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diff --git a/scratch.txt b/scratch.txt index 02bd79f..20df59f 100644 --- a/scratch.txt +++ b/scratch.txt @@ -1,54 +1,55 @@ The energy of chaos is required to change the existing order. # Scratch -## The exhilaration of figuring something out. +Whatever one’s opinion of the response to the disease, what is undeniable is that so many people of influence took for granted that safety must always trump social relations and that the human being is not the center of a web of loyalties and commitments but is rather a physical fact needing technical management. Nothing, it was revealed to us, is worth risking life for—nothing. If other occasions for risk remain, this is evidently only because administration has not yet found the means to quash them. It was revealed that no danger is greater than death. It was revealed that life is sheer matter and not something else, for example, the capacity for love. +https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2022/06/atoms-and-the-void-review-of-interventions-2020/ -This little movie runs on a loop in my head. It invades everything I do. I see it sitting at stoplights, a similar path of electricity out of the breaker, up the light pole and to the switch which sends it to the top lens, which happens to be red. - -I see it doing the dishes. The water leaving the tower, flowing down increasingly narrower pipes, off the main street line and into my hot water tank where it sits until a flick of the faucet calls it up through more pipes and out onto my hands. - -Everything flows like this. Every system around us, when it works, does something similar. +# Stories to Tell -Right now the Travco does not work. I can see it in my head and yet I cannot make it work. It has to be the fuel pump. I have spark, I have compression, the missing ingredient in the basic trifecta of the internal combustion engines is fuel. +## Illinois Beach -But seeing it and understanding it are different than actually solving the problem, making it work. This is basic difference between architects and builders. Builders have to solve problems in the real world that architects will never encounter. +I think it's important to remember that it's fun to do something for no reason at all. That is, not everything needs a reason beyond simply the freedom to do it. -Days pass. I continue to fail with the bus. The real world of by time constraints, pay checks that don’t arrive, other commitments, weather. I work on other things. Hang wall panels, sand and apply finish. I do things I know I know how to do. More days pass. Still the bus doesn’t start. I get sullen. My wife thinks I’m mad all the time. I’m not. I’m thinking about the engine, I can’t get it out of my head. It reminds me of the first time I tried to write some code. It was fun, but it also was not. +This is what Sir Edmund Hilery was hinting at when he was asked, *why do you want to climb Mount Everest,* and he answered, *because it's there*. Because the freedom of the will to choose and act and do, the freedom for you to do something for no other reason than you happen to want to do it, is irreducible, unassailable base on which all human delight is built. +That has nothing to do with how we came to be at Illinois Beach State Park, on the far northern reaches of Chicago, or what we did there, but I think it's worth saying things from time to time about the meta-journey if you will and one of the key things I've learned from this adventure is that life isn't so serious as it seems, perhaps especially when it seems most serious. The universe is a whimsical place after all, how else do you explain the giraffe? Or this strange, abandoned concession center in the middle of Illinois Beach State Park looking for all the world like it was plucked out of a 1950s Soviet seaside resort and plopped here in Illinois? -# Stories to Tell +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_065427_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2970" class="picwide" /> -## Ocracoke II +One of the things I was most looking forward to about coming back to the Great Lakes area was replicating the day we [drove out of the heat and into the wonderfully cool summer of Wisconsin](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2018/06/wisconsin). Alas, that did not happen this time (you can [never go back](https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2008/06/you-cant-go-home-again)). -The storms were still clearing out when we headed back to Ocracoke for another two weeks. The ferry ride over had some of the strangest green waters and stormy skies I've ever seen. +The heat wave followed us up through Chicago, where I stopped off at the Zipdee factory to pick up two awnings we'd ordered several months ago. With the giant, fifteen foot tubes on the floor of the bus, I hit the road again bound for Illinois State Beach, on the shores of Lake Michigan. -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0537.jpg" id="image-2915" class="picwide" /> +Thankfully the heat wave only lasted two more days, and we had the nice clear, cool waters of Lake Michigan to keep us cool in the mean time. Almost any day spent on the water is a good day in my book, though the temperature extremes were more than we're used to -- 100 in the air, 53 in the water. Stay in for more than a few minutes and you're shivering, but by the time you're out two minutes you're ready to cool back down again. -The next day the clouds blew away shortly after sunrise and we didn't have anything but sunshine for nearly two weeks. +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174403_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2972" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-20_174406_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2971" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0621.jpg" id="image-2918" class="picwide" /> +Fortunately after the weekend the air temp settled back down to a nice 80 degrees, making it a bit for fun to sit (and play) on the beach. +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_103522_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2968" class="picwide" /> +<div class="cluster"> + <span class="row-2"> +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105102_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2967" class="cluster pic66" /> +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_105937_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2966" class="cluster pic66" /> + </span> +</div> -The only downside to perfect weather and endless days at the beach is that there's not much to say about it. We found a routine of working in the mornings and evenings, and spending the day at the beach. It's a hard life out here, but someone has to do it. +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_173023_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2965" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_190901_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2964" class="picwide" /> +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-22_194625_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2963" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0548.jpg" id="image-2925" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0562.jpg" id="image-2916" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0598.jpg" id="image-2917" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/2022-05-22_161317_ocracoke-birds.jpg" id="image-2912" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220518_135014.jpg" id="image-2921" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/IMG_20220518_141855.jpg" id="image-2922" class="picwide" /> +The abandoned concession stand wasn't the only odd thing in Illinois State Beach, in fact there were quiet a few oddities. My favorite was the pair of Sandhill Cranes that strolled through the campground every day utterly unconcerned with any humans that might be around. In fact they would march right up to people looking for food, I saw one sneak a hot dog off a picnic table and proceed to eat it before any of the people around noticed. -We did spend a bit more time exploring the village of Ocracoke this time. There was a mass transit system running now, which in this case was an extra long golf cart you could ride from one end of the village to the other. Just barely faster than walking the same distance, but the kids loved it. They also somehow talked Corrinne into buying them candy and swords. +<img src="images/2022/2022-06-21_102538_illinois-beach.jpg" id="image-2969" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0625.jpg" id="image-2919" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0551_01.jpg" id="image-2924" class="picwide" /> -<img src="images/2022/DSC_0645.jpg" id="image-2920" class="picwide" /> +However odd it might have been, Illinois State Park was perfectly suited to the real reason we came -- to install our new Zipdee awnings and get rid of our old. No one complained about the sawing and the remains of the old one fit nicely in the dumpster. In the end rain stopped me from getting the big awning installed here, but I got our new side awning on at least. -Mostly though, we spent two weeks enjoying the weather, the sand, the sea. Aside from food and good company, there's not much else in life you need. +It keeps the afternoon sun out of the window and allows us to have the window open even if it's raining, but really we just like it... because it's there. It makes the bus a little more fun, a little more delightful if I do say so myself. -## Seining with Val +"" ## Birding @@ -225,7 +226,7 @@ I will likely never write a rebuttal because for one thing it would be publishab I don't hold this against science as a method of inquire, but I do very much hold it against scientists, who have become a modern priesthood controlling public discourse, just as the Catholic church did through the middle ages, the high priests of Set did in ancient Egypt, and so on through any other culture you want to cite. -There is always a priesthood setting the limits of acceptable discourse, what matters is how that priesthood (and the culture more broadly) handles dissent. How much room is there for discourse outside the acceptable? We're very fortunate to live in a culture where for the most part there are no limits placed on dissenters. I can write this, publish it where anyone can read it, and there are (currently) no consequences. I will not be burned at the stake, exiled or any number of horrible things visited on those with "unacceptable" ideas in various cultures throughout the ages. There is some risk of publishing these opinions and having them come back to haunt me at some point in the future of course, but ultimately all I am advocating for is that we continue to not punish, or censor people who old opinions, beliefs, customs, what have you, that are considered unacceptable to the current priesthood. +There is always a priesthood setting the limits of acceptable discourse, what matters is how that priesthood (and the culture more broadly) handles dissent. How much room is there for discourse outside the acceptable? We're very fortunate to live in a culture where for the most part there are no limits placed on dissenters. I can write this, publish it where anyone can read it, and there are (currently) no consequences. I will not be burned at the stake, exiled or any number of horrible things visited on those with "unacceptable" ideas in various cultures throughout the ages. There is some risk of publishing these opinions and having them come back to haunt me at some point in the future of course, but ultimately all I am advocating for is that we continue to not punish, or censor people who hold opinions, beliefs, customs, what have you, that are considered unacceptable to the current priesthood. ## Present @@ -777,21 +778,89 @@ I still use them. I keep open some tabs for the stock market because those are r ## Intentional computing. -A computer screen is a distraction from life. There is no life in this thing we are both staring into at different points in time. Life is what happens when we close this and go back to the world. That's true of a book too. But a book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. A book has edges. It ends. The world of the screen taps into the networks and continues without end. This is why we fret over the distractions of computers and never worry about books. +A computer screen is a distraction from life. There is no life in this thing we are both staring into at different points in time. Life is what happens when we close this and go back to the world. That's true of a book too. But a book's distraction from life is much less consuming than a computer screen. It is a single story. More important is that its depth is limited. A book ends on the final page. The world of the screen taps into the network and offers unlimited depth. A world without end. There is no final webpage. This is why we fret over the distractions of computers and never worry about books. + +So how do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? I've been thinking about this for decades now, gradually spending less and less time on a computer. Two things jump started me on a path to less screens. One was the birth of my children, which were a kind of sledge hammer reminder that nothing digital matters. None of it actually exists and none of it matter. The people in front of you, they matter. + +The other thing was selling our home and hitting the road in the bus. This was another sledge hammer reminder that the physical world is what matters. Given a choice between staring at a computer screen at night and sitting around a fire and staring up at the night sky, is well, not even a choice. + +These two things greatly reduced how much time I spent using a computer (and be computer I mean a laptop or phone). Then we left the road and rented a house and something interesting happened. I went back to staring at the screen way too much. All that distance I thought I had created? Gone with single change of behavior. I just slid right back into those old habits of tucking the kids in and sitting down at my desk to stare at a screen. -How do you stop yourself from getting sucked into a world without end? I've been thinking about ways to do that and recently, accidentally, stumbled on something that works for me. I don't know if it would be practical for most people because it involves using the command line and text-based interfaces aren't much in fashion, but perhaps if I walk though it someone smarter than me will figure out a way to do it without using the command line. +I could defend myself and say that I write a novel in that time, which is true, but that only really accounts for maybe half the time I spent staring at that screen. And now that we're back in the road, I've once again had to wean myself off. I still pick campfires over screens, but like most of us I imagine, I still spend way to much time on a screen. -Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you have to. Every time I reach for my laptop I try to pause and think, could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a computer? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do. Rule one becomes prefer the analog. +I want to spend less though, and so I've been working at this for some time, finding ways to not just get off the screen, but handle the things that I used to do on a screen, without needing a screen. This time I don't want to relapse should I be away from life on the road for some reason. + +To lessen the time I spend using a screen I realized I needed to turn it into a book. I needed to put edges on it and make sure it has a last page. In order to defeat that time sucking endless form of the network we're going to have to put some endings in place. + +What I've done is to create many endings. Endings for every beginning. The best ending in this case is the beginning that never begins. Here's the basic idea: only use a computer when you absolutely have to. Every time I reach for my laptop or phone I force myself pause and think, first, do I need to do this right now? Yes? Okay, but could I do whatever it is I am about to do *without* a screen? Quite often the answer is yes. So that's what I do -- I use some analog tool instead. + +**Rule one: prefer the analog.** I am a writer so often when I am going to open my laptop the things I am about to do is write. Now for work, I go ahead and write on the laptop. There's too much to look up, cross-link and reference to not use a laptop. For myself though, I prefer to write things like this in a notebook with a pen. -I also tend to look things up online, but, in an effort to cut down on this I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. This has a couple of side effects I've noticed. First of most painfully: a lot of the things, a lot, like almost all, the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the 2 seconds where I did care have passed. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe 1 in 10. I have no real way to catalog how much time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. +But writing is as least as much research as it is actual typing, and this tends to be where I really get sucked in. In an effort to cut down on the amount of time I spend "researching" stuff that I probably don't really need to research, I now write down questions on paper instead of immediately typing them in duckduckgo. Only later do I set aside some time to go back to this list and actually look things up. + +From this I have learned something important. I am not a very good judge of what is important to me. A lot of the things, *a lot* -- like almost all -- of the things I go to look up on the internet are utterly trivial things I don't really care about once the two seconds where I did care have passed. I am forced to confront this every time I go over my day's list of stuff. Of all the things I write down in my notebook to look up later, I actually end up looking up maybe 1 in 20. Probably less. I have no real way to catalog how much screen time this has saved me, but it feels like it must be ages. + +Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Could it wait? Let's wait then, it'll probably pass. No? Okay then. + +**Rule two: Batch your queries before going digital** + +If it doesn't pass and I really have to open the screen, then let's do it. What greets me when I open my laptop is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open, ever. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. The task is done, the last page has been reached so you shut the book, so to speak. + +**Rule two: Practice Single Task Computing** + +This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite -- especially web browsers, where the tab essentially functions as an ever expanding task list. + +Here's where I will suggest something heretical: hide your tab bar. Go into the browser's View menu and disable the tab bar. One tab, one task. + +To understand how this can be powerful I have to take a technical detour. The application I do my writing in is called Vim. It is very old. Old enough that it predates the idea of a tab. Instead it has something it calls buffers. They're similar to the tabs in modern applications, but with one important difference: a buffer is a stack of pages with *only the top one visible*. + +Tabs are always visible. Tabs are a todo list you don't need. Tabs will will steal your attention. Buffers will not. To change buffers requires a conscious decision and effort on your part. You have to call up a list of buffers and then switch to one. You will never accidentally switch to another buffer. I have used this to my advantage as a way to focus when writing for years. + +You know that expression out of sight out of mind? That's buffers. For example I am typing this right now on a screen that looks like this: + +That is about as uni-tasky as I've been able to make a screen. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +I have no way to measure how much time browsing in a single window with buffers bidden away until I need them has saved me, but again I believe it is significant. + + + + + + + + + + + -Once I've exhausted all avenues of analog deferment I still give myself one more ultimatium that I call the Outkast ultimatum: forever ever? Is it really really that important? Right now? Could it wait? Let's wait then, it'll probably pass. -If it doesn't pass and I really have to open the laptop I do. And what greets me is an entirely blank screen. Well, actually it's a gloomy, slightly blurry picture I took a long time ago somewhere deep in the lagoons of the Florida panhandle. The point though is that I don't leave any applications open. This encourages what I call single task computing: open an application, complete a task, close the application and then the laptop. -This is the opposite of how we approach computers much of the time, but I find that trying to multitask on a computer ends up with me distracted by all things shiny and next thing I know an hour has gone by. Single task computing prevents this, but you have to be vigilante. Applications encourage the opposite -- especially web browsers, where the tab offers and easy way of creating an ever expanding task list. +Now I do leave some background tabs open, mostly investing related tabs because I am a fairly active trader and I like to run through my charts every morning. But the rest of the day, I don't see those tabs. I got to thinking about this recently because I was out on Ocracoke Island in the Outer Banks for a while where the cell reception was awful[^1]. It was a struggle to load a webpage. I would type in a URL, go boil water for tea, make the tea, come back and the page still hasn't loaded. It was bad enough that I pulled out w3m, the text based browser that started life in 1995 and hasn't changed much since. I opened it up and low and behold, it worked. It rendered the text I needed, I got the info I wanted, and it didn't take long using the exact same connection that wouldn't load in a graphical browser. |