really been fitness/nutrition and grief. A beloved pet passed away unexpectedly and suddenly; it’s been a moment of perspective shift and a time out of routine for the last month. In addition to the usual (but arbitrary) calendar driven moments of reflection, this event has also forced an unusual state of mind. It has been a reset.

Core Domains Review

The following three areas (fitness, writing, photography), resolved into my main leisure activities this past quarter. Only one of them had real success, another had moderate progress, and the last had almost none at all.

Writing

On reflection, I wrote a moderate amount. Less than I would have hoped but more than nothing.

What I did

7 mini-essays (all unpublished)
1 blog post, the year end reading summary
3 10 minute writing sessions

What I learned

Published material has fallen off a cliff since mid-summer.
I found the mini-essay format and wrote a couple.
I have still been using the chatbots as an editing assistant. All the words are my own, but I ask for help on clarity and if there is anything missing. However, I find that since they lack a distinct point of view or stable personality, the bots find it difficult to know when to say when. They never want to stop improving the piece, even when it’s reached a state of good enough for now. So, I’ll work on clarifying that in the prompt.

What’s next

I suspect I need more structure to both write the raw inputs and to get material published.
In the new quarter, I have scheduled 30 minute writing sessions for 3 times per week. I’ll use these to do more 10 minute writes, write mini-essays, edit posts for publishing. I suspect that the 30 minutes is going to be just opening the door.
And I’m setting an aspirational goal to publish 10 pieces of writing (preferably the mini-essays but I’m not going to force that) over the course of Q1.

Photography

Photography practice was nearly a complete miss the last 3 months.

What happened

150 ± 20 photos taken in each of the 3 months, all or nearly all were iPhone pictures.
0 prints
0 photo sessions

What I learned

I tried jpgs again for a couple of weeks and regretted it again.
Not having planned times, and sticking to them is a great example of the adage that “failing to plan is planning to fail.”

What’s next

Schedule 6 scout or out photo sessions this quarter.
Print 6 photos and hang them on the walls.

Fitness & Nutrition

This quarter has been my best ever for fitness and nutrition. I’m sure it’s mostly newbie gainz, but those are still gainz.

What happened

Very consistent on 3x per week functional weight training sessions.
Most weeks running 1 or 2 times per week. I should check, but I think it was 50% of the time running and often at least an incline walk the other times.
Food has been very high quality and shifted to protein anchored meals from carb anchored.

What I learned

Having appointments with a trainer and not having the cognitive load of figuring out a workout plan every time has been a huge boost. If you can afford it, I highly recommend doing this.
It can still be challenging to motivate for running, but aiming for less than race pace every time definitely helps.
Dialing in the nutrition after the shift in eating style has been an exercise in problem solving. It keeps my brain engaged and isn’t too onerous, as long as I keep it fun.

What’s next

Mainly keep on keepin’ on.
Dial in the daily/weekly meals to get the extra body fat percentage moving in the right direction, while maintaining or increasing strength.
Go backpacking.

Secondary domains

The next sections aren’t the priority so I’ve abbreviated the updates.

Reading Books

I read several books, the best were Good Strategy, Bad Strategy, and Winter. Quitting books that aren’t working for me is a good thing. In the new quarter I plan to continue reading, and may tradeoff morning RSS time for book time.

Drawing Practice

I drew only 4 times over the quarter, and I am happily surprised that I still retained a reasonable amount of skill. Since I plan to emphasize writing and photography this quarter, I won’t set any particular goals. If my wife starts up a crafting club though, I’ll join that time to practice sketching.

Music Practice

In the last month I renewed my iPad music practice and made several (over half a dozen) introductory drone music pieces. It was fun. Again, music is not the focus this time, so I’ll just do a few things here and there without any specific goals. I’ll try to be intentional instead of aimless about what I do, so keeping some notes will be helpful. But, no pressure.

Field recording

Nothing done. Well, almost nothing- I offloaded one recording from September from the recorder, and was disappointed to discover that the other recording hadn’t happened at all. That was a great night of wind and coyotes and eventually rain. I had expected to find a second recording with a few hours of wind in the pines at least and maybe the first coyote chorus before the batteries ran out. There was nothing at all; I must have not pressed record. What a bummer.

Research

I started using the CORE workflow to capture, organize, review, and engage with materials.
The idea of using pocket compendium books to learn topics or focus actions seems like a great addition. I have started one for general things and have set another aside for a photography reference book. I should add another for writing topics, ideas and notes, and if those take, I can consider continuing on to make a little library of them.

Highlights and Lowlights

Work took up a lot of my energy. I put all the remaining energy into the fitness and nutrition bucket. That was a good choice.

Highs

Fitness habits and progress and eating well, that’s a win too.
I count writing the mini-essays as a win.
Dinner out with a new group of friends has also been an unexpected win.

Lows

Research was minimal. I chalk this up to using AI summaries (which I guess I don’t trust enough to extract notes from) and probably an implicit misbelief in how small steps of learning add up to big leaps in understanding.
Writing raw notes diminished over the quarter. My use of the waste/waist book to capture raw notes got less and less.
Reading was uneven and that contributed to doing less research.
Photographs were few.

Metrics / Experiments Log

The only experiments were around fitness and nutrition, and they weren’t super controlled. More like directional moves toward meals that anchor on protein and deemphasize carbs and fat. Strength has been gained, fat pounds have not (but they haven’t reduced either).

Possible Next Experiments

Iterate to successfully make good use of pocket compendium books for learning new things and staying diligent on small habits and actions.
Identify all sources of calories and own them.
Make some specific experiments to harness boredom and don’t simply give it away to the attention economy.

Forward Questions or Hypotheses

On structure: I have had great success by having set appointments for the gym. Can I apply a similar strategy for writing and picture making? What does it take for that to work?

Closing Reflection

This past quarter was somewhat lost in an over emphasis on work and then consequent undirected personal time projects. I drew energy from my new regular habit of going to the gym, another new activity of going out to dinner with a forming friend group, the few times I discovered and listened to some really good music¹, and my new simplified nutrition plan. The time out to dinner with the new friend group was also the time that I felt most carefree. I realized that too much screen time on attention economy parasitic activities (doom scrolling, YouTube influencer content, general screen time without a creative purpose) were some of the biggest causes of energy and mood drain. So trying to limit the aimless screen time, or even going a bit further and limiting the RSS review time, which is a sort of planned aimless doom scroll, would probably improve my mood and satisfaction in the next quarter. Another habit that I suspect would produce a lot of satisfaction is a regular practice of 10 minute exploration writing.

Finally, the grieving period caused a perspective shift, a chance to see things in a different light. The time was, somewhat paradoxically, a slow almost meditative state, while I attended to my own emotional needs, completely insulated from the outside world’s pressures. My own internal clock drove time’s forward march. It was a strong reminder to identify and prioritize what matters and spend time on that.

I mean some interesting drones, some great ambient music, and always the long mixes from Anjunadeep. ↑

To Reply: Tell me what you've been up to in the last few months.

Third Quarter Review

2025-10-01T20:45:00-07:00

This first quarterly review covers July through September, 2025. I’ll summarize what’s changed in that period. There are two updates that are dominating over everything else: career updates and fitness shifts. It’s exciting that I am expected to deliver different results than before; my career has made a step change in progress (I won’t mention this further). And in the last month both A and I have dramatically changed our approach to physical fitness. So, this is an important note marking the start of a new chapter. It’s a turning point but also a reflection on how the grind is always turning, and that’s life.

Core Domains Review

Most of the domains, the ones I feel like publishing anyway.

Writing

What I did

I captured “Ambient Finds” in the second half of August (not published).
I continue to use 3 paper notebooks: a daily calendar for food and fitness, a main book for daily notes/research/thoughts, and a pocket waste book.
I continue to fill the 25.2 notebook. The volume of writing is lower than my expectation from 25.1.
Continued experiments with various smartphone note capturing workflows: Journelly, Shortcuts + iA Writer, Drafts.

What I learned

I have determined that I have no problem with words. What is lacking is structuring them into a larger work.
My struggle with too ephemerality of smartphone notes (they just get lost) + the doorway effect + carrying minimal things remains unsolved. The smartphone is usable when constraints limit other options, but I still prefer paper when I can use it.

What’s next

See what happens when I experiment with making a larger point, even if it feels mechanical.
Allow daily captures to include some mundane thoughts. It’s a future-me reference. The stuff that is not particularly noteworthy yet later you wonder what did I think in 2025.
Don’t stress about where ephemeral notes end up, as long as you revisit them at the end of the day.

Reading Books

What I did

I read 6 books; a mix of fiction and non-fiction. One was an audiobook.
I started and abandoned one other book.
A slow quarter for reading; other things heated up, and I had reached my yearly goal.

What I learned

Russian short stories from the masters are wild, shockingly good reading despite the distance between reader and author. Thank you, George Saunders, for introducing me to them.
Didion’s ironic but distant eye works much better for me when turned on herself than other people outside of her cohort.

What’s next

Keep reading, target some applicable reads.
Leave room for pure fun ones.

Photography

What I did

Made about 6000 pictures while just going about life.
These were family events (kid’s soccer game, dog park party), a field trip to Elkhorn slough, and a backpacking trip.
Exported several hundred and shared to the relevant small number of people.
Improved my export flow with Photos and Shortcuts and Working Copy.
Mostly shot with my Sony when I planned to, but I also experimented with Project Indigo and compared to Halide and the default Camera app.
I took down the pictures I made in Santa Barbara in January and haven’t put anything else back up. It’s pretty barren in my office right now.

What I learned

Having a good low-friction workflow really helps!
I prefer the Sony’s output.
When viewed on iPad or iPhone, the smartphone pictures aren’t obviously different. The Sony just looks better.

What’s next

Still trying to figure out how to get good non-smartphone-look pictures with iPhone; keep experimenting with LR settings.
Consider printing out a small series of photos, a la Seeing in Sixes.
Aim for one intentional session in Q4, while continuing my incidental practice.

Drawing Practice

What I did

Completed my first sketchbook!
Started a new sketchbook, which I have only drawn a little in since.

What I learned

I am quite impressed with the amount of improvement in the first sketchbook, which took about 5 months to fill. The challenge is now about compound objects and making scenes.
The long period of steady practice and slow improvement is difficult to sustain.

What’s next

Consider returning to a 15 minutes a day practice.
I should remember why I prioritized drawing this year at all: it was an alternative to spending time with screens.
Just have fun, and damn the “mistakes.”

Fitness

What I did

Maintained a steady running practice of ~2 5k runs per week.
Shifted focus during runs from pace to heart rate.
Went backpacking in Eastern WA/OR, a highlight.
Started working with a personal trainer 3 times per week on functional strength training.
Got a DEXA scan.
Refocused my diet around nutrition to support my fitness routine.

What I learned

Running slower, at a lower heart rate, is more sustainable and easier to look forward to. Who knew?
Working with an excellent trainer, one who has a good attitude and is very knowledgeable, is really great. Highly recommended, if you can afford it.

What’s next

Stick with the trainer, that’s going awesome.
When it’s right, add back in a second run each week.
Maintain cardio through the winter, even if means experimenting with using the, ugh, treadmill.
Continue iterating on the nutrition (macros, brah) to support.

Research

What I did

Research has stalled. No notes or progress on my various topics under Humans and The Algorithm interests.

What I learned

Projects that are too ambitious for my current time constraints and current skillsets are unsustainable.
The research area still fascinates me.

What’s next

Try something smaller: define a narrower scope and a reachable goal.

Highlights and Lowlights

Highs

Produced many good photos of rocks, plants, birds, or landscapes.
I am good at describing a mundane-yet-interesting or just odd scene in writing. I made several of these a day for a few weeks in August, and the practice helped me to notice the interesting and to put it on paper.
Just keeping a regular running practice going was already a win. Upgrading to functional weight training with my very own personal fitness concierge is a real treat!

Lows

Too many interests make it difficult to have enough time for them.
I did not simply continue sketching and practicing when I moved on to a new notebook. It’s a nice notebook and despite my best efforts at not worrying about that, I still don’t want to ruin or waste it.
Did I do any research at all in the last 3 months? I don’t think I did.

Metrics / Experiments Log

In the last quarter, I…

recorded two overnight field recordings out in the wilderness,
posted eleven blog posts, of which eight are photos,
ran twenty-three times for a total distance of almost one hundred and ten kilometers,
went to the gym six times for functional weight training,
collected three bag nights in two states,
noted and edited notes on thirty three different days,
vacationed in the mountains for three nights,
discovered the California delta en route to the mountains,
road tripped to the Seattle area to visit friends for a week,
completed one two week experiment on writing,

and my other things too.

Forward Questions or Hypotheses

How will AI tools continue to influence, integrate, and enable more personal growth and development? How will I avoid personal atrophy with these supports?
How can I make balance work and life and keep it natural and easy and successful?
Continuing to note noticings will eventually pay off, just maybe not in the next quarter.

Closing Reflection

Grinding on these things, rotating through them to mix it up and keep it interesting, pausing to regroup. These strategies all lead to a payoff, sometimes smaller, sometimes bigger. It’s been true in so many areas. Start somewhere, work at it, level up, start over and work at it some more. Enjoy the success, don’t worry about where it’s going. Just follow the energy and keep your balance.

To Reply: Email me about what you've been up to lately.

Recently Watched

2025-07-18T07:00:00-07:00

Evil S1-3

What a weird show. For a while it doesn’t know what it wants to be. I’m not convinced it ever figures that out. But it does set up some interesting situations that are fun to think about. I hope the cast gets more work, they were good.

Murderbot S1

Fun and lighthearted. Well, not only. There are some weighty topics in there, but they are not treated with a heavy hand. I guess I mean that the audience is not fcuked with. I’m noticing a theme in my viewing.

Andor S2

Excellent. More complicated than S1. I don’t think they need to make more Andor (how can they). But more original stories please, with actual development.

Rogue One

I followed it up with Rogue One. It didn’t match my memory of watching it when it came out. I mean, all the pieces were there, but compared to the series it is sh*t. R1 is just a bunch of scenes in sequence with almost no time to think or appreciate or get to know any of the characters. I guess they just try to do too much in there. I appreciate the visuals, but it’s not much of a story.

A New Hope

Of course I had to watch Episode IV right after. It was great. I mean, minimalistic in the story, but understandable. And they didn’t rush to fill every second with unmotivated words or deeds. There was time to soak in the universe, feel what the characters felt. A more civilized age.

Han Solo

And because I had checked out the Art of Han Solo from the library and enjoyed it, I decided to also watch the Solo movie too. I was really surprised. My recollection of this one was of not particularly enjoying it when it came out. This time, I got it and felt there was space to breathe. I mean, they do put a lot in there but it seemed to hold together. Maybe the director had something to do with it.

Brooklyn 99 All Seasons

Still a top show. Great for fun frivolous laughs. But it has a heart; it cares about its people.

The Expanse S1-3, ongoing

Still so good. Fun scifi. On the way to completing the series again.

I am also reading Book 2 (Calaban’s War). It’s better than Book 1 (Leviathan Wakes). Reading more of these books seems plausible now.

The X-Files S1-4, ongoing

Still generally excellent. My theory that it laid some of the foundation (or just enlarged it) for today’s info-sphere problems does somewhat complicate my appreciation. And that it’s not well suited to binge style streaming does bare some of the threads. Still, I am enjoying the weird world that Mulder and Scully inhabit.

Someone get that woman a desk, please.

To Reply: Email me your recent watches.

Navigating the Weirdness

2025-07-06T14:45:00-07:00

I’ve never heard of Erik Davis before. I don’t know if he’s a nut or not. I watched these two videos and thought there were some good ideas in there, even if a lot of it sounds crazy at times.

These notes cover the material that starts at about 46:20 in the second video through to the end. They are random, scattershot notes.

If I was forced to connect this to my science background, I would say it’s observational skills, phenomenology and empirical. The key is to not discount reports of people believing things that you know to be wrong. The alternative stance is to use “maybe logic”¹ to accept the implications of the observations, even it doesn’t represent the factual truth. Those reports may still guide to some other insight.

To kick it off, here’s something unexpectedly weird that I ran into last week:

Alviso Salt Pond, 2025

Weird shit is happening. It has been for a while. Some examples: the global supply chain, self-driving cars, social media and the internet. A lot of stories are being told too. Examples of that too: disinformation campaigns, virality and algorithmic feeds, tech hype cycles.

Test it by tracking your own belief evolutions if you do the opposite of what you would normally for a set period of time, a few days. Maybe use UFOs as a laboratory to investigate your changing beliefs; they’re already weird af and polluted with lots of manipulation. For example, if you do believe in UFOs/IAP, go in a different direction: practice skepticism and corroboration of every thing you hear. If you don’t believe, do a deep dive down the rabbit hole. See how your beliefs change. Track them and follow what is different before and after. It can give you insight into influences on your beliefs in other, more mundane domains. Synchronistic connection: Matt Webb’s recently relayed a point that knowing that aliens exist is unlikely to change things much.

The tools below offer ballast to keep you upright in the stormy waters of the weirdening. The goal is to maintain your humanity and soul in as healthy of a state as can be.

1. Perpetuate Human Theater

Just keep doing normal everyday stuff no matter what else happens. Keep falling in love, arguing, solving the world’s problems, debating religion, being neurotic, all that stuff. This is living.

2. Attention Martial Arts

This is a marathon, a long game. Settle in, the weirdness will not likely be over in our lifetime. Attention is a martial art in hybrid warfare. The battlefield is not in the obvious places; the infosphere is one but there are others. Broadly speaking, our attention is the battleground. It’s not always obvious who the combatants are either. Evade the traps that diminish your power or your clarity.

3. Concretize and subtle-ize

The goal here is to keep our soul alive. Pay attention to the specific embodied experiences of your life; this is the concrete. Make an art practice of noticing your experience and responses to subtle nuanced things. Humans are good at this. This helps elude abstract narratives which attempt to distract us from our lived experiences.

4. Pick your battles

Sustain your effort; you can’t fight effectively every day for years and years. Keeping focus is a skill you can learn and develop. Go deeper, feel better.

5. Shouldn’t should

What does this mean? Reject the “capital E” expectations. Do what you do, don’t do what you think you should be doing. Find in yourself your authentic response. It’s not necessarily the trained or socially expected one. Examine of those impulses.

6. Keep your cool

Be able to calm down and be un-triggered. It’s a skill and a powerful gift.

7. Foxhole Humor

It’s all so weird and comedic. Maintain your freedom to laugh. Things can be both a bummer and humorous.

8. Emotional Mixing

Keep loving your dog and being happy, despite the awful stuff. Be aware that this stuff is triggering, is genuine, is intentionally manipulating. Develop some space and resilience around your emotion responses. I don’t mean to ignore the terrible, I do mean don’t neglect the good. Keep feelings real, but also play with them.

Grief is legit and contains the seeds of the future; anger and fear do not.

9. Join Posses

Getting together with people is important. Friendship networks, “Fellowship of the Ring”s type stuff. Keep your old friends, make new ones.

10. Curate your curators

Be intentional about who you follow. Remember why you followed them when it seems to not make sense anymore. Be willing to prune but also continue with them if they still make sense.

11. Values over frameworks

Go deep on values. It’s not about what you believe that people should be doing. Take advantage of the situation, figure out how to use it. It sucks, but what’s the alternative. Connect with core values; they provide coherence and guidance over rigid frameworks.

Conclusion

These are some ways to survive the continuing weirdness. Not all of them may make sense for all of us, it’s ok to be picky and choosey about your. The backstop objective is to maintain your soul and humanity.

“Maybe logic” is a stance that involves accepting the potential significance or implications of an observation, even when its factual truth is not confirmed or is actively doubted. ↑

To Reply: Email me the weird stuff.

Some Good Stuff

2025-07-01T07:01:00-07:00

It’s just some stuff that I’ve seen recently.

Rubin Observatory! I’ve been following this thing for like 20 years! It’s going to be so cool.
Silos! via Jeff.
LEGOs for The X-Files are coming!

San Jose, CA. 2025

Enjoy!

To Reply: Email me some good stuff!

The Casino World Death Cult

2025-06-27T07:00:00-07:00

In today’s post, I’ve explored what I think about the idea that the world is being consumed by Casino logic and how that connects into an older idea that I’ve been kicking around which is that America is a Death Cult. As usual, the ideas and thoughts here are provisional and exploratory. I may encounter some new information or thought that radically changes how I think about these ideas. But, I won’t know that if I don’t write it down to look at.

Summary

Recapping the Casino-world ideas from Panic World podcast with Edward Ongweso Jr (The Tech Bubble post), from June 2025. It was the legalization of online sports betting in the US that really turned a lot more of internet economy toward the idea of keeping the users in flow state. Not just attention economy feeds, but everything. The user is so focused on the trickle of entertainment that they don’t notice the draining bank account or frittered hours. Turning toward this had already started before betting got involved, maxing attention metrics just became a mainstream imperative.
I hypothesize that the ad sellers in the feeds are not actually incentivized to do excellent matching of highly relevant ads. If they do, the user exits the doom scroll loop. It’s just enshittification: value is extracted by the middleman from both parties. The user is duped into doom scrolling, the ad buyer is swindled out of click throughs in this two-sided scam.
The feed user trades away their time and attention in exchange for the analgesic thumb-twitching hours of a distracted half-sleep. They escape to TikTok from whatever it is that is immediately troubling them. It’s not necessarily anxiety free, but it is legal, self-dosed through their own dopamine glands, is convincingly in their own control, and is always available. Whenever they need a moment of distraction from their daily suffering, whatever it may be, an internet break is always in there in the pocket.
An emergent feature of America’s particular flavor of divided bureaucracy¹ governance is profit maximizing in highly regulated environments. That’s the great thing about being able to help write the rules, it’s hard to be a criminal when you don’t break any laws. And, making the individual responsible for all the risk and consequences gives them a feeling of control. I call this situation the American Death Cult. The people are setup to fail, and they want it.
The death cult is the bigger tent here. Casino-world is just one particular ring of marketing mechanics inside the circus. There are other rings, and the most successful blend distraction and confusion to keep the participants disempowered and unable to align the incentives with their own interests.

Resonant Phrases

“casino-ification of the internet”, and everything
“placing bets is an entry gate to flow state”
“getting to the content interrupts the flow”
“dupe the ad buyer as much as the scrolling user”
“exchange attention time for a docile vegetative state of half sleep.”
“a kind of legal self-drugging”
“people blinders”
“the death cult is the bigger tent”
“How to avoid being a criminal: don’t break the law. Easiest to do that if you also wrote the laws.”

From Matt Webb: “attention-farming”.

Open Loops

Gather specific examples of the death cult systems that show profit-harm misalignment. Some immediate examples are healthcare, housing, student debt, fintech, social media. Write case studies.
Dig deeper into flow state around doomscrolling and gambling. How does it start, how is it interrupted, where else does it surface? Cable news, shopping, anything that tries to get you hooked.
Get a few more examples of regulatory capture.
How to counter the flow exploitation?
How to resolve if the ad buyers are in fact being duped in the current system? It’s just speculation in my thinking.

Ref: 25.2p71-73

Graeber’s revolving door relationship of the regulator to the regulated. See his book The Utopia of Rules. ↑

To Reply: Email me your death cult stories.

Aesthetic Residue

2025-06-26T12:00:00-07:00

I mentioned the term “Aesthetic Residual” earlier this week but left it at that. I returned today to take it up and find out what I meant. The thoughts here are still provisional, still exploring, but I returned with a few good idea nuggets to leave on the shelf for a future me to find. Take a look.

Note: ‘aesthetic residual’ is a placeholder term. My definition is still evolving.

Summary

Modern stories¹ have a very useless feel, they are either pure escape or frustratingly incomplete and don’t offer any souvenir, an absorbed interaction template for example, to bring back to reality.
Before getting to the failures of the middle, let’s start at the two extremes. At the minimalist end are suggestive poems from the imagination, spare atmospheric concepts, places that invite the audience to inhabit and complete as they like. The other end is the fully realized masterpiece where even the details have believable sub-details.
At first I thought my definition for aesthetic residuals was something like the committee-built mashups made from spare parts. Catchy one-offs fused into a grotesque that lack a competent follow through. The committee tried to make a commercial venture of it anyway. But that didn’t quite feel right, these are a thing, they’re just something else.
But now I believe the true aesthetic residuals here are those still visible suggestive concepts. To get at them, one needs to un-embed the raw idea from the final product. To do it is tough, there is a lot of confusing noise in these faulty stories. The unfinished gems are hard to grasp because they were only half there to begin with. I suspect in a year I will be defining it somewhere else nearby.
Those incomplete leftovers tempt us into making a bigger story because we can invent missing pieces in our minds and ignore the bad ones before we speak them into existence, we can easily neglect the rough edges that don’t line up. Cognitively speaking, I propose that this is a result of our limited working memory (about 5±2 slots). This limitation helps to make our day dreams feel functional. We simply lack the capacity to notice that all the story details we invented don’t make a complete picture. It’s fun anyway.
What to do? Aim for the poles: make suggestion the game and let the audience do the work. Don’t publish a masterwork until it’s really finished. Don’t be a sellout that’s being lazy for money. Avoid making messy middle ground pieces packed with loose ends that interfere with having a good make-believe time. Make something to be proud of.

Resonant Phrases

“liminally latent spaces” or “latently liminal spaces”
“workaday craft pieces”
“amputated series”
“zombie corpses that carry on”
“reanimated shamble”
“unfinished gems”

Open Loops

If we had a larger working memory would that help or hinder story craft?
Can we put a finer finger on what constitutes truth in fantastical tales?
I suppose if we could somehow fix up those middle ground stories, that would be a billion dollar idea. Perhaps it’s about taking away instead of adding more. Make room for the audience to add their own juice. The question is, can subtraction turn middling works into workable stories? It’s a collaboration of subtractive synthesis.
Is it the audience or the author that is responsible for making meaning in these stories? Where is that boundary? Naively I thought this was a settled litigation in favor of the audience, once the author completes their work. But they inhabit the system that the author creates to guide them, so authors had better make a good system.
What do we lose in these failed stories? What do we gain?

Ref: 25.2p69-71

I’ll clarify that I mostly mean movies with this. And a lot of television. So you can calibrate on recent movies that I did like: Dune 1 & 2, the D&D movie, I was pleasantly surprised by Superstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, the Knives Out movies. I think you probably get the idea. ↑

To Reply: Email me your favorite unfinished gems.

The Failure of The Makers of Meaning

2025-06-25T09:00:00-07:00

I have open-loop free-written on the topic of our collapsing methods of making meaning. As usual, this is provisional, and doesn’t yet feel like I have landed on the core of what I want to say. Lots of interesting side-alleys though.

Summary

Our faculties for making meaning have always been in a process of renewal. Old methods fade, and new ones replace them. I suspect the pace of this regeneration is at an especially high clip right now. Some examples: we have a social media coded president, we are in an advanced position on the s-curve of exploiting current level info tech (ie wringing the last drops of blood from the stone of attention)¹, and there are several aggressive state actors. All that contributes to the rushed feeling of the information environment. The most probable is the electronic/computational revolution that is very much unfinished at the moment. It is unclear to me that the acceleration will continue or a new equilibrium will be eventually reached. The evidence needed to settle that question is likely years or decades away.
The transition period is rough, we are drowning in a deluge of unvetted information, disinformation, analysis, and raw data. Profit-biased mainstream (formerly) media is in a hot war with the internet. On the other side is a legion of “post world” algorithmically intensifying viral-coded news-like clickbait pieces. And don’t get me started on the various flavors of slop (from SEO recipes to shrimp Jesus and Pope drip), all of it urgently competing for our attention. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that this is some sort of crisis of legibility.
The old reliable markers of trustworthy meaning makers have been worn out, and they weren’t what we thought anyway. It’s all being unmade and remade right now. We can find a standard that reasonable people would accept for the necessary inputs to making up our own minds. One of those inputs is a luxury of time to consume and digest the information fully before making a decision. There are a multitude of fronts where directing our attention would benefit in decision making (climate change, political will, homelessness, healthcare, taxes, you name it), and it is that very attention that is so desired by all the marketers and industrialists. It’s a real conflict of interest.
One challenge is that we’ve learned that a persuasive tale can look deceptively like the truth. The credibility component is an entirely independent variable easily isolated from the reality-based truth component. Entire industries (psyops, advertising, PR agencies) have been developed around this separation; it’s a natural consequence of the information age. And that is the fully developed form of the duality of subjective (imagined) and objective (physical/real) realities. Reality has its subjective uses and its objective uses, both are valid.
Another parallel here is the alignment problem in artificial intelligence. It may be a matter of what we humans recognize as goals, but we ought to be operating in the easy version of the problem right now with only other humans to contend with, for example sharing non-enshittified news that is actually useful and helpful. We are failing miserably on some axes in this easy case. Compare that to the much more challenging problem of an alien or artificial intelligence with unknowable goals.
The consumer is ultimately responsible for what they consume. But the incentives and structures of the system they inhabit contribute.
It’s not just conmen that we need to be wary of, there are confidence structures that are doing the swindle too. (Check that this is clearly listed above.)
We may be in a bifurcation scenario: those that choose (or can afford) to do the work of being discriminating about their information intake will sort into one group, and those that passively sop it all up are in a different group. I am looking for evidence that this sorting happens and what the real effect is. Those in the second group already appear to inhabit a world haunted by demons, and it’s impacting the world of the rest of us too.
The break-and-patch method of corporate optimization may or may not be successfully applied to the social institutions that we all depend on. The interdependency of this system is complex and not well understood; its resiliency is untested. We may be in for a surprise.
The current information saturation point is an echo of the witch hysteria that occurred at the beginning of the printing press era (check facts here). There were so many reports that even if only a small percentage were true, that would be too many witches.

Resonant Phrases

“collapse as a continuous process of renewing”
“Collectively constructed subjective reality”
“subjective reality has a lot of force in the world”
“agentic authority”
“Maximally convincing”
“Break-and-patch governance”
“A preponderance of evidence of witches”
“Printing with electrons is far cheaper even than buying ink by the barrel.”

Open Loops

We ourselves do not have the capacity to make legible meaning of all aspects of our lives. It’s overwhelming. What do we farm out, what do we reserve sovereignty for, and what do we say “I don’t know” to? Where are the limits? Omniscience is a fools errand.
Why has the amount of stuff rammed into our eyeballs escalated so extremely? Cheaper tech has lead to screens everywhere, and something must go on them, but why do we do this to ourselves?
What are the limits of the alignment analogy that I use? What is and isn’t alignment?
Is the bifurcation scenario even plausible? Find examples that already exist.

Ref: 25.2p66

One thing that is nice about free writing by hand is that I can’t go back and mince words, only forward. The only latitude afforded me is this sentence, this next phrase block that I am writing now. It compels motion, and pushes me away from second guessing or trying to find an improvement to what I just said. I mean, I can rewrite it again in the next line, but I haven’t adopted that habit yet.

What I mean here is that we’ve developed a lot of tools and technology for computing and manufacturing, and now we’re late in the game of optimizing all of them to extract as much value as possible. There is a lot of surface area to apply that optimization too, so consequently a lot of things begin to change. The last mile is things like computer screens in refrigerators (now with ads!), washing machines that can text you when they need more detergent, popovers for the popups on the SEO drivel recipe sites, and surely coming soon: targeted ads in the AI generated slop video, chats, and music. ↑

To Reply: Email me your dissolving meanings.

On Entropic Decay

2025-06-24T07:00:00-07:00

These are more provisional notes, thinking in the act of being thought.

Entropic decay is the apparent and accepted brokenness of a still functioning system, or one that recently did function. In non-physics contexts, entropy is the lack of order or predictability of things.

Downtown Santa Barbara, 2025

Summary

There is an office building somewhere in Puyallup that is frozen in the Eighties. It’s a form of maintained entropic decay, a capsule traveling through time, misplaced not in space but in time. There is a difference between a timeless style and fashions that are of a particular time, but that maybe goes under the heading for Aesthetic Residuals.
Entropic decay has one projection onto the lack of physical maintenance of machines, infrastructure, tidying and storage. It’s about the functional minimum of keeping it all going, about letting go of keeping up appearances. Replace with the wrong style part, maybe even a part from the wrong industry altogether. The functional minimum may be the pinacle of what is achievable in the situation. A thing used far beyond its original purpose because there was no other choice. Other examples include using the wrong tool for the job such as opening a paint can with a screwdriver, knowing just the right way to unstick a door, and the satisfaction of being the go to person for making that one machine produce.
Another dimension of this are the rituals, processes, and institutions that continue on after their original purpose has been long forgotten. Traditions, superstitions, habits, memes. All can be evidence of entropic decay, some faithful logic out of place or time lumbering on like a sleepwalker, providing stability of who knows what and leaving a disturbed wake rippling outward across society. There are taboos, laws, rules, and norms all persisting in a way that make their original intents and purposes questionable in most situations.
Entropy is a strange kind of force in nature, always present and inevitable in its seeping pressure to disorder things. Nature’s rebellion leaves its mark on all things, at all scales. The entropic patina is inescapable, it can only be delayed a little, diverted for a time, hidden in the fine details of the surface. Like gravity, entropy influences all things, always.
The elegant disrepair has a kind of accidental random beauty, imbuing the surface with an energy. The layer of entropic energy may perturb the order of things and lead to some unexpected contrast that invites insight. Is the source of our resonant response to the perceived beauty something that is really there, or only us seeing patterns in the energetic traces made by the oldest fundamentally random natural force?
Nature is not excluded from the topographics of entropic decay; landscapes with particular types of exceedingly slow erosion will have all the appearance of entropic decay, but without the intentional construction it is a natural process following its course. There are those rare places which have a strong formal geometry, an accidental rhyme of the made landscape, some of those places chip and wear away into smaller and smaller platonic fragments of matter. These special happenstance locales have a naturally occurring entropic decay.

Resonant Phrases

The 80s office park that’s been quite well maintained but never updated, preserved in its original vision.
It’s the worn out road stripes, it’s the utility pole so tired it droops, wilts, sags for rest. Or maybe it’s the utility pole held up by the power lines it once supported, separated from its base, just left that way for years. Tolerated brokenness, minimum viable repair. I’ve seen all of these things.
The double asymmetry of the misplaced, the misused, the missing, and where it is found in some random new setting. Example: a partially rebuilt internal combustion engine in the front kitchen. Why is it there? Who cares, what ideas does it inspire?
Rituals and bureaucracy that persist on inertia alone, their purpose forgotten long ago and lost to time.
The entropic patina, the result of a constant seep of change pressing on the surfaces of all things, always. The residue is a kind of energy held in ember or glass, slowed but never halted.
Old, worn out places, even if they are repurposed and repainted like the old Navajo Bridge made into a pedestrian access over the Colorado river (see image below), or The High Line Park¹ in NYC, they can’t have a new paint smell, the accumulated and accreted patina of years of entropic wear which can’t be fully covered up. They carry their age with them, unless we unmake them entirely or bury their surfaces under a new edifice entire.
The photo above of the downspout is from a fancy district in Santa Barbara. I took it in January of this year. I offer it as evidence that even the wealthiest among us cannot fully negate entropy’s tireless efforts.

Open Loops

As mentioned above, is there something real in the patina, or do we just see patterns in the noise left at all scales by the busy fingers of entropic ghosts?
What’s the smallest disturbance of entropic decay we could call as such, in each domain? And how large can we go with this concept?
How strangely may we stretch the idea: by what mechanism does it impress upon our subjective reality? Not just the thermodynamic action, it seems to also disturb our very ideas in some way. Does some mathematically topological mapping enable us to make predictions about the limits of bureaucratic scale? Is there a limit to the physical scale beyond which we can no longer bestow blame upon entropy’s reach, and so escape it? Some thing is just too big to be random? I think not.
Clarify the distinction and border with the adjacent concept of the Aesthetic Residual.
I didn’t include it here, but there was a strand about technological replacement (really a phase change of any sort, technology, habit, species) a kind of catastrophic entropic decay, organized or reorganized disorder? Or something else.
There are some places, “un-main roads” for instance, where the entropic decay accumulates into a museum of typologies, framed and showcased in surroundings that compliments the energy of these “pieces”. Where are these place, why are these places?

Old Navajo Bridge in Arizona, 2014

Ref: 25.2p62

Sadly, I have yet to make it to the High Line. I should also make a point to get to the park on the top of Salesforce Transit Center in SF (but this is still a new thing, and entropy’s work is only begun on it). ↑

To Reply: Email me your wildest or most mundane application entropic decay.

What's Real Anyway

2025-06-12T23:15:00-07:00

Santa Teresa Park

A few links to set the stage. They all turned out to be about AIs, directly or indirectly; the chat bots, or ‘gippity’¹ as I heard one person pronounce it today:

Fake Audio, it’s an AI newsletter; it’s the bit about voice cloning, and it’s scary.
Fake People, it’s an internet newsletter but is about AI; too many people are talking to fake people via chipity. Or are they? Scary too.
Fake World, it’s an offline podcast and they mostly talk about social media and stuff. The host got their Twitter (ew) account hacked by phishing emails, and that’s lame. But they’re pretty savvy, so if they can get tricked, well, stay on your guard.

I was reading this morning an analogy for doomscrolling: it’s like being a prey species and knowing the predator species is watching. How does the hare feel, and what does it do, when it knows the fox is out there watching? That’s good, and the next step, in our case with the attention economy, is that the predator never loses focus, never rests, never sleeps, and is relentlessly pursuing us from the shadows. In the “Fake World” (my title) podcast linked above, Jia T. describes it from another angle: it’s like watching a friend drowning, but on the other side of a big plate glass window and you can’t get to them, just watch them unceasingly suffer and endlessly perishing. Yeah, it is like that too. Yet another direction: it can be like a crowd of strangers burning, endlessly.

We do grow numb to it, or we don’t because the algorithm shifts, the world shifts, and a different horror is presented to hold our attention. And now the world is a horror, when you look into that small black window we all keep in our pockets. When we can tear ourselves away from the tiny window and go outside, it doesn’t seem so bad. There are people out there doing ordinary things, living normally, and there are a lot of them. More even than it seems online. Much more. I’ll keep doing my weekends off the internet, it’s been something different, and different is good.

We need better strategies, better reflexes, better gestures for when we recognize that we’re in a situation of inhuman pursuers. Algorithmic feeds, and what isn’t one these days, aren’t aligned with what’s good for me or you. We have to make better decisions about that. Even when they’re tough or maybe even a little drastic. Drastic can be “drastic,” like throwing my phone in a (virtual) lake every weekend.

This is a correction, earlier I spelled it ‘chipity’, which tbh is also good, but it’s not what they said. ↑

To Reply: Email me if you've been touching grass lately.

The X-Files and Post-Truth

2025-06-05T12:47:00-07:00

I haven’t researched this theory at all. I’m just clarifying my own thinking first. It could be original (doubtful) or it could be independent discovery (hopeful) or it could be old news (likely). I had fun writing it up.

The X-Files as Early Stage of the Post-Truth World

TL;DR: The X-Files rehearsed the emotional logic of today’s post-truth era: trust no one, suspect everything, tantalizing resolution someday soon maybe.

As some of you may know, my wife and I are currently re-watching that mid-90s to early 2000s documentary about those two FBI agents that are just trying to find the truth. I watched this show when it first aired, and I loved it then. This time around, my third I think, is really showing how preposterous the stories, conspiracy theories, and even the choices of the characters are. I mean, I want to believe the in universe stories, but sometimes these days it is harder to maintain my suspended disbelief. Or it takes a more intentional approach than it did the first time around. Also, we’re generally binging it, not watching one episode on Friday night, so that’s different too. With that pacing, the non-resolution of, well, anything, is unmissable. The show runs on the suspense.

To be clear, I still think it’s good television. It’s so much fun! But I have a theory to sum up here.

The basic theory is that The X-Files was laying the groundwork for the deep state conspiracy theories that are dominant in some sectors of American politics since the mid-2010s. Not the details of what is in the episodes of the show, not fluke worm man, or any particulars of EBEs or any of those specifics. But the Cancer Man vibe, and all the unknown unknowns in the world, maybe filled with black oil or unknown assassins trained in the School of the Americas, that was all close enough. It’s that there is a cover up, that someone out there knows the truth, and if you believe hard enough (Mulder) you can even convince the hired skeptic (Scully) to buy in. For years on end it maintained the narrative that there is much more going on than we are led to believe. What’s really going on goes in all sorts of different directions. Then, dot dot dot, QAnon.

I’m not saying that The X-Files created this paranoia out of thin air. Ruby Ridge (‘92), Waco (‘93), and Oklahoma City (‘95). The raw ingredients were around, the show just packaged it all together into a weekly prime-time habit.

The show existed in a time when Unsolved Mysteries still aired regularly, and JFK was a recent theatrical release. I didn’t even know about Coast to Coast AM until much later, but it was on then too. I was more likely to listen to Love Line, haha. But what also was on the airwaves was a show called Law & Order (among others). The X-Files served as a credible bridge from the cop show watching set to the conspiracy theory sci-fi folks. And maybe, just maybe, it contributed to those unskeptical want-to-believers pulling in more and more of those police procedural programmers. The show itself likely didn’t convince anyone, it just opened the door for more people who wouldn’t have otherwise been exposed. Olivia Benson is pretty facts driven in her approach to the law. Contrast that with the FBI agents who have a much more vibe-y relationship with the truth.

I wasn’t a part of it at all, but early Usenet message boards at the time searched for clues in every episode; it was a pre-run for OSINT and today. My friends and I did our post-episode forensics the old fashioned way, over the landline.

The point I’m feeling my way toward is this: the show’s style of managing the viewer’s emotions feels uncannily like today’s information rush. We’re living in a world that echoes the 44-minute format Mulder and Scully inhabit. We get no breaks. Everything happens, and we’re left to puzzle it out for ourselves. There are never any answers. It’s fun on TV, but not so much IRL. And that’s the point.

To Reply: Email me if you want to believe.

The Neighborhoods

2025-06-03T19:58:00-07:00

Do you like photography? Are you at least not annoyed about NYC? What about ordinary things, do you find fascination in the mundane?

If you’re still here, I’ve got a newsletter for you. The Neighborhoods by Rob Stephenson is “a not-so-deep dive into every neighborhood in NYC”, and I love it. There are so many photos of random places in New York. Some neighborhoods are fairly ordinary. Others have something really strange, or something that just doesn’t look like it belongs at all, here on Earth, or in this timeline.

You should check it out.

Edit: yeah, I linked to this in February. It’s worth double clicking, but sorry about the repeat.

To Reply: Email me if you like photographs too.

Internet Fast

2025-06-02T19:58:00-07:00

I am reporting back from my phone fast / internet sabbath, which was a success in several ways. Also iPad. I also put the iPad away and didn’t open it from Friday to Monday. It was an opportunity to notice how I was interacting with the internet by taking it away, and I’m glad I did it. I plan to do it again next weekend.

Some things that I noticed:

It was both a relief and presence, like making a new habit, to not turn to the internet or my phone so often. I formed space, and if there was something I wanted to look up, I wrote it down for later.¹
I allowed myself texting (fine), and phone calls (didn’t receive any), and YouTube. YT was interesting, some things felt not internet at all. A drawing lecture by a university instructor. Another video felt very internet and I resolved not to watch that type of material on the weekends again. I’d rather be bored.
In the morning, instead of reading my morning edition RSS feeds, I read a magazine. It was a breath of fresh air. It was curated, it was edited, it was just it’s own thing. Not relentlessly trying to get me to keep reading or consuming or otherwise steal my brain right out of my head.
It occurred to me to prioritize internet use like I only get one hour per day. I’m not likely to actually limit myself like that this week, but I could see it happening after a few detox weekends.

The internet has become such a tar pit. There is still good stuff there too, but it’s all mixed up with the less good stuff. Spending less time on it was good. You should try it.

Maybe next time I’ll disentangle the whole phone vs internet thing.

Questions I saved for later: drones for photography; an in world history study of the events in Star Wars; storm chasing in places other than the North American plains; Trevor Paglen; illustration magazines similar to Aperture. ↑

To Reply: Email me when you get back on the internet.

Engage With Boredom

2025-05-30T06:44:00-07:00

I’m ready to throw my phone in the lake again. This is something that I am always low-grade thinking about doing. You see, the interface generally sucks; it’s compromised in a couple of different ways. The touch typing is awful, it’s a pest with notifications (I have virtually all of them off), and everyone wants you to use an app or make an account, and none of it is mobile first, and and and. So much of the actual content is enshittified in some way, or else it’s gamified, or it just takes you out of your present local moment. There is the doorway problem, so I pick it up and don’t remember what I was just about to do. Worst of all that is that the smartphone is a constant mind thief, stealing away my opportunity for thought, robbing me of the time to think or notice or just do something.

What am I going to do about it? Last week Craig shared his views on the curative powers of allowing for being bored. Austin linked to that and more, today. I listened to the Search Engine episode about phones randomly this week.

It reminded me about my experiment to reduce time on the phone (and iPad). It’s been a mixed bag. I claim to be intentional about it, and have reduced my RSS feeds. But there is still too much time doing effectively nothing on my iPad.

So, inspired by the opening sequence in the podcast where the guest (or host, I forget) ended up at a cabin without internet access for a weekend and came away so refreshed they thought they were a different person, I’m throwing my phone and iPad in the (virtual) lake this weekend. Not really. I’m not using either device except for texting and phone calls (ha) starting at 5 tonight until 8 on Monday, no exceptions. A big chunk is going to be my morning and evening “hour” of RSS checking. The other hard part will be any incidental internet checking, searching, questioning, whatever, throughout the day. I do less of that, but it happens. My solution is to write it down. In fact, I had thought to exempt writing on the iPad, but I think I’ll just write it out long hand instead and see what’s worth transcribing on Monday.

So, that’s it, throw your phone in the lake. The goal is to be more present and access boredom. My theory (and experience) is that good times and good ideas are found there. I want more of that, more boredom. I’ll report back on Monday.

To Reply: Email me if you are bored.

Tariffs 3

2025-05-08T07:00:00-07:00

The internet news and analysis periodical, Garbage Day, surfaced some important IRL facts: the ships aren’t in the ports anymore. Whatever stuff we have from the factory floors of the world is all that we’re getting for now. I’m not entirely sure what to do with that.

I mean, call your rep. Seriously.

There is no obvious move. There are no specific purchases that I can hurry along. For now the shelves are still stocked. Should I buy extra TP? Probably, even though I’m pretty sure we make that here, on this shore. Past experience has shown that people will lunge for that during a panic, but it’s a basically meaningless action. In the big picture, how important is that particular staple?

The shearing of the American mind will continue in the greatest experiment on Earth.

Supporting articles:

Imports into the US from China to decline 75%. CNN.
Planned voyages from China to the US are down 44% year over year, FreightWaves. But I don’t know if that controlling for short term variability or if it’s sensationalized a bit.

To Reply: Email me your shopping notes.

Daston's Rules

2025-05-04T16:36:00-07:00

I just finished reading Rules: A Short History of What We Live By, by Lorraine Daston, published in 2022. If you want to know what you’re in for with this book, check this (brief) review in Foreign Affairs.

Reaction

Five stars! This was an excellent book; S-tier oddball history. Erudite, funny, challenging, wide-ranging, deep, and well structured. I have gained a new lens for looking at the world, a toolkit for excavating situations with peculiar properties, and a better grasp on the range of possible ways and places that rules press upon us. I’ve even gotten a better appreciation for the firmness, or lack, that rules have or that we should think they have. The book and some of its lessons have already made a difference in my professional life, something I was not expecting to happen at all. So, the book is surprising too. If you are at all interested, this is a text worth seeking out.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, if you are reading this, I suggest you take a look at Rules for your next musical. Really.

Partial Reading Summary

I have only read the book once, yet. There is much more to plumb out of this rich text. I have captured a few anchors, re-entry points, for future visits. To be honest, it’s only a sampling. I’m sure I will gain more such footholds in future readings too.

Origins

Rule, as in straight edge. A cane plant used in ancient masonry. Rule, as in tape measure, or as in the rules of multiplication. Basically geometry and by extension all math and other algorithms.

Rule, as in WWJD. Models, paradigms, singular examples to imitate (but not ape). This definition of rule has gone out of fashion lately, so I’m struggling to find an X to put in that X.¹

Rule, as in legal code. Laws, regulations, norms, and customs. These are pretty familiar.

Oppositions, or duals, or symmetries

Rules can fall somewhere along these three opposites. There are historical combinations that are quite uncommon today, which makes it hard for me to wrap my head around. Fun to think about though.

Rules formulated thickly or thinly. Thick with examples and exception and clarification. Thin if all those crunchily specific details can be ignored or handled elsewhere, and they are simply stated.

Rules applied flexibly or rigidly. “They’re more like guidelines” or “death and taxes.”

Rules with a general or specific domain. General, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, or specific like “only 2 hours of TV per week in this house.”

Generalizations

The application of rules always, unavoidably, inevitably, infallibly, requires the use of judgement and interpretation. The use of judgement may be shifted around, as in the rule only applies when certain conditions are met, or there may be carefully worded exceptions to the rule. It may be assumed that a certain system is being used in the application of the rule. Some intelligence must judge if the conditions are met or not. Blind application of the rules will result in errors. Using rules means also making careful interpretation [p125].

On the one hand, rules are a tool for addressing the chaos of the world, and the chaos that we humans are so good at adding. The predictability gained by some small success with rules can become addictive [p185].

Particularities

The advancement of mathematical calculation from the domain of learned experts to human computers to modern digital computers has not relieved us of either the toil or the intrinsic judgement required. We are able to get a lot more numbers pushed through this specific formulation [p105].

The goal of free markets is not to make people behave virtuously, but to make them calculable (predictable), which is a very useful property for them to have [p182].

We have yet to construct a system of rules that is completely free of exceptions. This is one of the roles of the executive or sovereign [p265].

Used Book Marginalia

I bought a used copy and it came with an inscription in both the front and end flaps. This is one of the things that I hope for when getting used books: little mysteries of history, secret surprises hidden in the covers, more than I bargained for. Sometimes I get the wrong book (online orders) and that can go either way, a dud or an unexpected gift.

It took quite a bit of staring and questioning to extract a reasonable interpretation of this handwriting.

learning skills to switch jobs
A way to provide college degrees–
require skills but not college degrees

and on the back

able to to get a job the return / which
did not allow repayment
anyone in world – get skills to
= oppor[tunity] to learn.
2 trillion/year spent on college degree to get an educ[ation]
RE–INVENTING
educ[ation]
&
access to earning

Well, that’s my interpretation. See for yourself here: front endpapers / back endpapers. The “Francis Bacon” is my note, the other hand is some earlier owner.

The other traces left by the former owner are about 3 pages of quite intense underlining and margin noting: p1, p2-3, p4. That’s it, no other markings anywhere else in the book. It doesn’t appear to be directly connected to the note in the end papers, nor do I get any insights into what all the heavy underlining meant to them. Your guess is as good as mine.

Note: I added the ❶, ❷, etc, so I could link my paper written notes back to specific paragraphs. It’s an experiment, since I expect to find relevant ideas or facts in every paragraph of this book.

The parentheses, e.g. ❪main body text❫, and asterisk, ✱, in the margin are mine too–I’ve been doing that for a few years now. It’s served as a good way to find a specific passage later, and easy to refer to.

It’s kind of a bummer that paradigms are not still in use. There are a lot of useful skills related to applying this type of rule. We may need to bring it back. I might examine this more later. ↑

To Reply: Email me your favorite oddball histories.

No Government in the Cloud

2025-05-04T07:30:00-07:00

I had a reaction to one part of Robin Sloan’s Energy Suck post from 25APR19. Multiple companies are building massive data centers around the country, which Robin is objecting to. Now, I don’t necessarily disagree with Robin generally, but I think a better argument could be found. Another possibility is that I got sidetracked by this one aspect and didn’t read his post very carefully.

This is a summary of hand written notes on 25APR21. The notes below stem from a provisional exploration of my reaction to one of Robin’s points. Robin’s post was the spark, so the connection is at times not necessarily direct to his post.

Summary

Robin says: “A bunch of companies are racing to acquire exactly the same thing.” The alternatives, monopoly or national control, are likely a worse outcome.
This duplicative inefficiency is actually a good thing: robust products come from proper competition, and durable computing infrastructure is built.
The profits are being invested instead of just going back to shareholders or staying in VC coffers.¹
Suppose these companies succeed. Private firms with human level, or higher, artificial intelligences will be able to run whole governments in these data centers with LLMs.

Resonant Phrases

Clear writing is essential for good communication with LLMs. They are not capable of guessing “what you meant” if you yourself do not know what you mean.
Some government functions will be turned over to the LLMs in the data center.
The existence of artificial super intelligences controlled by commercial firms does make traditional/legacy government sound dubious. Otoh, this is not a concrete specific ASI, it’s some poorly defined imaginary tech in the future.

Open Loops

AIs in data centers will be (are now?) able to execute lawmaking and governance. This seems like a bad idea. Where do we draw the line?
The “behind closed doors” negotiation and lawmaking must be legible somewhere in written form. I’m sure this sausage making is messy, but it can’t be magical. How is it done? You can’t train a model to do it without the record.

W-25-APR-p21

This point feels weak. ↑

To Reply: Sorry Robin, don't (at) me.

Chill Time

2025-05-01T20:29:00-07:00

Boosting Mu-An Chiou’s post about keeping appointments with yourself:

Therapy note: prescribe myself relaxing activities and treat them as seriously as I’d treat medication. Adding “chill” to the medication schedule.

This is good. Good because it’s simple to do, and good because it’s important too.

It always seems like there are more important things to do, or something that is more urgent. Every. Dang. Day. But nothing is more important than taking care of yourself, mind, body, and soul.

Speaking of taking care of yourself, I just wrote about the power of adulting which unlocks the power of planning meals around dessert. With great power comes great responsibility.

Get your chill on.

To Reply: What are your best chill activities?

Dessert

2025-04-27T07:05:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

It’s okay to plan a meal around dessert. You’re an adult, and people who try to tell you how to eat should be offered dietary advice regarding eating a butt.

From Martin Mann’s wisdom project, via Recomendo.

That’s a good idea; I don’t eat enough dessert, and should try out this method for meal planning.
This is some good rhetoric too, something I could learn from. The combination of useful information and humor is working for me; I’m still immature enough to laugh at the joke.
There are some ideas in the rest of the file too, worth seeing what other bits might be right for me or just written with snap.

Find more lists like this at linkmachinego.

To Reply: Email me your best desserts.

Pacts Follow Up

2025-04-26T01:05:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

More than a week ago I promised to report back on two tiny experiments, one about reducing the number of RSS feeds, and the other about using a writing schedule.

The goal of The RSS Reduction Experiment was to make space for more writing by removing some feeds from my regular reading habit. That experiment has been a success. While I didn’t keep hard numbers, the number of articles and newsletters I peruse, skim, scan, or really read on any given day has reduced by 30-50%. I plan to continue evaluating this and reduce it further.

The goal of second, The Writing Schedule Experiment was to generate ideas by thinking on paper. I have to be honest, it’s been less successful.

[Insights added on 25MAY02] Actually, let me expand on that: when I kept the appointments, it was astonishingly useful writing. In the set time appointments, I generated ideas that astonished me. If I didn’t have the ability to keep the appointment, well, it’s unclear to me how successful it was. I think more of the writing that was captured in those moments is useful as input to later appointments; it is grist yet to be milled.

I like that milling analogy. Keeping it going: the milled grist (output of set sessions) will still need to be refined into some final product. That would be the bakery. Back to reporting on the experiments. [End of 25MAY02 insights.]

The first week went perfectly, I made 100% of my writing appointments. The next week was looser, and much more fragmented. I was traveling and the net results was that I made one 30 minute session, missed another one, and also didn’t complete an open-ended 30 minute goal on a third day. However, at the end of the week I am happy with the words I opportunistically got out. And more travel next week will make meeting specific appointments a challenge again.

What makes sense for continuing this experiment is adaptation. Next week I will set appointments on the two non-travel work days. On the travel days, I will make an effort to do some distributed yet intentional writing when I find time. What I mean is that when I find I have a reaction, or idea, or moment of quiet, I will attach the gesture of writing a quick note about it. Also, at the end of the day, I will review those notes and add any others as I mentally review the day. If I find myself with a few minutes, even if it’s just at the end of the day (or the beginning, for that matter), I will take a few minutes to write out some thoughts. No set time commitment, just write something that is more intentional than a note. Anything at all will do.

Stepping back to review, what other tiny experiments can I try? I don’t have any further tiny experiment pacts to propose at the moment, so I will continue to explore some organic searches for making a few things work best for me. I mean: always stay aware, follow the gradient of what’s working, and tirelessly just keep pulling on that thread. They’re in the fitness, food, and noting/thinking areas. I’ve done well with capturing thoughts in writing and use those as seeds for the writing appointments. Feels super nerdy to always carry around my little paper notebook and even more so when I actually use it, in public. But the ideas have been great, and fruitful, so I press on.

To Reply: Email me your tiny experiments.

Seeking the Shape of Hidden Structures

2025-04-18T20:04:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

These are provisional notes from a raw writing session today.

Summary

What other skills are needed for photography: framing, emphasis, sensetivity. Plus, some examples of how I’ve grown in the last year, photographically.
Offline communities that remain hidden, online communities that stay unfound.
The makeup of a shared singular experience over 20 years ago. It was re-corking some wine bottles so they would last another 20 years. And a recent one, searching for the shot in Silver City, NM.

Resonant phrases

It’s not the job of the photo to capture all the scene, it’s to emphasize the one aspect I found most compelling. If I’m photographing what the [subject] is in my mind, it’s going to be a bad photo. Make what I see in the viewfinder align with what I see in my mind.
Niche groups kept isolated in distinct valleys by the high algorithmic peaks and passes that don’t obviously connect. To the outsider, another area of the algorithmic feed is an unknown unknown known, an open mystery if you knew to search for it.
It’s wrong to claim that everyone is online, they are not even when they are.
Learning some secret knowledge helped make the experience singular to him.

Open loops

Tiny experiments to catch more singular experiences.
Recognize niche cultures, offline and on. Be sensitive for community, whether offline or algorithmically obscured.

2025-04-18-improved-photography and 25.2.26

To Reply: Email me your writing notes.

Getting the baddies with wrong answers only

2025-04-16T20:46:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

These are provisional notes from a raw writing session today.

Summary

Using wrong answers to make progress while uncertain.
Trying to understand how we ended up with bad people in charge from first principles.
Our brains make a culture which we use to make a society and then things can go horribly wrong and you end up with the baddies in charge.

Resonant phrases

Never bet against (or on) the future; it’s not a very durable way to organize.
Society is the house and culture is the building material.

Open loops

Wrong answers are actually helpful.
Basing your plan on inaccurate facts is not a very durable way to organize.
Culture is the common things we’ve learned and share; society is what we build with those things.
Culture is the most transmittable thing we learn, but the people are a low pass filter; only the most sticky things get through.

25.2.24

To Reply: Email me about your writing.

Pacts

2025-04-14T08:42:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

A la Le Cunff’s recommendation, here are N tiny experiments that I am running this week.

Collect data so that I can reduce the number of RSS feeds I am following that I am not getting much out of. RSS feeds tend to proliferate in my habit and then I review the crop daily and get less and less out of it overall. I assume this is a FOMO thing, or just a consumer mindset? So, this week only (Sunday to Friday), I am starring any article that I either open or linger on. At the end of that, I will review the feeds that have no stars and remove some. Notice that I am not being strict about it. At the end, I’ll report back how that worked, did I remember to mark the stars, how many feeds were culled, did it feel effective. That sort of thing.
Writing wise, I will try a schedule. Nothing onerous, but I will set a time to do it, just 3 times this week. I will set aside 3 schedule slots, appointments, of 30 minutes each and write during that time. At the end, I’ll report back how I got along with the writing, if I see potential for a set time to work for me, how do I see using that as a tool for more writing.

So that’s it, the experiments this week.

To Reply: Email me your experiments.

Knausgaard's Autumn

2025-04-12T14:54:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

Autumn, by Knausgaard, is a lovely book of carefully noted observations and connections made from memories, personal experiences, social order, and nature. It could not be more perfect for me and my writing right now. I am working on many of the same problems, such as how to develop an idea or experience without it becoming predictably formulaic. The short pieces are excellent examples of sharing an idea, a connection, a memory, a spiral of thought. One way to look at the essays is as many varied solutions to the challenge of maintaining diverse and interesting writing: starting from a general subject before moving to a specific experience of it, or beginning in a particular memory and then turning more generally to the subject and finishing again on some specific memory or precise detail. Of course Knausgaard is more than just these structural forms; mood and tone and register are all varied too. That’s just a taste, the short essay richly rewards closer reading. There are so many pieces that I enjoyed, plus I get an extra scoop when I go back to study those other non-narrative elements, the other textures of the writing. The short essay format is no hindrance to being profound or astonishing. It’s like I am not reading them but living them as he lived them. There is a lot of art to making it so effortless yet still feeling authentic and natural; it never feels like he’s playing a trick on me. Kudos to both Karl and the translator, Ingvild Burkey!

I can’t wait to read the remaining three in the quartet.

To Reply: Email me what you're reading.

Tariffs Part 2

2025-04-09T20:04:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

So we’re not doing the tariffs just yet; there is now a 90 day pause on the tariffs for all countries except China.

Here is some interpretation from Intrigue. Their take is that it’s a complicated tradeoff between bond markets and de-intertwining economies, although I’m not super convinced that this outcome was exactly planned or expected. It does seem that somehow a real disaster was barely avoided, but I’m not at all sure how that was achieved. The current situatoin is not great, although some people were informed ahead of time and made a quick buck.

To Reply: I am not an economist.

The Mixed Diversions 50

2025-04-09T07:00:00-07:00

A lot of good reading this week. Keep on reading.

That light rail station.

Books
- I finished Tiny Experiments by Le Cunff. This airport-business-self-help book and it suffered from the constraints of the style; it could have been a flow chart. Still, there is valuable stuff in there. For example, I will be doing the plus, minus, next exercise about the thing that I am doing right now: writing this blog. I’m glad I skimmed it, paid enough attention to not miss the good bits.
- I continue reading The Work of Art, but I am slowing down on it. What do I want more of here? To read it in the morning.
- Started on Autumn by Karl Ove Knausgaard. It’s absolutely beautiful. I am quite happy to learn that it is a series of four.
- Rules by Lorraine Daston. Technically I am reading to support my amateur research hobby into bureaucracy and the social science of how humans do big things when they’re not all that smart. The topic of the book is, well, rules. That is laws, algorithms, measurements (ruler), and also examples and paradigms. It turns out to be way more fascinating than I expected. This is a deep look at a severely under appreciated aspect of our everyday lives. And Daston is hilarious, taking every opportunity to construct funny, absurd, and surprising rhetoric to describe how truly unexpected so much of “rules as a topic” is.
Television
- The X-Files S2E8 “One Breath” is a pivotal episode in developing and understanding Mulder’s relationship to Scully.
Music
- Monterey Bay Aquarium, Krill Waves: chill shrimp, schooling fish.
- Caught in Joy has a few good ambients: House, Returnal, Homeward.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Tariffs

2025-04-08T20:00:00-07:00

[backfilled on or after 25MAY01]

Tariffs land today and it’s chaos.
The end of the US dollar as we know it.

To Reply: Hyperinflation is not a great policy plan.

The Learning Currents 50

2025-04-08T07:00:00-07:00

I encountered a number of words that I had never seen before this week. Also, the robots are coming.

Santa Teresa Hills

Articles & Newsletters
- After last week’s puzzlement over the sartorial requirements of the robot kind, there has been a timely update. The robots are coming and they have clothes (nyt gift link). I admit that was sooner than I expected. This, machine, is just up the proverbial road from my house.
- Large models are a social technology is a useful framing for thinking about the impacts on human society. Other technologies, for reference: writing, and the printing press, rapid mail, the telegraph, radio, the internet, etc. What is not a social technology?
Podcasts
- Panic World about how to deal with it when someone you know falls for conspiracy theories. Do they even know it when they are being mislead? Do I?
Words
- Peavey, a tool for turning logs. I had completely forgotten this word until I was talking with B about steam donkeys and old family logging stories.
- [a]estivate: to pass the summer, possibly dormant.
- recondite: concealed, hidden, or not easily understood.
- aesthete: a person who appreciates particularly the beautiful, or who acts that way.
- limpid: clear or transparent, easily intelligible, calm.
- modality: fundamental, essential, or core mode of being.
- casuistry: logic, often flawed, for deciding a case of conscience.
- prolixity: long-winded.
- liminal: the threshold below which stimulus cannot be perceived.
Facts & Ideas
- The video game industry is over 5 times larger, in terms of revenue, than the movie industry.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

The Daily Bits 50

2025-04-07T07:00:00-07:00

I’ll be taking the rest of April off to regroup on my blogging/writing goals.

Loquat tree.

Almanac / outlook, Mar 31 to Apr 06

Chance of rain at the beginning of the week, followed by sunny yet cool temperatures. A bit warmer on the weekend.

Sunrise has fallen below six in the morning, and sunset is fast approaching half past seven. There are over twelve and a half hours of daylight¹ now. The moon is very fresh and will wax to over half full this week. Nights will continue to be dark².

Day Bits

Trying for more small observations this week.

MAR31MON
- I saw the sky shredding itself while out for my run. The clouds tore, twisted, sheared, and whisped in roiling whorls.
- This morning I noticed that the neighbor’s loquat tree had slyly snuck its annual crop into the deep green leaves again. I’m caught off guard by their sudden appearance every year.
- The rain started just after we turned around, just short of the furthest distance from home. We anticipated this; we had our umbrellas, but we still ended up wet from the shower. Especially the dog.
- The air this morning is filled with a damp vegetal scent, growing plants wet from the recent rain and anticipating more soon. It’s not that wet dust smell, spring is sprung, all the plants have donned their finest greenery.
APR03THU
- Just a quick health note: not feeling great in the afternoon.
APR04FRI
- We received the devastating news that a friend’s dog has a very aggressive cancer. The feeling echoed, reverberated, all throughout the day, returning suddenly after moments of calm forgetfulness.
APR05SAT
- The chronically empty light rail station nearest to my house is astoundingly unpleasant. This platform is between the two sides of a busy freeway. Well, it’s not as busy in the middle of the night, I’m sure. But neither does the train run at that time either. The reigning feature of this location is the complete lack of any sound barrier between an infinite stream of cars and the riders waiting for the next train to arrive not soon enough. These patient, surely hypothetical, patrons are rewarded with a sonic tapestry that is one continuous and endlessly loud rush of cars passing at 75 mph not more than 20 feet away. No wonder this station is abundantly under utilized.
APR06SUN
- Warmed cloth is truly a sensuous pleasure. It can be in a sunbeam on a cool day, by the fireplace after coming in from the rain, or inside a hot car on a windy day at the beach. Today it was while folding sheets right out of the dryer.
- Chainsaws in the medium distance, with the accompaniment of a roofer’s nail gun. The usual lawn mowers, airplanes both jet powered and prop propelled. All this drifting in through the open back door on a perfectly temperate spring afternoon. Cars whooshing close by. The highway has a particularly loud murmuration when the wind direction wanders more our way. There are soft moments too, when the conductor lowers his wand and all the sounds of this warming orchestra simultaneously silence. I’m surprised at how often I hear an engine oscillating at its rev-limit in the distance. Now the neighborhood dog is barking its common lamentation again, and a horn is honking at the intersection a few blocks away. Our own wind chime plays softly in the occasional breeze. I will not say that it combines to make a particularly pleasing din.

While it looks like a lot of words, it was a real struggle this week. There were a lot of things going on, and my fitness activities suffered. I’m declaring a pause for the rest of the month of April; I’ll be back in May.

Outside Events

It appears that fatigue is setting in. There were plenty of events this week, but the main standout was the tariffs.

What fourth branch of government?
Cory Booker held the floor of the Senate for more than 24 hours.
More tariffs announced.
And markets dropped significantly in response.
Many protested against the administration around the country
Did you know that the Pope was in the hospital?

This article is a great explainer about how daylight changes throughout the year. ↑
More information about the moon than you could possibly want. ↑

To Reply: Email me about your days.

The Stray Thoughts 49

2025-04-04T07:00:00-07:00

Thinking a bit about YouTube channels and the inevitable AI updates.

Against “Channel”

Is “channel” really the best name for YT content creators that put out hour long vinyl mixes? Or the focus is multi-hour rain walking videos from Tokyo? Or those chores as comfort content, the viewer follows along as they silently get their work done. Channel only seems right if they don’t ever change.

Shifty Vibes

I’ve noticed a shift in tone recently when the leading AI labs speak about the near future developments of their products. They’re no longer ominously saying that AGI is imminent and we’ve got to do something. Now, if it’s brought up at all, it’s assumed, and it’s not threatening or scary. I wonder why that is. A couple of guesses, and I want to be straight with you, these are just guesses. One option is that it’s not happening, AGI or &ast;SI isn’t coming. This one is probably it; we don’t have yet, so nothing is sure. Another option: the labs aren’t worried about scaring the regulators into regulating for whatever reason. Lots of possible reasons there, see the first one, or different administration different attitude, or competitive nations, or… I won’t speculate further, I don’t know enough.

A last option (for now) is that these labs, they think it’s not right right around the corner. It’s going to be an incremental approach, like many things it won’t happen overnight. So when it comes up, they’re talking like it’s a sure thing. We already have some pretty wild tools that we really haven’t figured out how to make the most gains from. The not AGI stuff is already going to rock our world, so it’s just a matter of time. Will we even really notice when the real deal lands? I mean, of course we will, but by then there might be so much change in the rearview mirror that our little monkey brains won’t truly tell the difference. One degree of exponential for another.

Sounds like hype to me. Did I even say anything in that last paragraph? I did not, and neither are they. Call me when the self-flying cars are in the mail.

To Reply: Email me about your thoughts.

Mixed Diversions 49

2025-04-02T07:00:00-07:00

Longer than the DESCRIPTION but the same thing.

If needed, more expository text goes here.

Verdant

Books
- Finished The Notebook by Ronald Allen. I’m glad to have read it, there were many interesting things that are relevant to my interests. It doesn’t completely satisfy, and seems to omit rather seriously much investigation of the notebooks of scientists, engineers, and others dedicated to thought work. Perhaps that’s in a different book, a book directing its attention to more recent times. The emphasis here was on the early years of notebooks, which was indeed fascinating.
- Abandoned Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. I figure if I am not hooked after a hundred pages, I’m probably not going to be.
- Continued The Work of Art by Adam Moss.
YouTube
- New Imamu room.
Television
- Finished The Residence. Maybe a bit wordy at times, but I thoroughly enjoyed it all.
- More of The X-Files S2.
- Il Gatopardo, on Netflix. What I noticed was how the mid-1800s period garb was very close–adjacent even–to the costumes in recent sci-fi shows such as Dune or Foundation.
Music
- I hope Paul Kalkbrenner’s Studiosession #2 is good indication of what awaits in the rest of his channel. Also live @ CRSSD.
- DigiTales II is really a tour of some files you can get for the Elektron Digitone II, but I enjoyed the performance. More.
- More enjoyable Zelda Lo-Fi. Majora’s Mask extended.
- Carbon Based Lifeforms Live Set at Tillsammans.
- Resomat Mysterium.
- Really good State Azure Livestream.

To Reply: Email me the good books.

The Learning Currents 49

2025-04-01T07:00:00-07:00

It sure sounds like the computers are coming.

Clouds on clouds.

Articles & Newsletters
- The humanoid robots are coming. And they’ll need clothes?
- Simon Willison points to the Anthropic blog post about how the language models think. That is backed up by a pair of much more in-depth research papers. They seem significant.
Podcasts
- The Panic World podcast on who killed #MeToo is honestly great, and does an excellent job of summing up why you really can’t believe much of anything on the internet about anyone or anything that is also a brand.
- This week’s Web Curios section Long things that are Long is a wonderful snapshot, from Article World, of this moment.
Facts & Ideas
- Bone tools are much, much older than previously thought. One point five million years old. Via Kottke.

To Reply: Email me the good tools.

The Daily Bits 49

2025-03-31T07:00:00-07:00

I found my words this week.

Neighborhood California Quail

Almanac / outlook, Mar 24 to Mar 30

The week starts off hot, low 80s for a high, but quickly crashes back down to seasonably average weather. From Wednesday on it’s in the 60s during the day and mornings in the 40s again. Possibility of rain sometime in the latter half of the week.

The days are rapidly getting longer, sunrise will be a little after 7 and sunset almost 7:30 at night. That’s twelve and a quarter hours, and increasing noticeably each day.¹ The moon is a waning crescent, and is new on the weekend. It means the darkest nights of the month are at hand.²

Day Bits

Below is my foreground at various moments during the week. Keep in mind the weather and waxing daylight for background. Now it’s a three dimensional scene.

MAR24MON
- There was this very irritating horn drone in the YouTube DJ mix. Or the car is making a very irritating continuous sound since merging onto the 101. But it really does sound like a horn, not a sound that a car makes on the 101. It’s very convincing. I’m trying out this new YT channel. The first video I found was great, but after that it’s been something off, some detail that just grates. This horn, it would fit the pattern. See, the tricky thing is that the horn did and didn’t change when I changed the volume of the stereo. Cutting the music though, the horn definitely persisted. Definitely. So, not the music. New theory then, maybe it’s in my head. Or ears. One more test: the exit. In a quite surreal way, the volume of the horn decreased right along with the background ambient car sound as we slowed to a stop at the end of the offramp. The third theory is it! It’s in my head, or ears. Should I be this excited?
MAR25TUE
- Have you yet had the pleasure of not hearing the gardeners because they are using battery powered tools? Our tree guy today had an electric chainsaw and leaf blower and I don’t know what else. I didn’t hear any of it. And the tree looks great.
- We had a very early preview of summer evenings to be today, in late March. The evening temperature: perfect, maybe a little warm. The breeze: delightful, especially in the shade. Walking along the sunny side of the street in those slanting rays: warmer than preferred. Tomorrow will be twenty degrees cooler. Twenty.
MAR26WED
- The drivers this morning all wanted to have words. There was the one that felt they waited too long for a biker to blow the stop sign. The driver had words with the biker, after not sharing the road and boxing in the biker behind some parked cars. Physically pressuring a cyclist with their SUV is clearly taking it too far, but it wasn’t the only cranky driver this morning. At the intersection closest to our house, another driver flew through the stop sign while making a right. The scary thing is that it was close enough that the driver heard A let out a long “waaoow!”, and then they slowed to roll down the window and shout back “really!?”. You cannot make this stuff up. What the big hurry was for either of these drivers remains unknowable to us, and probably, unfortunately, for the drivers themselves too.
MAR27THU
- I was walking to a meeting when I glanced to my left and saw through the open blinds of a window that the rain was falling again. I could see clearly, all the way across the parking lot to the building across the street. There was a clear gray light, and it seemed every raindrop along the line of sight was sharply visible, every droplet, every bit of water falling gracefully. There is a different look to it when your view is slightly downward through all this falling water, the vertical dropping is more apparent.
MAR28FRI
- The hills around San Jose are that brief but brilliant spring green, almost painfully verdant and bucolic. If you don’t look too closely at the foreground suburban sprawl you could mistake it for somewhere else, somewhere more humid and always wet from rain. All the light fluffy clouds hanging isolatedly over the valley really tie together the idea of elsewhere. Combine those pure white cumuli with the intense green meadows and the only thing missing is a flock or two of sheep among the scattered oaks to complete a postcard picture of, say, Ireland.
MAR29SAT
- There were so many buyers at the Friends of the Library sale this morning. I estimated that half of the people there were professionals, or gig workers if that is a thing in the used book economy. They are more pushy and less considerate, but not outright rude. Just determinedly checking every single book down the line with their scanners and apps. Maybe indifferent to the regular folks, maybe even more indifferent if you’re a woman. People gotta work, I know that, and their money is green same as anyone’s. But is this event for the community to support the library, or for the entrepreneurial to skim off the best books for only a dollar or two? I hadn’t realized there was such a demand, there were even more buyers than I remember from a few years ago. I’m just surprised this part of the market could grow so much that it’s starting to spoil it for us regular readers.
MAR30SUN
- The internet was out for about half a day and I gotta say it was a relief. It abruptly cut out in the middle an X-Files episode last night and wasn’t restored in the morning. Turns out that reading books to wake up isn’t so bad, I’ll have to find the right material to do more of that. Maybe it helped that I was reading The Work of Art which is written by a magazine editor, so chapters were short, focused, and easy to read, but on engaging material. The internet came back late in the morning and the sense of normalcy returned.
- While I waited in the car it must have rained tiny unexpected drops on the windshield from the high scattered clouds. It had to be only for a minute, if I hadn’t looked up just then I wouldn’t have known at all.

This is an abundant crop of words after last week’s weak showing. I tried something a little different, variations on the typical structure I’ve established. Leave out the punchline, change the emphasis, that sort of thing. Next week I’ll vary again.

Outside Events

There were many more significant events this week. This is just a small sampling, the ones that really stuck out to me personally. Not a survey or a summary, more of just keyhole snapshot.

It will be white dudes on the moon again. God this is stupid.
The SecDef uses Signal and so can you.
People are being disappeared off the street now.

This article is a great explainer about how daylight changes throughout the year. ↑
More information about the moon than you could possibly want. ↑

To Reply: Email me about your words.

Week Notes No. 48: Mixed Diversions

2025-03-26T07:00:00-07:00

It’s another installment of random mishmash media consumption. I wish I could say there is a theme. There is no theme.

Is it supposed to look like that?

Books
- I find that I am reading 3 books this week.
- Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson. It has not gripped me at a little over 100 pages in.
- The Notebook by Roland Allen, that I’ve already mentioned.
- The Work of Art by Adam Moss. I tried to read the introduction a while ago and it bored me. This often happens. I’ve read the first two chapters and they are excellent. I’ll go back and read the introduction after I’ve read the rest of the book.
YouTube
- I do not need a new hobby, but I’ve always wanted to be better at drawing. This Draw Sessions video on sketchbooking with no pressure or expectations may be the ticket. I’m already on day 3.
Television
- The Residence (Netflix) is fun and funny.
- The X-Files, season 2.
Music
- The Rosen Corporation’s live session from 12 March was good.
- Martin Stürtzer and S1gns of L1fe Space Ambient Liveset was good.
- A new station perhaps? Nonations Studio “Moonlight Seascape Mix” was good.
- Yaeji booboo and Pondeggi. Something new.
- A lot of chill lo-fi from Monterey Bay Aquarium Krill Waves Radio: Kelp forest, Coastal wildlife, Open Sea.
- Unexpectedly fun Nintendo Mariachi remixes: El Niño del Viento and Super Mariachi World.
Links
- Do you want to play Asteroids with Wikipedia edits? This is your chance! Note: shooting asteroids has no impact on edits to wikipedia.

To Reply: Email me your sketching.

Week Notes No. 48: Learning Currents

2025-03-25T07:00:00-07:00

This guy, Francis Bacon, keeps turning up. I’ll have to learn more about his role in our modern lives.

Pacific Telephone

Articles & Newsletters
- I’m rereading a Sam Kahn article about the intellectuals. I read it (skimmed it?) last September, but the only part that stuck with me was the blame laid at Francis Bacon’s feet. If I’m understanding right, Sam claims that we can blame Bacon for enabling the non-geniuses to reach widespread success. I mean, maybe. See the quote below, am I reading that right? I’m not sure this really represents Bacon’s legacy as it’s conventionally understood. Conventional understanding can be wrong, incomplete, or only one version among alternatives. What I can tell you is that Sam is possibly assuming quite a lot of the reader before getting to the argument. I’m not convinced that it’s really the right framing but also I recognize that I still have quite a few questions. The thesis seems to neglect some relevant points, but I’ll have to follow up on that before I really say more.
  
  ¶ Here’s a brief aside: I vaguely remembered this last week. It took me quite a bit of searching to locate my original written note on this. The note lacked a complete context and brought in some other things I was also reading at the time. All of it was rather imprecise- I couldn’t figure out the origin despite quite a bit of looking around. I finally found it, and have resolved to make my notes more usable going forward; I expect that will be another iteration or two to get right as well.
  - “Bacon’s crowning idea was to do things through an organizational structure in which personal attainment as well as the search for higher truth were deemphasized.”
- Ben Kuhn’s note on running major projects. Talk about timely. I’m in the thick of it at work right now. This article is a blueprint. Maybe email me if you have other suggestions.
Podcasts
- Panic World with Felix Biederman and the follow up comment in the Garbage Day email, both about consensus and Article World vs Post World. This seems very similar to the thesis The Revolt of the Public, just more so.
Quotes
- From The Notebook (p129 & following). Note that the translations aren’t literal, they’re my own rendition.
  - Ars exerpendi: The art of excerpting.
  - non collegio, sed selego: Not collecting, but selecting.
  - notae proprae, notae optimae: The notes I make are optimal for me.
Facts & Ideas
- Ancient Greek statues had smell, in addition to color.
Open Questions
- What is the pH of my morning salt water? Maybe I should get raw unflavored next time.
- In real terms, what was the bounty of Columbus’s first trips to the Americas? What would be the equivalent today?¹
- Which is more important, cookery or philosophy?²
Bets
- I’m feeling good about my bet that Apple won’t deliver on AI + Fitness by the end of next year.

The cake is a lie.

Also from The Notebook, p141. ↑
C.f., p131. ↑

To Reply: Email me your guides to leading major projects.

Week Notes No. 48: Daily Bits

2025-03-24T07:00:00-07:00

An embarrassingly thin week as far as writing goes. It may be signaling that I should take a short break (2 weeks?) and reset. I really like the tiny observations, I want more of that. But the additional context of all my other writing is useful too. What to do?

Clouds.

Almanac / outlook, Mar 17 to 23

A bit of rain early in the week and cool temperatures remain. Lows in the 40s and highs in the 50s to low 60s during the week. The weekend is forecast to be warm, in the mid-70s and sunny.

Folks, we have surpassed 12 hours of daylight, and the Spring Equinox is this week on Thursday. Sunrise is just before a quarter after 7 and sunset a little after a quarter after 7. The moon is waning from full, so by the time the clouds are gone, the beginning of the night should be dark.

Day Bits

It’s going to be a mixed bag, weather-wise, this week.

MAR17MON
- It doesn’t matter what you’re talking about with the neighbors when the rain starts to fall in big aggressive drops. Nor does it matter that you’ve all been getting to know each other better lately, because when the rain is openly hinting that it’s about to become a shower, it’s time to go. Jog fast because you didn’t bring an umbrella and it’s a long block back home. But there is still time to notice the nearly full rainbow hanging in the sky when you look to the left to cross the street to the house.
MAR22SAT
- Made some new friends today at a birthday party. We sat and talked on cold cement picnic table benches under thick clouds that wouldn’t rain, getting to know each other. It was a pleasant surprise.
MAR23SUN
- It’s interesting that when I don’t see someone around the neighborhood for months on end, the first explanation I reach for is that they have moved away. The turnover around here is a little slower nowadays, but people are still moving in and out often. Then they show up with their dog at the park, just the same as the last time you saw them, and it’s obvious that they’ve simply been doing things in other places. I’m happy to know that the changes aren’t so rapid that these people and dogs will just constantly disappear.

I’m not sure where the days went this week.

Outside Events

The roller coaster ride at the national level continues.

Some test deportations have begun.
They’ve come for the museums and libraries. More.
Israel ends ceasefire in Gaza.
Folks it happened, that 7-11 has opened. After literally years of “it’s finished but the fence is still up,” the fence is down!
So long radiosondes, I’ll miss those UFO sightings.
Hudson’s Bay Company closes for good.
Putin puts Trump on hold. We knew this would happen.

To Reply: Email me about your rainy days.

Week Notes No. 47: Mixed Diversions

2025-03-19T07:00:00-07:00

This week: movie trailers.

Books
- The Notebook by Roland Allen.
- Finished reading On the calculation of volume I by Solvej Balle. Very interesting read, perhaps a deep meditation on the repetitive sameness of midlife. There are myriad interpretations, but one that resonated with me is when you’ve set up your routines and get into a groove, you notice that a dynamic equilibrium has set in, a cyclical stability. Then you have to ask yourself: do you want to maintain the pattern? And if you’ve grown attached to it, can you master your fears and escape this hand-built little prison you’ve made? The book intensifies this situation to an inescapable extreme scenario: the same day repeats itself over and over in a time loop. Balle’s focus is on the protagonist’s response to the situation, which I found compelling. Tara, the narrator-prisoner, is meticulous in her examination of the ever-repeating day and her own reactions. I look forward to reading Volume II.
Articles & Newsletters (the fun kind)
- A classicist reivews The Return, a film about the second half of The Odyssey. I will put this film on my to watch list. Here is the trailer.
YouTube
- I saw the trailer for Mickey 17 right after The Return trailer. The contrast in their approach to violence was impossible to miss, and there is really quite a lot of violence in both. In one it is Odysseus, the hero-protagonist, dealing all the damage in a male power fantasy set in a mythic Greek past. And in the other Mickey, the victim-protagonist, receives all the violence as a result of filling in forms in a dystopian and bureaucratic science fiction future. Either way, it’s violence all the way.
Television
- Finished The X-Files S1. Recommended.
Music
- Marsh has released a 7 (seven!) hour long liveset: All Night Long.
- Couple of Nintendo Synthwave mixes: The Hero of Synth and Nintendo Synthwave Videogame Mix.
- The Ludovico Einaudi Tiny Desk Concert was beautiful.

To Reply: Email me your favorite time books.

Week Notes No. 47: Learning Currents

2025-03-18T07:00:00-07:00

Another crop of unrelated trivia this week.

Articles & Newsletters
- Learned about Albion’s Seed by Fischer from the Why Is This Interesting newsletter interview with Rett Wallace. Wallace sounds like a character, dodging the question on what media to consume, but I was intrigued by the book he suggested and its description of America’s origins. So, I found Slate Star Codex’s book review/recap and decided to buy a used copy of this giant tome. We’ll see. Maybe I just need the recap.
Podcasts
- Ezra Klein’s rant about making functional government is right.
- From a pragmatic point of view, I agree with the Panic World guys that you can’t just ignore AI and expect that it will go away. I assume they got royally roasted for taking this position, but unfairly so. It’s kind of another sign that people you would expect to be reality based are not, in fact, based in the same reality as you are. The next few years are gonna be messy, folks.
- I found the Vox article on AI coming for the laptop class interesting and good for establishing some concrete possibilities to evaluate for their abilities to bear loads. Via Links I would GChat you.
  - One possibility is “the world now, but moreso” with even more economic output and more worker displacement.
Words
- The word record is related to the word heart, and that is an unexpected connection I learned today, with all kinds of intriguing possibilities leading out from there. The connection is the proto-Indo-European root &ast;kerd- which means heart.¹ I’ve been reading Shipley’s The Origins of English Words and I have to agree with the subtitle; discursive is an understatement. This book is a wealth of information, but it’s all just kind of shoved in there. It’s like you stopped in some energetic fellow’s office with one question, got an earful, and left with ten more. Awesome and overwhelming in equal measure.
Links
- A decoder ring for feature to model mapping schemes.

The Wikipedia external links for PIE are also helpful. ↑

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 47: Daily Bits

2025-03-17T07:00:00-07:00

This week was busy but not busy. It was strange, a phase change perhaps.

Almanac / outlook, Mar 10 to 16

Deteriorating warm weather early in the week followed by rain and colder temperatures from Wednesday on. Initially the daytime highs will be in the upper 60s, later decreasing to the low 50s. Lows will be in the 40s, or just 40, all week. Running will be a challenge on Wednesday and Friday.

After the clock change, sunrise is just before 7:30, and sunset is just after 7. Soon there will be 12 hours of daylight. The moon will reach full this week; nights may not be dark except for cloud cover. It seems unlikely that we will be able to see the total lunar eclipse this week.

Day Bits

Spring is happening.

MAR10MON
- A community garden plot is much more of a blank canvas than a small raised bed in the back yard. And I don’t mean just because it’s bigger, there’s something else, even if I can’t quite get a handle on it. This space, just carefully cleaned of weeds and set apart from everything else, suggests that it could be made into anything, anything at all. Now I’m slowly pushing over another wheelbarrow of compost to spread evenly over the top, slowly because the bearing in the axle is totally shot, and now because I want it done before the rain comes later in the week. The slow pushing has given me a little extra time to think about all of this. Now even that little extra time is over. It only took a half dozen loads to cover the plot with rich black soil.
MAR11TUE
- I regret my first visit to a doom scroll site in almost a month. It was only for a few minutes but even so, I could feel my brain melting from just this brief encounter. The never-ending stream of community consciousness is just a jumbled concatenation of anything anyone decided to put there. I attempt to make some kind of sense of it all but each post is just random and pulls my attention in a new direction. It’s a mess. I feel exhaustion beginning to creep in almost immediately. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but a digest might help. An evening edition of the most interesting posts in the last 24 hours, but not some complicated algorithm designed to hijack us for an alternative purpose. Just some points for creativity and popularity will probably do it, maybe some groupings under themes. And there we would have it, a first draft of the day’s zeitgeist. Wasn’t there a whole industry built around that concept? Whatever happened to them?
MAR12WED
- The rain came in the afternoon, hard and fast. I could hear it through my in-ear buds while I took a meeting. It maintained a relentless intensity until night. A downed treed on Santa Teresa, and a removed roof on White Oaks. This wasn’t supposed to be an especially impressive storm, but Bay Area Never Forget.
MAR14FRI
- There wasn’t a great reason for it, but today was a slow day, low energy, difficulty focusing. Maybe I was fighting off something, a cold or other infection. I didn’t get my run in, put it off to tomorrow. Hopefully this doesn’t stick and just taking it easy for a day is enough to get over it.

The busy week takes it’s toll once again.

Outside Events

The carnage continues at the federal level.

NASA getting RIFfed this week. Sucks.
Free speech under attack. It’s happened before too
No more Environmental Justice.

To Reply: Email me about your neighborhood wildlife.

Week Notes No. 46: Mixed Diversions

2025-03-12T07:00:00-07:00

Finished a book and started another two books.

Books
- I started reading On the calculation of volume, I by Solvej Balle, and the story opens late enough in the sequence of events that the main character accepts her predicament. I just love that she’s so matter-of-fact about the bizarreness of it all, and I’m intrigued by all of the examined mundane detail. This is gonna be good; I can’t wait.
  
  ¶ Even the formatting of the paragraphs, no indents with an empty line between, reinforces the story. The visual weightiness of that choice underlines how challenging it has been for the narrator to get this written out and emotionally processed. Each experience or realization, contained and contextualized in its own paragraph, has been a huge effort. The reader is dropped right into each new installment of her endlessly looping existence. They can stand alone too, like a microblog post, and still work. I am in awe.
- I read the introduction and first chapter of The Notebook by Roland Allen, and I must confess to finding the style choices to be not at all to my taste. The font choices seem common and suggest the book is self-published. The number of fonts used reinforces the idea. But the book is not self-published. Is it some new trend? I have no idea. At least the contents are grabbing my interest.
- Finished Sedaris’s Theft by Finding. After success found him and he moved to France, his entries grew from jots to full vignettes. They can be quite funny for a book that is a raw diary, only lightly edited. There are a few quotable lines later in the book, good turns of phrase or memorable description. I laughed at his mal-Frenchism of the pot calling the kettle black–I would stumble into a phrase like that too! His writing has become less rickety, more self-assured. Even so, I find the later chapters less useful as a guide for my own journaling. They’re quite ambitious for a diary entry, but maybe someday I’ll be sitting long enough to write similarly. Overall, I enjoyed the book.
YouTube
- NHK Okinawa Ramen, part 2 looks so good.
- NASA Lunar Eclipse on 3/13, hopefully it’s clear where you are.
Television
- The X-Files Season 1 continues. More monster of the week episodes than I remembered. But then I looked back on what I thought about those early seasons and I remember thinking that last time.
Music
- Chromeo Adult Contemporary (Deluxe), it’s very good.
- Lane 8 Brightest Lights is good. Room Service Festival is good too.
- State Azure Night City is good to read to. FAWM#3 ‘Cloud Cover’ track from scratch was alright.
- The Rosen Corporation Watching, Feeling, The Waves.
- Raw Escapes Jeremy Nattagh Live Instrumental was good and in a beautiful setting.
- Martin Stürtzer Space Ambient Liveset Home Concert 70, keeps the good stuff going.
Links
- Netflix-codes.com (via Recomendo) looks like it might be super useful for finding something to watch in Minoan labyrinth that is Netflix’s (terrible) UI. If I don’t report back, send someone with a string.
Events
- An Art of Manga exhibit is coming to a museum near me. That could be cool to go see.

To Reply: Email me a good book you read recently.

Week Notes No. 46: Learning Currents

2025-03-11T07:00:00-07:00

This is half grim stuff, drone wars and AGI, and half wtf stuff, wooly mice and SharePlay.

Articles & Newsletters
- This NYT article about drone warfare in Ukraine is dystopic.
- Something quite nerdy: a new paper on differentiable logic cellular automata (via hn). I don’t know why, but I can’t give up my fascination with these tiny computer programs; all I want to do is make art with them. It’s a purely visual appeal for me–it’s all about the aesthetics.
Podcasts
- Ezra on AGI is coming. They sound convinced, and I am convinced that something is coming. I just don’t know if it is really going to blow our socks off.
Quotes
- “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer, via HN.
Links
- A decoder ring for the asinine AI (AAI?) naming schemes.
Facts & Ideas
- There are wooly mice now. Like mice with genes from wooly mammoth, so they are very fluffy. And part of me recoils, and says in a whisper, “abomination.” But they’re also pretty cute. So, you could say that I’m divided over this new development.
Skills
- You can start SharePlay by holding iPhones near each other.

Cat zen.

To Reply: Email me your AGI hopes and fears.

Week Notes No. 46: Daily Bits

2025-03-10T07:00:00-07:00

Did you change your clocks? It’s clock change time where I live.

Almanac / outlook, Mar 03 to 09

After last week’s visit from late spring, we’re transitioning back to NorCal winter. So, lows will be in the 40s and highs in the 50s until late in the week when they reach for the 60s. There is a slight chance of rain on Wednesday, emphasis on slight. To sum up, we get a little more soup weather.

Sunrise is at 6:30 and sunset is at 6; eleven and a half hours of daylight. Those times are good until the weekend because on MAR09SUN we spring ahead. We’re still into changing the clocks twice a year. The new time for sun up is 7:30 and sun down after 7. Just as before the change, the days keep getting longer and longer; we maintain eleven and a half hours of daylight despite the horological shenanigans. And the moon is still quite new but rapidly waxing; we’ll transition from dark nights to bright ones this week. Heads up– there will be a total lunar eclipse on the 13th, when the moon is full!

Day Bits

A smattering of notes this week.

MAR03MON
- The cirrostratus clouds were really stunning this afternoon, as if a giant painter had drawn their brush clear across the sky. Pale grey, white, and a bit of blue peeked through, blending and streaking from the horizon to beyond the top of the sky, smoothly filling it all. I don’t think I’ve seen clouds like this here before. The whole sky is an enormous canvas! It’s really quite the effect; I stopped and admired nature’s finest work of the day. More of that, please.
MAR05WED
- I worked in the office today and was quite surprised to see that it rained a lot at home, but not at all up here, when usually it’s the other way around.
MAR06THU
- Got a run in today. Doing the fitness, activities, whatever, it’s become a boundary condition. They’ve become non-negotiable. I’ve been on a long road to get here. I hope I stay, in this place of regular exercising. Something I’ve said to myself lately is “you wouldn’t not eat, would you?”, a sort of reminder. Exercise, on the regular, it’s like making sure to eat. I usually think about my day while running. The benefit this time was solving some problem at work–a relief. It still surprises me how that works.
MAR08SAT
- A busy-relaxed Saturday: gardening, library, laundry, hardware store, running, hang board hanging, dog park, dinner, reading. At no point was there any pressure to get it all done, just a steady step by step progression through a long list of things to do. Starting many of these tasks was a mini-battle against inertia, each one showing now-me that I can get more done in less time than past-me would expect. It felt good. Also, busy. Still trying to find the right balance between doing more needed things and still resting to enjoy life.

It’s been another busy week, and I don’t think it’s going to let up. I’m just trying to get some words out here so I can mark time.

Outside Events

I don’t know if it was how busy I was at work, or a change in how things are going in the federal government, but there was less standout news to me this week.

Some good news: Firefly landed on the moon.
The end of weather forecasting is coming and I am miserable over it. Fired: hurricane hunters.
US stops sharing intel with Ukraine. Despicable.
US suspends cyber operations against Russia. Speechless.

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 45: Mixed Diversions

2025-03-05T07:00:00-08:00

See, the things is, lack of sleep makes it hard to read things. So there isn’t a huge amount here. Not really sorry about that. Enjoy!

Death Valley, CA

Books
- Finished The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. This was an interesting book, but I am not 100% endorsing it. The people who definitely should read it either have a curiosity about early SF or are keen on Le Guin. I am in the latter camp. I will say that the last couple of chapters really lifted quite noticeably above the rest of the book.
- Continuing with Sedaris’ Theft by Finding. Despite what my lack of commentary here might indicate, it continues to engage.
Articles & Newsletters
- Life must go on as the horrors continue also. This laundry ain’t going to do itself.
YouTube
- Any Austin does the rivers of RDR2. I should really unlock the whole map. Is gorgeous.
- Boring game trailers: Slow Roads 2.0 and Over the hill.
Television
- Continuing with S1 of The X-files. Even the early monster of the week episodes are iconic. I am going to savor every scene of this rewatch of the show.
- Continuing with S2 of Severance. S2 is so much weirder. That is apparently what was missing from S1: weirdness. I am much more engaged. My theory: this show is just work/life balance and corporate absurdity. It’s great!
Music
- State Azure Live Stream // FAWM ideas with Syntakt + Digitakt II took a little while to cohere into something but then it was excellent.
- The 8 hours Severance – Music to Refine To just friggin’ kills. Features Odesza, who are on the Anjunadeep label too. So that tracks.
- CRi Open Air: Mexico City.
- Relaxing afternoon Deep House from Caroline Chang.
- Several from The Rosen Corporation: The Magician, Morphic Resonance 59, and The Fool.

To Reply: Email me the good music.

Week Notes No. 45: Learning Currents

2025-03-04T07:00:00-08:00

Despite the sleepy recovery, I did manage to scrape a few learnings from the insides of my eyelids.

My shadow reaches deep into the Death Valley landscape.

Articles & Newsletters
- Today in Tabs on all those government firings. I, for one, am not very excited about how exciting things are about to get. Apprehensive, anxious, or just feeling really quite uncomfortable about all of this, any of those would be more accurate. Maybe a little bit angry about the stupidity and brazenness. I do not think it will end well, or end how the perpetrators want it to. But I don’t know anything.
Podcasts
- Ezra’s interview with Martin Gurri. Some points we need to hear about the right’s more competent adaptation to the new info-sphere. Some facts were disputed between the host and guest about Biden’s lucidity and USAID’s legal origins. And some willful naivety on the part of the guest, in my opinion, regarding the expectation that the rule of law will be respected.
Words
- Not just one word, but a whole bunch of proto-words. I followed some obscure symbols to the back of The American Heritage Dictionary, and there in the appendix I found the essay on proto-indo-european language. And a mini dictionary of roots, only about ten pages. It is fas-ci-na-ting. I cannot wait to learn more.
Quotes
- “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Eric Hoffer, via HN.
- “what are you going to do now with what you believe in?”
Links
- A decoder ring for the asinine AI (AAI?) naming schemes.
- Another decoder ring, err mnemonic.
- corporate.watch is “fun” and “useful”. Really. Corporate-speak for “when in time are we now?” is patently absurd. Has it been patented? It has, hasn’t it? Then let’s just go with useful.
- I discovered mapper.acme.com has really excellent satellite photos. It’s been right there at the top of the geohack list of online maps purveyors the whole time.
Facts & Ideas
- That was good. Notice the mundanities that engoodenate your day. Write them down. And share them. Also, it was worth clicking through to the original author.
- I am not in charge of when these things get published. Some poor soul in Pompeii had their brains glassified by extremely hot gasses. Sucks. Super interesting that this is something that can even happen. Glassification of brains?! Still su-ucks!
- First Pharoah’s tomb discovered since King Tut. Cool! Other’s have already made the jokes about awaking the ancient dead at a time like this, so I will not.
Skills
- You can change tab groups in Safari with ⌘–⌥–[ and ⌘–⌥–]. Via pxlnv.
Open Questions
- Can anyone recommend a podcast that goes episode by episode through the whole The X-Files canon?

Good doggo zen.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 45: Daily Bits

2025-03-03T07:00:00-08:00

Back from backpacking, but my sleeping patterns took a few days to recover.

Sunset in San Jose this week.

Almanac / outlook, Feb 10 to 16

There is no almanac this week because of a “me” outage last weekend. Out backpacking, that is. The weather was great, very like spring. In February. Benefits of California.

Day Bits

Backing out of backpacking sleep into regular home sleep really wrecked me this week. Luckily there weren’t any other aftereffects, like soreness. Musta done something right this time. The bits below are more scattered than usual.

FEB24MON
- Final day of backpacking in DV and flight home. I will post a report soon.
FEB25TUE
- I find myself in the very uncommon situation of struggling to sleep through the night. My guess is that it’s the backpacking trip I just returned from. You see, on those trips, I am usually going to bed quite early and getting up very early too. While out backpacking the evenings are often cold and dark. And it’s the light in the morning. But the natural sleep guide of dark coolness is gone back home. We’ve solved these problems; my bedroom is always dark, my living room is the temperature I choose it to be. I rely on habituation to schedule to guide my sleep. I’m sure I’ll find my way back to it.
FEB26WED
- So green, so spring. Many of the trees are starting to pop too. The greening is getting so intense that you can sense it even when the sun is down.
FEB27THU
- I think lifting on the same day that I ran made me run faster. Maybe a bit too much faster because I had to walk a moment to recover.
- Brief bit of beautiful sunset, over in the corner of the sky. The colors were incandescent. Red, pink, yellow. Purple to lavender. I don’t care how cliche it is, it’s always beautiful.
FEB28FRI
- Good catch-up with B. Many things in the air for them. I hope it all comes together ok. They are in my thoughts daily.
MAR01SAT
- Weeding the community garden plot; it was way out of hand! An hour was both more time and less time than I realized. Most of the weeds are gone, but I barely noticed the hour was up. Busy hands make quick work? It’s not the usual phrasing but still sounds right to me. I keep doing that, not recognizing how much you can get done in a short amount of time. Did it in the afternoon again too, really got the “garage gym” all ship-shape while the washing machine ran through a single load. I thought it would be more work. But the emerging pattern is that it isn’t more work, or I work faster than I think I do? I’d like to get to the bottom of this mis-habit. Best way is probably to just keep doing it.
MAR02SUN
- You ever notice that you have distinct and strong preferences about toilet seat covers? I hadn’t, until today. There I was, standing in the bathroom aisle of the big box hardware store, and bang! it hit me. Most of these covers are wrong, just wrong. Who on Earth would buy one with a scalloped bevel? Wait. Am I the one who’s nuts? Anyway, today I learned.
- Running into the wind is way harder than running with it.
- There are huge alien invasion clouds as we approach sunset. The mothership parked over the Santa Cruz mountains is sending an armada of sorties over the valley. Golden sterns push the dark gray prows through the sky, wispy tendrils dropping as they prepare to take over. I for one welcome these new alien overlords.

Outside Events

These are the main events of the week, and they are so significant that I had to include some personal immediate reactions.

More USDA / USFS / Federal government firings.
The FAA is getting Starlink. Disgusting.
Zelensky stands strong. I feel sick over this. An unexpected gut punch. Another take.

To Reply: Email me about your best backpacking t(r)ips.

Week Notes No. 44: Mixed Diversions

2025-02-26T07:00:00-08:00

Just a reminder: I was backpacking in Death Valley. Content will be lighter.

But there will be some pictures.

Tell me it's not a simulation.
Amargosa River, Death Valley, CA

Books
- Continuing to read Theft by Finding.
- I started The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. Le Guin. It’s ok. So short that I will surely follow through. Maybe it felt original at the time of publishing, but I’m not nearly as challenged as I was in The Dispossessed. And that’s obviously, so obviously, about an out of date paradigm too.
Podcasts
- Panic World on Area 51 and NJ drones. Good contrast for today’s nightmare. Guest is the Atlas Obscura guy.
- Several other recent episodes from Panic World. All good.
Music
- What a resource: Discogs Digs on ambient albums. Via Lars Christian.
  - Couple of articles: If you liked Selected Ambient Works 85-92 and Essential Ambient Albums: 1978 - Today. I’ll report back.
- Synthygate Ava Eva was good. Kind of French touch, I think?
- Caroline Chang Ambient Techno To Zen Out To was good. I’ll seek out more of this.
- Carbon Based Lifeforms Live at Ozora Stage 2022 was excellent. More, please!
- Martin Stürtzer Space Ambient.
- Aphex Twin, fan made Selected Ambient Works Vol. 3.
- Gaia Cafe Fall ambient mix. Wish they made more.
- Something completely different. Nao Sogabe ambient lute. I think it looped at some point, maybe multiple times.
- Another different thing. Bansury Music, Indian flute.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 44: Learning Currents

2025-02-25T07:00:00-08:00

Since this is a short week, content may be lighter than it otherwise would have been.

Amargosa River (Dry) in Death Valley, CA

Articles & Newsletters
- Robin Sloan’s Is It Okay? about all the recent progress on AI. Useful read.
  - Robin assumes that these advances do not fundamentally alter the social contract, that business as usual can continue, approximately. That sounds about right. But surprises happen–they always do. I’m not sure how far the rules stretch before the deal is altered, and people feel real impacts. Even if today’s economic theories remain intact, it doesn’t mean our lives stay the same. But that’s all really out of the scope of the article.
  - Staying in scope, I had a couple of follow up questions that I would like to examine:
    - What, really, is the training corpus? Is it everything everything? Or all of the internet and some books? Or some of the internet and a lot of books? I’ve only heard conversational details; I’d like to know a more concrete answer.
    - It seems preposterous that the machines could fabricate a replacement dataset that is as large, varied, rich, or as valuable as the original. But I should check this before placing any big bets. Why don’t I believe this: is it justified?
- Do more pointless things. Hell yeah!
- More on that asteroid that might land on us in a few years. And my new favorite domain: arewedoomedyet.org.
Links
- The AI tip off phrases, on Ethan’s bsky. They do seem pretty generic to me. I would add an over use of em dashes.
Facts & Ideas
- It’s not super clear, but I think this is saying that a particular cave in Spain was occupied by various people for 46,000 years. That is amazing.
Open Questions
- What are the functions of a bureaucracy? Information storage and retrieval is one function. Also executing rules about the decisions, operations, and behaviors of the people that make up that institution.
- Is YouTube infrastructure? It’s a question after my own heart. But no, I would not trust it to be infrastructure. Relying on it as a real archive seems risky. There are no laws to govern it that way, and nothing serious in place to protect it.
- I am confused about how the AIs avoid witch hunts and conspiracy theories. Do they, in fact, avoid them? Ethan found a replicable paper on how they can be used to diffuse belief in conspiracies in humans. That’s usefully adjacent to my question.
Panics & Tripwires
- I think I should get something specific in here. Any tips?
Bets
- There is a lot of change going on. What to wager?

Moment of cat zen.

To Reply: Email me your AI thoughts.

Week Notes No. 44: Daily Bits

2025-02-24T07:00:00-08:00

Heading out to Death Valley, so content will be lighter than usual.

Almanac / outlook, Feb 17 to 23

A warming trend. By the weekend it may be breaking the 70 F mark. But, there is a chance of rain on Wednesday.

Sun rising before 7, and setting at almost 6. That’s 11 hours of daylight this week. The Moon is waning, but still gibbous; some light at night.

Day Bits

FEB17MON
- Sweet, sweet day off.
- Packing for Death Valley backpacking. It will be unusually warm. Not problematically warm, just warmer than anticipated. So, I will bring my least insulated sleeping back.
FEB18TUE
- This warmer weather is so nice. I don’t want to short change necessary winter–we always need the water. But, speaking selfishly, I do enjoy the feeling of warmth, so the break is nice. I hope it’s a break anyway, and we get another couple of storms.
FEB19WED
- Well, that was a day that didn’t let up. Busy busy at work. Running around last minute getting things together for backpacking. I’m supposed to sleep too, aren’t I?
FEB20THU
- Backpacking in Death Valley. In a winter heat wave, so nice temperatures.
FEB21FRI
- Backpacking in DV.
FEB22SAT
- Backpacking in DV.
FEB23SUN
- Backpacking in DV.

Outside Events

These purges, they do not seem so well organized

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 43: Mixed Diversions

2025-02-19T07:00:00-08:00

It’s been a busy week. I’m surprised there is even this much stuff.

Books
- I finished Circe. It was very good. I’ll have more to say soon.
- Continuing to read Theft by Finding.
YouTube
- Zeltik does Anju & Kafei. I appreciate that someone does this. I don’t always get why they pick what they pick to analyze in such depth. But, I’m glad they do.
- maigomika pre-winter renovations. Nice, they watch Martijn too!
  - Does anyone know of other Japan-based YT’ers in this style? Doesn’t have to be English language. I’d call it “slice of life,” does that sound right? Not looking for “so you want to live in Japan” type content here. Blech. Email me?
Television
- Brooklyn 99 continues. “I’m a human, a human male.” Gold. Pure gold; every line is rich.
- Finished Dark, on Netflix. My brain insists I watch it again. I may acquiesce.
Music
- Martin Stürtzer 3 hour ambient set and ambient night 19.
- Nick Elisabeth Mexico City.
- Röyksopp - Profound Mysteries.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 43: Learning Currents

2025-02-18T07:00:00-08:00

It’s a light week; work clobbered me.

Articles & Newsletters
- Advertising is not one thing, but a thousand different things, all called advertising. Via HN.
- Carla Lalli Music’s The costs of youtube. Sobering. Carla, I wish you future successes, but I’ll miss your YT content. Just maybe don’t read the HN comments.
Words
- Dinner vs supper. My mom’s mom used these words in a particular way, and I was recently reminded that I was always confused by that. Since I just happened to have a dictionary in front of me, I looked them both up. Dinner is the main meal of the day. It could be lunch, it could be breakfast, it could even be what is currently commonly called dinner: the evening meal. Originally it was breakfast. Supper is a small meal, later in the day. There you have it. When my grandmother, on the farm, was calling lunch ‘dinner,’ it was because it was the main meal of the day.
Quotes
- “You’re playing Russian roulette with your self-esteem, and you have no control over how you’ll be received.”
Facts & Ideas
- Girl Scout Cookie mirror universe.
- The Control Test. Ask yourself, “if this is in my control, what is my next step?”. This clarifies the question of what you can and cannot do something about. Via Kottke.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 43: Daily Bits

2025-02-17T07:00:00-08:00

Can you tell that my work week was busy? I think you can tell.

Almanac / outlook, Feb 10 to 16

Cold mornings in the 30s, rising to mid-40s. Highs in the mid-50s all week. Rain Tuesday to Friday.

The sun is rising earlier, around 7, and setting later, almost quarter ‘til 6. Full moon this week, so bright nights. If it’s not cloudy.

Day Bits

So much weather. Running was impacted; I’m such a fair weather runner. Here’s what I did with it.

FEB10MON
- Standing in the dog park this evening, it was very cold. One friend had texted me saying it might snow in the Bay Area. Don’t believe everything you see on the internet, kids. Maybe a dusting at the highest elevations, gone by the afternoon. I saw no weatherman mention this.
FEB11TUE
- Solid running today. Consistent pacing, steady effort. Felt good. Glad I ditched the gloves; it wasn’t that cold.
- It continues to be quite cold - by local standards. When the evening sun is hidden behind the hill, the air draws the heat right out of you. It drives you back inside, sending you home too soon from the dog park. Days are lengthening, but our time outside isn’t. Yet.
FEB12WED
- Driving in the rain. Across town for a meeting in the evening.
FEB13THU
- Driving rain. Like really coming down. I had no reason to go out, so I didn’t.
FEB14FRI
- WFO. And riding in the company self-driving car. I was duly impressed, and would ride again at the next opportunity.
FEB15SAT
- Mitsuwa. Pays to get out early so you can find parking. And the good stuff goes quick; produce, deli items, fresh cuts of meat and fish.
FEB16SUN
- Helped a friend with their first bread loaf. I hope it starts them on a delicious and bread-y journey. And that we can exchange loafs in the not-too-distant future.

Outside Events

Many events going on, and my busyness kept me from noting much of it.

It’s widespread flu season.
So we’re going to cancel the penny now? I think it’s still an ‘if.’
Many other government related things this week. What a mess this is.

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 42: Stray Thoughts

2025-02-14T07:00:00-08:00

Two stray thoughts this week.

Sun up

Pathological externalities

Do all successful industries or businesses externalize all the costs that they can? Nascent industrialists might not even recognize these potential externalities in the early days. Responsibilities that can be shared upon society, ignored for a while even. Maybe no one will notice. I think they might even be forced to do this by financial regulations once they reach a certain size. Some examples: tobacco and cancers, chemical industries and water contamination, asbestos and cancer again. I’ll leave the biggest one of them all out for now. But we do benefit from these industries. Our lives are unquestionably better for many of them, maybe even all of them for a time. Legal drugs distributed nationwide. Better living through chemistry. Where would we be without teflon? Tell me where. And don’t forget about fireproof… things. So, these good things are part of a bargain. We as a society trade some future costs for improving our situation now. Who knows what the future will bring, how we’ll bear those costs. Is it worth it? When isn’t it worth it?

Piece of Paper

Is the Constitution of the United States just a piece of paper? I thought it was a inter-subjective reality that most of us agreed to so it became substantial. Must be that we lost quorum, belief fell below critical mass, enough of us stopped caring. Or someone is trying to convince us that it just doesn’t matter anymore. How’d we get here? Does it matter? They say you can’t keep stepping into the same state again and again. The body politic is in constant motion, but who’s steering?

To Reply: Email me your thoughts.

Week Notes No. 42: Mixed Diversions

2025-02-12T07:00:00-08:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve now separated the info from the entertaining. This is the entertaining stuff.

There were so many good ambients this week.

Welcome to My World

Books
- I read some of each of Circe and Theft by Finding. They are both engaging. I should finish Circe soon, and I’m about half way through Theft.
YouTube
- NHK world is one of the “regular tv” gems on YT. This folklore focused episode about the Yokai Namikozo was quite interesting and an excellent way to see some off the beaten track corners of a region. I suppose that is the point too.
Television
- The X-Files S1E2. “Budahas!”
- The X-files S1E3. Tooms. It’s one of the greats.
- More Brooklyn 99.
- The psychology of Severance. A finds the show too disturbing to watch. I’m enjoying the unending mystery and what it reflects about us.
Music
- Anjunakitchen: PROFF & Ezequiel Arias. Good stuff, both.
- Ambients (all excellent):
  - The Rosen Corporation The Unamed Arcanum, The Lovers, The Moon, The Hanged Man, The World.
  - Martin Stürtzer Dub Techno Live Set.
  - State Azure Ascending Jupiter Terminus.
  - Sands of Arrakis.
  - Anjunachill: Lost in Nature, A slow embrace, Ibiza chill.
  - Jun Doe, I thought it was interesting. Will investigate.
  - LUSS Poisonoise.
- The Jody Wisternoff ablum arrived. It prompted me to move around the speakers. The ones formerly in my office are the better pair. Now the stereo kicks!

To Reply: Email me the fun stuff.

Week Notes No. 42: Learning Currents

2025-02-11T07:00:00-08:00

I’ve decided to split up the Media et al into two posts. I’ve noticed that there are really two themes here: learning things and entertaining things. Separating them gives each more room to breathe. Tomorrow I’ll publish the fun stuff.

Most of this is about the events in Washington.

A distorted view.

Articles & Newsletters
- Thank you Wil, for this moment of resistance and respite.
- So, it’s coup week:
  - Garbageday.email: delete the CDC, delete USAID, delete the Department of Education. It’s the takeover Twitter playbook.
    - Ryan adds more, via BlueSky: citizen → consumer → entrepreneur.
    - Today in tabs: maybe we just go insane instead.
  - Heather Cox Richardson. Just the facts, on Feb 3.
  - Kottke on events, on programming change, on of course it is
  - Jamelle Bouie on not going back.
  - Dan Hon on gov’t and technology.
  - Oldster recommends on how to make your voice heard.
  - A Google doc on some other things that we can do besides voting or protesting.
  - Advice to prioritize high quality information and to avoid the trap of engaging naively with lost causes. More advice, on fighting in fight clubs.
  - Possibly extinction burst explains the ratcheting racism and other abuses. It’s appealing, but I remain skeptical.
  - It’s a self-coup, obviously. All attention on the man behind the curtain, please.
  - Although, many people seem to think it’s just a tv show, and it would never impact their lives. There is no leopard eating your face.
- I’m considering going back to print.
- On having a donut. I cautiously agree. But a lot of the time I eat a donut and feel like garbage afterwards. So maybe something is wrong with me. Or donuts. More investigation is needed here. The mind may want a donut, but the body surely keeps the score. If we’re not careful, the mind is easily deceived and hijacked. All for want of a donut.
Words
- mǣrþu: greatness, honour, glory, fame. I know it’s very likely coincidence, but it seems to align with Martha (from Dark), and I don’t believe that name has any of those connotations.
Quotes
- “Shipping the org chart”.
Links
- HN comment on the rationalists. I’m only glancingly interested in the so-called rationalist community, and even from this distance I get distinctly cultish and irrational vibes.
- Indivisible.
- The robots are coming, via xyzlabs newsletter, but I won’t link to it because these people don’t include links back to the source.
- The ROBOTS ARE COMING, this is going to be a sucker punch. Just watch the video. Via Interconnected and Pixel Envy.
- Maybe I’ve gotten behind the times on intellectual property rights. Enforcing ownership of something invisible seems difficult, unless you’ve got the lawyers. And who’s got all the lawyers?

Zen surf camel.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 42: Daily Bits

2025-02-10T07:00:00-08:00

Rain and wind and cold sun.

Universal moss.

Almanac / outlook

Off and on rain most of the week. Actually could be quite a lot of rain. And wind. Lows in the 40s, highs in the 50s.

The sun is rising closer to 7, and setting at half past 5. The moon is a quarter illumined, so nights may not be that dark by the end of the week. But there will be clouds to help.

Day Bits

FEB03MON
- The weatherman finally started keeping his promises today. In the morning there was a faint “spitting” rain. Neither A nor I even bothered to mention it. And before lunch, a light but insistent rain began just as I stepped off the porch for a 5K run. It dampened me the whole way.
- I just realized: the lemon tree is laden, laden!, with lemons this year. Are there more lemons than leaves? No idea. A situation like this demands of us one thing only: the best goddamn lemonade you’ve ever had.
FEB04TUE
- Morning brought the kind of rain that will sneak under an umbrella. It’s annoying, and it makes you want dry pants. The weatherman always keeps his promises.
- Thunder! Close too. That’s exciting.
- Afternoon rain so hard the dog wouldn’t even leave the porch.
FEB05WED
- Sunny and cold–we get a bye day between storms. The dog wore her purple sweater. She is not a small dog.
FEB06THU
- Yes, there was more rain today. And it was good rain, serious rain, sheeting and ponding and all that. Not important now. I want to tell you about the wind. This was ‘Bay Area storm 2025–Never Forget’ wind. I swear it was going to rip the conduit thing right out of the chimney! The hammock flipped. We will rebuild. Who knows what else happened out there. We’ll see in the morning.
- The bad news about all this weather is that the dog won’t go out. She suffers. Or, she suffers when she does, finally, go out in the rain. Well, less rain. Today, neither walk happened. Neither. Not a sound from her about it either; the rain drowned her usual protests.
FEB07FRI
- Minor damage. I saw two small trees toppled by yesterday’s wind. One was landscaping; the other, a wrist-thick youngling in a parking strip.
- I was doing a midday workout and I noticed something to share. It’s progress, but not fitness progress: it’s thought progress. After a month, I’m getting into a groove with these functional workouts. I’ve started to do that thing where you think about whatever it was from the morning, and solve the problem, while lifting a kettlebell. I’ve always done this while running and I look forward to it. Today, for the first time, I caught myself doing it during weights too. I think I might be getting into this.
FEB08SAT
- Slept poorly last night. Something at work is probably bothering me. I’d have noticed if I was endlessly turning something over in my head. Nothing. I got up and puttered around: read, write, review notes, listen to music, that sort of thing. Sleep was refusing to come near anyway. After an hour I began feeling tired. Sometimes at that point, I can just go right to sleep. Not last night. It was at least another half hour, tossing, turning, before I noticed it was already light. Sleep caught me unawares, I guess. I had a groggy, underdone feeling. Yeah, I was up very late, wasn’t I? Coffee—hot and bitter—eventually revived me.
FEB09SUN
- We saw a golden eagle this morning. Two golden eagles! Or… red tailed hawks? On further investigation, definitely red tailed hawks. They’re huge. One was carrying a snake. Or a stick? Yeah, it’s a stick. They’re building a nest in a tree high above the school. That’s so cool.

Outside Events

The trade war is paused. What is this, a clown show?
It is Tuesday, and I guess there’s an administrative coup on.
We are not accepting packages from China; we are accepting packages from China. I think the point is confusion. Also: yes, this is a clown show.
Makes sense that the Treasury was first. FWIW, the courts told them to stop it.
I guess we’re giving up on cancer. And everything.

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 41: Stray Thoughts

2025-02-07T07:00:00-08:00

I focused on my moments of noticing in the day bits. Enjoy this picture instead.

Once mud, now dirt.

To Reply: Email me about your thoughts.

Week Notes No. 41: Media et al

2025-02-05T07:00:00-08:00

I don’t think that DeepSeek was at all the most important thing that happened. Maybe it was just a convenient diversion.

Winter tree.

Media

Books
- Continue to read Circe, and it’s quite good.
  - “Even my sister had an end, a place she could not go.” p. 125.
  - A good passage on earning vs being born with it, on p. 135.
  - A very good passage on parts of human nature in power dynamics, on p. 146.
- Also continuing Theft by Finding, and it’s an interesting read.
Articles & Newsletters
- On DeepSeek’s V3 and R1 model, which is 45x cheaper to train than competing models. I mentioned it last week too. That’s 45 times less time or energy or GPUs, which is considered “a lot of times less” generally.
  - Intrigue which covers a broader look, it’s a short brief on the topic.
  - Gary Marcus is brief and to the point. At the time I checked it, NVDA is down almost 13%.
  - Simon Willison which is a summary of Jeffery Emanuel’s article (see also HN comments). The article is about the implications of R1 for Nvidia.
  - If you were wondering at the veracity of the claims about cheapness to train, there are people out there working to verify it (hat tip HN comment) and it seems to be basically checking out.
  - And The Zvi chimes in too.
  - Nate Silver? Sure, why not.
  - Stratechery’s Ben Thompson wrote a FAQ. Via Simon Willison and Daring Fireball.
- Blogging Advice. “Write to experience what you care about in higher resolution,” sounds good to me.
- Ezra Klein responds to the first two weeks.
YouTube
- Cozytubes: Imamu Room and maigomika.
Television
- Re: Dark, my theory is that this show is the Minotaur myth retold. So I’ll be waiting to google for that until after I finish season 3.
- The X-Files S1E1. So much baked in already, right from the beginning. And it still works, on me at least, after all these years.
Movies
- The Lost City is a junk food movie that is fun and only skin deep and exactly what it looks like it is. Sometimes that’s all you are looking for. I appreciate that they didn’t try to do more.
Music
- New James Grant premiere
- Ambients:
  - The Rosen Corporation (SLYT) “Illusions”. Excellent.
  - Rosen again “Watching, Feeling, The Waves. Very good.
  - Tom Sherlock Ambient Vinyl Mix Vol.2. Again with the vocals and the vinyl youtubers.
- Our return to Monterey Bay Aquarium livestreams: Moon Jellies and Shark Cam.
- Zelda tunes from stellarsheik and Sam and Chill.
- Anjuna: A history of Chillout and Anjunachill’s Soft Winter Beats. Both great for reading.
- Orchestral performance of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, on vinyl. Testing the waters with our current gifted record player setup. It was fun.
- Ordered Jody Wisternoff vinyl. More testing of the waters. Let’s just keep this practicable here.

Info

Words
- Saudade is Portuguese and untranslatable. It means approximately the presence of something missing.
- Simple (via Circe), a medicinal plant. She’s even referred to in the link I put there.
Facts & Ideas
- Asteroid Bennu sample contains building blocks of life. It amazes me that we did this, and that sample container is the thing that went to an asteroid and came back.

A moment of (giraffe) zen.

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 41: Daily Bits

2025-02-03T07:00:00-08:00

Continuing to lay off the generic internet time. Look inside to see what happened.

I’m willing to note down more of the things that happen while I am out walking the dog. That’s one thing that happened, anyway.

Thanks to W. Eggleston

Almanac / outlook

More seasonably average this week, which means a bit colder: lows in the upper 30s and highs not breaking out of the 50s. Maybe rain during the weekend. Maybe. Clear before then.

New moon on Wednesday, so dark skies all week. Sunrise is around a quarter after 7 and sunset is about half past 5. That’s a little over ten hours of daylight.

Day Bits

I noticed that some of my noticings are taking more words to articulate than they used. Not sure if that’s good or bad. Hopefully they sound like me. Or at least are clearly articulating what I saw, heard, felt, or otherwise noticed.

JAN27MON
- It is day 3 of my escape from the internet, and I am still running as far as I can. There is relief in this time away; I do not look gladly at the prospect of searching for something there. It’s generally not a friendly place, though there are some boroughs more welcoming than others. They can be short or long lasting, steady or unsteady, and often hard to find. I don’t mean to say it’s all like that, but it does all seem to have the stink of some bad air. Maybe we’ll clean it up someday. For now, I plan to drive through as fast as I can when I must.
- Those questionable collard greens turned out to be collards exclamation point. I think we’ve mastered sautéing random greens; those were good!
SEP28TUE
- This morning, while out walking the dog, I heard a couple of voices. I thought they were voices but I heard them again a few moments later; they were the same but now unmistakably coyotes. A few of them weere having choral practice up in the hills, not far from where I was. Sounded like children at first, or a child. Must’ve been the choirmaster.
- On my way to my blood draw appointment they were paving the expressway. It’s not a road that particularly needed a repaving. At the blood draw I waited a moment and looked out the window at a recently burned building. When the nurse arrived they swiveled the chair to first check my right arm, and swiveled, then checked my left. Left was preferred by both of us for different reasons; them for easier access and me for the distraction of the view.
JAN29WED
- Some new graffiti on the way to work. “FLOOR IT G.’O.D.” Anybody know what it might mean? It was on several of the big directional overhead sign bridges.
- I was driving home tonight and someone was cruising down 85 with their lights off. How does one just not notice? It’s even kinda hard to turn the lights all the way off. Most autos these days have an “auto” setting for the lights. You just don’t have to even change it. Ever. But, I guess if one time you do change it, you might forget by the time you get in the car again. You’d not even realize that the extra dimness out there is not because your glasses are dirty or it’s a dark and stormy nights.¹ Anyway, those automobile regulators apparently thought of that because cars also have reflectors built into the bumpers now. So even if you happen to be driving around with the lights off, the other drivers would have to be too for it to become a real problem. Modern life.
JAN30THU
- The dump trucks on our street are so loud this morning. There normally aren’t dump trucks of any kind on our street, not even quiet ones. They must be grading at a couple of build sites up the way. We decided enough was enough and chose a different way to walk home.
- This tetherball pole has been smoothed. It’s the same as the handles in a train station by all the touches of passing passengers. I’m at the school yard where we take our dog in the evenings, waiting for her to come to me. The coating on the metal pole is a slightly rough surface, like fine sand or dull orange peel. But it’s smoothed down and worn away. It becomes almost like glass. Maybe it was once painted, I couldn’t say. Whatever the finish was, it’s now polished away to a mirror. Even the rusty areas are glossy and reflective. I had no idea that rust could be made delicate by any method, be it tetherball, years of children’s hands at play, or even careful craft. It is beautiful. It’s been made a work of art in the commons.
JAN31FRI
- A bit of rain got me while I was out walking the dog this morning. First precipitation in a couple of months now, has it really been that long?, and more is on the way. There was sparse evidence on the ground and the weatherman said it was coming, just didn’t believe him about this morning. After a couple of blocks a weak rain started; it hardly met the definition. The drops were real ones, but they only fell in a meager portion. Maybe ten minutes after that I noticed the tiniest increase in their frequency had urged me to step faster. M began to shake her head, flapping her big ears noisily because of the extra moisture. Clearly she was annoyed. She even stopped to scratch the top of her dampened head once. It was not enough to wet my coat all the way though; it couldn’t fill in the spaces between the newest drops. My coat was covered with a splotchy fractal pattern of fresh wet spots and fading dampness. Just cold air and a little water for now. More’s coming, M, more is coming.
FEB01SAT
- In the late afternoon there was such a flash of sun in the backyard that I jumped up to go see. All day it had been one endless thick dark cloud. And then, a dazzling brief brightness; my eyes were accustomed only to this day’s dimness. It was the only sunlight today. I hurried my search for shoes, but the light was already waning by the time I got out. The golden glow was gone too quickly. I guessed that the sun had glanced under the cloud edge quickly before falling behind the hillside. It would surely continue on and brighten another’s afternoon too, if for just a moment. No rain came from those clouds either, despite the weatherman’s promises.
FEB02SUN
- Life can be like a trip to the grocery store sometimes, or sometimes a trip to the grocery store can really be life. You know what sucks? Spilling blueberries in the grocery store sucks, that’s what. They roll everywhere, and if you step on one, or many, they squish and make a mess. Most of the berries end up right under the cart, but a dozen or more scatter around the produce section. A couple of other shoppers helped pick them up. The four of us all bent low, looking for round little blue fruits. It’s a basically unheard of kindness, stooping to clean another’s mess in a space busy with foot traffic and during one’s own errands too. We need much more of that kind of sensitivity in the world today. Not Karens or Garys who spout obscenities and bile at any inconvenience, shouting “what about my needs?! my need!”. These fellow travelers in the grocery store of life, they simply helped and briefly commiserated before continuing on with their own business; even the shopkeeper said thanks. Maybe some things will turn out ok.

Outside Events

NVDA experienced a massive selloff on Monday after the Chinese company DeepSeek’s app debuted.
Gulf of America, via hn and DF.
The new administration continues to attempt massive changes spanning the functions of the US government, and clear media coverage is particularly lacking.
Nonsensical water release to “aid” LA fires.
Two plane crashes, DC and Philly.
So, we’re in a trade war with Mexico and Canada now.

Yes, I know it’s California. We do occasionally get dark and stormy nights. No, tonight was not one of them. Poetic license. ↑

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 40: Stray Thoughts

2025-01-31T07:00:00-08:00

Here are a few more random thoughts I had this week.

No intentional theme here, but if you see one, maybe email me about it.

'Trench'

Stray thoughts

Layouts

Going to a different Costco than usual is like entering a parallel gonzo universe. All the same things are there, aren’t they? But a rather different set of decisions have been made about their placements. I mean, it’s a giant empty box of a store, how many ways should you arrange the contents? Maybe it’s a form of character, individuality, for the stores. A freedom for the managers or an iterative exploration for corporate. Who knows, maybe it’s nothing. Do all the big box stores have this feature? Ikea, Sam’s Club, Best Buy. I guess I hadn’t questioned it at smaller scales; all your Wegmans’, Luckys, Safeways, Wincos, and Tops are different and that’s perfectly expected. It’s nothing, nothing.

Retelling

It’s a pity that so much time is wasted on unwanted remakes. If the first version is good, let it be. Go find some new story to tell. Or a new way to tell it. It’s embarrassing and annoying.

And not at all the same thing as rewriting stories as plays, which is what they say that Shakespeare did. That was a different time, with a different media literacy, different things that you could expect of the audience.

Sure we’re still working out what you can expect from the audience today too, but it’s not tolerating unnecessary remakes. Today you don’t even have to go to the theater (or the Blockbuster) to revisit an earlier release. If the earlier attempts failed in some way, sure give it a go. But when the original was already quite successful, it’s a waste. How many of those succeed anyway?

Open here

You know those little notches on bags for opening the package? At this moment I’m thinking about food packets. Chips, ketchup, family size M&Ms. That sort of thing. They never work. Well, never is hyperbolic; they’re really not dependable. Based on my non-scientific and imperfect memory, I estimate that something goes frustratingly wrong about one time in three. Just one way it fails: the tear goes crooked and doesn’t fully open, or doesn’t open at all, or opens too much, sometimes way too much. It’s seemingly random; no pattern that I can find. Packaging from companies that worked fine suddenly stops opening reliably. Maybe they got a new machine. Whatever, not my problem. Except it is my problem right now. In my opinion it’s a failed technology and we should all just go back to using scissors like our ancestors did. Opening a bag with this tear off tech has only possible use: in an emergency and as a last resort. Or, maybe I’m the common factor. I could just lack the skills. Another possibility is that I’m just seriously unlucky with this particular invention. And you know, if this is where my bad luck is concentrated I’ll take that deal every day of the week. But if it’s not either of those things, if I’m not the only one, then these QC departments, packaging engineers, and marketing teams, they all need to get out of the office for a bit and have think about what exactly it is that they think they’re doing.

Attempting to make sense of things

Algorithmic Feeds

That the algorithm intensifies is obvious from control theory. It’s a feedback loop that amplifies the material which its creators deem most engaging. And the people who write¹ for that platform notice what it selects and tune their new material to it.

Big step back: is it like shouting fire in the theater? Who is shouting, the algorithm or the people writing? In this globe theater we’re all but whispers. Methinks it’s the amplifying algorithm that is actually shouting. But both are responsible.

Intensification

If the algorithms intensify, or find more intense versions of the things that people like, or people make more intense things that the algorithm has pushed before, are there things that can’t be intensified? Things like ambient music. Is there such a thing as intense ambient? I think that’s just a different thing. Maybe ambient is a fixed point, something that no algorithm can intensify. Are there other equalibria? Can tissues be intensified? Or soft lighting? Can you intensify a tortilla? All these things are already at peak conceptual softness. Adding more would fundamentally change them.

I mean in general. It could be pictures or video or whatever. ↑

To Reply: Email me your favorite ambient.

Week Notes No. 40: Media et al

2025-01-29T07:00:00-08:00

My tour through the quiet corners, and the loud, of this strange land called the internet, and some dead tree media too.

This week was a lot.

Lost hat

Media

Books
- Continued reading City of Saints and Madmen by Vandermeer. I’m not convinced this book is for me. I do hope it engages a bit more soon; the opening chapters are rather slow. I’ll read another chapter and if it’s not working, I’m giving Finch a shot.
- I’m not going to beat around the bush here, I’ve given up on City of Saints and Madmen, for now.
- Theft by Finding continues to be interesting and well written. A couple of quotes:
  - “may you fall down where you live” and
  - “real trouble has a bad complexion and a windbreaker”
- The first pages of Circe (by Madeline Miller) are building with quiet intensity; I’m engaged.
Reading
- Zvi’s Monthly roundup. Some wild stuff in there. Life expectancy is 95+ and increasing in 20 years? Anything could happen in 20 years. Well, almost anything. Is it just fantasy? Who can say.
- Ezra Klein opinion on Zuck’s transparent and unprincipled attitude of “it’s all about the money” toward Trump. He wants chaos? Give ‘em chaos.
- Garbage Day:
  - American mirror that pairs with the Panic World podcast below. “Thanks to TikTok, America finally saw itself and it scared us.”
  - Full Stack is a framing of this first week. “In a dire situation, running away is the best strategy,” well it is when that is an option.
- Mike Monteiro’s Good News: How to survive online. Via Kottke.
  - “The only way to defeat a narcissistic sociopath is to starve them. Protect yourself from their bullshit, of course, but move away from it. Let them have their stage, but refuse to be their audience.”
  - Be less online.
- Interconnected; it’s not synchronicity or anything special. Like you said, it’s just a bunch of stuff that happened. When a lot of different things happen randomly, sometimes you get unexpectedly linked combinations like that. It’s just the math. And it seems like more because looking back over history compresses it and our brains desperately want to see patterns.
- This mefi comment on (maybe) separating posts from platforms, and this note on distinguishing the art from the artist are vibing. Manuel Moreale is also in this conversation, and brings up some movies that I did enjoy. The analog of this same problem extends to other areas: everything is connected, and many things are compromised. Purchases online and off, sports, heroes, just to name a few. I’ve never seen the practical ethics of these day to day decisions articulated clearly. Isn’t there some pithy wisdom to help? Perhaps before now it’s always been limited to a small blast radius, and not, you know, genocide. It’s a hard problem and deserves more careful thought.¹
- Kottke’s post How To Weathering the Storm is useful; it refers to and samples several others (some of them already linked). I’m going to work on my critical ignoring skills, which I think are ok, so-so, maybe mid? They’re going to need to be much better.
  - “Resisting certain types of information and actors online requires people to adopt new mental habits that help them avoid being tempted by attention-grabbing and potentially harmful content.”
- Guy Tal had good words in the June ‘24 issue of LensWork that I took to mean basically “pay attention while experiencing art to your experience of it, and avoid introspecting about how it was done.” He didn’t say that you can do that investigation later, but obviously you can. It was good.
- I mentioned it in the days of the week already, but Craig’s suggestion to disconnect landed this time.
- Gary Marcus on several recent AI drops from China. Some astonishing progress in the last month, for apparently far lower costs, from a few different groups.
Podcasts
- Panic World Meta Doesn’t Care Anymore. This seems not good. Like FB is bringing home the attitude it has in the rest of the world. Maybe adding the internet to the world just fundamentally alters it and there isn’t anything we can do about that but adapt to the new landscape. Regulation is a form of adaptation. Just sayin’.
  - This TechDirt article is related.
YouTube
- Catching up on Maigomika’s New Year post.
- Another Death Valley Discoveries, this time in Smoke Tree Canyon. Thanks, Steve Hall, for sharing these.
- I’ve been watching a few Crime Pays But Botany Doesn’t: Cactus parasites and urban river inventory. This guy knows a lot of natural history things.
Television
- Brooklyn 99 (Netflix -> Peacock) continues to be a ridiculous escape.
- Saving these audio The X-Files mini seasons for later.
- Severance (Apple) S1E6 and E7. Enjoying this weird mystery.
- More of Dark (Netflix). Finished S1 and it was a puzzle. In a good way.
  - Almost done with S2 and new theory: they’re all the same person and it’s all going to collapse into a blackhole.
Movies
- I will have to seek some better movie inputs. Nothing appeals right now, which probably means the right things are not passing before my eyes. I tried this top ten list (slyt), and tbf they all look pretty bad. Really bad. Everything is just unnecessarily too intensified. Even the list is intensified. It’s kind of shit.
Music
- Marsh @ Printworks, London Marsh @ Natural Bridge SP Best of Marsh
- New Royksopp announced, True Electric, comes out 25APR11. Pumped for this.
- Ambients:
  - The Rosen Corporation Impromptu Ambient Session is good.
  - I tried a few of these folks, Jacek Szymków, and RE: Analog, and Asano Record. They’re vinyl based, often skew more toward jazz or jazz-adjacent, and usually include one or two tracks with vocals. I’m glad there are alternates out there, but only some of it really worked for me.
  - ilyandily and ilyandily was a good new discovery this week.
  - ilyandily and RE:Analog were added to the Reading playlist.

Info

Words
- mān: wicked, false. This from the Old English Wordhord. I didn’t expect the word to mean this. I don’t have any good reason to have expectations about these things, yet I am still surprised.
  - Since this was the word on inauguration day, could it be just coincidence?
- calque: a word that is loaned and translated into English.
Quotes
- “The great majority of Americans are suspended between these opposing attitudes. They are uneasy with injustice but unwilling yet to pay a significant price to eradicate it.” MLK via Daring Fireball
- “I’ve said it before but we’re just apes! We shouldn’t have to navigate all this…” by mefite tiny frying pan.
Links
- Do I really think now is the right time to get more into vinyl? These record players do look cool though. But do I want to become a cliché? Is it really worth it? It might be.
Facts & Ideas
- Vaccines for several types of cancer are in trials. Just remember: cancer is not one thing, it is a thousand things all called cancer.
- New kind of magnetism: altermagnetism, and it could be important for superconducting materials. See also Nature, via Live Science via Damn Interesting.
- Sony has ended production of Blu-Ray disks (and mini-disks). I didn’t realize this was so close at hand.
Open Questions
- Why are there not more free range drones out and about in the city or suburbs? I think it’s probably the batteries. Or the expense? Another possibility is social norms. Skill requirement seems to be solved by software. There is the line of sight regulation, and a bunch of other rules, but I’m not sure how much that is really constraining people.
Panics & Tripwires
- Is Meta blood diamonds? Maybe it has been for a while (the whole time) and I didn’t look closely enough.
Bets
- I’m placing a bet that Apple will make an AI fitness coach, announcing next year (2026). How can they not when they have all that data about workouts and heart rates, etc. My betting partner is taking the position that they will announce it this year (could release next year). If they make no announcement (or unheralded release) before the end of 2026, we both lose the bet. The wager is the usual amount.

Even just the things I noticed this week were a lot. Here is a moment of (chickening) zen for chilling out.

I do plan to think more about this; already I think there could be a clearer separation of categories. ↑

To Reply: Email me the good stuff.

Week Notes No. 40: Daily Bits

2025-01-27T07:00:00-08:00

This week has been a lot, to be honest. I’m glad that work eased up a bit.

January spring

Almanac / outlook

Sunny but cool in the first half of the week. Lows in the upper 30s to low- or mid-40s. Highs in the 60s. A little wind, no rain.

Sunrise is around a quarter after 7, and sunset is 20 after 5. The moon is still gibbous, but waning. By the end of the week it will be just a faint crescent and not rising until the last small hours.

Day Bits

JAN20MON
- Surprise Costco trip on this day off. And the regular grocery store.
- Running is easier when you are caffeinated.
- I solved the problem of the Apple iPhone Camera Control button: just turn off all the whiz bang features and use it as a button. Now I can be a bit more delicate with it, which I thought was the point. Snapshots gon’ be snappin’ (see above).
- So sunny today after unending fog yesterday.
- An evening of reading Theft by Finding & City of Saints and Madmen.
JAN21TUE
- Our friend L stopped by. M, our dog, loves it when we have guests. Especially surprise guests. I mean, how would a dog know if you’re going to have guests? Well this wasn’t one of those times. She got so excited she zoomed around and hurt her own ankle. That is pretty excited. She’s fine, just needed a few minutes to recover from her excitement.
- “Bro, do you even lift?” amount of lifting.
JAN22WED
- I dreamt about some successful music venue. In England. I was there, in the sound booth. I was helping for some unfathomable dream reason. How do they determine these things, anyway?
- I dreamed about a guest house up the hill from the main house. There were stars, I think, and a field, and forest. We were leaving at the end, but we never left. It’s a jumble, honestly.
- I noticed that the feral fruit trees¹ in the neighborhood are blooming (see above). That’s the thing about California (even the middle/northern part), it has not really got any dependable seasons. It’s only liminaly seasonable, or has a kind of seasonal liminality. Anyway, colder-ish this week, but still sunny and apparently warm enough to convince the implacable trees that it is spring time.
JAN23THU
- Haircut day. They were playing classics,² and heavy on the Nirvana. I listened to some more Nirvana on the way home.
- This afternoon it is so beautifully warm and sunny, like a brief moment of late spring.
JAN24FRI
- Steady as she goes on the running. You know, I noticed that the Ring doorbell on one house would chime every time after weeks of running by. Last week I started flashing a peace sign, and this week it stopped. Weird.
- B and I had a rollicking good time during our usual catch up sesh.
- They cannot take away the comets.³
- When did the kitchen get to be a mess? And the dining room?
JAN25SAT
- Today I made a quite intentional decision to stay off the internet for the most part. It worked and it wasn’t that hard honestly. I hope I can do it again tomorrow.
  - It was only after this day off that I read Craig’s commentary on it that I had opened in a tab a few days earlier. And no, previous mentions (I’ve been reading him for quite a while now) didn’t really penetrate before like they do right now.
- Chores, cooking, reading (paper based media).
- I do believe, upon further reflection, that I did feel one single rain drop, a small one, when I was walking the dog in the evening. My very first reaction was that, but then I felt no more, and so I changed my mind. Maybe it was just a tiny solitary drop of spit. But the weatherman said that there might be rain and it probably didn’t get to the ground even though it showed up on the radar. So, it was a last lone survivor, almost making it to land.
JAN26SUN
- This morning while out walking the dog we saw the egret. I say the because one theory I heard is that there is only one egret in all the world and he is a thief.⁴ I do not know what it is this thieving bird steals, but I’m sure it’s whatever it can get its grubby little beak on.
- I was a giant nerd and took a paper notebook with me instead of my phone on that walk with the egret. Part of my effort to use my phone less. But I realized something out there. My notebook doesn’t really take very good pictures. Or pictures of any sort, actually. So I bring my phone with me and only use it for pictures. And the paper notebook. And a pencil.
- Shady collards have been hand delivered to our door by a friend.

Outside Events

Like I said, this week was a lot.

Ugh. Inauguration day. I won’t even link to anything about it. We’re having a media blackout. Well, the ‘Sig Heil’ penetrated our defenses. Ugh.
TikTok ban is delayed.
The pardons.
A freeze upon the NIH and others. Additional details from Your Local Epidemiologist.
Executive orders.
There was a lot of Executive Branch stuff. Brutal.

Pace yourselves, people.

The valley used to be fruit tree orchards before it became some almost-endless suburbia. I guess a plum orchard was near here, but I don’t really know. The tree I’m thinking off is just past the suburban boundary in the green space. I’m assuming it’s an arboreal refugee making a break for it, and I think it made it! ↑
I think they’re classics now. They’re just my high school soundtrack to me. ↑
Well, I hope I am right about this. There is Starlink and who knows what is next. ↑
It’s made up but I had help; it was a team effort. ↑

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 39: Output

2025-01-24T07:00:00-08:00

Vader is always on my mind.

Fresh crop of mushrooms pushing up overnight in a neighbors parking strip.

Stray thoughts

Broken Promises

When I notice some enshittification in real time, mentally I see the scene from the beginning of Empire Strikes Back where Vader says “I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further.” Of course when something is being enshittified they alter the terms again and again, sneakily creeping along to get as much as they can get away with.

At least Vader was open and honest about what he was doing, no need for deceptions.

Maybe that’s one of the keys though, we have more choices. Lando’s options were fewer.

Caged goods

Is the caging of all the things at stores, locking them up, even in nice, ahem, “nice” neighborhoods an indicator of moral decline? Or is it saying that they aren’t being justly compensated for what they do, in terms of gainful employment. The world today, it asks so much of us. So much of all of us.

Speaking of speech

Is the algorithmic feed free speech? I mean Facebook, Instagram, Threads. I mean YouTube. I mean X. These platforms, they amplify, they boost what someone said, freely or not.

They ensnare. It’s their purpose.

They get that thing in front of more people, and those people respond. And the algorithm responds, and spreads that shit even more. So, I’ll ask again: is selective amplification and distribution a form of protected free speech?

Phones

Can you believe it? We used to just go around, in public, or at college, or whatever, with no passcode on our phones. For years. Just forget for a minute about those few years when the phones were not smart and all they had was a few text messages and our phone book. Remember the time after that, after flip phones and feature phones. All those phones were just open to anyone who picked them up. I guess, like our wallets were. Are.

To Reply: Email me what you're thinking.

Week Notes No. 39: Media et al

2025-01-22T07:00:00-08:00

The usual tour of all the things this week.

Another format change: the Appetites (recipes / food) section will move to it’s own post in Culinaria on Thursdays.

Something from the kitchen.

Media

Books
- Finished Translation State by Ann Leckie. I appreciated the pronoun ambiguity in the end.
- Making a go at Sederis’s Theft by Finding. I pity this guy’s earlier years. It sounds awful. People were barbarians, and uncivilized back then; evidence suggests that they aren’t much improved, just different. The surprise is that there are a number of things that I didn’t think would exist in that bygone era: bean-burger mix (p 55), food deserts (p 63), and Krispy-Kreme (p 51). “History” is weird.
- Also staring on City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff Vandermeer. Just what is happening here. I mean the book as an object. It appears that half of the rather thick book is the main text. And the other half is appendices and collages and a lengthy section of bibliography? If I go read the wikipedia article to get the production notes, will there be significant spoilers? I hope something happens soon.
YouTube
- Steve Hall’s Death Valley Discoveries series.
Music
- Marconi Union Weightless, 10 hrs version (slyt) is good. Via Kottke.
- Martin Stürtzer Ambient Liveset, Home Concert 68.
- Futurescapes: Galactic is good, Juniper is ok, and Obelisk is fine. Ananta is good. Some other ones weren’t as relaxing as advertised.
- The Royksopp Profound Mysteries continue to be excellent. I should make a list of “good for reading”.
- I made a good for reading playlist. You’re welcome!
- OK Go has a new music video? Hard to believe these fellas have been doing this for 20 years. I’m really not sure how they pulled off all this editing and filming and coordinating of these phones. There must be an app for that. More
Television
- Continue with Brooklyn 99 rewatch. Gawd this show is funny.
Movies
- The Dark Tower. B. Had potential, but something missing there.

Info

Words
- Bourse: stock exchange in non-english speaking country. Via The Economist.
- You know what’s a more intense version of penny-pincher? penny-fucker.
Links
- The misinformation sphere is about to get a lot more intense.
- The algorithm, it intensifies.
- Some 2000 year old wine was discovered a few years ago in Spain, and that’s pretty cool.
- New Glenn’s cool rockets.
- The Instagram video of the Starship Stage 2 very rapid unplanned disassembly.
- Did these two coordinate today?
- Two moon missions launched this week. The Blue Ghost Lander is a NASA commercial contract to deliver instruments to the surface. The second lander is ispace’s Resilience mission, and it’s the second commercial attempt after an earlier failure.
- If you’re in the low-, rarely-, or no-alcohol set like I am, The Oldster has a good edition on the topic. I’ve been meandering my way through all the mocktails and other flavored waters in the various grocery stores lately. As I mentioned the other day, it’s a glorious time to be exploring this stuff. Pity that the IRL places are missing the boat.
Quotes
- This town is a crap circus.
  Brooklyn 99 S4E2. Or maybe it was E1.
- Los Angeles, every day, hot and sunny, today, hot and sunny, tomorrow, hot and, for the rest of the… hot and sunny, every single day, hot and sunny. And they love it. ‘Isn’t great, every day, hot and sunny?’ What are you, a @$%^& lizard?
  Bill Hicks
- …questions are the drive that make us who we are.
  Kyle Maclachlan on David Lynch.
- Anyone who doesn’t understand the old gods has never looked up at the sky.
  Walknotes

To Reply: Email me about your media intake.

Week Notes No. 39: Daily Bits

2025-01-20T07:00:00-08:00

This was one of the most intense work weeks on record. There was a lot of different bits and bobs in flight with several different contributors. It was a lot to track, and because this is all happening at breakneck pace, I’ve struggled to balance my own IC expectations vs my leadership responsibilities. Next week is another attempt.

Another format change: breaking the three major section up into one post each, Monday, Wednesday, Friday. This gives them a bit more breathing room to exist and grow to suit themselves instead of being crammed into one giant omnibus post.

A very foggy Sunday morning this week.

Almanac / outlook

Cool and clear, lows around 40 F, highs around 60 F. Sunrise is still after 7, but sunset is now around a quarter after 5. Moon is waning from being full on Monday, so bright nights. Good for running.

Day Bits

JAN13MON
- First day back in the home office after two weeks off plus the holidays. And it was a banger; this week is going to be intense. I’ve long suspected that Monday the 13th should be the real unlucky day.
JAN14TUE
- The freezer has been FULL. And apparently the door hadn’t quite closed for a day or two, so it’s all covered with a feathery layer of frost. And and it’s making a bit more noise. My short term proposal is to simply consume everything we’ve stored away in there before it just breaks. Found some delicious soup that way, which is surely from this year, but I have no memory of making it.
JAN15WED
- While I was driving home on the 85, I realized that this is the longest I had lived in one place since childhood. And I don’t mean the 85, even though Bay area commutes can feel that way. I’m thankful I only do it about once a week nowadays. Hard to believe that it’ll be a decade that I’ve lived here.
JAN16THU
- Bless the taqueria down the street. A blessing on all good taquerias, in fact. There is always good food around when there is a taqueria nearby.
JAN17FRI
- Into the freezer again, to forage, and to feast. The freezer: it’s better than ordering food and it’s easier than cooking.
JAN18SAT
- Finally some time to do the cooking. Chicken Caesar salad for lunch and dinner was tsukune with sautéed green onion, roasted delicata squash, and rice.
- Tried to watch Flow, but I guess it’s in theaters right now, so the rental price was higher than expected. Watching it now is not that urgent, so we watched The Dark Tower instead.
JAN19SUN
- So foggy this morning. The marine layer intruded and, all the way to the ground. It’s pea soup!
- In this mist, A notices all the spiderwebs, showing brightly because they’re all covered in dew. There are two kinds: orb weavers, all catenaried with tiny dew drops, and the little woven sheets of some faery spider dotting the hillside. More than dotting, they seem to be quite everywhere!
- pizza night!

Outside Events

A few things that I noticed this week.

LA wildfires continue.
SpaceX and Blue Origin launch big rockets.
Biden administration winds down.
TikTok ban goes into effect.
David Lynch has died.

To Reply: Email me about your days.

Week Notes No. 38

2025-01-13T07:15:00-08:00

Mostly a week spent in the American Riviera, Santa Barbara, California.

Seaweed. Santa Barbara, CA

Almanac / outlook

Lows of 44 and highs of 65 or 70 here in Santa Barbara. Clear skys.

Diurnals

Santa Barbara is an interesting place, one that I find difficult to explain. My best hypothesis is that all the evidence of wealth is due to it being imported from elsewhere, namely LA but possibly the rest of the country or world too. The climate, at least on this January week, was ideal.

We put together a list and map of places to visit.

JAN06MON

Spent the day at the marina and the beach nearby. Enjoyed Dart coffee. These oil platforms off the coast are surreal.

More stuff on the offshore oil fields: Ellwood / Platform Holly, Coal oil point seep, Carpenteria offshore oil field.

JAN07TUE

Downtown. Handlebar Coffee and Alessia pastries. The Presidio. Chaucer’s books. Via 42 Maestri for dinner.

The LA fires began this day, and throughout the week, other than attending to whether we were at risk in Santa Barbara I mostly ignored them and enjoyed my vacation. See also the YT weather forecast, and a follow up on Saturday.

JAN08WED

A day in, plus photowalk.

JAN09THU

Found Dune coffee, which was also very good. Devareux Beach in Goleta, CA. Rocket launch viewing at Lompoc.

JAN10FRI

Lunch on campus and drive back. The sunset ombre was gorgeous!

JAN11SAT

Running, chores, a loaf of bread. Less screen time.

The LA wildfires increasingly hit home. This is another surreal event. See also Stray Thought on contrasts below.

JAN12SUN

Bias toward action: clean up garage, work on fitness, read more instead of interneting.

Also, coming to you live from grocery shopping for some reporting on the bird flu egg shortage.

Media

Reading

Finished Ancillary Mercy and started Translation State both by Ann Leckie.

Bought a copy of Theft by Finding by David Sedaris. Maybe I will pair it with Kafka’s Diaries.

My new skill for reading this year is I plan to practice keeping some easy read around even when I am reading some harder material so that I don’t just default to a screen (ie doom scroll or other form of boredom waste) whenever I don’t feel like reading the harder stuff. I need a stack of those on the lower shelf of the coffee table.

YouTube

Any Austin on the boring places in GTA V. I love these places. And I’m looking forward to finding what they cook up for GTA VI whenever that comes out. But it won’t be any mountains, because Florida doesn’t have those. Hopefully there will be some island and “river” and swampy stuff though. Should be good. Or garbage. Hard to say.

LA weather before the fires.

Sarah Cooper with a Q1 update.

Music

Fever Ray.

Anjunadeep 15 and 14.

Some older Hot Chip on the drive. And the Hot Chip Tiny Desk Concert.

Royksopp Nebulous Nights (slyt) and Profound Mysteries I-III (slyt).

Rich Aucoin Octave the Cat and Moog.

Television

S1E9 of Dark.

Other

Appetites

This pressure cooker chili looks appetizing (from Serious Eats)
These sourdough waffles look amazing (from NYT).
Caesar Salad (Serious Eats) is on the menu this week.

Facts or ideas

Apparently you can surgically change the color of your eyes now. But it’s risky. Via Damn Interesting.
More details on alcohol and cancer risk. See original fact from last March.

Links

Slime molds are pretty cool.
I suppose it is January, so everybody is all “I should get in better shape” and I guess I’m taking the opportunity to think on that too. The Economist published an article on lifting weights, which prompted me to go look for the WHO exercise recommendations here, and page 32 (42 in the pdf) recommends 150-300 minutes of moderate-intensity per week, or 75-150 minutes of vigorous-intensity. Additionally strength training at moderate or above intensity 2 days per week. I do not have a good reason to not prioritize doing this. And it will cut down on screen time. I hope.
It’s a good idea to make space for boredom. Don’t just fall into whatever is available because what is always is available is your stupid phone. Do something else. At least read a book.
I had eventually called Totino’s “stupid pizza” or “pizza food” back when I was occasionally eating them. I’ve even been nostalgic for that ultra-processed food item, and have bought one on occasion for the memory of it. This MeFi comment effectively reduces this particular stupid pizza to it’s elements. Only time will tell if this will have a wasting effect on my desire ever buy one again.

Quotes

pain is not just one thing. It’s a thousand different things, all called ‘pain.’

Dr. Gereau in Chronic Pain is a Hidden Epidemic. Related.

Stray thoughts

Truth default but world update resistant

Humans are truth default when the information is novel to them but also extremely skeptical or even blind to new information that is contrary to their held beliefs. Is this right? What is the split between these two defaults?

Those LLMs

I have been making a more concerted effort to explore the uses of the LLMs.¹ I have access to Gemini through work, and I have a personal subscription to Claude bc I appreciate their philosophy more. I’m leaving ChatGPT aside for now, but am open to revisiting that later. Honestly, I’ve had the most success by using it as a coach for photography and fitness. I’d like to find other strengths as well. My strong preference is to use it as a teacher or as a technician, but that may be limiting it. Based on my experiences so far, it feels like one solid use case is something like an advancement of spell + grammar checker: it can tell you where your writing is strong or weak, what changes you should consider making to improve, etc. Maybe it’s the interactive nature of the chat interface that requires you to write out your thoughts and then gives you quick feedback on if what you are saying is having the desired effect. That’s neat.

Contrasts

The cognitive dissonance of watching² all the worldly chaos, and yet my own life continues to be, thankfully, mundane. When I came home from my recent trip, this contrast really came home for me too. The ordinary-ness and uninterrupted continuity that I am fortunate to have…. I don’t know if it’s true, but I feel like humans are not well adapted for this firehose of human scale/relatable impacts across the globe. But nor should we ignore it and leave it all to the powers that be. What to do in this situation? How long can it last?

Interruptions

All. Of. The. Goddamn. Interruptions.

One cannot even open a website that you’ve paid for without an interruption. Or multiple interruptions. Begging for more of your attention. I’m here already, is that not enough? This is absurd. It’s maddening.

Stop. It.

I seriously think about just not using the internet except for specific precision strikes. In that way, it’s like going shopping. Get in. Get out. Do not loiter. Be not distracted. You can hardly find what you’re trying to buy through all the clutter of what you didn’t come to buy. The experience is not enjoyable. And the fact is that it could be better. Other sites, sites that are not so brand focused, those sites show it can be another way. They respect you and your time and attention by giving you what you came for.

Clutter / minimalism

I read something interesting yesterday, I’m not sure where, that it might be that those extremely tidy houses may not be quite what they seem. You know the ones - they’re not cluttered up with papers here and books there and just other things all over the place. It could be that those people are living an extremely disposable lifestyle. They buy the thing that they need, use it, and then throw it away. Or maybe donate it. Whatever it is, they don’t keep it around to mess up their aesthetic. I guess it costs some bucks to do that. But I’d rather not just be tossing things out all the time. I’ll keep ‘em, and keep the money too. So what if my house is a bit messy. I really live in it too.

Yes, I know about the copyright stuff. Buy direct, buy from artists. If you want something to continue to exist in the world, find a way to support it. We will find a way to continue to create. ↑
I’m not even watching all the closely. I check the wikipedia current events page once a week. I poke my head in on some of the social medias. I try to, and mostly succeed at, not doom scroll. I don’t watch the nightly news, nor regularly open any of the mainstream newspapers. I have a couple of news sources in my feed reader, such as Intrigue and News Minimalist. I guess The Economist’s feeds count as pretty current events, but it updates approximately weekly. Some individuals I follow comment on the news occasionally, so I rely on their filter effect to only surface news worth being aware of. Even with this, I think I hear about more things than I can reasonably do anything about and has an emotional toll. ↑

To Reply: Email me your stray thoughts.

Week Notes No. 37

2025-01-06T15:00:00-08:00

New Year’s Eve/Day and visited some parks.

Calero Park in Santa Clara County, California. 2025.

Almanac / outlook

The days slowly grow longer, minute by minute. Weather is expected to be sunny, or sunnier, until the weekend when some rain returns. Highs in the 50s, lows in the 40s. Monday is the new moon, so dark nights continue for the week.

Diurnals

It was surprisingly busy for a week off, with going here and going there.

DEC30MON

A bit of work even though I wasn’t supposed to. Nobody’s perfect.

DEC31TUE

I took my sister in law and niece for a long walk along the trail, and we looked over our part of San Jose.

JAN01WED

NYD. We napped. I read Ancillary Sword.

JAN02THU

I took a short photo walk at Calero Park, and sketched out some photography plans this year.

JAN03FRI

Unexpected chauffeuring to the doctor and CVS. Well, the doctor appointment was expected, it was an appointment. It was nice to get out.

JAN04SAT

I spent much of the afternoon spreading native seeds along some of the open spaces along or below the trail.

JAN05SUN

Driving to Santa Barbara. An easy drive and faster than I expected. Visually interesting here. I’ll need to make some time to photograph amongst all the other things.

Media

I had not bothered to look closely enough at to realize that Philomena Cunk is a deadpan mockumentary. Via NYT via more NYT.

Reading

Blitzed through Ancillary Sword and started Ancillary Mercy. The first one was the best, but these are also generally good.

Newsletters

Good advice for how to experience life more in Sasha’s ‘Newsletter’ on How to like everything more.

YouTube

Some gorgeous via ferrata from Train to Summit Punta Anna, and another

More normal winter weather content: Smith river.

Hiking Eagle Creek; I’ve always wanted to do this one.

I’m still stunned that Fire Watch was so gorgeous, and bummed that they got bought and aren’t going to make any more beautiful games.

Music

J Ribbon Anjunakitchen is good.

I’m putting this under music, but it’s really a 6 hour no commentary play through of the game Naiad. It’s good chill music, and a very serene looking game too.

Anjunadeep: More Marsh, Anjunadeep 14, Anjunadeep 15.

Hot Chip’s Tiny Desk Concert.

Television

Dark (Netflix), German language time travel loop thriller.

Movies

Attempted to watch Rebel Moon (Netflix), but it was increasingly clear that the psychic trauma it was going to cause would be for no good story reasons. Abandoned about 20 minutes in.

Atlas (Netflix), Hallmark movie level bad but in space and actually had some good bits. I’m as surprised to write that as you are to read it.

Other

Words

Perquisite: the long version of perk.

Arbor: shady corner of a garden or park.

Appetites

This thick focaccia (YT) looks amazing! Can’t wait to make it. See also article/recipe.

Facts or ideas

Winds that blow out of the east (easterlies) here in the Bay area are called Diablo winds, because the mountain range to our east is the Diablo range or maybe just Mount Diablo, similar to the Santa Anas.

Links

A couple of months ago I posted about some solar atmospheric phenomena, and here is a recent Gary Hayes Geotripper post.

Stray thoughts

Phone mics to ads

I agree that our phones are not eavesdropping for the advertisers. If they were, we wouldn’t notice this only occasionally. It would happen all the damn time. When have you known them to have any restraint at all, except when legally required to?

To Reply: Email me your first week of the year.

Notes for the New Year

2025-01-05T20:00:00-08:00

At the beginning of this year, I wanted to capture some thoughts and ideas that I can refer back to throughout the year. Articulate my thinking around plans and goals. I want to have something that I can use to reflect back on at the end of the year. As usual, it’s mostly for my own use; feel free to read along.

Writing and Photography

A couple of project goals: building some more of my writing and photography practice.

I have made some specific goals in photography to develop and explore my own themes more deeply with several projects. It’s framed loosely around time commitment and output instead of anything more specific than that. I’ll produce a small body of work around those developing themes, and later seek some more outside input or critique.

My plans around writing are less committed, and less specific. I’d say it’s more about capturing input and continuing to enrich the broth of raw material. At some point it will become strong enough that the right outputs will become obvious. I do want to capture more quotes and words and random thoughts. I wouldn’t mind it if I got these blog posts / waste book notes / whatever into more discoverable and usable shape. I plan to continue organically iterating toward that throughout the year.

I plan to continue reading intentionally, carefully, interactively. Extracting more of that material to here is a soft, aspirational, goal.

Body and Wellness

Just keep running through the winter, which is typically the hardest month for me to keep going through. If I can get out there 3 days each week, I am happy. If possible, I would like to add in some other body weight exercises on the off days. Essentially this means PT type exercises. I guess, if I think about it, some type of fitness activity each day of the week for around 30 minutes would be ideal. It’s not a particularly ambitious goal, but it would be new for me.

As always, I would like to eat better generally. I don’t think that I eat poorly, and I don’t mind at all that I occasionally have something naughty. But. I have been eating more than I should lately, and I would like to cut that out. Also, I’ve noticed that there are some things that I want to eat that my body doesn’t particularly care for. Maybe it never has and I just never noticed. For example, I can have some apple fritter, but not a whole one. Probably not even a half one. And if it’s not scratching the itch that I want it to, then eating the whole thing won’t do it either. So, cut that out. Anyway, that’s the goal.

I’ve had a short term meditation practice, low key, nothing special. And it was good. I should do more of that.

Internet and Screens

Less of them in general, but the insidious thing is that they are also unavoidable. I won’t be any more specific than to say that doom scrolling is not relaxing. Make sure you are using your time for what you want to be using it for.

Work

The coming year promises to be a lot. A lot of projects that I want to work on. A lot of challenge for me personally. I’m excited about that. But nervous too, because expectations are high. I’ll do my best. But I want to keep it in check, in balance, not get out of control with effort or time. Give the work it’s due, but give the rest of my life it’s due too.

House

There are a few projects around the house that I would like to see checked off by the end of the year. Future me, you know what these are: garage, some furniture, maybe some back patio updates. I think that last one is undecided, but some other project is doable this year. So let’s do it.

To Reply: Email me your New Year plans.

New to me Facts and Ideas in December 2024

2025-01-01T07:00:00-08:00

The December editions of fascinating facts.

After this edition, and the end of the 1 year experiment, I’ll be folding the fascinating facts into the week notes.

Week 49

Began on 24DEC01SUN .

Fact: More Nazca lines. Via Mark Larson, and quite a few other sources too. This is the second ML enabled Nazca lines drop this year.
Hypothesis: Neanderthals manufactured tar 20k years earlier than similar evidence for humans. Via Ancient Beat.
Hypothesis: humans transitioned to mode ii tools 900k to 780k years ago, also via Ancient Beat. More details on mode ii tools and industry: pear shaped hand axes.
Hypothesis: dog domestication attempted many times.

Week 50

Began on 24DEC08SUN .

Fact: Sharks evolved before trees by 50 Million years. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: There are dark comets roaming the solar system. Via Damn Interesting.
Hypothesis: Neanderthals and humans interbred between 50k and 43k years ago. Also in The Economist

Week 51

Began on 24DEC15SUN .

Hypothesis: murder hornets eradicated from US, via Kottke. Good news, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s wrong at some level (but I’m paranoid about these kinds of claims).
Hypothesis: syphilis is from the New World. More context at the Ancient Pages article.
Observation: plant fossil has no known modern related species and that’s really cool. What does it mean? Via Damn Interesting.

Week 52

Began on 24DEC22SUN .

Fact: modern dairy cows produce six times the milk compared to 100 years ago. Via Quantum of Sollazzo and others.
Fact: Earliest bubonic plague evidence outside of Eurasia found in mummy in Egypt from 3250 years ago. Also skeletal evidence for bubonic plague is known in Eurasia as far back a 5000 years ago. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Russia is not as large as it appears on Mercator projection maps and it’s a relief, tbh. But see later reply on the projection of the projection.

Week 53

Began on 24DEC30MON

Fact: new branch of life discovered in the human intestines? via HN. Not sure what it means, but what?

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 36

2024-12-30T12:00:00-08:00

The holiday season is on.

Stacked surf at Bean Hollow Beach, CA

Almanac / outlook

Rain and clouds a few days this week. Wind on Tuesday. Highs in the 60s, lows in the 40s or 50s. Waning moon in the last quarter of the cycle, so dark nights. King tides with some large waves landing on the coast, take extra care on the beaches. Expect a lighter work week with many people away on holiday and two days of for Christmas and the Eve.

Diurnals

DEC23MON

Yesterday I didn’t find a small size (quart) of egg nog at two different stores that we happened to be grocery shopping at. One was out of all sizes. The other only had half gallon. So, I guess it’s either no egg nog for me, or homemade, or nothing. Might go with nothing.

DEC24TUE

The morning rain was ended, and the sun was out. It was a ruse; a deception to get us far enough from the front door without umbrellas so we could be completely soaked by a remnant shower. And drenched we are. It’s been a long time since I’ve been this wet in the rain.

DEC25WED

Happy Christmas all. A and I continue our usual tradition of going to the beach (see above). One beach is not so busy, the other which has a minuscule parking lot is nearly full. The weather was perfect.

DEC26THU

I had a good catch up with C. We mostly discuss food options for after Christmas. Sounds like making sushi at home might be it, I hope it is delicious!

DEC29SUN

Blissfully empty shopping experience. Everyone must be out of town. If only it could always be like this.

Media

Holiday week, so extra media.

Reading

Books

I read Richard II by Shakespeare. It’s been a long. time. since I read any Shakespeare. It took a deep reading, like transcribing and translating, the first scene to get it. But after that it got a lot easier. I was mostly reading it for the rhetoric choices in the writing. But in order to do that I had to know the context, which means the plot and events, and characters. I think it was mostly good, and actually found the couple of speeches to be rather interesting. Quite dramatic, as one would expect for a play, but good. I’ll probably have to read it again, but if I don’t wait too long it should continue to be understandable.

Also: Act I, Scene 2.

Newsletters

This just in: Zvi on o3, which was announced a couple of weeks ago. Sounds exciting. I’m sure it’s more than just hype. There is, of course, the copyright problem with these things. But also, I’m sure I’m not exploring their potential uses enough. Basically, I think just ask them more questions. Questions you would ask any expert you had access to. Like, if you were a wealthy patron, and could call up any expert on anything to ask them to conversationally explain something, or research something and come back, do that. And just like those experts, they can be wrong, and you have to reason about the responses and integrate what they say into your own model of the world, and think if it makes sense. This is what they offer.

Podcasts

None this week.

YouTube

Buncha Maverick’s stuff. ‘Tis the season. long view, in it, in it 2.

Martijn Doolaard 132 and 133.

Music

Fat Boy Slim Elevator Music.
Sofi Tukker DJ Sets: Night We Met and Ultra Europe, and the new Bread album.
Martin Stürtzer Ambient Night 18

Television

Never Have I Ever S2. Quite moving at moment, I really feel for Devi. Excellent writing and story telling. Can’t wait to see S3.

Brooklyn 99 continues.

Movies

Hocus Pocus (1993): First time seeing it. It was funny, silly. Enjoyed it.

Home Alone (1990): Holds up.

Oblivion (2013): A story from an earlier age. I enjoyed the the bit about (spoiler warning) can Tom Cruise defeat… himself? I think my reaction to it was: this is an old fashioned human victory tale, and it’s all rather pointless. What even makes a good movie anymore.

Knives Out (2019) is a rewatch for me, after Glass Onion a few weeks ago.

Other

Appetites

My current food goals are to get more bean based recipes (I want to start with Frijoles Charros for some reason, but making killer daal is another), and to make better roast chicken than you get at an actually good restaurant. Oh, and to make more of the Japanese recipes because they are light and simple in their constituent parts.

Other things that looked good

Facts or ideas

Debuting next week.

Panics

Internet Shaquille, are you me? Should I be worried about people that are panicking about seed oils?? What precipitated this video?

Quotes

“Stop concentrating on what you hate. Embrace what you enjoy.” (source, but I don’t really recommend this tour through someone’s holiday troubles).

Stray thoughts

A stray thought

Well, conversational search, that might be helpful when memory is only weakly helpful. Edit to add: another example of this.

To Reply: Email me your unusual holiday traditions.

Week Notes No. 35

2024-12-23T07:00:00-08:00

So many words this week.

Almanac / outlook

Rain Monday and the weekend. These are dark times, but not too cold: mid 60s for a high. Lows in the 40s. Waning moon, just full; king tides.

Diurnals

It was a quite busy week with a lot of work and two trips to the office.

DEC16MON

The stupid internet is out all day. Doesn’t it know that the storm was during the weekend and not today. What happened? I will probably never know.

DEC17TUE

End of year party at the office. It’s actually pretty great. Thankfully it’s during the day.

DEC18WED

Managed to fit in a run during the afternoon. I’ve been slacking, so it’s tough-ish. But not unbearable. I slog through.

DEC19THU

My kingdom for a handsaw. It’s a comedy of errors in one act. We get the piece of garden furniture into the street, and cut over halfway through the woody bits that we need to remove to make it fit in the car, and realize that it is geometrically impossible to cut through the rest with the circular saw we have brought with us. Why, oh why, didn’t I remember to bring the handsaw to this remote job site? Back into the garden it goes and away we drive, empty handed in defeat. Tomorrow is another day.

DEC20FRI

B and I are having a rather deep conversation about the range of experience that different people have based on their personal or family wealth. The core of it is that people index or level set their assumptions about what is right by their own personal experience. When doing this, they neglect to account for how limited their own experience is, their own baked in biases, and the truly vast range of possibilities that are acceptable as “the right way to do thing.”

Later, I encountered this comment and it struck me as another expression of the same thing. But it’s not just limited mental bandwidth, it’s also not learned or expected or even recognized that being an active agent in choosing to direct your attention at any of these things is something that you can do. People, I suspect, just do what feels right, fits in with their group, and don’t think about it much. I think you could label that as “stupid” behavior from the outside, but it’s just normal routine on the inside.

Just speculating here, arm chair theorizing, hypothesizing at how the world works. Sounds right, don’t know if it really is, or is just masquerading as truth. Could just be achieving order in society instead.

DEC21SAT

Solstice day, shortest day of the year.

DEC22SUN

I am beginning to reflect on all the notes that I took this year, and lessons I learned. Toying with the Drafts app as a lower friction input. But is it? It should replace my shortcut to email (Captio replacement), and anytime I deal with pre-drafting things in my iPad git client. Maybe it is better. It is kind of an overwhelmingly sophisticated tool with lots of features and options behind the spartan front facing editor that you get dropped into. So, uh, how do you do… x? Baby steps, that’s what I got to say.

Partially inspired by the stray thoughts section below.

Media

Reading

I read the Introduction to Made to Stick by Heath and Heath. That’s enough for it to win a spot on my shelf, but I don’t need to read any more than that for now.

I am also sampling the middle section (Action) of The Obstacle is the Way by Holiday. It’s the Stoic book. I wonder if this writing style (quite similar to Robert Greene’s style), heavy on the historical anecdotes, and fairly contextless for actually mapping onto one’s own context. It’s vexing, it’s own obstacle to understanding. Ironic. Probably obvious to others.

The other book, ahem “book” that I may read is the Shakespeare play Richard II, the first play in the Henriad. Or I’ll just get through the stick figure version. I’m looking for something short, that I can complete before the end of the year-ish. Plays are short, right? I realize it will make it a horribly edited paragraph, but why would I want to read this? Basically because English. Shakespeare does it well, some say the best, and I want to read it more carefully.

Podcasts

Ezra Klein on Population Decrease This is a two parter-ish. Or, there is a second episode on the same theme. My take-aways:

It’s a global phenomenon, and it’s not universally correlated with a country’s wealth. India is an example of a low income country that also has a low birth rate.
Horribly draconian policies have been shown to work (i.e. Romania), but only as long as they are applied. Doing so is obviously against the will of the people. What are the alternatives?
Assuming correct knowledge of how pregnancy works, available and effective birth control, then any alternative activity applies downward pressure on the number of children born.
One interpretation is that it’s evidence that the current cultural arrangement is not working at all for the child bearers. If women are given the option so reduce or not participate, some will do it. Enough will do it that the number of children being born drops below replacement levels.

Seems to me that if you want to make a real difference, you’ll have to make some changes such that people want to have children as a choice. I doubt that some tax credit will do that. Hot take: it’s about individual agency or freedom to create the life you want, and about escaping from the traps of familial/social servitude or someone else’s entitlement overriding yours. Who doesn’t want that?

YouTube

Yule Logs: Nasa, Wind Waker, Calcifer.

Pacifica Pier Livestream

Maigomika does the yuzu festival.

Martijn’s new old truck. I am so far behind here.

Music

Marsh at Sussex

Anjunadeep editions: 531 Anuqram and 530 Qrion

Television

Finished the last season of Girls5Eva. It was a mistake to not renew it. I’ll have to go and look for other works by these folks.

Started rewatching Brooklyn 99. Holds up. So funny to me. I love the ridiculously absurd spins they put on mundane-ish situations.

Interior Chinatown looks to be way more than I expected. And What we do in the shadows final season is out.

Movies

Hocus Pocus I was in the mood for something with a supernatural adventure type story, or olde-timey problems.¹ I mean, curses, ghosts, mummies, etc. Movies like The Mummy or National Treasure or The Tomb Raider or Raiders of the Lost Ark. Not saying these are good movies, but they’re fun and not too serious, but well put together. I’m not saying that Hocus Pocus is one of these, but I hadn’t seen it before which was pretty surprising to A, so that’s what we’re watching.

Other

Maybe next year I’ll work on migrating these things back out of the one weekly post.

Words

Pertinacity. Pigheaded stupidly obstinate tenacity. Uber, unrelenting, inevitable, brute force tenacity.

Yaws and bejel are different expressions of the syphilis bacterium more common in tropical regions. From here.

Appetites

YT: Tsukune. These were so good and so easy.
NYT: Rice and Squash Bombe looks interesting.
SE: Butter swim biscuits, probably making these for Christmas. Pity about the name though.
CJ: Sausage Meatballs with Halloumi and Tomatoes, this looks succulent.
YT: Maigomika’s gomoku zushi recipe.
Now I want gyoza.

Facts or ideas

Premiering in the new year.

Links

All the Montaigne essays! I didn’t expect to find that this week.

Arts

A cool photo of leaves on water.

Stray thoughts

Complaining about broken websites

Several things broke in websites² this week. It’s very frustrating. YT history isn’t loading. The newsletter website isn’t cooperating with the dark mode plugin. Ugh. I assume it’s ios 18.2. Or the newsletter site changing style things. Or just bad juju.

Is this related? I don’t know. But that’s a different problem that I often think about. A hammer is a hammer is a hammer. Always has been. But your pie (pocket internet engine) is about a million things and they keep changing where the business end is.

The smallest possible bureaucracy

A while back I asked “what’s the theoretically smallest bureaucracy?” I think I have proposal of an answer: one person and a notebook (and a pencil) is the smallest possible bureaucracy. A notebook has enough pages that some retrieval system is necessary to find what you want in it, and it can hold a lot of information in those pages. It is durable enough to last years. It can be used to record things and make decisions with those things. The decision rules can even be noted in the book itself. There it is, a bureaucracy. Does a bureaucracy imply and require an enforcement mechanism, such as an army, police force, or jail? I hadn’t considered this angle before, after all I’ve just described a person and a notebook, which may not be very effective at influencing an uncooperative population. Of course, if the society just consists of that person who is writing in the notebook, maybe it could still qualify.³

Why can’t businesses just be businesses anymore?

Airlines are credit card companies with travel infrastructure department attached. The search company is really an ad company. The social network company is really an ad company. The car company also sells telemetry data to anyone who’ll buy it. All (hyperbole) the businesses are hybrid businesses, marketed as one thing but actually making money on something else or several somethings else. I conjecture that this hybridization of information will continue to push down to smaller and smaller businesses. Due to networked POS systems, you probably can’t even buy tacos without the data of that transaction being sold to someone, assuming you paid with a credit card.

A golden age of flavored waters

The non-alcoholic business of making new (or just not on the market before) waters and other mocktails is positively booming. The flavors seem to sprout like mushrooms after a rainstorm⁴, heck even the companies seem to be sprouting like that too. It’s great! Keep ‘em coming.

Like conflict with an ancient evil kind of problems, not like modern inventions by science made problems such as Frankenstein. ↑
I use this loosely. I don’t know where the breakage is. And it’s not really my job to figure it out. That’s a choice that cuts both ways: I lose on emotional energy and whatever information or activity I was trying to do. And the website loses audience or customer or whatever I am to them. Also the whole ecosystem loses credibility, iOS, Safari, the plugin, the website, the author, my own internalization of what I expect myself to be able to do at any given time. All of it. Ugh. ↑
My outer reality on this is that I’ve been really maxing out my notebook usage in the last couple of years. So, of course I would think this. ↑
That one’s free but I won’t be buying any of your Mushroom rain flavored waters, thank you very much. ↑

To Reply: Email me your stray thoughts.

Week Notes No. 34

2024-12-16T07:00:00-08:00

It’s week notes time!

Almanac

These are the darkest days, the shortest ones. Sunrise is ten after seven, and sunset is ten to five. Makes it easy to see them both. Temperatures remain cool and even; lows in the 40s, or maybe mid 30s, and highs in the 60s. There is rain later in the week, but not all day and not an excessive amount. Full moon during the weekend.

DEC09MON

Just a nice nothing dinner at a friend’s place. This is that kind that’s not a big to do. It’s just shared food, and it feels so comfortable.

The CEO assassin is caught in MD, and he’s causing problems for everyone’s narrative. Seems like the wrong thing to focus on.

DEC10TUE

Team dinner in town. I ended up sitting at the curmudgeonly end of the table, and I fit in great. Had an enjoyable time, conversation flowing the whole time.

DEC11WED

In the office for lunch with C. It’s rushed, not our best most relaxed lunch chat. We haven’t seen each other in a while. But still, it’s good to catch up, even if only a little. I think next time I’ll budget more time.

DEC13FRI

Afternoon conversation with B is heavier than usual. We’re talking about talking about financial things with partners and family and that is a topic that is often harder to discuss in a productive way than either of us think it should be. He’s got a great analogy for that situation based on rock climbing. Some people are really skilled at it and some aren’t, varying skill levels. So one partner might be really comfortable with the perils of dealing with medical issues and the other is particularly afraid of those heights. The trick is that sometimes we get into those situations without realizing it and it’s important to acknowledge the asymmetric levels of discomfort, so you could say “sorry, I didn’t mean to start climbing El Cap there, without giving you a heads up.” It works both ways, when either partner realizes that the other is getting nervous. It’s a great tip.

DEC14SAT

Lightning and thunder overnight, and really quite a bit of rain. The 5 am shake-the-house loud thunder was quite the wakeup. I should have checked the gutters yesterday. A bit more thunder around noon. Wild weather day. And there was a tornado in Scotts Valley, in the afternoon. The NWS investigators confirmed as a low intensity EF-1, 90 MPH winds for 5 minutes (wikipedia).

DEC15SUN

A bird has gotten into our car. The bird is stuck on the dashboard. It is pooping on our dashboard. I did not have this on my bingo card. Yes, I took a photo after it left. You’ll have to email me about it.

I think it is proper to focus on getting the bird out of the car first and then do the documenting. In retrospect I could have asked someone else to take the photo while I got the car door open. I will know for next time.

Media

Television

Girls5Eva S2. It continues to be ridiculous and enjoyable.

Man on the inside, off to a pretty good start. I’m a little worried that the frame story may end up too constraining.

Never have I ever What is even happening, hahahah. It’s funny!

The great british baking show: holiday episodes 2024 Usual wholesomey goodness.

Black Mirror S6E2. Trying, and failing, to find some episode that captures.

Podcasts

Panic World the His and Her internets episode.

Search Engine the ayahuasca episode.

Music

Rich Aucoin Synthetic Season 3. I enjoyed it.

Reading

Finished When things fall apart, which is just excellent. I don’t want to tarnish how good, and revisitable, and complete it is with any nitpickings. Worth reading and re-reading. Recommended. It’s my 22nd book of the year.

Probably by the time this is posted I’ll also finish The Odyssey. It’s been a great read. Not the most compelling plot, but it has a great story. Those sound at odds, but that’s how it’s been. Emily Wilson’s poetic word choices make me want to try and find some more of that kind of writing. Just on something more contemporary; but I already have so many books.

Other

New section!

Words

Eurus = east wind, and zephyr = west wind. I had always thought zephyr was a gentle, good wind. I didn’t realize it had a direction association too. Via The Odyssey. More wind words.

Appetites

Sticky Toffee Pudding (cake), this was amazing.
Easy Apple Crumble, saw this one too and it looks good.
Alvin’s Levain Cookies, making these this weekend. Mine did not turn out as good looking as Alvin’s did. And I don’t think Alvin’s were all that much like Levain’s. So, I found some online recipes.^a

Stray thoughts

YouTube is such a treasure. Well, the archive of videos is. Is that accessible somehow, like a library interface? Something that you could do proper research with. Seems like they ought to support that. But, what’s the business model? The user search interface can be maddening. I hope it is never deleted. Of course we will lose these archives, and we’ll be very bummed about it.

I think the same applies to a lot of other sites: Facebook, Instagram, Flickr, Vimeo, all the major upload sites.

To Reply: Email me if you wanna.

Week Notes No. 33

2024-12-09T07:40:00-08:00

Heavy news week.

Almanac

Consistent temperatures this week, and low to no chance of precipitation. Mid-60s for a high, and mid 40s for a low. Sunrise is incredibly late, just after 7, and sunset is just before 5; daylight hours are as short as it gets. The moon was just new, so it’s waxing and up mostly during the day.

DEC02MON

I am interviewing a candidate, and they misspeak: Brutal force instead of brute force. I think it might be my new favorite language tweak.

DEC04WED

In the office. A random encounter, maybe even for the first time in person, was beneficial. There are good reasons to be there sometimes.

DEC05THU

So, we get a tsunami warning alert mid-morning, the harsh blaring un-shutoff-able cell phone alert. There was a large earthquake off the NorCal coast (see below), and after a bit of searching and info sharing, it became clear that if there is a real tsunami then it would arrive at downtown SF after about an hour. Our house isn’t close enough to water to credibly be threatened by anything but an absolutely monstrous wave that would also clobber the entire southbay- I’m not even sure that such a thing is even theoretically possible. After almost an hour, the tsunami warning is cancelled.

DEC06FRI

Lunch with D. I appreciate her saner perspective on the aftermath of… things.

DEC07SAT

Pancakes for lunch. And a nap.

DEC08SUN

Delayed and extended conversation with B. We cover a lot of ground and it is good.

Media

News

I don’t normally do this, but there has been quite the surplus of news this week and I wanted to do a quick rundown of the highlights and articulate what I am thinking right now. I assume that most of this is actually wrong, so don’t listen to me. By writing it down, I a) want to snapshot what I am aware of and b) capture what I think concretely so that I can c) correct it.

03TUE morning west coast time, TUE night locally: Martial law declared in Korea. I remember seeing that this happened just before starting work, and it didn’t quite register as significant. Probably I found it un-credible, or lacking confirmation. The whole rest of the series of events played out while I was moderately busy during the work day, and it was resolved before I took my dog out for a walk in the evening. And by “resolved” I only mean the martial law part, not the underlying problems.
04WED: Health Insurance CEO is killed in Manhattan. This is total conspiracy theory fuel. Great, more of what we need. More evidence of social contract fraying? Unknown if the assailant is going to have left or right tendencies. Possibly that doesn’t even matter. Ugh. Not good. Only time will tell.
04WED: No confidence vote in France. This is relatively normal parliament procedure stuff, but it does add to the mix.
05THU, Local news: tsunami warning in Northern California. Personal note here: kind of a tense hour while I waited and doubted the possibility of the tsunami being real. Luckily it turned out to not be, and as a bonus I finally learned how to read the beachball moment tensor diagrams.
06FRI: Romania annuls presidential election results. I don’t normally follow Romanian politics, but it is the southern border of Ukraine. In my perception of the news this week, this event drifted by in the background and only really became something worth noting when I learned a little more about the problems with the election and while compiling this list.
07SAT: al-Assad abandons Damascus. This is a big deal and much too early to know what it’s really going to mean. More details from Lawfare.

Conspicuously missing to me from this list are two topics that have been ever-present for the last 1-2 years. Israel/Palestine which recently agreed to a ceasefire, however tenuous and punctured. And the war in Ukraine. Have I gone news blind to these? I doubt it.

Television

Dark Winds S1. Really enjoyed it. One niche aspect that I particularly liked was how they filmed it modern even though it was set in the 1970s. There wasn’t any annoying and constant cinematographic reminders of “this is the 70s” in every single shot.

Black Mirror Joan is awful S6E1 is amazing. And I haven’t found another episode amongst the early seasons that I liked nearly as much. Most of the episodes seem too direct to be all that interesting. Sure, they’re commenting on things, but it’s obvious things that don’t need an entire hour to workout.

YouTube

On Standby by Loud Numbers. I desperately want to find a version without any talking, just the electronic ambiences.

Marsh at Malta, at Sussex.

State Azure Nova Sonus- I’m just here for the visuals!

Jody Wisternoff Welcome to my world (album).

Martin Stürtzner Ambient Home Concert 67.

Universal Ambients Samarkand, 1869. ‘Twas a’ight.

Podcasts

Ezra Klein + Rahm Emanuel This seems exactly right to me. Stop being dumb, Democrats.

Panic World on Mr Beast The opposite of Mr Beast is slow and realtime YT. While “Train vs Pit” sounds cool, no dude, I am having an allergic reaction to the idea of the treatment (I haven’t seen it). The engagement hacking style, breathless and giving the viewer no time to accept and interpret the information that is offered, to be completely triggering of only emotional response in an unacceptable way. I assume that eventually everyone will become numb to this style at some point and the effectiveness will wear off. Or not. Whatever, it doesn’t work on me at all. It reminds me of advertising, which the other surest way to get me to bail out on that kind of video content.

WTFpod with Luca Guadagnino I haven’t finished; only the first 10-15 minutes of the interview, and it’s already landed several points to think more about and investigate.

Reading

More progress on The Odyssey and When Things Fall Apart. Nearly done with TFA, and over the halfway point with Odyssey.

Words

Hecatomb: a really big animal sacrifice. Via The Odyssey.

Revanchist alt: to reclaim territory lost in war. Via The Bulwark/bsky.

What a weird and synchronicitist juxtaposition.

To Reply: Email me your news takes, or don't.

Week Notes No. 32

2024-12-02T07:00:00-08:00

It’s Thanksgiving week!

I'm a sucker for a good cloudy sky.

Almanac

Some rain, lots of clouds. Holiday activities. I have the whole week off.

NOV25MON

I already had W-F off, so I opted to take M and T as well. I’m looking forward to a whole week off!

NOV26TUE

Visited 3 parks. Quicksilver, Calero, Santa Teresa. At Quicksilver I walked through some California Laurel, or maybe it was an appetizer course of herbed olives. It had recently rained, so all the plants were quite aromatic, if that is any excuse.

NOV27WED

Nothing to report.

NOV28THU - Thanksgiving Day

After messing around on Bsky for a bit, and keep in mind that I basically have no community there,¹ micro blog posts are too short to say much of anything with a natural level of complexity and/or nuance. Pithy one off remarks are the commonest things I see; soundbite rhetoric. Does a soundbite have even two dimensions? Or maybe the most frequent is the hustle. So much hustle. Either way it’s pretty exhausting. I do appreciate the generally cheery attitude amongst the improbably large pool of people I ended up following. And the art. There is lots of cool art.

NOV29FRI

Chill day.

NOV30SAT

Have you seen the Tragedy of the Nutcracker? I saw a junior performance, and before you get out the pitchforks and torches, please allow me to explain. It was an adorable performance.

There were three acts (not really, it was 5 scenes and no intermission: junior performance, remember?). First, a bit of gold tape affixed itself center stage left and a little drama unfolded while the male lead attempted to innocently sweep his dancing foot and remove it. No luck. Some minutes later, an opportunity presented itself for a bit of stooping and the tension was resolved.

In the next scene, a shocking twist: two of the senior dancers’ costumes became entwined; they were hooked! One of them realized the predicament, but the other was still unaware. Now that’s exciting! Luckily the attachment only lasted a moment and they were free and escaped stage right.

For the final dramatic moment, one of the most junior dancers in the troupe lost control of their hat. Stunned, she looked to the male lead for help or guidance or maybe just support. Confidently, non-chalantly, he gestured to her to simply re-place it upon her head, no big deal. The young dancer was surprised at the simplicity of the solution, and the calmness of the proposer. So she did put it back with a bit of a struggle, the pesky elastic band was not cooperating. In the end it rested upon her tiny head, maybe a bit backwards, but there nonetheless.

The rest of the regular programming was quite enjoyable even with the novel plot elements that I had not seen or heard of before. It has all the usual pieces too: children, mice, princes, and the morning. There was one bit that I didn’t remember from before: the humans (well, Nutcracker prince) shot first!

In truth, these little unplanned dramas made the clockwork of ballet theater more human, more relatable. The errors, sure they distracted a bit, but the show was not so complicated or unfamiliar that it was a problem. The errors showed that these dancers are accessible, and that they all, even the prima donnas, start as junior dancers who may make mistakes.

Recommended.

DEC01SUN

Where is everyone? Costco is practically deserted. TJs too. I can only assume that the people are not returned from their travels. I won’t question it, I’ll just get my shopping done and get going.

Media

Movies

Suzume, very good!

Television

Slow Horses S4. Ended kind of abruptly. I suspect that the budget constraints of 3 major stars (Oldman, Pryce, Weaving) put limits on the amount of screen time that Oldman got this season.² It has been renewed for series 5 and 6.

Girls5Eva S1. Unexpectedly wackily hilarious.

YouTube

Usual Martijn and maigomika and Any Austin.

Reading

Regular steady progress in both The Odyssey and When Things Fall Apart.

It’s funny, The Odyssey is very readable, and the reaching back in time aspect is gripping. The story is, the story is both simple and interesting. Is it just alien? Stripped of the ten dollars words used in other translations, the plot movement is often naively direct. Literally of the form “I’m going to tell you X, now X happens” kind of segues. But there are good phrases and words and so on.

Things Fall Apart has many good insights, there is a lot of human psychology in there. It reminds me of the Stoics a bit. My first Bhuddist reading. Very educational.

Words

Charon, the ferryman, is pronounced like Karen. Well, so my dictionary says. I still see it said both ways, but the hard K seems more likely consistent with other uses. There seems to not be a lot of other details about this figure. I consulted the Oxford Classical Dictionary too, not just Wikipedia. Was he a man and emplaced in this role? Was he a god? A blank slate then.

If you’re a regular reader here, I’d love to connect and see if some bidirectional interaction could work. ↑
Could be a dozen other explanations. Original source material, scheduling issues, etc. ↑

To Reply: Email me your favorite Thanksgiving treats.

New to me Facts and Ideas in November 2024

2024-12-02T06:00:00-08:00

Kind of a low month, only 5 facts. I’ve been over busy at work, and outside world …things… happened.

Week 45

Began on 24NOV04MON .

Hypothesis: Cuneiform may have been developed from clay rollers six thousand years ago? Via Damn Interesting. Bear in mind that these are the durable remnants only, the things that decay are gone from the record.
Hypothesis: DNA evidence suggests that Pompeii was a cosmopolitan city with people from all over the Mediterranean area and Africa. Via several.
Fact (not new): Yeast is a single cell fungus. This is not news, but an update/correction in my knowledge. Heretofore I had always thought yeast was in its own category. But this was an error of omission; it has been known to be a fungus for quite some time.

Week 46

Began on 24NOV11MON .

This space intentionally left blank.

Week 47

Began on 24NOV18MON .

This space intentionally left blank.

Week 48

Began on 24NOV25MON .

Fact: 2024 was an above average hurricane season. Would be interested to know the variance or standard deviation around the average too. Maybe we don’t have enough data yet.
Observation: Fertile crescent bakers made focaccia like breads about 8000 years ago. Via Archaeology Magazine among others.

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 30 and 31

2024-11-25T15:00:00-08:00

Current strategy for this weekly week notes is not doing it for me.

Seen
San Jose, CA

First Week

Almanac

This week will be tough. Highs will be in the mid 50s to mid 60s; lows in the 40s. At these temperatures, which I know are not that low for some of you, I will find running to be a struggle. And it might rain on Monday and Friday. Anyway, sunrise is a little before 7, and sunset is right at 5. The moon will be full later in the week.

NOV11MON

HVAC work begins, and quite a bit of rain, actually.

NOV12TUE

Farewell Chang, I barely knew ye. Best of luck in your new role.

NOV13WED

A month of sprinting at work and we cross the finish line. One finish line. There will be another one next week. But I can focus on just one thing now, which is nice.

NOV14THU

Highway thoughts: America is not a person, it’s a business.

NOV15FRI

Good chat with B as usual. Tried and kind of failed to not be too angry about, things.

NOV16SAT

First frost of the season, basically right on schedule. It’s on the roofs and shadows and a few shaded windshields.

NOV17SUN

Bsky is taking off. Is it the new old, erm, old site?¹ I’ve seen enough cycles, everything enshittifies, everything. Or just changes and isn’t what we thought it once was. There are a million other off ramps too. Maybe it won’t even become what we imagine it could be. How long will we get?

Second Week

Really not that excited about the direction that this weekly recap is going. It’s gotten quite formulaic and not that interesting to me to write. My goal was to a) remember what happened, and b) process or think through what I thought about it. Just making a record of the days isn’t really doing that for me. I think it’s probably time for a reset.

Almanac

Bit of rain, but not as cold. Often cloudy.

NOV18MON

I finished another pen. The fourth one this year. I bought a five pack at the end of last year. Can’t find the last one. I should check my backpack. Anyway, I’ve been using a “fancy” pen since then. It’s working. All pens are compromises, I just get along with some better than others. Hashtag stationary nerd.

NOV19TUE

I am focusing on one thing at a time today. It’s been a theme for a while. I keep trying.

NOV20WED

Other finish line is crossed. Really catching my breath now. But there will be more finish lines, more running. I think all these finish lines are one of the reasons for a lack of posting here. I hope things get back to normal soon.

NOV21THU

In the office for a toast. The PA system was having some difficulties; if the co-leads both spoke at the same time it would cut-out. Art as life.

NOV22FRI

Usual Friday things. Ladies and gentlemen, The Weekend.

NOV23SAT

Dinner at a friend’s place. Homemade pho broth is just a completely different thing than anything that I’ve had at a restaurant. Even those tiny mom and pop places. Ugh.

NOV24SUN

Some progress putting the garage back together after the HVAC work last week.

Media

Media consumption is up. Because, things.

Movies

Glass Onion, the second Benoit Blanc movie. I am glad that it doesn’t take itself too seriously, but takes itself seriously enough to commit to the bit. It was funny.

Television

Along for the ride for Outlander.

Nobody wants this is on Netflix. It’s cute and fun, after the first couple of episodes.

YouTube

The usual suspects: Gifgas in Canada, Martijn and is cadre of barefooted volunteers, and Maigomika. Perhaps a new entrant: Matheus?

One thing that I appreciate about Maigomika’s videos is that they show us there errors more often. It must feel pretty vulnerable to do that. Martijn only does it very ocassionally and when it happens he doesn’t call any attention to it. Quite possibly it costs viewers to do that. But maybe it retains some better ones? Show your mistakes, it’s one of the ways we know you’re showing us the truth of living there and not just some story. I prefer my stories to be more obviously stories.

Podcasts

The recent crossover episodes of Panic World to Search Engine on jaw maxing was unexpected, as was the Panic World episode on Tumblr as trans vector. As a regular Tumblr lurker, I had no idea. Please, other humans, just let people live as they wish in peace.

Music

Various Anjunadeep videos.

Marsh on a train in Wales, in Kew Gardens, in Estes Park, Colorado
CRI Anjunadeep Edition 441, Printworks, Osheaga
Grant and Wisterhoff Mexico City

Daft Punk 2007 live show Lollapalooza

Reading

Finished Nexus, now The Odyssey as translated by Wilson is getting all of my attention. That book slays, so rhythmic, it’s like a meditative chant. I wonder if there is other modern texts in iambic pentameter. Hell, even just some contemporary fiction or essays might work. Who the hell am I now?

Words

oneiric: relating to dreams.
ossifrage: a lammergeier.² Looking that up leads to: An osprey, a vulture.
clepe: to call out.

Twitter, okay, Twitter. ↑
Possibly the second best definition that I’ve ever encountered. ↑

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

A Library of Dictionaries

2024-11-14T07:30:00-08:00

I have collected a few dictionaries. I mean the bound paper kind of dictionary. Why? Because they are cheap, interesting, useful, surprising, and reliable.

You can usually find them used for a few dollars, often with free shipping. I think this is because no one else wants them. How many people do you know that have a dictionary? Or many books at all for that matter.

For me, interest often goes in a couple of directions. Further clarification on something that I already vaguely know, and complete surprise. Dictionaries offer both of these in huge proportion.

Different dictionaries contain different words, or explain the definitions of the same words in different ways. This can be quite useful. Sometimes they have more senses. Sometimes a dictionary will mention archaic uses or variations. Some include pictures or short narratives.

One advantage of real books is the element of surprise. I think this is a greatly overlooked feature of browsing real books and real bookshelves. While scanning down the page to find what you are seeking, your eyes must pass over many other entries. Sometimes, more often than you might expect, there are some very alluring words, very necessary words that are encountered purely by chance along the way. I think also, by definition, one usually consults a dictionary when they aren’t sure of something and often there is a surprise in the resolution, even if it’s a small one.

Paper books have an advantage over computer based information storage: they don’t usually change when you aren’t looking at them. There’s no annual subscription fee. They stay where you put them, usually. That can be both a feature and a bug. Paper books have unique interfaces that you can learn and depend on. They’re stable.

The following list is in chronological order by publish date.

Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, 1986. It’s functional, has occasional maps and illustrations, and is generally good but dry. This is one that Zinsser suggests as a good option in On Writing Well. He also mentions the American Heritage dictionary, and that he’s got more too.

Dictionary of Word Origins, 1990. Smaller, shorter book. Still comes in handy at times when searching for the right word.

Reader’s Digest Illustrated Reverse Dictionary, 1990. There is a non-illustrated version of this, but I didn’t locate a copy of that.

The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, Volumes 1 and 2, 1993. I use it, sometimes. It’s kind of a tossup whether I will search the internet or not at this point. Definitely contains a lot of information. Since it’s the “shorter” version, it’s not exhaustive or unabridged.

The American Heritage College Dictionary, Third Edition, 1997. Small gutter. Includes pictures and sometimes a short informative background related to the word. For instance, for heroin, the drug, there is an extra bit about how this name was originally chosen, and what the name is usually differently attributed to now.

Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary, 2002. A selection of words and definitions, quotes, and quips, from the original dictionary. Fun to check while editing to see if there is some useful association that is no longer common.

The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories, 2002. Same as the other book on word histories.

The American Heritage College Dictionary, Fourth Edition, 2004. Gutter problem isn’t quite so bad. I enjoy the extra info and less dry attitude.

The Chambers Dictionary, 11th Edition, 2008. Mostly British English, has more obscure words that are sometimes dialect. This is really useful when writing to add the occasional bit of flavor. That’s what I think, at least.

I’m not recommending one over another; the assemblage is more useful than any one in particular. If the question is which physical dictionary to get instead of continuing to have none, then the answer is which ever you find first.

To Reply: Got a favorite dictionary? Send me an email about it.

Week Notes No. 29

2024-11-11T07:00:00-08:00

This week happened.

Almanac

Warm this week.

[I’m leaving these notes to myself as a marker of the before times, literally and literally.] Discuss the surreality of automatic clock changes for the end of DST. Vestigial acts for those unconnected items like old ovens and old microwaves. And physical clocks on the wall that do the whole tick tock thing.

NOV03MON

Flying back from Denver. The thing that I am the most surprised about is how close together Denver, Golden, Boulder, and Morrison (Red Rocks) are to each other.

NOV04TUE

I can’t watch. We are finishing Whitechapel instead.

NOV05WED

This is awful. Somehow I work. It is even reasonably productive.

NOV06THU

Does Thursday happen this week? I forget if we’re having Thursday this week. Oh yes, game night. Game night is a bright spot.

NOV08FRI

Good conversation with B.

NOV09SAT

In order to be prepared for some HVAC work we are clearing out the west wall of our garage. This is a good forcing function for clearing out the garage ahead of finishing it, which is nominally the next project.

NOV10SUN

Is it me or are people extra grumpy now? Many of the other customers at Costco seemed especially inconsiderate. Not all of them, but a lot. Emboldened or grieving, I don’t know. Just consider your fellow humans too, it’s not that much to ask.

The Trader Joe’s customers are a little happier, which is counter intuitive since the available space is so much less.

Media

Thinking about moving this section to a different day.

Movies

Dune, part 1 was our escapism this weekend. Boy they screwed up the intro, the first 20-30 minutes. There was no storytelling here. I guess it’s too much to introduce so they just tell it to the audience. Or inaudibly whisper at us. Very frustrating. I preferred the Lynch version, as cheesy and campy as that is. After that things improve a bit. Or something. It’s generally filmed beautifully, and the costuming is pretty neat. By the end I enjoyed it; I’m looking forward to seeing the second part.

I maybe have a proto-theory that these days directors would very much like to just skip the dialog and tell the story with imagery. But sometimes information must be transmitted in words, so they’re forced to have the actors say some things even though the director would very much rather they didn’t. In the silent film days that minimal dialog was handled by text cards, but that’s not yet back in fashion. So they whisper some of it, or talk with a lot of background noise. “Characters talking is happening.” No one knows how to tell stories, or the story is killed in committee and we’re left with whatever is left. Awful.

Dune, part 2 fast followed the next night. There was a lot of killing.

Television

Finished Whitechapel. The show’s characters progressively spiral. I’m not entirely sure if the end of the show is going supernatural or if it’s just in the minds of the characters. And I think that is the point; they all go a bit crazy.
The Law According to Lidia Poët, season 2. Fun.
The Diplomat, Season 2, Netflix. Also fun, as long as you don’t emotionally invest too much in the actual decisions of the characters. I have no basis for judging if this is even a poetic license interpretation of what the real people in these roles would do. I think that’s one of the things that makes it fun.

YouTube

Scavengers, “prequel” to Scavengers Reign which is now on Netflix, and also not renewed.

Music

Some CRi: Live from Mile-Ex, Live from Carré de Gaspé, Anjunadeep Edition 441, Danforth Music Hall.

Some Dosem: Open Air LA, Empire.

Reading

Buncha post election coverage, not worth mentioning. I want better, more accurate information going forward. OK, a couple were that, but I can’t reconcile their calmness with the rest of it. This is one and this is another.¹ Sure, I want some of the bellyaching, finger pointing, post mortem-ing stuff too. It’s cathartic, or at least helpful for processing… this . May it be less bad than our worst fears. It will still be bad, but less would be better. Good luck to us all.

Not much other reading, no Odyssey, only a little of Nexus.

Idk if either of these are “correct.” I’m just saying I appreciated them. Maybe this one too. ↑

To Reply: Email me your bright spots.

Week Notes No. 28

2024-11-04T19:00:00-08:00

Quite the packed week this week.

Snow flies over the very bundled crowd while Qrion and Dosem play at Red Rocks Amphitheater, Morrison CO
Photo taken on 24NOV03SUN with Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Almanac

Much cooler temperatures this week; we have entered through the autumn passage. Morning lows in the 40s, afternoon highs in the mid 60s or lower; there could be some clouds in the middle of the week. The new moon is Friday; dark nights with the moon up during the day. Daylight Savings Time ends this weekend; we get an extra hour of sleep and return to natural time.

OCT28MON

It rained some actual rain today. I finished my run right before the shower really started, thank goodness. It’s not the absolute first drops I’ve seen this season, there were a couple on the windshield a week or two but I don’t think it counted. This was enough to wet the street. Perfect night for a bowl of ramen at Ramen Champ. I’m glad my mother-in-law suggested it!

OCT29TUE

WFO. Jiminy it’s busy at work now. I’m in the middle of a six week stretch of two different projects battling it out for my attention. It’s the right kind of challenge for me, and the stress of it isn’t all bad. Still stressful though.

OCT30WED

Blissfully my schedule is basically wide open so I could focus on making concrete progress during the day. There was a lot of progress to make and I do make an adequate amount of it. Another daytime run.

OCT31THU

Much longer gaming session tonight. There’s a new Expedition in NMS (No Man’s Sky), and it’s shifted the approach to play by force. The player is constantly harried by phantom jellyfish, or whatever, and there is a new resource meter that must be maintained. Instead of being kind of methodical about achieving my goals I am simply frantically trying to survive and scrabble together enough resources to get the next step. It seems to be working, but I don’t think I’ll have enough actual play time to finish the Expedition in the short window that has been allotted. It’s interesting to see my play pushed and pulled like this.

NOV01FRI

NaNoWriMo begins. I’m giving it a low expectations shot. I don’t have a good plan for the novel, even though the story has been kicking around in the old brainpan for years. Thirty minutes a day of getting ideas out will probably help in a couple of ways. First, I have a short term habit-type goal of writing about it for a half hour each day. Second, the structure of that will try to jostle it into novel-ish shape. Third, since I’ve never written a novel before so this is a chance to really examine the form from the author side. How does one build a novel? Fourth, since I don’t actually have the expectation on myself of finishing a novel here, any progress toward a better picture of what this story will look like as a novel is a form of success.

NOV02SAT

First time in Boulder. Surprising amount of bookstores. Too many bookstores. Some towns are so lucky.

NOV03SUN

Yes, folks, we have flown to Colorado for a concert. Thing is, when we left the forecast wasn’t so confident about rain and snow. But, folks, that was days ago. And right now, I am dancing, ok “dancing”, in the stands facing away from the stage because there is a fell voice on the wind, and it is sharp and pointy and it stings. The music is great, and energy of the crowd is good, and the setting is spectacular. I just think someone forgot to payoff the weatherman. And I like, no, I looove bad weather. But at some point, enough is enough. Rain, a little at the beginning. Then heavier rain, and lighter again. Eventually snow, and sleet, and much more snow. It hasn’t started to accumulate here, still too warm for that. But when my socks start to get wet, it’s time to call it a night. Great show, horrible weather. And I say that as someone who loves horrible weather. Well, how about this: uncomfortably exciting atmosphere!

Media

Television

Kaos fun and funny. Not for kids.

Podcasts

Search Engine update on OpenAI. Just pay attention, ok? And not only to OpenAI.

Music

Reading

Making solid progress on Nexus. There are some chapters that I am objecting to, and I’m glad that Harari is addressing those objections. I don’t think I agree with his understanding of how tech companies actually work when it comes to updating and changing their algorithms. But I’m also not sure it matters that much. I mean, it’s better to have the objective truth here, but it’s also ok if the basic results are the same if some of the middle steps get muddled.

One of too many books that I picked up in Boulder is Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey, and dang does it hit. This is a far more impactful text than Fagles’ version that I read before. While that was fine, it was also kind of hard to relate to. Wilson’s is much more direct. I could see referring back to it in the future, when I need a bit of inspiration for some compact wordage that really delivers. I’m looking forward to finishing that unlocking the later translation of The Illiad. I mean I wasn’t even planning to read that next; I was thinking that the other Ulysses by Joyce would be next. But this has grabbed me.

To Reply: Email me your Denver area recommendations for the next trip.

New to me Facts and Ideas in October 2024

2024-11-04T08:01:00-08:00

Some interesting facts in here! More crow facts.

Week 41

Began on 24OCT07MON .

Fact: plants, even of different species, will synchronize boom years of producing seeds. This is called masting. Via Tuesday Triage.
Idea: The planned closing of Waffle House restaurants during and after hurricanes has been a useful indicator of their severity. Via Kottke. See also hn for a guess at what the index represents; it’s a uniform standard across jurisdictions. Apropos Milton. The actual Index/screenshot, and additional hn discussion.

Week 42

Began on 24OCT14MON .

Fact: Europa Clipper launches successfully. Arriving at Jupiter in 2030. See also hacker news for launch streams.
Fact: We’ve reached solar maximum, via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Hurricane Oscar is very small.

Week 43

Began on 24OCT21MON .

Fact: Intelsat 33e breaks up in geostationary orbit. It’s a Boeing bus. Via Hacker News.
Fact: Orion and Meade shutdown in July. Also Coronado. Very abruptly. This is a bummer. Via the YT algorithm.
Hypothesis: 70% of meteorites originated in 3 asteroid impacts, via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Claude (a LLM chatbot) can control your computer. Via HackerNews.
Fact: OpenAI (a LLM chatbot) can provide your read your fortune.
Fact: I am late to the cereal milk latté party. My unscientific research suggests an upper limit age of 2016, so probably a couple of years older. Via Rosecrans Baldwin.

Week 44

Began on 24OCT28MON .

Hypothesis: Man chucked in well appears in Norwegan saga. Also, and. Via Damn Interesting, Kottke, and others.
Fact: (almost): Apple is off lightning connectors.
Hypothesis: Crows hold grudges for up 12 years after the offended crow has passed on. Via Kottke.
Likely fact: Touch screens are ageist because of lowering moisture levels in skin. Via hacker news comment.

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 27

2024-10-28T07:00:00-07:00

The pizza was a hit, and there is always something to do. Light week notes this week.

Solar atmospheric optical phenomena.
Photo taken on 24OCT26SAT, San Jose CA.

This is a pretty rare atmospheric optics phenomenon, and we got to see it in San Jose! There is the one sundog visible at right, the other is hidden behind the hillside. Then there is the 22º halo that intersects it. The brightest feature, after the sun and the sun dog, is the upper tangent arc. And beyond that is the 46º halo which is rare. Or maybe it’s the Parry arc, I’m not sure. So lucky to get to see these!

Almanac

Cooling temperatures, lows in the low 50s, highs 80 or below; no rain or clouds in the forecast. Sunrise is around 7:30 and sunset is moving toward 6. The moon is waning yet still gibbous; it rises late and sets in the early afternoon the next day.

OCT21MON

I am still sick with the stomach flu; no running this day.

I’ve wondered what the proper name is for the oaky grassy landscape that used to dominate the Santa Clara valley, since I’ve got a remnant chunk of it right across the street. It’s called oak savannah, or oak woodland.

OCT22TUE

Ugh, another sick day. It’s so weird not being congested but feeling unwell. Thankfully it clears up toward the evening.

OCT23WED

Back in business. Surprisingly sprinting right off the bat. Out of respect for my colleagues, I wfh the rest of the week. I don’t want to get anyone sick.

OCT24THU

Mother in law is visiting for a week since yesterday.

OCT25FRI

Rustic fresh tomato pasta. It was quick.

OCT26SAT

I make a run happen.

By chance I rediscover the pizza dough recipe I used to use. It’s the one. I can’t believe I “lost” it. It’s a few pages further on from the one that I have been using for the last, what, couple of years? I blame the pandemic. Overnight poolish dough, I’ll never forget you.

OCT27SUN

Unexpected surfing competition in Santa Cruz.

Surfing Competition at Steamer Lane
Photo taken on 24OCT27SAT, Santa Cruz CA.

Media

Television

Whitechapel, Peacock. Relatively cozy police procedural. I enjoyed it.

Culinary Class Wars, Netflix. Full season. Well, I didn’t get to see all of the it. Really I just got to see last couple of episodes, and those had some very creative dishes. I was inspired.

Pachinko, Apple TV. s1e1-2. I am somewhat engaged.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

To Reply: Email me your favorite streaming shows.

Week Notes No. 26

2024-10-21T11:30:00-07:00

Running success, a big meeting at work, and then I get the stomach flu.

Almanac

Cooler this week, morning lows dropping into the upper 40s by the end of the week. Daytime highs in the low 70s or upper 60s. The return of morning clouds (marine layer) and afternoon sun. Sunrise around a quarter after seven, and sunset is half past six; the number of sunlit hours is rapidly falling toward eleven. The full moon on Thursday means bright nights. Fall is coming.

OCT21MON

The HVAC man is here.

OCT22TUE

Baking bread. I should do this more. There are too many good kinds that I like, and I don’t bake them frequently enough. I can’t get deep enough into the recipes at my current rate, so I consider their maxima of quality are still unfound; they are unfinished puzzles. Work on some standards and just give them away. Well, it’s an unsolved problem.

OCT23WED

In the office, but boy was it hard to get here; my morning was suddenly packed with meetings. The afternoon is a Team fall festival.

OCT24THU

Big meeting at work. Progress is made, but I’m not sure that the leads were satisfied. We wouldn’t be here without the deadline, and we won’t find the next steps without their input either. In that sense it is success. I am not sure if there are other forms of success too, or failures.

OCT25FRI

Damn it’s the weekend. What a week.

Good conversation with B. I should take notes. We talk about current events (election), Empty lots, and random facts chitons (pronounced kite-ons) etc.

Throughout the day I also keep up a very focused chat with J about belief and guessing the motivations of others. We solve nothing, but many thoughts are had.

OCT26SAT

Increasingly not feeling great in the stomach area. Before I succumb to the sickness, I complete the west half of my survey of the Coyote-Alamitos canal. There is less graffiti than I expected. Erosion is consistent with the spring. A weak La Niña this winter means that precipitation could go either way. Check back after the rain door closes.

Lots of reading of The Natural History of Empty Lots after I am confined the couch with fatigue, aches, and cramps.

OCT27SUN

I am spending all day feeling weak and unwell. It started a bit on Friday, but by yesterday it went from “this isn’t great” to “why would anyone even eat food.” Hopefully I’m better on Monday. I have the stomach flu. I hope it is short.

I finish The Natural History of Empty Lots; I enjoyed it. See notes below. More later.

Running success; all three planned runs occurred. I should keep this up, it is easier every time.

Media

Television

Whitechapel, relatively cozy police procedural. There is a bit more TV gore than I generally appreciate. Blitzed through about half of it after achieving YT burnout being couchbound on Sunday.

YouTube

Martijn 125 and 126. What’s with these barefooted helpers. Excited to see what happens with the second cabin. As a friend said: “are we just watching this guy do chores?” Um, yes?

Grab Bag: Monster Mothership is 3 hrs of field recording and video(?) of a thunderstorm in the midwest. What I appreciate about this one is the mostly dark screen. Jelly Cam is a classic. A drive across the Diablo range is about some bay area bioregionalism. So SFBA it’s kinda painful, but interesting. Ambient walk at Point Reyes. The Bark Europa voyages home.

Food: Lan Lam teaches sandwiches; I must practice. MZK: Oil and Garlic Pasta, Carbonara. London style pizza with Gozney. Butter: whip it and whip it some more. Asian chicken noodle soup. Note, I didn’t make these things, they are inputs.

Trailers: The magnificent life of Marcel Pagnol, from the director of Triplets of Belleville; looking forward to it. Witch Hat Atelier; I don’t know what this is but am curious.

Podcasts

Panic World interviews Caroline Calloway. It’s very long, discusses some internet history which is super interesting, and then turns specifically to the guest and how the internet and the people on it have changed. I learned two things. First, the haters on the internet, they really would rather talk about themselves. Maybe they see these other people doing things and it makes them jealous that other people are talking about them instead? That probably is an over simplification. Second, dealing with people at scale has different rules. You cannot treat them like an individual, that’s not how they are thinking about what you’ve done, what you’ve just gone viral for. Third, nine out of ten people who are doing really weird attention seeking behaviors online are probably in an abusive/exploitive situation. Things that people are doing that seem really out there and not normal, they are probably doing it because they are in some sort of danger: drug addiction, exploitive partner (business or otherwise), debt, etc.

Music

State Azure Artemis Station. Finished this 3 hour piece. It’s fine, might play it again sometime.

Reading

The Natural History of Empty Lots It turned out to be a better contrast to Nexus than I thought Ancillary Justice was. Empty Lots is present tense, contextualizing, and oriented toward the near future. And, of course, Nexus is relevant to present times. Both books were published in September 2024, I think it might be the first time I’ve ever read such contemporary work. I kinda like it. Empty Lots is a description of our cultural machinery as surplus generator, resource extractor, and insulator from the natural world. It’s more than that, because it resolves how that description, while truthful, is inaccurate in some important ways. The wild is there if you look for it. The book is self-aware too, noting the author’s own unintentional participation in the damaging nature. Lots of good phrases, thought provoking points, and historical references. Idiosyncratic, lacking foot/end-notes, and kind of unclear sometimes what the biases, omissions, or selections were. However, I think it was worth my time.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

Week Notes No. 25

2024-10-14T07:00:00-07:00

Changing things up this week, publishing on Mondays from here on out. This is kind of a bankruptcy and reset too. Posting everyday last month gave me new materiel to examine and evaluate which parts I gain from. And there are parts that I do gain from, no doubt.

Kelp at Point Lobos, California.

First week

Almanac

There will be a heat wave for much of the week, mid- to upper-90s Monday to Thursday, possibly 100 on Tuesday. Nearing the new moon, so dark nights all week.

SEP30MON

Running.

OCT02WED

Running.

OCT04FRI

Backpacking. Well, make do backpacking because it’s definitely probably too hot at the original destination which is high in the Sierras. We run for the coast and it seems like a good choice.

OCT05SAT

Pack out, and then afternoon in Point Lobos. On the trail we meet a rather large group of other hikers, heading in.

OCT06SUN

Day hike at Wilder Ranch. It’s still hot. This place would definitely be cooler with fog and marine layer and such. Next time hit up the coastal bluff Ohlone trail.

Second week

Almanac

No almanac. I was busy and didn’t have time to write it.

OCT07MON

Last day of makeup activities. We’re at Fort Point, right underneath the Golden Gate Bridge. By the water it was cool, jacket weather. It warmed as soon as we strayed from the edge.

OCT10THU

Running. Believe it or not, I am still recovering from all that hiking over the weekend. A little weakness in my right knee, maybe I mis-stepped on the trail and didn’t realize it. Still, it was a generally faster than usual run and I don’t want to lose that.

And new phone day.

OCT12SAT

Quick gardening in the morning. Burger and a movie in the night.

OCT13SUN¹

Made the east half of my survey of the Santa Teresa Ridge and Coyote-Alamitos canal. I’m mostly looking for signs of slumping, and making an index of the various graffitis that wax and wane throughout the seasons. It’s mostly tags and some throw ups, no pieces, but some symbols or logos (I’m not sure what the right name is for things that aren’t letters but aren’t pieces either).

Media

Some of the intake this week.

Movies

The Matrix Resurrections I think I enjoyed it, but also can we have new stories? I ask that a lot these days. I’m probably looking for movies in the wrong places, and should take more risks on unknown things. Some things didn’t make sense to me, such as Smith’s motivations at various times. Some things I appreciated, such as the on the nose addressing of the film’s outer reality. Some things annoyed the eff outta me, such as the frame rate settings not playing well with my TV. I sure would like them (they, those people that figure this sort of thing out) to hurry the hell up and figure this aspect of movie viewing at home out. I noticed it a lot during the fights scenes and it took me out of the film each time and had me questioning if it was worth it to not spend this time on a new story instead. Overall though, I think it was worth the effort. I rank it below the first one, but above the earlier sequels. [Added later:] Would I watch a sequel to this sequel? Maybe. I don’t rule it out, but nor is it obvious to me that I want even more of this. Maybe something different in the same world, but something entirely different would be good too.

YouTube

Martijn Doolaard starts on the second cabin.

Ninurta A new one recommended by T. Tiksi part 1 and part 2. These were good, longer slightly panning shots of a super interesting abandoned place in winter. The ships in part 1 are a very unusual subject for this genre, and in an unusual atmosphere. Must have been a lot of work to get there. Most of the editing was ok, shots are held long enough, but my preference is always for longer cuts, more real time like ambient experience. There’s no need for music, I’d rather just hear what it was like there.

I didn’t really enjoy the Mining Ghost towns (remastered) video, it was much too choppy. It was only a few seconds between cuts, which is basically unwatchable to me. Glad I stuck with it and checked out another video.

Gifgas Trainhopping across Scandinavia is the compilation of the 4 parts already uploaded of Mission to the Arctic Circle. It’s good, always enjoy the pacing and scenery focus of Gifgas.

Any Austin on Morrowind’s “rivers”.

Space: Starship 5.

Weather: Hurricane Milton aftermath, Hurricane Helene aftermath in North Carolina. This seems bad.

Podcasts

Harari on Making Sense, it’s really only the first half.

Music

Martin Stützner Home Concert 66 is 3 hrs of ambient, I enjoyed it.

Chris Luno from Anjunakitchen, I enjoyed it.

Reading

As much as I thought that Ancillary Justice was a good complement to Nexus, I think that A Natural History of Empty Lots is even better. A Natural History of Empty Lots is a book that sits well between Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing and On Looking by Horowitz. For more related books, see my post detailing the imperfect library of noticing. Maybe I should just rename it the incomplete library.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

The day it is written. ↑

To Reply: Email me your make up backpacking stories.

New to me Facts and Ideas in September 2024

2024-10-09T07:20:00-07:00

Commercial spaceflight facts, and more.

Week 36

Began on 24SEP02MON .

Fact: Turbuculosis, fka consumption, is still the number 1 infectious disease killer. But it doesn’t have to be. Via Kottke.
Fact: Highest resolution images of atoms is even better than before. Via Damn Interesting and Science Alert.
Evidence: Submerged bridge suggests that the Mediterranean was settled by humans earlier than previously thought.
Observation: a 1 meter asteroid/meteor crossed the sky over the Philippines. Via Damn Interesting.
Evidence: Sausage purchasing is an indicator of poor economic situations. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Boeing^a Starliner^a lands in New Mexico. YT livestream.

Week 37

Began on 24SEP09MON .

Fact: Polaris Dawn launches on SpaceX Falcon 9.
Fact: First commercial spaceflight is a success.
This years ignoble prize in physics is for measuring the swimming abilities of a dead fish.
Fact: OTC hearing aids are expanding. For example Apple’s earbuds are now approved for it. Via Daring Fireball¹.
Fact: New USPS mail trucks are here. Via Hacker News.

Week 38

Began on 24SEP16MON .

Fact: Eyeliner is at least 8200 years old. I’m sure it’s older than that.
Fact: More flooding in Europe, central Europe specifically this time. Via NYT.
Fact: There are more than just the ABO +/- blood type groups. A new one is just discovered, and another was discovered a couple of years ago. They affect very small groups of people. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: New Mozart discovered. How cool is that. Via Kottke. See also.
Fact: CERN to expel Russian scientists.
Probable fact: So called blue zones don’t actually exist / Ignoble award, i.e. people living beyond 100 with higher frequency is some areas is debunked. Via Slashdot, via alterslash
Fact: QLink Wireless provides free cell service to those that need it. Via HackerNews.
Update: Velociraptors have low body mass, much less than my (large) dog. However, I still wouldn’t call them small, with a body length of up to 2 meters (probably mostly tail). Via Walknotes.

Week 39

Began on 24SEP23MON .

Hypothesis: Space defense with x-rays (from a nuclear weapon) to deflect asteroids.
Fact: California bans all plastic grocery bags, NYT.

Week 40

Began on 24SEP30MON .

Fact: Fruit fly brain is fully mapped. Via Damn Interesting, and a few other places. I think this is probably a big deal.
Observation: Webb measures the Hubble constant H0 via a triply graviationally lensed Type 1a SN. Via Damn Interesting. That’s pretty cool.
Observation: Students run proof of concept/tech demo of real time camera glasses to PII/dox, via Kottke.

Of course it is. ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 24

2024-09-29T21:00:00-07:00

Quick recap before the heatwave arrives.

Focaccia, fresh from the oven.

Almanac

Sunrise is right at 7 am, and sunset just after 7 pm; about twelve hours of daylight, and getting less day by day. It is sunny and the daytime highs range from mid-80s to mid-90s. Nighttime lows are upper 50s and low 60s. The middle of the night will be well illuminated by a waning but still gibbous moon.

SEP23MON

Running. It keeps getting better.

First bread this week was a beautiful focaccia, destined for garden fresh sandwiches. I will simply make this bread again.

SEP24TUE

Not my normal wfh day. I think I am still reeling from just how bad the commute was the other day.

SEP25WED

Skipping the office altogether this week. Wednesday is often my backup day if I can’t make it on Tuesday. Not this week.

Running continues to be perfectly reasonable. I think I will need to begin strategizing for my winter campaign. Winter running is always a struggle. I probably will have my best luck during that afternoon, and in the proper clothes. Once it looks like the weather is going to turn, I am going to begin planning for it. It is on my mind.

SEP26THU

I have nothing to say about Thursday.

SEP27FRI

Running. I could do more. Maybe I should do more.

Lunch out with a friend the I haven’t seen in months. They’ve been out for much of the summer, and I am a little nervous. But it’s unwarranted, we are back to our old selves again, just checking in and sharing about our lives.

SEP28SAT

Pizza night. Second bread of the week. I am getting a handle on my wood pellet fired pizza oven, but it is still quite a hot cooker. Maybe I should throttle the air flow a bit, or R suggests maybe don’t fully occupy the floorspace of the oven, which puts the pizza quite close to the flame. I will iterate and try again. The pizza tonight is delicious, I love both the wood toasted flavor, and how incredibly inflated the dough becomes in extreme heat. For tonights pizza I attempt a pizza diavola, but didn’t do any research, so it’s good but misses the mark.

SEP29SUN¹

Prepping dried foods for backpacking next weekend. Dehydrating things in the oven, and in the dehydrator. The main goal: don’t bring stupid too much food.

Media

New section.

Podcasts

Panic World S1E2. Panic World is a new podcast about the moral panics that originate on the internet. It’s from the makers of Garbage Day. There were a couple of things that I noted about Ryan and Kat’s discussion, but I think the top line item was the irreverence that they projected about all the abuse that they receive via DM. It was about the weird (and tired) attacks on immigrants in Ohio, where the VP candidate made up stories about them eating pets. There was a lot of stuff to talk about.

Panic World S1E3. It was about smartphones rewiring our brains. I mean yeah, but also they’re useful, so like everything in moderation? Also good discussions.

Movies

Tomb Raider (2018). I’m too tired to write a long review. It was fun. Also. Do films always have to be so indulgently gratuitously grandiose to tell stories? Where does the one-up-manship end? The moon, galactic core, or the heat death of the universe? It’s absurd, pointless, and tiresome. Maybe try telling stories where it’s the smallest things that pose the necessary challenges for characters to overcome.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

The day it is written. ↑

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

Trust and Internet and Ai

2024-09-26T19:40:00-07:00

I don’t usually do topical, but I wanted to grab a snapshot.

So, there’s this fish that has walky legs. And there’s these images of Asian Auntie culture, which also features lots of fish. And there’s these newly identified Nazca Lines, found with the help of AI image processing. Finally there’s this article about AI slop.

I think the first fish is real but those videos don’t particularly look higher fidelity than some of the not-even-newest gen ai stuff. But it took me a minute. The Asian Aunties are definitely generated. The Nazca lines, I hope those are legit and a retraction isn’t issued in a few months. I included the last one to have someone else’s take for reference.

That’s the state of the world today. Everything is doubtable and doubtful it seems.

To Reply: Email me your most doubtful but true internet stuff.

Week Notes No. 23

2024-09-22T14:45:00-07:00

I have the worst commute, take a morning off to go hiking, and some other ordinary things.

Almanac

Temperatures are much lower for the work week; low 70s for highs and low to mid 50s for overnight lows. It is more cloudy for the first half of the week. The weekend is warmer, back to the mid 80s.

The days are getting shorter, sunrise is just before 7, and sunset is just after 7; a little over 12 hours of daylight. The equinox is Sunday. The next full moon is Tuesday, and it’s up all night: bright nights if they aren’t clouded over.

SEP16MON

A few hydrogenated oxyde droplets in the air during the run this morning. I wouldn’t quite call it rain, maybe just a heavy mist or fog. Run was fast and smooth and easy. Much cooler temperatures today, and cloudy. Almost cold on the ears.

While out for my run, I spotted a rolling laptop desk. I’m going to use it for a lectern aka mobile dictionary stand. San José provides.

SEP17TUE

I am in the worst commute since before the pandemic. That’s the last 5 plus years and I don’t remember what that previous commute was. I look forward to not remembering this one too. It was just unendingly slow: 86 minutes. I average 11 miles per hour for the first hour. It could be worse, it could always be worse. At least I had a snack before I left.

SEP18WED

Santa Teresa County Park
Photo taken with Apple iPhone 14 Pro Max.

Work has been too much for the past week and a half, but has finally eased up. I haven’t, but it has, so I choose to take advantage of that this morning and go for a hike at the nearby park. It’s quiet and not too warm and just what I need. I should do this more often, maybe check in on the nearest big parks once a month or so. In the evening there is a spectacular sunset because of the weather system passing by far to the north.

Dramatic sunset of San José.

SEP19THU

NMS at night. There are a lot of options for things to do in NMS, and none of them are strongly incentivized. You do them all at your own will, like life. They must be remembered by you as well, there is somewhat less hand holding in this game than there is in others, and I appreciate that. J, my Thursday night gaming partner, is focusing on building his base at the moment, but slowly. I think that after I finish the expedition, which I am the last to do, I will begin working on my pilot hiking loop. It’s a folk programmers way.

SEP20FRI

I have done it, I have gotten my lazy butt out running 3 times this week. I am stretching the definition of running to include the mental health hike on Wednesday. Each run is getting easier, and I will remember that for next week, because next week it will be hotter and I should aim to do my running in the morning.

SEP21SAT

A and I go into central SJ to visit best used bookstore in the area, we have a pretty big pile of books to sell; they buy most of them. We use the proceeds to bring a couple of new to us books back home. We also jaywalk across the street to grab a barely early lunch before heading home. It was a nice time.

SEP22SUN¹

Chores and errands, but you don’t want to read about that. Or, I don’t have anything interesting to say about it at the moment.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

The day it is written. ↑

To Reply: Email me your off label NMS uses.

Week Notes 22

2024-09-15T11:00:00-07:00

A lot of good food this week. And running, a good amount of running. Not to mention that work audibly ratcheted up a click or two.

Punta Gorda, on California's Lost Coast Trail with the tiny Punta Gorda Lighthouse in the distance. We had perfect weather for this trip, which is super rare on the Lost Coast.
Photo taken on 21JUL08THU with Apple iPhone XS Max.

Almanac

Temperatures are cooling down this week. Monday is the hottest day with a high of 86 F, and midweek will be in the upper 70s. Morning temperatures are in the mid to low 50s. Sunrise is in the last quarter hour before 7 o’clock, and sunset is a little over twelve and half hours later in the second quarter of the seventh afternoon hour. The moon is waxing from a crescent toward full, rising in the afternoon and setting later into the night. The nights will be bright with moonshine later in the week.

SEP09MON

I usually save the food updates for the now page. But this tomato risotto, with tomatoes from A’s farm, it is the risotto of the decade. We’re both wrecked from how good it is. I don’t think that recipe in particular has any secret sauce. The secret is the homegrown garden tomatoes. They are the secret to everything.

I’m sad because the picture I took of it doesn’t effectively represent the experience of it, or the taste at all.

SEP10TUE

A breakneck WFH day. If the week were the plot of a novel, today would be the climax. Kinda early in the timeline, but I’m not really the author.

SEP11WED

Running in the AM. I’m feeling like I’m coming down the back side of “running is hard.” Next challenge: changes in the weather.

In terms of the plot metaphor I mentioned yesterday, today is definitely the denouement. WFO. Big presentation. Well, I mean I have just one slide in a big presentation. Most or all of the neck breaking things yesterday are now making sense. I can return to my regularly scheduled programming.

SEP12THU

Finally, a day of going at my own pace.

SEP13FRI

Running at lunch. Definitely getting a handle on it. Only the last few minutes are suffering but that’s because it’s sunny and warm and no shade. Or at least that’s what I am telling myself.

Sometimes I have a shadow that runs with me. Or maybe my shadow also has footsteps; I mean that today I hear what sounds like someone running a couple of steps behind me. Not this time, but other times I’ve even looked over my shoulder to check if someone is there waiting for an all clear to pass on this completely empty and very wide trail. It would be pretty creepy in the dark, but I don’t run at night. And I usually don’t have a shadow either.

What I think is actually happening is that the sound of gravel crunching underfoot is echoing off of nearby things, maybe even just the ground. Under this theory, the sound is a half step back or more. Some quick math should verify or rule out that possibility. Also under this theory a rougher surface for the sound to have more area to bounce off of, or things like trees and curbs, will make the effect more apparent.

SEP14SAT

I’ve been branded. “Those people. The ones who put their mattresses on the roofs of their cars.” Two loud talking cyclists ride by, talking loudly, possibly unaware that everyone can hear them. A and I are loading some old things into, and on top of, our car for short distance transport to the rally point. People, it’s dumpster day. You’re probably the sort that doesn’t put your shopping cart away. I’m not really taking umbrage at being labeled, but I am a little surprised that the words have more impact than I think they ought.

Friends over for dinner. We should do this more often. It turns out that you can clobber the best tomato flavor out of a recipe, if those best tomatoes are crowded too much with other flavors. The result is only excellent, not sublime. Oh well, lesson learned.

SEP15SUN¹

The Costco run this morning is unusually busy. A and I are only a few minutes later than we wanted to be, but the place is already packed with busy shoppers going every which way, and they’re escalating. A number of people are muttering under their breath about it. That’s unusual; I usually don’t see anyone else noticing the mundane mayhem. So maybe it is an out of the ordinary amount of chaos. Something in the air? Full moon is soon, and so is the autumnal equinox; could be anything.

Extra²

In the evening we relax with the screen door open, and A notices an owl hooting. When directed to it, I notice that I can hear it too, and it’s not another distant dog barking, a different animal entirely. Neither of us had ever heard it before; neighbors such as L have heard it often. It’s a few percent magical.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

The day it is written. ↑
This is why I should probably finish writing this on Monday. ↑

To Reply: Email me about your week, I'd love to hear about it.

Week Notes 21

2024-09-08T15:00:00-07:00

A short work week, but it sure felt like five days of work happened anyway.

Sunset colors wash from orange on the horizon through yellow to a tinge of green then pale blue which deepens higher in the sky through to dark purple. There are a few electric pink clouds in the sky, the give away that I don't take pictures while driving. See the note from Saturday to understand why I mention that here.

Almanac

The last cool day of the week is going to be Monday. For the middle part of the week it will be hot, back to the 90s F. It’s sunny all week. Clouds may come back in the morning later in the week, but I kind of doubt it. The weekend is forecast to be cooler again. Sunrise is in the latter half of the six o’clock hour, and sunset is around half past seven. For the nighttime hours, there is a new moon on Monday, and it’s only up during the daylight hours.

SEP02MON

Today is a holiday.

My friend J is in Portland this weekend, and will be making a pass through Ken’s Artisan Bakery. Last night I got inspired by this so I made a plan to get out to Manresa Bread this morning to pick up a couple of pastries and maybe a coffee. It is so worth it, especially because traffic is light and parking is easy and there is hardly any line in the shop.

Campbell is still filled with Campbell people.

In the evening I make another batch of pesto beans (NYT Cooking recipe), and a salad with a fresh vinaigrette. The simple foods are always so, so good. I reheat a baguette from Manresa in the oven to complete the meal.

SEP03TUE

WFO. On the drive home, I pass an accident, thankfully minor looking. I don’t see any active EMTs, just a few scattered groups of distressed peopled on the shoulder. A stricken Prius in the middle lane, shielded behind several large white fire trucks that block all three lanes. It adds 10 minutes to my commute. So much for an easier time during a holiday week. I remain sangfroid about it, the cummute takes what the commute takes.

SEP04WED

At lunchtime I drive up to the central corporate campus to meet CB for lunch. The place is from a surreal future. It gives of the vibes of a separate world, distant again, like the launch pads of the Florida coast. Despite being intimately within the very heart of it, I am miles away. We both remark on how weird it is. Everything is normal and not normal at the same time. Maybe it has become a place where our world and its mirror touch just a little. Maybe next time I will have more time to investigate these vibes.

SEP05THU

I sleep terrible this week. Waking up, and not being able to fall back to sleep. Struggling to fall to sleep to begin with. I know it’s about something at work, even though I am not actively worrying about it during the daytime hours. Being tired and unrested blocks my running plans and my cooking plans. Today I slept well, but other days I did not. During the day I discuss with one of my colleagues something that I think is bothering me and we clear most of it up. I am left with two conclusions: one that I am able to intillectually accept somethings and still resist emotionally accepting them, and two that there is one part that is somehow still my burden alone. Later I realize that also I don’t need to take that last bit so seriously. So what if I have some read of it wrong, we will figure it out. I won’t claim that it’s all resolved, but I feel some relief.

SEP06FRI

Very busy day at work. Had to ask to take a zero with B. I manage to pull together a result but it doesn’t answer all the questions we have. More for Monday.

SEP07SAT

It’s kind of rare to be out driving just at the sunset hour. A and I find ourselves out doing just that. The sunset horizon dims through a whole gradient of hues, golden orange on the horizon to deep blue above. Then a rich pale yellow to navy verging on violet. The ombrés gradually shift to ever dimmer renditions. It’s spectacular for a cloudless sky. I’m lucky that I don’t crash the car. I would see it again and again. There will be another chance most days.

The picture at the top is suggestive of tonight’s sunset, but it’s from almost a month ago. I don’t (usually) take pictures while I am driving.

SEP08SUN

(The day it is written.)

Desk building, sandwich making, laundry, a few minutes of No Man’s Sky, writing this post. Dog walking, taking the dog to the park. Meal planning, grocery shopping, doing the dishes. Reading, writing. Organizing and editing out a few of the things around the house. These are just some of the things I am doing today.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

To Reply: Email me about your week, I'd love to hear about it.

An Imperfect Library of Noticing

2024-09-07T17:01:00-07:00

These are some resources I’ve found helpful for noticing more, and noticing what I’m noticing. These are books¹ that I myself have read and found to be relevant to noticing more. But, it’s not a perfect list. I haven’t surveyed all the possibilities. I haven’t even found a great handle for finding other sources (email me if you have figured it out). So here, I present to you, what I know so far.

So much of noticing is thinking. So much of noticing is attention. Noticing is openness.

I think the biggest leg up for noticing more is knowing a little of the thing that you are intersted in. With a tiny bit of knowledge you can begin, you have eyes (even if those are are one of the other senses) If you know nothing, you don’t even know what to look for at all. There’s very little payoff from all the time spent looking. You’re missing so much of the unknown unknowns. So, once you know there is a niche you want to see more of, just go find the shortest introduction you can. It’ll pay you back a hundred fold.

Alternatively you can just go in totally blind. It’s liberating and freeing and a pure sensate inquiry of yourself and the environment. Very flow. You might find something that no one has noticed before.

Looking, Noticing, Attention

These sources deal directly with the topic at hand.

On Looking by Alexandra Horowitz, 2013
Horowitz’s book does a couple of things that are so far unique. First, she show’s us what she learns from an expert by being an uneducated looker and begins to notice the first things that the expert has taught her. Second, at least for me, is that she provides a small keyring of these toehold introductions in the dozen chapters of the book. I don’t think it was her intention to be a catalog of introductions. If it were, I think that book would be arranged quite differently. There are not many general references here either.
The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker, 2019
A book of exercises and suggestions on this very topic. The one that helped me realize that there is a topic for this idea of looking and noticing and spying. Many references in the back yet to be explored. Rob also has a newsletter.²
How to See by George Nelson, 2003
It’s a picture book of many different themes that this designer is attracted to in the urban scene. There is a small amount of text to give a little more context on the themes.
How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell, 2019
Odell’s book comes from the direction of escaping the attention economy. But it still is aimed directly at noticing your surroundings and the secrets that are there right before us all.

From the Arts

Artists are always making something of the things that they notice, whether inwardly or outwardly. They’re such observers and recognizers, even when they aren’t able to say what it is that they have put their finger on. Of course they have an extensive practice and library of this subject. Lots of tools here for tuning the mind and attention to notice what you are noticing.

How I Make Photographs by Joel Meyerowitz, 2019
Has a good discussion on methods for noticing what you are noticing.
Draw it with your eyes closed edited by Paper Monument, 2012
A collection of exercises from artists classes.
The Photographer’s Playbook edited by Jason Fulford and Gregory Halpern, 2014
Another collection of exercises, for photographers.
Steal Like an Artists by Austin Kleon, 2012
Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland, 1993
Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, 4th ed. by Betty Edwards, 2012
A little more distantly related, but still relevant. It’s about observing.

Writers

Similar to the artists, writers are also great noticers of things. In order to write it, you have to become aware of it first. And you have to attend carefully to what you are resonating with too.

The Art of Description by Mark Doty, 2010
About poetry writing.
Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
About all kinds of personal writing.
The Log from the Sea of Cortez by John Steinbeck, 1951
(I have the 1995 Penguin Classics edition)
An example of both concrete observations as well as the insubstantial cultural type things. Lots of good clear writing here, you can feel the act of noticing that Steinbeck has done.

Mind Skills

These references are indirectly related, but still useful.

How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens, 2017
Mostly just included for the bits about types of attention, collecting raw notes, and the mechanics of making connections.
The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul, 2021
It’s been a while, but if I remember right, the earlier chapters about magpie mind is relavent here.
How to Think like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok, 2020
Lots of tools related to thinking and using your brain that are related to this topic. Well, I thought they were.

If you have some tips on other good sources, books, podcasts, blogs, what have you, I’m all ears. Use the link below.

They’re all books for now, but I intended to include some other things too. ↑
I didn’t link to it, so that keeps the list all books, right? ↑

To Reply: Email me your best references on noticing.

New to me Facts and Ideas in August 2024

2024-09-02T07:00:00-07:00

More space facts than I would have predicted this time.

Week 32

Began on 24AUG05MON .

Idea: thinking hard is not fun? I don’t think I really buy it. Maybe if you aren’t doing it right. Via Damn Interesting.
Idea: Swiss Army knife of lunar utility infrastructure? It’s bigger than you think, and it sounds like fantasy to me. Via Damn Interesting.
Idea: Plant Behavior and Philosophy, also via Damn Interesting. I still want to watch Green Planet, which a friend described to me in a way that strongly resembles this article.
Idea: the assembly index as test for life? Via Damn Interesting. I only loosely scanned the article, and wikipedia, the index is how many different kinds of pieces come out when you break the molecules up by force. Think hitting a pocket watch (we all carry those, right?) with a hammer. You get gears and hands and pieces of glass. That’s a lot of kinds of pieces.
Fact: Google is a monopoly, in search, via Kottke. They will appeal, already reported in NYT.
Fact: Starliner is still at the ISS, via Hacker News, and the crew may be brought back by SpaceX Dragon. It launched in June, and was supposed to be up there for a week or two.

Week 33

Began on 24AUG12MON .

Travel week. I did read some feeds, but maybe between my being out of my usual environment, and it being the middle of August so people are on vacation, I didn’t pick up many new things.

Idea: framing stories by their inner and outer realities.

Week 34

Began on 24AUG19MON .

Fact: there is a spaceport, SaxaVord, on the northernmost inhabited Shetland island. The first launch is planned for this year, so it’s not a proven spaceport. Via Ars Technica.
Hypothesis: The Wow! signal may be explained (also first here). Via Damn Interesting & Ars Technica.
What the fact: Polaris Dawn commercial space mission will do some pretty crazy stuff to investigate the effects of Van Allen belt radiation on humans in space, among other things such as EVA. Via A.
Fact: Second largest diamond found.
Fact: Nasa opts to return Boeing’s Starliner without the crew. See also hacker news discussion. The crew will return early in ‘25 on a SpaceX Dragon capsule.
Hypothesis: Air filtering helps reduce infections, via Hacker News. I thought we knew this already. Why aren’t we mandating air circulation in all public spaces?
Fact: 5000 year old pollution is still around. Well, archaeologists found it anyway.

Week 35

Began on 24AUG26MON .

Fact: the land around Los Alamos is as contaminated as Chernobyl. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: A new glacier is forming in Mt. St. Helens, via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Polaris Dawn is delayed because SpaceX Falcon 9 boosters are grounded after one doesn’t stick the landing.
Evidence: Crows (corvids) are smarter than previously thought, via Hacker News.
Evidence: Neolithic builders had a solid grasp on engineering including the arch principle and bedrock foundations. Via Ancient Beat.

To Reply: Email me a cool fact you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 20

2024-09-01T18:00:00-07:00

You will note that there is not a mention of tomatoes in this week’s edition.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

Almanac

Sunrise is around half past 6 and sunset is around a quarter to 8. Morning is the best time to run with some marine layer clouds, and lows at 60 F or a bit below. Clear skies later in the day, highs are mild low 80s to mid 90s F this week. Evening temperatures are just about perfect in the later hours. New moon ~this~ next week; expect dark nights.

AUG26MON

In the morning I am writing on a personal project. I don’t know where to begin with something I want to say, so I set a timer and just gush words onto the page. When I do this, it is a list I am making. With bullets. I try to follow the advice and don’t filter anything. In the process, I solve one of the problems that has been impeding my progress. It’s an unlooked for reward and I hope to a) remember this success so that I might repeat it with other problems, and b) actually be able to relate it to you soon.

After work I go for a run. It was pretty awful. Just very hot and I am not used to it anymore.

AUG27TUE

Today I am in the office. Traffic never got better, it just took about an hour to get here. My morning is somewhat free, but the afternoon is more packed with meetings. So, I have a little time to make progress on an important project; I am still stymied. At the end of the day I spin around and ask lead a quick question, and he just reflexively punts the problem off to another team. In that interaction I saw two luxuries combined into more than the sum of their parts. I could just ask, low stakes, full context, and they were there and with me on the problem. The transaction costs were utterly minimized. The second luxury was that in this role the responsibilities are defined well enough that we can do that punting, it’s just not something that was an option ever before. It was nice, and the project has moved quite a distance since then too.

Okay, the costs are hidden by the distance of time. I commute an hour each way for the luxury of the interaction. Remembering that might be a good idea, for more than just me. It has a multitude of implications.

AUG28WED

This morning I correct for the temperature problems on Monday and do my running early. It was great, a good run. I still have plenty of getting into shape to do, but this run was much better. As much as I don’t like doing exercise in the morning¹, it was better for the temperature and it was nice to have it done before any other things could sap my will power.

AUG29THU

Caught up with C. She got married (as expected). She quit (unexpected)! I don’t think the two things are connected. I am super excited for her!

AUG30FRI

Friday is chat with B day. We cover a wide range of topics, Puget Sound sailing situation, gardening, cooking, reading, news. One of B’s more intriguing culinary interests is fermenting. He recently made some beet kvass, and it turned out quite alright. Interesting and worth continuing to pursue. And coincidentally aligned with an article that I saw earlier this week about tepache.

The weather has been trending cool this week, so I chose to run in the evening again. The result was somewhat in between the two other runs this week. I’m talking all about how challenging it is to keep my out of mental and physical shape self going for the whole time. This run was easier to do than Monday’s, but by the end I was having to keep myself going by setting short term destinations to keep going to. “Get to that stop sign,” and then “get to that corner,” etc. Still a successful outing. Maybe next week I just try to go in the morning all week.

AUG31SAT

This morning I am reading on the back patio. Or trying to read. It seems like every sentence reminds me of something to look up. Or some thought I had earlier in the week and want to write down now before I lose it again. I read another sentence and it has a word that I am less sure of. Put the book down, grab the dictionary and look it up. A real dictionary. Just fyi, these things are great, and you can get two for twenty bucks used. Real books, real dictionaries. I suggest you try one.

SEP01SUN

(The day it is written.)

A and I are at the Cupertino library. It has been a while since I’ve been here, maybe pre-pandemic. There is a San Jose library branch closer to our house. This library is part of the county system and the county libraries have substantially larger collections. The cookbooks are both sides of an entire aisle, as a calibration tracer. There are many other interesting books on the shelf other than just the one that I am seeking and have specifically confirmed will be here. I take a rather absurd pile of books to a table to sort through, and note several titles that I would like to buy instead, because I plan to read them and make notes / marginalia. It’s a success in many dimensions. I make a note to come back to the county libraries even though they are a longer drive. It’s worth it.

Let’s be honest with each other, I don’t like exercise at any time of the day. But I do like being in approximate shape for hiking and for living in general. ↑

To Reply: Email me about libraries?

Week Notes No. 19

2024-08-25T21:00:00-07:00

Smaller week.

Character / Week Notes Key has the decoder ring for the people mentioned.

AUG19MON

We saw one of our favorite neighborhood dog walking friends this morning. And we had both gotten back from travels, so we spent an extra long walk swapping stories of our experiences. It was fun!

Restarting the running is always hard. It’s been extra hard this time. Felt like I had lead boots on. Only managed about 80% of my goal. The more important thing to recognize is that I got out there and got the ball rolling. That effort will pay dividends later in the week. Between the heat and my lack of running lately, I suffered through.

AUG20TUE

WFO. Quite a few meetings. Actually, an unusual amount of meetings. All afternoon. Or maybe a new normal amount of meetings? It was a rush of context switching and a lot of talking. But, was I effective? Time will tell.

AUG21WED

I caught up with JH¹ today. It has been a few months, and it feels just normal to pick up again. I’m glad to hear that he’s doing well. He’s got a new kid and know that can be a tiring time, but everyone is good. The baby boy is teething.

As luck would have it, I also caught up with CH today too. Another old friend, we hadn’t connected in a few months just because of schedule differences. He had recently come back from Taiwan, and it was cool to hear about his trip.

For dinner we made pesto beans, and baguettes (round 2) that I also made. There is a recipe, but it basically is what it sounds like, made a little more saucy with some broth. The recipe calls for some mild bean, probably cannellini, but we used butter beans. Did you know that butter beans are lima beans? I only learned that recently. Good thing I like lima beans. The pesto stands up well to their robust flavor, and the baguettes were delicious too.

AUG22THU

Tomato season is cresting. There is such a thing as too many tomatoes. Tomato salad. Panzanella. Stewed tomatoes. Tomato sauce. Tomato sandwiches. We can’t keep up. They’re delicious. You want something different. They pile up. We don’t give up.

AUG23FRI

Friday means weekly chat with B. We go over our usual topics: garden, politics, Ukraine, sailing, health, reading, watching. It’s always a refreshing and engaging, deep and ranging, conversation. I’m glad we’ve kept it up, for years now.

AUG24SAT

Ran in to MV together this morning and we were all achatter about the new houses being built. We form an impromptu pool on when they will be finished. Maybe we differ on the definition of “finished,” but I’m quite optimistic about this building crew’s speed.

In the afternoon we drive up to Mt. Madonna, a county park in the mountains where TFam is camping and having a birthday party for their middle child. A couple of observations: these folks know how to glamp! And, for not being that far away, this park feels quite out there. And the drive out, after getting off 101, was intriguingly backroads, I smell exploration possibilities.

AUG25SUN - today

Ahhh, pizza night. I do the stewing of the tomatoes in the morning, my first time doing this. Same day Ken Forkish dough, it’s best in a really hot wood fired oven, but also very good in my kitchen, which is the plan for today. And it doesn’t disappoint: meets expectations. But those expectations are oh so high. That sauce, from our own stewed tomatoes is so so good, the real star of the show.

And A made key lime bars for dessert!

Remember to see the context linked at the top of the post. ↑

To Reply: Email me about something.

Week Notes Key

2024-08-20T09:00:00-07:00

This is after DW’s Walknotes Context page. Expect this note to be regularly updated as I mention knew folks.

Who	Context
A	My wife.
B	A good friend I've known for almost 10 years. He moved away a couple of years ago, but we catch up weekly.
C	A friend I stay in touch with about once a month since the company we worked for folded.
CB	A former colleague of mine, we get lunch about once a month.
CH	Old work friend, catch up every couple of months.
D	Former colleague, now getting in years of lunch together since that company foundered.
J	A Close friend of mine. I've known him since college. We text/chat daily.
JH	Old work friend and sometimes hiking buddy. We have a monthly catch up with B.
L	A neighborhood dog friend that has grown to be more.
M	Our dog. Seventy pounds of hound. Solid goof.
MV	Neighborhood dog people, we usually see the V somewhat more often than the M. Their dog Oaks loves M.
P	Neighborhood dog person that we always chat with.
R	Long time friend since grad school.
SA	A neighborhood dog/person pair we see sometimes. S looves M.
TFam	Family friends my wife and I have known for almost 10 years. They live nearby.
T	My backpacking buddy. We text chat multiple times a week.

To Reply: I like getting emails.

Week Notes No. 18

2024-08-18T22:00:00-07:00

There are two weeks contained in this “week” note. And there are a lot of words.

AUG05MON

A lot of careful thinking required at work today. Interpreting, digging, describing, clarifying, communicating. That sort of thing. It’s tiring.

I made the mistake of also trying to learn some new muscle memory. A friend gave me a split keyboard for my birthday and I got it working yesterday. Had to setup my env, assign the keys and flash the firmware. It turns out that was the easy part (it really wasn’t that difficult). Teaching my hands to do the right things was much harder. Hard enough that I had to postpone my evening run to the next morning. Is this getting old, or did I just not notice before? Alternative hypothesis: some lingering brain effects from Covid a couple of weeks ago.

AUG06TUE

WFO this day, so there was a commute to and from. I’m writing this a couple of weeks later and it’s unremembered at this point. After work there is a National Night Out block party down the street. Some friends of ours (TFam) come by to take it in and we join, but if I am honest, the long day and commute have exhausted me. I wasn’t much conversation or activity. Still, the music was good, even if it hasn’t been my style in quite a while. I have my second It’s It ice cream sandwich of the day. Those are great!

AUG07WED

Booked a car rental for next week now that the satellite launch date is confirmed. We’ll be going to Cape Canaveral to enjoy our first rocket launch. My wife gets the VIP treatment, and I’m super happy to just be there (I like making my own adventure actually quite a lot too). Also keeping an eye on the potential hurricane, as yet unnamed Ernesto, that is forming in the Atlantic. It could be lining up time-wise to be where we are going to be next week. It turns out to stay off the coast and jeapardizes neither our lives nor the launch.

I started the focaccia recipe that I mentioned in the recent Now update. It’s a two day affair.

AUG08THU

With this vacation finally coming together, I had booked a haircut for today. The only available slot was in the evening, which is not really my preferred choice. But, needs must. And my barber texts me to ask if it’s possible to pull it in to the afternoon, which is perfect for me. I much prefer to take a break during the day and think about my problems outside of my usual context. So I roll with it.

The other big deal: ladies and gentlemen, the sandwich of 2024. It’s killer. No, it’s serial killer. I’ll be making this again.

Focaccia Sandwich with melted Pecorino, Prosciutto, and garden fresh tomatoes, Roman Style.

Played NMS with J later in the night. We had a great time and stayed up way too late.

AUG09FRI

It’s the Friday before vacation begins. I have vacation-itis. But also several things to accomplish at work. I get them done and still manage to bag off early. I really should book a long weekend in September and October. Maybe take the Tuesday off after Labor day.

During my weekly catch up with B, who is always inventive and has good ideas, he points out a couple of things. One, that with the amount of bread that I bake, I could easily justify the purchase of any bread making implement. And two, a heated seed starting mat could easily double as a proofing heater at a much lower cost even if I had to also get a Variac¹. We swap garden stories, even though most of mine are vicariously through A. Furthermore, his suggestions of reminding A to start winter seedlings now (or soon) is super helpful. And his other offhand remark about the pickling peppers or other veg has resonated with our overwhelming tomato problem! Wait, can you pickle tomatoes??

A and I both decide we’d rather play NMS than watch the Olympics tonight.

AUG10SAT

Lazy day, a mix of Olympics watching, NMS playing, low-key packing, etc.

AUG11SUN

Packing for real. Okay that sounds way more serious than it is. After a few rounds of taking packing too seriously, I mostly stick to the “if I really need it, I can buy it” method. I do meticulously sort out my audio recording and photography gear. Glad my new roll on luggage arrived in time on Friday!

The Second Week

Travel week. Heading to the Space Coast to watch Falcon 9 launch Worldview Legion 3 & 4. And take in Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex.

AUG12MON

Time to fly.

Well, after a carefully timed run down to our dog trainer to watch M for the week, and back up. Then get a Lyft to the airport and get through security. It goes too smoothly and Southwest delays the flight by 30 minutes. We’re too early. We’re there so early that we have time to order coffee and drink it before boarding starts.

Our first stop was Midway in Chicago. On landing I noticed that there are houses really quite close to the airport. I didn’t get a picture, you’ll have to be satisfied with a Google Maps Satellite view. At least they built a blast wall around it. Must be an “interesting” place to live, outside that wall. I would be interested to make some pictures out there sometime. The scenes would probably be unlovely, unremarkable, and odd. Just my type.

Midway was a reasonable airport to transit though. No complaints from me. We continue onward to Orlando.

Clouds from above, somewhere between Chicago and Orlando.

Now the one remarkable thing about this flight was how an otherwise normally speaking flight attendant could turn into an inebriated motormouth for just the safety dance part of the flight. I’ll try to describe this particular verbal affect: all the words were run together, and all emphasis was minimized, as were most syllables or hard sounds. Basically any part of speaking the words that took much effort or motion from the resting pose of the mouth was highly attenuated. And yet, it was still mostly understandable, but just barely. It gave the impression of having been done a million times and all the extra parts were worn off. It also suggested that they couldn’t be bothered to try any harder or care. I’m not at all sure she was aware she was saying it this way. I’ve never heard anything quite like it. But once some other announcement was needed, she sounded totally normal. We made it to Orlando without incident.

Other than the two tolls we paid in cash, totalling 3 whole dollars, and the one toll booth attendant that was very much enjoying some comedy show yet was still very cheerful for us, it was an easy drive. Well, it was very dark out, and unfamiliar, so that made it a little more harrowing.

It was a long day but relatively uneventful. Only sorry I missed dinner.

AUG13TUE

KSC day. In the morning we met up with David, one of A’s colleagues, who was also here for the launch. Breakfast outside was a mistake, for me anyway. I had sat in a window reflection, so I got the sun from both directions. It was probably already in the mid-80s and very humid.

The KSC visitor’s complex is both bigger and smaller than it appears. I’ll just give a few vignettes.

The Saturn V rocket is bigger than it looks, and would give a more imposing impression if it was upright. But then you wouldn’t be able to see it. I’ll take seeing it. Seeing several actual Apollo artifacts that had been to the moon or were actual moon rocks was for me much more impactful in memory than in person. Also, I can appreciate how someone might look at some of those things and just call BS, believe it’s a hoax and move on. But we did go there.

Seeing the Atlantis shuttle is indeed quite moving. It’s really impressive. It does recall the sister tragedies, but also the spirit of exploration. Space is a hard thing. I hope we have learned the necessary lessons to continue as safely as possible. Maybe some² have not.

They have a lot of gift shops, including the world’s largest.

AUG14WED

We joined up with another of A’s colleagues at the end of the day yesterday. So, we again journeyed the short way to the KSC visitor’s complex. I didn’t mind at all getting to see some of the same things again. There is a lot to take in, and having second day to look again is well worth it. If you can’t do that, at least take some notes in case you get to go back again some other time.³

In the evening A and her colleagues had some events to attend to for the launch, so I was free. But I also had a headache, probably from a little too much sun. I texted with T While I waited to see if the Excedrin would help or not. Neither of us had high expectations for this part of the country, but we both appreciated that lowering your expectations can lead to being pleasantly surprised. With my head starting to feel better, I headed out into that warm blanket that is the eastern Florida coast after a thunderstorm.

It wasn’t my most productive evening of wandering around, but I did find a few interesting things in Titusville. Some photographed better than others. I walked around the most downtown part, around Main street, for an hour and a half trying to find the energy, the interesting threads through town. It was pretty weak, and dispersed. There were a few murals around, and some old buildings. Surprisingly little electrical conduit or external plumbing; the utility poles were pretty good (but I struggled with the lighting); there were train tracks. I found a few unremarkable and odd places. Most of the area was not unlovely enough to be very admired, nor so put together that it approached artistry. I think the kids these days would call it “mid.” Still, I did made some pictures. Maybe I’ll share a few someday, I’d like to print a few of them first.

Next time I would grab a paper visitors map of the area, or at least looked for a pdf of one online. I’m sure I could have found this in the hotel. I’ve kind of fallen into the trap of thinking that online resources are the only ones. They are not, and things like Google Maps are not designed for this purpose: exploring an area you aren’t familiar with. They don’t give a good high level overview. Instead they are both too scant at a high level, not even being good at identifying towns or major geographic areas, and too dense at a low level since they don’t have any real prioritization lens either. If I don’t know what is there, how can I search for it?

I had dinner solo at restaurant that was having Neapolitan pizza night, and they just happened to put out a fresh one to go to a table right as I walked in. It was easy to convince me. I’m happy with my choice. I had toasted coconut and ube ice cream after, at the place up the block.

A got back late and then went back out because of some delay and then got back even later. It was totally worth it.

AUG15THU

Launch day. No hurricane, Ernesto stays far off the coast. No other schedule shifts either.

After A and here cadre clear out on their bus, I grab a cup of coffee from the hotel bistro. There’s no line after they all left, see. I zip out to Playalinda beach, on the Canaveral National Seashore to find my own view of the launch. This is the closest I can get, and my view of the launch pad is unfortunately obstructed. Also, it’s already impressively hot and expectedly very humid. It’s only about 8:30 when I exit the air conditioned environs of my rental.

The beach is not particularly crowded. I think I would prefer to be here in the fall or winter, when the climate is a little more polite about not making you perspire. So, I make my way down the beach to the cones, which are the limit of approach, about 6.5 miles (I think) from the launch pad. The view is surreal, the launch complexes are truly megastructures, like something from the future, something we mere mortals aren’t to approach or even really understand; distant. They recede down the coast into the hazy humid atmosphere, partially hidden behind the shore dune. Borrowing something that I read earlier just this day (that I’m writing this), it gave a strong “Tarkovsky vibe.”

Canaveral National Seashore, Florida

The 10 minutes before launch take at least 20. I don’t have a good enough cell signal to stream the countdown, but one of the handful of other people nearby does. I can’t really hear it over the surf, only 20-30 feet to my left. I text a little intermittently with A as my weak cell signal allows. It’s a wildlife refuge and a national park, and a beach too. No place for LTE, or rockets for that matter. Launch goes off exactly on schedule, and the Falcon 9 rises above the dune slowly at first but every instant faster and faster. The 8 minutes for the booster to land go by in about 2 minutes. The dang thing is basically impossible to see, but a neighbor spots it very very high, and at least for a second or two I see it too. It’s not until the booster is almost back that I can track it. It’s true what I heard: rockets shouldn’t go that way. Cool as heck. Worth it.

Viewing help
- I mostly used Ben Cooper, but he doesn’t mention the NPS fee for getting to Playalinda.
- Scriptunas is similar, I used their camera settings.
- Later I found Supercluster which has a great map.
They’re working great.
More details
Livestreams: Spaceflight Now, The Launch Pad

More could be said but to sum up; we took it easy the rest of the day.

AUG16FRI

Return trip. Similarly smooth sailing.

I noticed the clouds are so regularly gridded that it almost looks unnatural.

The order taker at the chicken place where I get lunch in the Nashville airport has another altogether different verbal affect. Everything is a statement. “What you want.” “Sides.” “Dipping sauce.” She is an order ticket in human form, fill in the blanks. But she is paying attention. “What’s your name.” Justin. “Joseph.(?)” That’s my father’s name. Maybe a hint of a smile, maybe I imagined it. Everyone at that place was above average interesting. I would order there again just for the people.

Two other noticings: the river meanders and all the water features of the south are quite beautiful from the air, and as usual the mountains and canyons of the southwest are similarly gorgeous. They both present similar problems, if you are trying to travel across these landscapes. I have lots of photos from the air of the southwest, but I don’t fly out to the southeast all that often, so I don’t have many of those. Next time.

AUG17SAT

Out early to get M back, a day later than expected but it was so kind of our trainer to offer. Much of the rest of the day is spent either extracting my notes from The log from the Sea of Cortez or just taking it easy. But I also made baguettes. And sandwiches with those baguettes. They’re great, but I see some things I can improve. They would be perfect for banh mis. Not bad for my first try.

AUG18SUN (today)

We found a lost dog?! After seeing him scamper by alone, we simply followed his lightly bloody paw prints to find him. One of our usual neighborhood dog people, SA, helped catch him, and knew the number to call to find out what to do. Poor little guy had been running all morning and his paws were raw and bleeding a little. But he was friendly enough, or maybe just exhausted. We took him to the right vet and they checked for a chip, none found. Left him there, the city pound would come get him in a couple of hours. A posted it on Nextdoor (that app is trash, I gotta say), and one of the respondents suggested Pawboost. Not sure what did it, but the owner found one of the posts and retrieved their pup from the vet before the pound got there. Happy endings all.

Many more tomatoes were harvested from the garden. A week’s worth. L was supposed to pick some while we away, in exchange for watering. Oh well. However. Folks: the tomato salad of 2024. Cherry tomatoes, just washed and not even cut. Good extra virgin olive oil. Balsamic glaze. Salt. That’s it. OMG.

Character Key

Note: I plan to move this to its own page soon. Notenote: I added Week Notes Key with this information, and it will get updated.

A: my wife.
B: a good friend I’ve known for almost 10 years. He moved away a couple of years ago, but we catch up weekly.
C: a friend I stay in touch with about once a month since the company we worked for folded.
J: close friend of mine, I’ve known him since college. We text chat daily.
L: a neighborhood dog friend that has grown to be more.
M: our dog. Seventy pounds of hound. Solid goof.
SA: neighborhood dog/person pair we see sometimes. S looves M.
TFam: family friends my wife and I have known for almost 10 years. They live nearby.
T: my backpacking buddy. We text chat multiple times a week.

Not really a Variac, which would be much too expensive. But the right word I am thinking of escapes me at the moment. ↑
Boeing. ↑
This is something that Steinbeck mentions in The log from the Sea of Cortez in the very beginning. You will notice that I am not leaving very many notes here. I should at least make some private notes! ↑

To Reply: Email me about space coast.

Week Notes No. 17

2024-08-05T21:00:00-07:00

Recapping the week. A day late.

How does one bang this out in 30 minutes or less? These have been taking me a couple of hours to write. My current working theory is that it’s a form thing. Once I settle on a

Monday JUL29

Went to a friend’s house (TFam) to hang out, get a car wash, and watch their kids do an egg drop. Three of the contraptions kept their eggs whole despite being tossed off the garage roof!¹ My wife gave the kids a ride in our convertible Beetle after. Felt like old timey fun, just driving around the block with a different set of kids each time!

Tuesday JUL30

A quite busy day of meetings at work (from home), maybe my fullest schedule yet. I’ll just leave a question that I was thinking about in the middle of the week. I think the price of a thing, the dollar amount, is intended to encapsulate the whole cost of that thing. But how can it? How much does it really cover? There are external things, like environment costs. There are personal things, like the time you’ll spend or the space it occupies. It seems to me that just being able to have these questions is a luxury good here. Anyway, how to think about costs. That’s the question.

Wednesday JUL31

I commuted into the office today, and found that I was unexpectedly anxious as I got closer. There is no explanation for it, the big meeting had been the day before and it had gone just fine. The drive was also fine, no near misses or very unusual objects in the road² or particularly pesky fellow commuters. The only thing that I can figure is that it’s because of my long absence from being there in person. The last time I found myself bodily in the office was in the second week of June. That’s a long period of time away from there. Sort of like asymptotic freedom, as I became very near to the building any anxiety I felt ebbed away to such a degree that I barely remembered it at all throughout the day.

Thursday AUG01

Are you watching the Olympics? I’ve been sampling many different sports, definitely preferring to watch them in real time (well, tape delay), uncut, long play format. I’ve particularly enjoyed Table Tennis and Badminton. I surprised myself with how many opinions I had about surfing on the first day, given that I know almost nothing about it and have only incidentally seen a couple of other competitions in the past. At least in this venue, and this setting, and these waves, it’s a very relaxing sport to watch.

Friday AUG02

Caught up with a couple of friends today, C and B. I’m so happy that I make time to do this and that they do too. In one of the conversations we noted how much things have changed just in the last 25 years, and how improbable it is that we have adapted or even understand the first or second order effects of very many of those changes at all. I should make a list, even if it would seem a very obvious one.

Saturday AUG03

Tomato season is upon us. I started a loaf of bread last night and baked it this morning. It had a singular purpose: tomato sandwiches. These tomatoes are the freshest, home grown, heirloom tomatoes. My wife grew them in her community garden plot (I helped a little). These sandwiches are the most pure form: tomato, bread, mayonnaise, salt, pepper. I know, it’s sounds plain, but if you like tomatoes, this is probably the place to start.

Tomato Sandwich, purest form.

Sunday AUG04

Late start to the day. Chatted with a couple of neighbors while out walking the dog. Went to Costco much later than is our preference, and the melee was more than I wanted at first. But checking out was fine, and there was a pocket of calm in the potted plants section. I’m kind of unsure what the right attitude is to have about that place. On the one hand, a household of two is not the right size for shopping there. On the other hand, there are only a few things we buy there, but they’re good and dependable. We find good fruit there, reliably if we pay attention. Good watermelons, in season. Pre-cut veg is good. Occasionally some durable goods too. But like 90%+ of the stuff there, it’s waay too much quantity, or we just don’t need it. Shrug. For now.

A parent did the tossing. ↑
I kid you not, the other day I saw a 3 pound sledgehammer right on one of the middle lane lines. I only noticed it because we were all driving quite slowly at the time. It was practically invisible. That will ruin your day. ↑

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New to me Facts and Ideas in July 2024

2024-08-05T08:00:00-07:00

It wasn’t obvious that this month was going to have very many facts, but plenty turned up in the end.

Week 27

Began on 24JUL01MON .

Fact: Hurricane Beryl reaches Category 5 on July 1

Week 28

Began on 24JUL08MON .

The evacuation zone for SpaceX’s Starship has a 3 mile radius whenever the rocket is fueled in Texas. There is a larger variant planned for use in Florida, and presumably the zone would be even larger.
Seeking: has the reliability of polling declined since we mostly transitioned off landlines?
Observation: The bee situation is more complicated than I expected. They’re factory farmed to support agriculture but also there are gangs that steel them? Also: it’s not only about the bees. Via O’Reilly Next:Economy¹.
Fact: California power grid continues to dramatically shift off of natural gas to batteries. Transitively via Hacker News.

Week 29

Began on 24JUL15MON .

Obs: Tech companies (specifically MSFT and GOOG) used a lot of electricity last year, via Hacker News.
Fact: Lab meat approved for pet food in the UK. Via Damn Interesting.
Obs: Retail is more about those credit cards than retail, via Marginal Revolution. Like airlines. This is old news, I guess.
Obs: British botanist’s seed bank is useful for crop diversity, via Damn Interesting. The seeds offer “a ‘snapshot’ of cultivated wheat before the dawn of systematic plant breeding.”
Obs: Immunotherapy advances for cancer treatments, via Kottke.

Week 30

Began on 24JUL22MON .

Fact: Solar production up 25% in the US. It now accounts for 7%.
Fact: Hawaii has a “grid scale” wave power device, 1.25 MW. Via Damn Interesting.
Speculative: Police drones are coming, or maybe are already here. Via Damn Interesting.
Counter-point: that fact during week 11 about any amount of alcohol is a bad amount of alcohol, it was probably very cherry-picked. Via Hacker News Comment

Week 31

Began on 24JUL29MON .

Obs: there are several brands of smart glasses out there that look pretty normal. Maybe this is happening, 10+ years after Google Glass.
Fact: NASA has a spacesuit problem. News to me. Via Things Magazine.
Obs: [Random² bird critical for human life](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c28e2pvzn3lo), via Kottke.
Fact: Paper cuts are solved. Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Fast charging, high range EV battery tech is here (if you can afford it). Via Damn Interesting.
Idea: The proto Indo-Euro language had a [deific³ “gender” form](https://interconnected.org/home/2024/08/02/filtered). Like passive/static fire, and the active/enspirited inflamed. It was used all over the language.
Idea: Bureaucracy is so ubiquitous that it has become invisible. If that’s true then perhaps another ecosystem should emerge on top of it. Probably it always has been.

I couldn’t find a way to link to the newsletter directly on O’Reilly’s site. Here’s some other site. ↑
I, ahem, editorialized in the ‘random’ aspect. ↑
I just made up the word “deific”, I think. See the last point (4.) in the linked post. ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 16

2024-07-28T17:00:00-07:00

I’m trying a different format this time: chronological order.

Since the last weeknotes, which was 4 weeks ago, the two main events that happened are i. traveling to NY for my wife’s grandmother’s funeral, and ii. catching covid. Covid has been no joke and has taken longer to recover from than I expected, but that’s just lack of experience. I’m basically declaring bankruptcy for that period and going to cover just the last week. I think it will be enough.

Monday

Still getting over Covid and I estimate my recovery at 90%. It’s the “still a little more fatigues than I ought to be” level. With a side of congestion and an occasional cough or two. It’s not even 100% gone by today, seven days later.

Tuesday

I have declared my second bankruptcy and given up on finishing The Voyage of the Beagle. I also have little interest in finishing off Blindsight, a book that I read last year and picked up to read on the flights to and from NY at the beginning of the month. It served me quite well for that, and I think I read about half of it. But once I began to mentally re-emerge from my covid stupor, neither of those books seemed all that interesting. I had already read one of them, so I knew where it went and hadn’t made enough new discoveries in the text to really motivate finishing the rest of it now that I wasn’t trapped on an airplane with little else to do. And Beagle, well I just remember that it was indeed interesting, but the pacing of it seems like an effort, a slog, to pass between the genuinely compelling bits. I may yet come back to it.

In the mean time, I sampled the first few pages of a small handful of books and selected the book that I had originally intended to partner with Darwin’s record: The Log from the Sea of Cortez by Steinbeck. I’ve never read any Steinbeck before, and am now about halfway through the text. I’m really enjoying it so far, and find the narrative structure to be quite inspiring in a couple of ways. My approach to backpacking trips has always had a little flavor of expedition to it, but I could make it more intentional. Do some more homework before hand, and have a couple of goals beyond just walking some distance and enjoying the scenery. On the other hand, I don’t want it to become another project or grind. So, you know: balance. The second way I am inspired by the text is the particular form of it. Basically, Steinbeck and Ricketts are describing the events of their expedition, and at every opportunity the text makes like detours and sidetracks to explore ideas, thoughts, and questions that tangentially relate or were inspired by some recent transaction or event in their collecting. And whenever that is satisfied, the text returns to the narrative log of their expedition for a paragraph or two before inevitably deviating again into some observation or other that isn’t about biology or navigation or oceanography. Maybe I can use this structure for my own writing, even starting from the events of my own backpacking expeditions of the last few years? Who knows, it could be fun!

Wednesday

It’s my birthday. Several friends and family call or text or otherwise wish me a happy day, which is very nice and very appreciated. Neither my wife nor I are particularly feeling 100% and opt to delay and more substantial celebrations to this weekend. Covid is a major bummer!

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting a little older, or everyone is on vacation this summer, or maybe even the AI apocalypse is even nearer than I realized, but it sure has been seeming like very little genuinely interesting content is being found on the internet these days. I noticed it sometime in June; a lot of articles or tidbits seemed forced, or slow news day, or there was just less to pick from, they had too much hustle and not enough genuine interest. Is it me? Is it content makers? Is it the slop getting in the way? People trying too hard, or not hard enough? Anyway, my solution has been to try to get offline more, pay attention to what’s physically around me. I’d like to explore this more, but it seems so slippery, and so difficult to assign to one area. Maybe everyone is just exhausted from everything, Ukraine, Gaza, election cycle, the economy, whatever. Maybe it’s just me that’s exhausted.

Thursday

Finally, the new patch for No Man’s Sky lands on Xbox (well, it landed on Wednesday). I haven’t made much time to play games in the last few years. Probably it was kicked off by my frozen shoulder injury last year: playing games hurt. But it’s been a trend for a while. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy them, and often my approach isn’t all that different from Any Austin’s, which is to say I’m always asking about the different choices that are made for the game and what their consequences are. I don’t really think I ever get far enough into them though to really find the deepest nuggets. Still, my wife often asks “are you him??” when we watch one of his yt videos. It takes more time than I care to spend to play and replay the games.

Anyway, my point was that a friend and I have started playing online one night a week for the last few months and we were excited to play something different than Fortnite. Our options are pretty limited since we don’t both have the same system, but NMS is one of the choices. I’ve been playing it for years, off and on. My last save was sometime last year, so somewhat infrequent. It’s a new game for him. Hilariously, as soon as we decided to give it a go, a new patch dropped but because of certification lag we now couldn’t play together until both systems got synced up. It finally happened on Wednesday and we played on Thursday. I’m sure I’ll have more to say about this topic.

Friday

I’m not really sure how to begin this one. We have quite the little community going at our local unofficial dog park. One of the occasional canine members passed suddenly last week from a natural illness that had been undetected. Her owner came to share the news, and it was a sad and tearful moment as we were shocked and saddened. She was a good dog and will be missed. The community is doing the right things around the owner, and I’m glad for it. I hope we can continue to nurture this small group and support each other.

I watched most of the Olympics opening ceremony, and while I don’t have a strong opinion about it, I am generally positive about it and enjoyed the spectacle. I don’t generally enjoy sports announcers. I know that the opening ceremony isn’t a sport, but it does include those same professional talkers that I don’t find add much. So I muted most of it, except for a few moments that were obviously musical. Maybe that contributed to the puzzling spectacle of it all, which I found just seemed to go on and on, in the rain, with one new surprising vignette after another. Given all the computer generated X¹ that’s been happening in the last year or so, I wasn’t surprised to see it make a showing, but I kind of wish for a different choice. Shrug.

Saturday

Saturday garden day. It was volunteer clean up day at the community garden where my wife has a plot. The work was pretty easy basic stuff. Trim trees, clean up the trimmings and haul them to the greens pile for composting. Collect any non-compostable trash to the dumpster. All told about an hour of effort and a substantial improvement in the look of the place.

In the afternoon we drove over the Los Gatos and our favorite bakery in the area for something suitably birthday cake like. To our surprise there wasn’t much left in the case, it was decimated. Nonetheless there were a few quite dwindling delicious delicacies left by the time our number was called, even though some things we had our eyes on got scooped up right before us. It didn’t matter, all things at this bakery are properly delicious.

We also made a stop at the well known ice cream shop, our first time. It was very good, but some things I make better- my vanilla ice cream is better than their double vanilla. Lesson: get the flavors that are too much trouble to make at home, or are new to me and surprising. Ah well, next time. My wife’s vegan scoop was delicious and original. “Best non-dairy ice cream” she’s ever had.

Sunday

So I ate all of one of those slices of cake last night. It’s not a huge piece or anything, but I didn’t need it, and I basically regretted it all night. Possibly the other items in the non-sense meal I made up contributed to the minor stomachache I was dealing with. I have to be wiser and more diligent about what I eat, even though I already generally eat pretty well. Just when I slip up, or indulge, or whatever, I mind the unpleasant after effects more than I used to.

fill in the blank. ↑

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New to me Facts and Ideas in June 2024

2024-07-02T07:00:00-07:00

It’s the end of spring and the beginning of summer, so things are getting hot. Except jalapeño peppers, those are not.

Week 23

Began on 24JUN03MON . Some of these are from last week but I was away.

Observation: Go to bed early, even if you get up late. Via News Minimalist.
Obs: JWST observed oldest galaxy and it is not what is expected based on current models. This is exciting.
Fact: Connecticut will require oil companies to pay for climate damages via Kottke. I confess that I do not know how this is supposed to work.
Idea: Nice buildings are an extravagance, and who has the money to waste on that when you could be making more money with that money.
Idea: Look for better business books (I extend this to mean those self-help type books that describe how some aspect of the world works) in other sections, such as music or sports. Basically superfan accounts their topic are likely to be much more packed with useful and interesting information than MBA writing is. Via Marginal Revolution.
Obs: It was very hot in Delhi last week, 50C/123F. Via Kottke
Obs: Jalapeño peppers are getting less spicy. Still seem to be variably spicy to me. Via Damn Interesting.
Obs: Fingerprint microbiomes could be used to identify who wore or touched things. Via Damn Interesting.
Obs: Younger Dryas may have been caused by a comet strike. Via Ancient Beat

Week 24

Began on 24JUN10MON .

Obs: Elephants have names and use them and respond to them. Via Kottke and HackerNews.
Idea: Mushroom Leather Via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Paramilitary Banana via HackerNews. This is recent, 20 years ago.
Fact: AI/ML is getting better at MRI based prostate cancer diagnosis, via News Minimalist.
Obs: Those food labels like “may contain X” are misleading.

Week 25

Began on 24JUN17MON .

Idea: They made Pineapple Leather, via Damn Interesting. See last week’s other leather options.
Hyp: People are more often getting sick?, via Kottke.
Obs: Banks are aware that climate change is real, via Damn Interesting.
Hyp: Jupiter’s current Great Red Spot is from the 1800s, via Damn Interesting.
Idea: Social knowledge began accumulating 600k years ago.
Fact: Monitoring ocean garbage, from space, via Hacker News.
Idea: Limitless exploration of the sea via Damn Interesting.
Fact: Noam Chomsky is not dead, via Garbage Day.
Hyp: No, Easter Island didn’t have a population collapse.
Fact, tentative: Non-rare-earth metals magnets, with other benefits too, via News Minimalist.
Fact: Exponential growth for solar power continues, via Damn Interesting.
Idea: Benefits of blinking, via Damn Interesting.

Week 26

Began on 24JUN24MON .

Hyp: Humans started wearing clothes 87k-170k years ago. And became hairless 3-4 million years ago. Via Damn Interesting.
Hyp: The Northeast US is predicted to receive up to 50% more precipitation due to climate change. At Kottke.
Obs: More supply chain woes: ocean shipping traffic issues at Red Sea (Suez Canal) and the Panama Canal are causing longer times and higher prices. Via Hacker News.
Fact: The Romans used liquid iron to patch potholes on the busiest streets via Damn Interesting.
Current Events: Russian sabotage campaign in France, via Damn Interesting.

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 15

2024-06-30T19:45:00-07:00

It was a pretty low activity week, since I was focused on family support.

I1. Field Recording:

Uploaded another video to YT, Death Valley, Night 3, part 1. The second part is coming soon. I am still working out the kinks of my post-processing, since it’s not quite what I had originally been aiming for. I may still re-upload these videos/audio files. I’ll see.

I3. Photography:

Honestly a super low activity week. Which doesn’t surprise me, given other family events that were going on. I think it’s fine.

I5. Plotting:

Nothing.

I6. Thinking

Writing

Reading and Notes

Some interesting ideas in Syntopicon:Dialectic. I also read some for of Beagle.

Seasons and Days

Lining up around parasympathetic nervous system relaxation. And better eating.

I7. Backpacking:

Trying out another method of trip planning with the club. Maybe this one sticks.

I8. Cooking:

Cooking some things from the garden this week. Yellow squash, and Palermo zucchini.

I9. House Projects:

Just keeping the garden watered and weeded, and some of the houseplants.

Other Interests

Note that I2. Drawing, I4. Synthesizers, I11. Family Tree, and I12. Astrophotography are all deferred to later times. I identified several other interests beyond I12 that were not yet numbered and are also deferred to later. I10. Travel is not really an ongoing concern to so only added in as needed.

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

Bi-Week Notes No. 14

2024-06-23T17:30:00-07:00

So things are both more and less this week. Obviously it’s a week late, or contains two weeks, however you want to think about it. More inside.

My wife is away, family things to tend to. This affords more time for my own things, and some care taking things she usually tends to (i.e. garden). Maybe it’ll get me hooked, idk. But her concerns are my concerns, so it’s been an emotionally taxing week. The coming week isn’t looking to be any better.

I1. Field Recording:

Two advances this week. Ok, really there were three.

First, I made a suburban recording up on the hill in front of my house. Over 25 hours of raw recording, with the intent to record the wind in the trees during the afternoon blow through¹. Hopefully I’ll get a few hours of the wind, after trimming the construction workers, the yard workers, and the folks walking by on the path having conversations. We’ll see.

Second, uploading the long overnight recording of night 2 in Death Valley, at Coyote Canyon, is imminent. There have been lots of annoying hangups on my post processing that I am still ironing out. I would really like a script for it, but that seems to be easier said than done.

Which brings me to the third half of progress here: made some advancements in understanding ffmpeg, and am trying to just remember my manual process for doing this. It will get easier with practice, but I would rather not rely on my memory or incomplete notes. I am going after all of that surface area, but also just trying to get caught up on my back catalog of recordings. I think I have over half a dozen long files to get out there. Can’t improve the inputs if I don’t ever get to the outputs.

I3. Photography:

I don’t remember how I got to doing it, but I went through my recent photos over the last 6 months and looked for the themes. I avoided labels of what your “supposed” to make pictures of, because if I’m honest, I doubt I really have a solid understanding of what all that means. They’re just words, and maybe some collections of pictures to go with them, and it’s left up to the viewer to decide what it really means. Maybe there was a side of ego in there too. I’m trying to put all that away and look at what I am interested in, what gets me excited in my own photos. Not some art that I’ve seen that I want to mimic. I watched at YT of someone’s Antarctica trip, and it was very very cool² and exciting etc etc. And no doubt I would have a good time if I ever get the chance to do something like that. But there aren’t any pictures of Antarctica in my archives. So I went looking for what was in there that tickles my own resonators, even it’s just the potential of the photo and I am annoyed at some aspect of the reality of it. Why did I take that photo, something got me excited about it.

I found 25 themes in there. And I started to organize photos with tags and folders and stuff. It’s a lot of admin work. I’m taking it easy on that, no need to burn out. There’s no rush. I do wish that the iOS tools were easier to work with. I’m trying to figure out how much LightRoom, how much Photos to deal with to try and get it all straight. As the different bodies came together and confirmed the different themes, I also tried looking for some work by others that is similar. That’s probably going to be difficult. I might have to ask for help.

I also printed a couple of photos. One is framed, it’s for the kitchen. It’s a loaf of bread that I baked a few months ago. The others are hanging on the wall, temporarily, unframed, to get a feel for them. One has already been rejected, I see what I did that I didn’t like, and hopefully I’ll remember to look for that when I try to make another similar photo. And not just of that particular subject either.

I5. Plotting:

I mostly used the tools that I added last time. Iterated a little on the two projects. Did a single work from my pre-plotter days on the plotter. Mostly still trying to formulate the correct next move.

I6. Thinking

Writing

Several good “odd an unusual thoughts” collected. Not sure what to do with those yet. Sort of echoes my efforts in the photo themes department that I was mentioning above.

Reading and Notes

Made more progress on Darwin, speaking of which I’ll read some more of that tonight. I also read a few random sections of the a book on Complexity. I’m trying to decide if I should keep it or not. It might not be written for me.

Seasons and Days

It’s a fallow month. Exploring some other ideas, playing with them a little. Nothing committed though. This is fine.

I8. Cooking:

Wins this week: pasta con squash.

Plans: a loaf of bread for egg and cheese sandwiches.

I9. House Projects:

Tending the garden. Literal garden.

Other Interests

If anyone knows the proper meteorological term for that afternoon wind surge that we get in the Bay area, please drop me a line. ↑
All puns are intentional. ↑

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

Week Notes No. 13

2024-06-09T19:00:00-07:00

So many pictures this week, among other things.

I1. Field Recording:

Recording collected in Gila Wilderness, NM. It’s from very near the Middle Fork of the Gila River. I think if our camp had been situated somewhere else, I would have collected something potentially more interesting. But, it is what it is, and it’s still interesting to me. At least you can’t hear us talking late into the night.

Copied the above files to laptop, and was reminded of the limitations of the pybub library. Namely that it can’t export really long audio files because of the maximum numeric value in python is too low. This doesn’t sound right to me, so maybe I’m doing something else wrong. If true, it’s an opportunity to improve the world, I think. But, but, the issue is in the WAV specification, and here is the issue in pybub repository.

GOAL: I would like to finish one recording this month (June), and share it.

I3. Photography:

Some more details on all those photos I mentioned in the last update.

A backpacking trip is an opportunity for several kinds of photography. There is the airplane, if there is any driving to the trail, there is the main event, and after party (whatever that is) and then the return. For this trip, SJC → BUR → ABQ, and then a 6 hour drive. Three days of backpacking, a day in Silver City, and the return trip: ABQ → LAS → SJC. The main thing was that I had really learned to push the kit lens I take backpacking a lot further. See below. It also means that there are a lot of photos to edit (clean up).

While in Silver City, after dinner, my friend and I did a walkabout and take photos. Just followed the energy around town taking pictures of whatever was interesting. There was a lot of interesting stuff! Met two interesting characters. I regretted not taking a picture of the first one, so I was sure to get a picture of the second.

Fallugia Paradoxa

I5. Plotting / generative art:

I picked my way through one of the problems I had and solved it over a couple of days during the week. That sort of freed up the space to solve several other minor annoyances over the weekend while integrating the solution into my current project. And, before I bashed my head against the next problem for several hours I stopped that and instead decided to be more intentional about it. It means stepping back and clearly identifying what the possible next steps are and what tools and pieces of informations I need to get a better understanding and possibly solve the problem are. In the past I would simply try guessing and checking and guessing and checking ad nauseum until I was sick of it. It pays to be more intentional, and careful.

This week I added: a saturating probability field based on parabolas with sane defaults, arrows with useful defaults for debugging, library documenations, improved preview gallery tools. Sane defaults are a friction reduction habit that I’m trying to institute that makes the old code more easily accessible to future me.

I6. Thinking

Writing

Reading and Notes

Some short notes on Darwin’s writing.

Seasons and Days

The last 30 day period ended while I was on the trail, so if choosing to be without internet for a few days counts as cutting down screen time, it ended on a very positive note.

I haven’t settled on the next one and it’s already 30% over. Maybe it means I should take a rest period and pick it up in July.

I7. Backpacking:

Clean up and storage of gear from last time. And capture any key learnings for the next one, possibly in August? Or early October at the latest.

I8. Cooking:

Small batch thin crust pizza. It means that there is only one day of leftovers instead of several. While it might seem like less pizza is a worse deal, it means that pizza will happen again sooner.

Some simple food plans this week: sushi rice dice from a random yt (I put the recipe elsewhere on this site), polenta and some sort of bean dish (email me an easy bean dish that goes with polenta, maybe? ), and two different chicken dishes. Some roasted broccoli. Surely we will order some food.

Planning to make a full sourdough loaf this week to go with some of the cheeses I picked up today.

I9. House Projects:

Pressure washed the back patio. It looks so nice. I have an appreciation for the work that goes into it, but I’ll probably hire out for this next time.

Got some paperwork taken care of. Several other paperworks to do still.

I would like to get started on the garage finishing project next.

Other Interests

Bought a couple of small midi controllers. They’re multi-use: I intend to attach some of them to my stationary office iPad for making synth drones, and using them as an input for generative art too.

To Reply: Email me about that bean dish.

Two Week Notes No. 11 & 12

2024-06-05T07:00:00-07:00

It’s a two-fer since I didn’t get the update out before I left on a trip. There is quite a bit of content in here.

As I mentioned my most recent now page update, I watched this video and it helped.

I1. Field Recording:

Not much action here, but I realized that I didn’t mention something I noticed last week. I was out there in the Quicksilver Park area, and I stopped to listen. Because when I was listening to that recording after I made it, I noticed there was this low rumble. I figured it was the highway, like miles and miles away. Or some other city noise. Or I suppose it could be these high tension power lines that run through the area. I didn’t think I was close enough to them. So I’m listening, and it could be the wind in some particular stands of trees? I’m not sure, but it was really there, not some electrical pickup thing. So I want to come back and like walk around and have another listen, with my field recording gear.

Also preparing for a field trip. So my backlog of recordings will grow a little bit.

Post trip / week 12 (Gila Wilderness)

So I did a couple of things different this time despite 2 nights in the backcountry and 1 in the frontcountry. I suppose I could have recorded in the frontcountry site, but a) there were a lot of other people around and b) I was saving the batteries for the wilderness. In the wilderness we stayed both nights in the same base camp, and did a lot of walking besides so I wasn’t interested in a long distance drop rig setup. Bottom line: only one night recorded.

The other difference was I tried to capture a couple of things with my phone while away from the rest of my gear. Some particularly nice wind in the trees, for instance. Maybe those will make into a soundshot.

I3. Photography:

Good times at the Marshall Cottle Master Gardener plots. The overcast morning made for wonderful even light for photographing the bees and flowers.

24MAY25SAT Blooming Artichoke

Post trip / week 12 (Gila Wilderness)

Hooboy, over 1000 photos made in the last few days. I even took a picture of a person in one of them.

I5. Plotting:

Currently working on a small library for applying computing probabilities of points in my art frame.

I6. Thinking:

Maybe too much? I was out and about in the wilderness with no internet to distract me. It was glorious!

Writing

While out walking in the woods I felt really compelled to write down my thoughts on how important it is to ‘make it work for you’. So look forward to that… sometime.

Reading and Notes

I started reading Charles Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle. It’s his journal from when he was a young man hired as the naturalist on the HMS Beagle in the early 1830s. I am pleasantly shocked at how readable it is. My goal was to read good examples of descriptive writing, and this is perfect for that. I thought it would be boring, but it is not at all. Email me if you know any other good description writing!

Seasons and Days

Phone simplifications, Assistive Access, via Hacker News comment.

I7. Backpacking:

Trip to the Gila Wilderness. It was great! I made a list of 12 take-aways from the trip so I am better prepared for next time. Less No. 1: bring less food.

I8. Cooking:

Some tasty backpacker meals that I will report on later. A couple of loafs of bread.

I9. House Projects:

No work here.

Other Interests, not pursued.

Note that I2. Drawing, I4. Synthesizers, I11. Family Tree, and I12. Astrophotography are all deferred to later times. I identified several other interests beyond I12 that were not yet numbered and are also deferred to later. I’ll migrate these items to the Ideas page. I10. Travel is not really an ongoing concern to so only added in as needed.

To Reply: Email me MAYBE.

New to me Facts and Ideas in May 2024

2024-06-04T18:00:00-07:00

Some interesting ones this time, but a lower than usual haul. Also this is late because I was out of town.

Week 19

Began on 24MAY06MON .

Boeing’s Starliner is set to launch tonight. What a mess it’s been getting to here. Competition has been good.
Over the past three years, battery storage capacity on the nation’s grids has grown tenfold, to 16,000 megawatts., MeFi / NYT.
The era of relative public anonymity is definitively over. This has been basically true for a while with respect to law enforcement. It’s not also true for any other interested party as well.
Bluetooth connectivity from space?. Via Damn Interesting.
Only 8 more years until the next pitch drop. Via iflscience.com.

Week 20

Began on 24MAY13MON .

The cellular growth and neuron map of fruit fly larvae is known. Also the complete cell lineage, purpose, and interconnections of a small worm is known. Via Hacker News.
Insurance company profits are increasingly impacted by climate changes, causing them to pull out of some states. Via Damn Interesting.
There is a beetle that mimics bat sounds to avoid being eaten! Via Damn Interesting.
Military advances: directed energy weapons can replace expensive missiles, “17¢ a shot vs millions per missile”. I guess that may work against drone swarms. Via Damn Interesting.

Week 21

Began on 24MAY20MON .

I think I mentioned it before, but we’re entering the time of the Blaze Star, now to September. Only once every 80 years. Via Damn Interesting.
Shipping, on big boats, could save up to 17.3% simply by slowing down. They have the opportunity to do that because they currently hurry up and wait at the port. Via Damn Interesting.
Maybe real banks can hold your crypto soon? Maybe not.

Week 22

Began on 24MAY27MON .

Tattoos correlate with lymphatic cancer, at +20%. Via Damn Interesting.

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 10

2024-05-22T07:00:00-07:00

More text here than I expected.

Phonography:

No progress here this week.

Photography:

Unexpected opportunity struck in the photography department. Twice.

24MAY18SAT Red Shouldered Hawk

I also succeeded in getting the Shortcut to work for adding pictures to the Working Copy repository for this blog!

Writing

An old friend and I are starting a memoire-ish project. I think we just want capture on paper some of our memories from college. It will be fun to work with someone on it, but we’re keeping the ambitions low. We’ve given it the label “F Street Blues”, or well that’s his label. I just call it “F Street.”

Reading and Notes

New notebook week! Making the switch always feels like it might be a risky moment. All these full pages, they just go away. And the new notebook, it’s so… empty. But things have already started going again.

Nearly done with extracting notes The Year 1000. I should be able to mail it out this week.

I was reading Where good ideas come from, but now I’m just skimming. As I read through it, I found the stories less compelling and more hypothetical or speculative. I became unconvinced that it was a very thorough accounting of what it purported to be. So I’m just checking through the second half before I put it in the donation pile. I did pick up one thread I want to pull on: Darwin’s journal from the Beagle sounds like it might be a good example of descriptive writing and journaling. I’m looking for some good concrete examples of this to model in my own writing. Email me, maybe.

Two other things I read recently and found inspiring or useful:

Chase your reading. I’ve been roughly doing this but could be more intentional. Via Henrik Karlsson.
Daily sentences, original microblogging. I might do limited series of these. Via Hacker News comment.

Seasons and Days

The hoped for reduction in general second screening and dumb idle scrolling (death time), well it hasn’t showed up yet. Possibly the rejection of the good ideas book as good reading is part of it. A friend of mine has taken to leaving their phone in the car for the evening. Having an Apple brand smart watch enables that. I have one of those, so it’s an option. But my problem isn’t the pocket computer; it’s the iPad (eye-paddle). Unsubscribing seems to help.

Backpacking prep

Running and general fitness continues apace.

To Reply: Email me if you have any tips.

Week Notes No. 9

2024-05-13T22:00:00-07:00

There is a tiny bit more free writing inside.

Phonography:

I need to get this jump started again. There are several days of audio that need to be (minimally) processed. And I have several things that I want to get on “tape” but the backup is holding me back. Aargh!

Photography:

One (failed, below) attempt at aurora photography; they were a no show, or the city sky glow was more of a show.

Writing

Drafted a short opinion post by hand. It’s an opinion, about something kind of timely. Not like DJT or OpenAI timely. Just some tiny mostly irrelevant thing that’s bothered my about our current extended moment. I haven’t posted it and do not plan to.

Reading and Notes

The last couple of weeks surge in notes has regressed back toward the mean. That’s kind of a relief actually. I’m still growing my practice. But. But. Next week is probably new notebook week.

Still scraping the last few things out of The Year 1000 before I send it out at the end of the week.

Seasons and Days

How is my 30 days of less phone going? Poorly. The data is noisy, but I don’t see any downward trend yet. I’ll keep going.

Backpacking prep

I put in several good sessions of running in the last week. There is some gear I should refresh in the next week or two, and.. oh yeah. Meals.

To Reply: Email me if you saw the aurora this weekend.

Week Notes No. 8

2024-05-07T06:30:00-07:00

A lot of reading and notes.

Phonography:

No work in this space this week.

Photography:

Some light photos (ha. ha.), some workaday photos.

Writing

Keeping pace with what I reported last week. I’m not sure what it means.

Reading and Notes

I am going to lend my copy of The Year 1000 to a friend, so I’m grabbing all my notes out of it. While doing that I noticed that there was something kind of incomplete in the notes I had already. So I am quickly rereading and marking up and taking out from a few chapters that I felt I could get more out of. It’s all basically an exercise in skill development through practice. Sure feels like I’m making progress.

Seasons and Days

I’m off to an interesting start to my 30 days of less idle “phone” time. It includes iPad too. One piece was figuring out what I can use from the Screen Time tools in the iOS control center. Another piece is having some better alternative when that itch comes, as it inevitably will (and has). So I’m going back and re-reading older pages in my paper notebook. So far I’ve made interesting connections and found inspirational reminders for new ideas each time I’ve done it. More so than in past attempts. I’ll just keep going.

Backpacking prep

Finally have a go date for my next backpacking: it’s in less than 4 weeks. And I totally fell off the wagon as far as regular running is concerned this winter. I really am a fair weather runner. With time short, and the destination at some pretty high altitude, I’ve got to get moving!

To Reply: Email me what you have been up to this week.

New to me Facts and Ideas in April 2024

2024-05-06T08:00:00-07:00

If I had to say a theme here, it would be some combination of health, history, and space.

Week 14

Began on 24APR01MON .

The magnet field lines in these galactic black hole images are beautiful! Via and hosted by Kottke.
The human body has 30 trillion cells, because a friend said a number and I had to check.
The US has tried not changing time before, and it wasn’t fun. Probably because the picked the more unnatural time. Via Astral Codex X.
There are only 80,000 Giant Redwood trees in California. Is this right? Via Slime Mold Time Mold.

Week 15

Began on 24APR08MON .

Blaze Star may burst to brightness in the next 5 months, in T Coronae Borealis. Via Damn Interesting.
There is a oral spray vaccine for UTIs and it is preventative for up to 9 years. Via News Minimalist
Cavities are contagious. I definitely didn’t know this. Via Damn Interesting.
There are 5 new National Monuments in the US. Indirectly via WTFJHT
More frescoes in Pompeii (alt, alt’, discussion, more). Via Damn Interesting, MeFi, Ancient Pages, History Blog.
Next generation Solar Sail is ready for launch.

Week 16

Began on 24APR15MON .

Lottery ticket sales are super messed up: the poorest spend almost 5% of their income on them! Via Zvi Mowshowitz
McDonald’s is brining some freaky future to the Netherlands. Via Damn Interesting.
Email forwarding is going away?
Homicides are down this year, but some cities have more and some have less. Via Kottke.
Halifax has the cutest ferries.
A cave in Saudi Arabia was used (on and off?) by humans for 7000 years. Imagine it; I suggest that you cannot. It would be just a place that had always been used if you thought about it at all. Via Damn Interesting.

Week 17

Began on 24APR22MON .

NASA reports that it has restored communication with Voyager 1. It’s a story I followed for the last couple of months and I’m happy to hear that we got it working again. Both via DamnInteresting.
More Herculuneum document decipherment, this time it reveals more precise details of Plato’s burial. See also Vesuvius Prize which is different.
The world of chip flavors is waay larger than I thought, not having thought about it very much before. Via Robb Knight’s Links feed

Week 18

Began on 24APR29MON .

Maybe Augustus’s house in Vesuvius has been discovered? Via DamnInteresting.
Atomic nucleus excited by laser, and preprint verification by an independent team. Via Damn Interesting, and Hacker News.
Very cool video of building seismic isolators in action on X/Twitter¹, sorry. Via Oakland Geology Blog.
The US DEA may soon reclassify marijuana from schedule 1 to 3. Via Hacker News.
The largest bacterium is about 1 cm across and was discovered in 2022. Via Experimental History.
100 new near Earth asteroids discovered. Via NewsMinimalist.

I saw it called Xitter, and that wins now. ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

(Mid) Week Notes No. 7

2024-05-06T07:30:00-07:00

Notes: this is published a week after it was mostly written. Oops.

Change of plan: keep this on Sunday because it requires a bit of time and thinking. Move the Now page update to Mondays; it requires less thinking.

Still working on this revised schedule.

Phonography:

No work in this space this week.

Photography:

I completed the 7 day project of sunset photos, and got some good ones.

Writing

Even more notes this week than previously. It might be a new personal best. Is best the right word for it?

Seasons and Days:

The 30 days of fiber is a tentative success. There have been some gains in my habits around making sure to eat enough of it, but they are by no means assumed.

For the next 30 days I’ve chosen to reduce idle time on my phone. More next time on that.

To Reply: Email me what you have been up to this week.

Week(end) Notes No. 6

2024-04-21T21:30:00-07:00

Words about sound and pictures and words.

Change of plan: keep this on Sunday because it requires a bit of time and thinking. Move the Now page update to Mondays; it requires less thinking.

Phonography:

Yesterday afternoon I was listening to the most perfect sound of wind in trees. I was standing under the tree, and my app said the wind was 8 mph, with gusts to 18 mph. It was just the right amount. I wonder if it was the new spring leaves, or the tree kind of by itself, or well, not in a forest. Maybe it could be a project, trees in wind in different seasons or stages of leaf maturity or presence. The wind in the trees is always a sound on my list.

Photography:

Started a short silly project that actually is good. I’m taking a picture of the sunset every day from my backyard. It’s limited: only 7 days. The contraint has been good, because it was only the second day that had a really glorious sunset. The other days have required more creativity, more looking and seeing.

I’ve also put in a bit more effort when other opportunities present themselves to make photos. Food and cooking in the kitchen require solving lighting challenges, and also background objects. The San Jose Bike Party rode by in the dark on Saturday, and instead of thinking about going out to take some photos, I actually went out there. Sure, I haven’t taken many photos in the dark of people on bikes, so many of the photos were bad. And I’m fine with that because I learned quite a few things, and also things that I need to learn about working the camera in the dark. So that’s success.

I also struggled with getting a Shortcut that would add photos to my blog repository in Working Copy. I got one version working that uses the clipboard. But it’s kind of a hack. I found this howto, but it’s not working for me. Shortcuts almost never seem to work as advertised, and the errors (or lack of) make it quite difficult to debug. The reuse of words also makes it hard to search for help. Do they do this on purpose? I am again ready to quit Shortcuts. And so another cycle is complete.

Writing

Many notes made, thoughts recorded, ideas kept. One other blog post written, just a recipe, but still, there is more words there than the recipe alone.

Seasons and Days:

I think I’m going to be able to call this 30 days a success. There is still a couple of weeks to go, but progress is being made on adding more fiber into my diet. I’m having a higher awareness of it, and what foods are better or worse for it.

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Week Notes No. 5

2024-04-14T16:50:00-07:00

New recording in the field. More writing work.

Next week I might shift this to Monday. There is a lot getting written on Sunday and it’s starting to feel a little congested and toil-ish.

Phonography:

Got to get out in the field and make a new overnight recording. Spot checks sound good, can’t wait to (minimally) process and share it.

Photography:

There were two projects (ok maybe “projects” ?) this week.

First, I carried around the camera on several mornings, hoping to make a photograph of the Great Blue Heron that we had sighted twice last week. But either because of the increasingly early sunrise, the change of the weather, or just the animal whims of the bird itself, I didn’t come across it again. I heard it had been seen in one of the nearby fields, but I haven’t gotten over there. I did make some (bad) pictures of quail (they’re fast little buggers).

Second, I hiked to the Peters Creek Loop in Portola Redwoods. Obviously I wanted to try and make some photos of the trees, the old car, and any other interestring forest things (fungus, face like patterns/pareidolia, water, whatever).

There have been some good clouds lately.

Seasons and Days:

Recap: I am focusing on getting better at my high fiber diet this 30 days. So I found some surprising foods that are quite high in fiber, and I’ve been collecting them in a note so I can share.

Reading

Finished reading The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger. It was an interesting read!

After checking through a number of books on my to-read pile I selected How to Live by Bakewell. I’ll probably also read some Montaigne essays in between chapters.

Writing

More notes in the notebook, and the various post files. I think it will take a few weeks to fill up the buffer and start to skim off the more finished pieces.

I was also hoping to start to see some more isolated and self-complete shorter notes or observations. Nothing has felt immediately ready for sharing. I might just have to take some risks.

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Week Notes No. 4

2024-04-07T15:00:00-07:00

Progress on field recording, and a writing reset of sorts.

Phonography:

Commited to publishing a file this week on YT, so I manually processed the file in Audacity. Minimal processing: gain adjust, limiter, fade the ends. Quickly made the images, merged with ffmpeg, and uploaded to YT. It goes live tonight. Probably going to be the quietest file on there, that isn’t just silence and a black screen. I’ll also trim off 15 minutes of the dawn chorus and use that in a post of my own later this week.

Captured the work I did with the python tools to git. That includes the failed finalizing with pydub script, but also some useful tests I wrote. I also updated the image maker for making movies. It all went rather fast once I said “eff it, just do it by hand.” So that’s a couple of weeks “lost” futzing around trying to automate something. I would say that the very useful bits are the preview tool that chops the NN hours of audio into 1 hour chunks for easier listening and noting.

Seasons and Days:

I am focusing on getting better at my high fiber diet this 30 days.

Reading

Finished reading Do Interesting by Russell Davies. I picked up some ideas to try for capturing what I notice, and collecting it, and even sharing.

I am maining reading The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger. This is mainly research for some questions and ideas I have around a couple of things. One is something like “what beliefs did people have that fundamentally alter their approach to living?” and another is around this “history rhymes” idea. I didn’t think it would be such compelling reading, but it totally is!

Writing

I evaluated my strategy for getting these essays and ideas I have into more developed states, and well, evidence is that I am not making as much progress as I would like. So I am dropping the whole digital aspects as the main thing and trying for something more intentional and hand written. At least until it starts to look like a draft where proper word processing would help. I find that the jumble of notes in a digital file is just too overwhelming to work with when it comes to actually writing. I’m not even sure how reliable of an excuse that really is.

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New to me Facts and Ideas in March 2024

2024-04-01T00:00:00-07:00

Twenty fresh facts in here. And remember the chitons!

Week 10

Began on 24MAR04MON .

Half of the residents of Mumbai (called Mumbaikers, which I also learned), live in slums.
Lightning kills or injures over a quarter of a million people each year globally. Via Damn Interesting.
The Great Pyramids were all commissioned by one family over a ~100 year period. Via the Fall of Ancient Civilizations podcast episode that I mentioned last month because I hadn’t finished it.

Week 11

Began on 24MAR11MON . Was working on a few projects, so here are a couple of throwbacks.

Fiber maybe helps with cognition
No amount of alcohol is good for you
Long covid linked with low iron, maybe
Standard (winter or “natural” time) is the scientist preferred option (also) if we ever settle on a year round time, because it better aligns our clocks to sunlight throughout the year. Via Damn Interesting.

Week 12

Began on 24MAR18MON .

Unintentional fall (like off a roof) is the leading cause of emergency room visits in adults. Via Hacker News comment.
Chitons have eyes all over their shells, via Damn Interesting. I vaguely recall learning this sometime ago, but not being super clear on what a chiton is, so I mostly forgot it. But. But there is a bonus fact here (well, it’s actually the point of the article): chitons evolved eyes on four different evolutionary occassions (so just a bit less than crab body type), and they have two types of eyes. I mean two solutions to the vision problem were evolved, and they don’t both appear on the same species of chiton. … After reviewing the wikipedia article, I’m not entirely convinced that I’ll not forget they exist again, but I’ll try: they’re weird af and kind of a flexible and mobile clam or mussel, so a snail with a flexible shell (but they’re really their own thing).
Icelandic pronunciation, because Iceland eruptions.
The snack regions of the US, if you believe it. Via bookofjoe.
Trends in weather forecasting accuracy show that 7 day forecasts were right about half the time in 1990 and now are approaching correct 80% of the time. Via Kottke
Claim: Larry Page intended Google to be a money machine to fund AGI development. I don’t know if this is true or just some random thought he voiced. I have lots of those, some may become true in 30 years. It doesn’t mean it’s precience. Via Hacker News Comment.
It still blows my mind that we might put people on the moon again as soon as the year after next! Via Damn Interesting.
At the dentist they now have handheld x-ray guns. Via going to my dentist.
Antibiotic resistent bacteria continue to advance, via Damn Interesting.
Ötzi had 61 tattoos, which is a lot more than I expected. It’s another one of those things that I vaguely remember knowing that he had tattoos. This means we’ve been tattooing for at least 5000 years. Via Damn Interesting.
Clouds disappear during an total solar eclipse, and that is wild. It’s only over land, and for certian kinds of clouds. But if the sun disappearing wasn’t a big enough deal, then even the clouds getting in on the act somehow makes it an even bigger deal to me. And probably ancient us too.

Week 13

Began on 24MAR25MON .

GPS tracker darts are now legitimately a thing. Via Damn Interesting.
Cocoa prices are up 60% over last year due to climate? Via News Minimalist.
Colorectal cancers are increasing in younger people, which is why the age for screening was changed from 50 to 45 in 2021. Via New York Times

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Week Notes No. 3

2024-03-31T00:00:00-07:00

What did I do this week?

Phonography:
- Made another run at the PyDub export tool I am trying. But it seems that exporting ~12 hours of 44.1 kHz mp3 is just too many samples for 64 bit math (I’ll have to do the math on that). It works great for doing 1 hour chunks though, so I’ll keep that win. I guess I’ll pursue one of a) script interface to Audacity, b) maybe I can do it in ffmpeg directly (but those flags are a whole language to themselves), or c) just do it manually in Audacity.
Seasons and Days:
- As expected, this was a week off. And it was the last week. So I didn’t get to 30 minutes per day every day. Maybe it’s just not my thing.
- Next 30 days starts tomorrow. I have to review my past ideas before finally selecting the next focus. I feel like I am losing focus, maybe it means I should have a fallow month.
Reading
- Finished up This Night’s Foul Work by Fred Vargas. It was good, maybe not quite great. I was gotten by the double twist though, and wasn’t able to pick out the villain before the finale.
- Also finished Neuromancer by William Gibson. I plan to write up some notes so I can do a better job of remember more than just the rush of ripping through it. It still holds up, only a couple of minor things that I would choose differently today vs in the 1980s.
- Started Do Interesting by Russell Davies. So far it’s ok.
- I’ll pick up something else too, or maybe just read more Syntopicon.

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Week Notes No. 2

2024-03-24T00:00:00-07:00

What did I do this week?

Phonography:
- Completed identifying the usable section of the first night of my Death Valley recordings. Developed my pydub workflow and probably ran straight into a library or even python limitation when working with very long recordings. I will explore alternatives. I would like to upload that file this week. There are alternate measures I can take such as manually exporting the file with Audacity as I have been doing before this.
- I did test several HPF settings with both of my mic pairs. Seems like anything 60-100 Hz would be fine.
- Also picked up some tea filters for making diy wind breaks. Should be some fun experimenting.
Photography:
- Some photos made and test prints printed.
- Added a couple of photos to the site.
Seasons and Days:
- I was able to get out and run several times this week.
- I did not succeed at 30 minutes of exercise each day of the week. This week it will not be possible for legitimate reasons.
- It’s time to start thinking about next month’s 30 days focus. I will continue with the season of body.
Notebooks: new notebook day is tomorrow, my first Leuchtturm. I had considered using one of my Seven Seas but I find that I really take advantage of the hardbound covers and the SS is not that.
Reading
- Looking forward to wrapping up This Nights Foul Work. I’m sure Neuromancer will burn through so quickly. Then back to some idea books / non-fiction.
Watching: Repo Man was very strange indeed.

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Inaugural Week Notes

2024-03-15T00:00:00-07:00

My first weeknotes. I have no idea what I am doing. I’ve put down some notes about projects I worked on this week, and other things.

Phonography
- The Quiet American has lots of great tips and links out. Many are stale. Thanks be to the people at the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Please Donate.
- One of the links is this guy and he’s got lots of great diy wind protection for mics.
- I added several sources of field recording related forums, mailing lists, and blogs, to my regular reading list.
- Wrote some processing tools (using pydub/ffmpeg) to minimize the time I spend preparing preview files, and then used them to process all the raw audio files from a couple of different projects: 3 nights in Death Valley and 2 days of stormy weather near home.
- staging to also sort out, finally, what the HPF should be set to for my two pairs of mics so I don’t have to mess with that either. Ideally I get to a workflow (record → preprocess → review → label entry → still + audio = video) that minimizes my toil and is fairly automatic.
- upload one part of one of the DV nights is next.
- I feel like this was good progress, but I would also like to see something delivered. Making it easier to deliver feels good.
Photography
- Edited a couple of photos in LR using Adrien Sanguinetti’s ideas. It’s been fun and I’ve enjoyed the results.
- Made a couple of prints for a friend and mailed them off.
- Made a very small number of photos while in Santa Cruz this weekend.
- Considering a project on utility pole typologies. But I don’t want it turn out like my horrible catalog of bicycles in Como, which I discovered I hated as soon as I “finished”.
- I think I’m at that frustrated stage of photography. I want to print more of my own photos but I seem to always find a flaw, or the workflow is tedious and takes too much time, or the number of photos to sift through is overwhelming. Similarly I’d like to make more photos but it always seems inconvenient to go somewhere to make them.
30-days progress
- I have struggled quite a bit with actually getting out or making time to exercise this last week.
Notebooking and other writing
- I used my notebook enough this week, but it’s had less pages filled than in past weeks. I’ve been reading fiction. And working a lot.
- Nearing the end of nb 24.1, but I can probably get another week in.
Thoughts, Ideas, Questions
- AIs are already here, the slow version. I’m glad there is prior art on this. But I wonder how inexact that analogy is to today, and how applicable. At best I see corporations (made of groups of people) just using today’s computer based AI as a tool. But obviously that’s a hot take.
- When I think about it, it’s weird to me that we still talk about these two guys (Julius and Augustus) pretty regularly. Not like nightly news regularly. I am not a Rome obsessed person, it just seems to come up more often that other historically important people like Charlemagne or that Hapbsburgs. There are others. That lead to the next topic.
- Why exactly is it that ancient Egypt is so prominent still today? This is after listening to the Fall of Ancient Civilizations podcast a couple of weeks ago. Is it the prominent Great Pyramids, made by one family over a short period of time? Is it the fact that they have a written record? Or that their tombs, the ones that weren’t robbed, are well preserved because theyr’e in a desert? Longevity? Location, along one of the great rivers? The garish, to today’s taste, style?
- Based on the Stross lecture linked elsewhere here, how do I go about looking for historical parallels to patterns that are playing out today?
Culinaria
- baked some bread, but this time I used mostly bread flour. The last time I made these loaves it was ap, and I complained that it was too wet/weak. It squished too much when I cooked it. This time it was too tough. Toasts real nice though.
- Not as much other cooking this week as I would have liked. Probably working too hard.
- Had a burger at an asian fusion place, it was like half way to being a banh mi, flavor wise. Jalepenos and cilantro, and maybe the cucumbers were pickled like the veggies on the sandwich. It was excellent and I would definitely do that again.
Reading
- Mostly getting wrapped up in This Night’s Foul Work, more than Neuromancer this week. But also I notice some more problematic choices in the work than I was aware of last time I read a Vargas book. Nobody’s perfect.
- Charlie Stross’s 2017 essay/speech
Watching
- The March 16 Iceland Eruption. Natural disasters are my sports. Wait that doesn’t sound right- I’m not rooting for the natural disaster!
- Lantern Rouge and NBC Sports recaps of the Paris-Nice cycling race.
- I need to find out where Pogocar was, but the short version.
- What’s the next race again?
- Try to remember who actually won it this time.
- RRR. Loved it, everything about it. There should be more memes and gifs from this movie. There probably are, just not in my echo chamber. Wish we could have found the original audio that the actors were speaking and singing in, but Hindi was as close as we could get.
- Repo Man is on deck.
Random
- Rebecca Toh, inspirational.
- Interconnected, I’d like to write connections more like this!
- McDonalds down? What the future?? Write that!
Exploring
- Went to Santa Cruz and was a tourist about it in the town.

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New to me Facts and Ideas in February 2024

2024-03-04T00:00:00-08:00

My new fact finding has slowed down a bit. Still, there have been some interesting and new to me facts in the past month.

Week 6

Began on 24FEB05MON .

Clouds form around feldspar particles. Well, maybe not all clouds. 60% of the Earth’s surface is feldspar. That’s a lot of feldspar. Via Damn Interesting.
The glymphatic system is recently (2010s) discovered and related to our need to sleep. Via Hacker News comment.

Week 7

Began on 24FEB12MON .

The best way to store avocados for a long time, months, without them ripening is on the tree. Via Scope of Work.
Chaucer is to blame for Valentine’s Day being about romance instead of epilepsy and bees.

Week 8

Began on 24FEB19MON .

I learned about Nilometers¹ via the Fall of Civilizations² podcast.

Week 9

Began on 24FEB27TUE .

Leap day is at the end of February because ancient mythology³ set the beginning of the year at the start of spring, so the end of February was the end of the year. Plus other reasons. Via Damn Interesting.
AT&T has applied to not be required to provide land line telephone service in parts of California.

A related concept is the hunger stone which I recall stumbling across before. ↑
This url has non-ascii characters (𓅓). I hope it works. If not: https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/. ↑
The Romans. ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Thirty days of narrate your work

2024-03-01T00:00:00-08:00

For the month of February I tried to narrate my work. I failed. Well, I succeeded a little less than half of the days.

On the first day I was sorting out whether to write in the first or third person, and if it should be present tense or something else. In the end I decided that in the moment describing what I was doing right now or what I was planning to do next didn’t feel quite right. So that left describing what I had just done. That’s what I did, and it felt the most tractable. The problem remained that I didn’t think that all the things I was doing were worth writing down this way.

I know it can be sometimes hard to judge what will be interesting later, so I adopted a strategy of random sampling. At 10:30 in the morning an alarm on my phone would go off to remind me to write down a few sentences about what I had just done. At least this way I got some practice in with whatever I had just been doing.

The overall goal of the month was to focus on the process of it and see what I learned. Somehow the mechanical exercise of writing down what I had just done a few times helped me to see that there may be a way forward to identifying and describing some aspects of what I am doing that might be interesting or useful for others to read, or myself in the future.

So much for narrating my work. At the start of the month I’m changing the activity of the next 30 days. It’s also time to change the season. I let this season, I guess I’ve been calling it a season of learning, run on a little longer than I should have.¹ It’s been a few months of taking in new ideas and practicing new skills, and I feel it’s time to reverse the flow a bit, put more things out. Or maybe change the focus from working on the brain to working on the body. It’s already the first day of the new month and I haven’t settled on what I’m going to be focusing on yet. Maybe that’s ok, so long as the decision doesn’t drag on too long.

They’re my seasons, so I can do what I want. ↑

To Reply: Email me if you figured out how to narrate your work.

New to me Facts and Ideas in January 2024

2024-02-05T00:00:00-08:00

I found a wide ranging set of ideas and facts to be new and noteworthy, to me at least. Enjoy!

Week 1, of 2024

Began on 24JAN01MON .

(Modern) design originated with Bauhaus in Germany in 1919. Via John Maeda’s The Laws of Simplicity, supported by UNESCO World Heritage and it depends on what is meant by “(modern) design”.
The northern ~half of Japan is part of the North American tectonic plate. Via Shawn Willsey.
Slugs and snails are slow because their food isn’t moving, and they’ve evolved effective defenses against predation. I don’t want to imagine a world where they are moving fast.¹

Week 2

Began on 24JAN08MON .

Desalination is economically viable because of solar photo voltaic derived electricity can be very very cheap. I remember reading something a year or two ago that made a similar claim. This suggests some follow up questions for me.
There is a World Porridge Making Chapionship, via Serious Eats. I don’t know why I am surprised.
Copernicus’s remains have been identified, via Damn interesting.
The NASA mission to the moon is pushed back a year to September 2026 due to issues with the heat shield. Via Space Flight Now.
DARPA is making a plane that doesn’t fly by flaps and stuff, via Hacker News. It controls flight by jets of air.
Is the origin of the house spirit folk myths wood mice??
Wing has announced some level of service to Dallas-Fort Worth. I still wonder if it will go global or be shut down for some random reason.

Week 3

Began on 24JAN15MON .

The wealth of the 5 richest people (men) has more than doubled since 2020, 405B$ to 869B$. Via New Minimalist.
Atomic batteries for you and me? Do you think it’ll become a reality? Via Damn Interesting.
Debunked: The jet stream doesn’t keep Europe warm, the ocean currents do. I admit that I would have parroted this when asked, but before reading the article my inner monologue said something like “it’s the ocean”. Via Damn Interesting.
Debunked II: No, names were not changed at Ellis Island or elsewhere via Marginal Revolution. I admit to resisting this update in the state of my model of the world.

Week 4

Began on 24JAN22MON .

This one is a two-fer. The names for groups of birds (or other animals) is actually called a “company term”, and the origin for many of them, in English, is one of the first books printed in English. Via The Marginalian.

Week 5

Began on 24JAN29MON .

Death Valley is larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined, and nearly as large as Puerto Rico. Not only that, but a lot (I mean a lot!) of surrounding land is also open access: map.
You now have the option to get a tri-focal replacement lens for your cataracts surgery. Via my friend Ben. It is considered a cosmetic upgrade by insurers.
The greenhouse effect was identified and caclulated closer to the start of the industrial revolution (in 1776) than today. Via XKCD.
More cursed knowledge: IE (if you are old enough, you know) was first released closer to the Apollo 11 moon landing than today. Via Kottke. Is this some sort of sign??
Humans and Neanderthals overlapped in Europe for longer than previously known. Via Danm Interesting.

Fast snails and slugs exits: under the sea. ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Fascinating Facts, December 2023

2024-01-01T00:00:00-08:00

In the spirit of Tom Whitwell and Jason Kottke (and others, I’m sure), I am going to keep track of the interesting facts or evidence that I learn about. Becuase it’s cool! This the first edition of Fascinating Facts, things that I was surprised or happy or found interesting or just generally helpful to learn of.

I learn lots of things most days, and reporting them all would be boring and a lot of work for not much reward (for you or me). Many of them aren’t that interesting, even to me. Often times they’re operational things, or things like what a setting on the dishwasher does. But I reserve the right to share the surprising things that dishwashers are capable of.

If I manage to keep this up, I’ll compile a best of at the end of next year (December 2024).

Week 51

Began on 23DEC10SUN .

Spiral Waves in Saturn’s Inner B Ring via Astrum (SLYT). I also am a huge fan of the Daphnis ripples, but I learned about those when they were discovered over 10 years ago. So cool! Update: just realized that I didn’t know before that those ripples also project above and blow the plane of the rings!
Xmas is actually very old, via Tasting History with Max Miller.
The word for a person with autism is autist (via).
Poll taxes ended in the US only in 1964. This is still very very recent.
There is a 10x difference in energy use per capita between the US and developing countries such as India or Sub-Saharan African countries. Energy use drives everything in an economy and is a useful indicator of standard of living. Oil is still the cheapest energy source. This is one of the many reasons why getting off of oil is going to be really hard. Via Ed Conway’s Substack, which is a very good explainer.

Week 52

Began on 23DEC17SUN .

Bird Weather is a site with live listening stations and reports of bird species detections, with audio and other cool features. Via MeFi.
In medieval times a fire cover was used at night which prevented the fire from spreading, and it’s called a “curfew”. The word curfew is derived from the French couvre-feu. My question is how long have these curfews been in use, it seems quite a useful idea. I see ambiguous claims that the fire cover is named for the order from William the Conquerer, or it’s just descriptive. Anyone know?
Diamond is not thermodynamically stable at standard temperature and pressure. It is metastable. If thermodynamics is all we need to consider, diamond should turn into graphite which is a lower energy configuration of the atoms. However, the energy barrier to make the transition from diamond to graphite is very high and there isn’t enough kinetic energy around to make the transition very often. This means that practically speaking diamond is stable; your diamond ring isn’t going to decay away on anything less than geologic time scales. Reference and what ChatGPT 4 has to say about it.
It used to be that you needed to remove the stones or pits from raisins. Via Max Miller. I suppose this is kind of obvious in hindsight but I had never been prompted to consider this before.
10% of aerosols in the stratosphere contain Aluminum and other metals from spacecraft that have burned up on re-entry. Reference, via MeFi (a lot of other interesting space things at that link too). Some context from the reference: meteors deposit approximately 130 tons per year (T/yr) to Earth, of which 20 T/yr are ablated in the stratosphere, and spacecraft debris 210 T/yr of spacecraft aluminum ablate in the stratosphere. There are other metals too from spacecraft that are not naturally present.
For the first time a human played Tetris deep enough to trigger a known bug in the scoring system that caused the game to crash. Reference, also via MeFi.
Hummingbirds need to feed every 15 minutes. SLYT.

Week 53

Began on 23DEC24SUN .

The White Shark Cafe is a mid-Pacific ocean winter and spring habitat for sharks from all along the North America coast.
There is a version of the English language for art: International Art English. Via The Life-changing Science of Detecting Bullshit by John V. Petrocelli.
The ideomotor response is a subconscious motion of the body that reflects what is being thought about. Also via Petrocelli’s book.
Multicellular life evolved multiple times since the origins of life on Earth. Via Jason’s list at the top. Many other good ones too.
Sensible farm animals (probably paywalled), I’m glad to see the science catching up. Via HackerNews.
Someone died and their body was unrecoverable when they went off trail in the Lower Geyser Basin at Yellowstone! Eek!¹
When you lose weight, you breath it out. Via Kent Hendricks.
Human touch is able to discern surface features of 10 nm. Via one of the things I learned this year lists, but I don’t remember which one.
30% of traffic fatalities involve a person driving while drunk. Via Marginal Revolution.

That’s a lot of cool stuff!

Reminds me of the Nutty Putty Cave incident. Even more eek! ↑

To Reply: Email me the cool facts you've learned lately. Or a correction.

Thought provoking reads from 2023

2023-12-31T00:00:00-08:00

I set a goal to read 20 books this year, and yesterday I finished my 20th book. So it seems like a good time to look back on those books that I’m still thinking about. This isn’t all that I read, or attempted, or that I’m still thinking about.

Non-fiction

I read Scott Newstok’s How to think like Shakespeare (not an affiliate link, none of them are) over the summer, and it was an interesting read. I’m still thiking about the model of thinking as a craft. I’ve always thought of crafts as a ladder of skills, and a practice. Even after you’ve mastered a craft you still have to attend carefully to it because the materials are not all identical. They must be treated in the way that is right for their unique properties in order to make the very best out of them. Applying that model to thinking has been very helpful. It involves both the ideas you are thinking about, and the tools you use to work with them.

Earlier in the summer I read Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. There were lots of thought provoking things here, most of the whole book really resonated with me. In particular the idea of working in cycles, planning to do poorly at one thing for a while so you can have the attention or energy to do better at something else for a time. Then rotate to the next thing because you cannot do it all. There are lots of analogies, like managing a field for crops by rotating what is grown there, or letting it go fallow. This practical skill with managing wanting to do too much has helped. I made copious notes and I’m sure I would profit from re-reading them, and the book itself too.

The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker is, I’m pretty sure, the nerdiest book on this list. The bits about sentence structure, and neither asking your reader to hold in their minds too many things, nor to hold them for too long, has done the most to improve my diction. Last year I read The Grail and that guy has some very loong sentences that are somehow still readable I think precisely because of this. Pinker’s book is probably another one I could read a few more times.

I learned about the rider and elephant metaphor from The Happiness Hypothesis, and whether that is precisely correct or not is both irrelavent and unhelpful for my purposes at the moment. It’s been a helpful model for thinking about my thinking, for trying to understand my own habits and thought inertia. Why is it so hard to or easy to do certain things, and how to hack on that to do what I want to do.

The book I just finished was Petrocelli’s The life-changing science of detecting bullshit. This book was, in some sense, a back to basics topic for me because of my background in science. Still, it was nice to revisit these topics, and to see them applied in more everyday areas in a systematic way, with practical and concrete advice. It’s a little early still to know which thing in particular I’ll be still thinking about in six months, but I have a couple of guesses. The first is about asking better questions, maybe even the first question you should ask. The better question is “how do I know this is true” instead of “why do I believe this”. The distinction between how and why is important: asking a how questions is more naturally going to point to evidence, whereas why is often a setup for opinions, arguments, or assumptions. Evidence is the superior reason to believe something and those other things are less good reasons. This leads me to the other idea I think I’ll be thinking about for a while: treat ideas like ideas. It seems to be a bit of a mantra or mnemonic for the rest of the rationalist skills; an entry point. The rest of it is “not like facts” but adding that is too long.

In a very different direction, but still non-fiction, I’m still thinking about something that I read in Salt Fat Acid Heat. You might think it’s odd that I would read a cookbook, but it’s not really a cookbook in the way that you might be used to. The first 2/3rds of the book are all prose instruction, guidelines. The thing that I think about still is that it’s actually pretty easy to work backwards from the end result dish and figure out how to make the dish, once you know most of the basics. I happen to know most of the basics, so this is a nice discovery for me. Somehow working backward makes food much more intelligible than working forward from the recipe. There is a kind of engineering language present in the final dish that I’d never really noticed before.

Fiction

I did read some fiction too. Although the ones that I am still thinking about in particular were the nerdiest ones.

Peter Watts’ Blindsight (that’s the text, on the author’s website) has quite a few novel ideas. And, it’s in the genre of hard science fiction, and the ebook that I read had a pretty big appendix with discussion by the author of where he got them and how justifiable they are. That’s not to say that everything in there was true current state of science, just not necessarily eliminated by what we know today. But, I must add a warning: it’s not the usual science fiction, there is a large component of horror. That’s not my typical cup of tea, but it was well balanced by the novel’s other aspects. I’m looking for a copy of the second book, even though it’s not a direct sequel.

I also read, synoptically, The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the Shadow, which I found to be quite mind boggling in the amount of effort put into it. I’m looking forward to reading the next installment. So helpful to see the writing process too!

Here’s to 20 (or more) good books next year!

To Reply: Email me about the books that are still making you think.

Relaxing with YouTube

2023-12-16T00:00:00-08:00

I’m engaging a new line of enquiry and examination. I’m trying to get precise with a particular genre of YouTube. It’s probably some untranslatable German/Japanese/Norse lacunae word for that tired mood when you want to see and hear something but not too much of it. Pardon my vagueness while I try to grope my way to some clarity.

The video is not something too engaging, yet still lightly interesting. Maybe just visually stimulating, maybe something kind of ASMR but not really. I suspect it satisfies that need to be present with others or in some head place that isn’t so common to find in the modern world. I’m not going to fall asleep or anything; I’m not trying to. The video should be neither distracting nor monotonous. This is video content for when you’re tired, or not feeling great, or otherwise kind of brain dead.

Everyone’s taste is different, but there does seem to be quite a lot of this kind of content uploaded to YouTube. Since I kind of tour around to different things, I thought I would grab a snapshot of some of the videos that work for me these days in this area.

Oh, and it really helps if you can get rid of the ads. I pay for YT without ads, but some ad blocker may work. To each their own.

Some alternate titles: lazy yt, unwinding yt, yt and chill, cozy yt. I saw koselig yt may fit the bill, but I don’t really know.

Features

no sharp audio (no sudden noises, no annoying noises)
if it’s music, it can’t be too energetic
if there’s talking, it should be low, infrequent, or that kind of tv talking that you don’t have to listen to
longer to just plain long video cuts
I haven’t found many generated things that work, mostly it’s good old videography
also, the video should be video, not just audio and a black screen or a still shot
total video should be at least 20 minutes, preferrably longer, so several can be queued up or decision making is needed too much

Tubes

There are rather a lot of different varied content that can fit this bill. I don’t think I’ll be able to get all of it. Instead of being exhaustive, I’ll just link to some things from my actual viewing history.

No talking: Udon shop, maybe there’s talking but it’s usually indistinct. Imamu Room, Korean bakery, hiking, hiking in Iceland, rain walking, Snow walking, UK walking.

Some talking: Martijn Doolaard, French language GR5 hiking, French language alpine hiking, Waymo ride along.

Rather a lot of talking: Time Team, full episodes, French language alpine glacier documentary, UK photog in France.

Live Jams: Remixsample, State Azure.

Long play no commentary video games: Stardew Valley, Zelda content, but you have to mute it. Assassins Creed Ancient Egypt, note also check out Across The Map.

Missing

This list was drawn from my history over the last month or so, plus a couple of extras. There are a couple of sources missing, so I may someday do an update.

Conclusion

This Ask MeFi Post is pretty similar to what I’m looking for, except I’m not trying to fall asleep in front of the TV.

To Reply: Email me your favorite relaxing 'tubes.

What are notes?

2023-12-10T00:00:00-08:00

Notes can be updated, they’re not necessarily static like blog posts. I use notes as a reference for future me.

They’re somewhere in between quick note (so, not ephemeral), a blog post, and an essay. I’m figuring it out as I go. They’re perpetually unfinished. Hopefully they link to other notes.

To Reply: Comments by email are welcome.

You might like Cozy YouTube

2023-12-03T06:55:00-08:00

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Wool

2023-10-07T12:39:00-07:00

Finished: Wool by Hugh Howey 📚

The short version: this is a book that takes the idea of “good writing is about the characters overcoming challenges” to it’s most extreme limit. It’s all suffering and adversity, almost too much. If you can get past that, then it took 2/3 of the book to get going. Maybe it was that way so the long suffering reader gets a real feel for time, and struggle. However, the last 1/3 really moves and was a page turner. I am interested in reading the later books now.

More details below (vague spoiler warning).

I appreciated that the author did not call attention to the things that are hard to believe like submerging a neutral pressure suit under tens and tens of feet of water will just work and you also won’t get the bends during a panic resurfacing, and where are they getting tea from (this only pops up once) or is it actually hundreds of years old, and how come the people don’t develop distinct accents or dialects, and can they really make these things like semiconductors to last that long or do they have even that manufacturing capability??

Some things that people are knowledgable about seem quite a stretch too, given the other things we learn about the world. Like the have-nots just making up military tactics in confined spaces, on the fly with no training in it, that can succeed (for some definition) against a prepared enemy. I am suspicious of the closed ecosystem being able to sustain for that long. But I don’t know enough about ecology to be any more than that about it, so I’ll leave that one there. Or how come there aren’t problems with diseases in the later parts of the story; you’d think separate populations would generate different strains of viruses and when they meet it would be bad for one or both. Where is the underground/black market economy? It really stuck out as something missing from the world to me. There some scenes that described and used the kinds of connections that would enable black or gray market trade to exist, but it seemingly doesn’t play a part in this story.

There may have been a few too many dramatic coincidences to believe, some of them defying even the most generous probabilities.

Even with these cracks and inconsistencies though, if you don’t notice or think about it, then the story is fine. But the veneer over the true science fiction and obvious dramatic or poetic license is only paper thin. Maybe I do prefer hard sf and a little more effort on the part of the writer to make it believable in a somewhat-ordinary-or-at-least-plausible-turn-of-events-for-the-universe-that-they’ve-constructed sense. In the end, I think this story was more of a cartoon depiction than a live action staging.

All that being said, I’m curious how the author arranged all this to exist, which I think is in the first sequel.

Maybe later I will elaborate on the more constructive thought provoking ideas that I had while reading the book. Things like, this is a mirror of our current times (most writing usually is), intra- and inter- nation-state-wise, and how would I arrange a society to function in such isolation, and this is really just a different setting for the same problems and ideas of one of those generation ship scifi stories, isn’t it? I had a lot of “how could this be different” thoughts to many plot points and story choices as I read, I should keep notes on those for the next book I read.

To Reply: Email me what you're reading.

September Record of Cooking

2023-10-01T00:00:00-07:00

I’ve been trying to cook more (because I enjoy it). I also want to get better; I am already a reasonably good cook, but better is always better. The notes are here to help me improve. I’m doing science to it.

This is what I’ve been cooking. It’s not all that I ate this month, just the foods that I, myself, prepared/cooked.

2023-09-30 SAT
- Wintertime Tomato Soup, from Bittman’s How to cook everything Vegetarian. Man, this has been a favorite for years. Taking advantage of an early cool weekend to get another soup on.
- Pan Toast with that bread from a few days ago. In olive oil. Delicous.
2023-09-29 FRI
- Minimalist Korean Street Toast Egg Sandwich. Pan toasted thick slice of bread. One egg, lightly scrambled. A bit of ketchup. (picture).
2023-09-28 THU
- Roasted cauliflower.
- More popcorn.
2023-09-27 WED
- Another loaf of bread, The Standard #1. More sesame seeds. picture.
2023-09-25 MON
- Oven roasted Brussels sprouts.
2023-09-24 SUN
- Another The Standard #1 Loaf (picture). I gave away half of yesterdays, and used much of the other half for those hamburgers. This loaf is for another friend, so I’ll probably make another in a couple of days. Bread (is) Life.
- Cheeseburger, again. Achieved my desired improvements over yesterday’s burger: a bit more salt and pepper on the patty, thinner bread slices, less pink in the middle (picture). I’m still amazed that I got the patty the right size for both burgers. I think I would improve on the crust of the patty next?
- Grilled chicken thigh (picture).
2023-09-23 SAT
- The Standard #1 Loaf, from Forkish’s Evolutions in Bread (picture). I put sesame seeds on it, which is not part of the recipe. I’ll be doing that again for sure.
- Cheese Burger, on slices of the loaf above (picture).
- Oven fries (potatoes).
- Roasted Artichokes. I’d never prepared them this way; they were quite good (picture).
- Grilled chicken thigh.
- Popcorn.
2023-09-21 THU
- ‘nother grilled cheese (picture).
2023-09-20 WED
- Grilled Cheese, with my bread (picture).
- Dinner: roasted broccoli, grilled chicken, semi-brown rice (picture). Yumm mmm.
2023-09-19 TUE
- Pan toasted a slice of my bread (no picture). This counts, right?
2023-09-18 MON
- The Standard #2 loaf, from Forkish’s Evolutions in Bread (EiB). It’s that loaf I started yesterday.
- Mushroom and Eggplant Yassa, quite good actually.
2023-09-17 SUN
- Sautéed Cabbage, topped with olive oil, balsamic glaze. Letting it sit for about 5 minutes after dressing it made it better. (picture)
- Started a loaf bread.
2023-09-16 SAT
- Pain Au Bacon, from Forkish’s FWSY. It’s a hit! Kind of a lot of work though, well cooking the bacon is. Pictures: outside, inside.
- Better Than Snickers Ice Cream; we’ll see about that. But I did make my first caramel (picture). Maybe a touch burnt? Not sure.
  - I kinda wish the peanuts were lightly salted, at least.
  - Damn, this is good (picture).
- Bittman’s Potato Leek Soup. High of 76 F is soup weather, right? Right??
2023-09-15 FRI
- Bacon, for Pain Au Bacon that will be baked tomorrow (picture). I used the simmer and sauté method. The finished product was perfect, but it sure took a while.
- Pain Au Bacon, started, but it has to rise overnight.
- Bacon Sushi, because science, and I had the materials available to me. It was ok, not really consistent with the vibe of sushi. But… experimenting. picture
2023-09-14 THU
- Classic/Rome Style Alfredo, again. Better this time. picture
- Sushi party: I am sushi roll construction challenged, so we make them sloppy hand rolls. Trim the nori to small squares just big enough to hold the rice and one topping. Usually the toppings are veggies: carrot, cucumber, avocado. Not this time: tofu, egg. Instant pot sushi rice.
2023-09-12 TUE
- Carla Music’s Sautéed Scallions. Unexpectedly yum (second time making them). picture
2023-09-11 MON
- Babish’s instant pot risotto. I doubled it. Half is for my wife who is currently doing an elimination diet, so no cheese. The uncheesed part was surprisingly good; if I didn’t eat cheese I would definitely still eat this. The other half I cheesed, ate, and plan to also make arancini with the leftovers. If you can be non-traditionalist about it, the instant pot version is just great.
2023-09-10 SUN
- Toum, but started here. Tasted off. It wasn’t the right texture/consistency. Too liquidy. Maybe because I didn’t remove the germ? And I made it with the stick blender. Or maybe it was the wrong oil (canola). I tried to save it on Monday, by putting it back in the chilled food processor and adding some more chilled water and oil. I added a bit more salt too. It didn’t help. I’m frustrated, this is one of my favorites. Update: it broke. ☹️
2023-09-08 FRI
- Faux-tisserie chicken, again. This time I used regular poultry seasoning.
- Started a new sourdough starter, since my previous one (Vigor and Theref) got moldy. Picture at the end, on the 15th.
- Popcorn again.
2023-09-07 THU
- Spaghetti Squash Broccoli Pasta. This is normally made with linguine, but my wife is on an elimination diet at the moment, so we subbed in squash instead. It worked quite pleasantly well, which wasn’t really that surprising to us. It’s not the same at all, think of it as a different delicious dish.
2023-09-06 WED
- Fettuccine Alfredo, Original Rome style, for a crowd. I used dry pasta, and while the end result was tasty, it was also not very creamy. So, I will try again, with a smaller (single serving sized) batch. I think more starchy water is key. Other notes: Nailed the pasta amount, and al dente perfectly. Well almost, I got a bit of crunchy stuck together pasta, which I really don’t understand because I stirred the pot quite well several times.
2023-09-03 SUN
- Ken Forkish FWSY Same day pizza. No canned tomatoes in the house, and no regular mozza either. So, this is what I’m topping it with:
  1. Garlic candy (smashed cloves sautéed in evoo over low heat), Pecorino Romano, evoo and a few left over mozza pearls (picture). So so good. It’s another one of those random things, but sautéed garlic just became one of my favorite pizza toppings, and pecorino didn’t disappoint either (but I think it only worked so well because there was no sauce).
  2. Mozza pearls, basil, evoo (picture)
2023-09-02 SAT
- Molly Baz Cook This Book Wedge Salad (pic). This was quite good, and I would make it again. Maybe next time I would add bleu cheese or Gorgonzola to the sauce or just on top.
- Molly Baz Cook This Book Popcorn. I find that the 1:1 ratio of fats to kernels in the recipe is way too high. 1:2 fats to kernels is right for me. I skip the turmeric, and go more with something like Carla Music’s toppings. These two recipes are not all that dissimilar, and work better for me than the OG Alton Brown recipe, which uses less fats, and is in a bowl + foil. I used to have so much success with that, but somewhere I lost the thread and it just burned all the time.
2023-09-01 FRI
- Brian Lagerstrom’s mashed potatoes from the faux-tisserie chicken video (picture). I made the chicken the day before, and dang is that good- going to be a go to recipe for a while I think. I don’t have a chinois, but I do have a food mill with a fine grate; that worked well. Next time, I would reduce the liquid a bit, maybe 25%. The potatoes were very good, but a bit slack in the final result.
- Brian Lagerstrom’s bigggg cinnamon rolls (picture). I doubled the recipe, but something went wrong, maybe my notes were off. I had to add more flour to get a firm enough dough. The bake needed an extra 20 minutes to reach 190 F too. Still totally amaze-balls. Note: I double the cream cheese and reduce the sugar to 100g in the frosting. It’s still sweet, but not too sweet and it’s so so good.
  - Ok, figured out what went wrong: I didn’t weigh my wet ingredient, I used volumetric. This lead to a ~6% error in the amount of liquid, which agrees with my need to add about another ~100 g of flour. Oops.

To Reply: Email replies are the best replies.

Today's Scenery

2023-09-25T00:00:00-07:00

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Deep and Deeper Time

2023-09-22T00:00:00-07:00

There has been a surprising confluence of deep-ish time ideas swirling around my own personal bubble/echo chamber thing. Let me list them.

The future: Population peaking this century? Just how do they know that? I’m not saying this opinion article is right or wrong. Just genuinely asking, how? Trending birth rates by country.
The past: Remnants of the Santa Clara indigenous managed ecosystem. This was an in-person thing. We touched on how the native people had managed the landscape, perhaps for 100s or 1000s of years. I don’t know. The Spanish described it as like an English garden, with carefully separated trees and grassland across the whole valley floor. The mind boggles.
The future? This comment about agriculture and alternatives forms of that. As well as the books about permaculture. Our agriculture practices may last 100s of years, or they may not. Probably not.
The past and the future: The recently announced discovery of evidence of 500ky old wooden structure, and the follow up discussion about other ancient or future detectability. Reading the comments is worth it. Crikey, five hundred thousand years ago.

Hopefully this is enough for me to recapture the feeling later, when I write more about it.

To Reply: Email replies are the best replies.

The (Step) Ladder Of Intelligence

2023-08-22T00:00:00-07:00

The first rung of the ladder is, I think, noticing. Then asking questions about what you’ve noticed. After that it’s basically just habits. Those are the fundamentals.

At the top level of the step ladder things get more complicated: skills and meta-skills. But those are really forming habits of applying certain patterns of thought to what you’ve noticed. Maybe it’s about asking certain questions, or doing certain logical steps. Just following a recipe, really.

I’m not actually sure if there is anything fundamentally beyond that. It’s about working with your abilities to just do the most that you can. Not holding yourself back- that’s just noticing and questioning again. Maybe doing it faster, reflexively. Discovering or learning a new skill.

Kind of a relief to know that this is all it is to being intelligent. It’s a process, and you can focus on just doing the process better.

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Thinking as Craft

2023-08-14T00:00:00-07:00

Another book I read recently was “How to think like Shakespeare” by Scott Newstok. It’s a book mostly aimed at educators, I think. About halfway through I almost quit, but the short chapters kept drawing me back in. I ended up reading all of it.

The main idea that I took from the book was that thinking can be modeled as a trade craft, that thoughts are a materiel that must be worked. A craftsperson develops learned skills for working their material, and they develop their own methods. Some of those skills can be learned from books or other people, teachers and other craftspeople. But a lot needs to be learned and fit together in their own mind and abilities (either thinking as craft or some material craft).

I’ve found thinking as a craft to be really a very useful analogy¹ for fitting together many of the necessary skills. And for noticing that if thoughts are the material we craft with, we can separate the actions we do with thoughts (which are still other thoughts) from the resulting thoughts and thinking. It all gets very meta, abstracted, and confusing without the helping structure of the analogy.

Hopefully more on analogies later. Briefly though: analogies are useful because they give you something concrete to hang your idea on, to push against, to test for the limits of the analogy and thereby maybe uncover new insights. ↑

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Human Social Distances

2023-08-13T00:00:00-07:00

I read the Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt. It’s billed as a revisit of ancient ideas with modern sciences. Kind of a check of selection of wisdoms common to several major world religions.

One aspect that really struck me was how much of it was useful information for understanding the social world around you. I guess that makes sense; your ability to manage your own happiness is dependent on making sense of the environment you are in. There were a number of those type of ideas, but today I’ll just focus on this one, from Chapter 9.

There are two fairly obvious axes of social distance: I’ll call one tribal closeness and the other class/status hierarchy. I think of tribal closeness as being about the people you know and are comfortable being unguarded with. Ordered by increasing distance you have your immediate family, your close friends, maybe work colleagues, then neighbors and acquaintances, people with the same accent or speech patterns, the folks you share national identity with, and then the others are most distant on this axis. On the other axis, for a middle class person, below them is the poor and we can debate if it should or shouldn’t be the case but often race plays a part. On the same level are people of similar wealth and neighborhoods, or professions. Above are the wealthy, and political leaders, the pinnacle of those receiving class respect are presidents, kinds, high religious figures and officials, etc. It plays out in different ways too, age or family seniority. There are many ways.

There is a third axis, one that doesn’t get a lot of attention in the United States because of how secular the country is. It’s the divinity axis, sort of how holy or spiritual or maybe even selfless or altruistic a person or act is. This is another axis of social respect.

That’s it. Does it sound right to you? What’s missing here, is there are 4th or 5th dimension of social distance needed or do these 3 cover it?

I think that attractiveness and brute strength probably both get reconciled into the class/status hierarchy.

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First notes from 300 Arguments

2023-06-23T00:00:00-07:00

Part 1 of my notes from this interesting little book. The book is not organized into chapters, so my notes won’t have any natural break points.

Notes

I was unaware of my assumption that we would always have more time. It’s so easy to slip into that assumption. Inspired by page [4].

Notice. Practice noticing who you truly are and be that person. [5]

At some level our instantaneous language skills are always inadequate to what we feel. [8]

What might be the consequence of this? This = having a worst regret mean you believe there was an origin, a decision you made, that lead to all your undeserved misfortune (folly). This ?= trying to write perfectly (don’t do that!). Hold that question while writing stories. [12]

Other people, stupid ones, may decide what’s best for you about your grief. Your friends will give you options. [14]

This “fragment” claim, I don’t necessarily agree. The claim being that a fragment was once whole and now isn’t. Fragments can be unfinished too. [27]

When learning about each other, how much of that is automatic vs what we think is intentional? [29]

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4kw Afterward and Appendix

2023-06-22T00:00:00-07:00

These parts are a condensed and reapproached take on the whole thing.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Afterward Notes

You can’t change everything. But you can change some things. Don’t discount that.

Hope is not a plan, nor is it an action. Don’t hope. Plan and do. Think, plan, do/act.

The apocalypse is here.

Stop hoping. Start living. Stop caring. Start doing.

Appendix Notes

Fixed volume productivity. Be real about it.

Open to do list: a brain dump for all tasks, limitless.

Closed to do list: ten items at most, can’t add until something is removed.

One project at a time. Or one work project and one home project? It sounds very liberating.

Finish first (or quit) before starting another.

Nominate areas of your life where you won’t excel. Strategic failing. Cyclic failure. Focus on something that really matters, then switch to something that had to be neglected.

Keep a done list.

Cancel the morning productivity debt.

“You must focus your finite capacity to care.”

Set your phone to grayscale to make it less eye candy attractive.

Keep only mono-taskers out of the kitchen. It means that devices (tools) should only do one thing, so that don’t have the ability to distract you. Except in the kitchen.

Novelty slows the perceived passage of time. Find what’s new in a thing or activity. There are many strategies for this.

Research with curiosity, not with an outcome orientation. It opens you up to the novel. It’s an attitude of finding out e.g. who a person is. Your curiosity can be satisfied in ways you like or dislike. It doesn’t matter which, because now you know.

The generous impulse can be many things. Check in on a friend, send praise, donate money, etc. Do it right away.

Sometimes not acting is the right thing to do. Can you bear it?

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4kw Chapter 14

2023-06-21T00:00:00-07:00

This chapter is about Now.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

Surrender/vulnerable.

It’s not really four thousand weeks. It’s just now. That’s what we get. Four thousand weeks of Now.

Bobin: “life only ever gives a series of wonderfully insoluble problems.”

Hollis: does this choice diminish or enlarge me?

There is no point in waiting for someone else to validate your life. No one else will. No one else can. Only you can do it. Even then, security will not be a solved problem.

Piver: “how would you enjoy spending your time?” I don’t always/often know. Worth trying to find out, I think. Don’t avoid the question.

Confirmed: everyone is winging it.

What if I didn’t expect to see the fruits of my labors? What labors would I choose then? What leisures?

Jung: do the next most necessary thing.

AA: Do the next right thing. For navigating crises.

Me: finish the current thing. Or abandon it. Focus on one thing.

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4kw Chapter 13

2023-06-20T00:00:00-07:00

What control we really have is what this chapter is about.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

Ecclesiastes: striving after wind. You can’t do this. Or, it’s meaningless to do this.

Be an agent of deciding what post-pandemic normal looks like.

Only 35 Betty Whites ago: the Pharaohs. Knowledge could be handed down word of mouth, only 35 steps in the telephone game. I’m sure has been, but what? Or what not?

The massive indifference of the universe vs my need (preference) for a secure future.

I thought ‘nothing matters’ was Nihilism. Without the book in hand, I’m not sure what this is referring to, again.

How to accurately value what you spend your time on is probably not even the right question.

Surrender control of expecting neither too much nor too little of the weeks you are given. Take them as they come, one at a time, and just live them to the relaxed best of your ability.

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4kw Chapter 12

2023-06-19T00:00:00-07:00

Sharing time is what this chapter is about.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

Time is a network good. That’s not all it is, but that’s one way to think about it.

Some (all?) activities have a price of admission.

The Soviets had a 5 day week at one point. Four days on, one day off. Sounds like hell.

Time’s value increases when yours is in sync with someone else’s. That’s the network good thing.

Noticing a parallel: free will vs conformity; free time vs coordination.

Work creeps into all the crevices of life, like sand.

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4kw Chapter 10/11

2023-06-18T00:00:00-07:00

Taking the time is what these chapters are about.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes for 10

Things take the time that they take. Just admit it.

Patience is my super power. How do I also trust in that in my work?

Notes for 11

Admit that you don’t know and slowly examine the situation with care.

Having problems is a good thing. At the minimum, it is something to do.

The experience of patience is “tangible, almost edible.” -Grudin

Do smaller, more sustainable amounts, as little 10 minutes, and always with weekends off. Less is done in the short term, but way more in the long run. Because you don’t stop.¹

Don’t hasten. Relish instead. Attend to one thing at a time.

Keep going. You’ll get to your own originality eventually. Stay on the bus.

Look at me, not stopping on the weekend. ↑

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4kw Chapter 9

2023-06-17T00:00:00-07:00

The chapter is about how to spend this moment.

The post is just some raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

In ancient Rome/Greece, work was fundamentally undignified and not the point of being alive. Leisure was life’s center of gravity. I wonder how much of that is more about the authors and audience at the time? Maybe that’s too cynical.

Sequence of social control: church, print, radio, tv, interactive internet?

Clock time driven work of the industrial revolution put work before leisure.

Remember to be lazy, you need it.

The absurdity that is the doctrine of predestination.¹ How insidiously am I infected?

A day of rest (sabbath) is a formal way of conceding that we’re on the receiving end of this existence.

Stepping back, aren’t all activities atelic? Atelic = hobby.

Hobbyist as subversive, even (especially) those pathetic hobbies.

Having no hope of doing some activity well is an excellent reason to stop optimizing how well you use your time.

Reminder to put cross link from here to How to Think bit about animal automata. ↑

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4kw Chapter 8

2023-06-16T00:00:00-07:00

In this chapter, the focus is on being in the moment.

More (mostly) raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

Don’t say to yourself “when I finally accomplish X” all the time. Maybe even minimize the amount that you say that.

“Causal catastrophe.”¹ Well, no. Reaping the benefit of the present also means experiencing it undistracted.

So many things that we are doing for the very last time. But it’s also wrong to spend much time in the present moment focused on that aspect. Notice that it may be true as a reminder to pay attention and then do that: attend to this moment.

Don’t be absurdly oblivious to the fact that this moment is the only one we’ll get.

Capitalism instrumentalizes everything in encounters. It always asks the question “what value can be gained from this?”

How much do I struggle with the billable hour concept? I walk slow-ish, but dislike waiting in the line for lunch. Maybe if I stopped to notice more while in line it wouldn’t be so bad. This is what I do when there is no alternative to waiting, e.g. at the airport or the DMV.²

There isn’t some future, free from worry, to get to. That time is now.

Another thing that I don’t struggle with: you cannot force savoring the moment. You just relax into it, while being open to (by not anticipating) what happens. Relinquish (surrender?) control of that moment and let it work the magic. Where else does that skill apply?

You are already inescapably in the moment. (Maybe you just forget sometimes.)

I wish I still had the book. My note here doesn’t include enough context, so I don’t remember how causal catastrophe might have inspired the reaction. ↑
Or try to use that time for thinking/contemplation as I do while walking. Somehow the walking seems to help though. It could be also that there are obvious alternatives; I could choose to wait, it’s not only the food at the end of the line that is the reward. ↑

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4kw Chapter 7

2023-06-13T00:00:00-07:00

This chapter is all about the reasons we don’t focus on the present, and why those reasons are wrong.

These are (mostly) raw notes and thoughts from my reading of Four Thousand Weeks.

You might be wondering, where is chapter 6? I guess I didn’t take any notes. I’ve returned the book to the library, so I can’t check to make sure I actually read it and just didn’t find anything noteworthy. I suppose it’s possible that I didn’t have my notebook with me while I read it, so those potential notes are lost. Such is life.

Notes

Hofstadter’s law (the planning fallacy that projects always take longer than we think) is a kind of cousin to the tendency of physical objects to not do what we expect. Straps catch on things, cups aren’t where you expect and get knocked over, forks resist going into the dishwasher’s utensil receptacle. It may be a degree or two removed. I think all these fall under the Murphy family tree. It’s a case of us assuming we have it more in hand than we really do, for various reasons of a lack of understanding. The future isn’t knowable, so planning starts off at a disadvantage. But assuming you know where something is well enough that you can dodge around it when you aren’t looking, that’s another kind of information deficit. Let’s call it the problems of missing information.

Beware of over investment in actually accomplishing your goals, or when they’ll be done. Have a looser hand on the plan tiller.

It reminds me of the ‘long defeat’ mentioned by Tolkien. Is that a pessimistic view?

Review the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:34). Why worry about the future (or the past) when there is enough to worry about in the present?

Don’t mind what happens → love your fate.

Goldstein said “a plan is just a thought.” And that’s a good reason to not anchor too much on it. What if I extend it a bit to something like “a plan is just a though, rational as any other.” Or instead of rational, what about “sane”, or even just “same”.

A plan is a statement of intent. I suppose sometimes it’s a commitment, and other times it’s more aspirational.

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4kw Chapter 5

2023-06-12T00:00:00-07:00

The theme this chapter is on our experience of attention.

More unsorted, undeveloped, and raw notes and thoughts from Four Thousand Weeks.

Notes

Attention is the experience of being alive - you pay for attention with the minutes of your life.

Variable reward is used to keep us pulling down for refresh. For checking our phones, inboxes, feeds, etc. I hate being manipulated. It takes a will, but batched delivery is much better for our brains.

The industry of the attention economy distorts our model of reality by bringing to our attention the things that we find most compelling. Our model of reality is just that, a model, and it’s all we have for interacting with reality. It’s assembled out of the things that we have attended to with our minds.

Non-engineered reality struggles to compete with the engineered meta-reality that the attention economy folks present to us. Actually, real reality is much richer, more subtle, so interactive and present, full of surprises. But you have to show up for it.

Focusing on this moment, no matter how unpleasant, can make it completely engrossing.

Boredom is the pressure of our finitude. Finitude is another word for our mortal limitation. I’ll have to pay more attention, but this is not what my recollection of boredom is. I’m not even sure that I feel bored anymore; those times are an opportunity to notice what I notice.

Distraction just needs to make you feel unconstrained (contrasted with finite); it doesn’t need to be fun.

Finitude is also another way of saying “this is it.”

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4kw Chapter 4

2023-06-09T00:00:00-07:00

Continuing to collect all my random jottings and notes from Four Thousand Weeks here.

Notes

How to decide what NOT to do, but wisely?

Try a three task limit. It’s a hard upper limit on works-in-progress. I typically do a short list, a handful, three, five, maybe seven. I can usually tell when it’s too long, but also have refused to admit I need to do a tradeoff and drop something (for now), but struggle to actually do that last step.

These should be bite sized chucks so they don’t occupy a slot for months. Wait, these slots persist for more than a day? I typically organize it on a daily basis, but maybe I should rethink that.

This is hard, but you have to say NO to things that you want to do. Which ones?

Finitude Acknowledgement Distress = FAD.

Avoiding making something (a task? a project?) concrete and limited, just we ourselves are, is an appeal to the vague mystery. The not understood is always interesting. I think I am mixing up a few thoughts here, but the one quote I do recall is attributed to Tacitus via Doyle through Stoker: Everything unknown seems magnificent. The ill-defined is also safe because we can make it in our minds to be anything.

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4kw Chapter 3

2023-06-06T00:00:00-07:00

Continuing this series of my notes and thoughts about the book. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive summary of the material of the book. Honestly, in looking over all the notes that I’ve collected, each one of these paragraphs could be expanded into a full blog post of my own extended thoughts and questions and reflections about just that one idea.

Notes

Heidigger book “Being and Time” sounds like it could be interesting. I am, however, pretty allergic to the fact that he was an actual Nazi. WTF am I supposed to do with that?

“To be…” is for humans an unfinished, or unresolved, sentence. e.g. Hamlet.

To be temporarily. The temporary-ness is inseparable from the being-ness.

“I can’t entirely depend on a single moment of the future.”

Whatever I am doing today is only one of a handful of times that I will get to do it. And of these, this time is unique too. Does it make everything just too precious?

Being, in an absolute temporary way, really grants you the opportunity to focus on living. If you can keep that in mind. Being and temporary are contrasting opposites?

On the left is zero being, never having been born at all. On the right is existence (effectively/practically) of all time- the permanent atoms bearing witness to eternity.

When annoyed by some inconvenience, remind yourself of the alternative that is not experiencing anything at all.

Ask yourself “which activity do I want to [spend] this moment on?” This moment, and this activity, is an opportunity. Even if it’s something that you may have considered an annoyance. I do not like the word choice of “spend” here.

Consider also JOMO = joy of missing out.

Deliberate selection of activity gives it meaning. Remember that you can say “I choose this.” I don’t think that means you always get to choose that activity of every moment. But you can choose how your mind approaches it.

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Notes from Four Thousand Weeks

2023-06-02T00:00:00-07:00

Just some quick notes about different ideas that struck me as I was reading the first couple of chapters. I might develop them more later. Or just leave them here.

They’re not verbatim quotes; I have rewritten them in my own words.

Chapter 1

(A farmer’s work is) work is infinite. There are theories of idea generation (be it art, science, engineering, invention, anything) that map to hunting, farming, foraging, gardening, etc. Even pirates.

Comparing the value of some future benefit earned by this moment against the value in just living this moment, the future value often wins. Maybe the future value idea shouldn’t win so often. It really shouldn’t.

Fear is just part of the deal and it will not destroy you.

Reality is a painful constraint and time is only one aspect of it.

Facing the way that things truly are (as best as you can tell) is pretty effective, and it should be self correcting. The best guess at the way things truly are is bound to be wrong, either some of the time, or by a little, or even by a lot. With more information, the way things “truly” are will update and be closer to the truth.

Richard Bach: “You teach best what you most need to learn.”

Eigenzeit = the time inherent in the thing (process) itself. It takes as long as it takes, no need to rush it.

Chapter 2

The painful truth of our limitations: which people to disappoint. You can decide, or ignore it and default into some choice.

One option is to more efficiently use your time. Or even choose to use more of it, like that tired time at the end of the day. That over withdrawal, it comes due though, you go into deficit that way. Another option is to experiment with the other side of the equation, what if you free up more time by choosing to do fewer things and regale in that down time. Charge up and background process.

Be less invested in the getting to that finish line, any finish line. This is taking that idea of future value all the way to zero. The only value you get out of that project is what comes in the current moment. It doesn’t matter if it ever finishes. Not always the right choice, but maybe it’s a good baseline, so you at least capture the current moment’s value.

Parkinson’s law: what qualifies as “needs doing” expands to fill the available time.

Sisyphus was a king. TIL.

The surface area of all your interests and projects and ideas is vast. The potential surface area of that surface is multiplicatively vaster again. Of course you can think of so much more than can actually be done. Just appreciate that for a moment.

“Existential overwhelm” = the modern world’s never ending supply of things that might be worth doing.

Reminds me of RINORIN = read it now or read it never. Seen here, yesterday.

The fact that we don’t default to believing in an afterlife, plus our modern belief that the future is ever improving (not static, or cyclic, as historically thought), added to the awareness of our finite life, leaves us feeling the pressure to experience it all or as much as is possible. FOMO to the infinite.

Do not become a limitless reservoir for other’s expectations. Learning to say no.

The anti-skill is not getting it all done, and being ok with that.

Since you actually cannot do it all, be present for the things you do get to experience. And, choose those things better.

Friction is just one of those things. It can forge bonds of connection with place, give humanity. Some things are worth those costs, so don’t just toss them out for more convenient ways of achieving the same ends. Invest that cost in the things that are worth it. Or at least be intentional about choosing to.

The relentless improvements of these conveniences, which remove that friction, also sometimes remove the humanity. This leads to “tech-induced loneliness”. The innovation ladders maybe also just shifts around the friction or inconveniences, it’s never ending. I don’t think abandoning the improvements is always the right choice. I’m not advocating for being a Luddite here.

It isn’t the thought that counts, it’s the inconvenience you went to for the gift. It was worth it to endure that so you could give the small happiness to your friend or relative. Solving the inconvenience makes the give empty for the both of you.

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The Experiment Frame

2023-05-29T00:00:00-07:00

The Experiment Frame/framework/framing
Know thyself by experiment
Introspective experimentation
Reframe to experiment

I’ve found it useful to reframe a problem to be solved and instead to think about experiments that I can do to help me understand. There are a few reframes that I’ve found useful when thinking about a problem or situation. This time I want to write about reframing to an experiment, particularly when working with the problem¹ of knowing yourself. I suppose it helps that I am an experimentalist by training, so I’ve spent a lot of time formulating experiments to help understand.

When faced with any sort of problem where I’m not sure how to proceed, I’ve found that a useful strategy is to reframe the problem to experiments aimed at learning more. The challenge is usually remembering that this is a strategy that works in a lot of contexts: introspective, inter-personal, technical, and even more. Let me focus on the tricky problem of personal growth, and how this technique can be applied.

Let me outline.

I am going to tell you about the thinking tool of the Experiment Reframe.
I’ll focus on knowing yourself via experiment.
My default, without this tool is to assume I already know enough.
How to operate an experiment.
An example.
I told you about the Reframe to an Experiment tool for thinking.
This tool applies in a lot of places, so I expect that I’ll revisit to work through the problem of the experiment frame again.
By the way, here are some other frames that I’ll tell you about later.

Introduction

Ok, so I want to tell you about this tool that I use when thinking about a problem. I call it the experiment framing. One step in the process is that I recognize that I need to know more than I currently do about something. So I frame my gathering of that as an experiment and attempts at solving it are ways to get more information. This reduces the emotional burden of expecting success on each attempt. It’s sort of meta thinking, or parallel thinking. Thinking about your thinking; thinking with your thinking.

Know yourself by experiment

One place that is pretty good to apply this is to your own image of yourself. The old adage to “know yourself” and “a life unexamined is a life not worth living” come to mind. This tool is one way to further those efforts. I think it’s particularly useful because we’re often blind to ourselves. This method can offer some insights. It takes a lot of time and effort and introspection to know ourselves. Maybe it’s also a “getting older” thing.

Knowing yourself ab initio

Personally, I have had to unlearn the habit of assuming that I already know my limitations, or preferences, or abilities. It’s so easy to just be in our own heads, living by rote or routine. This is a sort of unknowing and unexamining of ourselves. We change over time, so it’s worthwhile to revisit past experiments too- we’re not the physical world where experiment outcomes shouldn’t change over time. Our minds are plastic, learning, and changing. Check up on that.

Principles of how do Experiment

So, how to do it? The rigorously correct way is to first state the problem, second formulate a hypothesis, third perform the experiment, fourth review the results. Let me break that down a bit more. Some examples of problems where experimenting might help you understand: “I don’t like clams,” “I’m bad at sports,” “I am not a morning person.” The corresponding hypotheses might be “clams have a bad taste,” “I won’t sink a free-throw,” “getting up early is very hard.” I think the experiments are pretty obvious, but for pedantic reasons I’ll write them down anyway: “make some clam chowder and try to eat it,” “get a basketball and shoot some free-throws,” “set the alarm clock earlier than usual.” Finally, note what happened: “still don’t like clams, but the soup part was good,” “sank some free-throws and actually had a good time,” and “it was hard to get up early but doable.”

I think what’s going on here is that by framing it as an experiment you are primed to notice more aspects. You become an observer of yourself, and inquire more deeply about thing other dual of the experiment. Instead of focusing on your remembered reaction to it, and replaying that when confronted with that thing again (clams, basketballs, or early mornings), you are open to noticing more of the experience of it. You are open to some surprises, even if just a little bit.

Practical example

Let me run through it again, but with just one example from my own life, and in a lot more messy detail.

At the high level, this is what I’m doing.

Here are the messy details.

So that’s the experiment framing

it’s not only for knowing yourself

Some other tools for thinking that I use

I didn’t talk about when to use it

I mean problem in the sense of “as a practical matter, how to do it?” without any negative connotations implied. ↑

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Make it work for you

2023-04-30T00:00:00-07:00

I think there might not be a more foundational lesson than that whatever it is, you have to make it work for you. Every skill that you learn, it has to be hand tuned to your own style. It must be impedance matched, by you, to your own mind and abilities and preference. Maybe that’s called mastery, or maybe it’s just learning something and owning it, I’m not sure.

This is not to say that you should completely reinvent the wheel with every new skill. Take from what others say the skill is; learn from that example. But then adapt it to your own web of skill and abilities, which does require some inventiveness of your own. It’s a critical step, never stop doing this.

I’ll give a couple of examples.

When cutting vegetables for cooking, and I’m just an amateur at this, there are a few things to remember. The things to remember increase with the level of skill you bring to it, but so does the automatic recall from practice. How to hold the knife, it’s particular to your hand. I’ve found that it evolves over the years, as your hand ages and wears, or your strength changes. Hard vegetables like carrots take a different grip than soft ones like tomatoes or potatoes, which have their own particular needs. Cutting them evenly is another kind of attention. Remembering to treat each of these aspects of the skill with care is it’s own skill too. You can see, there is quite a lot here for this practical kitchen skill.

Going to a more abstract skill, I’ll talk about algebra. I don’t use it day to day anymore, but I’ve had quite a lot of practice at it and it is a language I am fluent. There is skill of noting which variable is of interest, and not losing track of that. There are the operations of moving around the different variables. Not losing a sign or constant as you work down the page. Expanding and simplifying, it’s not so much the operation but how you execute it that is the skill. This is what I mean by making it your own. Others will perform the same operations, but they have there own mnemonics to help them, or little rhymes or what have you.

The same is true of all skills. Some you may become so fluent at that you don’t even see these little adaptions that you, yes you, invented to make them your own skills. But they are there.

And when you learn a new skill, even if it’s been years since you have done so, you’ll have to invent new adaptations to learn the skill and make it your own. It’s one of the steps necessary to add it to your own network of skills.

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Drowning in Distraction

2023-04-25T00:00:00-07:00

Lately I’ve felt much more acutely the demands on my attention. The unending prompts to join newsletters, the ubiquitous advertisements, even my own constant curiosity about so many different things new to me or not. I’ve written about it recently: a, b. I don’t have the answers, but I think I have a couple of things to try.

The experience of it: drowning, falling, out of conrol.

Take control; be intentional about where you spend your attention.

Pull back, regroup. Just pause for a bit.

Devote time to fewer things, but things that recharge.

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More Saturday Rambling

2023-04-23T00:00:00-07:00

Doing less seems like such an important thing. The productivity maximizing habit (fetish, really), isn’t actually maximizing my productivity, creativity, or even my success, much less my enjoyment of life. I’ve found that just stopping work on several things, as hard as it is to do that, quickly improves so many aspects of my life. Maybe the more you do, the less you can be present for, and the faster that time flows. Certainly the more you try to do, the less you can do of those things. It’s also relevantly in the background of this post by Austin Kleon.

Play is a really important activity. I don’t mean mandatory playing, or playing with a purpose. Some how that capital-e Expectation That Something Will Be Accomplished that comes with that attitude really just ruins restorative aspects of playing. I’ve found it is really difficult to not set a goal for myself with an activity, particularly once I’ve developed some skill or interest. But, it really matters to set aside that unstructured, aimless, goal-less time. The only criteria for success is enjoying my time doing whatever it is I am playing at. Don’t ruin it by making careful notes; trust that you’ll absorb what you need to.

Uncertainty: I read this article which is related to what I wrote earlier this week, although it took things a somewhat different direction than I was looking for. I don’t think I take any comfort yet from the reminder that it really is uncertainty all the way down; we’re just estimating what the state of the system is, whether that system is an atom or another person. Probably without realizing it, I’ve been gravitating toward the desire for certainty, no matter that all certainty is false or at best less certain than it seems. All that is, except death and taxes.

Sentimental/Romantic I caught myself having a strange longing for the imagined simple life of uninteresting times. Being able to look back on a life of thousands of identical evenings, seasons of repeating feasts and labors, of knowing that I will be eating X tomorrow morning as assuredly as the sun will rise. This is not the life I live, have never lived that way. It’s always an unending struggle to decide what to cook this week, what spend my time on, which project to tackle next. Upon inspection I really don’t think that this simpler time that I imagine is actually any more free of the stresses that I suffer today, in fact probably has more. To a certain degree, these stressors are self-inflicted, or at least exposure to them is something that I have some agency over.

It’s funny, but another thing that I occasionally get romantic ideas about is smoking a pipe. It’s a hilarious anachronism, and whenever I’ve had the chance to try it, the romance is quickly dispelled by the unpleasant practicalities. After the second or third attempt, the desire to actually go do this has worn off. But the feeling that it might be nice, if it didn’t suck, well that still visits when I read certain books.

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Belief

2023-04-19T00:00:00-07:00

I was reading Pinker the other day, and he wrote something that seems rather obvious when you think about it. “To hear or read a statement is to believe it, at least for a moment.” And “Any statement that is untagged is treated as true.”¹ Here, tagging is with a label of true or false. For some, I think it is even the inner voice that is heard and believed, which is possibly another too obvious statement to bother with writing down. That is, until you stop to think about the implications and downstream consequences of this belief that are so important to understand.

I haven’t much time, so I’ll be rather brief. I’m sure others have already written about this; I suspect it is in “Thinking Fast and Slow”, and I’m sure also that Feynman has had something to say about it. Maybe I’ve read this idea before and that’s why it seems obvious. I will find those later and add another note if it make sense to do. It’s still profound.

Inwardly, it is most difficult. We are easily fooled, and most easily fooled when we trust the origins of the statement. There are so many levels to this when that origin is ourselves. It has been grappled with for ages and ages. The theory of knowledge, it’s a whole discipline.

I do not wish to be distracted by the more esoteric aspects of theories of knowledge, just the practicalities. It is very difficult though, so I must form a good question and make a passable experiment, I think. Too many questions occur to me at the moment, so I will have to come back to it. Just to put a concrete idea here though: obviously we don’t need to question the existence of our own thoughts, those surely exist if anything does. It’s the next step after that where everything is lost in an inky un-solid blackness.

Outwardly, it is somewhat less difficult but I wouldn’t say it is easy. So much of the outside world is either very concrete stuff, or maps onto concrete things. Almost any abstract thing, from energy fields to game theories, eventually causes a movement of something physical. (What are counter examples of this?) I won’t bother with learning chess at this point, not until I have a lot more free time, but it seems to be an apt analogy: those eventual concrete motions of the abstract things, they may not turn up for a while. It’s the making decisions about the future, as yet unrealized things, that is difficult, and where belief comes into it.

It is much too easy to believe ideas, and even ideas that are being only hypothetically explored can have such a magnetic pull that seeing the nearby but different ideas really takes an effort.

This entry is, again, unsatisfyingly unfinished. But there I must leave it.

“The Sense of Style” by Steven Pinker (2014) P172. ↑

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Framing

2023-04-18T00:00:00-07:00

Yesterday I touched on the difficulty of knowing what the right choice for you or me is. I have more to say, but about a different facet of the difficulty here.

It has been said that “advice is a dangerous gift”, so let me be clear that this is not an advice column. I am exploring my own challenges, seeking to see what I think in what I have written. You may join me, or not. I will say no more about that.

There is a problem of imagination, or what choice is present and possible for some is completely invisible to others and they are undistracted. A particular illness of the creative, or educated, or people with a certain amount of experience, is to see so many options that none seems better or worse, or at least they all (or just many) offer some value or interest. It’s a different thing than ‘analysis paralysis’, the present options arise unbidden and need no particular analysis to make one paralyzed. They are obviously interesting. There is also, comically, the opposite problem: too many bad options, none of which appeal or seem to have any redeeming qualities. I guess that’s a kind of irony.

In my mind’s eye I see this, vividly, as a dirt path at a saddle point (col): forward into the valley are many good ways to go, behind the other valley beckons with so many treacherous choices. Vaguely to the hard left or right are paths that lead up into the higher mountains and maybe clouds.

I think with this thicket of choices that one of the dangers is less about finding satisfaction and more about settling in tolerance. One choice or another might not seem all that satisfying, but either is tolerable and maybe not without merits. Inwardly I wonder which would be useful. Outwardly, the signs are that I am satisfied with my choice. The two worlds are well hidden from each other and can only communicate through the little window facing between them. It is up to the only person that has any access to them both to notice the discrepancy and speak up about it.

This is where it gets tricky. A third party has entered the scene: you’ve got to tell someone about what you’ve decided. What do we have? We have: the outside situation which is a mix of choices with one selected, there is the inside response to that scene, and I suppose an internal observer trying to make sense of those two things. If I remember my college psychology right, that’s the id, or maybe ego? I’ll have to look it up. Depending on how you count that observer, which I think is tangled up with the inside response, there are 3 or 4 puzzle pieces now, all of them dynamic to some degree or other.

We’re coming to the end of this entry now, but there is a little more I can add. There are a couple of ways that I see this can be framed. One frame is a free choice, your internal observer has made the best guess of both internal and outward results, and you pick the option that seems best given what you know. It won’t always turn out as desired, for a variety of reasons, dominant ones being error, missing information, and chance. If you are paying attention you can learn something useful from all of those. Another frame is an optimization problem that tries to satisfy all the people involved, and any other constraints that you deem relevant. There are times when this is the right model, but if too often chosen you’ll probably lose your way. The optimization problem sounds quite similar to the free choice frame, but I see it as a significant and meaningful matter of degrees different, even if they are on the same continuum.

No resolution here yet, but progress is progress.

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Choices

2023-04-16T16:00:00-07:00

Yesterday I wrote about how many options we have, so many thing we could do with our time. I’d like to elaborate, I have more to say. Because, you see, there is far far more choice of what to do than any one person could possibly ever even realize. Even me.

The way I see it, it breaks down the usual way: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. And unknown knowns, which are either things that someone knowns (sic, lol), that person is just not you, or it’s things that you’ve forgotten that you know but will realize it again when the right situation arises. Maybe those two conditions are kind of the same thing, depending on other conditions.

Another thing that I think about this is that there are uncountably many choices between any other choice one could make. What I mean is that, sure, there is the reductive take which is that when faced with a fork in the road you’ve only got a few options: left, right, stay put, or turn around. That’s already twice more choices than often listed in that cliche, and we’re just getting started. We live in a time ordered universe, you could wait a bit and see who else happens along before abandoning that plan and venturing a bit down the left branch, change your mind a few steps down the lane before returning to the right one. As far as metaphor goes, it was a whole sequence of binary choices, or ternary, or quaternary, depending on how you look at it.

What am I getting at with that? That the obvious choices aren’t the only ones, and even after that you can sequence them and I bet you’ll see something else entirely. You are not on rails here, and as long as you elect to be your own agent, you’ll have agency over the choices that you make. With that ability, who knows what you’ll find or experience.

Ok, I think I’ve gotten a bit far from that other end of this axis, which is how to make a choice when there are so many interesting ones to pick from. Truth is, I don’t really know, and I don’t want to parrot something that I don’t believe and haven’t been able to put to great practice myself. What I can say is that you’ve got to decide it for yourself. Well, you don’t. But you may not find it as satisfying. Not deciding for yourself will certainly be easier for a while. I feel safe in saying that eventually other people’s choices for you will get pretty uncomfortable. Possibly torturous, even.

Another thing that I feel pretty safe in saying is that the advice “you’ll just know” is probably kind of wrong. With out a lot of attention to your inner voice (or whatever you want to call it), it’s only the really wrong choices that will be obvious. Something that is kind of right is probably going to be hard to distinguish from something that is more right. I don’t know the difference until I’ve spent some time on that choice, inhabiting it, following it up, pursuing it. Even then, it’s often not the choice (activity?) itself that makes it clear that this isn’t the best fit. At least, I think that is what is going on there.

Another choice begins to appeal, distract, interfere. This is the point in this entry where my own logic reaches it’s limits. Stay with the old choice, or change? You don’t have to forget everything that you learned before, so it’s not lost, not abandoned.

Choice’s End?

I guess it depends on what the goal is. Productivity? Bah. Achievement? Achieve what. Achievement (impact), takes follow through, dedication. That’s a worthy choice, I think. It may amount to a hill of beans. I bet people would come from miles around to see a hill of beans of a certain size. Glory, then.

Glory to who? Self? God, if there is such a one? Do you need to be trained to accept your own achievement? Ready to believe in your own success? I was never taught this acceptance, to know what that kind of satisfaction looks like. It’s never enough. I suspect that some people have this worse than others. More glory and more, never enough. Do we just stop when we’re tired enough?

[lightly edited for typos, missing or wrong words, and such]

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Saturday Morning Pages

2023-04-15T10:45:00-07:00

I have a few thoughts swirling around this morning. I’m just going to jam them out, morning pages style. I set a timer, 30 minutes, go! The only rule is to keep on typing, don’t stop. This will be a mess, enjoy it. Maybe it will inspire you (or future me) to develop some of these ideas more. As has been said, writing is an idea generator.

1 What Are We Doing

People are wild. Humans are a malleable mind, you can achieve anything you want and do it with other humans too. This is kind of a curse? It makes the world a bizarre place.

A friend of mine is traveling abroad for an extended period of time: I get periodic text updates. I actually like this quite a bit; the informality of text messages really lends itself to honesty. Today’s update is about how he had visited the corpse of a long dead leader in south Asia. It’s a think you can do when you are in the area. That’s crazy, and while I guess I have a vague recollection that this is a thing that probably hadn’t stopped being available to people to do, it wasn’t something that I had actively thought about in years. So my friend’s visit, well, it made the fact that is a thing that could be done, well, it made it very real. Visiting is one thing. But the machinery that enables that visit, and the fact that people do, or are required to do it as part of their education. My mind boggles.

This is a thing that we humans do in this world. It occurs because someone willed it to. Or in that particular despot’s case, not what he in particular willed, but his followers after he was gone. And, of course, this is not without precedent. The preservation of bodies has been going on for, well, quite a loooong time.

Part of me wonders if this is not some animal attachment to the rage of surviving in this chaotic inferno that is life on rock in a vast sea of nothingness. We choose to not let this person go, in the same way that Sartre said that hell is other people. It’s what we imagine them to be. It’s all pictures in our minds, twitching neurons trying to make sense of something more than just survival.

The malleable mind, and the drive to achieve or outlast or survive or at least make a mark. It’s kind of a curse.

2 Too Much To Do

There are just too many damn things to do in this world. Analysis paralysis, or even just over subscription is a governor on what we as individuals can achieve. I should probably read 4000 weeks or something to help me get better at focusing.

Some things that I want to do this weekend: practice writing, make ice cream, improve at bread baking, fix the sprinklers in the yard, read more of a couple of books, watch a movie, do some fixing in the house, cook something good for dinner, continue practicing cooking because I enjoy it. Pick some art for purchase. Go for a run, do my PT. Laundry, clean the garage, tidy up, make sourdough pancakes with some discard and figure out what to do with the rest of the discard or just throw it away. Develop a process for better record of life (diary?) writing materiel.

Doesn’t seem like much. Heh.

Then there are the things that I have elected to not do also: practice music making or even just some synth sound design stuff, make some art of my own, learn how to draw or paint, post on social media more, actually pay attention to the tv that is on sometimes. Probably not research for a book I’d like to write, and while we’re at it, not actually write any of the novels that I think I could write. Yet.

Ugh, so much stuff that is not done but would be super cool to do. Now it seems like an overwhelming pile of things to do. Impossibly many. At some point the mind abstracts and this list of 10-30 minutes tasks turns into “do those things” which is not a task, it’s an achievement.

3 The Writing Voice

I’m annoyed with my writing style, but I’ve got to write with it anyway to change it. This messy post feels better. Yesterday’s post about Paris-Roubaix felt like it had no life. Straight reportage, which a little bit of my own (detached) observations.

I hate it.

But if I hadn’t written it, I wouldn’t be able to put my finger on what the problem I have with what I write is. And I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hate this too. It’s unedited, messy, maybe not even factually coherent or accurate. I don’t know, that’s not the point, that’s not how you improve.

Best part is, no one will read this. Well, maybe one or two people. And some LLM, that’s for sure.

So, what do I want in my writing? Clarity, force, a point of view. To see that some human is authoring it, with a particular perspective that is understandable. Feeling, and wisdom. Something that makes you recognize another mind there, maybe even provokes some thoughts of your own that you could converse with. Writing that is worth reading, spending time with.

How many obvious sentences do you have to write to get something original?

I guess I don’t want to just write pointless commentary. It should be something with depth and meaning, personal observations that would help another person with their own struggle to make sense of it all. Solving the worlds problems? Isn’t that just commentary?

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Paris-Roubaix (hommes et femmes)

2023-04-14T19:00:00-07:00

I watched the extended highlights of both the men’s and women’s Paris-Roubaix races, and I gotta say the women’s race looked much tougher this year. It had rained before the women’s race, so the course was much messier and consequently more dangerous. The competition was also much tighter for the women, and there were indeed more falls, pileups, and crashes. In the women’s race, there was a bunch-up entering the velodrome, and even a crash. The first finisher in the men’s race was so far ahead that he was all alone.

In both races this year I noticed a lot of side tracking in the cobble sections, more for the men than the women since the men’s course was dry, but there was still some on the women’s race. This felt like cheating the spirit of the race, which is meant to be on the cobbles. But, choosing the side track wasn’t without risks: it could end abruptly and the rider would have to hop a small curb back onto the uneven cobblestone road, or the friction might be even less of a given.

There were more punctures and flats shown the men’s race highlights than the women’s. That might be because there were actually a lot more crashes to show in the women’s highlights.

I don’t typically read any reporting on the cycling races, I’m just here for the spectacle, so I don’t really know anything about the factual accuracy of my observations above. Take that as you will.

Addendum

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Garbage Text

2023-04-13T10:00:00-07:00

I’ve started doing it again. Treating this space as too pristine, too perfect, for any of my writing. And that blocks me from actually writing anything here at all.

Of course I want to share what’s good here. But it’s more important to finish, loosely defined, anything at all and move on to the next piece. Quantity over quality. That will drive the quality up through practice and having a body of work to refer to and see how it could be improved.

Weather Report 2023-04-07 FRI

2023-04-07T23:00:00-07:00

There was rain this morning, but it was over before I got up. I am thankful for the rain, even if I also just wish that this interminable winter would end. There has been a seemingly endless parade of storms since December, one or two a week. Funny thing about this bit of rain is that my back lawn sprinkler didn’t get the message I guess. So it ran, needlessly. Oh well.

Much of the rest of the day was quite dark, and when the wind blew it was chilly. Not that I was actually out there much. Just to walk the dogs.

Evening time was still cool, but at least the sun had come out. We walked the dogs over to the park, and because there was a little league practice we didn’t actually let them off. Visited with the other neighborhood folks about weekend plans, favorite foods, and the sports we used to play. Just getting to know each other a little more, bit by bit over the weeks and years, as you do. That was nice.

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Turning Inside-out

2023-04-03T20:05:00-07:00

I want you to think back to an earlier time, in ten year steps. In my mind, I am comparing the state of the world, whatever that means, to the past. Compare 2023 to 2013, and 2013 to 2003. For bonus points, if you are old enough, compare 2003 to 1993. This is about my limit; I only have dim memories of the early 1980s.

When I compare 2023 against 2013, I think that a lot has changed. Maybe more to the point, a lot is changing currently. You can make your own list. I don’t think the contents of the list matter particularly for the point that I am making. In 2013 there was less significant stuff changing quite so rapidly or profoundly. It could be that my memory is not great, or that I was still partially living under a rock at the time. At least I had returned from overseas by then and was absorbing the media landscape in the language I was born into.

When I look at 2013 and 2003, they seems much the same as each other. There is some new stuff, some different stuff. But also a lot of the same stuff.

I think the extra reflection on 2003 and 1993 really helps me. There are some pretty big changes between these two years. Maybe it’s a foreshock of what we are experiencing now? New things in my life in 2003 were: cell phones, email addresses, laptop computers that I personally owned, mp3s (but still a lot of CDs). Those are some concrete changes that you’ll notice in your day to day.

Maybe it’s that more of our lives are lived digitally now. Changes in the digital landscape are noticeable today because we’re always connected, always online.¹ Another generation of those online things are being tilled over back into the digital earth. Today feels more like the world is being turned inside out more than I’ve ever experience in my life. What a weird time we’re in.

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I’m not saying we should be online so much, but we sure are. ↑

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Airing of Grievances

2023-03-31T16:00:00-07:00

Placard

Consider this a ritual (there will be others). I don’t want to be a party pooper, but I am also a human being. That is a privilege that I will not be giving up anytime soon, hopefully. One of it’s encumbrances is an emotional response to experiences. I choose, for my ritual expression in the context of frustration, to be a periodic airing of grievances. Expect repeat offenders, but also expect some reflection and examination of past grievances. A devising of new coping strategies. Progress toward that end.

Let the process begin.

Complaints

Can nothing be done about this unending rain that this winter has wrought upon the sunset state that is California? The irony of my much anticipated near future (and near past) grievance of “will somebody please do something about the drought that has befallen us” is not lost on me.

Bay area traffic sucks, commuting sucks, it’s exhausting.

Like, phone tag with the vets around here. It’s impossible. This is kind of important to me, can we just get in touch?

I am tired of the LLM hype machine. can we get a rest? Yes we can.

I am aggrieved that entering camera from lock screen, and then re-locking, leaves focus mode stuck in camera mode. iPhone problems.

That cold cold wind.

Again with the physical objects being particularly insolent. Boiling bean water droplet, just one or two, right in the eye. Ouch! (I must just take greater care, like I used to do).

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Reading Two Tolkiens

2023-03-31T14:43:00-07:00

Currently reading: The Return of the Shadow by Christopher Tolkien 📚

and

Currently reading: The Fellowship Of The Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien 📚

I read the first chapater of FR, and then the same in RS (first phase, anyway), and it was totally unsettling. Like reading the twilight zone version of some history you know really well. What a trip. I’m going to do the reverse order for chapter 2 and see if that is less unnerving.

It’s been quite a while since I read LotR (I pronounce it loter), over 20 years, I think. I have seen the extended version of Jackson’s films quite a few times over those years, and the memory of the films has really modified what I thought was in the text. So this is kind of like re-reading with fresh eyes. I’m pretty excited!

The RS / history of the text, after the alternate history take is absorbed, is also super-duper fascinating. Like a mystery novel in construction. I’m enjoying what I’ve read so far.

Nerd alert 🚨

😁

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Too Curious

2023-03-28T20:45:00-07:00

I’m bad at not being curious about things. There are a few things that I have elected to not be curious about, like the details of bicycle maintenance (easily a rabbit hole I could fall down). The list is not long, of those things. And there are some things that I have a hard time being curious about, that I wish I was more curious about, like baseball, cycling as a spectator sport, and playing chess. Those first two I thoroughly enjoy watching, but stats and stuff, it’s difficult. Maybe it’s the memorization/association about specific names? Names are hard. Anatomy, I’ve got a slight allergy to that one.

Ok, those things aside, I’m basically insatiably curious about almost everything else. Like it can be a problem, because when you are curious about too much stuff, you never settle down on any one thing. Something else always beckons; they’re all rabbit holes. There is never enough time, because, well, there isn’t enough time for all that stuff.

I should be more intentional about what curiosity I engage with. Maybe something like 80% of my “free” curious time on topics that I know I am happily curious about, and the other 20% free range? Probably still too many topics in that 80%. I’m going to need a twelve step program here. But, I’m not making any firm decisions right now, just putting this out there.

There isn’t really a wrong answer here, just maybe ones that net out more enjoyment than others. On an individual preference basis.

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Right time to write?

2023-03-27T21:00:00-07:00

I apologize in advance for this. I waited until the end of the day to start writing this. And I just don’t have the energy for it. So I’m going to quickly report (badly) on the weather here, in “sunny” California.

Weather report

It was windy and cold this morning. But when the wind died down, and you were in the sun, it was warm. You’d still need a puffy coat, for us acclimated transplant now-locals anyway.

Tomorrow it’s going to rain, again. This has been the rainiest, longest winter I’ve experienced here in California. I think it’s the eighth winter? The first one was the warmest winter I’ve ever experienced, anywhere. It was in the 90s in January that first winter. But this year? This year it’s been quite stormy, and I’ve enjoyed that.

There was frost on the neighbors roof this morning. It’s almost April. Not what I expected, in “sunny” California. And we’ll have rain tomorrow, and maybe thunderstorms (mild), on Wednesday.

I wonder what will come next?

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On Processes

2023-03-26T15:50:00-07:00

This is a process. Today, I don’t have a great topic to write about. No thought has come forth demanding to be expressed, or clarified, or understood. But I’m here anyway, showing up, putting in a bit of time to keep the habit going. That’s a victory.

A friend of mine once said “you don’t get 100% of what you don’t ask for.” I don’t think that’s strictly true: sometimes you’ll get what you want anyway even if you didn’t ask for it.

But I don’t think it works with understanding or writing. So I’ll keep showing up and asking for those things.

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A sense of belonging

2023-03-25T15:45:00-07:00

I was at a t-ball game this morning, and one thing I noticed was all the parents wearing 49ers gear. T-ball is not football, but my guess for this choice is that it was red, and the kid’s baseball uniforms were red too. Simple enough.

But then I noticed the extent of the different articles of clothing: shirts, jackets, hats, hoodies, shoes even. Shoes branded for the 49ers, and thats when it occurred to me. Wearing this garb is a form of membership, and it grants members a feeling of belonging to a community, knowing who your people are. That’s comforting.

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Notice What You Notice

2023-03-24T19:45:00-07:00

I think it’s important to notice what you notice, and then if you are so inclined, to examine that. I’m a big fan of The Art of Noticing by Rob Walker, but I’m not really sure how much this noticing has anything to do with that.

Today I was noticing that this town that I’ve lived in for the last few years doesn’t feel so big anymore. It’s a megalopolis for sure, depending on how you count it up to 10 million people live here. It just didn’t feel as big to me as I drove up the highway this afternoon. Could be the density; it’s a lot of suburbia. Could be that the distance to the edge of town is almost never out of sight. It’s in a valley with a great open bay in the middle, and there are protected green spaces on those valley sides. The city inhabits the zone between those two other places and you can always see one or the other or both. Could be that the suburbia is quite well treed, maybe even wooded at times.

I’m not reporting anything profound here, just noticing what I’m noticing and thinking about it. Do with that as you will.

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Blindsight

2023-03-23T22:23:00-07:00

Finished reading, with satisfaction: Blindsight by Peter Watts 📚

Well that was rather excellent. I will read the sidequel book too at some point. Some quick notes:

not always the most graceful writing, particularly in the beginning
it’s hard scifi, so expect jargon and nonchalant use of unexplained technicalese. Keep a dictionary handy, wikipedia will tell you which sections to expect.
there are nontrivial elements of horror, in several flavors. Reminded me of House of Leaves in that way.

Thought provoking work, I’ll consider other Watts books going forward. Taking recommendations, as always!

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Improving on the PB&J

2023-03-23T13:25:00-07:00

I have a pet theory that invention, progress, of any kind really, is driven by randomness. I might not have invented that. Maybe I just have my own independent discovery of it. I don’t know.

Let me give you an example: I just invented a new sandwich. Well, maybe again original invention is too strong, I don’t know. I didn’t check. Maybe it’s more of an iterative improvement. I’ll just claim independent discovery for now.

About my sandwich, or is it a dessert? I’m not sure. Whatever it is, it’s unexpectedly and unreasonably good. Stay with me a moment because this next bit is the recipe. Toasted piece of bread. Spread peanut butter. If you are a hater, I suggest you can stop reading now. Spread raspberry jam on top. You see, it’s an open faced sandwich. Here is the inventive bit. Just a bit of canned whipped cream, say one shot on each corner. It might work with other jams; my peanut butter was unsweetened. It was so good. I was shocked. My wife was shocked when I did it and said “what is wrong with you, whipped cream on everything??” I said “try it.” She did. She was shocked at how good it was too.

What happened, again? I made the sandwich. I had the whipped cream that needed using, it was available. I mean, I could have just thrown it away, or eaten it on a spoon. There were other options in the fridge that I didn’t consider: pickles, pepper, mustard, some uneaten oat milk ice cream. I put the ingredients together, and it was good.

Is it a true original invention? Maybe I’ll check later and follow up someday. For now I’m enjoying my sandwich.

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More thoughts on LLMs

2023-03-22T21:23:00-07:00

I have some further thoughts about these GPT-LLMs everyone is talking about. Mostly I’m talking about Bing, Bard, ChatGPT, and I suppose some other things (there are so many other things). See my earlier ramble about it here.

I do think it likely, greater than 50% chance my gut tells me, that we’re getting into another technological shift. That already feels quite bold, but I suspect that if anyone reads this they might think I am lowballing the odds. Maybe it’s even 51%, heh. Hey fella, it’s my gut that’s telling those odds, I’m just reporting what it says. I don’t even really know how reliable it is.

By technological shift, I mean something similar to, I don’t know, Wikipedia, or cell phones, maybe even early Google search. FourSquare, Twitter in the before times, or Facebook, but not social media. New vistas await, possibly big vistas. Or maybe it’ll just be a better Siri, or predictive typing suggestions for your phone. There will be some minimal amount of technological progress capture from this.

I think though, first things first, we (me, you, us all) don’t need to do anything hasty here. None of those career doomsayers have a crystal ball any better than yours or mine, even if they have a little more information than either of us. They just have some new dart that they’ve thrown at the wall of humanity. Maybe it will stick. Maybe it won’t. Maybe it’ll just dangle.

Here are some of the challenges I see. In the current iteration, these things are very casual with the truth. They are creative with facts, and you don’t have to try hard to get them there. This could be a fool me once situation. By that I mean that we, the users, feel tricked by this early iteration and take a step back for a while.

But maybe it’s good at helping you edit your own set of facts, editing something that you’ve written. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t tried that. I want to write my own words. Maybe I’ll try a human editor someday, if they haven’t been replaced.

There are also confidentiality concerns, liability for these errors, and just flooding the space with drivel which might poison the well. That last is only about as overblown as those people yelling about the immediate reshaping of the global economy. It’s just sleazy hype.

I’m also not sure how well it will be made to work in practical situations. In real, messy settings, and in more regular situations. Like forms at the DMV, or at the county clerk’s office. I’m sure they’ll get the tax forms, that’s too big of an apple to not take bite. Anything smaller than that, some Wasco county building permit form, I bet it’ll trip up. They’ll leave that for those county folks to deal with.

Somehow making this more complicated is not the way, and “prompt engineering” just sounds more complicated to me. Specialists will be able to make some hay with a complicated tool, but a true revolution is not what it is yet. For some folks it’ll even be a kind of fun. If it doesn’t exist already, I see prompt golfing games around the corner.

And yet, some change seems likely to land. ChatGPT has been intriguing, maybe even fun to play with. It surprises you. Don’t know what that change will look like. So keep your eyes open

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Initial thoughts about LLMs

2023-03-16T23:19:00-07:00

So, there has been some big news going around lately about LLMs. I won’t go into a lot of detail about what they are, you can find that in various places, in escalating levels of detail. And that’s not even including the very latest news from just this week (sentence written on 2023-03-16).

I thought it might be worthwhile to me to write down some of my thoughts at the moment. Not to you or anything, I mean it will be worthwhile to me so I can sort out what I think. You can even read it, if you want.

I want to be clear here: I did not use any LLM in the writing of this in anyway. These are my thoughts in my own poor wordings, and lacking in good editing style.

These Things Are Tools, Right?

LLMs are a tool. Some have said their like having an intern. I think that is doing a disservice to interns, and they should be angry and offended at that. Yes, it’s true that both interns and LLMs can be unreliable. That’s true of everything and everybody to some degree.

Oh God, What is That Thing?

We’re all just having our first impression of this right now. Something new has arrived on the scene. Well, new isn’t quite the right word, but newly available and potentially obviously possibly useful? Maybe even a little bit (a lotta bit?) threatening.

Meet the Family

Certainly seems to be evolving fast. I think the first widespread leading edge of it was probably the Github Copilot thing, um, last year, I think it was. That was something.

We had our midjourney/stable diffusion fun last year too. They still haven’t worked all the kinks out of that one, but there has been some very fun stuff out of that. It’s kind of in the really effing creepy part of the uncanny valley now, were things look right until you notice just how wrong they are, also this.

Then along came GPT-3, and that has been fun if actually really quite the confident fabulist (aka bullshitter). And you don’t have to try very hard. These tools, which I don’t mean to make out to be sort of equivalent in anyway, but from an outside perspective, they sort of do seem to form a technological cohort.

I guess GPT-4 is blowing the socks off of people right now.

Those threads are

Generating code: Copilot
Generating images: mid-journey, stable diffusion
Generating text: Chat-GPT and others
Where do deep fakes fit in here? Generating movies.

I’m going to mostly focus on the text based LLMs, hence the title. But probably some of these things are related.

What Does it Take?

The extraction has already begun here, and I would say it is moving rapidly.

What are the costs?

They charge money, don’t they?
They take your queries too.
I think it kind of steals your, motivation? No, that’s not right. They are competing with you.
There is a verification tax here. Just they vomit out tons of text, but then you have to go slog through all that goo to find the truth in it. Sounds great, right?

What in Particular About Text is so Bothersome?

Well, I’m writing text right now. A lot of people write text. Should we do that anymore? I already don’t like it that much when Google Docs suggests a different word choice or some grammar improvement. Sometimes it’s better, and I’ll go for it. Other times it just feels like it’s flattening my own voice out of the document I am writing.

I have a friend that is a professor. And I was talking to them the other day, back in those early days of ChatGPT3. I think it was mid-February 2023 (about a month ago). And they said that ChatGPT3 was a great boon to them, so helpful for different writing tasks, such as composing possible tweets on topics for their daily twittering, or composing letters or recommendation for students that needed them, tweaked and edited by hand also, naturally. I don’t know just how hypothetical these statements were, necessarily. But they worried me. Worried me on several fronts.

Isn’t a slippery slope from taking the output of these models as suggestions and editing or rewriting them yourself, maybe even in your own words, to just copy/pasta’ing that text verbatim because, oh I don’t know, you’re in a hurry that day there is a grant proposal due and the kids going to be late and I think that about covers what I wanted to day. And after that first time, it get’s a little easier the second time once the seal has come off.

Another angle here is that maybe if you need a force multiplier here to get all this text written you should probably just question if all that verbosity is really necessary. If this text generator is generating all that text, why not just send the prompt and leave it to the reader to stick it in the LLM if they want more to read. They’re probably going to ask the LLM to summarize that long letter you sent them anyway.

I hear Google is working on building that stuff right into Gmail and Docs already, but I’m not convinced. If they were so far ahead with AlphaGo or whatever, why didn’t they add this already? I know the arguments about protecting their search business or ad business or whatever. Are they stupid? Maybe all that money made them stupid. It sure seems to have made Meta stupid.

In Conclusion

What the hell is going on here? The future is getting weird, maybe I should turn pro.

PS: I didn’t really edit this after I wrote it. Sorry about that.

Comments

If you want to comment, do that on Mastodon:

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The Fifth Season

2023-02-04T15:01:00-08:00

Finished reading, with satisfaction: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin 📚

Good story, it really moves. Not sure exactly the genre. Probably not science fiction. Maybe fantasy? Elements of young adult, but also romance (I think, very adult topics anyway). I very much appreciate the natural, non-judgy, and often kind but not holding back, point of view. Casual writing style works better for me than I expected. Some of the best interpersonal arguments/fights with about the right emotional sting that I’ve read. Bravo! Can’t wait to read the next one.

Some other things I liked:

geology! And rocks
a building’s structure plays a critical role for a plot point
Fun made up words that are suggestive of their origin. I am not a linguist but I still enjoy it

To Reply: Email me your best books.

A Brief History of Equality

2022-07-06T18:01:00-07:00

Finished reading, with satisfaction: A Brief History of Equality by Thomas Piketty 📚

5 out of 5 stars for this one: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I found this book to be very informative and overall a good read. I’m looking for more context in this area. In particular:

Why did progressive taxation and the welfare state become the chosen option beginning around 1915? What events lead to that conclusion? I don’t find “because World War 1” to be sufficient. It must have been a long road leading up to that.
How did the free movement of capital around 1980 come about? Also, there are consequences of this globalization, and I want to have a firmer grasp on the connection between this cause and effect. It really seems to be a defining frame for so many issues in the world; is that true?
And at the same time, circa 1980, the decline of progressive taxation. Was is the same fundamental forces? And no wonder our infrastructure is poorly maintained and failing: we built it all in an entirely different budgetary situation. (Edit: added this one)
Generally more of a connection between the historical context and the basically economic story that Piketty tells here. I would really like to compare the events that are emphasized by different authors in the same time periods.
Exploring the conceptions of private property as a concept for common good. I assume that this is a regular socialist topic, but I haven’t read much of that.
Finding an accurate description of the global economic system, meaning capitalist, socialist, and the hybridization.

There are some few details in the text about these events and ideas, but I want to understand more concretely. If you’ve got good book recommendations, I’m interested. I have a few books in house already that I can credibly start to expore some of this stuff.

To Reply: Email me your non-fiction recs.

On Making My Writing Less Hard

2022-07-05T21:34:00-07:00

You probably remember that I recently said I was revising the plan. Well, that was saying that I intended to do that. So here’s the next iteration. I got lucky and a couple of things hit this week. Or really, more than just a couple of things did.

First, I found Oliver Burkeman’s newsletter The Imperfectionist. I forget how I got to that, maybe it was when I returned his book to the library early via the Libby app and clicked the link to his website. Or maybe it was randomly from another newsletter. Or maybe hackernews. Let’s not get too distracted.

Hmm. I think it was the newsletter.

Oliver has this great edition about making writing less hard. Just like the source I linked to last, I’m going to do an advert for this post. It’s really great.

Because I haven’t found a better way to make this point in my own words for you, I’m just going to quote his first section heading: “Good writing is pointing out.” There’s a lot more helpful explanation in that section. This framing, that good writing is about showing what you found interesting, what caught your attention, was really helpful to me. I’m doing it right now.
He’s got some words about knowing when to stop. This didn’t resonate with me at first, but it does now. I think I’ve still got a lot more processing to do on this particular lesson. I’ll be coming back to it.
Finally, Oliver reminds us that writing doesn’t really start with a blank page. And this is the section that I am responding to here today. This is the one that inspired the next iteration in my writing plan.

To finish my advertisement: it’s a good article, good writing, short, direct, practical, actionable advice. I don’t know if it is helpful for everyone. It is helpful for me.

So, what’s the revised plan?

Before I get to that, I want to connect this bit about not starting from a blank page to some other things that I’ve read this year.

The same book that Burkeman mentions, How to Take Smart Notes by Ahrens has a lot of useful practical advice on writing. He is writing about academic texts, but it applies lots of places I think. Ahrens also talks about not starting from a blank page, start from your notes of what you have been reading. But how? I’ll be honest, as practical and helpful as Ahrens’ prescription is, it still didn’t make sense to me.

Later I read some slides (edit: link added) about practical epistemology. The author talks about not only how to go about forming beliefs that are both more correct and less wrong. He also makes some suggestions about how to write, since writing is a great way to get feedback from yourself on your own writing. Honestly it was very similar to Ahrens’ advice, but slightly different. It’s a good set of slides. Like I said, I’ll add the link.

The penultimate (thus far) connection was some things that are the Bullet Journal Method book. There are a lot of really good, practical, tips in that book. If it seems like something that might work for you, I really suggest you take a longer look at it. Go grab the library copy and browse through it. The thing I want to highlight here is the sprints. I’ve used sprints before because work. But I’ve never run my own sprints. And I’ve never run my own sprints for my own projects at home on myself. That’s what we’re doing to try here.

Quick aside: there is a whole mess of other relevant things in that book too. But I’m going to omit that stuff for now. Just know that it wasn’t only the idea of sprints that was helpful here.

The last connection was Burkeman’s article.

So this is the plan. First, since I haven’t been very good collecting post ideas I’m going to jump start that. Well, since it took a bit to finish writing this, that part has already happened. Second, I’m going to take one of those ideas and work on it for an hour. Not finish and publish it, because I don’t know when it’s done. Just show up and work on it.

Third, I’m going to reflect on that process and refine, Deming loop style, to see what I should update. This is the mini sprint to jump start the flywheel. Last, it’s just not credible that I will be publishing daily anymore. I have a full time job, and other stuff, and a daily blog is just more than is realistically achievable. Often, hopefully more than once a week, but, well, as the sub-title of the blog says, no promises.

Let me summarize the plan again.

On day 1 of the sprint, spend an hour brain dumping out all the ideas for blog posts I can think of. With what the next step is. I believe that is possibly due to GTD (edit: link added).
On day 2 of the sprint, go through that list and pick one do the next step. Probably also brain dump all the random unordered thoughts onto the page too. Finish by attaching the next step.
On day 3 of the sprint, reflect on how that went and decide what needs to be updated. Decide the next steps and when/what the next sprint should be.

A few things to note here: the time limits, the separation of idea generation/capture from post development, the focus on process instead of outcome. These are all things that were connected to these different sources I’ve mentioned.

That’s it, that the plan for now. Hopefully those ideas that I’ve generated in step 1 can be used for developing future blog posts and research. But I’m not sure how soon they’ll be ready. I guess one revision that’s already available is to distribute effort going forward between the ideas that seem closer to ready and those that will need more work so that posts are evened out a bit. Idk, I’ll have to think about it.

PS: there are a couple of steps I didn’t do on this post that I will be doing going forward. They’re both from Ahrens’ book: live outlining (making an outline and constantly updating it during drafting), and editing more drafts. This version here is draft 0. For this post I wrote the word jumble to get all my ideas on the page, and then I wrote draft 0. Copy-paste to here, and make a couple of tiny tweaks before hitting publish. I will do more next time.

To Reply: Email me your writing tips.

Revising the Plan

2022-06-30T09:30:00-07:00

OK, so what have I learned from the longer and the shorter recent blogging chain? And what am I planning to do next in this space?

Quick recap of what has happened: I signed up for micro.blog for reasons, there was the 30 day challenge pin which was enough motivation for me to post everyday for a month, I got that, and it’s been a struggle to post since then. I also read Bullet Journal Method 📚 which has been very helpful for thinking about focus, and about doing less.

Why do I want to do this, what was my initial motivation? I think I’ve got some things to say that might be helpful to others. I want to get better at writing effectively to say those things. I also have an idea for a novel that is not finished, so I need more practice at writing. Several novels actually. 📝
I am not sure how much time I really have for daily writing on the blog. I’ve gotten a lot of value out of improving and targeting my journal practice. Maybe I should just focus on that for now, for some limited time, and revisit later. 🤔 But I also think I got a lot of value from writing the blog posts too. 🧐
Churning out posts for 30 days on whatever was in front of me was fine, but kind of untargeted. I think an iterative improvement would be to align the blog writing with a longer term goal. Make the action of doing the blogging something that supports progress toward that. There are two goals (as already mentioned): my own observations, and progress toward my novel.
- Advancing the novel could be research reports, exercises for writing, etc.
- I hesitate to share my own observations because they feel unoriginal or derivative, or repetititve of something that I just read. Even though I know my own observations are unique to me.
Oh, and reading reports. Everyone loves a good book report, right?
I still think writing is important for knowing what you know, and understanding what you think. I don’t want to stop doing it.
It is very easy to substitute “working on the blog” i.e. futzing with the css or whatever, for writing. Writing was and is the goal. I have mostly successfully avoided doing much futzing. Staying focused on the writing is explicitly the goal here. No futzing around.

What's next is that I sort out my goals and try to align my blog writing practice with those. I also continue getting real with what is practicable given limited time. I will also be experiment with being more intentional about post constraints, not just the alignment with the goals.

I'm not going to be hyperbolic and say that writing well is a super power, but it is a skill that makes you more effective at living.

To Reply: Email me about your writing.

BART

2022-06-22T20:30:00-07:00

I took BART today for the first time in, well, ever. I am actually quite impressed. It was a smooth ride (maybe a bit loud at times), and it ran efficiently. My other experience is with CalTrain which I have used quite a few times. I vastly prefer either of those options over driving myself if I can help it, but the BART was much faster for a similar commute, and it felt faster too. Given that, I’ll probably take a pass on CalTrain until after the CalMod upgrade is complete for any work commuting I have to do, at least. Probably still the better option if I want to go to a ball game.

BART: I recommend it. 👍

To Reply: Email me about public transit.

Just Journaling

2022-06-20T21:33:00-07:00

I am ambivalent at best toward online Bullet Journal culture, more often I find the ferver off putting. I have found the book 📚 to be none of that. Today, and yesterday, one line is particularly applicable:

When you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.¹

That point is much more broadly applicable to me too, but I’m focusing on today. I said yes to several things today: journaling about yesterday, errands, repairing a sliding door that wasn’t sliding,² visiting with a friend, and making dinner. Making dinner to me means cooking and preparing, and serving, a time consuming thing. But it’s all making and sharing. It’s something that I haven’t said yes to enough.

But saying yes to these things means I didn’t say yes to some other things that are also important to me, but apparently less so? Or less right now? I’m not sure. They were less urgent. Working ahead of time on this blog post is one thing that got a no. And making some art with my plotter also got a no today.

Sidebar comment: It’s not the right time, but I am exploring alternative names to “bullet journal.” I am not a fan of the bullet in bullet journal. Maybe “just journal” or “right journal” or… hmm. I don’t know, it’s a work in progress.

I guess there will be more posts in this theme, this personal journey of journaling.

That may be a paraphrase, I don’t have the book next to me as I write this. ↑
A team effort and success that I am most proud of. ↑

To Reply: SALUTATOINS

This Week in Captio Captures

2022-06-17T16:46:00-07:00

When you say yes to one thing, you are saying no to something else.¹

I guess there will be more posts in this theme, this personal journey of journaling.

That may be a paraphrase, I don’t have the book next to me as I write this. ↑
A team effort and success that I am most proud of. ↑

To Reply: Email me your ephemeral notes.

Bullet Journalling?

2022-06-16T18:07:00-07:00

Just doing a quick tour through this. I kinda feel like my notes aren’t gelling, and I’ve started collecting kind of a lot of them. A friend said this was working for him, so I’ll take a look. Not planning to read every page though. I’ll set a reminder to post an update in a couple of months.

Currently reading: The Bullet Journal Method: Track the Past, Order the Present, Design the Future by Ryder Carroll 📚

Public library for the win, it’s even a physical copy!

To Reply: Email me your note taking notes.

On setting aside The Discourses of Epictetus

2022-06-15T22:01:00-07:00

I’ve had to move Discourses, Fragments, Handbook (Oxford Worlds Classics) by Epictetus 📚 to my Reading, but like not right now shelf. I have completed Book 1, and will shortly finish Book 2. Books 3 and 4, the Fragments, and the Handbook will have to wait until some other time. I’ll probably start with the Handbook when I do pick it back up. I have some more thoughts…

I may do a more well thought out review later, when I finish the rest of it. But here is my hot-ish take right now:

Is it me or is he brining up death, exile, and suicide-as-a-legitimate-option kind of a lot? Maybe times were a lot different back then and these were common concerns. Or maybe these things loomed large in the minds of his target audience: the wealthy men that could afford to hire philosophy teachers.
He has his moments when he’ll say directly what he means. But a lot of the time he is pretty round about with getting to the point, or saying clearly what he is trying to tell his students. It can be rather indirect. Is it a mysterious affectation? A conversational style to engage the listener? He was speaking these words, after all. Something else, like giving the audience what they want to hear, what they’re expecting a philosopher to sound like?
Come to think of it, I get the sense that he doesn’t think too highly of a lot of the students or interlocutors he’s addressing. Even if they are just hypothetical people he sets up to knock down, it seems like not the most trusting of teaching styles. It also seems like his students maybe had a habit of coming all haughtily arrogant and he’s got to take them down a peg. I find it off putting and boring. Tiresome. The teacher is not taking the students seriously.
At several points he makes rather unserious arguments. That a god or gods exists isn’t even said as an axiom, it’s just so obvious that anyone who says differently is a fool. This, Epictetus, is not an argument. Instead of treating the competing philosophical schools seriously, they are usually rather casually characatured, or straw man/person’d and considered dealt with. Frankly, I can hear the guy yelling about it through the ages and pages even today.
Not a very inclusive group either. It was the times, sure. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t color the rest of the work. How are you going to just paint over those pieces and not see/wonder how they have distorted the rest?

All that said, there have been a few passages that seem quite useful. There were some interesting points made that are worth pondering. But there was a lot of wading through sections that wavered on the edge of just not worth reading, with the occassional bit of useful life observation hidden in there that makes you not give up. Even if the life observed was almost 2000 years ago, some things are still familiar.

↝ morrow

To Reply: Email me your stoic thoughts.

Too Many Words

2022-06-14T22:10:00-07:00

Again, with the power prompt today there was too much material. Here is the current recipe:

Write what happened. This can be brief.
Write why it happened, if it needs motivating.
Write about what I think it means, if that is something that I spent time thinking about.
If necessary, write about the context. That might have something to do with the above.

It turns out that a lot happens on an ordinary Monday. I don’t think that I am being too detail oriented either. I guess I need to be more efficient with my words? I suspect that as a writer this is a good problem to have, so I’ll keep working that particular problem. I’d like to get through the whole day; there are things that are worth writing about in the later part of the day too.

Here are a couple of things to try tomorrow:

Write the shortest possible recounting. Just the events. These are like the notes of the day, from memory.
Pick the things that seem worth diving deeper into first, and write about those. Trouble is that it’s not always obvious what I’m going to get when I start unwrapping some thing that happened.
Make those notes of the sequence while it’s happening? Just the briefest possible notes.
Go in reverse order. Might be weird to do. Might be worth it anyway.

I’ll also finally get around to reading the next chapter in Writing Life Stories sometime soon.

↝ morrow

To Reply: Email me your power prompt.

End of day ramble

2022-06-13T21:45:00-07:00

Time is running out and I haven’t thought of much to write here today. I did use my power prompt and got lots of words out, but not anything that I felt like elaborating on here. I’m not sure yet how to translate all that personal material to the things I write here, even though I think that they shouldn’t be all that separate.

Speaking of that power prompt, the first day was really great. The second was much more of just a recounting of what happened, static sequence of events style. Not much of why did that happen, and what might it mean. So today I let some of that stuff back in. The pages just fill up. I didn’t have time to get it all down in the morning. I had to make a bit more time in the afternoon to finish. Lots of directions this can go, I think. Looking forward to exploring as many of them as possible.

A few random thoughts:

Monday the thirteenth always seemed like a better bad luck day than Friday.
Does any one eat “tuna nachos”? It sounded just plausible enough to me to exist. Tuna salad scattered on some potato chips. You could even melt cheddar over it, tuna melt style. Not sure it’s something that I want to exist, but it just might. Inspired by the tuna salad that fell off my sandwich on some chips at lunch today. Thought of a few other “just plausible enough” foods, and a few duds.
Not been much reading of Dracula lately. I hope everyone is ok.

To Reply: Email me your rambles.

June Rain

2022-06-12T20:22:00-07:00

It’s a really nice day to share an all too brief and far too rare June rain with some friends that surprise come over and bring pizza fixings and also enjoy the rain with you, even if it means we have to abandon the patio at the end because it is in fact raining a bit too much to stay outside. It’s a very lucky thing.

To Reply: Email me your rain.

TIL: a powerful journaling prompt

2022-06-11T18:48:00-07:00

There was a comment on a hackernews post this morning about journaling that I thought I would give a try: just recount what happened in the last 24 hours. So I tried it. I didn’t add too much of what I thought of what happened later, just what I remember thinking about it at the time. I plan to follow up with later thoughts on some of those things.So much came out of this. I think it was 4 pages¹ before I got tired of writing. And that only covered about 12 hours.²

Now I have a solid default option for journaling, and it’s a powerful one.

There was a second suggestion somewhere in that thread: journal twice a day. I could see the last 24 hours really being useful in the morning. And an evening session for elaboration, further thoughts, or just other topics. I do think that this is worth the time investment, but it is that: a time investment.

It was 7 A5 size pages. This is a lot for me, I typically put down 3-4 pages on a good day. ↑
I sleep about 8 hours a day, so that is 2/3rds of the day. ↑

To Reply: Email me your power prompt.

Unknown Treasure

2022-06-09T21:06:00-07:00

I have found an unknown treasure right in my own backyard. Excellent backpacking is a truly short drive away, and the price is a few days of sore legs, which I am still recovering from. I guess 22 miles in 24 horus will do that too. One big win is that I finally get it about using trekking poles on the way down all those steep hills that this particular location offers.

🥾⛺️🥾

To Reply: SALUTATOINS

Journeys and Stories and Secret Destinations

2022-06-09T20:22:00-07:00

< blockquote pre=”Martin Buber” >All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.< /blockquote >

There were many charming and interesting things mentioned in The Grail by Brian Doyle 📚, more than I expected for such a local interest book.

I like the framing of this as “secret destinations” even though I don’t think those destinations are pre-decided and don’t need to be. You find them in you, in the place, and in the moment, alone or with those around you. The destinations can even remain secret to you alone.

They’re kind of like a very condensed version of the way that Doyle describes stories:

< blockquote pre=”Brian Doyle” cite=”The Grail, p. 148” >…this is what happens to people and stories, you sense them and collect them and tell them and savor them and then you and the stories move along down the road, sometimes together and sometimes not.< /blockquote >

Those secret destinations in every journey are our own personal poetry, resonant in our hearts and minds. Even on the longest journey.

< blockquote pre=”Dag Hammarskjold” >The longest journey is the journey inward.< /blockquote >

To Reply: Email me your grails.

Daily Chain

2022-06-09T19:49:00-07:00

I’m starting a new daily blogging chain today. I had done really well with the pin for 30 days of blogging dangling out there in front of me. Now that I accomplished that, and then some wobble in my schedule and I dropped a few consecutive days. Honestly I don’t think I can blame schedule wobble, there was more interference in the last month than the events of the last week. Try, try again.

To Reply: Email me your blogging.

Pinnacles National Park

2022-05-30T20:07:00-07:00

I had a brief visit to the West Division of Pinnacles National Park this morning, to hike the Balconies Cave trail, and a bit more. And a bit less. It didn’t go entirely as planned, but it was a nice day out in the wildlands.

Fun fact, this is the western portion of a volcano that straddled the San Andreas Fault and was subsequently sheared apart. This portion moved 200 miles north by the fault. The eastern portion remained, known as Neenach Formation and it is evidently not as dramatic.

To Reply: SALUTATOINS

Oddball Social Media

2022-05-26T21:25:00-07:00

I thought I would do something a little lighter today, so I’m sharing some of the other takes on using the internet to facilitate communications. I kind of enjoy some of these different interpretations, anti-gamified in a way, of social media. Maybe “alt-social media”?

Pony messenger, like email but it delivers only once per day at the same time for everyone. → @garo is me, feel free to write.
Minus.social gives you only 100 posts, ever. That’s my profile on the link there. But what if I waste a post and regret it? So I haven’t written even one yet.
Slowsocial.us is about focusing on connection. Not much else to go on here. I don’t remember when I made the account, and signing up didn’t help figure out what it is any better. Maybe it’s a scam?
Slowly distance based delay of message delivery. It’s like pen pals but on your phone.

Know of any other good ones?

To Reply: Email me your weird social medias.

Too many inboxes?

2022-05-25T21:21:00-07:00

I mean a different type of inbox in this post, not the email inbox. Well, not always.

I am still struggling to get a consistent “in-tray” for my captured notes. I basically mean fleeting notes, the notes that you capture while not distracting from your work in the moment, and then deal with later. Since I’ve been homebrewing my own Johnny.Decimal+Commonplace book+Zettelkasten system in Obsidian, so that’s where I put my in-tray.< marginnote >Yeah, I know that’s a lot. Most of it is working, just not really the zettelkasten part so much yet.< /marginnote >

It’s not always convenient or smooth to get every fleeting note into Obsidian. There are several failure modes: syncing is slow, capture from webpages is clunky.
A pocket paper notebook is fun to use sometimes. Nothing beats an inactive surface (paper) at being almost completely unable to interrupt you or distract you like an active screen does.
Captio has been really great for a low distraction digital interface, on both my phone and ipad. But it sends the output to my email, not Obsidian. And it’s not available on laptops.
What about marginalia? Literally those notes in books. I set a reminder to go back those notes a month after finishing the book to grab the ones that still resonate. Is that in the in-tray?
I don’t use Obsidian to manage those reminders. Instead I just use the stock reminders app.
For other reasons, I’m starting to explore pinboard.in, and I used raindrop.io before that, and del.icio.us< sidenote “del” >I won’t link to it, it seems to be unsafe!< /sidenote > before that. I’m not satisfied with Obsidian for bookmark management.

I have been trying to reduce friction here, but as Bob Doto points out< marginnote >Just found Bob. Bob seems to be talking directly to some of my questions.< /marginnote > frictionless can be its own trap too.

I’ve considered using drafts. It’s available in all the places. It’s clean and fast and pretty distraction free. But it’s another system to invest in, it might not be worth the effort. I like simple things.

Maybe some friction is necessary to get a grip on things. Having a few-but-not-one inboxes maybe is okay. The point is to be intentional about handling those notes while taking them out of the in-tray. The point is not focusing on getting it into one perfectly beautifuly simple elegant system, but to have something that works for me and captures most of my notes.

Anybody out there got any thoughts or suggestions on this particular aspect?

To Reply: Email me about your inboxes.

Getting my email back

2022-05-24T19:19:00-07:00

A couple of years ago I noticed that I actually wasn’t the owner of my email inbox. My email inbox owned me. I just archived the emails that it presented to me, from meaningless mailing lists, from old camera clubs, or irrelevant advertisements that started coming after some purchase or other. So I unsubscribed from these obviously useless emails.

But it wasn’t enough. A year or more later I noticed that I was still getting more than 10 irrelevant or uninteresting emails for every one that mattered to me. But some of these had sentimental value or some reason for keeping them coming.

I had bought something from this company once, and I thought I might buy something else from them again some day.
I agree with this cause.
This mailing list at one time sent me some stuff that was useful, and I hope that it will do that again.
I attended a lecture from these people once and hope that someday they will offer another one that I would like to attend.

The list goes on. One un-critically thought through excuse after another. They are easy to break. I’ll do these ones real quick.

Refuted: I don’t need to be reminded daily. I have that thing I bought to remember. Or if I don’t remember, maybe it wasn’t that special after all. These emails aren’t going to make up for that.
Refuted: Receiving an email, or a lot of emails, is not really that much of a commitment to a cause. Do something more impactful if you really care.
Refuted: By the 3rd or 4th un-useful email, it’s ok to unsubscribe. There is a rule on the internet somewhere about that.
Refuted: If there is another interesting lecture you’ll probably hear about it from some community you actively participate in. There are probably dozens and dozens of lectures that you don’t hear about and missing those has turned out ok so far.

I suspect that keeping all these emails was a reasoning breakdown at the intersection of a) free stuff, b) Gmail adding tools for managing more useless junk, and c) the mirage of Gmail’s archive and search features. “Just archive everything” is a trap in general. It’s been said that archiving is just throwing things away for the uncommitted. I am hardly ever able find something that I know is in my email with search. At least not without putting in some real effort.

Upon recognizing all this, I did an even more severe clean out, and I was left with some real breathing room. I think I got only one or two automated emails a week. It was great, so great that I subscribed to The Sample to find some better newsletters. But I think I’ve reached some new maximum amount of suffering midly useless emails again and I’ll probably unsubscribe from about half of those. At least those emails are ones I intentionally signed up for. I know who’s fault that is, and I can just as easily undo it.

Join me in unsubscribing from useless email!

To Reply: Email me your email lol.

Quieting the Noise

2022-05-23T21:01:00-07:00

Sometime last fall I made the effort stop multitasking at work. Rapidly switching context had reached its limit and my role was changing. It was hard at first, but it’s gotten easier.

Over a few months after that, I found interruptions increasingly unpleasant. What was once a necessary function of my role had become a frustrating experience that just happened to me without my control while I was trying to do other things.

So I have steadily turned off more and more of these notifications of chats, emails, some meetings even. At first I was reluctant. Being resonsive to others, helping to unblock them, was something that I was proud of. But as space opened up for thought and focused work, I have become increasingly protective of that time.

A lot of other notifications had to go too. They were preventing me from being able to focus, just think uninterrupted, or recover from an intense discussion. I also noticed that a lot of notifications where coming from apps or businesses, and they just weren’t useful, relevant, or interesting to me. So I muted, unsubscribed, or in rare cases scheduled the notifications for only a couple of times per day. An ever expanding list of apps and systems have been banned from ever notifying me.

It feels good to have some space, some breathing room. Some time to think and decide what’s next.

To Reply: Email me some quiet.

Reporting from the road: finale

2022-05-22T20:49:00-07:00

There was startlingly less remarkable things on the road today, the last of our journey. We covered 384 miles (618 km), and only saw two things to remark on.

Mount Shasta had surprisingly less snow than when we drove past going north 10 days ago. Partly because I suspect it had a fresh dusting from the winter-in-May storm, and also because it was clouded in and hard to see. But still, Lake Shasta is low, and not much snow on the mountain. This is worrying.
The colored trucks, also near Mount Shasta, which I did see on the way up also. But, since I’ve seen them for years and years, I didn’t really think they were remarkable until I reflected on it. This is kind of stretching it.

This meager haul is far below expection. But I think that’s just part of small numbers.

See all the other parts: part 1, part 2, and part 3.

To Reply: Email me your road trips.

Reporting from the road: the return

2022-05-21T19:19:00-07:00

Today’s drive was the reverse trip of part 2, Portland to Ashland, 285 miles (460 km).

Here is what we noticed:

A big (person sized) “Nature Pride” graffito. Only in Oregon, I guess.
A large house fire south of Salem. I hope everyone is ok.
Saw 5 separate people walking south, or resting, on the shoulder of I-5. I feel like times are more desperate than I’ve ever seen in my life. I’m trying to figure out what it means and what to do.
I was really noticing the planer nature of the scattered fluffy cloud strata. It was very 3-d as we drove over the hills and through the valleys; moving nearer and farer from the cloud layer quite noticable shifted the perspective.
Mount McLoughlin was very pretty, a perfect cone.

That’s 5 remarkable things. Going north, it was 4, and based on the first day we expected 6. I think this is all fairly consistent. Does it say more about the rate of remarkable things on the road, or about the noticer?

As an aside, I learned that there is a complement to metropolitan statistical area: micropolitan statistical area. Neat. Found this while reading about Roseburg, Oregon.

To Reply: Email me your miles.

Masks, 2 of 8

2022-05-20T19:51:00-07:00

< summary >In which another mask is described.< /summary >

The second mask is similar in overall structure to the first. But, there are some significant differences. There is the domed forehead, but this time the transition to the eyes is smooth. The mouth is still rounded into an “o”, and it is still at the chin, but it faces forward instead of down.

< newthought >The mask< /newthought > is carved from one piece of wood, it is smooth with some sparce lines inscribed in the surface and inlaid with white. The wood is dark color, perhaps ebony. Starting at the top, the forehead is domed and protrudes forward beyond the nose even. The eyes, at first looking lidded, are in fact rendered with some different, more reddish pieces that have pupils cut in them. The slits below are for the wearer to see out. The nose gives a triagular appearance, even though the tip is rounded, and the bottom, where the nostrils would be is a flat plane. There is a long space between the bottom of the nose and the mouth, at the chin. The cheeks and upper lip area are smooth and rounded to flat. The lines cover all the surface and have a bisecting line down the center of the face to the mouth. The round inside of the mouth, the nose, and the eyes are the only area not touched by the lines. Lines continue under the chin. There are not ears.

It is a true mask that could be worn. Overall the feeling of the mask is friendly to neutral.

To Reply: Email me your masks.

Dracula Daily May 9-18

2022-05-18T22:02:00-07:00

< summary >Spoiler Warning.< /summary >

Here’s a recap of the last few days.

We met Mina and her friend Lucy. Based on literary reasoning, I assume that Lucy’s fiancee Holmwood, and one Dr. Seward, will feature in the story’s future.

Unfortunately for Harker, he went exploring further into the castle during the Count’s absence, and willfully fell asleep. While on the cusp of sleep three Ladies approach, but are stopped by the Count who says Harker is his alone. The Count returns Harker to his rooms. Later, when he checks the door where it happened, it’s shut tight.

‘til next time!

To Reply: Email me what you thought.

Masks, 1 of 8

2022-05-17T23:14:00-07:00

The house I am staying in has a few masks decorating the walls. There are 8 masks in 3 rooms, I believe. I thought it would be interesting to describe them. Here is the first one.

This is likely the first mask you would see. As you enter the house it is directly facing the front door. The mask is near the center of the wall of the dining area next to the door to the kitchen. It is placed at the height of top of the kitchen doorway. There is a bit of space around it, separating it from the other pieces on this wall. Also, there is another mask to the right of it near the corner. I’ll describe that mask another day.

This mask is carved from a single piece of wood, and it is old and worn. Most of its surface is rough wood, with some evidence that it was once painted or perhaps scorched or burned to darken it. The forehead is domed, almost a quarter of a sphere, and there are raised rings at the temples. Where the ears would be are two small holes on each side. Perhaps for ears, or perhaps for straps. I don’t know because I haven’t seen the back. The eyebrow is formed by a hard right angle cut that goes back to the plane of the face, where the eyes are. These are two circular bore holes close to the nose. The nose is narrow acute triangle that reaches to a rounded point. The nose also has a single small hole bored through, as though pierced. The lower part of the face descends and narrows smoothly to the chin. A small mouth is at the point of the chin below, forming an “o”. The mouth itself is chipped, no longer having a perfectly smooth o. Overall the mask is a fairly calm one with smooth lines and soft edges.

To Reply: Email me about your masks.

Brunch

2022-05-15T21:12:00-07:00

Brunch at home is such a good meal. Even if home this week is a rental in the next state. Overnight french toast bake, crispy hash browns, eggs sunny side up or over easy, coffee, tea, juice. Fruit salad, with oranges from a neighbors tree back home. It’s not a complicated or fussy event, at least not where I come from. One thing that made it special today is having all the family together here, even us out of towners, to celebrate a late Mother’s day.

In the afternoon I got to solve a technical TV issue for my parents so they can enjoy a baseball game without the spinning baseball of your-connection-has-been-interrupted. That’s the hope, anyway.

To Reply: Email me your brunches.

Reporting from the road II: destination reached

2022-05-13T09:47:00-07:00

More miles more smiles. Or, in our case, less miles less weird stuff.

< newthought >During the drive today, I saw a bit fewer things than expected< /newthought > but not anything out of statistical expectation based on yesterday’s observation.

Very succintly, yesteday the drive was 383 miles, and today it was 285 miles. Since there were 8 interesting things seen yesterday, if the rate is the same, we expect to see 6 today. I like error bars, so 6 ± sqrt(6) or 3-9 remarkable things expected.

Without further delay, here’s the report.

The Human Bean, which in this instance is a coffee shop. That’s not the remarkable part. I distinctly recall someone on MB recently using the term, I think in some identifyably Oregon context.< marginnote >Maybe I made that up. I can’t find where I saw it.< /marginnote > Before that it was a phrase sometimes heard in my house growing up. Not much heard by me after leaving there. Maybe it’s an Oregon thing? Hard to back that up.
“Fish Viewing Area.” This has got to be about the most Oregon (or pacific northwest) thing ever. You don’t notice these things until you’ve been away for a while and realize that you didn’t see anything like that anywhere else in all the other places that you’ve been.
The adult shops. I was in Portland a month ago and there were quite a few. My recollection is that is actually usual. I was expecting to see some similar number on the drive this time, but there were only few, in the places I remember them being. I think I have enough to do, but I suppose I could do some counting to estimate the prevalence here vs other places.
A whole lot of rain. Very on-brand for Oregon, but also kind of unusual for mid-May. Thank goodness for Rain-X!

Seeing 4 remarkable things is a little low, but maybe 8 was a bit high yesterday. Small numbers are trickly like that. I’ll get another shot in a couple of weeks when traveling in the reverse direction back south.

To Reply: Email me your smiles.

Shortcuts Sucks

2022-05-12T20:02:00-07:00

Does anyone get Apple Shortcuts the app on iOS? I am trying to grok it but maybe I am missing something fundamental. What I am trying to do is append a link and some of my annotations to an Obsidian note.< marginnote >Maybe I’ll just use Captio.< /marginnote >I do have it doing that, but the user experience is not something that I would call nice.

There is a lot of automatically jumping from app to app. I have not figured out how to script the text formatting that I want to apply to the input in a foreach loop. Searching for clues about what to do is maddening because the names are all the same and “shortcut” is such a generic name.

I would like to improve things, but eventually my patience for playing the Apple guessing game runs out. Anybody got any tips?

To Reply: Email me your Apple complaints.

Reporting from the road

2022-05-12T09:23:00-07:00

The road is a great place see things.

A “sheisty” little train. CFNR was so maligned I think because of some graffiti on the cars?
Shasta “Lake” looking maybe the lowest I’ve ever seen it. At the overpass just before the 705 N exit, I could see the Sacremanto river in its channel that is often under up to 50 feet of water (just eyeball guessing the high waterline depth from a speeding car). I wonder what we would get if we sized the Southwest water system today, after an additional ~80 years of weather observations?
Mt. Shasta covered in powdered sugar, looking very nice.
The roadside political commentary: state of Jefferson (been there for years), Biden is Weak (new one to me). Personally don’t particularly want to draw any more attention to either of those, but great big road side signage is hard to not comment on.
And the roadside statuary: cow with calf, and the dragon. Both have been there for quite a few years now.
Saw three small airplanes taking off in a row. The last being the slowest, but probably has the best view from a huge panoramic dome windshield.
The huge burn scar north of Redding, it seemed to go on for miles. Not sure which fire or year that was from.
Someone wearing what looked like an animal skin print rug, poncho style, and maybe it was a large Ikea grocery bag balanced and draped over their head? I couldn’t even see the person walking inside this getup.

Stay tuned for a similar update tomorrow from the rest of the journey.

To Reply: Email me about the road.

On getting out of town

2022-05-11T10:07:00-07:00

I’ll be road tripping north today, and on past trips I noticed that some towns feel faster to get out of than others. I’m finally taking a moment here to notice it a bit more.

On past road trips I’ve noticed that different places have different departures times, and its route dependant. Some shorter, some longer. The exit tomorrow is longer, one of the longest I know.< sidenote “lie” >The other “longest exit” is getting off Long Island to head back upstate. Takes forever.< /sidenote >I don’t feel like I’ve really gotten out the door until I’m on I-5< sidenote “i5” >Interstate 5, USA< /sidenote >. That’s about 1.5 hours drive from where I start when there isn’t any traffic.< sidenote “traffic” >There is always traffic.< /sidenote >

Something peculiar about it is that this particular exit is the fast one, even though it adds 30 minutes (according to the maps) to the total time vs another faster-in-total route. The other faster overall route takes 30 more minutes to feel like I’ve “left”, bringing it to about 2 hours. Feels like an eternity.

< newthought >In looking for patterns< /newthought > in this, I noticed that both places I mentioned already, the Bay Area and Long Island / NYC, are very large metropolitan areas. Maybe it’s that I don’t feel that I’ve left until I’ve crossed some frontier of the metro area. That sounds like a natural thing to think. And it holds up when I think about different size places I’ve lived. It also survives the test of exiting town via the nearest frontier; in my case a southerly exit is the quickest.

But the journey began when I left my house, so what does the city have to do with it?

To Reply: Email me about leaving.

What makes a good first sentence work?

2022-05-09T10:34:00-07:00

📝 In Writing Life Stories: How To Make Memories Into Memoirs, Ideas Into Essays And Life Into Literature by Bill Roorbach there is an exercise from chapter 1 about first sentences. These aren’t limited to the very first sentence in the piece, it could be the beginning sentence in the chapter or segment too. The goal is to look at a bunch of them, pick some personal favorites, and determine why they work.

I won’t reproduce my list in entire. These aren’t even my favorites, just ones that I wanted to comment on.

< epigraph pre=”Herman Melville” cite=”Moby-Dick” link=”//micro.blog/books/9780393285000” > Call me Ishmael. < /epigraph >

I wonder what is the speaker’s true name. Why are we using this name instead of that one? Ishmael is an exotic feeling name today, whether that was true or not in the 1850s I don’t know. It’s such a short sentence to contain all that. I think it’s a great success. My spouse disagrees.

< epigraph pre=”John Gardner” cite=”Grendel” link=”//micro.blog/books/9780307756787” > The old ram stands looking down over rock piles, stupidly triumphant. < /epigraph >

This is a very odd place to bring our focus when the title character is such a mythically great monster. Why is he concerned about goats at all? It has a bit of whimsy. I feel like I am seeing the old ram through someone else’s eyes, with some of their thougts about it. There is background here, judgementalness and prior history with this goat in particular.

< epigraph pre=”Umberto Eco” cite=”The Name of the Rose” link=”//micro.blog/books/9780544176560” > It was a beautiful morning at the end of November. < /epigraph >

This is a very unusual wording given that we are purportedly reading a manuscript written in 1327, translated into French. And why is this what the author, a monk, is bringing our attention to? Seems very unusual, personal, a memory.

< newthought >After examining first sentences< /newthought > more than I had before, opening sentences need a couple of things to really succeed. They need a bit of crunchy specificity (thanks Tim!). A good opening sentence has a touch of mystery. It opens the door a bit further, maybe in a surprising way on what you already know about the story. There should be a noticeable question in your mind when you read it: why is this the aspect that the author chose? It should illicit a response of curiosity, and a desire for resolution. It launches (or re-launches) the “story” in the direction that it eventually goes. The shorter the better the sentence, often times the better.

There is a companion exercise to take a similar look at my own first sentences. I still have to do that one.

To Reply: Email me your favorite first sentences.

Dracula Daily 3-8 May

2022-05-08T14:31:00-07:00

< summary >The events of the book so far are summarized and discussed. Spoiler Warning.< /summary >

The events so far (from memory, going forward I will keep my own running summary notes):< marginnote >For other posts in the series, see here.< /marginnote >

We meet Harker on his first night in the Carpathian mountains of Romania. It is the eve of the final leg of his jouney.
Harker departs the hotel with a quite singular scene of the hotelier and townfolk trying to pusuade him from finishing the journey. I have never seen, heard, witnessed, experienced, nor participated in such an event in all of my travels or life.
The transfer from the coach to the carriage is quite strange, and the ride to the castle is also beyond experience, and harrowing. I find it troubling that Harker is so matter of fact about what he witnessed. Perhaps he is questioning what he truly saw, or perhaps at this time over a century ago there was more credibility about this type of thing.
Harker meets the Count. They talk to the morning.
They discuss the Count’s new London property. Evidently the Count is planning to move.
Harker determines that the Count is without servants.
Harker understands that he is captive.

There we have it, things have gone quite badly for Harker it would seem. A few things are worth it to me to note about this reading.

First, the immediacy and intimacy of the writing is quite successful. The food, the experience of travel, the scenery. The layer of reading it on the same day as it was written helps to build the connection with the character. I noticed that upon entering the castle, discussion of the particulars of the food stop being listed. It makes sense to drop that sort of trivia given other factors.

Second, Harker seems oddly lucid and accepting about these experiences that he is having. Even upon noticing that he is imprisoned, he doesn’t list his options for escape. Maybe Stoker thinks readers will accept that all the avenues are in fact closed. Maybe readers in that day did. I am not satisfied with the short discussion of cliffs and locked doors.

Third, I am quite satisfied with my own interest and engagement level. Of course having never been interested in horror as a genre, or in Dracula in particular, I was quite surprised at my own interest level. Glad to see it hasn’t waned yet. It’s quite possible that the novelty of real time reading is keeping my engangement level up.

To Reply: Email me your reactions.

Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching by U. Le Guin

2022-05-06T22:54:00-07:00

Finished reading, with satisfaction: Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way by Ursula K. Le Guin 📚

But like, I’m going to have read it ten more times at least. There is an extra dollop of mystery in this poetry, and calling it that seems to be understating it. I’m not even sure what to say right now, so much good stuff here.

For future ease of reference, I leave here one of Le Guin’s sources: Carus’s word-for-word translation of the text from 1898.

< newthought >I read this book< /newthought > as a physical book, and a very nice copy too! Good thing because I’ll be back!

To Reply: Email me your book reports.

Reflecting on the week

2022-05-06T21:34:00-07:00

It has been a busy week, but a good week. There were plenty of moments that I took time to think, to just sit with my thoughts. Whatever thoughts those were in those moments. I’m glad I did that instead of trying to scramble and fill the time with execution when what I needed was time to reflect and absorb and process.

It has also been a turning point week, with me having had a lot of talking to do. Lots more talking is coming too. Very direct, honest talk about things that needed to be said. None of it anything to be afraid of, but still it felt difficult for me to say before. Most of it honest reporting of the world as I see it, and the challenges I see. This week was not easy. But it was doable, and even comfortable. And a relief. Maybe I hadn’t arrived at a final position until recently.

I feel good about the decisions I’ve taken, and the ways that I’ve gone about them. I’m very glad for that. Just one step on the road of personal progress.

By the way, I’m talking about work stuff, which is of course important, but there are many more important things in life.

To Reply: Email me about your week.

Evening Links

2022-05-05T20:53:00-07:00

< summary >Some links from my nightly RSS news feed.< /summary >

I may from time to time share a sampling of the things that I have seen in the morning or evening perusal of my RSS feed reader. This time is one of those times.

GoldenEye 007 on 4 screens? As a huge fan of the original in it’s time, this sounds like a dream to me. But also screencheating< sidenote >Or, “stop looking at my screen!” as I called it.< /sidenote >was sooo muuuchhh fuunnnnn!
Noto font includes everything? I dunno, this is pretty cool actually. I even like the mono emojis.
Mermaid is a great tool, I use it in Obsidian. Any chance we can get support in MB? Or maybe we already have it.
Indirectly got to Paul Graham’s piece on How to Disagree. I usually enjoy Paul’s< sidenote >We’re not really on a first name basis.< /sidenote >essays, or at least learn something.
I do enjoy these ambient noise things. Someday I may post a whole collection of them, with Photian comments.

Thats it for now, time to read some Dracula. Have a good night!

To Reply: SALUTATOINS

A few quick thoughts after having just finished The Grail by B. Doyle

2022-05-05T09:59:00-07:00

Finished reading yesterday, with satisfaction: The Grail: A year ambling & shambling through an Oregon vineyard in pursuit of the best pinot noir wine in the whole wild world by Brian Doyle 📚

It is, as Brian Doyle says, “a thirsty book.” In just one sentence: a great many enjoyable personal essays on the growing and making of the Lange Estate wines. And really it did make me want to head out and pick up one or several bottles of pinot noir from all around, Oregon or elsewhere, because that is a wine that I do enjoy, among others.

I made many underlinings, and asteriskings, and otherwise notings and dogearings while reading this one, which is my new habit. I am going to let those marginalia age for a month and then come back and I might have more to share about this book. And after I talk it over with my dad who recommended it because he knows many of the people in the book and worked in the Oregon wine industry for almost 30 years, I suspect I’ll have a few more things to say then too.

Oh, and a very unexpected cross connection: this is “a thirsty book”, and so was the chicken< marginnote >”paprika hendl”< /marginnote >”very good but thirsty,” that Jonathan Harker eats for supper on the 3rd of May in Bistritz, Romania in the very opening of Dracula that I just started reading yesterday.

< newthought >I read this book< /newthought > in the form of a physical trade paperback that was printed very very well, however if I had one thing to mention it would be that the typesetting was left aligned instead of justified, but I think that may have been a design choice to support the author’s rather conversational, and often long, sentences. Good bright white paper and clear text throughout. A joy to read.

PS: my writing style may, just a bit, have been affected by the writing style of the author of this short book.

To Reply: Email me your grails.

Too much to know by A. Blair

2022-05-04T16:55:00-07:00

< summary >In which I report a couple of very interesting things I found in the book, and why I ultimately abandoned reading it.< /summary >

< newthought >The other book that I recently abandoned reading:< /newthought > Too Much to Know: Managing Scholarly Information before the Modern Age by Ann M. Blair 📚.

There is a ton of fascinating history in managing and accessing all the information in books. A lot of the tools and technology you and I use today are much older than you might think! Tables of contents probably started out as the outer layer of a scroll.

Also, lots of fun random trivia. And not at all presented as fun random trivia. This is a serious scholarly book after all. Example: incipit: “the first few words of the text, employed as an identifying label.” I didn’t know that word or definition. I didn’t even know that was a thing. I might be able to use that. Cool!

Or the crazy random rabbit holes you can get to on the internet now. I learned about the Bibliotheca of Photius, which is Photius’s< sidenote “Who is Photius” >Photius of Constantinople, 810-893.< /sidenote > list of all the books he read, and his reviews< sidenote “Inventor of book reviews?” >Maybe he even invented the book review, or at least the written form.< /sidenote > of them. Like this gem about Socrates of Constantinople: “There is nothing remarkable in the author’s style, and he is not very accurate in matters of doctrine.” Ouch. You can check out the rest of Photius’s big list of books with commentary here! Never would have found something like this in a million years.

< newthought >But, what am I going to do with it?< /newthought > Right now I haven’t got many plans that this would fit in. Maybe one story idea could use it for texture, so I’m glad I found it. Reminds me a bit of The Ninth Gate (book or movie, take your pick). But there was a lot of reading to find these two and the few others too.

So, I’m a bit more bummed about quitting this one than the other one. It was interesting, often fascinating. But, in the end there was too much to read here to get the useful bits out that I wanted to use for my own practical gain. I’ll probably graze occassionally, maybe I’ll pull out more random gems.

< newthought >I read this as an Apple Book< /newthought >, and my comment is the same as last time: I’ve seen the end notes done in a more useful way in other books. But I was able to get to the good stuff, so they are at least workable. Really appreciated that about it.

cc @chrisaldrich

To Reply: Email me what you know.

Read with a pencil

2022-05-03T19:03:00-07:00

< blockquote pre=”George Steiner” >The intellectual is, quite simply, a human being who has a pencil in his or her hand when reading a book.< /blockquote >

I’ve been doing a lot more of this lately because I finally jettisoned my inhibition about writing in books. I had already been buying used/reading copies for years. Now it’s time to cash in!

Found via Austin Kleon’s great newsletter. The rest of Austin’s comment on this one is great too, check it out.

To Reply: Email me your jettisoned inhibitions.

Phishing

2022-05-03T16:56:00-07:00

Is it just me, or are phishing text messages really getting out of hand? Used to be they were only occassional. Seems like it’s almost daily now. In the last ~3 months I’ve gone from mildly skeptical of unexpected text messages to “no way am I clicking on anything in that” unless I’ve Googled the domain, and remembered what I did that would have triggered the text message, and critically examined the contents for phishing bait. It’s not like I was clicking on them before, but it wasn’t such a… reaction. In the last week I switched on the filtering to put texts from unknown senders in their own area in iMessages.

What else can we do about this? I predict the demise of text messaging if this trend continues, or it turns into email anyway.

To Reply: SALUTATOINS

It Begins

2022-05-03T13:01:00-07:00

Oh oh, oh! Dracula Daily began today! I don’t know why I am so excited about this! Maybe it’s the travelogue nature of the beginning, or the comparison of weathers< sidenote “About Weather” >I mean, the experience of comparing and contrasting my weather against the atmosphere of the book, which I assume will follow some seasonal trend and be called out. Just a guess on my part.< /sidenote >I’ll be having over the next 6 months (weather: I’m a fan). I plan to do some realtime commenting on the reading too.

Started reading: Dracula (Norton Critical Editions) by Bram Stoker 📚. Nicely formatted ebook from Standard EBooks if you’re into that.

The things I noted in the first day’s reading: the food (I see cooking opporutnities here), the locations, the corporeal inhabitedness,< sidenote “About Immediacy” >Harker mentions how he slept, and talks about food, and not wanting to miss the train. It seems all very personal/experiential, and immediate.< /sidenote > and the sense of mystery and even a bit of calamity. The world is being set before me, and I don’t know which of the possibilities is a probability. It was only a couple of pages worth. The annotations in the Norton Critical Edition help and also distract a bit.

Anybody want to start a reading club?

To Reply: Email me your Dracula thoughts.

XKCD Commentary

2022-05-03T09:00:00-07:00

What is the right etiquette and way to Micro.blog this?

I really enjoy these comic-commentary types from XKCD 😄. They really capture the uncertainty and confusion of the first time encountering these mathematical notations. Takes ya back haha!

Link to the original: https://xkcd.com/2614/

Another recent favorite in the genre: https://xkcd.com/2586.

To Reply: Email me your favorites.

Lena

2022-05-02T16:57:00-07:00

Lena @ Things of Interest is a short-ish piece of sci-fic posing as something like a Wikipedia article. It’s about the first successful brain image create in the year 2031. I’d say the piece is a success because my reaction was “oh god, the horror.” And this is not a piece of horror sci-fi.

Have you read Lena? What did you think?

To Reply: Email me your favorite short stories.

Headache

2022-05-01T16:58:00-07:00

Yesterday was one of those rare days with a mild persistent headache and achy teeth. That is despite taking Excedrin, drinking plenty of water, and eating plausibly well enough. Maybe it was allergy induced? Or maybe I’m catching a cold. This is a pre-recorded message since I am planning to use Sunday as a day of fewer obligations.

To Reply: Don't email me your headache. Please.

The Extended Mind

2022-04-30T16:59:00-07:00

Abandoned reading: The Extended Mind: The Power of Thinking Outside the Brain by Annie Murphy Paul 📚. I was reading this book on my iPad with Apple Books.

I approached it with the mindset that these ideas are options for me to consider in my own mind practice, and there were a number of interesting ideas. But yesterday I had to admit to myself that it is time to abandon my comittment to reading this book. I have to do the same with another book it was partnered with, but I’ll get to that another day. I think I read about 30-40% of the book before my calculations told me a sustained effort would require more energy than I had to give it at this time. I will keep it around for the option to browse different sections look for useful tidbits.

I found the idea of the Magpie Mind to be a useful one for understanding how I assemble bigger ideas from whatever is around. Want better ideas? Have better stuff around. Also remember to pause and examine the ideas you have constructed.

I also found the ideas discussed around the poured paintings of Jackson Pollock to be really helpful for inspecting and understanding some things about my own computer art practice that had been quite mysterious to me. My random search for what works and what doesn’t work for me will probably be much more effective with this clue.

There are many other ideas that were also useful and that I will continue to personally explore. You can get a pretty good sense of the type of ideas from Ezra Klein’s podcast with the author.

But some sections were less obviously plausible. I did not see the connection to thinking in groups in the tale about the aircraft carrier and the sailboat. If one of you did find a connection there, I would listen. There was also quite a bit of text related to the ideas presented that I didn’t feel added all that much; some stories about trainings and their audiences that I didn’t think clarified what I was to do with the idea at all. Maybe it’s just me.

Now, some comments about the (virtual) book itself as an object. This is a thing that I care about and might explore at a later time. One thing that I greatly appreciated the author and publisher for including is rich end notes. I was able to use these to track down more technical materials on some of the concepts that had been diluted beyond recovery in the book. Those breadcrumbs are invaluable. However, I’ve seen it done in an easier to use way in Apple Books before, and the increased friction was an annoyance. I have nothing else worth mentioning in my review of the experience of reading the book on an iPad.

Did you read The Extended Mind? What did you think of it?

To Reply: Email me your extended mind.

Dracula Daily

2022-04-29T17:00:00-07:00

Found out about Dracula Daily, a Substack that will mail out the contents of the book on the dates that they happen. That starts next week, May 3. I’ve not read Dracula before, so I’m kind of excited about this. Got me a hard copy too: Dracula (Norton Critical Editions) 📚.

In general I enjoy an episodic driven story. The Name of the Rose has a time driven story, and for me it adds an extra dimension to read it around the time of the year that it happens (late November, if I recall correctly).

Anybody have suggestions of other good writing like this? There are some suggestions on the Epistolary novel wikipedia page, but that focuses more on the document aspect of the novel materials, rather than the time/season aspect.

To Reply: Email me your Dracula thoughts.

Introduction

2022-04-28T19:31:00-07:00

Hello new friends. Let me do a short introduction here.

I like to write 📝 and want to get better at it. I am writing right now, am I not?
I’ve been making art 🎨 with computers for a while now, but I have ambitions on drawing too.
I’ve been on this planet for a while now, so I’ve learned a few things. But I still have questions.
I recently started dabling in music making 🎵. It’s been fun.
I’m a competent photographer 📷, it’s a hobby that I enjoy but have been doing less of it lately.
I like to cook, I’ll probably share pictures from time to time. Maybe some recipes too.
I’m pretty math curious, so things like that might show up from time to time.
I went to school for science, physics in particular. So, I have some experience in that.
I do some software professionally, so I know a bit about that.

Obviously there is more than that, but this probably covers a lot ground that we could use to make a connection. Let’s try to get acquainted!

To Reply: Email me an introduction!

justing.net/notes

Prompting Structure and Mix-Ins

Better Prompting Habits

Context gathering:

Epistemic calibration:

Pressure testing:

Scope and output discipline:

Prompts for the bots

Working with the bots

Using Agents

Basic Habits

The IMe pattern: Interview Me

The APE pattern: analyze, plan, execute

Welcome to RSS Club

25Q4 Check-in

Core Domains Review

Writing

What I did

What I learned

What’s next

Photography

What happened

What I learned

What’s next

Fitness & Nutrition

What happened

What I learned

What’s next

Secondary domains

Reading Books

Drawing Practice

Music Practice

Field recording

Research

Highlights and Lowlights

Metrics / Experiments Log

Forward Questions or Hypotheses

Closing Reflection

Third Quarter Review

Core Domains Review

Writing

Reading Books

Photography

Drawing Practice

Fitness

Research

Highlights and Lowlights

Metrics / Experiments Log

Forward Questions or Hypotheses

Closing Reflection

Recently Watched

Evil S1-3

Murderbot S1

Andor S2

Rogue One

A New Hope

Han Solo

Brooklyn 99 All Seasons

The Expanse S1-3, ongoing

The X-Files S1-4, ongoing

Navigating the Weirdness

Principles of Navigation

1. Perpetuate Human Theater

2. Attention Martial Arts

3. Concretize and subtle-ize

4. Pick your battles

5. Shouldn’t should

6. Keep your cool

7. Foxhole Humor

8. Emotional Mixing

9. Join Posses

10. Curate your curators

11. Values over frameworks

Conclusion

Some Good Stuff

The Casino World Death Cult

Summary

Resonant Phrases

Open Loops

Aesthetic Residue