Somethings to keep in mind

The fable of The Foible of the Brass Bearing.

don’t use the auto-push on the lawn mower; you’ll wear out the brass bearing.

a graveyard of darlings

I went to lunch and then to dinner. Some old people were talking about their divorces on a lunch date. Later at dinner a guy explained logistic regression to the lady. A successful first date requires discipline. Because it is my own mind, I tell it what to do.

As a toy example, by now it is clear that footed socks are a cynical attempt to sell more socks. One consumer–friendly regulation might require vendors to present a Monte Carlo simulation modeling the same–footed pair risk of random draws. One thing that the model makes clear: in a baroque torture scenario coercing you to spill coffee on your socks, make sure you were wearing an opposite–footed pair that day (or an opposite–same–footed–pair if you have previously found yourself same–footed in that same scenario).

This is completely intuitive, and there is nothing to gain from this risk assessment.

Now something more practical: I live in a seasonal climate, meaning it’s frequently 30 degrees this time of year. When you find yourself in the battle of wits that is small talk, a deft hand will tell you “ah but it’s 20 degrees with windchill”. “It’s cold” becomes “it’s cold”. Try to work this one in: you (the defter hand) will tell them that you can recall what 20 degrees feels like, but “ah that feeling was likely more accurately 10 degrees if you consider windchill”, and so on. At the time of writing, this is the only known method for experiencing the sensation of absolute zero and one of the many known methods for pissing off your girlfriend.

apply a chamfer to the edges of your soul

If you subscribe to the same substacks as me, you know that Erstwhile Nostalgiac has read for shit contemporary TV shows in a recently published polemic targeted at audio mixing and black levels. His research finds the same firms behind the flailing marketing campaigns of his favorite cartoon film studios and the enshittification[1] of McDonald’s’ play places. My major contribution here is in making the connection to methodologies outlined by EvoPsych Dispatch, Haplogruppen, metonymous bosch, a rose by any other name would taste as Peat, and Mitochondrial-Trust Societies for attributing lapses in outcoming experience to procedural mistakes. To synthesize their arguments, the most successful hunters (men) were often process-oriented (greater penis length in well-preserved bog bodies) while the most successful gatherers (females) were often merely results-oriented (higher concentration of big boob genes).. this is the framework from which I and my raucous gang of 15-year-old minds curse the lazy devs that didn’t optimize our game. If there are four points that square our circle on this, they are:

• our knowledge that poor input is basically synonymous with poor output
• moral clarity on any evaluations that follow
• more cognitive effort redirected to indexing relevant xkcds
• expertise in technical analysis trading patterns

After connecting this final blow to the gestalt, we find that critical work—if such a joyous occupation, certainly critical, can be work—only remains in developing our corpus of checkboxes to check, at which we do arrive arm in arm and dick in hand. We doubt the possibility that taxonomy detaches us from experience, and we take the opportunity to rebuff: a little bit of knowledge makes us dangerous.

The Clockmaker’s Abode pp.341

KARL

How inspiring that everyone feels so secure offering opinions unsolicited regarding my hair, manner of dress, and facial hair stylings? I retire to my Inner Sanctum!

(Exeunt K toward Inner Sanctum in a huff.)

(Exeunt all.)

(Inner Sanctum, filled with gears, springs, and boxes of gears. Enter KARL.)

KARL

(brooding)

What is this life but a grand complication on the clock–face[22] of the father?

It can be confusing that a bezel is usually beveled. My dad gave me a Moonswatch for my birthday in July, and he has put himself in my good favor for at least a couple of years. He had asked me which one I wanted when he was on a trip. When he returned and I asked him about it, he lied that they were out of stock. My watch ticks in my ear because I hold it to my ear. It doesn’t make me want to kill myself, and I don’t think any authorities can hear it. My brother is not slow. I don’t even have a brother. I think about what all of the people that I don’t like have in common. You can usually trace the provenance of a critical thought through the thought-terminating-cliches:

"thought-terminating-cliches" —> "Goodhart’s Law" —> "Occam’s Razor" —> Reddit threads stalked feverishly through age of majority

My sword (wikipedia articles) strikes upon (get paraphrased until) your head (the next HOI4 DLC goes on sale).

Used to be nothing more embarrassing than revealing that you learned something from being online. Trying to publicize losses and privatize wins. Friends say “goyslop” every once in a while, and it makes me laugh. And it disgusts me not unlike the guys who get turned on by rational discourse—exercise in slow wit—posting their classifieds online, telling each other IANAL. Containment breached, culture victory reached.. and nobody there to nuke it from orbit! Now they crawl woodworkedly to gnaw on something harding, dying to give dome on that part of twitter.

In Which I Lament Loss of the Auld Traditions

Back in the day—after advent of horse husbandry, but before introduction of ElectroJac probes—every village had one guy who would pleasure the stallions. This was how they elected the mare. To be American is to have, in proportion, superpowers from the lands on which my great great great grandparents toiled. 7 years ago, in a fit of fascistic embodiment, I sprinkled my great grandmother’s ashes in a lake 500 kilometers north of her recorded birthplace. At least that lake was 2000 miles closer to home than where she lived since she was 6.

My next brush with fascism came when I worked in the former headquarters of the John Birch Society. That job sucked. They lured me out to Boston—noted Nazi stronghold—under pretense that I would fulfill John Birch’s ideal of devotion to my America: toilsome American. Now, I ply my trade as a mentally sound software developer. It fulfills me. More critically, it is the only career that allows me to wake up after 9am. I love the Winter Olympics. My epigenetic memories of getting a damn touch peaked at the high school varsity level. The situation encourages me to make enough money to encourage my children into an academy for a sport nobody else is playing.

However, I find myself more pleasurably, occupatedly chronicling my cat’s life. Basically, he has mental health that drives him to hide things like headphones and chapstick against me. I count otherwise among his more serious transgressions:

• general malcontent
• turning off my computer monitor by sitting on the cable
• mauling including but not limited to flying jumpattacks
• putting grubby paws on anything.. televisions, beyond reason
• attacking the tea bag label and, by proxy, the Hario 02 V60 tea decanter
• shirking chores and hygiene

I have ordered a set of those buttons that you see on tiktok that the dog steps on to tell the reiki practitioner lady “I’m barking”, but the boy hasn’t unpacked them yet. I’m figuring that he’s taking issue with the dog on the box or the pre-owned status. Every cat video on tiktok has comments like “I swear black cats are secretly just evil orange cats”; you could easily find comfort in the events from 1928 to 1945. I know that everyone has been wondering: my “Roman Empire” is what I’m going to have for lunch today.

My dad got a cuckoo clock in Solvang. I’m really happy for him and myself because prized possessions should not be those that you had when you were 25. It keeps 59.99998/60 time and pisses off my mom and the dog. How do you get on when you’re Joanna Newsom? A friend and I go fly fishing some Mondays during the summer. There is no hope for catching anything. The eclipse passed right through Cleveland two years ago. I am still trying to get on with my life.

Why have it if you won’t?

Opdateringer

my mom still loves me

You give me Faron Young four in the morning!

Naked Eyes/Burning Bridges (1983) reissued (it’s complicated)

Words of the week

declasse

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