Nice! Break out the masks and celebrate!

I knew who all these people were, and I knew where they stood. I didn’t NEED this debate. In fact, I was gonna launch into a whole spiel on this very website about how Debates Are Worthless.

I think the author is in the minority in that most of the lazy disengaged American public knows very little about most of the candidates, and that for as information-lite and vacuous the debates are, they NEED the debates because that pittance is an order of magnitude more information about the candidates then they will bother to acquire without them.

1. I didn’t know until today that he was the lyricist.

2. cgod borrowed me a rush album many many moons ago and while I liked it in a D&D sort of way, I didn’t love it in an “important artist” sort of way.

3. A couple years ago I was flipping through streaming channels on my TV and a free rush concert was available (the one where they had all the washing machines on stage). From the moment I landed on the channel I was absolutely transfixed and unable to move on. It was amazing. Absolutely amazing.

I'm not good at it, but I've gotten better at it the more I've done it.

My method is this:

1. Start with a scientific paper, not a news article summarizing the paper. Scientific papers are laid out really nice, with an abstract that gives a simple overview, an introduction, conclusion, etc. The way they are structured and written, they provide a ton of context for terms that you don't understand, where an article will strip out the context providing insight to the term you don't understand, while overcompensating by explaining things at the "overview" or abstract level, which is not the problem you're really trying to solve.

2. Start with a paper on a subject you are super geeked and profoundly curious about. Like you are just climbing out of your skin to learn more. Not something you need to know more about for work or for school. Something that turns you on.

3. Read it on a computer, and literally do this: Each term you do not understand (this will likely occur in the first sentence, and there maybe several of these in the fist sentence and almost every sentence thereafter. Yup) you should highlight, right-click, and select "define" or "Search google" from the context menu. And....just read about that term. It will send you off on a tangent. You will spend a ton of time nowhere near the paper you are on, and each time you return to the next word, you'll not have made it past the sentence you're on, but 20 minutes will have past.

4. Rinse and repeat. Just keep knocking words down, one at a time. Oh also you won't fully grok each term before moving to the next one, but you'll start becoming familiar.

How I do it anyway.

Will Iran back off now that the US has bared its teeth?

I feel like the response from Iran was basically the equivalent of "we don't want any trouble". Felt like the minimum they could do and save face. I'm sure there will be more to come, but they seem to be on eggshells out of the gate. Maybe they are just buying time for something more though.

I know it’s unfinished business really

I think I'm going to watch Goonies with my wife tonight. She's never seen it.

Happy New Year to Hubski. I've been busy lately, and I have to confess to one trait of my personality being that when I focus on something I pull back from extraneous activities somewhat radically in order to do so. I've been focusing on work for a while now and uh..."indoor gardening" when not working, but the point is...I like it here :)

So...I saw AC/DC for the first time about 3 years ago. Fucking christ they rocked. I love how Angus was carried on plywood by security while he solo'ed. Obviously a more expansive production by the time I saw them, but it was different in that I saw them in a stadium (Ford Field in Detroit) but bucking the trend of the past 20 years of stadium shows in my town, Ford Field (where our football team the shitty Lions play) had no seating on the entire main floor, so it was old-school in the sense that you could jockey and elbow your way up to the front. Which we did. The energy was so much better than seats...

It's interesting in that I think the song improved Andy Warhol's screen test of Edie Sedgwick, and Andy Warhol's screen test of Edie Sedgwick improved the song...

When you have given all you can to the point of breaking yourself, you have not failed her.

My wife's sister just died from cancer. She was in hospice for mere weeks, and between her husband, myself, my wife, my wife's sister, my wife's brother, and both of her parents, there weren't enough of us to give her all of the care she needed. We all gave her every bit of what we could. We were looking into a full time nurse right up till the end.

I'm sure you already are looking at it this way, but it's worth being mindful (meditating if you will) of the fact that in taking care of yourself, you'll be ensuring that you can take care of her to the best of your ability.

Those dads and moms know something I don’t

Was in Seattle for a day and walked into one of those Amazon stores without cashiers with a buddy of mine, grabbed some gum, and walked out.

Instantly clear to me that nobody will ever walk into a store with cashiers again if they have the option to do this instead.

I can’t speak to how deeply this tech will penetrate on what timeframe, just that if you can, you will.

Congratulations!

Not my favorite by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to give a special shout-out to Sea Cruise by Yo La Tengo, for kicking out a totally jammin version of a song that makes me want to impale my head on a spike when I hear the original or any other version on the radio.

You’re a bear hunter and respect is what you come up with? Hmm. What were you saying about people falsely anthropomorphizing our own intelligence on to wild animals? I bet that happens more readily the more time you spend with an animal, like a kind of bias.