logloglog

Dec 14, 2022

April 16th, 2024

My book on hermeticism is showing me the psychological potential of meals. Of course food is functional, delightful, and a good break, but it also acts as a reliable threshold in your day that you can use for symbolic priming. The method is “alchemical” instead of scientific. It’s anti-Huberman in that it’s not about specific bio-sounding enzymes. It’s about “impregnating” your meal with a thought and focusing on it before the bite, during the bite, after the bite, and for each bite. It’s something like a programmable eating mantra.

What can I learn from journalism? What if half of my process became structured and deadline focused? I very much appreciated the “work like an artist” workflow I have, and will fight to keep it, but maybe that’s one of two streams.

I can write short relatively fast. I can write a solid 500-word one-take essay in an hour. In 2 hours I can edit, refine, and publish. I can muster 4 hours a week to write two, short, topical, Substack-native essays. The problem is my executive focus. I haven’t been prioritizing the practical half of my writing practice.

We Earthlings do weird things to celebrate holidays. For Christmas we cut down all the evergreen trees. For Thanksgiving we genocide the turkeys. For Easter we take perfectly fine eggs and crack them against each other in competitive brackets. I just don't understand; on Earth Day why don’t we burn garbage in back yards and dump poison in the rivers?

For a thesis to feel supported it needs material, the fusion of biographical details and cultural lore. These two modes are opposites: private memories vs. public domain. (The public/private element is common in architecture.)

By supporting your thesis with biographical details, you:

lodge yourself in the essay, making it something only you can write,
prove that you have first-hand experience with the topic, and
model how the reader might relate to the thesis.

By supporting your thesis with cultural lore, you:

show that a pattern exists beyond yourself,
are trusted as someone who is knowledge in relevant fields, and
make your case with symbols the reader might already be familiar with.

An essay missing a half is lob-sided. Without biographical details, it’s missing a personal element, without cultural lore it’s missing an collective element.

April 15th, 2024

Check out the English Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). It is set of one billion words that is considered to be the best cross-section of usage in the English language. It has 8 domains—blogs, websites, movies, speeches, fiction, magazines, newspapers, academi research—that each cover ~125 million words. Bigger corpus’s do exist—the site has a 155 billion word corpus of all Google books—but they’re less balanced and representative of the language.

Basically, you type in a word, and it tells you how many entries there are, and shows you every example so you can see it in context. While some of these corpuses show it as “0.14 per million words,” these stats below are absolutes.

Here’s how many times each word was used in a one billion word corpus:

496,838 entries for “love.”
20,985 entres for “tournament.”
1,163 entries for “squint.”
256 entries for “faustian.”
38 entries for “addle.”
13 entries for “abaddon.”
0 entries for “abdals.”

lemma (n.) : a family of words that all share the same words (ie: develop = development, developing, developmental, underdeveloped, redevelop, etc.)

This is the best vocabulary test I found (of the three I tried):

https://preply.com/en/learn/english/test-your-vocab

What to expect: first, they give you a grid of 50 words, ranging from really easy to really hard. I knew probably 90% of these. But then based on what you select, it gives you a second group of words that’s at the edge of your zone, where I only knew 20%.

I ended up getting an estimate of 22,986 known words. On their visual scale, I was on the highest mark (“proficient,” I think), but within native speakers I was on the lower end (native speakers range from 20,000 - 35,000 words).

My goal is to hit 40,000 words. Vocabulary ties directly to voice. I think there’s a way to command specific words that can use context clues to help them become rich and inclusive instead of pretentious.

If I can retain 25 new words a day (my daily session usually brings 50 new ones), I can reach 40,000 words by the end of 2025.

I took three vocabulary tests, marked down the words I missed, and used AI to define them for me. There’s a certain appeal to charting words that are simply “unknown,” but just because its uncommon, doesn’t mean it’s worth using. For now, I think my public dictionary might just include more than necessary: it’s a reflection of my learning process. Maybe I’ll eventually publish a pruned list of words that I think are worth learning and integrating.

Anyway, here’s my list of unknown words (while I have an intuitive sense of some of these, I either questioned it’s specific meaning outside of cliche usage, or, I don’t feel confident enough to use it in a sentence):

Abscond: To leave secretly and suddenly, often to avoid capture or responsibility. Distinct from "flee" in its connotation of wrongdoing.
Alleged: Claimed but not proven. Distinct from "supposed" in its legal context.
Alum: A chemical compound used in various applications. Distinct from "alumnus" (a graduate of a school).
Aperitif: An alcoholic drink served before a meal to stimulate the appetite. Distinct from "appetizer" (a small dish served before a meal).
Atoll: A ring-shaped coral reef enclosing a lagoon. Distinct from "island" in its specific formation.
Augured: Predicted or foreshadowed. Distinct from "predicted" in its association with divination.
Basis: The foundation or underlying principle. Distinct from "base" in its conceptual nature.
Bawdy: Humorously indecent or obscene. Distinct from "lewd" in its humorous tone.
Bibulous: Excessively fond of drinking alcohol. Distinct from "alcoholic" in its emphasis on enjoyment rather than addiction.
Bloc: A group of countries or political parties with common interests. Distinct from "block" (a solid piece of material).
Bludgeon: A heavy, blunt weapon used for striking. Distinct from "club" in its intended use for violence.
Braggadocio: Boastful or arrogant behavior. Distinct from "bravado" in its negative connotation.
Brobdingnagian: Gigantic or enormous. Distinct from "huge" in its literary origin (from "Gulliver's Travels").
Bruit: To spread a rumor or report widely. Distinct from "rumor" as a verb rather than a noun.
Bugbear: A source of fear or annoyance. Distinct from "pest" in its imaginary or exaggerated nature.
Cabaret: A nightclub with live entertainment. Distinct from "club" in its emphasis on performance.
Cantle: The raised, curved part at the back of a saddle. Distinct from "pommel" (the front part of a saddle).
Caitiff: A cowardly or despicable person. Distinct from "villain" in its connotation of weakness rather than evil.
Captious: Excessively critical or prone to finding fault. Distinct from "critical" in its negativity and triviality.
Cavalier: Arrogantly dismissive or offhand. Distinct from "dismissive" in its historical association with royalist soldiers.
Cenacle: A small, exclusive group of people with shared interests. Distinct from "clique" in its intellectual or artistic focus.
Chivvy: To harass or nag someone repeatedly. Distinct from "nag" in its connotation of physical pursuit.
Chthonic: Related to the underworld or subterranean deities. Distinct from "underground" in its mythological context.
Clerisy: The intellectual or educated class. Distinct from "intelligentsia" in its religious origin.
Communiqué: An official announcement or statement. Distinct from "statement" in its diplomatic or military context.
Cordillera: A system of parallel mountain ranges. Distinct from "mountain range" in its large scale and geological formation.
Coven: A group or gathering of witches. Distinct from "group" in its specific association with witchcraft.
Defenestrate: To throw someone out of a window. Distinct from "eject" in its specific method and historical origin.
Deracinate: To uproot or remove from a native environment. Distinct from "displace" in its connotation of cultural or social uprooting.
Devious: Deceiving or cunning. Distinct from "dishonest" in its connotation of cleverness and indirectness.
Disjunctive: Lacking connection or coherence. Distinct from "disconnected" in its logical or grammatical context.
Ejector: A device that forces something out. Distinct from "expeller" in its mechanical nature.
Embonpoint: A plump or stout physique. Distinct from "fat" in its positive or neutral connotation.
Emir: A high-ranking Arab ruler or prince. Distinct from "sheikh" in its political rather than religious authority.
Endoplasmic: Related to the internal membrane system of a cell. Distinct from "intracellular" in its specific reference to the endoplasmic reticulum.
Epigone: An inferior imitator or follower. Distinct from "imitator" in its connotation of lesser talent or originality.
Erythrocyte: A red blood cell. Distinct from "blood cell" in its specific type and function.
Estivation: A state of dormancy or inactivity during summer. Distinct from "hibernation" (winter dormancy).
Exudative: Relating to the discharge of fluid from blood vessels or skin lesions. Distinct from "oozing" in its medical context.
Fens: Lowland areas partially covered by water. Distinct from "marshes" in their nutrient-rich soil and vegetation.
Figure: A number or value expressed in digits. Distinct from "number" in its emphasis on the written or printed form.
Fuliginous: Sooty or dusky in color. Distinct from "dark" in its specific shade and texture.
Funambulist: A tightrope walker. Distinct from "acrobat" in its specific skill.
Fustilugs: A fat, clumsy person. Distinct from "oaf" in its emphasis on physical appearance.
Gauche: Lacking social grace or sophistication. Distinct from "awkward" in its connotation of social ineptitude.
Glutamate: An amino acid that functions as a neurotransmitter. Distinct from "amino acid" in its specific role in the nervous system.
Grouse: To complain or grumble. Distinct from "complain" in its connotation of petty or repeated grievances.
Hallmark: A distinguishing feature or characteristic. Distinct from "trademark" in its figurative rather than legal sense.
Hessian: A coarse fabric made from jute or hemp. Distinct from "burlap" in its specific material and weave.
Horologium: A timepiece or clock. Distinct from "clock" in its inclusion of sundials and other time-measuring devices.
Hutch: A cage or coop for small animals. Distinct from "cage" in its typical use for rabbits or other small mammals.
Hypnopompic: Relating to the state immediately before waking up. Distinct from "hypnagogic" (relating to the state before falling asleep).
Ignivomous: Vomiting fire or lava. Distinct from "volcanic" in its specific action.
Impolitic: Unwise or imprudent. Distinct from "unwise" in its emphasis on political or social consequences.
Inveigle: To persuade or deceive someone with flattery or charm. Distinct from "persuade" in its connotation of trickery.
Lectern: A stand with a slanted top used to hold a book or notes for reading. Distinct from "podium" (a raised platform for speakers).
Legerdemain: Skillful use of one's hands to deceive or manipulate. Distinct from "sleight of hand" in its broader application beyond magic tricks.
Leitmotif: A recurring musical theme associated with a particular person, place, or idea. Distinct from "theme" in its specific use in musical composition.
Limerence: A state of intense romantic infatuation. Distinct from "infatuation" in its psychological depth and longevity.
Limpid: Clear and transparent. Distinct from "clear" in its connotation of purity and serenity.
Lothario: A man who seduces women. Distinct from "womanizer" in its literary origin and connotation of charm and sophistication.
Lugubrious: Mournful or gloomy. Distinct from "sad" in its exaggerated or affected nature.
Maganam: A ruse or deception. Distinct from "trick" in its elaborate or strategic nature.
Malapropism: The mistaken use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one. Distinct from "error" in its humorous or ironic effect.
Onious: Relating to onions. Distinct from "oniony" in its technical or scientific context.
Maladroit: Clumsy or inept. Distinct from "clumsy" in its connotation of social or diplomatic blunders.
Mammon: Wealth or greed personified. Distinct from "money" in its negative moral connotation.
Manacle: A shackle or handcuff. Distinct from "handcuff" in its historical use and connotation of captivity.
Mawkish: Excessively sentimental or insincere. Distinct from "sentimental" in its negative connotation.
Melange: A mixture or medley. Distinct from "mixture" in its connotation of variety and diversity.
Mien: A person's appearance or manner. Distinct from "appearance" in its inclusion of facial expression and demeanor.
Mumpsimus: A traditional custom or notion adhered to despite being shown to be unreasonable. Distinct from "superstition" in its stubbornness and resistance to change.
Nescience: Lack of knowledge or ignorance. Distinct from "ignorance" in its philosophical or theological context.
Noisome: Harmful or unwholesome. Distinct from "unpleasant" in its connotation of physical or moral danger.
Nostrum: A medicine of secret composition and unverified effectiveness. Distinct from "medicine" in its dubious or fraudulent nature.
Oneiromancy: Divination through the interpretation of dreams. Distinct from "dream interpretation" in its supernatural or occult context.
Opsimath: A person who begins to learn or study late in life. Distinct from "late bloomer" in its specific focus on learning.
Pabulum: Material that is intellectual but oversimplified or bland. Distinct from "food" in its figurative sense of mental nourishment.
Parsimonious: Excessively frugal or stingy. Distinct from "frugal" in its negative connotation.
Pastiche: An artistic work that imitates the style of previous works. Distinct from "imitation" in its deliberate and stylistic nature.
Peasantry: The class of small farmers or laborers. Distinct from "farmers" in its historical and social context.
Perdue: Hidden or concealed. Distinct from "hidden" in its military or strategic context.
Piedmontese: Relating to the Piedmont region of Italy. Distinct from "Italian" in its specific regional origin.
Pittance: A small or inadequate amount of money. Distinct from "amount" in its connotation of insufficiency or meagerness.
Phytic: Relating to a type of acid found in plants. Distinct from "plant-based" in its specific chemical compound.
Potboiler: A work of art or literature created quickly for financial gain. Distinct from "bestseller" in its emphasis on speed and commercial motive.
Pother: A commotion or fuss. Distinct from "commotion" in its connotation of annoyance or bother.
Premier: First or foremost in importance or rank. Distinct from "first" in its connotation of prominence or leadership.
Prig: A self-righteously moralistic person. Distinct from "prude" in its emphasis on moral superiority rather than sexual propriety.
Prurient: Excessively interested in sexual matters. Distinct from "lewd" in its connotation of unhealthy or inappropriate desire.
Puckish: Mischievous or impish. Distinct from "playful" in its connotation of trickery or devilishness.
Pule: To whine or complain in a childish manner. Distinct from "whine" in its connotation of weakness or immaturity.
Purloin: To steal or pilfer. Distinct from "steal" in its connotation of stealth or cleverness.
Ramient: Branched or having many branches. Distinct from "branched" in its technical or scientific context.
Redolent: Strongly reminiscent or suggestive of something. Distinct from "reminiscent" in its olfactory or sensory connotation.
Refectory: A room used for communal meals in a monastery or other institution. Distinct from "dining hall" in its religious or institutional context.
Regent: A person who governs in place of a monarch. Distinct from "ruler" in its temporary or delegated nature.
Regnant: Reigning or ruling. Distinct from "dominant" in its official or legal authority.
Rind: The tough outer skin of certain fruits or cheeses. Distinct from "peel" in its thickness and texture.
Roving: Wandering or traveling from place to place. Distinct from "wandering" in its connotation of purposefulness or exploration.
Ruck: A mass of people or things. Distinct from "crowd" in its connotation of disorderliness or confusion.
Seamy: Sordid or disreputable. Distinct from "disreputable" in its connotation of hidden or underworld activities.
Sedulous: Diligent or persistent. Distinct from "diligent" in its connotation of painstaking attention to detail.
Shakti: The female creative power or cosmic energy in Hinduism. Distinct from "energy" in its spiritual and feminine context.
Shearling: A sheepskin or lambskin with the wool still attached. Distinct from "sheepskin" in its use as a garment or lining.
Sheerly: Completely or absolutely. Distinct from "completely" in its connotation of transparency or thinness.
Shuddered: Trembled or quivered, often with fear or revulsion. Distinct from "trembled" in its connotation of horror or disgust.
Signet: A small seal used to sign documents or mark property. Distinct from "seal" in its personal or official nature.
Sobriquet: A nickname or epithet. Distinct from "nickname" in its literary or historical context.
Soliloquy: A dramatic device in which a character speaks their thoughts aloud while alone on stage. Distinct from "monologue" in its introspective and revealing nature.
Sparge: To sprinkle or spray with liquid. Distinct from "sprinkle" in its technical or industrial context, often related to brewing.
Strop: A strip of leather or canvas used to sharpen razors. Distinct from "sharpen" in its specific tool and purpose.
Sully: To soil or tarnish. Distinct from "soil" in its connotation of moral or reputational damage.
Sultry: Hot and humid, often with sensual or seductive overtones. Distinct from "hot" in its atmospheric and emotional connotations.
Svelte: Slender and elegant. Distinct from "slim" in its connotation of grace and sophistication.
Tatterdemalion: A person dressed in ragged or tattered clothing. Distinct from "ragamuffin" in its emphasis on the clothing rather than the person.
Tawdry: Cheap and gaudy. Distinct from "tacky" in its historical association with lace and finery.
Tenebrous: Dark and gloomy. Distinct from "dark" in its connotation of mystery or foreboding.
Terpsichorean: Relating to dancing. Distinct from "choreographic" in its poetic or literary tone.
Tricorn: A hat with a brim turned up on three sides. Distinct from "hat" in its specific style and historical context.
Trill: A rapid alternation between two adjacent musical notes. Distinct from "vibrato" in its use of distinct pitches rather than variations in pitch.
Trollop: A sexually promiscuous woman. Distinct from "slut" in its connotation of untidiness or coarseness.
Trundle: To roll or move on wheels. Distinct from "roll" in its connotation of heaviness or clumsiness.
Tureen: A deep, covered dish used for serving soup or stew. Distinct from "bowl" in its size and formality.
Uxoricide: The murder of one's wife. Distinct from "homicide" in its specific victim and perpetrator.
Valetudinarian: A person who is unduly anxious about their health. Distinct from "hypochondriac" in its connotation of weakness or self-indulgence.
Verdure: Lush, green vegetation. Distinct from "greenery" in its poetic or literary tone.
Vibrissae: The stiff, sensory hairs found in the nostrils or around the mouths of certain mammals. Distinct from "whiskers" in its technical or scientific context.
Visage: A person's face or facial expression. Distinct from "face" in its connotation of character or appearance.
Weir: A low dam built across a river to raise the water level or divert its flow. Distinct from "dam" in its specific structure and purpose.
Welter: A confused or disorderly mass. Distinct from "confusion" in its connotation of turmoil or upheaval.
Williwaw: A sudden, violent gust of cold wind. Distinct from "gust" in its specific location and temperature.
Yoghurt: A food made from milk fermented by added bacteria. Distinct from "curd" in its smooth texture and tangy flavor.

emogenus — a piece of writing plagued with emojis.

Reminder: you can build full-stack AI-powered apps wih Bubble.

cosmic tide — the idea that the whole life of the universe—from the big bang to the collapsing of the universe—is just one wave in an “ocean” that’s beyond space time. What if the comedy and tragedy and all possible beautiful and all potential forms of life within our plenum is just the crashing of a single wave? It is a loop, a wave, a heartbeat, a breathe, a pendulum.

Can the hermetic practice be described as practice where symbolism is assigned to every action? Breathing, eating, washing, orienting in space, orienting in time, typing keys, etc. It is a kind of applied and active ritual superstition. The claim isn’t that a series of hand gestures will effect external outcomes, the claim is that a series of hand gestures can, with practice, be used to reliable usher specific mental states.

I had a lucid dream that had something to do with a dictionary. I was in my “home” reading through some large book, marking it up. Later on, I was at a book launch for some retired professor in a library (me in the future?). I decided to buy a copy, and at the register I realized it was the same book I had marked up and left at home. I tried to trace back how I got to that moment, realized I was in a dream, become lucid (!), and the thing whole scene uncontrollably melted away. Somehow, I got back to the cashier (not lucid anymore), and asked how the book transported from my home to the library. His rationalization involved the CIA.

April 14th, 2024

“The complete results of literacy did not supervene in Greece until the ushering in on the Hellenistic age, when conceptual thought achieved … fluency and its vocabulary [and syntax] became … standardized. Plato, living in the midst of this revolution, announced it and became its prophet.”

After dinner, Andy and I stopped by a bookstore that was next to St. Mark’s Comedy Club. Unorganized, lots of underground poetry, ended up getting “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” and a preface to Plato. I asked the guy if they had any Ed Sanders (his Tales of Beatnick Glory shaped my sense of history of this neighborhood). They had that same book, signed, but I didn’t care. He apparently had poetry mixed in that I couldn’t find. Then they brought a Tuli Kupferberg book to my attention (he was a co-writer of Sanders in the Fugs). Rare print. $250. The cover had 4 pictures of him, naked and erect. The inner pages had poems, manifestos, and drawings that were pretty cool. He was willing to go down to $35, but I still passed give how obscene the cover was.

Impressions on the standup comics and crowds in Midtown for the East Village.

Midtown: Long-Island like, sports and sex jokes, louder, more stereotypically New York, Mitch Hedburg, played into racial stereotypes, comfortable, comedy as a hobby, beer culture.
East Village: nuanced, less obvious punchlines, more believable personal stories, drug/marijuana/psychedelic inspired, struggling, comedy as lifestyle, weed culture.

On 2nd Avenue & St. Mark’s, there’s a noise band performing on a rooftop near the intersection, and as you walk east, the nature of the sound reflections change in weird ways.

Closeted eclectic.

To combat any grand ambitions of the future that are starting to turn toxic, just imagine that what you’ve already accomplished is all you ever need to do.

My Substack is already the fulfillment of my life’s potential. I didn’t have to end up here. Because of all my decisions over the last 15 years, I have now have this his site, some ideas on there I’m proud of. I can’t control the impact they have, I can’t force myself into the culture. I just need to show up, have generally bold goals, and work from a sense of peace of having already arrived where I want to be.

I am my grandest delusions. I am the quiet one at Thanksgiving

On that big escalator going up into Grand Central, and I visualized a full longitudinal section of Manhattan (from Battery Park to Central Park, showing the bedrock differences, and also the famous facade of GC). I imagined myself as a little scale figure in that architectural drawing, and as I moved my hand in real-life, a little pixel updated in the section. (imaginal perspective)

On expression (craft) — 27 patterns behind great essays
On language (logos) — selective dictionary, new thesaurus architecture
On ideas (history) — lineage of 100 root ideas through civilization

Where is the syllabus of the best essays to read in the last 5 years?

bonk : British slang for having sex. (vb) bonking is not the best idea. (n) they had a bonk. The phrase likely comes from “bonkers” (a thrust to the head that causes madness or insanity, but you can guess how the thrust was repurposed).

On the “Dead Internet Theory” — there’s a Quora bot that is using GPT to answer popular questions. It pulled a face from the site “This Person Does Not Exist,” and it has 1 million views in the last month. The weird thing, there aren’t even any financial incentives to doing this, there’s just a certain fetish to automate because we can. Eventually, the average person will realize that they’ve been catfished in 50% of their online interactions, and the Internet as we know it will be abandoned.

Listening to a classical composition from 1957 (The American Scene, by William Grant), and it really brings a beautiful and eerie moo around existence, childhood, society, and nature. It’s a frame-breaker.

April 13th, 2024

There’s a radical range of resolution in how I can interpret my day. Sometimes the smallest details, like the headphones of a passing pedestrian, can have something like religious significance, and every perception feels worthy of a paragraph, worthy of interpretive and sensorial prose. Other times, days escape in a passing fog without rapture or rupture.

I wonder if it all comes down to attention and how you can lace it with a self-suggesting mantra that everything is meaningful. Is it possible to stay in the pocket, where every moment feels prose worthy and destined to be a verse in some Great American Novel? Is every perception a clue into the ciphered reality of your life and your culture?

This gets into the distinction between peak experiences and extended flows. Maslow talked about how the beginning of self-actualization comes with a lot of peak experiences, but over time it flattens out into a constant flow state that’s barely noticed. Maybe my “days of fog,” would be at the intensity of a peak experience to my 18-year old self, but I’m just used to it now.

Still, that peak I felt after finishing my sungazer essay (last Thursday) felt like the place to always try and inhabit. It was a way of being that was bursting with energy, potential, confidence, acceptance, life, and wonder. Maybe that can’t be help perpetually, but could it be accessed every day?

Adaptive preference bias — the tendency to want to justify your own decisions. With time, all of your decisions become the right ones. You learn to love where you end up, instead going through the struggle of molting and moving your life in accordance with your values. It’s the danger of over-relying on your own emotions. While values are often emotionally derived, they can be frozen as abstract constellations that can guide you through disorienting storms … needs a much better coined word though (ie: oozy taste, bullshit identity cushions)

Gluggy — invented word for the smell of a harbor that sells half-rotten.

Calling someone an “egg shell,” “egg head,” or “hollow egg.”

April 12, 2024

Creators shy away from complexity because it’s not instantly legible or memeable. This leaves serious wisdom unshared. The power of AI is that a bot can encapsulate the full complexity of a given trade. It becomes accessible one bit a time, based on user input. Instead of crafting a meme, you’re ordering a universe of truth.

Hammer punch:

“A hammer punch is a hand tool used to drive a punch (a hardened metal rod) through a workpiece, usually to create a hole or to mark a specific point. The hammer punch consists of a handle and a striking surface, which is used to strike the punch and drive it through the material.”

Monkey paw:

“A monkey's paw is a talisman or amulet that is believed to grant wishes to its owner, but with disastrous consequences. The concept originates from a famous 1902 horror short story titled "The Monkey's Paw" by W. W. Jacobs. In the story, the paw of a dead monkey is enchanted to grant three wishes, but each wish comes with an unforeseen and terrible price.”

Aviary:

“An aviary is a large enclosure or cage designed to house birds. Aviaries are typically spacious enough to allow birds to fly freely within the enclosure and are often used in zoos, parks, or private residences to display a variety of bird species. Aviaries can be indoor or outdoor structures and are designed to provide a suitable habitat for the birds, including perches, nesting areas, and feeding stations.”

I am X, I am not X. Embrace both. Only when you can truly accept the negative side of a belief can you escape desperation and actually come close to it. If you never believe X in the first place, then you are stationary. Through embracing paradox, you maintain perpetual forward motion.

For me, I think the physical act of dying is more troublesome than the existential fear of not existing. I’m something like a “valetudinarian” (a hypochondriac who is unduly worried), so the idea of aging, warping, and decaying is a tough one.

In Greek mythology, Chronos was “Father Time” and he devoured his own children. One son got away and rose above time to become a God; this was Zeus. He formed an uprising against time and became the king of the pantheon. I think the Gods preferred an alternate type of time called “Kairos” a fleeting moment that was pregnant with opportunity. It’s not instrumentalized. It’s about having the presence to escape time and notice the opportunities in a moment that are calling.

“Time is a paradox. We exist in time, and yet, we are above time – if we choose to. In fact, we must transcend time if we want to redeem it. It tries to devour us, but we give it a stone. When we save those precious little moments from being devoured, they are transformed. By rising above time, we complete the chronological time (Cronus). We become timeless.”

“The Greeks called it Kairos – an opportune time. A pregnant time. We transform Cronos to Kairos when we use time to rise above time. We use the time to break into the timelessness. Every time we see why this moment in time is given us, we have an opportunity to bring it to fruition. We can bring it to fullness.”

Spongic time.

There’s something tragic about taking a system that ONCE might’ve caused a breakthrough, but then grew stale. Though the act of sharing it and meme-ing, it can go viral, but through going viral, it lodges itself in everyone’s heads and can’t be updated. It’s stunted and holds no future utility, for the creator or the users. It’s almost like a bastardized, deserted promise. It is an exteriorized shell that lost touch with the endlessly adapting interior.

When creators talk about using a “second brain” (an external knowledge management system), they risk forgetting the power of their own subconscious. Both could work in unison. You’re “deep subconscious” is untouchable and unknowable, it’s just your engrained way of working that you accumulate over your life through effort and you can barely start to explain it. Your “shallow subconscious” is trickier. All the interesting factoids you learned 2-6 months ago aren’t fundamental enough to seep into automaticity. Writing to capture these insights help. Memory can surface some of them, but I think we underestimate how relevant these logs and highlights can be. The ideal second brain would surface all these related captures as you are in the flow of prose.

Word choice often comes down to syllabicity as much as it comes down to meaning.

The last sentence of every paragraph benefits from an interline rhyme.

When you dive into complexity, it’s so off the trail (in the thickets) that you’re forced to invent & touch the source of language to share it.

There are two halves to a thinker. One is about the intention behind the mind: it covers the life you cultivate, your mental composition, the discipline of your attention, and your capacity for wonder, excitement, and creation. This is honest work that is immune to shortcuts. The other half is the expressive outlet: learning the theories of civilization, the minutest nuances of vocabulary, and the patterns of composing and expressing cultural works. These are all disruptable by AI.

The dishonest mind will gain powers in craft, but their creations will mean nothing, rotting about like abundant shadows in the old world of media. The honest mind in the super-suit will elevate into a new kind of being, creating trans-historical objects that will charter the course of the future.

“The new alchemists” has potential for a named group. Alchemy captures the romantic spheres of creativity, psychology, and spirituality. It’s also the pre-cursor to science. It’s what science forgot. Alchemy is all about embracing the paradox, and one of the central ones is how the path to psychic transcendence comes from putting the contents of our mind under a scientific method, one that demands heating and cooling, a constant reforging, an endless death and rebirth loop.

The insights from someone like Neitzche or Emerson are insights that arrived from a mind immersed in nature for decades.

Timeless works have an organized complexity within them. It is a vast universe, containing more wisdom than the mind can behold at once, meaning every time you dip in, you might notice some new layer you missed before (since you’ve evolved in the interim).

Sometimes, when you dive into an intellectual universe (Plato, McKenna, Emerson), it’s overwhelming. Before you can marvel at it, you’re confused. The first contact with complexity isn’t necessarily legible or comforting, but there’s a certain mystery that lets the patent ones stick with it and learn the local vernacular.

Once you learn how to swim, it’s like you have a life-time pass to an endless, regenerative, oceanic, inspiration swarm.

AI doesn’t just automate the bullshit work, it risks automating the manual joy of thinking, creating, and basically doing anything.

Music done right captures a resonance between math and language.

Harmony/rhythm is basically a space/time language that is mathematical (an octave is a unit of space, a measure is a unit of time, and it’s all about how you carve and layer within those units). Lyrics are obviously the linguistic half of it. In the most basic songs, a nice poem is layered over a clean sounding chord progression. The magic happens when there is synesthesia (a lyric is accompanied by specific chord that augments the meaning of that chord).

The classic historical example is how the Beatles designed their bridges in their early music. During the bridge, they’d switch the perspective of lyrics to start confessing the feelings of their inner world. This was accompanied by a tonal shift into minor chords. Teenage girls melted.

What would it look like if I started a publishing company? What could I learn from Frank Lloyd Wright? What would a modern renaissance guild or platonic academy be? It feels like most modern internet intellectual salons don’t work together to create something unique or original.

In my own diagrams, I’ve marked the beginning of the Renaissance as 1370, but Chris argued it goes back to the 1110s. Maybe the way to think of it is that there were “proto Renaissance figures” emerging for up to 2 centuries before.

Dante Alighieri (1265-1321): Italian poet, writer, and philosopher, best known for his Divine Comedy, which is considered a masterpiece of world literature and a significant influence on the Renaissance.
Peter Abelard (1079-1142): French philosopher and theologian who lived before the Renaissance but is known for his contributions to scholasticism and his famous love story with Héloïse.
St. Francis of Assisi (1181-1226): Italian friar and preacher who founded the Franciscan Order and is known for his devotion to poverty and love for animals. He is considered a key figure in the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.
The development of Italian poetry: The works of Dante, Petrarch (1304-1374), and Boccaccio (1313-1375) laid the foundation for the Renaissance literature and influenced writers across Europe.

Jacob Burckhardt was a Swiss historian professor, a mentor of Netizche, and one who coined the term “Renaissance.” In 1860, he published “The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy.”

AI explaining Bertrand Russel to me:

Bertrand Russell, the renowned British philosopher, mathematician and Nobel laureate, published "A History of Western Philosophy" in 1945. The book provides a survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratics to early 20th century philosophers.
One criticism sometimes leveled at Russell's work is that he gives relatively little attention to German philosophers, especially those associated with German Idealism like Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. Russell was generally critical of Hegel's obscure style and what he saw as the authoritarian implications of his philosophy. So while these thinkers are covered, Russell devotes less space to them compared to ancient Greek philosophy, British empiricists, etc.
As for Ludwig Wittgenstein, he was Russell's student and later philosophical rival. Their relationship was complex - Russell initially saw Wittgenstein as a genius and supported his early work, but later came to view him as misguided.
Russell was especially critical of Wittgenstein's later philosophy as presented in works like Philosophical Investigations. He considered the concept of "language games" to be trivial and accused Wittgenstein of spouting nonsense. The "charlatan" remark you mention seems to refer to Russell's view that Wittgenstein's cryptic style and gnomic utterances gave the false impression of great profundity.
However, it's worth noting that Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the 20th century. While his work is certainly challenging and unconventional, many consider it to be hugely insightful and influential, even if Russell ultimately rejected it. Eminent thinkers inspired by Wittgenstein include Elizabeth Anscombe, Saul Kripke, and many others.

What are the irreducible semantic units behind any language? I want to figure that out, draw them in 50 or so diagrams, and put it on a poster.

Charles Dickens

“Make them laugh, make them cry, make them wait.”

paragon : the perfect example of something.
slipshod (adj) : a sloppy lack of precision.
concordance : an alphabetical list of all usages of a word in a corpus.
presumptuous : taking liberties and overstepping boundaries with assumpitons.

The anecdotal edge:

hard-earned wisdom
domain expertise
enduring obsessions

Watching the Black Eyed Pease perform at Ultra in Miami in 2009 was a low point in my life (around the same time I dropped my finance major and reconsidered my life and forged who I am today). Wil.I.Am is like a modern Heironymous Bosch painting, a warning of what hell is like.

April 11th, 2024

Brene Brown (quoting Jung, quoting the alchemists):

Carl Jung wrote, 'Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.' We are complex beings who wake up every day and fight against being labeled and diminished with stereotypes and characterizations that don't reflect our fullness. Yet when we don't risk standing on our own and speaking out, when the options laid before us force us into the very categories we resist, we perpetuate our own disconnections and loneliness. When we are willing to risk venturing into the wilderness, and even becoming our own wilderness, we feel the deepest connection to our true self and to what matters the most.

Quick attempt to write out the logic beyond my Food of the Gods review:

1. Starting 2 million years ago, homo Habilis emerges from grasslands as meat eaters. This is cited as the main explanation for the growth of the brain, but it's not clear how eating meat led to genetic changes that would pass down to offspring.

2. However, in hunting mammals (ie: cattle), they came across their dung where psychedelic mushrooms grew. McKenna proposed that the mushrooms could be the source for the increase in brain size, for they're known to increase cognitive functioning. However, it's not clear how mushrooms get into the genome either.

3. Instead it's likely that mushrooms worked as a catalyst, they facilitate problem solving, formation of words, and tools, and solutions. None of these pass into the genes, but, the epigenetic blanket of inventions (vocabulary, tools, tribe norms) do get inherited. And we underestimate how something like language can drive brain size over time.

4. Therefore, the growth of brain size isn't something to do with biological evolution, but it's growth has more to do with the set of psychotechnology and technology we pass down to our kids. Proof of this phenomenon is how modern day feral kids who aren't raised with language have brain structures that are closer to a homo Erectus or homo Habilis, with limited ability to form language in our modern senes.

April 10th, 2024

The journey doesn’t really begin until you get to the swamp.

Bank of spicy takes:

Essay quality can be objectively measured.
AI editors will breed a generation of brilliant human writers.
Typewriters should be mandatory for writers.
Give kids remarkable tablets instead of iPads.
Take gibberish seriously if you want to improve your prose.
Your truest self is waiting for you in a pseudonym.
Write down every thought you have every day.
Read the dictionary A>Z.
The future of our species depends on re-designing the thesaurus.
Complexity is better than simplicity.
Personal growth doesn't begin without understanding paradox.
Teaching Jung in middle school would end the culture wars.
Digital time on lock screens traps society in manager mode.
You can induce out of body experiences at will.
The evolution from the alchemist to the scientist led to disaster.
Delete Notion and go touch paper.
AI will kill the Internet, and then resurrect it.
We should fuse orthodox ritual with psychedelics.
Modern society is a cult of convenience.
The killer app of VR is teleportation.
The great danger of VR is its ability to hijack awe.

If you look at depictions of the Putto in Renaissance art, you’ll find a mosaic of babies doing unreasonable things.

It seems like so much stress comes needing to have a clear and legible identity. "I'm X, but not Y." And when you truly live in the 3rd, you can't just easily label yourself and convey what you stand for to others.

Like Emerson said, you yourself become the island beyond categories. I think this natural aversion to detaching from spectrums and labels is the key thing that keeps the ego from developing & individuating (a Jungian term).

Curious; is there a moment where you detached from a dichotomy, and realized, "what even though I thought I was A, I'm partially B also, not fully B, but an A that accepts B." Showing you work this struggle might invite others to welcome this concept into their own realm of identity tension. (ie: currently trying to resolve the tension between being an orthodox Christian and a complete heretic)

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance:

“Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and to-morrow you arrive there and know them by inhabiting them."

From Hermes Trismegistus:

"If then you do not make yourself equal to God, you cannot apprehend God; for like is known by like. Leap clear of all that is corporeal, and make yourself grown to a like expanse with that greatness which is beyond all measure; rise above all time and become eternal; then you will apprehend God. Think that for you too nothing is impossible; deem that you too are immortal, and that you are able to grasp all things in your thought, to know every craft and science; find your home in the haunts of every living creature; make yourself higher than all heights and lower than all depths; bring together in yourself all opposites of quality, heat and cold, dryness and fluidity; think that you are everywhere at once, on land, at sea, in heaven; think that you are not yet begotten, that you are in the womb, that you are young, that you are old, that you have died, that you are in the world beyond the grave; grasp in your thought all of this at once, all times and places, all substances and qualities and magnitudes together; then you can apprehend God."

April 9th, 2024

Locations for totality in the next30 years:

26 Spain, 27 Morocco, 28 Australia, 30 South Africa, 33 Alaska, 34 Egypt, 35 Japan, 37 New Zealand, 38 Australia, 39 Antarctica, 41 Kenya, 42 Malaysia, 44 Northwest Canada, 45 Florida, 46 Brazil, 48 Chile, 52 Southwest US, 53 Spain.

Watching a review of Jacob Collier’s 4th album, and everyone in the comments basically agrees: “incredible music, horrible artist.” Another quote stands out: "all the talent in the world can't grant you good taste."

If I were to give Jacob Collier artistic advice, I’d say “be a maximalist within constraints of timber.” I see his problem as having 70 vocal tracks, crazy mixing, loads of 2nd percussion—all that, plus bending time signatures and micro-tonal harmonies. He’s a musical genius without realizing the negative effects of his digital tools.

I’d like to see an album of his with 1 acoustic guitar, 1 electric guitar, 1 pianist, 1 bassist, 2 drummers. Basically, the constraint is you have 6 total people. You can’t have more than a 6-part harmony. If you want 4 second-percussion parts, that means all the stringed-players have to stop playing. Ideally, it is 6 actual people with different vocal registers that sustain from song to song.

On practicing vocals:

Can you consistently match pitches?
Can you consistently stay in key?
Can you identify the root note of any song?

From Reddit:

Jevon's paradox is the observation that as you make things more available and efficient demand for those things goes UP.
Examples: 1) Fuel efficiency advances in the 70s and 80s created the monster SUVs and Trucks of today full of features that use MORE fuel. 2) The cotton gin was though to use cotton so efficiently that slavery would be abolished. INSTEAD it increased demand for slavery as demand surged for clothes.
Humans are very energy efficient. And in a hyper abundant AI future, we may well want to work in gamified environments for fun or very little compensation. This may be enough to invent a bunch of bullshit jobs. Kind of a hyper version of what the Industrial Revolution did.

UFO footage from totality is trending on X (meaning: the shadow of a plane projected onto a cloud). I noticed 3 back-to-back messages that are syntactically identical. All posts have since been deleted. I think thees messages are designed as bait to bring you to a profile, but then removed for fear of being caught as robot spam:

POST 1: https://twitter.com/selenagomedic/status/1777602307498127682

In the midst of the much-anticipated 2024 solar eclipse in Texas, reports of a mysterious UFO sighting have left experts baffled. Witnesses describe a large, brightly-lit object moving swiftly across the darkened sky, sparking a wave of speculation and excitement among onlookers. While some dismiss it as a mere coincidence, others are intrigued by the timing of the event. Investigations are ongoing to determine the origins of this enigmatic visitor. Could it be a trick of the light or something more otherworldly? Only time will tell. [#AlienMystery]

POST 2: https://twitter.com/Erwin6672195870/status/1777554571335802896

In an unexpected turn of events during the highly anticipated solar eclipse in Texas, multiple witnesses reported an unusual sighting of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) streaking across the sky. The event, which coincided with the rare celestial phenomenon, has sparked intrigue and speculation among locals and experts alike. While some attribute the mysterious lights to natural or man-made phenomena, others remain open to the possibility of extraterrestrial involvement. The occurrence has added a fascinating layer to the already mesmerizing solar eclipse experience, leaving many curious minds pondering the unknown. [#UFOsighting]

POST 3: https://twitter.com/Kena847869/status/1777554984764142077

In a peculiar incident amidst the highly anticipated Texas Solar Eclipse of 2024, reports have emerged of a UFO sighting. Witnesses claim to have spotted a mysterious object hovering near the eclipse path, igniting discussions about extraterrestrial presence or mere coincidence. While skeptics attribute it to optical illusions or drones, UFO enthusiasts are intrigued by the timing. The event has sparked a mix of curiosity and skepticism among observers, adding a new dimension to the celestial spectacle. As investigations continue, the mystery surrounding the UFO sighting during the Texas Solar Eclipse of 2024 deepens. [#UnexplainedPhenomenon]

If I were to reverse engineer the prompt: 1) it lays out the context with an emotional reaction. 2) It mentions how people reacted to the event. 3) It attempts to analyze the reactions. 4) It describes two points of view. 5) It ends on something open-ended. I imagine someone has set up a prompt to run this same script across any trending story, adding different hashtags (associated with the story) to increase exposure, and then deletes itself within 24 hours after the trend passes.

April 8th, 2024

Hartford smells like sewage from the highway.

Counted 108 “diamonds” (reflective beads in the lake). It’s a form of white light the eye can tolerate. There were obviously more, that’s just how many I counted in a single fixed perspective before getting bored.

Looking through blackout glasses is aesthetically boring (look, a cartoon crescent moon!) but symbolically interesting. The sun is at such an intensity that in order for the human eye to look at it, everything else is imperceptible.

My logs about the solar eclipse were all pushed into an essay called sungazer.

April 7th, 2024

Sun stats:

The sun is 1.3 million times bigger than the sun.
1 astronomical unit (AU) = the distance from the Earth to the Sun. The size of the sun is 1% of an AU!

On “transneptunian objects:”

Planets on a shared plane: The planets in our solar system do indeed orbit the Sun in roughly the same plane, known as the ecliptic plane. This is due to the way the solar system formed from a rotating disk of gas and dust called the protoplanetary disk, not because of centripetal force. As the disk cooled, the material within it began to clump together, forming the planets, which continued to orbit in nearly the same plane.
Transneptunian objects (TNOs): These are objects that orbit the Sun at greater distances than Neptune. TNOs include dwarf planets like Pluto, Eris, Makemake, and Haumea, as well as smaller objects in the Kuiper Belt and scattered disk.
Orbital inclinations: While most TNOs have orbits that are close to the ecliptic plane, some do have significant inclinations. For example, Eris has an orbital inclination of about 44 degrees, and some scattered disk objects can have even higher inclinations. However, it is an overstatement to say that these objects orbit at "wild, orthogonal angles." Most TNOs still have orbital inclinations of less than 30 degrees.

A total eclipse passes over any given location once every 500 years (on average). They are mathematically predictable. Greece could calculate it to the day, and by the 1700s they could calculate it to the minute. In the last few hundred years, much of our knowledge about the sun has coming from observing it during eclipses.

On line at the bagel store, I see a “tournament director” (as it says on the back of his shirt) making chit-chat with Lori Ann (as he called her). It was something like a track-and-field-coach—student-parent acquaintanceship. Sounded like they were talking about TV shows. I paradoxically saw this in both lights: as the power of local community, and the sadness that our cultural anchor is cheap entertainment. It had the veneer of glee and happiness, but I couldn’t help but imagine a weird underlying alienation.

April 6th, 2024

The Long Island highways are flashing “ARRIVE EARLY, STAY LATE,” to warn everybody of the upcoming eclipse-induced traffic surge.

Since my wife brought her grandfather’s old analog radio into our apartment, we basically always have classic music running the background.

For $1,000, you can buy the 20 volume Oxford English Dictionary. What’s the case to have this physical instead of using the website?

Goon Cave : like a home office, but strictly for masturbation. This is one of the weirdest slang terms I’ve come across (from the Intrinsic Podcast). It gets into the Goon Cave (overly masculine) vs. the Longhouse (overly feminine). Even saw a post called, “Escaping Plato’s Goon Cave.” It’s a word for a subculture that glorifies porn. The definition is bleak:

“Gooning is a slang term referring to a sexual practice that involves a person masturbating to pornography for prolonged periods of time without climaxing (a process known as "edging") in order to achieve "the goon," a so-called sensation of full mental numbness and dissociation from anything unrelated to the process.”

The term “gooning” went viral since the pandemic (33x in popularity) and there are subreddits with millions of people. It’s hard to know the difference between reality and satire, as some people claim to do this for somewhere between 1-48 hours straight. I think it’s safe to separate this phenomenon from the moral debate around porn (it’s about self-inflected catanoia that addles your brain and absorbs most of your waking day.)

Don’t get too excited about new systems you build for yourself (here’s a transcription of an audio note from Plexus):

You have an early excitement for the fact that you've designed something, that you've taken initiative, that you are, you know, making a move to better yourself and close the gap between where you are and your vision. That's all very exciting, but the system is kind of created blindly, right? It's a theoretical abstract thing and you think that your time and your situation can flow through it and lead to the outputs you want, but so often the systems you build, whether they're analog or digital, simple or complex, something is lost in the abstraction and when it makes contact with your life. Either it doesn't fully solve it, it gets you the wrong thing, it gets you what you want but with a terrible side effect. I mean, there's all these truths that you have to iron out through experience and so what might be important to develop … [is] a change log of your systems … Map out the totality of what it is you're going for and then … be extremely specific as to what you think that [it] can deliver … Then, at a certain interval [check in… is it working?] … [if it] didn't lead to what you expected … you have to re-tweak the whole architecture.

Weird dream: my aunt and uncle got a new house in Florida that was attached to the outfield of a professional baseball stadium. For some reason it brought tears of joy lol (must’ve been some kind of subconscious release, a return to childhood, the flattening of time, who knows … I had a similar effect in a dream of my elementary school). Weird to think I cry (tears of joy) more in dreams than in real life (perhaps never). Only time I really remember crying uncontrollably as an adult was on the 20 years anniversary of 9/11 (for very different reasons, after watching far too much shaky cam footage). Ended up catching 2 foul balls back-to-back.

April 5th, 2024

Some points to defend the POV that “essay quality is objective.”

Specific scope: You have to set the scope small enough to “essays.” Books, memoirs, newsletter and other written mediums have their own criteria. Songs and films are even more different. I think it’s important not to get bogged down in genre, and instead to see genre as a culturally accepted groove of patterns over something more fundmanetal.
Flexible patterns: All essays share the same objective components. They each have an idea, a linear flow (structure), and a way to render words (voice). You can zoom in on each. With structure, there is storytelling, form, and flow. Within form, there is sequence, cohesion, and parallelism. What I’m not doing is declaring any one sequence to be superior to the others. There isn’t a master template. There are granular patterns that can be expressed in infinite ways, but they all still fall under the same realm of measurement. A good framework should be able to account for the most extreme forms of experimentation; it could even help the wildest experiments get away with it and still resonate with a human.
The wrapper: It helps to think of the essay as the wrapper for thought. You put in an idea, you structure it, and you use specific strings of words. This system isn’t here to tell you which idea is better than the others. I can’t tell you if an essay on the Powerpuff Girls is more or less important than an essay on Climate Change. But, we can judge each through how effective its rhetorical wrapper is. A batshit, bad idea can be structured into a great essay (ie: why nuclear was is good!) Of course, truth, purpose, and vision all matter, but are independent from measuring if an essay meets it’s platonic ideal / max potential.
Biological constraints: The critique of something might boil down to the intentions of the writer (the intentional fallacy) or the way a politically charged reader responds to it (the affective fallacy). Yes, intentions and reactions do matter, but an essay can be evaluated in it’s own right on the idea, structure, and voice. Humans share biological traits like bandwidth, memory, empathy, linearity; we are sight and sound based creatures that have to perform mental labor to interpret strings of text. The ideal form of essays is based on our hardware.

Lanthimos went to a film school in Athens that is highly influenced by Ancient Greek composition principles (especially Aristotle). It’s interesting to consider how an ancient culture can into something timeless/sacred but then lose it. Even though it can go dormant, it’s so potent that any culture who revives it goes through a period of rebloom / cultural molting. During the whole Renaissance, the Greeks were under Turkish rule, meaning they were cut off from connecting with their own roots. What’s the story of modern Greece tapping into its cultural source?

Fiction is about letting go of control and letting a universe or character unwind through the aeolian forces of your imagination.

Children model so much of their behavior from how parents act. Note to future self: instead of trying to discipline, lecture, or shape kids, focus on yourself (aka: don’t be a hypocrite). Example: they’re going to want to stay up as late as you.

a/an : “A was modified from the Egyptian hieroglyph representing the eagle. In Hebrew it was an ox, and in Greek it was a “symbol of a bad AUGURY in the sacrifices.” The distinction between a/an happened around the 1300s.
aardvark : South African “earth pig”
aaron’s serpent : “something so powerful as to swallow up minor powers (Exod. vi, 10-12). Thus, Prussia was the Aaron’s serpent that swallowed up the lesser German States between 1866 and 1870.” For context, Aaron was “the patriarch of the Jewish priesthood,” and “possibly connected with haaron, ‘the ark.’”
abandonment : ties into atheism and “God is Dead” from Nietzche; the feeling of a once-religious society suddenly without a father; abandoned. “Concept central to atheistic EXISTENTIALISM. According to … Sartre, God does not exist and life therefore has no intrinsic purpose or meaning. Man has been ‘abandoned’ in the universe and must create his own morality and code of values without the assistance of any divine being.”
abbadon : “the angel of the bottomless pit (rev. ix, 11), from Heb. abad, he perished. Milton used the name for the pit itself: ‘in hall her gates Abbadon rues, Thy bold attempt.’ Paradise Regained, IV, 624.”
abdals : “the name given by Moslems to certain mysterious persons whose identity is known only to God and through whom the world is able to continue in existence. When one dies another is secretly appointed by God to fill the vacant place.”
abduction : Latin, abductus; “to lead away”
abject (adj.) : miserable (wretched, thrown away, cast off)
abjure : to reject solemnly.
ablution (n) : a washing; in Cantebury Tales, means “the cleansing of impurities”—this makes me think it’s more about ritual washing than practical dirt cleaning.
abney’s effect : from Sir William Abney (1843-1920); “the phenomenon … when a large area is suddenly illuminated, the light seems to appear first in the centre of the patch (rather than appearing all at once) and then spreads outwards towards the edges. When the light is extinguished, the edges disappear first and the centre last.”
abstraction : abs = without, tract = grip, tion = a state; “a state of no grip.” Something is abstract when there’s nothing figurative or recognizable for the mind to grip onto. “The sense of an abstract idea appeared in 1644, in Milton’s Of Education.”
abstruse : hard to understand; ab=before, trudere=thrust,push,enter; it’s a kind of confusion where you can’t even find the entry point to begin conceptualizing it. Some types of confusion give you clear elements that are confusing from a lack of cohesion. But abstrusity is about being impenetrable.
absurd : not just “irrational”… the meaning of “surd” is revealing … “borrowed from latin “surdus” (deaf, unheard, silent, dull, out of tune, senseless) … it’s as if absurdity is the kind of insane behavior you would expect from a creature with it’s senses … Also relates to “alogos,” the opposite of “the logos,” meaning, absurdity is deviation from the diving patterns of the universe.
abundance : this word has a positive connotation, but it’s Latin equivalent, abundare, translates to “overflow,” creating the image that something is bursting out of it’s intended container. Consider how when something is overflowing (knowledge, entertainment, friends), we tend to value each unit less.
accede : to agree to a demand (cede = yield).
accord : to be one one heart.
accoutremaniac : one who obsessively organizes.
accumulate : “to heap up in mass.”
accuse : from the Latin word causari, meaning, “to give as cause”; while this is usually cast in a negative light, it could be seen as the act of inferring the hidden works behind unknown phenomenon.
acolyte : not just an altar boy or assistant, but the Greek word akolouthos infers it’s about someone who is on your side along the uncertain road, path, or journey. Someone helping cast light on the path ahead.
alpha privative : The Greek prefix where “a” is used to mean “taking away, depriving.” It’s similar to a-, an- in Sanskrit, in- in Latin, and un- in English. Examples: ahistorical, atemporal, anemia (without blood), amorphous (without form), anonymous (without name).
baroque : typically referred to a style in art or music, but also references “baroque thinking” a writing style full of elaborate arguments, historical references, and polysyllabic words; 1600-1750s; ornamentations, complex involution, motion; exaggerated poses; a reaction against the proportion and balance of the Renaissance; busy; around the time of the microscope and the telescope, leading to a feeling of wonder, mysteriousness, and spirituality.
bathetic : when something of high quality descends into triviality.
beastiary : “an allegorical story in which the principal characters are animals; often employs anthropomorphism, a form of personification. Also referred to as an apologue, beast epic, or beast fable.
belletrist : “fine letters,” (French), a writer known for light non-fiction (addressed to friends?) more regarded for its style than for its substance.
chapbook : “popular ballads, stories, poetry, and other forms of literature published in pamphlets or small book form and sold by peddler known as chapmen from the 16th-18th century.”
cognate : from cognatus, “of common descent.” Used to describe words that come from the same root.
coterie : “a group of friends or writers with similar literary interests.”
didactic : “poetry or prose meant to be instructive, to teach a lesson.” (contrasting Oscar Wilde’s notion of “art for art’s sake).
hagiography : “originally, an idealized religious biography of a saint or martyr; now refers to any biography that idealizes or idolizes the subject of the biography; from “written by inspiration (Greek).”
koonselroman : actually spelled (Kunstlerroman); “a type of narrative that traces the development of an artist either from childhood or from artistic immaturity; from “artist novel” (German). Ex: ‘A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’ [James Joyce].”
kowtow (n.) : “an act of slavish submission. (1804) … [the] Chinese custom of touching the ground with [your] forehead to show respect or submission … borrowing from ‘k’o’t’ou,’ literally, ‘knock the head.’” Related to the words “fawn” and “truckle.”
polemic : “a detailed attacked against a person or institution; from ‘pertaining to war’ (Greek).”
prosody : the musicality of language (pros=toward, ode=song/poem).
roman a these : “a novel with a message of social importance; from ‘thesis novel’ (French).”

April 4th, 2024

“Bang bang” is when you have two consecutive meals at different restaurants.

“Hoover” (vb) is when someone tricks another to come back into a toxic relationship.

New record, the first time I learned the time today was 6:12 pm.

I’m sure someone’s written about the romanticism of bookstores before, or at least a “How to Bookstore” manual. There’s a kind of Keuroacian self-bullshit I experienced going to the Strand, some grand narrative, some story on the lifelong pursuit of logos. Then the first 10 minutes is a whimsical flick through the carefully curated on-display books, adjacent to others going through the same dance. But there is something real when you get lost in the reference section in the back of the basement for 3 hours, and you’re asking the employees oddly specific questions they can’t answer, and your just sitting there reading full pages of books you end up not getting, and you grasp the radical scale between the huge amount of reconnaissance you’ve done and the still infinitely dense basement.

The church near the Strand bookstore on 13th/14th. Walked by this so many times; now I know where it is. It also reminds me of that AI recolorized video from the 1920s, where people walked on this lawn outside these buttresses.

From Plato, the word “eidos” means: "form" "essence", "type," or "species." There’s also the phrase “eidetic memory” which is the ability to lucidly visualize things in the mind. Worth thinking about architecture not through buildings, but through categorizing and visualizing the elements of something.

A “hyperobject” a thing too complex to be beheld, can still be mapped. Essay Architecture is part of an effort to map the logos. The essay is the middle-scale, but it also zooms into words, and zooms out to ideas.

“Hunch-hucking” (phrase by

Garrett Kincaid

) is when you get behind and shill a flimsy theory.

I’ve been noticing that paragraphs are stronger when they close on showing instead of telling. The power of closing on an image is that it requires reader visualization and interpretation. It’s active, it’s open-ended, and it creates a draw to the next paragraph in search of some kind of resolution. Telling on the other hand is logical, revealing, and definitive.

The end of the paragraph is basically the end of a scene. It’s a natural dip-out point for a reader. Showing at the end of the paragraph is like a micro-cliffhanger to keep them lodged in the text. It’s critical for reader trance.

Little visual anecdotes (often in the form of personal stories) are powerful ways to visually connect meaning to the main idea. For example, compare, “I was crying in the car,” with “As soon as we got onto 295 South I started crying.” The second one isn’t just more vivid, it hooks the visual into the theme of the essay (which is about moving across the country).

Fucking gerunds! “A gerund is a verb in its present participle form (root verb + “ing”) that acts as a noun in a sentence.

How would you use commas here?

a) long, fucking cold winters …
b) long, fucking-cold winters …
c) long, fucking, cold winters …
d) long, cold fucking winters …
e) long, cold-fucking winters …
f) long, cold, fucking winters.

“I feel like a detective reading between the lines to figure out what I was really thinking, what I was really feeling.” From a friend re-reading their old blog … Whenever you read back on writing from your past-self, you notice the gap between what’s being said, the underlying tension, and how things actually play out. With foresight, it’s easy to catch your past-self bullshitting itself. How might the current self be bullshitting?

When you re-name something in a new way after a comma, it’s called an “appositive” (Bryan Garner). This can be done with nouns, verbs, or even full phrases. “The cold, lonely winter.” “My friend, John, told me…” “…the thing I wanted, the thing I needed.”

Punctuation vs. grammar:

Punctuation is about mechanics and syntax. It’s about the visual elements to help you interpret meaning. It involves everything from spacing, to symbols, to capitalization).
Grammar is more about the logical modulation of words to be “correct.” It’s involved with parts of speech, clauses, subjects, nouns and verbs.

As a native speaker, grammar is so automatic and engrained that there’s much to learn around writing without even paying attention to it. I’ve found the study of punctuation to have more of an impact. Maybe at some point, a dive into grammar would be worth it, but it seems so technical and so detached from expressive power. I’d like to learn what I’m missing.

On the naming of things:

Places = capitalized, no italics (New York, Italy, Mary’s Theatre);
Book, blog names, container of works = italics (Wait But Why, Dean’s List);
Essay titles, individual works = quotes (“Go touch paper")

Look into lotus visualizations on the throat and what that has to do with dream recall. Chakras can be cringy when explained to be scientific, but maybe they make sense as symbolic. Meaning, there are archetypal (built-in) reasons why the mind likes to associate certain parts of the body with certain things.

quandry — a situation where the decision to make is unclear or perplexing.
scruple — a feeling of hesitation in a morally ambiguous situation.

April 3rd, 2024

7:15 am (Kind of funny that Garrett's car's clock is wrong) — Yehudis’s first Jeep ride, we’re debating if it’s worth rushing for flights. I don’t know what time it is, but I have a feeling it’s a crunch and she might join the after-party. Boarding is 8:10, and now it’s 7:53. We got to meet those Coptic Orthodoxians who overhead our non-traditional riffs and jives on Jesus. Driving calmly, talking about road trip freak crashes and license fees for $280. Conversation winds into biohacking, the 100% happening typewriter conference, and weird dreams. The dream stands out where God kills himself to learn about hell on a reconnaissance mission, and at that moment Garret dramatically swerved around a loose tire that materialized in the road and he saved our lives.

10 years before the Apple Vision Pro (AVP), I demoed a shitty VR headset at my friend's apartment and it literally changed my life. The Oculus DK-2 was a hunk of plastic, tangled in wires, designed by a teenager, with only a million pixels in each eye. “This is the future.” As undercooked as the technology was, it put me in a crude hallucination, and for someone who just finished a grueling 5-year architecture degree, that was game-changing. My life re-oriented around that demo. Soon after, I quit my job and started a VR company. By day, I put NYC developers in trance state, and by night I hosted things like VR Bong Night. I’ve been in headsets for 100s of hours and have 8 of them stashed in my closet. I learned new languages in Unreal Engine and built spatial interfaces. I believed in the Metaverse. Everything I knew during my analog years of architecture school got me to believe that “spatial computing” would revive the lost merits of paper. We just needed a headset that was powerful enough…

Quote from After Babel:

“Another mistake is believing that our children are more advanced than others in terms of the strength of their character; unfortunately, our values are not passed through our genes. Despite our efforts to train our teens to “do the right thing” on their screens, teens are not gifted with the willpower needed for social media. We cannot continue to believe the fallacy that we can teach our kids more willpower and build discipline to resist temptations by giving them more time with addictive activities. Science does not support the notion that exposure strengthens willpower. The opposite is true; repeated exposure tends to weaken, rather than strengthen, the ability to resist temptation. The established method for resisting temptation is to remove access to the addictive activity or substance. In the case of smartphones, this means removing access until the risks are lower and the reasoning center of the brain is more developed.”

What if my essays were read out loud, put on YouTube, and augmented with imagery? Maybe Spotify too? Kind of neat to imagine my body of work across multiple mediums.

I see time to be directly linked to attention. You can fuse with your surroundings (archaic time), lock into one object (magical time/flow/addiction), orient around events, narrative or cycles (mythical time), or obsess over budgeting hours and minutes (rational time). The idea of escaping rational time and realizing “I am time” is liberating, and maybe one of the strongest ways to rewrite your psyche.

Isabel on time:

“I tend to be quite good at losing track of time compared to the average person—a blessing and a curse. I can get lost in a task and have hours zoom by me like seconds. I can fall into a conversation and only get pulled out of it when my stomach cries out in hunger or I suddenly feel so parched that I need to excuse myself. It is a good sign to me when it’s my body that calls me to pause, instead of my mind pulling me away from where I am. It’s usually a sign that I am in the right place, a place I want to sink deeper into, to spend more time in.
Lately, I’ve been trying to embody this idea that I am the source of time. I love that Einstein quote about how time is an illusion, about how it passes differently depending on how we relate to it. I find that when I am losing track of it, when it feels like time is coming through me, from me, instead of something that is happening to me—crushing me under the heaviness its demands and threats—I feel so much closer to my true self, to the ultimate expression of what is within me. I feel most at home in myself when I am losing track of time.”

Out that window to my left is more than a brick wall; beyond the side of my neighbor’s two-family is the sum of America (besides Maine, Boston, etc.). I face southwest from a perch east of the Manhattan. I’ve failed to consider the geography beyond my own apartment. Cardinal directions matter! Obviously I can’t see more than a few hundred feet, let along bend my vision around the curve of the Earth; it’s a symbolic thing (out that window are my fellow Americans! The bewildered, cultural refugees in need of a voice!) In some sense though, if I could transcend the human limits and become a 50,000 foot God (which maybe we all are), then I could see California through my window.

To drugify something means to either improve quantity, simplify access, increase potency, or introduce novelty. The Apple Vision Pro succeeds with all 4: more screens, instantly spawnable, at the best resolution you’ve ever seen, levitating in places where screens have never gone before. The AVP is aesthetic heroin (/morphine?).

If stuck in a narrative frame, the easiest way to get out of it is to shift into a more primal form of embodiment (archaic time, mythic time); basically, get out of your head. Go for a walk. Get into the details on something. Through escaping self-reflection, the ego unravels on its own and creates a blank state for meaning to be reformed.

It’s hard to write long-form essays without serious, socially-enforced deadlines. The reason my writing group (with Garrett & Yehudis) worked in October, November was because we had shared stakes. We all knew we were publishing on the 1st. Since we were linking to each other, you really can’t miss the train.

April 2nd, 2024

Today’s freshman architecture students are almost immediately thrown into a pickle around technology: should we use software to automate the creation of our drawings and models? I was fortunate to take my first semester at the University of Miami, a classical program where there wasn’t even an option. No automation allowed. I literally turned nocturnal for a semester because I had to handle stipple the whole skyline of Manhattan (an undertaking that took a hundred hours and a fair amount of marijuana).

The killer use case for the Apple Vision Pro: a prop for YouTube audience growth.

From John Vervaeke: there’s a difference between lying and bullshitting. Lying is about debating the nature of the truth, but bullshitting is more dangerous. A bullshitter acknowledges a lack of truth, but compels you to look somewhere else. When you’re bullshitting yourself, it’s not that your dishonest with yourself, it’s that you don’t have the courage to look at things head on.

After posting a Twitter thread last night, it’s very tempting to check my notifications after waking (I don’t have it on my phone, so I’d have to go to my computer). In the flow of creating it, I was seriously enjoying myself and not really caring about performance. But now, it sneaks back. I’m curious and eager.

The vacant mind is the one that risks getting corrupted by vanity and metrics.

Maybe the trick is to have something in flow at all times (a proactive narrative, a flow, or a dissolving into the environment). Bad stories can spoil everything. As I made it, I was totally on the “do this every day train,” and after watching it not perform, there’s that rational critic saying, “why bother?”

April 1st, 2024

Two notes from Sublime:

Syzygy means "when opposites become one." To step through the mirror itself is the art of illumination, of self-transformation. Through syzygy, the magician creates specific changes in their own behavior.

Our relation to ideas is an inextricable symbiosis, like that between plant and pollinator, a mutualism in which neither can survive without the other. At the dawn of civilization, a covenant was made between humans and these alien entities that live in our minds--honor and respect each other and all will flourish beyond their wildest dreams.

This is the 2nd night I’ve tried working past sunset with candles, and it’s seriously clicking. We’ll see if it’s just novelty or if it lasts, but I can share my impressions.

Basically, it all comes down to friction. Most of the room is illegible, and you have to physically move and orient your candle in order to see things. It’s an active/embodied process, which seems to keep me awake and active, when usually I’d get sleepy (from lights-on screen-time).

There’s a flickering and it brings up connotations of church (peace), and also paranormal fears of the dark (fear). It’s just a totally different headspace. Given my fear of burning my place down with fire, having a live flame adds the slightest element of danger to keep me on edge (ie: awake). A neglection could burn the room down, theoretically.

We take for granted how the invention of electricity completely changed human sleep cycles (from bi-phasic to mono-phasic)

In producing my “bonus thread” for my assay definition, I came across so much fascinating alchemical artwork. Need to dive deeper into that. It helped refine my intrigue to visit Prague. 3 places AI recommended:

The Speculum Alchemiae Museum: This museum is dedicated to the history of alchemy and features various exhibits, including artwork, laboratory equipment, and manuscripts.
The Strahov Monastery Library: This historic library contains many ancient texts and manuscripts related to alchemy, as well as ceiling frescoes depicting alchemical themes.
The Museum of Alchemists and Magicians of Old Prague: Located in a historic building that once housed a real alchemist's laboratory, this museum showcases the history of alchemy in Prague through exhibits and artwork.

It also mentioned “The Chemical Heritage Foundation” in Philadelphia.

I wrote a typewriter essay about DMT and the afterlife, and it’s making want to try DMT but I have that zinger of “death by astonishment” in my head. Wonder if DMT breathwork or holotropic breathing are safer methods to learn to navigate those waters.

Oscar Wilde on rendering shame:

"The books that the world calls immor(t)al are books that show the world its own shame.”

Oscar Wilde on pseudonyms:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth.”

Similar to how buildings are oriented (NSEW) based on religious narratives, so to can you meditate in a direction based on an idiosyncratic narrative. In lodges the self in an environment, and increase the scale from room to earth.

7/8 beat:
K- x- S- x- K- K- SS
KK SS KK Sx -x Kx Sx

There’s a neat illusion where it actually reads as 4 + 4 + 4 + 2 because of the snare spacing (it’s always on the 3rd of a 4/4).

Here’s that same beat written out as 4+4+4+2:
K- x- (3) S- x-
K- K- (3) SS KK
SS KK (3) S -
K- S- (now 3 is missing and it loops!)

And to make it really funky, it could start on a Snare after it loops.

Averaged 3.85/meetings per week in Q1. I remember when I used to average 4 meetings a day. There’s likely a correlation between how many meetings you have per week and your likeliness to consider getting off the clocks.

There’s an important distinction between “tasks” and “flows.” Batching these things into “to-dos” is a mistake; they even require different types of systems (whether software or analog).

I use a spiral-bound college-ruled book for tasks. This is my vehicle for manager mode, and I try to keep it closed unless I want to get a lot of things done in a short period of time. I have to check in on this 1-2 times a day, or things fall through the cracks.

But then, on a different desk, I have post-its sprawled out, each one representing a flow. “AVP II.” “Sketches for EA.” “The definition of abysmal.” These are creative flows that are unpredictable and require total immersion and spontaneity. The ability to stack, re-arrange, hide post its makes it more playful. The idea is to feel it out, grab it, and then do the thing.

shambles — more than a mess; it’s when something typically whole is torn up into unrecognizable parts; it’s a gross word that comes from the slaughterhouse.

Existentialism is when the rational mind hijacks the meaning creation center.

If you’re able to make and break frames at will, you’ve discovered the infinite energy glitch. It keeps you nimble, motivated, and present. A frame might always be a narrative (in mythic time), and by shifting to magic/archaic time, you can shed a stale perspective on your day. There’s something alchemical here. Each pole has a positive/negative, so any negative state can be solve by switching to the diametric positive poll (obviously this needs a diagram).

The habit of tracking time is pretty weird, but it brings me back to the medium of logging. 8:00, 8:24, 10:52 am. It’s the most banal, self-referential thing to capture, but it primes the pump.

Random dreams: 1) in some surreal Japanese sculpture park; weird floral beauty; peninsula like; ocean waves get more and more violent until there’s a massive swell; 3 kids there, and 2 seem to get knocked out (killed?) from the water; might relate to reading DFW’s Shipping Out before bed, which describes the dread of the ocean. 2) weird evil forces at the tree farm; tall, purple, biblical, monsterish; I’m running from outside, to inside, to running down streets to the train station; then rationally wondering, is that limited to that one spot? Or is this bound to be a pandemic demon?

A full archive of all my logs (WIP):
- 2023: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12
- 2022: 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | 07 | 08 | 09 | 10 | 11 | 12
- 2021: ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | ## | 12

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