taylor-town-hsouvj.txt (3590B)
1 [1]taylor.town [2]about [3]now [4]spam [5]rss 2 3 Stinky Gifts From Your Idea Kitty 4 5 To attract ideas, carry a notebook. 6 7 Suddenly, armed with blank paper, your mind sends details to your attention. 8 9 □ note: eating fiber and/or vinegar before carbs can smooth glucose/ 10 fructose spikes 11 □ note: explore the lives/works of Grothendieck and Mochizuki 12 □ note: "Determine value apart from price, progress apart from activity, 13 wealth apart from size." -- Munger 14 □ note: add to reading list: Urban Waterfront Promenades by Macdonald 15 16 [6]90% of those ideas are crap. Your mind became a friendly neighborhood cat, 17 delivering dead animals to your doorstep. Thank you for your kind gifts, kitty 18 -- all these delicate carcasses are so nasty and yet so generous. But your true 19 challenge is that 10% of the time, they're taxidermy squirrels stuffed with 20 sand and sapphires. 21 22 Your mind will never improve at finding good ideas; that cat will always 23 deliver 90% crap. What changes is you. You somehow teach yourself to sort and 24 salvage. You learn to forgive yourself faster, to bury the dead, and to pay 25 proper respect to Nature's harsh whims. You name this new feeling "intuition" 26 and "taste" and sometimes "luck". 27 28 This phenomenon manifested when I [7]started writing regularly. My hunches 29 found a nest. My curiosity grew legs. My mind made miles of piles and infinite 30 files for whatever these mountains of words will one day become. 31 32 □ essay: tactical procrastination 33 □ essay: temporal type theory 34 □ essay: gender penmanship gap? 35 □ project: suitcase shaped like a pencil roll; lies flat with many 36 pockets 37 □ note: explore dungeon synth 38 □ essay: licklider's "olivers" 39 40 After years of isolating myself, I [8]tried a new platform. It's been 41 delightful. I've rekindled old friendships, found new communities, and spread 42 lots of laughter. 43 44 But as soon I created that profile, my cat changed its patterns. More ideas. 45 Smaller ideas. Save this. Share that. 46 47 □ post: writing prompt: in Cool Runnings 2, the Jamaican bobsled team… 48 □ post: is a train a hypoloop? 49 □ essay: John Dewey's cool schools 50 □ post: mosquito net jacket 51 □ post: corporate sabotage: covertly replace the coffee with decaf beans 52 and watch productivity suffer 53 □ post: pic of mom's sad cabbage sandwich 54 □ post: fennel soda 55 □ essay: ethics of anteaters in Zoboomafoo 56 □ post: John Harvey Kellog was a cereal entrepreneur. 57 58 These ideas are still ~90% crap, but my intuition cannot yet appraise its new 59 deliveries. 60 61 My dendrites grow so stiff with age; I'm afraid I'll learn kitty's new tricks 62 too slowly this time. Only fools forget that cats have more lives than we poor 63 mortals. 64 65 I so deeply want all that community -- all that belonging. But I can't afford 66 more change. I'll try to visit as often as my old cat allows. Meanwhile, feel 67 free to [9]write me a letter. I'll be here, wherever this is. 68 69 Before I depart, I'll leave you with a powerful spell: a substrate (e.g. 70 notebook, blog, profile, etc) summons its works (e.g. notes, essays, comments, 71 etc). This is real magic. Try it at home. 72 73 74 References: 75 76 [1] https://taylor.town/ 77 [2] https://taylor.town/about 78 [3] https://taylor.town/now 79 [4] https://newsletter.taylor.town/ 80 [5] https://taylor.town/feed.xml 81 [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law 82 [7] https://taylor.town/ 83 [8] https://bsky.app/profile/taylor.town 84 [9] https://taylor.town/cdn-cgi/l/email-protection#b5ddd0d9d9daf5c1d4ccd9dac79bc1dac2db