M

Mo

Pure science fiction. Working on Standard Notes.

Susceptible to Control

Privacy is a question that I never quite seem to find a satisfying answer for. In the past, when I’ve asked myself why digital privacy is important, and why it’s worth struggling for, the answer I nestled on was that privacy is important because privacy is power. But that’s about as far as I got. Privacy was about keeping a balance of power between those who would abuse it for their own gain, and those who live out their lives, unconsciously leaving valuable trails of information behind. The i...
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Real

In the game Factorio, your goal is to create a well-oiled factory that produces objects which are then used in other parts of your factory. I had a flash addiction to this game, meaning I played it intensely for a period of two weeks, then never touched it again. The game was dangerous. It synthesized the human incentive loop into a mind-wrapping game one could not help but be mercilessly sucked into. The game's purpose was mostly up to you, but, in order to upgrade your factory parts, in order...
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You, Deity

We make plans as if our future self were rational, when present self is never more than a galactic mess of emotions. Present you is the only possible person that can save you. ...
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How to learn programming the natural way

Some years ago, I had a fellow developer ask me where I learned to type on the keyboard. I said, huh? What do you mean. It’s a keyboard. You just tap on it, and eventually you get rally tappy on it. I’ve been doing it since I was three feet tall. He said oh. “I took one of those Mavis Beacon typing classes.” Both of us, at that point, were equally proficient in typing on a keyboard and understood the super complex mechanics of hand placement and proper finger etiquette. I learnt it absentminded...
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Dog food is soylent for dogs

What to feed the poor little man? This dog is real beyond words, and every slight negligence of attention on my part is an injustice to his world. So I try to accommodate our guest. Love, warmth, long walks, and infinitely satisfying cuddle sessions. I would be a five star establishment, were it not for negligence and ignorance of the most important part of the experience. Rock food. How painful yet the sight of it is. Tiny rock-hard pebbles that give your dog only the best of what he needs. Th...
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Common Genius

Excellent taste plus average resourcefulness, or average taste and excellent resourcefulness, is about all it would take. Resourcefulness is a better way to phrase intelligence, as intelligence seems useless without the ability to impact neighboring matter. Resourcefulness can thus be found anywhere, and not imaginarily confined to unique circles. I had a friend call me once, lamenting how his unique struggles are owed primarily to his high level of intelligence. I said, are you sure? Now don...
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Simple

I told my friend, my requirements are: simple work, simple life. But I also need this amount of money on a monthly basis to find peace. And that I would need more users to get there. More. Ugh. That word. I cried in agony. What a trap more is. More is a thing with madness as its only logical conclusion. So why chase more? More users. More employees. More revenue. More markets. More problems. Why should I bother? I should close off registration today and say, That’s it. We’ve hit peak users ...
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Not all days are equal

Good days are good, bad days are bad, and there's nothing you can do about that. I find that if a bad mood stupefies you as to its origin, then, it's probably not your fault. You don't always need a reason. You can have two identical days with the exact same starting points, variables, circumstances and factors, and have the best day you've had in a long time in one, and be completely miserable the other, and have absolutely no guesses as to why. If it were deducible, which I do not think it is,...
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Notice

You're more likely to notice the bad things around you, than you are the good things. This is easy to notice. I have around me right now innumerable good things. I'm sheltered in a warm room, and have an endless supply of coffee. That's pretty good. My dog is snuggling cozily next to me, I'm not tired, I have food to eat, my bills are paid. Great, great things. But, it would be silly if that's all I thought about. No, better to think about the bad things. So I can fix them. Which proves, it do...
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Ambiance Monetizer

I was at a coffee shop today and overheard someone talk about a book they purchased on Amazon. Upon hearing that word, a bit immediately flipped in my brain and reminded me of a few things I’ve been meaning to order. So I went and made a purchase. I thought it would be funny if at some point Amazon introduces a device shops can place to monetize their ambiance, which at random times during the hour has no other purpose than to scream “Amazon!” as obnoxiously as possible. ...
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Not open to suggestion

I recently took a trip with a friend, and noticed myself behaving extrinsically, rather than intrinsically, and felt dirty about it. That is, rather than drinking coffee when I felt like drinking coffee, my friend might awake earlier than me and say "Hey, I'm making coffee, want some?" To which I might reply, sure, why not! I thought this was harmless, but carried on to other elements of life, you start living a life of suggestion. "Hey, I'm taking a walk, want to join?" Sure, why not! When re...
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It's not your fault

Several years ago, I went vegan for six months, because I wanted to be conscientious. I was fortunate enough to exit that unfortunately ascetic lifestyle after realizing: It’s not your fault you like meat. Humans have been eating meat long before I was ever born. Long before any of us were ever born. We’ve been eating meat for millions of years. If I crave it, it’s not my fault. Sure, I can try to fight it. I can resist my hardware. But if I give in, it’s not my fault. It's not your fault t...
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The Artificial Life

There was a story some years ago about living circumstances for the 1.3 million employees of Foxconn in China, the company that builds Apple’s products. It’s a problem of scale, no doubt, but these workers lived in crammed boxes stacked atop one another high into the sky. In between the buildings, there was a net. The net is an admission that suicide is embedded into the overall design of the arrangement, and short of a full-out global economic revolution, this was just the way it was going to ...
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Imaginary

Sometimes, when I’m deep in it, I think that there are several billion people on the planet, all worrying after something. Each and every one has found some way to entertain their mind with the wonderfully wicked world of what if. And it must be, if each of us is worrying ceaselessly after something—it must be that our worlds aren’t as real as we think they are. Sometimes, it helps to know that my problems are sort of...imaginary. After reading the above to myself, I realize another aspect, ...
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Chaos Theory

Not writing yesterday felt so good. And, now that I'm off the hook to produce on a fixed schedule, I can write flexibly whenever I want, in between tasks, like right now, at 2pm. I am no longer my own boss. I came across a really good quote the other day, which describes a theory of life in surprisingly succinct terms, in a way I hadn't encountered before. The quote comes from, of all places, a movie on Netflix called When We First Met, which was actually pretty good. Down on luck person: I...
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Masterless

Honestly, I wanted “Time is patient” to be my last post for a while. Because it so perfectly captured what I wanted to spend my time on. To live presently, and to not be in constant thought, focus, and anxiety. Writing every day has many benefits, but it has also produced some strange effects. One is, I express myself so vividly here, that I do not feel the need to express myself any further, in real life. It sort of gives me my social fix. I was already reserved before this; now, it's intensif...
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A world awaits

What I like most about vacations is the difficulty with which I come to a decision in going, and the ease at which I feel when I return. Even bad trips invigorate me in some way. It’s escaping your circumstances just a little bit; separating you from them, and seeing yourself behave in a different habitat. It’s almost shocking what part of my mood is directly tied to the routine I’ve managed to sink into. Sinking into is another phrase for complacency, and I think of all the horrible acts we he...
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Time is patient

One year is really long. Ten is an era. A hundred is a lifetime. A thousand is a millennia. Ten thousand is incomprehensible. A hundred thousand years—unimaginably vast. Yet two million years. Two million years is the amount of time, give or take, that nature has been thoroughly employed with this side project. The human species is a project that seems fresh, new, and cutting-edge. Yet it has been a work in progress for countless millions of years, if not billions. We like to fancy ours...
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Visitors

We are content to the great gods— Characters, of a never ending story. ...
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Bye bye

I'm taking a spontaneous, much-needed road trip to some remote cabin in Wisconsin with the wife and dog. The indoor atmosphere here has grown noxious from my ceaseless huffing and puffing. I should leave a window open to air the place out. I'm leaving..right now actually. Coming back Sunday. Vacations are a great way to test the resolve of your daily routines. If I stop writing..ah, who cares. ...
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Lethargy

This winter's been long. It's gotten me trapped indoors. My dog and I yearn for freedom. Change is afoot. I just..need to..snap from..this haze.. Because title, here's a dump of some unexpounded thoughts: Every day, we choose when to resign. Life is impossible to fill. It’s just too big. “It has solved a lot of problems, but it's also created a whole new set of problems” is probably the best deal you’ll get in life. Growth doesn’t operate on the same timescale as consciousness You can’t sk...
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An old friend

As predicted, the big project is complete, and now I’m impatiently trying to figure out what’s next. Do I code more? Do I do more marketing, whatever that is? Do I live off daily maintenance chores? These things should be easy. Why is this stuff not easy? Ahhhh. It should just be automatic. I figure at every "next" point my compass will automatically recalibrate. Instead, it seems to shatter completely, forcing me to assemble a new one from some unknown materials. It’s frustrating how non-respo...
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Resourceful

I’ve moved on to the third of the Dan Brown reading series, and at this point have grown just a little bit tired of the same plot-and-twist. But, his writing is instructional, so I'm attempting to stick it out. This book is Inferno, and—it may just be me—but it lacks the same profundity of topic as the others (The Da Vinci Code and Origin). I did however encounter one subtle passage that caught me meandering: Vayentha swallowed hard, scarcely daring to imagine the possibility. Has Langdon elud...
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Hardcoded

There is one recurring aspect of my life that always shackles me. My dependence on external activity. Notifications. Notifications of themselves carry no meaning and have no inherent value. I had been in one very particular setting so uncontrollably enamored by the interfacial beauty of a notification, that I glorified and fell weak at all the powers it had on me. Is it the font color? The way it says that word? No, it’s the dopameaning we’ve ascribed to that particular shape on a screen. I do...
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Uncertainly Free

In the definitions of freedom we’ve been exploring in the last few posts, we happened on the most suitable as the lack of dependence on arbitrary powers. And I had figured, since I don’t have a boss, that I’m pretty free, and should feel pretty good all the time. But, I don’t always feel good. Sometimes, I feel as bad as I ever felt at a job. Of course, they’re different strands of pain. But pain nonetheless. And I think if we were to explore more deeply the definition of freedom we’ve been ent...
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Licenses are the death of freedom

I wrote yesterday how the definition of freedom can be stated as “the lack of dependence on an arbitrary power,” and that freedom is the sum of your “microliberties” as permeated across the subtleties of your life. Personally, I’ve never been able to handle lack of freedom well, in any situation. No one likes being told what to do. We want to do what we want to do. Freedom is the space to pursue that. I will say that in the course of my life, government hasn’t been a large impediment to my free...
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A definition of freedom

I happened on a video lecture on the genealogy of liberty, posing the question: In most precise terms, what is the definition of freedom? Language is quite literally the architect of our reality, and a clear definition of freedom is of grave significance. The lecturer had presented various historical definitions of freedom, beginning with freedom as the power to pursue an option and the lack of external interference in doing so. This worked well enough for some time, until it became important t...
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A React Native tutorial

I wrote an article with a headline I won't apologize for on Medium some time ago about my experience with React Native. Since then, I still get the occasional comment or message asking the same question: Do you have any tutorials you recommend? This is a bizarre phenomenon that seems to emerge with large numbers, and I don’t quite get it. Find any article or tweet praising a framework, and you will invariably see comments of the same nature. Can you help me get started? Better yet, when I sai...
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Zzzzz...

I screwed up today. At 3:45am, I surprised myself awake. I was then faced with an important decision: check phone, or don’t check phone. The rules are simple: if I check my phone, I’ll be riled up by some alert, and won’t be able to fall back asleep. If I don’t check my phone, I’ll be antsy. This isn’t a common occurrence. It’s only because I finally launched the big update. Lots of moving parts, and from the time I fell asleep, tectonic shifts may have occurred. So I checked it. And I’ve b...
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Meticulously Explicit

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 ...
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