Immediate TODO#

  • Liberal duty to discourse
  • AI response to other articles
  • Your computer can run software too
    • Not just “as a service”
    • Remember installing apps
      • Had different programs you’d buy from a store
        • And load on a CD
    • Also, dumb terminals
      • Describe dumb terminals
      • And Telnet
      • And more modern graphical remote login
    • Web is more like the dumb terminals
      • With thin boundaries
      • You don’t own the apps, but just the computer
      • You might not even feel like you own the phone
        • Apple bricking controversy
    • Software and services can still be distinct
      • Wordpress but on your own server
      • Mastodon is confusing
  • Maine tries to join the Commonwealth club
    • Co-written with Ilse
    • Ilse calls her local legislator
      • Convinces him to make Maine a Commonwealth
      • Afterwards, thinks fondly of how PA is a Commonwealth
        • She learned this as a child
    • Dream sequence?
      • The states are all meeting to discuss Commonwealth status
        • May Maine join the club
      • MA is suspicious
        • ??? I don’t remember why!
      • PA says Maine is great (Why?)
        • ??? What did Ilse say??
        • Lobster
      • KY thinks it’ll make their mountains look puny
      • VA says their mountains are completely different
  • Taking your time
    • Medication!
      • This isn’t advice
        • This is suddenly stuff I (feel I) can do
    • With organizational planning
    • With doing chores
      • I have much more boredom tolerance
        • Because I have more short-term memory
          • Having a passing fun thought doesn’t obviate what I’m doing
          • I trust it more not to derail me from other things
  • Gardens vs streams
    • Start opinion garden
  • Housing commentary on:
  • Rings of Power review:
    • Just about the elves
      • Elves taking our jobs was the most ridiculous thing
        • That is not the nature of anti-elf resentment
      • It’s very hard to write such angel-like characters
        • Elves can be petty in Tolkien
  • Free will vs determinism
    • Cite podcast: https://overcast.fm/+7X6TqOK18
    • Parody of free will debate
      • Is science deterministic?
      • Or is there room for a soul?
        • In quantum mechanics, there is randomness!
        • Perhaps we can find our free will here
    • This annoys me as a compatibilist
      • Believe in free will as compatible with determinism
    • Where does the will come from?
      • That IS me
      • If an equation, then I am an equation
        • Where equation stands in for a sophisticated computation
          • i.e., a computer program
        • I proceed based off of principle
          • But it is a self-revising principle
          • And certainly not random!
      • If an external element of random
        • Then I am a set of decisions?
        • If random, how is that comforting?
          • Possibility of escape from corruption?
            • That is possible to just build into the equation
          • Perhaps just the big choice of good vs evil?
            • How is that different from God choosing?
            • In what sense can we identify our persons with this chooser?
    • The random in my life is least comforting
      • Habits I want to overcome
        • Would rather it be overcome by figuring things out than by random
      • Glitches where I say the wrong thing
      • I’d much rather have self-control
  • Possible physics-based religions
    • Multiverse theory
      • Best of all possible worlds
        • Perhaps God is optimizing some function with quantum randomness
          • Probably not any human definition of “good”
      • External “human soul” controls which world to manifest in
        • Quantum immortality
          • Find external citation
        • Sad version:
          • Perhaps the “real world” is the world you don’t experience happiness
      • Nuclear selection bias
        • See SMBC
  • Mastodon and the Internet
  • Don’t stop when you’re stumped
  • People who think I’m annoying
    • Thoughts of annoyance
      • If I’m annoyed at someone else, it’s a me thing
      • If someone else is annoyed at me, it’s also a me thing
      • Let other people have private annoyance
      • Can’t completely resolve the disconnect
        • Leads to assholery
        • Everyone needs to try to net clean up shit
          • Otherwise they’ll net contribute
    • Some amount of annoyance is necessary in a relationship
      • Or at least unavoidable
      • Micro-annoyances
        • Can be amplified by sampling errors
        • Or by anxiety
      • Need to have thresholds
        • Can’t be too low
        • Or too high
        • Can be relationship-dependent
        • Can be topic-dependent
    • Results of this fear
      • People pleasing
      • Opposite is bad too: People pissing-off
  • ADHD-unfriendly business practices
    • On purpose
    • To get money from executive dysfunction
    • Two-year gym membership SMBC
    • Amazon “subscribe and save”
      • Annoyingly, delays first portion of the thing
      • Who’s paying attention to that?
    • Free Trial Subscriptions
    • Making you have to call to cancel
    • There is a solution:
      • Indian law
  • Promote on Mastodon
    • tech.lgbt
  • Electric car subsidies
    • Opposition from the point of view of supporting the rich
  • Benefit programs should phase out
    • Make them universal and increase taxes
      • Food stamps for everyone!
  • Rewrite blog intro
  • Start repository of rants
  • Medications
    • https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018192/
    • War on drugs
    • “Everyone could be enhanced by appropriate use of different chemicals, and we’re just beginning to figure it out.”
    • Comparison to GMOs, a logical extension of normal plant breeding
    • My personal experience with Strattera (towards the beginning)
  • Fiction
    • Continue “Radio”
    • Revise Roll of the Dice
      • To maybe 1600 words, adding backstory and context to relationship
    • Rewrite Divorce entirely
      • New draft
    • Resume Left Handed
  • Perfect Practice Makes Perfect
    • Outline
    • Maybe write
  • Gardens vs streams post
  • Garden page on main blog
  • Follow up Mike Cole podcast
  • Write another review or two
    • Add reviews to “fiction I’ve read” page
  • Interesting tech books/articles/blog posts/podcasts

Reviews#

  • Takeaways from Atomic Habits
  • Review of Library Thing
  • LoTR so far
  • Ted Lasso
  • Song of Achilles

Organization#

  • “Break it down”
    • Outline before we write
      • This used to be very hard idea
    • Single huge steps
      • Intimidating
    • Breaking it into bitesize pieces
      • Less intimidating
    • Naturally leads to hierarchical TODO lists
    • Reveal what organizational system I use
    • Which will link to first and second
    • And them to this
    • In praise of planning
    • When we write, we’re told to outline before we write
      • This used to be very hard for me
      • Hierarchical TODO list
    • Outlining a story
    • Programming planning
    • Hierarchical TODO list in plain text
      • Org mode
  • Well-defined vs poorly-defined problems
  • Daily log
    • This is new every day
      • log command for .bashrc
    • Prose diary
    • Work tasks (always, important for stand-up)
    • Writing/blog tasks
    • Also personal tasks (sometimes)
    • Food and exercise log (WAY less reliable)
    • Daily tasks show up pre-populated
      • New idea
    • As I said, work in progress
  • Opinions about interfaces
    • Google Docs: Bad
      • Have to search for things
        • Search vs storage
          • This is the new way
          • Certainly appropriate for Google
        • Bad for me
          • Out of sight, out of mind
      • Screen is very cluttered
      • Directories form an implicit TODO list
        • Prefer traditional file managers: Good
        • What blog posts are available for me to work on?
          • I like to jump back and forth
          • I like to look around and see what’s there
          • I like to be able to SEE the big picture of a TODO list
        • What files are available for me to edit?
        • Command line: Good
          • Supports directories
          • Can list them in various ways
          • Very uncluttered
            • Can clear the screen if you don’t like what’s there
    • Window management
      • Windows: Bad
        • By default shows you a stupid task bar
      • Considered very technologically advanced when it was developed
      • Old macOS didn’t suppot maximize/full screen
      • Why would you ever want this?
      • If I do want two or more windows
        • I always want them either tabbed or tiled
          • Tabs like browsers or BeOS
          • Tiles like… XMonad (XMonad: Good)
            • Tiles within tabs (or virtual desktops!)
  • Gardens vs streams
  • Why JIRA sucks!
    • Ticketing systems
      • Can lead to micromanagement
        • When personal organization is impossible
        • When estimation is impossible
          • How long it takes to do something is non-linear
        • When tasks are too broken down
        • Ideal: Week or two long projects for new dev
          • Tickets are better for maintenance
          • Each bug or new feature as one ticket
  • Pre-writing and writing planning
  • How my writing is organized
    • Google Docs irks me
      • Search-based
      • I like knowing where everything is
        • Otherwise, I forget there are things
          • Link other post (if posted)
        • So I won’t look for them
      • No command-line interface
    • What is command line?
      • CLI vs TUI
    • Blog is static file based
      • No CMS
      • In a GitHub repo
        • Counter-intuitively, adds more “save” steps
        • I prefer this
        • Use common commands
        • Could not do it another way
        • Merge requests for comments
          • No way to comment outside of merge requests?
      • Mark-down
        • Plain text with vim
      • Single-command update script
      • Use hugo but am not attached to it
    • Outlining
      • Learned later in life
        • Like, this past year later in life
        • Found it essential
        • Alternative was perpetual drafting
        • Still learning how to use it effectively
      • Outline lives in outline file
        • It’s a TODO list for what to write
  • How my desktop is organized
    • XMonad
      • Every task has its place
      • Overlapping windows overrated
      • Virtual desktops underrated
        • Everything has its place
          • Screenshots!
          • 1: Browser
            • Slack in-browser
            • Documentation
            • Blog posts (obviously)
            • E-mail (not obviously, would prefer TUI)
            • Other things people browse for
              • Reddit (of course)
          • 2: Code I’m working on
            • Terminal, two files
          • 3: Code I’m reading
            • Terminal, two files
          • 4: Writing
          • 5: TODO, calendar, outlines
          • 6: Signal
          • 7: Long-running processes
            • Servers
              • i.e. server processes
              • Including VPN
            • Ridiculously long builds
              • ob run
    • Use only
      • Terminal
        • Many terminal commands
      • GVim
      • Browser (chromium)
      • Signal
      • Occasionally:
        • eog
        • evince
        • Google Chrome/Firefox
  • Different Strokes for Different Folks
    • Much shorter than originally planned
    • Handwriting doesn’t work for me
      • Too slow
      • Not used to it
    • Had a lot of organizational systems pushed on me
      • That really didn’t take
      • Common ADHD experience
    • Organizational Difficulties Presented as a “neurodiversity issue”
      • But let’s not do “neurotypicals vs ADHD”
      • ADHD is a spectrum
      • Other things are too
        • That have other labels
        • That don’t get labels
          • That aren’t even considered disabilities
          • This is the whole point of the term “neurodiversity”
      • EVERYONE has different ideal workflows
      • EVERYONE can be presumptuous about forcing theirs on others
    • Why is ADHD more commonly diagnosed now?
      • Standards are higher
        • People who have that phenotype are more likely to struggle in practice
      • Different people have different amounts of attention
        • ADHD is likely not a binary
          • Even if some specific brain-types are
            • It is not currently defined based on brain type
        • Someone who does fine in one context might struggle in another
      • Medication
        • ADHD is defined, and medications are diagnosed, based on symptoms
          • The big question of many diagnoses
            • Do these symptoms cause disruption in life?
              • Might be career/life-style dependent
        • Severity therefore varies based on career/life-style
          • Same person could not need medication in a different career
            • Does this mean they “don’t have ADHD?”
              • Anti-medication argument
              • Maybe that career is just “not for them”
            • But there are more skills than just attention
              • Someone might be well-suited for a career
                • But that career requires organizational skills
                • Or one particular job doesn’t provide scaffolding
                • Should they be held back just to avoid medication?
                • Medication isn’t bad
                  • For ADHD, is extremely effective
        • Life disruption looks different from different perspectives
          • Being in a professional career can count against you
            • People will say “you can’t have ADHD if you’ve done this”
              • This is bananas
              • Different people are struggling more or less
              • People lean on other skills
              • Talk about me, why I chose programming
  • What is neurodiversity?
    • In theory
      • History
      • Meaning
      • Social model of disability
    • In practice
    • But who is neurodivergent?
      • Everybody?
  • Review of Strattera
    • I feel like I can take my time
      • With organizational planning
      • With doing chores
        • I have much more boredom tolerance
          • Because I have more short-term memory!!
            • Having a passing fun thought doesn’t obviate what I’m doing
            • I trust it more not to derail me from other things
    • I feel like my coping mechanisms work

Linguistics#

  • The Limiting Factor to Competence is Time and Energy
    • I used to worry about the storage capacity of my brain
      • Thought of it like my family’s computer, with a hard drive
        • How much hard drive space does it have?
      • I worried because I wanted to learn everything.
  • Division of Labor
    • General skills vs. specialty
    • Within society
    • Within a company
  • Germanic “wild” to Latin “natural”
  • German “das” with apparently plural verb
  • Most languages do not have gender
    • Most major languages?
    • Eurocentrism
  • Not translating German surnames is racist
    • Research examples!!
    • Native American names are always translated
      • Sounds quaint
      • “War chief” instead of “General”
    • German surnames are not
      • And Ashkenazi Jewish surnames
      • Perhaps they should be
        • The news would be more interesting
  • Passive voice in English and German
    • Have already started draft
    • New intro paragraph citing this:
    • An example of a passive sentence
      • Defined in terms of active, the default voice
      • Deletes “underlying” subject
      • Promotes object to subject
      • In English, uses a form known as the “past participle”
        • But that has other uses
    • An example of a passive clause
      • Subject is implicit in this construct
      • Now, what would be “underlying” object is implicit
    • What is and is not passive
      • Give perfect examples
      • Give examples of rephrasing of other ideas
      • Give examples with unaccusative verbs
      • Surprise! None of these sentences are passive!
    • What is an object anyway?
      • Pseudo-passive
    • Is the way that English does passive universal?
      • Sentences with two objects seem to have two passives
        • “We have been given a gift.”
        • “A gift has been given to us.”
      • English wasn’t always like this
        • “Unto us a son is given.” –> “We have been given a son.”
        • Citation/research
      • Compare passive in German
        • Only accusative objects are promoted to nominative
        • But! Any “objects” can go to first position
          • Even in SOV clauses
        • Impersonal passive
          • “Unaccusative” vs “unergative” verbs
    • More complicated topics:
      • Zustandspassiv vs Vorgangspassiv
        • English has relics of this
      • Middle
        • “The glass broke.”
        • “The top is spinning because I am spinning the top.”
        • English is more willing to do this than German
      • Unaccusative vs unergative
        • “In this hole lies a squirrel.”
  • German word order
    • Find FB post
    • Do study
  • The word “prince”
    • A Jewish source thought “prince of peace” was dishonest translation
      • Find it
      • It claimed that it was trying to read the trinity into the Tanakh
        • As a Christian deception
      • But it’s demonstratably not doing that
        • Something else is going on
    • Let’s look up “prince” in the dictionary
      • Generic leader/head of state definition
    • “Princeps” from the Bible
      • “chief priests”
    • Queen Elizabeth I referring to herself as “prince”

Religion and politics:#

  • Immortality and Beethoven’s Fifth
  • Fantasies of revenge
    • How I wished once everyone would have to explain everything to Jesus
    • How people will never have to face the music for their smug wrongness
    • “Someone is wrong on the Internet” and Facebook addiction
  • Gluttony is idolatry; dieting can be gluttony
  • “God is not a demiurge!”
  • Why tax the rich?
  • Genesis 3:16: Pending
    • Callback to Jesus/lust essay
    • These words have been stuck in my head
    • Mythology is often to answer questions about the world
    • Why does the human condition suck?
    • Esther
    • Interpretations of this verse
    • New translation of the ESV
      • Do they not fear God?
  • “That which is of flesh is flesh, of spirit is spirit”
    • https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/math-5
    • These express the same idea
      • That humans are on the fringe of material and spiritual reality
      • Maybe animals overall, but humans the most
      • “God has created us little lower than the angels”
      • Try to find the SMBC about immortality
        • Because mortal intelligences are absurd
        • Thought machines in a dying universe
  • “Venture” capitalism
    • John Ericson
    • Basic needs fulfilled through a different mechanism
    • Then capitalism becomes lower-stakes
      • People can switch jobs more readily
      • Firms can fall apart
        • More like “ventures”

Jobs, organization, and human interaction:#

  • The wrong unit

    • Time
      • Minutes should be 5 minutes long
      • Months are extremely stupid, weeks are pretty great
    • Distance
      • Yards are definitely better than feet
  • Drugs

  • Boycotts

    • I don’t boycott corporate products b/c the opinions of their leaders
    • Because corporations aren’t people!
      • Because corporate leaders are just employees
      • Other employees contributed to the work
        • And benefitted from it
  • ADHD name

    • Executive Function Disorder
      • Russell Barkley?
      • More research required
      • Ada Powers: “ADHD is the most poorly named affliction ever. Like hi do you have a profound physical inability to acomplish your goals specifically because they’re your goals and also the thought of your friends not liking you makes you want to die? You may have Trouble Sitting Still Disorder.”
  • ADHD vs “lack of discipline”

    • What is meant by discipline?
      • If techniques
        • My Christian culture interpretation
          • e.g. Lenten disciplines, prayer disciplines
        • Well, ADHD people tend to use a ton of techniques
          • And still fall behind
          • Or fail to keep up the techniques in spite of trying
      • If that ineffable quality of being self-disciplined
        • Indeed, ADHD seems to be a lack of that
          • So there is no difference
      • Of having been sufficiently told off for poor behavior
        • From personal experience: Yeah, no.
        • On the other hand
          • Short term vs long term as a goal
          • Immediate motivation more necessary than with NTs
            • Which reminds people of children
  • I deny “Hume’s Fork”

  • Sometimes, it doesn’t matter if you’re right and everyone else is wrong

    • Marker color study
    • CNAV and reading the documentation
    • Brian Mayer and the poster store
    • The Redditor woman who wanted to make friends on Hinge
    • Conformity is good, actually
    • Argument from authority shouldn’t be considered a fallacy
  • Knowledge transfers

    • When lecture-style
      • People don’t actually get context
      • Most programmers are mediocre communicators
      • Can work, if it is mostly question-driven
        • Listeners are more likely to know what’s relevant than speaker
      • “What is X?”
        • Principal takes a holiday?
        • Burying the lede
  • Stagnant workplaces

    • Everything is hard. If they fixed long standing issues everything would become easier, but they’re used to everything being hard. Things being hard and dealing with it becomes a virtue.
  • Paradox of Mentorship

    • Two seemingly conflicting goals
      • Help people become self-sufficient
      • Help people get traction learning
    • Don’t overdo the self-sufficient one
      • There are actually ways to get most of the benefit
        • Without the harm
  • Corporate culture differences

  • Burn-out

    • The importance of tangible results to sanity
  • Styles of emotional communication

    • Open books vs hidden
  • Introvert vs Extravert

  • Not having a job wouldn’t help

    • I’m a stereotype!
      • I want to quit my job and write the Great American Novel
    • This would be a bad idea though
      • But most of my current impediments to writing are not job-related
      • I would not currently know enough what to do with my time
      • Having a job is an excuse to not get better
        • At this point
  • Workouts as Metaphors for Life

    • Building muscle
      • If you do a work-out you can easily do
        • Doesn’t help much
        • At best keeps you from getting weaker
        • Maintain exact level
          • Ryan’s anecdote about being in a 4th-floor walk-up
      • If you do one you really can’t do
        • You injure yourself
      • You must do slightly harder than you can easily do
        • The muscles will get microtears
        • And heal stronger
        • It will be difficult
        • You will be sore
    • Supersets
      • Switch up what you’re doing
      • Use one productive activity as a break for another
  • Bursty vs steady state

    • “Slow and steady wins the race”
      • I never have been
      • But interval training is better training
  • Managers: good and bad

    • How can a manager help you?
    • How can a manager hinder you?
    • How a manager is different from a client.
      • Or other stakeholder.
  • Plantar fasciitis as a metaphor for ADHD

    • It hurts to start
    • Like starting a new task
  • Netflix as a Tech Company

    • Feedback from Blair and Nathan
  • The Work from Home Revolution

    • Much written about
      • How it applies to me personally
      • Because it actually is just that big a deal
      • Link to “Biking to Philly”
        • Talk about conversation with that couple
    • Moved to NYC for the jobs
      • Not because of the stars in my eyes about NYC
    • I didn’t think remote work was for me
    • Remote-flexible
      • Fought hard for remote-flexible
      • WFH days and in-office days were different
        • WFH days were for focussed plow-ing through
        • In-office days were for brainstorming, getting on the same page
    • COVID
      • Wished on a genie
      • Learned to work from home
        • From friends' homes, before total lockdown
        • In other people’s houses, visiting long-distance
        • From bars, after lockdown thawed
    • Now
      • I know that I can work remotely
      • I can have an all-remote job
      • Future career opportunities
        • Previously, looking for NY opportunities
        • SF and Seattle have opened their jobs to me
    • Where I live has nothing to do with where I work
      • Live based on a more complicated system
      • Phoenixville
        • Intentional urbanist experiment
        • Walkable downtown
        • Towns like this are only going to grow
    • Loneliness epidemic
      • But! I won’t have to move somewhere lonely for a job…
      • Others are not going to put the work in to avoid loneliness
  • In praise of a tiling window manager

    • All technology is adaptive technology
    • Each virtual desktop has its place
    • If I want to look something up, in another repo
      • I may be briefly tempted to clutter screen 2
      • I instead am comforted by knowing what to do next
      • UI management decision paralysis

Tech world:#

  • Date order should really be 2022-04-29
  • Security questions considered harmful
    • “Favorite season”
    • DMV screenshot
  • Funding the M1 Linux
    • Old Canonical (of my high school/college years) would fund it
      • PowerPC Ubuntu install CDs
      • Find pictures
  • Politics of Changing Programming Languages
    • Everyone wants to be the one to rewrite the codebase
      • Or if they have lots of experience in the original, to shut that down
      • Lots of jockeying around
    • Inspiration by Reddit comment: From https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/u268sz/you_need_to_stop_idolizing_programming_languages/i4h5o5d/
    • I’m usually on the side of the changer
      • Get resistance
        • It often feels ridiculous
        • Moat C++ story
          • And my response
    • Understanding where managers are coming from:
      • “This code is hogwash, we need to start over”
        • An excuse to not gain expertise in an existing codebase
          • Individual scale: Great
            • Writing new code is easier than understanding old
          • Obviously, at a corporate scale, we can’t keep rewriting
            • The project jumps backwards
            • Can’t just be for programmers to have fun
    • But, technical debt is actually bad
      • Obsolete programming languages are hard to write in
      • Old or convoluted code should be rewritten
    • Signs a rewrite/heavy modification is objectively called for
      • You’ll see the same dynamic no matter who’s right
        • Re-writing will ALWAYS be costly
        • Joining an existing codebase will always be hard
        • So you need criteria to judge these cases
      • Replacing custom with off-the-shelf is generally good
        • Especially when the custom is old
        • Even when the custom has a lot of business logic
          • That can be factored out
          • Unless the business logic is the bigger part
            • In which case it may be fine
      • Replacing deprecated technologies
    • Barrier to entry is key
      • If people can’t on-board, of course they would rather rewrite
      • They want to be able to actually work
      • This is a concern difficult to relate to for established team members
      • Good documentation
        • Not just walk-throughs
        • Provide understanding of the situation
        • Provide awareness of the downsides, explain why they are there
      • Need simpler builds and testing situations
        • Builds should be a single command
        • People should be able to dev on normal Linux and Mac computers
          • On their work workstations
          • Or whatever your sub-fields' equivalent is
        • People should be able to run code locally
          • Server side
          • Embedded
        • Build problems:
          • Docker images
          • Deps that must have weird versions and aren’t in package managers
  • Stories from my iPhone programming job
    • Mostly from Tracks
      • Theme is “programming is not like you think”
    • Give me access to the database
      • Shocked it was CLI
    • Lost a week of work
      • Re-did it all in a day
  • How to prevent and squash bugs
    • Best practices
    • Linters
      • Can enforce best practices
        • Especially mechanical ones
        • Their existence blurs the line between PL and best practice
          • See longer article about warnings
      • Type systems
    • Tests
    • Log lines
    • Debuggers

Literature, commentary on fiction, and reviews:#

  • Things I wish we had in English class
    • Forms to fill out for each story or book
      • Identify premise
      • Identify themes
      • Summarize plot Book Review:
  • Hugo 2019
  • Hugo 2020
  • Nebula comparisons
    • 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home
  • Plain Truth
    • Getting Ellie and Katie to live together was super contrived
    • Say something about the POV switches
    • Pacing has been criticized
      • I liked the pacing
    • Ending was weird
      • Was the jury convinced about the unpasteurized milk thing?
  • The Song of Achilles
    • I remember Achilles and Patroclus from reading the Iliad as a child
      • Whole chapter on the games played at Patroclus’s funeral
        • This struck me as odd
        • Not because Patroclus wasn’t an important person
        • But because
          • Who plays huge sporting events at a funeral?
          • Wasn’t this derailing the plot a little?
            • They spent SO long on it
    • Book has a lot of material from post-Iliad stuff
      • Long tradition of adding lots of details to same body of events
      • In play, opera, other forms
    • Every time I think to check for a detail on Wikipedia, it’s bourne out
      • Sometimes, it isn’t exactly what’s recorded
        • But more often, it’s one of many options
    • Including the gay stuff
      • Many ancient writers said he was
        • Focus on figuring out who was “erastes” vs “eronomos”
      • Alexander the Great and his boyfriend
      • Cite all the sources
      • C.S. Lewis’s statement that Achilles was not gay
        • I personally don’t like gay readings of Frodo and Sam
        • Friendship can be emotional
        • Frodo and Sam aren’t gay
        • (Think Achilles and Patroclus were though)
    • This is a work of fiction
      • Can the question even be answered?
      • Achilles and Patroclus weren’t real historical figures
    • But it meant something to the original author
      • And the original audience
      • But also to us!
        • “Death of the author” means our opinion is equally valid
        • But that doesn’t make the question less interesting per se
    • Maybe intentionally ambiguous?
      • Every soldier can think of his closest fellow-soldier
        • Who is like family
        • Who they are never parted from
        • Who they think of as …
          • … like a brother
          • … like a wife
    • But given later Greek culture
      • And how gay soldiering can be
      • I think everyone at the original time thought they were gay
  • What do aliens mean?
    • Stand-in for human ethnic relations
    • Baseline to say humans are odd or normal
      • Aliens are peaceable
        • Means humans are weirdly war-like
      • Aliens are violent, oppose us immediately
        • Human war-like nature is natural

SECRET: For some friends only:#

  • COVID memoir (maybe don’t post)
    • The Secret Message
    • As soon as the lockdown started
      • I knew eradication was impossible
        • Karen’s zero-COVID thoughts about lockdown
        • I knew this wasn’t realistic
      • This implied that everyone would get COVID, eventually
        • The messaging implied that too
        • “Flatten the curve”
        • Slow the spread”
          • Never stop the spread
        • Even Angela Merkel didn’t talk about COVID-0
          • But rather about overwhelming the hospitals
        • Cuomo declared success that hospitals weren’t overwhelmed
          • “Those we lost were those we can’t save”
          • i.e., they were going to get it at some point,
          • and lack of medical treatment isn’t what killed them
      • Therefore, it made sense to shut down society to not overwhelm hospitals
        • But no further
        • Why society-wide measures to slightly postpone the inevitable
      • Lo and behold! People went further!
        • Why?
  • Failure is always an option

Fiction:#

  • Date story
    • Backstory, revealed later: Best friend at work sets it up
      • He’s nervous
      • Best friend is like, it’s a job interview
      • Man researches online, reads to check ID before dating someone serious
    • Date happens (open with this)
      • “Let us commence the dating process. ID please?”
      • Lowers head to fill out a form.
      • Shall we commence?
      • Would you like to ask the first question or shall I?
        • I have a list of questions here, and I imagine you’ve prepared your own questions.
  • Roll of the Dice
    • Eric is still a maybe on kids, but Todd’s a yes
    • What’s their personal relationship history?
      • They rushed into getting married?
      • They dated for a few years?
      • What’s going on here?
    • Better understand who they are, root for them in spite of their foolishness
    • More specifics about the history of their relationship!
    • How old are they? Mid twenties?
    • Do we want the audience rooting for them in spite their flaws? Do we want it to be more tragic?
    • Make Todd’s flaws lead to the outcome; he’s trying to force things through, which is why Eric is having this affair to begin with
    • Flashbacks might be cringe/Todd unreliable perspective
  • What if there were a counter-earth
    • On the exact opposite side of the earth
  • Immortals short story
  • Read Blair’s book!
  • Left-handed story
    • Physical description of George in therapist scene
      • For some other purpose
      • Juxtaposed with description of the therapist
    • Doctor who doesn’t figure out what happened
      • Girlfriend break-up
    • Another therapy session
    • Doctor who figures out what happened
      • Calls chemist friend
      • Figures out chiral mixture that stops the malnutrition
        • In exchange for studying him
        • He becomes a paid study participant, paid in slurry and also a small amount of money
      • They become friends with him
      • They see the alien abduction in the climax while staying over
        • Dual climax:
          • He’s finally got friends who understand him
          • They literally understand the whole thing with the aliens
  • There’s no gerrymandering in heaven.
    • In the next life, we design the laws for this life, by committee
    • Eventually we elect a God, and the universe restarts
  • Trees:
    • Choose a scene to write
    • Write said scene
  • Resurrect and finish
    • Family business story
    • Hexenstettler/witch story
  • Comparing apples to oranges
    • Cite Dan Perelman in some (subtle?) way
    • The fruits?
    • No, dummy, the computer companies
    • The computer companies
    • Fictional “Orange” computer company
      • Is secretly BeOS
    • MandarinOS? But some other orange variety
  • Submit fiction eventually to:

Miscellaneous:#

  • Delaware Office Sitcom
  • Beliefs Codex
  • Mortgage Essay part 3:
    • Show how mortgage amortization works
      • Start out by explaining what it is
      • Establish that it is proportional to payment
      • Establish that the relationship with interest rate is more complicated
      • Show the math
      • With example reflex Haskell program
    • CD example again
      • Exact money flow of the simulated Mr Doe example
      • Prove that you get your principle back
      • Screenshots of app

COVID: Firstly, in general the negative effects of lockdown were underestimated for social effects. Reopening and reopening guidance was business focus, guidance for socializing wasn’t even written. Guidance for socializing, explicit permission and guidance for bubbles, would’ve helped me.

2nd, outdoor meetings and socialization should’ve been encouraged much earlier. Smart people knew from the get go that outdoor spread was not a thing. Six feet survived way too long, not being cancelled due to embarrassment.

3rd, people died bc of government overstrictness. A generation will be lonely and critically affected in their development.

4th, no I will not go easy on the government. The lockdowns were too strict, and they were a violation of our fundamental rights. Those who did them out of panic were traitors to democracy.

FDA should’ve approved the vaccines faster.