commit daf0c46c7402e709db8246830dadc17a14884ac2
parent 7f9e2645d9c73da84504a8203c3d2e6bc1a32253
Author: David Eisinger <[email protected]>
Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2024 13:04:50 -0400
August progress
Diffstat:
3 files changed, 432 insertions(+), 13 deletions(-)
diff --git a/content/journal/dispatch-18-august-2024/index.md b/content/journal/dispatch-18-august-2024/index.md
@@ -4,12 +4,30 @@ date: 2024-08-07T15:35:45-04:00
draft: false
tags:
- dispatch
+references:
+- title: "Recently - macwright.com"
+ url: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
+ date: 2024-08-09T03:43:36Z
+ file: macwright-com-1msqdm.txt
+- title: "The World Beyond Your Head - macwright.com"
+ url: https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
+ date: 2024-08-09T03:43:55Z
+ file: macwright-com-59hl5f.txt
---
Some thoughts here...
<!--more-->
+* "Who has write access to your worldview?"
+* Roof replacement (selecting a vendor)
+* Balance: family, work, health, creativity
+ * (adulting, sleep)
+* Photo shoot
+* Racefest
+* Durham Library
+* Amateur woodworking
+
{{<dither BabyNico-48.jpg "782x600" />}}
{{<dither BabyNico-118.jpg "782x600" />}}
@@ -21,24 +39,28 @@ Some thoughts here...
This month:
-* Adventure:
-* Project:
-* Skill:
+* Adventure: Rehoboth Beach with my family. We've done this trip for the last four years, and every year the number of children in attendance has increased by one, a trend that simply cannot continue.
+* Project: [This is one of my favorite albums][1], and here's how they describe the creation process: "write and record a collection of drum-free samples, then flip them into an albums' worth of beats." I'd like to produce a track in this style this month.
+* Skill: Drum programming
+
+[1]: https://birocratic.bandcamp.com/album/ninety-nine
Reading:
-* Fiction: [_Title_][1], Author
-* Non-fiction: [_Title_][2], Author
+* Fiction: [_Moonbound_][2], Robin Sloan -- quite a departure from _Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore_ but I'm digging it so far; I like an absurd story told in a straightforward way
+* Non-fiction: [_The World Beyond Your Head_][3], Matthew B. Crawford -- I've read another book by this author, _Shop Class as Soulcraft_, and Tom MacWright spoke highly of this one in his [recent update][4] and [review][5]
-[1]: https://bookshop.org/
-[2]: https://bookshop.org/
+[2]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/wizard-s-design-robin-sloan/20374751
+[3]: https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-world-beyond-your-head-on-becoming-an-individual-in-an-age-of-distraction-matthew-b-crawford/8484056?ean=9780374535919
+[4]: https://macwright.com/2024/08/01/recently
+[5]: https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
Links:
-* [Title][3]
-* [Title][4]
-* [Title][5]
+* [Title][6]
+* [Title][7]
+* [Title][8]
-[3]: https://example.com/
-[4]: https://example.com/
-[5]: https://example.com/
+[6]: https://example.com/
+[7]: https://example.com/
+[8]: https://example.com/
diff --git a/static/archive/macwright-com-1msqdm.txt b/static/archive/macwright-com-1msqdm.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,247 @@
+[1]Tom MacWright
+
[email protected]
+
+[2]Tom MacWright
+
+ • [3]Writing⇠
+ • [4]Reading
+ • [5]Photos
+ • [6]Projects
+ • [7]Drawings
+ • [8]Micro
+ • [9]About
+
+Recently
+
+I skipped Recently last month. This one’s even more of a grab-bag than usual!
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+The <video> element and browser abstractions
+
+I was reading [10]Iván Sánchez Ortega’s thoughts on maps4html (at the time of
+writing, his website is down, so that’s an archive.org link). The post is about
+a theoretical HTML element that embeds a map on a webpage - something that Iván
+is skeptical of and [11]I am as well. But this section really got me thinking:
+
+ The user experience for video back in the day, both for the user (“I have
+ to download what and install it where?”) and the web developer (user agent
+ sniffing plus an <object> inside an <embed> with a MJPG fallback in the
+ form of a <img>) was quite abismal (sic). A <video> element back then made
+ sense.
+
+ So let’s fast-forward ten years, and see what <video> has really brought
+ us. For me, three things spring to mind:
+
+ 1. Chunked video
+ 2. DRM (in the form of EME).
+ 3. Consistent UI, then inconsistent UI back again.
+
+This is clear in hindsight but I had never really connected the pieces – the
+rise of standardized streaming video has also enabled DRM to be so commonplace.
+I can no longer take screenshots of Netflix, which was something that I used to
+[12]love to do. There are good tools for [13]downloading YouTube videos, but
+the same won’t exist for Hulu or HBO Max, and once a TV show declines to renew
+its streaming license, it’ll be inaccessible.
+
+I think this is a really interesting point: the standardization of the element
+meant that video decoding and UI would be part of the browser rather than the
+application, which allowed for strong copy-protection to be standard, and
+shifted power away from users. It makes me think twice about standardizing more
+elements of the web.
+
+Maps are what the [14]maps4html project wants to standardize, but argument is
+basically the same for cryptocurrency boosters (those who remain). They argue
+that the web was missing a “payments primitive” and it should be implemented at
+a protocol level. I don’t even agree with their goals (this current level of
+capitalist dystopia is enough, thank you very much, we don’t need to
+financialize any more stuff, please), but I also don’t feel great about the
+means of accomplishing those goals - embedding an opinionated currency and
+transaction system into standard technology.
+
+Part of the same thought bubble: is the web as a low-level abstraction of basic
+HTML elements and raw JavaScript on which the developer brings their own
+higher-level abstractions (web frameworks, or previously, Flash?), more
+egalitarian or free than a web with higher-level abstractions that are dictated
+by browsers and operating systems?
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Leverage
+
+ Historically, a key way to turn mediocre investments into good investments
+ has been to apply leverage. That’s not a recommendation; that’s a
+ historical analysis, and it comes with survivorship bias.
+
+This [15]blog post from Lyn Alden is a compelling and risqué unified theory of
+investing. She claims that real estate, stock, and bond investments are all
+pretty bad in the long run, and that taking leverage is actually a historically
+winning strategy because it shorts your fiat currency and amplifies your
+exposure to the other thing.
+
+ Within the context of the fiat currency system, it has been both
+ quantifiably workable and socially acceptable to own real estate with
+ 5-to-1 or even 10-to-1 leverage. People who are not professional investors
+ will routinely put 20% down and borrow 80% of the value of a home, with
+ various options to increase that to 10/90 in some cases, because we set up
+ our financial system around this being a normal thing to do.
+
+This is a good point that I never stop mentioning – mortgages are complicated
+and risky investments. Sometimes not as risky for the borrower but [16]always
+risky).
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+BeOS & Haiku
+
+I love the BeOS and Haiku icons and designs? They really are something. I’ve
+always had a love for the [17]Mac OS 8 look, but [18]BeOS is just beautiful: it
+has some of the strong colors of Windows, but used in a different way. And the
+icons…
+
+BeOS icons
+
+From [19]guidebookgallery.org. By the way: did you know about the [20]
+image-rendering: pixelated CSS option?
+
+And then look at [21]the icons from Haiku, the successor to BeOS:
+
+HaikuOS icons
+
+I’m not going to go as far as actually running these operating systems, but
+man, it all reminds me of a day when computers felt so much more focused and
+personal.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Bikes are electric now
+
+I’ve been biking more recently, and getting ready for a small Labor Day bike
+trip through Long Island. Eventually, when I have time (ha!) I want to do some
+much longer trips. I’ve been spending a bit more time getting reacquainted with
+the state of bicycles. In my lifetime, there have been a bunch of big changes
+for high-end bikes:
+
+ • Disc brakes replaced V-brakes, even for some road bikes
+ • Tubeless tires replaced tires with tubes for most bikes
+ • Wheels got bigger and most mountain bikes are 29ers or above
+
+I’ve mostly been on board with these things - the bigger wheels were obviously
+an upgrade from day one, especially.
+
+The weird new thing is electronic shifting, which is apparently becoming the
+norm. It’s a pretty odd turn, if you ask me: your bike as a little wireless
+electronic network in which the shifter on the handlebars connects to a motor
+in the derailleur.
+
+It’s nice to see though, from some ‘bike influencers’, a [22]pushback and some
+people even going back to [23]non-indexed shifters so they can use any kind of
+mech drivetrain.
+
+I think that when I get a midlife-crisis bike, there’s a decent chance it’ll be
+electric, partly because it allows for fewer cables to route, which would make
+mounting [24]bikepacking bags a little easier. But ‘running out of power’ in
+the middle of the woods, or just having ‘firmware’ installed on my bicycle
+creeps me out.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Running
+
+The 5k season continues. So far this summer: 21:00, 21:01, 20:27, 21:26. My
+goal is sub-20, which should be achievable (I’ve run it before in previous
+seasons), but mostly the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Last night’s race
+(21:26) was in 83°F, 68% humidity. Shoutout to singlets for helping me survive
+the heat. I picked up a [25]Bakline one and have been impressed. I see [26]
+Tracksmith gear constantly, and it’s good too, but I fear that some of these
+running brands are getting a ‘fashion brand’ markup.
+
+It’s hard to compete with DC and San Francisco as running cities. The DC region
+is [27]the ‘fittest’ in the country there are great trails in Rock Creek Park
+and super wide sidewalks in some neighborhoods. San Francisco has [28]
+spectacular hills and trails that can convince you that you’re really in the
+wild. New York’s sidewalks have far fewer cars parked on them than San
+Francisco’s, but you always need to look where you’re going. The sights are
+better, in my opinion: while SF’s hills look cool in the distance, there’s
+nothing like seeing the skyscrapers of Manhattan or running across the Brooklyn
+Bridge.
+
+New York’s running culture is great. There are tons of running clubs, and there
+are so many races to pick from. San Francisco had a [29]free weekly 5k called
+Park Run (part of a global network of events), but it was cancelled in 2020.
+Brooklyn doesn’t have a Park Run, but it has the [30]Al Goldstein race series,
+which is about $15, competitive, and well-run.
+
+CityStrides
+
+I’ve competed 10.24% of Brooklyn so far on [31]CityStrides: progress has
+stalled because I’ve been just running Prospect Park loops over and over again
+to get in shape for 5ks.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+Listening
+
+[32]Jessie Mae Hemphill by Jessie Mae Hemphill
+
+I started listening to brat but was disappointed. The biggest find of the last
+few months has been [33]Jessie Mae Hemphill, who I embarrassingly discovered
+because her song ‘Tell Me You Love Me’ came on the rotation in a Chipotle.
+
+Reading
+
+Oh man, [34]The World Beyond Your Head was such a read. It’s hard to summarize.
+In hindsight, I’m not even sure what it was about the book that hooked me -
+there were a few loosely-connected topics, each of which was really compelling.
+It made me think a lot. Hell of a book.
+
+Watching
+
+[35]Kinds of Kindness was great: I’ve now watched [36]29% of Yorgos Lanthimos
+films and love his style.
+
+August 1, 2024 [37]Tom MacWright ([38]@tmcw, [39]@[email protected])
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://macwright.com/
+[2] https://macwright.com/
+[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
+[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
+[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
+[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
+[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
+[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
+[9] https://macwright.com/about/
+[10] https://web.archive.org/web/20230205201150/https://ivan.sanchezortega.es/politics/2020/09/01/mapml-essay-part4-thumbs-up-for-document-accesibility.html
+[11] https://gist.github.com/tmcw/c17eec41deaec8f8f7b3d8bd38420a27
+[12] https://www.are.na/tom-macwright/subtitles-1528478762
+[13] https://github.com/ytdl-org/youtube-dl
+[14] https://github.com/Maps4HTML
+[15] https://www.lynalden.com/most-investments-are-bad/
+[16] https://byrnehobart.medium.com/the-30-year-mortgage-is-an-intrinsically-toxic-product-200c901746a
+[17] https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/macos80
+[18] https://guidebookgallery.org/screenshots/beos5
+[19] https://guidebookgallery.org/guis/beos
+[20] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/image-rendering
+[21] https://discuss.haiku-os.org/t/post-your-haiku-screenshot/3064?page=4
+[22] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAV9XvzB0eQ
+[23] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqMyvObJqnk
+[24] https://bikepacking.com/
+[25] https://www.bakline.nyc/
+[26] https://www.tracksmith.com/
+[27] https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/07/25/arlington-dc-fittest-cities/
+[28] https://macwright.com/hills/
+[29] https://www.parkrun.us/crissyfield/
+[30] https://runsignup.com/Race/NY/Brooklyn/AlGoldsteinSummerSpeedSeries
+[31] https://citystrides.com/
+[32] https://mississippirecords.bandcamp.com/album/jessie-mae-hemphill
+[33] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Mae_Hemphill
+[34] https://macwright.com/2024/07/07/world-beyond-your-head
+[35] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinds_of_Kindness
+[36] https://letterboxd.com/director/yorgos-lanthimos/
+[37] https://macwright.com/about/
+[38] https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=tmcw&user_id=1458271
+[39] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw
diff --git a/static/archive/macwright-com-59hl5f.txt b/static/archive/macwright-com-59hl5f.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,150 @@
+[1]Tom MacWright
+
[email protected]
+
+[2]Tom MacWright
+
+ • [3]Writing
+ • [4]Reading⇠
+ • [5]Photos
+ • [6]Projects
+ • [7]Drawings
+ • [8]Micro
+ • [9]About
+
+I read The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford on July 7, 2024
+
+Review
+
+This book sat on my digital bookshelf for months. I had forgotten what prompted
+me to buy it, and the title made me think that it would be a
+pop-psych-economics book that repeats the title in every paragraph, like [10]
+many [11]others I had [12]come across.
+
+Crawford is definitely floating around the topic of distraction: that’s the
+hook that makes this book relevant and marketable.
+
+I just read a few reviews on Goodreads before writing this, breaking my rule of
+never reading book reviews before reading and reviewing books. People seem to
+be annoyed at how he doesn’t stick to the topic, and they’re divided on whether
+the “hard philosophy” in this book is too hard or too soft. I wish I hadn’t
+read the reviews.
+
+The summary: I loved this book. Its little discussions of things like the
+importance of real-world difficulty in teaching us that we are physical,
+limited creatures who do not have all-powerful wills. The take on
+individuality: Crawford writes about the modern impulse to always prove
+ourselves as competent, competitive, and entrepreneurial, and how this differs
+from the older ideas of simply having a job, a role in society, and being
+judged mainly on whether you’re a morally good person, not whether you’re a
+genius or a hero.
+
+I thought that the interludes into philosophy were perfect: they included
+enough depth to get a handle on what the great thinkers were saying, but didn’t
+presume that the reader had a grasp on Kant or Kierkegaard already. I
+occasionally read philosophy now and read some of the classics in college
+(especially loved Kant and Spinoza), but I’m not prepared to judge whether
+Crawford is right or wrong in his points.
+
+ Quite apart from the business appeal of MOOCs for universities (payroll is
+ a lamentable thing), mechanizing instruction is appealing also because it
+ fits with our ideal of epistemic self-responsibility.
+
+The discussion of education and “epistemic responsibility” was fantastic. It
+connects so much to the idea of “unschooling” which is really popular with one
+of my social circles. (for the new-to-it, [13]unschooling is an informal
+learning style in which students are expected to learn from natural life
+including play, and there are often teachers present but there is no set
+curriculum. Unschooling has a foothold in technology because of books like [14]
+Mindstorms and the idea that kids can self-educate with computers. It also has
+a strong relationship with libertarianism in the sense that freedom is a common
+value, and schools are described as coercive, and also that an education system
+based on unschooling would require fewer institutions, especially those of the
+government-run variety. I am emphatically not a libertarian and view those
+overlaps as a major reason to be skeptical.)
+
+Crawford argues that enlightenment-era thinking as well as the particularly
+American Emerson/Thoreau-era philosophers think that only self-attained
+knowledge really counts, and they undervalue culture and social bonds in
+general, but especially those between teachers and pupils.
+
+ That is what computer games seem to do for our quasi-autistic cohort of
+ young men; it is what machine gambling does for those who have gone down
+ that particular path. Perhaps such pursuits help us manage the anxiety and
+ depression that come when experiences of genuine agency are scarce, and at
+ the same time we live under a cultural imperative of being autonomous.
+
+There’s also a really solid discussion of gambling and its role in society.
+I’ve been thinking about gambling a lot recently. I don’t gamble, and have no
+intent or inclination to ever gamble. But I’ve seen gambling dynamics appear in
+a lot of unexpected places.
+
+For example - there’s a fintech called [15]Yotta that recently failed and has
+potentially lost its customers money. It was a [16]“lottery-based savings
+account”, which is a series of words I’d never expect together. This is a whole
+category called [17]prize-linked savings accounts. It’s crazy.
+
+The power of gambling is scary to understand, but I think that this book makes
+a very strong argument that all of the psychic energy that flows into gambling
+comes from the lack of genuine agency, opportunity, and certainty in the rest
+of society.
+
+Sidenote: this book uses autism as a metaphor or descriptor for behaviors and
+thoughts, quite a lot. I didn’t find this very inappropriate or incorrect, but
+if you don’t want to read a book that talks about that, proceed with caution.
+
+ The question that hovers over your character is no longer that of how good
+ you are, but of how capable you are, where capacity is measured in
+ something like kilowatt hours—the raw capacity to make things happen. With
+ this shift comes a new pathology. The affliction of guilt has given way to
+ weariness—weariness with the vague and unending project of having to become
+ one’s fullest self. We call this depression.
+
+This idea of the cause of depression - the weariness of having to prove oneself
+capable - resonated hard with me. Maybe there’s something true and vital here,
+or maybe he and I have the same kind of sad, who is to say!
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+This is a book about a bunch of different topics that float around the modern
+condition, capitalism, attention, and individuality. The whole thing was really
+engaging for me, and extremely thought provoking. I found myself reconsidering
+my conception of myself, work, friends, and values. It might do the same for
+you!
+
+Or it might not! I was in the right head space for this read, and was happy to
+follow the sometimes-meandering trails. At times, this book can read like an
+Adam Curtis documentary - tying together big ideas and statements about modern
+times that seem a little too cute to be true.
+
+But it’s on a short list of books that I finished and immediately thought about
+re-reading in a few months.
+
+Details
+
+ • The World Beyond Your Head by Matthew B. Crawford
+ • ISBN13: [18]9780374535919
+ • Published: 2015
+ • Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://macwright.com/
+[2] https://macwright.com/
+[3] https://macwright.com/writing/
+[4] https://macwright.com/reading/
+[5] https://macwright.com/photos/
+[6] https://macwright.com/projects/
+[7] https://macwright.com/drawings/
+[8] https://macwright.com/micro/
+[9] https://macwright.com/about/
+[10] https://macwright.com/2018/10/02/against-charity
+[11] https://macwright.com/2022/02/09/laziness-does-not-exist
+[12] https://macwright.com/2022/08/01/against-creativity
+[13] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling
+[14] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindstorms_(book)
+[15] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/21/synapse-collapse-nearly-109m-in-yotta-customer-deposits-vanish.html
+[16] https://moneywise.com/banking/banking-reviews/yotta-review
+[17] https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/banking/prize-linked-sweepstakes-savings-accounts
+[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:BookSources?isbn=9780374535919
