Mo

It goes without saying, but it’s always easy to forget: Be explicit. But be especially explicit with your intentions. Several years ago, I underwent a metarough transition from a worldview of “things will align by themselves” to “only yourself can possibly care enough to justify your alignment.” It’s awkwardly phrased, but it wasn’t until I began being what you might even call meticulously explicit that I began seeing growth or results that I was contented with. At any given point, one must ...

Let’s represent a day as an array of events. day = [] As the day progresses in infinite fashion, events are piled on: while today: day.push(new Event) (Of course, this isn’t a singleton. Everyone has their own day. But let's keep it simple.) There are too many events in a day. Publications found an excellent market opportunity by culling events, chaining them together, and adding some makeup to tell a story. This story is called a piece. A piece is not truth. It is not fact. It is not jo...

In the modern winter, you just can’t compete with the indoors. From a touch on your phone, warmed streams of air trickle from the low heavens and dance with the tiny hairs on your ear. A particle-reenactor presents you with a dizzying supply of drama, comedy, and commentary. And why not pick up a game controller, and manipulate the glowing particles to your will, while delivering the reverberations of your larynx through thin air to fellow waking meat bags thousands of miles away? Perhaps you ca...

I stayed home over the past few days, as promised, to catch my solar breath, and feel better for having done so. But, it has meant less reading, since commutes are a golden time to read. I had only two chapters remaining in The Da Vinci Code, so I just checked out a block of time to finish it today—and, what an excellent, excellent book. My mouth gaped at the eloquence of description and the warm glowing aura Brown successfully describes in the last few chapters. I read over some of the descript...

It’s been an eerie calm before the storm. Just like beautiful summer days that turn stormy with a flash of lightening, my mood unexpectedly turns long-term solemn in an instant. My days have been filled with resounding purpose and determination doing work on the new update, and I fear uncertainty follows. There was a moment in Silicon Valley when the team was about to hit the “Launch” button on their platform. Seconds after launch, they erupt in spontaneous success. It’s been my experience tha...

I asked a friend who’s a “journalism connoisseur” whether he has a paid subscription to any news publications. He said only one: Foreign Affairs. Initially, his school had paid for digital access, but after he graduated, he kept the subscription active and put in his own payment information. I asked how often he accessed his subscription content, and he said not that often. Then why keep a subscription? He said, “I’m a fan of the work they do and I want to see more of it.” My head exploded inst...

Tired today. Fatigued. I’ve just noticed it, but I’ve been in an adrenaline fueled frenzy the past few weeks. Going fast. Extremely productive, but tiring. On the first sign of light I immediately rise and resume my robotic trance, and perform the morning ceremonials while anxiously observing the availability of the next bus. I’ll always over or under shoot, so there’s always either lengthy waiting or needless rushing—never in between. The snow is wet and heavy, and each lifting of my boot ancho...

Or, it’s an interesting proposition. “Fake news” is a complicated problem, and yet I think rather than setting both human and automated criteria for what constitutes truth, overproducing fiction can have a similar but self-selecting effect. Namely, skepticism. A little of it wouldn’t hurt right now. I think there are two differing options for reality, or a blend in between: Truth is curated by a handful of entities. Which in turn teaches reliance and trust on these entities. Which in turn crea...

I’ve had a broken experience with employment. And these experiences have led me to believe that employment as is traditionally done today is broken. Others may have different experiences, and some others might even swear by their job. I don’t doubt it. Yet I know a lot of others who have succumbed to the slow rotting of what I could only describe as profoundly subtle misery. I think employment can be made to work. But in the interest of squeezing every last oozing drop of utility from an employ...

Winning usually involves possessing just 1 more than the opponent. One more of what? Anything. This was sort of the stunning insight that led to AlphaGo’s dominance over its human counterparts. (AlphaGo is an AI developed by Google DeepMind, and is also the eponymously named documentary on Netflix.) At a game like Go, optimizing a game for winning by just one would be nearly impossible for a human to accomplish. For an AI? I tremble just thinking about that level of forethought and incisiveness....

Part of the reason I like to challenge myself to write everyday is to get over, as my friend calls it, the sacredness of art. When we believe the work we put out is the most important thing the world will ever see, it creates too much ceremony around something that should be casual. Case in point: In the beginning of Standard Notes, there was a lot of development work to do, but I still needed to echo out signals of existence from this corner of the world. So I would write some piece on some r...

I came across a tweet on John Deere’s practice of encrypting software on their machines to limit what repairs farmers can do themselves, and on the emergence of a nascent network of farmers trading encryption keys online. On the one hand—beautifully done. This is a magnificent display of capitalism, and is awe worthy just in that regard. On the other hand—what about the farmers? Pure Capitalism and its consequences is a topic of endless fascination, but I am no economist, and have no fresh ou...

I had a rough day today for whatever reason, and was on my way home antsy to just sit down and eject myself from the world and play some video games. But then a horrific thought hit me—what if I didn’t charge the headset? I’d been too lazy to take the extra step to plug it in every night, and I felt like I hadn’t charged it in a while. It’s died on me before mid-game, and being the only way to have both input and output, was absolutely crucial. I came home, and there it was. The prettiest scen...

I’m feeling a little delirious today, after having fully exhausted myself the past two days hunting down a dreadful bug. The most dreadful of all bugs: mobile crashes that occur on launch. Fortunately, this was just a beta build, and it was detected quickly by early testers. But, I was absolutely bewildered. What could it possibly be? The crash reports showed nothing. The changes I made in all were inconsequential. So unaffecting, in fact, that I pushed them straight to master. What could possib...

I get mad at myself when I forget something that would have been very much of help to remember. I’ll be tracking down one bug, and find myself traveling through forgotten worlds whose functioning seems totally alien. What are you? What do you do? Sure, they’ll be some comments here and there, but almost mindless in nature. As if it were a chore. If only I had written it down. If only I left clues for my forgetful future self. I could be such a more evolved, intelligent being. But instead I say...

I read something at about 11pm last night that dramatically altered my mood. I went to sleep like that, and now my waking is the manifestation of that seed. It’s the type of thing you can’t shake, because it hits you right where it hurts. And my overall consciousness is diminished by it. I’m writing about it to evict it from my mind. It’s gotten me in the worst mood, and the sooner I let it out of me, the quicker I can move from it. There were two small incidents, one which happened last nigh...

Another alternative to yesterday’s post about essentially the "proof of stake” (or proof of influence) system used by physical laws to redistribute matter is the idea that those who work the hardest succeed most in acquiring the things they’re after, or in other words, proof of work. I realize I may be applying bizarre personifications, or in this case machinifications, to the concept of a “sentient’ universe. This whole set up, including the environment, is ultimately fictional. But I think it...

Everyone gets what they want, relative to their influence. At least, that’s the new principle which I'm presently entertaining regarding the rules by which the “universe” operates. I’ve cycled through many beliefs about this particular question in the past—how do the mechanics of this world, if refusing randomness as a sufficient answer, allocate a participant’s wishes and justify it within the entire system? I used to carry sentimental views on this question, and was an avid enthusiast of the p...

By now, we should have all heard the expression that goes something like “you can’t always get what you want because if everyone got what they wanted the world would be in utter chaos and disarray.” I asked my wife recently whether she believed if someone wishing bad for you is enough for those wishes to have any concrete effect on your life. In other words, if enough people pray silently to all the gods in the world for your demise, can that possibly materialize into anything? She hesitated. O...

Something strange just happened. And it happened seemingly overnight. I mentioned before how I've spent a lot of time sucking in Rocket League on PS4. Nonetheless, I’ve played it consistently. And I’ve seen myself improve very little. Over the last week, I’ve been thoroughly obsessed with Twitch live streams. I’m late to the party—but have you ever participated in a live stream? It’s one of the most wonderful things I’ve ever experienced. Essentially, you’re able to control this human being th...

I mentioned how the transitioning of something from the unconscious to the conscious can sometimes ruin that thing for me. Like when I’m watching a movie and see through bad acting, and start feeling the presence of a camera crew behind the set. Strangely, this also happens with my unconscious routines. I’ll go about a few days where, by chance, I will have enjoyed the actions of the first day, so do the same the next day, and same the next. But somehow, invariably, and usually after about the f...

I used to keep an exhaustive list of ideas, piled on to over the course of several long years of fantasizing what I was going to one day build. I found, and somewhat counter to my expectations, that the decision making process was not so measured as it was spur of the moment. My friend, during a Watts-induced meditation, once mused that decision making is an illusion: in reality, you almost never have enough information to make the “right” decision, so instead you make a split-second decision at...

If quantum mechanics has taught us anything, it’s that observing screws everything up. Sometimes, I’ll be absentmindedly experiencing a positive emotion or experience, and think, this is great! But ah. Damn. Now you’ve observed it. And rather than continuing through the experience with the enthusiasm and enthrallment of a child, you’re now looking through the side of your eyes. It’s a devilish little thing. Observing for me can sometimes be about reproducibility. Last week was great—do that ...

I awoke early today, and having been in a rhythm of going to the office first thing, made no exception on this Sunday. Don’t be mistaken—this isn’t me hustling. My wife works some weekends, and rather than staying at home and basking in my living room, I’d rather get out and be enlivened by the brisk temperatures and constant motion. That energy, coupled with a throat-scratching cup of coffee, gives me large enough momentum to carry out any task of my choosing in the morning, up until about 2-3p...

A mind-blowing excerpt from Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code: The Priory's tradition of perpetuating goddess worship is based on a belief that powerful men in the early Christian church 'conned' the world by propagating lies that devalued the female and tipped the scales in favor of the masculine. The Priory believes that Constantine and his male successors successfully converted the world from matriarchal paganism to patriarchal Christianity by waging a campaign of propaganda that demonized the...

It would be easier if I didn’t have to publish this. I could just write the … silliest … things. Some days are subtle, like today. Fair-weathered, all around. My brain’s fan spins with a soothing calmness, unlike my macbook when I accidentally write a recursive javascript function, which seems to be happening more than it should. Progress remains steady on the new update. The codebase is cooling and taking form, after being molten for the past few weeks. I’m currently knee deep in The Da Vinc...

In Rocket League, when someone joins in the middle of the game, the game lags and glitches momentarily, integrating the new player into the network. My friend mused, what if real life lagged every time someone new entered. Life ultimately remains fascinating, despite the waking drudgery of our days. Sometimes I’ll wake in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, and still be crossing the ethereal divide between two different worlds—I’ll stare out the window, through the night and onto the m...

I hadn’t been very productive from Friday until Monday. Which sounds like it’s a weekend related thing but I assure you it's not. My weekend's borders are dashed, so you can slip in and out any time. But, Monday was strange. I was excited to get out of the house and head to the office, and avoid all the wondrous merry distractions at home. But, wasting time I still managed to do. Apparently, you can’t run from yourself. I was so heavily reluctant to produce even a single line of code, that it w...

I wrote in a post just a few days ago, that because I had happened upon a flow that seemed to be beneficial to me (writing every day), that you should also explore the opportunity to challenge yourself daily, by committing to a fixed schedule where you produce some sort of item every day. And upon further reflection, this is total bullshit on my part. There’s a certain self-help culture online wherein those who happen upon a productive nugget of truth or wisdom share it and urge others to also ...

I watched AlphaGo on Netflix yesterday, and have been in an eerie mood since. An amazingly well made documentary, AlphaGo is the story of AI and man. Have you ever seen images and cartoons from the 50’s that attempt to depict how the future will look? It’s the retro-futuristic vibe similar to the Smeg line of products. One thing you will notice though: we always get it wrong. No matter which time period we attempt to predict the future from, we get it wrong. I’ve always wondered, if this proces...