In Costa Rica for a few days with my wife and daughter. Coming in, the plane’s tail end hit the runway first. There was a scrunching noise and the pilot hit the throttle and took it around for another try. Yikes.
We are headed up to the cottage tomorrow. I am dropping this big boy at the dog sitter's today and it makes me sad. We could take him in theory, but in practice, he is still a puppy and will be giving everyone a bit of trouble and he won't understand why he can't come in the big cottage. As always, I could use the time off-the-grid, and I am looking forward to it. I need to install the stove and chimney in the sauna, and chances are very good that we'll be able to fire it up this year.
I made a rustic bench out of some of the reclaimed wood I got: I have a mitre saw that I got two X-mas's ago which I just broke out of the box for this. It is amazing. I don't have the room for it, but it changes everything. Two angles at once! The legs have 5 and 10 degree angles to them and they fit snug. Such a pleasure. More work on my painting. I started this painting for a friend, and my wife claimed it as hers today. Now I need to finish this one, and start another for my friend. I have conflicted feelings about that. I like EBay again. I have been using EBay to buy all sorts of things, from an enamel porcelain bucket for the sauna, to picture frames and RC car parts. I have been meaning to weigh in on the UFO thing. I have some thoughts.
More work on the painting: I also built a shelf with two of those reclaimed wood boards: I removed user promotion when I added email activation to the sign up, but it seems that spam bots are getting through more easily. I'm going to think of something...
I was doing a 24hr fast once a month, but fell off the wagon. I'm fasting today, and will try to stay on it. A researcher I know has been putting out some very interesting papers suggesting that plasma dilution in older individuals can have robust rejuvenating effects. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32474458/ Her group recently demonstrated that old blood was deleterious for young animals. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27874859/ It's interesting to think that something as simple as a build up of factors in blood could be such a large part of the aging program. It seems in easy agreement with the "healthy blood donor effect" and the widespread historical use of blood-letting, but we shall see... I am watching this closely.
Whether or not Trump is imprisioned in the next four years is likely critical for the survival of American democracy.
I just added an activity feed up top. It updates real time. Currently it tracks comments, chat, posts, and badges. Let me know what you think. I also finally fixed the comment and post feed sorting. Snow in the forecast tomorrow. I hope it doesn't disappoint.
We got together with my Mom, her husband, and my brother's family yesterday for Xmas. We all did a 10-day quarantine beforehand. It was the first time we were inside with each other in almost a year. That was nice. Here's the most recent with the current painting: I only get to paint once a week at best, which isn't enough to be sufficiently therapeutic. I've also started heat-shaping a sheet of lexan into a body for my custom rc car. It is a slow and delicate process. I have a bunch of other things going on.
These last two weeks have been busier again work-wise. Product launch and stuff. It feels like work again, which is mostly good. I've been offering feedback and advice to a few people on their own efforts. I don't like to talk about startups much. I think that's because of some of the culture and cults of personality associated. Startups are 99% about the founders, and there's a humble grind that gets lost in the noise. All the books about startups are useless. I'd advise anyone that wants to start a company to toss all those books out, and to spend the time building. At best, those books are PR for the author. You either work at something when it makes no sense to anyone but you, or you fail. I've seen this play out several times in a number of ways now. There will be at least one point where your effort no longer makes sense to anyone but you. One of my YC batchmates has been grinding at his product since 2017 and it's now starting to pay off. It's a wonderful thing to witness. It has nothing to do with the money. It's like climbing a mountain, or placing in a triathalon, or playing a piano solo in a concert hall. He's been working to build something of value, and people are starting to take notice that he really has. It's a joy to watch. I'm so happy for him. More progress on the painting: I figured out a trick last night regarding shading. Sometimes I feel like painting is a collection of tricks. I have also continued to build my custom RC car. The pace has slowed since my office isn't in my garage atm, but it's moving along. My next effort is to turn a sheet of lexan into a body with a heat gun. I've already used it to modify the angle on the roll cage. I didn't realize how quickly heat guns get hot. I almost destroyed it immediately. Finally, I have the long-term goal to create an iOS app. I believe that I am going to write the service in Python using the Django framework. I have a Django droplet deployed on DO at any rate. Happy to take advice. I've done some looking to see if there is an open source Swift/Django app out there without much luck. Not a big deal, but I love to learn by poking around with something that already exists.
I take issue with this. :) I often disagree with what Paul Graham writes. However, to call him a "profoundly unserious public intellectual" is silly. This essay doesn't make the case. Who would dare create a language and announce such a lofty goal? I have never met Paul, but I have been through YC and have interacted with many close to him. IMHO Paul is a rationalist to a fault. However, he has the uncommon ability to inspire others, and he has found tremendous value in a simple formula: 2. Try to understand why you were right or wrong. 3. Improve upon your idea. 4. goto 1. YC is a product that tested this formula, and it worked better than anyone (probably Paul included) could have anticipated. I have talked with hundreds of venture capitalists inside and outside of Sillicon Valley, and no one talks to founders like YC. Like everyone, Paul is far from perfect. However, I admire his positions regarding failure and humiliation. IMHO thousands of brilliant people harbor ideas that are lost to time because of fear of failure and humilation. If you create a new programming language, someone will call it a failure if it is not widely adopted. If you create a social website, someone will call you a failure if only a hundred people use it. I see Arc as a success.and Hacker News (now running on a machine with enough memory to stay afloat) remains the only meaningful deployment of Arc in existence.
1. Test your idea.
Are poor thing decades immediately followed by tough shit decades?
I don't have it in me To write a poem At the moment
I finished this last night. I don't really finish paintings, as much as paint until painting more ceases to make sense. This one is fairly large (3'x4'), and is on canvas. This is the first time I've painted on canvas. I prefer wood. Canvas has a texture and a bounce that seems to work against you rather than with you. Most paintings provide a bit of insight. This one helped me recognized that Neo-Megilp is very good for final lighting effects. Basically, I thin the paint, and work over the shadows and highlights with blues, greens, yellows, etc. You can't see it, but you can sense when it is there and when it is not. My next painting is going to be on wood, and it will be smaller. I ran for the first time since cutting off my fingertip several weeks ago. It throbbed a bit, but it wasn't as bad as I had dreaded it might be. The cold bothered it more than the exercise. I also did some push-ups. I am currently switching between my left middle finger and my shortened index finger as I type this. My brain definitely needs to be re-trained.
A couple of years ago I was at SXSW, and walking back to my hotel, I randomly turned into the bar at another one. I just happened to sit down next to the guy who ran the screens for Jeopardy!. Apparently, they were unique technologically, and were being used by a bank at SXSW. They literally had to be packed up and driven back for the show like the next day. I put down a couple of beers with him. He had nothing but nice things to say about Trebek. It sounded like Alex was the nexus for something special both on and off air.
LOL. I am blaming my bandaged finger on that one.
The fact that he tweeted FEELING GREAT today suggests that he is on oxygen again.
Trump is a very unusual candidate in the extent to which he rejects science and lies about public health issues. Some presidents have been bad, but Trump is abysmal in this respect. I don't think it's the polarization as much as Donald Trump in particular. Of course, he is a product of the polarization.
I believe that laziness exists, as I have personally experienced it. However, I think the author is talking about reasons for avoidance, and short term comforting behavior that is long term destructive. It is a conversation worth having. I struggled a very long time as a "procrastinator" before I became just as industrious as I was "lazy". If, in my late teens and early 20's, I had the concepts to better understand the nature of my behavior, I might have been able to change it sooner. But, maybe not. IMHO seeing laziness as barriers for an otherwise productive person is a double-edged sword. The barriers might be real, but removing them might not have the intended effect. Sometimes we are self-destructive, and sometimes being self-destructive feels right. If you seek to empathize with a self-destructive person, and help them remove barriers preventing their "healthy" behavior, you may be disappointed to find that the person finds or even creates more barriers to obstruct their progress. There is even the potential that lending a helping hand diminishes the person's self respect and helps them dig a deeper hole. People that have experience with addiction and those that suffer it are very familiar with concepts of sufferers hitting 'rock bottom', having 'moments of clarity', and 'come to Jesus moments', and those that care for sufferers with 'tough love' or breaking off relations with the people they love for that person's benefit. Personally speaking, my "laziness" was not remedied by people helping me to remove barriers, although my parents tried. Quite the opposite. It was actually a few moments of clarity some time after my folks gave up on me, that resulted in new patterns of activity that transformed my behavior. I used to be very productive when in came to constructing MtG decks, a game of Civilization, or leveling up a character in a MUD. For me, I can point to a very specific moment, early in the morning in Boston. I was not happy with my pattern of laziness, self-destructive behavior and avoidance. I then made a mental list of people that I admired, and considered what they had in common. I concluded that they all had done difficult things. It was then that I decided that I would do difficult things, not as a means, but as an end.
The stock market clearly indicates that they bought Teslas instead.
My 8yo would recognize it as stupid and dangerous. This man holds the nuclear codes. It is not political to call Trump a fool. It isn’t even opinion.
Florida self-hate LOL.
Was fixing some bugskis and contemplated changing the 'badges' link to 'bread'.
I used to crochet about 20 years ago. I still have some scarves. I miss gaming. I created the Wayfarers rpg in 2008, and released a second edition in 2012. The second edition was distributed by Mongoose Publishing, who never paid me. In free time I used to work on the third and final edition. I'll finish it someday, but I don't have that kind of time atm. I want to start gaming again too. There isn't anything like a good tabletop rpg session.
I've been thinking on these issues recently, and plan to eventually create a post to discuss it. For one, I believe that we can lower the entry barrier a bit once again, enabling new users to post more readily, and yet keep our anti-spam effective and low-effort. Here, we take the approach of putting as much moderation as possible in user's hands. I consider how we as people moderate our interactions in meatspace, and take a lot of cues from that. IMHO there are social dynamics that arise from top down moderation that can be positive in the short run, but often decay in the long run. I believe that the summation of individual choices results in the best of spaces, because participants do not have clear leaders which give them cause to champion opinions or to form factions that result from such opinions. I do not believe that there is such a thing as a proper space, or a safe space, or even a thoughtful space. However, I do believe that people can feel that spaces are proper, safe and/or thoughtful, and that they can choose to frequent them for those reasons. I believe the fact that physical architecture outlasts social architecture says much about the human condition. All this said, I do think that Hubski could sustain more thoughtful interaction than it does, and that it could be a better example or counter-example for online interaction in general. It's a goal I'd like to meet.
It happened. He was impeached.
I am happy to be in 2020. At least for my fellow GenXers, there can be no doubt that we are now in the future. We've avoided thermonuclear warfare, but still no droids or citizens in space. I am excited for this year's Mars rover mission, as it is the first step in bringing some red dirt back home. Xmas and New Years were enjoyable and relaxing. These next few months probably won't be relaxing, hopefully they will be enjoyable. I'm getting close to concluding this piece. The next one is going to be portraiture. After that, my largest painting yet, commissioned by my wife. We saw Parasite last night. Good movie. Everyone was looking at everyone else for reactions as we filed out of the theater.
I played this pretend for a while in Boston. I say pretend, because I had a middle class parents safety net that I eventually returned to, and finished my degree. I don't know what this is like without a safety net. I can only imagine, because it isn't great even with one. I commonly borrowed from the bank of ecib to make rent, and much of my check was spoken for before I got it. Fishing through the sofa and house for a $0.99 7-Eleven hotdog dinner, walking across town at 11pm to get an expired bagel sandwich from my roommate at the coffee shop. There is no fucking way I could have done anything but get trapped in debt working at a Hardware store. I'm a privileged sob.Mondays are paydays at McDonald's. Before I leave for my hospital job, I get my McDonald’s paycheck. It's $215, for 2 weeks of work. I know I will be broke by Wednesday.
Watching them now. Seems pretty real.
Probably for the best, IMO. This always feels like this to me.
Now they are going to subpoena Sondland: https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/08/trumps-eu-ambassador-ordered-to-not-give-deposition-in-impeachment-probe-000278 I don't believe the State Department can stop him from responding to a subpoena. Or maybe he just resigns and does it. By the text messages we've seen, it looks like Sondland was at least a bit complicit, suggesting they no longer text about the qui pro quo aspect of the military aid. I wouldn't be surprised if his lawyer suggested allowing the State Department to prevent his testimony to create the opportunity to distance himself from them.