More on External Result

Following up on my previous posting, here's another sparse effort to explain the primacy of framing:

Depending on External Result

Dude's straining so very hard to conceptualize “framing”.


Same guy, resorting to an example (good one, too!) to illustrate his point:

In their defense, the ancient Greeks, along with everyone else prior to 1839, had to work a lot harder to grok this concept. The inception of photography, and, later, movies, really brought framing front-of-mind (not that we've done much with it).


For any mystics in the house, note that the internal stuff is equally external, because it's still stuff. Your kernal is pure awareness. Subjectivity parses objects both "inner" and "outer", but you're the parser, not the parsed. You are The Framer.

Of course, the moment you slap that label on, you start identifying as a thing - object, not subject. Can't be helped. Things are more alluring than spookily intangible awareness. So we're back to the races, so to speak, at least until we reframe back to spaciousness (which sounds like some grand, exalted state, but is no more elusive than any other framing).

Revised Gettysburg Address

Abe, the text looks ok to me, but you leave yourself open to criticism unless you really hammer home your empathy, etc. Don't assume they'll recognize you're the Good Guy here. Please consider the following revisions:


Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are sadly engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are regrettably met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come, lamentably, to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave, sadly, their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether heartbreakingly fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we sadly can not dedicate -- we sadly can not consecrate -- we sadly can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and (lamentably) dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our regrettably poor power to add or, unfortunately, detract. The world will, sadly, little note, nor, regretfully, long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be mindfully dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who, sadly, fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored and regrettably dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they, sadly, gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly and heartbreakingly resolve that these lamentably dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not sadly perish from the earth.

Binary Extremism

Extremists both Left and Right are okay with dismantling the American experiment to insulate their feelings and make everything their favorite. Democracy ends not with a bang but an entitled whine.

The extreme Right is further along in this process, so we're correct to focus our attention and resistence there. Moderate conservatism no longer exists, because MAGA extremists have subsumed the whole structure, like a wolf pack taking down an elephant. So that's our big problem at the moment.

But the extreme Left is rife with the same angry kooky performative entitlement, only with different agenda points. And it hasn't yet subsumed the mainstream Left, so it seems as fringe as the extreme Right did pre-MAGA. So, for now, the rant below is just some writer shouting on Twitter for clicks. For now. But imagine a figure cut from this cloth who's charismatic enough and shameless enough to really rile up the crowds, screaming from lecturns about stuff that touches people's emotional buttons and channels their latent rage.

Moderate liberals wouldn't have a chance trying to contain such a figure, because they have only boring things to say. Extremism is, alas, galvanizing. And whiny angry entitlement is like catnip for a society of bored aristocrats who live to cosplay victimhood.

Same as the Right. Same as Trump. It's the same societal predicament.

If you don't know the story of the Nazis in Skokie, it's an essential and remarkable document of American values, and you should at least scan the Wikipedia page.

Calling someone a cat lady is not nice. The exterminators of millions of my people marching to lament the incompleteness of that operation also is not nice.

But America prioritizes freedom of expression over enforced niceness, because dehumanizing those who don’t fit your niceness bill is how extermination happens. The Germans didn’t find my ancestors nice.

Everyone has a different notion of niceness, each as fiercely righteous as yours. The Solomonic answer is tolerance. No contingent (not even if they're certain they're correct) gets to to dictate to the rest of us how to think, speak, or feel. It’s beautiful, though rarely nice, and it requires everyone to tolerate expression they deem intolerable.

Alas, it's notoriously hard to persuade aristocrats, or narcissists (much less aristocratic narcissists), to tolerate an aversion. A princess is increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas.

Handling Offensive Language

Here's how we solved the "offensive language" issue on Chowhound, in terms of community management and moderation: We weighted Context.

Remember "context"? Consideration of intent? You know, the part completely ignored by the mechanism of detection and calling out of sinful utterance by packs of vigilant anti-racists patrolling social media and rotely pattern-matching terms on their frequently-updated kill lists? What you meant or who you are hold no place in it. Even if you're Albert Schweitzer, if you've used the term, you take the hit. Period.

We opted to handle human language issues humanely. So this is what we came up with: Any provocative language used with obvious anger or disparagement was deleted (our main problem was with the underlying nastiness, not the words themselves). So this was a no-go:

"The Jewy kitchen served me two lousy meatballs."

But provocative language that was not obviously angry or disparaging could stay. For example:

"The knishes were Jewy wonderment".

More sharply provocative terms received greater scrutiny, but still weren't rotely deleted. "Don't miss the stupendous kike kasha!" would have been permissible, because intent is unmistakably positive (though cloddish).

Kids, "kikes" was a naughty term for Jews. You haven't heard it because we made the word go away, which is why everyone just loves Jews now. See? It works!

The inevitably objection was: "But how can you know?" And our reasonable answer was "If you're unsure, it's clearly not 'obviously angry or disparaging.'"

"Benefit of the doubt", just like the olden days! We weren't morality police meting out punishment. Our job was to create an environment for different people to express themselves in different and colorful ways. And if you needed to be shielded from certain words you found upsetting, we suggested that you reconsider whether the Internet was really for you. It's not the Internet's job to shower you with only your most favorite words, opinions, and ideas. It wasn't Chowhound's role to foster an experience to your perfect specification. That's not community, that's a narcissist's reflecting pond.

It all came down to considerations many of those same people would claim to cherish: tolerance and diversity. Communities tend to enforce conformity of expression and opinion, and we fought that dynamic, recognizing Chowhound would be best if it drew the richest, broadest, and most varied cast of characters. We refused to buff our conversation into an NPR-friendly sheen to gratify a fragile contingent, even though I myself carried around a WNYC tote bag.

My favorite poster was FEDEX GUY - my actual FEDEX delivery guy, fwiw - who'd fling terse, misspelled, highly vulgar tips for obscurities no one else had on-radar. He did not fit in, which I recognized as a shortcoming on our part, but I loved seeing him trudge in amid the Batali acolytes (out-squealing each other over some to-die-for sweet corn crema) with his coarse language and brusque manner. My philosophy of community morality was Rodney Kingism. "Can't we all get along?"


Here's another thing I learned: once you allow people to start weighing in on what offends them, there is literally no end to it. People would much rather talk about that than tacos or har gow. Luckily, in those days, you could still tell a crowd to cut it out and have only a few of them stomp off in a tiff (one of our most veteran posters decided she couldn't remain part of a community where the term "White Trash" was permissible, though the term appeared in the title of a bestselling cookbook, and was never used pejoratively).

Surgery and Noodles and Indulgent Self-Dramatization

A couple of postings ago, I said:

I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.

How did it feel? Well, in the aftermath it felt, as it always does (which is why people need to chain smoke this stuff) tacky and insufficient and fast-fading. And the dramatic arc-building and poignant complaining left me feeling like crap for a couple of days. I foolishly wrote myself - framed myself - into melodrama. I cocked up a whole story for myself to feel a part of, which is what I used to do years ago, in my misery, before I learned to opt out of dramatization and got real.

What's really going to happen? I'll have the surgery, and it'll suck, and then it'll get better, and the noodles will be awesome and the luxe flying will be a mild tickle and then something else will suck and get better. We're raindrops slowly working down windows, not heroic protagonists.

I'm not ashamed to publicly confess my backsliding and foolishness. Being agile about framing doesn't mean I always choose perfectly. If I can catch myself within two or three days, that's viable. Just so long as I don't spend decades or lifetimes steeped in nonsense!

The Factor of Relevancy in Trumpism

John Podhoretz, the intellectual editor of the conservative journal Commentary, tweeted this during Trump's typically deranged convention speech last night:

Before you sneer with completely appropriate contempt, consider one word: "Relevancy." Roll it around in your mind, because it's an underexplored factor in the MAGA phenomenon (and in all authoritarian grabs).

What we're seeing from our pricey ringside view of authoritiarian takeover is not just the usual greed and ambition driving enablers and go-alongs. There's also something more relateable. And this calls for an analogy!

Here's how I replied - or, actually, replied to Tom Nichols' ridicule of Podhoretz:

Twitter doesn't offer space to really drive home my point, which is about relevance. No film critic can remain relevant while calling crap movies crap. So they don't. And that's 1. normal and 2. squirmingly unpleasant for them.

Film critics are nothing like your nephew Josh who hits the multiplex to catch up on developments in the Marvel Universe or to see stuff blow up. Film critics study Bergman and Tarkovsky. They're highbrows, every one of them. But none would last a week if they let their contempt show, because they write mostly for Josh. It's an excruciating gig. Imagine if food critics were compelled to eat mostly in chains, and had to find something non-snotty to say about them, over and over and over again.

If you want to make a living at it, you can't make yourself irrelevant. You must eat the dog food, and like it. And the same is true for principled conservative writers and editors in a movement completely subsumed by Trumpism. They nearly all loathe him, but their choice is binary: play along and remain relevant, or stomp off and disappear forever and let their family starve.

You or I might indignantly demand that they take a goddam stand, even if it costs them their careers and relationships and ability to feed their children. This is because we are disgusting narcissists who see other people as two dimensional cartoons. How about you? How eager would you be to make yourself irrelevant in your world and go find yourself a new career? Let's play a game: Think of something that sucks about your line of work (I'm sure you can come up with something!), then quit, then go find another whole realm. I'll wait!

Real people play along to stay relevant. Democrats do it all the time. How often do you self-edit to avoid clashing with the expanding litany of taboo thought and speech? How hesitant are you to engage on social media with even mildly non-doctrinaire conversation? How clean do you keep your nose to avoid the withering glare of staunch mouthy cohorts, present and future? How much of yourself have you self-smothered to conform to conceits you privately consider daft?

Podhoretz' tweet was a glimmer of truth, encased in a desperate cry for help, masquerading as a snarky rebuke. Any conservative publicly rebuking Trumpism will lose career, context, and relevence. And if that sounds like the sort of brave stand you yourself would heroically take, no. No, you wouldn't. I know human beings, and here's what they do: they fantasize about being stand-up valiant people - and, under the cover of anonymity or while silently daydreaming, they'll be flamboyantly vocal, stockpiling mental evidence of their gnarly heroism. But they won’t put career and social standing at risk to take a stand. People don't do that.

And, worse of all, it's not evil. It's relateable. God help us.

The Worst of Times, The Best of Noodles...

“I saw this guy hitting himself in the head with a hammer. I asked, "Hey, buddy, why are you hitting yourself in the head with a hammer?” Guy replied “Because it feels so good when I stop!”

       — First joke I learned as a kid


I spent a lot of 2023 either in bed or in hospital due to various health maladies. 2024 hasn't been much better, adding a shoulder meltdown (I'm walking around with a splint, like a Revolutionary War soldier). I'm currently on hold for comprehensive shoulder surgery, whose recovery involves months of unremitting childbirth-style pain. Final recovery in six months, best case. And then I have four other surgeries queued up, including the same on my other shoulder (which is 50% as bad and gaining fast). I don't normally complain (unless there's some insight to be shared in the process), but you'll see why in just a minute.

I recently observed that people in their late 50s and early 60s ought to consider spending a bit more. Plus I need a reward to look forward to during my recovery, to enjoy before I undergo the remaining surgeries. So I have a plan!

The opposite of Portugal is Malaysia (and, like many antitheses, they touch; there is a small remaining strain of Portuguese culture in Malaysia, including one tiny remaining settlement, though this Portuguese connection is not where I'm headed with this). I showed last week how the soul of Malaysian and Portuguese pasta resemble each other, but that was the most tenuous possible stretch. Really, if you want SEA noodles - or anything the least bit Chinese - you won't find anything of the sort here. I've had maybe three East or Southeast Asian meals in 18 months, all on trips outside Portugal, and have gone a bit gastronomically stir crazy, despite eating like a god every blessed meal here. What's more, I've been storing up Malaysian food tips for quite sometime via Google Maps chowhounding.

So here's the plan. Six months after surgery, I will fly to Kuala Lumpur and stay at Tian Jing Hotel, superbly located and reasonably priced in Chinatown, full of street food. I'm bad with jet lag, so I will fly on Etihad Airline, which offers free stopovers in Doha, taking a few days to acclimate and to finally eat in this Persian restaurant I've been fascinated with for years.

Because I need a really shiny reward to look forward to, I'll treat myself with two indulgences I normally wouldn't take in a million years:

1. Because I will be weak and feeble, I'll fly business class (Etihad is super luxe in business class, and also surprisingly reasonable - circa $2800 round trip), and...

2. I'm bragging about it. I'm flying business class to Kuala Lumpur, in a cool private compartment, and staying several weeks to devour street food, after swanning around Doha, and I relish your envy. I'm mostly just curious to see what saying this feels like.


I'm normally as distant from Judaism as a Pashtun warlord, but there's a line from the Torah I like very much: "If you're going to eat pork, the juice should run down your chin."


I soon recanted the boast, the complaint, and really the entire fucking thing.

ChatGPT Guesses Dish Names

I had ChatGPT identify some food pictures I've recently taken. It did extraordinarily well.

Guess: Borscht (Ukraine)
Result: Correct

Guess: Cassoulet (France)
Result: Correct

Guess: Garlic Stir-Fried Water Spinach (Kangkung Belacan)
Result: Incorrect (Stir-fried Snow pea leaves, Cantonese)

Guess: Har Gow (Cantonese) aka shrimp dumplings
Result: Correct

Guess: Cozido à Portuguesa (Portugal)
Result: Correct

Guess: Tagine with prunes and beef (Morocco)
Result: Correct

Guess: Francesinha à Moda do Porto (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Bitoque, Portugal)

Guess: Portuguese Hake (Portugal)
Result: Correct

Guess: Arroz de Pato (Portugal) aka Duck Rice
Result: Correct

Guess: Feijoada à Transmontana (Portugal)
Result: Incorrect (Feijoada de Javali, Portugal)

Guess: Maçã Assada (Portugal) aka Baked Apple
Result: Correct

Me: “Bonus question: There's something slightly unusual about the way they prepared this one."

Reply: "Roasting the apple in a way similar to how meat or vegetables might be roasted, which is less common for fruit."

Me: "Very close....they used exactly the Portuguese method of roasting fish."

Guess: Hailam Mee (South East Asia)
Result: Correct

SEA Food Glossary

I've only been to South East Asia once - to Singapore - and I was overwhelmed by menus and foodie conversation full of Chinese terms - and, worse, local pidgin versions of Chinese terms - describing dishes we know by other names. I saw very few unfamiliar items there, but nearly 90% of the terminology was lost on me. Yikes!

I've since looked and looked, but no one has produced a decent glossary. A complete one would be impossibly broad (working far into Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian cuisines, just to name three), but I've created one (PDF download) with the help of ChatGPT focusing on the Chinese end of the spectrum, whose names are less familiar (I'm already cool with roti, biryani, rendang, et al).

It contains nearly 100 terms, 75% of which may be unfamiliar for serious American/European hounds (I included super famous items just for completeness). The descriptions should jar your memory, but always remember the Limster trick: Google Images is your best friend during moments of Chowzheimer's Disease. If you're an experienced eater, never google food names. Google-image them!


Other glossaries I've built (none downloadable):
Filipino Food Glossary
French Food Glossary
Oaxacan Food Glossary

Finally, along similar lines (but so so so much more), the best and most ambitious thing I've ever built: my smartphone app, Eat Everywhere.

Soulful Serendipity Simpatico

Left: Veal spaghetti at Chafariz Snack Bar, Setúbal, Portugal
Right: Hailam Mee at Yut Kee Restaurant, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

There's often deeper simpatico in serendipitous similarity (soulfully rendered) than in some hasty attempt at authenticity.

Processing Hamas Support Through the Lens of Vietnam Protest

It's 1970-ish. I'm a bright eight year old. Carried by the moment, I choose sides, aligning with the younger generation which is touchy about being sent to distant rice paddies to murder Vietnamese strangers and likely return in a coffin (as did several neighbors). The other side, with their crewcuts and cufflinks, seem morally disconnected, so I instinctually chose my side. We had Jimi Hendrix, they had Perry Como. There was never any doubt.

I had a thumbnail notion of the Cold War and I grokked the logic of domino theory. Evil tends to expand, and the cancer must be stemmed. But Republicans seemed hyperbolic in their anti-Communist paranoia. What's worse, they kept calling people like me "Commies" - an awfully disturbing association given their stated desire to mow down Communists en masse. Maybe we were next, after they'd won the rice paddies.

Then Jane Fonda went on the radio over there to spew propaganda at conscripted troops risking their lives, and I felt my first-ever pang of Centrist moderation. Same with activists who expressed solidarity with the Viet Cong. The Left had gone too far - the Viet Cong were plainly abhorrent - but I still dearly wanted us out of Vietnam.

At my tender age, I held a rather narrow view, wired into the immediate. Local kids were dying in distant jungles. Winning the war would scarcely improve my life, but merely serve the paranoid whims of creepy shitheads like Richard Nixon. It seemed simple.

Now, with the better part of a century of experience, I better understand the view of the creepy shitheads. Isolationism had been strongly debunked only three decades prior. I still would oppose intervention in Vietnam, but now I see complexity where I previously beheld simplicity. It's not an improved me, just one with more framing options.


I'm no expert on the Middle East conflict, but I know enough to firmly conclude that there is no righteous party. Each side claims righteousness by reciting a litany of atrocities committed by the Other, and both litanies are full-to-bursting. And, as I predicted, the Israelis were cynically - and quite successfully - baited into barbarism by the Hamas attack.

But that's me, with my broad, higher framing. Younger people, more narrowly framed, behold the latest barbarism in a non-contextualized freeze frame of Right Now. And they're not entirely wrong. Barbarism is barbaric, regardless of one’s litany of atrocity. If you slap a kid in public, your statement of justification will do you little good. You're now The Child Slapper. Never mind that this was the kid’s plan all along. 

I use my Vietnam memories to better relate to the Left's Middle East take, generally. Regarding extremists who've gone as far as to embrace Hamas out of rote solidarity with the enemy of perceived bad guys, I recall the somewhat milder contempt I felt for Viet Cong boosterism. At the time, I could distantly relate to the fools who chose that route. So I revive that impression in my effort to re-associate Hamas cosplayers with civilization; to at least distantly relate to fools who went that route.

Just Run-of-the-Mill Recent Eats

Restaurant Safibel is a fish restaurant run by an elderly woman who does pretty much everything. She's harried and grim, yet insists on baking desserts herself, a rarity since perfectly good bakeries stand ready to supply. Her nut tarts are exquisite. I'm pretty sure I'm the only customer ever to compliment her for them. Here, that actually means something.

Oksana is owned by a Ukrainian woman who speaks perfect Portuguese. She cooks 99% Portuguese food, except one Ukrainian dish one day per week. I may be the only customer who orders this stuff. This week: pelmeni. Dill's hard to find here, and she used to skip it, but I've been urging her, and look how happy the dumplings are for it.

The Bombay-born chef of Leitaria Montalvao knew I was coming and specially prepared an off-menu dopiaza just for me - perhaps the first ever cooked in Portugal.


None of them know my background. I'm just the exuberant American who comes around. But I'm eating extremely well here in Setúbal, pretty much the Utica of Portugal. No one understands how great this place is, including the natives. The small community of American immigrants sticks to shiny joints on the main drag.

I'm the only chowhound in this entire town. Perhaps a bit lonely, but I can't complain, as I'm like a kid running freely around a chocolate factory. Still nowhere near bored, and I've scarcely made a dent in the options of a town with a population smaller than Green Bay, WI.

Dr. Becky Science Videos and the Mystery of Dark Matter

There are vast numbers of people of varying qualification explaining science news on YouTube. Especially astro-physics, which attracts more laymen attention than, say, molecular biology.

Becky Smethurst, an astrophysicist at the University of Oxford who goes by "Dr. Becky" (because of course she does), has blasted right by all of them. When a given piece of astronomy news hits, all the YouTubers cover it, but Dr. Becky's channel inevitably produces terser, cleaner, clearer, saner treatment. And her graphics and charts are beautifully selected.

Those eyeballs don't glue themselves, however, so Dr. Becky compensates for lack of clickbait hyperbole via general exuberance and cuteness (every video is followed by a blooper reel where, tee-hee, she mispronounces, like, Chandrasekhar or nucleosynthesis).

Me, I disregard the spoonful of sugar and go straight for the medicine. It's great to have astrophysics news directly from someone in that community. You can really get a sense of the momentary consensus.

To bury the lead, it's impossible to overstate the importance of dark matter as a scientific mystery. A mere 5% of the universe is composed of material we've observed or theorized. The rest of it...who knows?

We're working like gangbusters to figure it out, but you can't exactly stay abreast of news because there is no news, per se. We know literally nothing about dark matter because it's only inferred. If your husband often comes home late from work but his office phone line pepetually goes to voicemail at 5pm, you can be reasonably certain there's another woman...but only as a theoretical notion, not an actual person. It's exactly like that.

Dark matter represents a scientific crossroads that will be remembered as long as there are humans to remember. It's a much higher-level mystery than the rest. It's worth taking your vitamins and losing a few pounds to improve your odds of finding out in this lifetime.

Naturally, a splinter group has arisen to insist that dark matter is not real, and that it's just that we fundamentally misunderstand gravity. They propose that gravity, unlike other basic physics laws, varies in different circumstances, and they're hellbent on finding anomalous gravity situations, each of which sparks headlines about the death of dark matter.

The leading cadre are the MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) supporters, who apparently just got a boost from some strange gravitational lensing results, as explained by another YouTuber, Sabine Hossenfelder (who at this point is more science explainer than scientist, and she was never directly connected to astrophysics). Dr. Becky hasn't covered the gravitational lensing paper, so I suspect Hossenfelder's enthusiasm was premature. But we'll see. I'm MOND skeptical, but nobody is dismissing it out of hand.

Two Dr. Becky videos to get you started:
How do we know how much dark matter there is in the Universe? - a great 16 minute tutorial to bring you up to date.

The search for dark matter on Jupiter - an extremely kooky proposition, since dark matter is normally assumed to be way out there, and certainly not in our neighborhood.

Apple $232

So when Apple's new improved Siri comes out next year and some problem with it gets tons of press, and the stock price falls below $200, you'll all buy shares without my pushing you into it, right?


On the one hand, it takes patience to wait out these long Apple cycles. On the other hand, taxes are awfully low on long term capital gains!

And, speaking of cycles and patience, the stock market is white hot right now. When everyone is losing their mind buying hand over fist, the smart move is to sell. And vice versa. Selling now ensures you'll have the cash to pick up bargains in the coming downturn.

The Rehashing Mind

I'm easily confused, so I ponder and ponder until I've brewed up some insight. Even if it takes decades! I'll go to the ends of the earth to understand better when things don't make sense to me.

I've suddenly realized, after decades of gear-spinning, that this inclination is 100% normal. Everyone does this; they nurse their confusion points, unconsciously spin gears, and periodically rehash hot topics for reconsideration. But there's an essential difference in my case: I don't dramatize it.

Sit in the window of any urban coffee shop and watch pedestrians stroll by. They're palpably consumed with mental rehashing of sore points. Re-litigating old arguments, contriving more clever responses to That Horrible Thing That Person Said, and reexamining for the hundred thousandth time their waistline, their bank balance, and ten thousand familiar points of aggrieved confusion. And scant few of them exhibit any joy.

I do what they do, but (thanks to lots of meditation) without the angst. By opting out of self-triggering and stress, I enjoy some bandwidth - some peaceful spaciousness - to muse bemusedly. There's room for insight to gather and connections to be made as sundry flips and framings are tried on for size. La dee dah. And the insights bring joy.

I'm not desperately trying to seize the reins, straighten it all out, and make things go better. I dispassionately peer at knots, obstructions, and outcomes through a microscope, crisply decked out in my starched laboratory smock, while nearly everyone else screams and flails within a virtual reality helmet perma-strapped to their heads. They experience no distance; no remove.

Here's how they reach that point: at first, they pretended to enjoy fake drama - like seeking out rollercoasters and horror movies for momentary thrills. But having over-invested in the pretending, they lose cognizance that it was their choice to begin with. The world freezes into malignity as they forget that the whole proposition was - and remains - elective. They forget their freedom to reframe!

For most people, the tedious replaying of woeful mental tapes feels like torture. Nothing good ever pops out. No golden ticket! But the rehashing is not the problem. If you can relax into it, and toy with it, and dilate rather than constrict - like learning to steer into a skid! - it becomes contemplation, sparking epiphany and insight. It's a framing thing!


Summing up: The mind’s rehashing faculty can be used for contemplation as well as for the standard neurotic self-torture. In either case, we follow instinct, aiming to trigger an epiphany which might reframe the matter and put it to rest. But you can't force it. You can't squeeze it. You can't push a string! As in all sorts of learning, it's most effective to adopt a playful, childlike approach.

Magic

I'm pulling a line out of an older posting, "The Husk", so I can make it one of my "Definitions" entries (which I try to keep short):


Real magic is contriving a whole to exceed the sum of its parts. Fake magic is the mastery of trickery and deception.


Here are all postings labeled "definition".

The Relish of Freddie Miles

I added some key points to yesterday's posting, "Be Freddie Miles". Here's the current version of the paragraph, after the addition:

Most of us collapse, for no good reason, into an unappealing off-the-rack bit/type/cartoon. Consciously or not, we bought a ticket and then we took the ride. But same for anyone like me who decided to remain an earnest, unaffected eleven year old. No points are awarded for that. Freddie Miles is doing it right. If the world compels you to be a cartoon cut-out character serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances, at least lean into it. Relish it. And force the card.

Be Freddie Miles

Tying together a slew of Slog themes which are obviously related, though I'm too slow to have previously noticed...


I was famous for a while and didn't like it. This is because one can't be famous. Your name can be famous, and some superficial facet of you can be famous, but not you you. It's a thinly-sketched cartoon-you. This disjoint makes encounters with fans strange at best and calamitous at worst, and explains why it's best not to meet heroes - who impertinently fail to embody the cartoon you assume them to be.

Then I wasn't famous. But as my circle drastically shrunk, I felt a queasy recognition that I wasn't any better "seen". I was just famous (i.e. cartoon-ized) for fewer people. And as I've surpassed Kafka on the existential shrinking scale, this remains true.

People are lost in their heads, terribly occupied with orchestrating an imagined cinematic journey for themselves. The rest of us won't occupy much attention. We're side players - colorful additions to enhance a protagonistic narrative; transactional units given emotional stakes via cinematic gesture. The montage flashes by: The Love Interest! The Pal! The Frenemy! The Boss! It's no wonder sensitive humans perennially feel alienated, feeling like cartoon cut-out characters serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances.

But that realization alone isn't worth much. Spotting delusion doesn't mean you're sane; it just means you're observant. It's a huge clue that we only ever rue alienation in the first person. No one pays a lick of attention to how they alienate others. Awakening to omnipresent narcissism is only a tentative first step toward recognizing that you, yourself, are the problem.

It always amazes me to see people mystified by behavior they themselves exemplify. You are the greatest source of information on why people do what they do! I keep flashing back to how my parents were perpetually indignant about how, as they kept moving further eastward on Long Island, the assholes from Brooklyn kept following them and ruining the rural landscape. They never realized that we, ourselves, were the Brooklyn assholes who kept moving eastward and ruining things!

Our thin, washed-out, unrealistic and cartoonish way of viewing celebrities is not a phenomenon of fame. For a narcissist - and nearly everyone in the First World is one - all relationships are cartoonish. Everyone we know is thinly famous - reduced to a prominent characteristic or two.

We warn each other to "never meet your heroes" because as soon as one steps out of character (not their actual character, but the character we've contrived for them), they've committed existential atrocity. Same problem for people in one's immediate circle. Everyone is counting on you to be That Guy - to embody the cartoon you're perceived to represent. Lock in, or else!

This is all leading to a confession of error. I've always expressed contempt for people who model themselves as a Type.

There are a few dozen clone lines in any society, no more. People are types, which is adaptive behavior because it lubricates social interaction. When you meet a brassy lady with a gravelly voice and energetic good humor, you feel that you know that person. Love her or hate her, you can deal with her comfortably due to long experience with her clone line. Same for the aloofly ponderous academic. Or the BAD BOY. No one's born as these things. The personas are adopted via modeling, these days mostly via movie and TV actors. In the old days, one modeled the persona of a family member or another local "role models" (turn that phrase around in your mind for a moment!).

We really commit to the role. A person never feels more expressively uniquely himself than when he's being most flagrantly clone-ish. That's exactly how the millions driving VW bugs or listening to "indie rock" manage to feel fiercely nonconformist. "Hey, I'm a free-thinking type! Yeah, one of those!"

I must admit defeat, acknowledging that the person who chooses a type, and sticks to it through hell and high water, wins. That's how you win. Me? I've worked hard to ensure I'm uniquely useful. Don't do that. You know who wins? Freddie Miles wins. Here's Freddie:

Freddie Miles wins. Freddie Miles, who is 1000% affectation and smugness and swaggering ballsy confidence. Freddie Miles is working too hard to embody this superficial cartoon to have any inner life, but it's not his superficiality that makes him, it's his unshakable commitment to the bit.

This is not a deep world. Committing to the bit - and making sure it's a contagious one - is literally all that's called for. That, after all, is the golden ticket. That's the answer. Game over.

Most of us collapse, for no good reason, into an unappealing off-the-rack bit/type/cartoon. Consciously or not, we bought a ticket and then we took the ride. But same for anyone like me who decided to remain an earnest, unaffected eleven year old. No points are awarded for that. Freddie Miles is doing it right. If the world compels you to be a cartoon cut-out character serving other people's narcisissistic mental contrivances, at least lean into it. Relish it. And force the card.

I anticipate your objection. After viewing that clip, you think, "Well, Freddie Miles is sharp! Freddie Miles has energy! Not everyone can be Freddie Miles!"

Wrong. That's just you falling for it, exactly like everyone falls for it. Consider, please, that Freddie Miles was played by a pale fat depressed schlub named Philip (also immensely talented and a beautiful human being, but that's irrelevant) who felt so ill-fitting in this world that he eventually cashed his own ticket.

If Philip Seymour Hoffman can summon an inner Freddie Miles (or some other mass-appealing cartoon), anyone can. And you've just seen Philip Seymour Hoffman literally - not metaphorically! - playing Freddie Miles. It wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world if he'd kept it up! It might not be "true", but there's no deeper truth in the social strata. Truth is a matter for one's inner life, not one's persona. A persona is a persona is a persona. Choose a flavor. Nothing deep.

Don't spurn cartoonishness because it's thin and superficial and annoying and pretentious. Just select a good one. And cling to it for dear life. All while nurturing and kindling your inner life behind the firewall. That's how you do it. Freddy's right; I was wrong.


It's too late for me; I'm all-in on developing inner strata. But I've come around from my initial compulsion to wince at pretension and to "see through" smugness. I realize that we need those people to make the world interesting. A world needs performers. It can't all be spectators!

For example, I've learned to appreciate good-looking people who've invested 10,000 hours in front of mirrors, learning to compose themselves; to committing to that good-looking bit. It's not anything like Art or Insight or Creativity or Quality, the commodities which delight and inspire me. But it serves a good purpose, and it's an interesting challenge to pull off, and one I'm unable to provide (I had potential once, but chose a different path).