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You’ll Never Get Off the Dinner Treadmill
“The thing about dinner is that you have to deal with it every single night. Figuring out what to eat is a pleasure until it becomes a constant low-grade grind”
Once again a writer has eloquently described something I think about regularly. I’ve be looking for the article and finally stumbled upon it (via kottke of course!).
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Curated Content
My optimism about AI is not that it will unlock some great power for us, but rather the plethora of garbage it creates — like the flourishing of SEO did — will drive people towards more curated content built on some type of connection, however tenuous, to the human curator.
Bookstores being one example (via Kottke), blogs being another.
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Rational-ish
I love this critique of Rationalism.
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Scruffy Hospitality
I wish people would lower the bar and just invite people over without worrying about impressions made by having a house not in perfect order. Let’s just be honest with each other.
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Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It
Waste Your Time, Your Life May Depend On It
Aha! This post does a great job of putting together some ideas that have been rattling around my brain for a while.
Specifically:
“saving” time and labor have become default settings and social imperatives. Rather than wisely judging what labor or time can and ought to be “saved,” our tendency is to buy into the promise indiscriminately.
It has long been my impression that historical Luddites were actively (read: violently) opposing/questioning this default. And now neo-Luddites are doing the same, though more in the realm of consumer technology as opposed to manufacturing.
What should we be asking of our technology? Well the same author addresses that:
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Third Spaces
Many people have fond memories of special conversations that transpired while they were doing the dishes with a parent or going fishing with a friend. This third thing they do together makes it easy and comfortable for them to converse more deeply, often without even making eye contact.
From Kottke
I love this concept of “third spaces”. In retrospect, I have definitely experienced this before.
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Recycling to Assuage Guilt
EPA: Recycling Eliminated More Than 50 Million Tons Of Guilt In ‘96 (archive)
Of course, with worldwide consumption of non-renewable resources at an all-time high, the world will still undergo total environmental collapse by 2065. “But with careful planning,” Toomer said, “guilt levels should remain low right up until then, long after the baby boomers are dead.”
I stumbled upon this Onion article years ago and am regularly reminded of it whenever conversations about recycling come up.
It’s from 1997 but couldn’t be more true today.
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Books as Conversation Starters
No one ever picked up someone else’s Kindle and explored the title or back cover of the book being read. Physical books enable serendipity in a way e-books cannot and can spark interesting conversation between the reader and the person who noticed the book. I got to enjoy this experience over the Christmas holiday when my wife’s cousins boyfriend had a copy of Braiding Sweetgrass laying on a chair, prompting me to pick it up, explore it and ask him about it.
I don’t think I had considered this experience in the value lost with more people using e-books.
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Write Shitty First Drafts
Shitty First Drafts by Anne Lamott via Do By Friday
The pressure to right well can be paralyzing whether it’s a blog post, a book, an essay, or even just an email. Writing a first draft should be a way of reducing that stress. It’s one of the steps in my weekly review 1 for addressing writing tasks that haven’t budged.
- okay, I never actually do the weekly review as I’ve designed it, but I am better about doing rough drafts as opposed to eternally putting off a task than I used to be. [return]
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Persistence of Paper
I’m becoming increasingly convinced that digital technologies are very, very far from completely replacing paper. Some well articulated points in this book review by Malcolm Gladwell for The New Yorker.
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The Maintenance Race
The Maintenace Race on Works in progress
Even as a draft, this article about the race to become the first to circumnavigate the world solo and unsupported by sail, was fantastic. I loved how it portrayed the different approaches, challenges and solutions of each racer. I feel like I saw a little of myself in each of them. Great lessons that can be applied to many parts of life as well.
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Kurt Vonnegut on Making Art
Kurt Vonnegut’s response to some high school students’ letters requesting he visit the school.
From Letters of Note, linked to from this HN post comment about the value of continuing to teach creativity in schools despite it not being valued by employers.
November 5, 2006
Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:
I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.
What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.
Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.
Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?
Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash recepticals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow.
God bless you all!
Kurt Vonnegut
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College Isn't for Everyone
College Was the Biggest Mistake of My Life
While college ended up being the right choice for where my career ended up going, it certainly wasn’t clear at the time. I related to several pieces of this article, including:
My decision to go to college was made under pressure — from my parents, peers, social circles, and from society — but no one put a gun to my head. I was a legal adult… I was a dumb, naïve kid — poorly-advised, ignorant of the world, who ultimately didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life, but felt an intense pressure urging him to decide anyway.
And,
I legitimately thought that if I didn’t go to college, my only career options would be of the lowliest, least remunerated, most depressing order imaginable. So, yes, I made the decision. I could have refused. But I didn’t. Because my choice was inevitable. You’d have to visit trillions of alternate universes to find a single simulation where I did, in fact, choose differently.
And the 1.7 trillion dollar question, should we be letting adolescents make such huge financial decisions?
It’s worth taking a moment to reflect on the fathomless insanity of expecting teenagers to hatch decade-spanning plans intended to shape the course of their lives, while their brain’s prefrontal cortex, responsible for long-term planning, is seven years away from being fully developed.
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Visualizing Jeff Bezos Wealth
Getting people to understand how rich the ultra-wealthy are is hard. This is one of the better and informative ways I have seen:
Another way of thinking about it: let’s be really really generous and say you earn $3,000 per hour. Yes, three thousand dollars per hour.
And because you are so awesome, you are capable of working 24 hours per day, 365 days a year. No breaks, no vacations. And even better, all your expenses are paid for so you can save every dollar.
How long would you have to work to have earned as much as Jeff Bezos is worth?
. . . . . . . . .
Over five thousand years, 24/7/365.
Per hour wage 3,000.00 = per year 26,280,000.00 Working 24/7/365 Goal 150,000,000,000.00 Have to work 5,707.76 years -
Monkeys, Monsters and Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
Why Procrastinators Procrastinate on Wait But Why
I can definitely relate to the Instant Gratification Monkey and Panic Monster characters.
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if there is an upside to procrastination. By putting it off , the resulting time crunch necessitates prioritizing. How can you get the most out of the time you have for the task? A Parkinson’s Law productivity hack?
But at the end of the day, you are not just a mere doer of things.
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Team Mudslide
I figured I would share some photos here too. I pulled my photos that I posted on Instagram over the years. Many of them were during my 2015 Appalachian Trail thru-hike.
Hiking through Great Smoky Mountain National Park, I was lucky to hike with a great group of guys. We called ourselves Team Mudslide on account of the muddy conditions we were experiencing during that part of the hike.
Peace Dawg and I ended up hiking the rest of the trail together. Beowulf, a poet and English teacher ended up splitting from the group at some point. Dance Move got off trail in Virginia after running out of money. All of ‘em Hiker Trash at it’s finest.
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The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m speechless. A must read.
The Second Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr - by Ibram X. Kendi for The Atlantic
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Autofocus Todo System
I spend too much time looking at different notetaking tools and to-do systems with a preference for plain text and pen and paper solutions. Here is a recent discovery that has influenced my current mostly notebook-based system.
Despite my obsession, I still try to keep the HN comment [[2021-07-31-not-getting-things-done|I mentioned here]] in mind.
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Global Guide To Letting Kids Have Fun Without Stressing Parents Out
A Global Guide To Letting Kids Have Fun Without Stressing Parents Out : Goats and Soda : NPR
Not sure if bashing Western parenting is just a fad, easy or both but seems to be fodder for a lot of articles and books these days. Or maybe it has always been that way?
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Not Getting Things Done
Hundreds of Ways to Get S#!+ Done—and We Still Don’t
A succinct review of the problems with productivity and to-do apps and why they fail.
I equally enjoyed this comment from HN
Good. When we die, we will still have a giant todo list, and that’s OK. That doesn’t mean we haven’t done things, it just means the list didn’t capture the entirety of our desires and goals.
Maybe the point of writing them down is mostly reflective; to contextualize them as much as possible and do the ones that we find most important by some unconscious heuristic. That means there will always be uncompleted things.
Also we have to see when we itemize things to do, we also objectify ourselves as a doer of those things. Which is OK for making things graspable, but ultimately we are not mere doer of things, we are humans in an existential context.
Maybe it is a good thing that we left todo items unchecked, maybe that is our protest against being reduced too much, maybe that procrastination is an attempt at gaining our humanity back, maybe that resistive Netflix binge has some unconscious meaning that needs to be honored. “
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The lie of “expired” food
The lie of “expired” food and the disastrous truth of America’s food waste problem
“A big part of the problem is that most of us don’t really believe we’re capable of determining if a food is good for us. “
“There are two vital facts to know about date labels on foods in the US: They’re not standardized, and they have almost nothing to do with food safety. “
While on a personal level, we can “start trusting our senses to tell us if food is edible”, larger scale change would likely require regulation, and “Congress just moves slowly.”
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Slack
This, so much. I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum of having too much slack and not enough. I certainly see a lack of slack in those around me and always worry about efforts to improve efficiency.
We have been promised for years that new technology and workflows will make us less busy but it never pans out. We just change our expectations, move the goal post, and end up just as busy as before, without any slack.
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Recent
Risk
Been reading a lot about risk, especially in a medical context.
Just finished Gerd Gigerenzer’s Risk Savvy. A lot of great thoughts on uncertainty vs calculated risk, how we, as humans, think about risk, and how we communicate risk. I should definitely write a highlights post on it when I get a chance.
Move
Excited to move into our first home at the end of June!
Gardening
Got an early start this year sowing seeds indoors with a couple grow lamps. Cherry tomatoes, shishito peppers, red bell peppers, sugar snap peas – sewn (?) outside since they are cold weather tolerant – are all coming along nicely.
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Mount Carrigain Trip Report
WMNF Map 3 / H7
Post-trip Notes
Trail was in great shapel. Good beginner trail. ~2 miles of flat, wide trail at the beginning and then more rocky and steep 3 miles up to the ridge. Good views along the ridge and at the summit and observation tower.
Pre-trip Plan
Date: 2020-11-14 Route: via Signal Ridge Trail (AllTrails)
- Stream crossings1: Yes - about .7 - 1 mile in. Easy crossing.
Distance (miles): 10.4
Elevation Gain (ft): 3,471
Recent trail reports: (AllTrails, TrailsNH)
- Muddy
Snowpack (Forest Service hi-res or NOAA NE Map): 0”
Weather (Windy): www.windy.com/44.094/-7…
Pre-hike Checklist
- Check: East Branch of the Pemigewasset River, Saco River. Saco River at above 4.0-4.5 feet means some river crossings have the potential to be difficult or even dangerous on peaks near that area [return]
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Galehead
Post-trip Notes
Similar to Carrigain in that the first 3 miles were relatively flat, non-technical trail and then it gets steeper and rockier. One small stream crossing about at ~1.5 miles that is easy to rock hop across. Muddy spots were small, infrequent and relatively frozen. Used microspikes on last 1-1.5 miles for ice and light snow dusting. One blowdown that was easy to step over. No view at the peak but good views at a marked lookout just before and at Galehead hut. Would be a good beginner trail for people new to the 4,000 footers.
Pre-trip Plan
Date: 2020-11-15 Route: via Gale River Trail (AllTrails)
- Stream crossings1: No
Distance (miles): 10.2
Elevation Gain (ft): 2,519
Recent trail reports: (AllTrails, TrailsNH)
- Dry Trail, Wet Trail, Wet/Slippery Rock, Standing/Running Water on Trail, Mud - Minor/Avoidable, Mud - Significant, Leaves - Significant/Slippery
- Trails were in great shape overall. I was able to bareboot for the entire hike. Micros made great bear chimes.
Snowpack (Forest Service hi-res or NOAA NE Map): 0”
Weather (Windy): www.windy.com/44.185/-7…
Pre-hike Checklist
- Check: East Branch of the Pemigewasset River, Saco River. Saco River at above 4.0-4.5 feet means some river crossings have the potential to be difficult or even dangerous on peaks near that area [return]
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