Here's why I'm wrong for this world. Someone I know announced to friends on social media that he plans to open a great cocktail bar with absolutely the most delicious cocktails. His friends were supportive. What a great idea. Hey, who doesn't love great cocktails?
A few months later, he posted photos of himself taking a class in mixology at a bartending school. The response was overwhelmingly enthusiastic. Can't wait to try your great cocktails! Shortly thereafter, he opened his bar. A labor of love!
Molar-grinding though it is, this, in and of itself, is not why I'm wrong for this world. This is just why the world is wrong for me.
The killer is that the top two paragraphs would be completely opaque for 99% of readers. "What exactly is your problem with this, Jim?"
I'm a slob who wants a genuinely delicious cocktail, not the proposition of one (see the "Face-In-Hole Board" section here). Is that so crazy?
Also, I'd like to live in a world with genuineness, broadly. Where we sip and are moved to go "Mmm!", and not just grimly peck out "YUM!" on Instagram.
Saturday, August 2, 2025
Friday, August 1, 2025
The Shivering Fisherman
I was newly introduced to someone who immediately wanted to discuss how awful Donald Trump is. So corrupt and shameless! Such a racist liar! Isn't he just awful?
I replied, with unconcealable exasperation, that this guy's been front and center for a solid decade, so those conclusions are pretty solid by now for those who share them. Little value could be wrung from the hundred trillionth iteration of the lament.
But I realized I'd just called him boring. And while it was true—he was being flabbergastingly boring—that wasn't the reason for my exasperation. So I reached for a metaphor.
"You're like an ice fisherman who cuts a hole in the ice, baits and sinks his line, and, awaiting a nibble, exclaims, "Jesus, it's cold!"
He stared at me blankly.
"An ice fisherman who's been at it for more than a week should have found some way to come to terms with cold. Dress for it, stoically bear it, or retrain yourself to feel eager for it. Someone who ice fishes on a frozen lake for years, complaining about the cold the whole time, is the definition of a crazy person. And while we're all free to choose our own approaches, in this case I've shown up, dropped my line, and settled in for a neighborly fishing session, and you lead with 'Is it just me, or is it cold?' Of course it's cold! We're ice fishing!!"
He squinted. "So you're telling me not to complain?"
"No. I'm suggesting you not complain in exactly the same way over the exact same situation for ten years straight. And if you can't help yourself, don't inflict it on your fellow fishermen, who've put effort into adapting to the cold. Nothing's gained by focusing on the frigidity of a frozen lake. Acceptance precedes sanity!"
"I will never accept the presidency of Donald Trump," he replied tightly, his posture stiffening in a show of staunch resistance.
And I flashed on my posting last week, which explained how accepting loss or disappointment doesn't require approval. I.e. don't expect to reach a point of approval re: the death of your hamster! Little Freddie's death will never stoke joy!
The acceptance/approval confusion seems more widely prevalent than I'd realized. We're all locked in obsession with our remaining sub-optimalities here in Utopia. Princesses, increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas, refuse to accept perturbation because they can't, by definition, approve of it. So anything disliked is forever unacceptable. Like this unacceptably cold frozen lake!
If we'd stop requiring approval in order to accept, we might actually enjoy the ice fishing—or a rewarding conversation with a new acquaintance. The stuck record might finally play forward!
This person spent ten years perpetually renewing his shock at Donald Trump's awfulness because he cannot accept something he disapproves of lingering on his dashboard.
Anything un-approvable is unacceptable!
That's the underlying mechanism accounting for all the sour, toxic stuck-ness we all sense in contemporary society (not just politics). Anything un-approvable is unacceptable, and must be re-hashed, re-processed, and relived in an unremitting loop until it’s just the way we like it.
I replied, with unconcealable exasperation, that this guy's been front and center for a solid decade, so those conclusions are pretty solid by now for those who share them. Little value could be wrung from the hundred trillionth iteration of the lament.
But I realized I'd just called him boring. And while it was true—he was being flabbergastingly boring—that wasn't the reason for my exasperation. So I reached for a metaphor.
"You're like an ice fisherman who cuts a hole in the ice, baits and sinks his line, and, awaiting a nibble, exclaims, "Jesus, it's cold!"
He stared at me blankly.
"An ice fisherman who's been at it for more than a week should have found some way to come to terms with cold. Dress for it, stoically bear it, or retrain yourself to feel eager for it. Someone who ice fishes on a frozen lake for years, complaining about the cold the whole time, is the definition of a crazy person. And while we're all free to choose our own approaches, in this case I've shown up, dropped my line, and settled in for a neighborly fishing session, and you lead with 'Is it just me, or is it cold?' Of course it's cold! We're ice fishing!!"
He squinted. "So you're telling me not to complain?"
"No. I'm suggesting you not complain in exactly the same way over the exact same situation for ten years straight. And if you can't help yourself, don't inflict it on your fellow fishermen, who've put effort into adapting to the cold. Nothing's gained by focusing on the frigidity of a frozen lake. Acceptance precedes sanity!"
"I will never accept the presidency of Donald Trump," he replied tightly, his posture stiffening in a show of staunch resistance.
And I flashed on my posting last week, which explained how accepting loss or disappointment doesn't require approval. I.e. don't expect to reach a point of approval re: the death of your hamster! Little Freddie's death will never stoke joy!
The acceptance/approval confusion seems more widely prevalent than I'd realized. We're all locked in obsession with our remaining sub-optimalities here in Utopia. Princesses, increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas, refuse to accept perturbation because they can't, by definition, approve of it. So anything disliked is forever unacceptable. Like this unacceptably cold frozen lake!
If we'd stop requiring approval in order to accept, we might actually enjoy the ice fishing—or a rewarding conversation with a new acquaintance. The stuck record might finally play forward!
This person spent ten years perpetually renewing his shock at Donald Trump's awfulness because he cannot accept something he disapproves of lingering on his dashboard.
Anything un-approvable is unacceptable!
That's the underlying mechanism accounting for all the sour, toxic stuck-ness we all sense in contemporary society (not just politics). Anything un-approvable is unacceptable, and must be re-hashed, re-processed, and relived in an unremitting loop until it’s just the way we like it.
Wednesday, July 30, 2025
Dressing Like a King
Noah Hawley produced two of my favorite TV shows—Legion and Fargo. Alan Sepinwall profiles him this week, ahead of the August 12 debut of his latest, "Alien: Earth". His article opens with this snappy vignette:
But this story struck me. If the great Noah Hawley at age 58—superbly accomplished, and firmly atop his game—feels obliged to dress up in a steaming jungle for a job where he's essentially God to all his underlings, anyway, then maybe there's something to it.
Perhaps I should have diverted effort to the Seeming, even at the expense of the Doing. It would be against my religion to sacrifice an iota of quality, but in collaborative endeavors this might have earned more cohesive collaboration—and with it, better quality. And it surely would have elevated a project's public profile.
My mind's eye flashes on Tom Wolfe in that goofy white suit, and Hendrix plucking guitar strings with his teeth. Those guys—and Hawley—might have had surplus bandwidth to devote to self-signaling. Me, I've always felt like I was skating just ahead of failure, so it would have been a grave misuse of assets—like a morbidly fat king reigning over an impoverished tribe.
But maybe that's what it takes to be King.
When a director arrives at a filming location, they have a lot of important tasks before the real work can begin. Department heads to consult. Actors to be prep. Schedules to lock. When Noah Hawley got to Bangkok to direct the first episode of Alien: Earth, he immediately had to have some suits made.I've been posting diatribes against emulation and affectation, plus confessions re: my piss poor poseur skills (I wrote here that "I'm quite good at doing things, but horrendously bad at posing as a thing-doer. There are specialists for that! Thousands of them! And they're good! They can do something I can't, and I truly admire them! Me, I could never fool anyone into imagining I could do something notable. Even if I actually have.")
“One of the first things I did upon landing was go to a tailor and work up, not a full wardrobe, but a way, through linen and cotton, to try to manage the heat, in a way that was the most stylish and comfortable,” explains Hawley, 58, the Emmy-winning creator of Fargo and Legion.
Most TV showrunners would throw on a T-shirt and cargo shorts to accomplish that goal in temperatures that were upwards of 118 degrees. But Noah Hawley is not most showrunners. Hart Hanson, who gave Hawley his first regular TV job, writing for the Fox crime drama Bones, remembers thinking on the day they met, “He’s too well-dressed to be a writer.” He doesn’t recall ever seeing Hawley in jeans or a polo shirt.
The bespoke wardrobe serves two purposes. One is, Hawley believes in dressing for the part when that part involves leadership. “We can get in trouble as artists who are also managers when we don’t understand the power of symbols,” he says. “The boss looks like the boss. No good comes from ‘I’m just like you.’”
But this story struck me. If the great Noah Hawley at age 58—superbly accomplished, and firmly atop his game—feels obliged to dress up in a steaming jungle for a job where he's essentially God to all his underlings, anyway, then maybe there's something to it.
Perhaps I should have diverted effort to the Seeming, even at the expense of the Doing. It would be against my religion to sacrifice an iota of quality, but in collaborative endeavors this might have earned more cohesive collaboration—and with it, better quality. And it surely would have elevated a project's public profile.
My mind's eye flashes on Tom Wolfe in that goofy white suit, and Hendrix plucking guitar strings with his teeth. Those guys—and Hawley—might have had surplus bandwidth to devote to self-signaling. Me, I've always felt like I was skating just ahead of failure, so it would have been a grave misuse of assets—like a morbidly fat king reigning over an impoverished tribe.
But maybe that's what it takes to be King.
Tuesday, July 29, 2025
The Waif and the Limo
Following up on "Perverse Corroboration":
That's not how you're supposed to do it! You're supposed to cover over the worst flaws, maintaining a cocky assurance that you're a great filmmaker who deliberately evoked crude, homespun flavor. "I meant it that way!"
So why freely confess my limited skills? Why even make such a film? Who deliberately sets out to make a sloppy film?
To me, it's obvious: I had no desire to impress anyone with my filmmaking skills. I wasn't trying to be a filmmaker. I just wanted to make a film.
Isn't everyone just trying to make a film (or whatever it is that they make)?
No. At least not as a straight shot. Most filmmakers make films not to make films, but to be filmmakers. The drive is much more about identity and status than authentic creative drive. As I recently noted:
I hoped to capture lightning, but not so I could be The Lightning Capturer. Just for its own sake! Who cares about me and my terrible skills? That's irrelevant. I have something I sincerely want to show, which might coax a useful reframing (though I don't need to be The Reframing Coaxer, either)! I was taking a straight shot. Doing a thing with no regard for being a Thing-Doer (see previous postings tagged 'Karma Yoga')
Les Blank was a brilliant maverick filmmaker, one of my all-time favorites and remarkably unpretentious. Yet, even for him, everything about this felt infuriating.
When a singer-who-sings-because-she-wanted-to-be-a-singer encounters pure-hearted singing—perhaps through the window of her limo as a street waif warbles a tremulous "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"—she is not touched. She does not slip money in the waif's pocket. She will most likely be oddly miffed. And if you were to ask for an explanation, she'd criticize the tremulousness...with incongruous agitation.
How does this apply to the story of David Liebman, the sax player?
It doesn't. As a musician, I was no tremulous waif. I had copious training and solid technique. So that one represented some other ju-ju.🤷
I cobbled it all together into a short film that's a meditation on quality. How it gets in, how it's recognized, and whether there's any objectivity. All the interesting questions! It's very poorly shot, recorded, and edited. It's tediously repetitive, lacks any discernible structure, and never quite states its theme. And yet, it has magic to it.I was describing some strange phenomena, but neglected to deal, head-on, with some strangeness of my own. Mainly: Why did I let it be so crappy? And why would I so blithely concede it's crappiness?
That's not how you're supposed to do it! You're supposed to cover over the worst flaws, maintaining a cocky assurance that you're a great filmmaker who deliberately evoked crude, homespun flavor. "I meant it that way!"
So why freely confess my limited skills? Why even make such a film? Who deliberately sets out to make a sloppy film?
To me, it's obvious: I had no desire to impress anyone with my filmmaking skills. I wasn't trying to be a filmmaker. I just wanted to make a film.
Isn't everyone just trying to make a film (or whatever it is that they make)?
No. At least not as a straight shot. Most filmmakers make films not to make films, but to be filmmakers. The drive is much more about identity and status than authentic creative drive. As I recently noted:
Few can resist a snapshot with their face appearing within a hole in a board painted to assume the persona of a super hero, medieval knight, etc. "Hey, look! I'm a farmer! It's me doing that thing!"I wasn't grabbing a snapshot of myself as a thing-doer as I did the thing. I just did the thing. And this undermined the process, from the perspective of those who go the other way. My guileless sincerity - I was 100% invested in the cookie guy, capturing his truth, and shedding light on one of the most slippery mysteries—gave the result an elemental magic. A child's magic.
"It's me doing that thing!" is what the world is about. That's the core presumption, distilled to its essence.
I hoped to capture lightning, but not so I could be The Lightning Capturer. Just for its own sake! Who cares about me and my terrible skills? That's irrelevant. I have something I sincerely want to show, which might coax a useful reframing (though I don't need to be The Reframing Coaxer, either)! I was taking a straight shot. Doing a thing with no regard for being a Thing-Doer (see previous postings tagged 'Karma Yoga')
Les Blank was a brilliant maverick filmmaker, one of my all-time favorites and remarkably unpretentious. Yet, even for him, everything about this felt infuriating.
When a singer-who-sings-because-she-wanted-to-be-a-singer encounters pure-hearted singing—perhaps through the window of her limo as a street waif warbles a tremulous "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"—she is not touched. She does not slip money in the waif's pocket. She will most likely be oddly miffed. And if you were to ask for an explanation, she'd criticize the tremulousness...with incongruous agitation.
How does this apply to the story of David Liebman, the sax player?
It doesn't. As a musician, I was no tremulous waif. I had copious training and solid technique. So that one represented some other ju-ju.🤷
Monday, July 28, 2025
My June 1999 Mailing List Email from Larry Page
This is interesting. I remember being an early adopter of Google, but I hadn't realized how early! Here's issue 2 of "Google-Friends News". Not "friends" just as a marketing term. Apparently it really was a friends/family list. I have no recollection of how I got on it, though I was using their site heavily by then.
Too bad I didn't hit them up for a job and grab some of those stock options. But, hey, I was busy at the time.
From: Larry Page, INTERNET:google-friends@google.com
To: Jim Leff, 75570,441
Date: Tue, Jun 8, 1999, 7:50 PM
RE: [google-friends] Google-Friends News: Google Gets Funding
Sender: google-friends-return-1-big-dog=chowhound.com@returns.egroups.com
Dear Google Friends!
Welcome to Vol. I Issue 2 of the Google Friends newsletter--news about the Google search engine. This is a monthly newsletter. You shouldn't be on this list unless you subscribed. Thank you for using Google!
IN THIS ISSUE
This was an exciting month for us as we secured funding so that we can continue to improve Google in new and exciting ways. This month we issued our first press release which announced our financing of $25 million and introduced the new the members joining our board, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. We also came out with a specialized government search that searches just the .gov and .mil domains. We have also been busy growing the company in employees and computers. Our plans are to keep improving Google in every way possible!
2) Google gets $$
This month Google secured $25 million in venture funding and will add two prominent venture capitalists to its board: Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Google plans to use the funding to continue to further its search technology research and grow the company's human and computer resources.
You can read our press release and articles published about our funding on our website at: http://www.google.com/funding.html
The Red Herring reported the following on our funding and new board members: On Thursday morning, Google, a search-technology startup founded by two Stanford graduate students, announced it had secured $25 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as a range of high-profile angel investors. While that number may seem staggering for a company's first round, what caused more jaws to drop was the company's newly named board members: yes, Mr. Doerr, but also Sequoia's Michael Moritz. The Red Herring article can be read found at: http://www.redherring.com/insider/1999/0603/vc-google.html
The Wall Street Journal also commented on the investment saying, "Even by Internet standards, Google has attracted an unusually large amount of money for a company still in its infancy."
In the Google press release, Michael Moritz, a new board member states "Google should become the gold standard for search on the Internet. Larry and Sergey's company has the power to turn Internet users everywhere into devoted and life-long Googlers."
We are thankful to all the current Googlers out there. We will use the funding to continue to improve Google and provide the best search results possible.
3) Changes with our results page
You may have noticed some changes in our results pages. We made some key changes that we think will make your search experience with Google even better. We no longer use the "phase match" or "partial phrase match" indicator since our users found this information to be redundant of the contextual, bolded search query results. We also eliminated the Page Rank percentage given since the red bar next to it shows the Page Rank graphically. (TIP: if you click on the red bar, you can see all the pages that link to the returned page).
4) Google government search
This month you probably noticed that we had our "Uncle Sam" search off of our home page (It's the next best thing to the CIA) that is now housed on the "more Google" page under the title of "special searches." This search covers all the .mil and .gov domains. So if you are looking for something published by the government, this is the best place to start.
5) Google expansion
Our capacity is still going up (thanks to you!), and we've been expanding to meet the demand. This month we've put in even more servers to ensure a faster user experience (we've started ordering our computers in 80 packs, up from our previous increment of 21 packs). We have also been working to make sure there the duplicates are removed from search results and we are working on some new features (sshhh!) that we hope will improve our users search experience.
We have also hired our first business development and marketing employees. If you want to do any "deals" with Google, please contact us at bizdev@google.com. If you have any marketing plans for your company that you would like to include Google in, please contact us at marketing@google.com.
6) Want a job?
Looking for a start-up adventure? Google is the leading designer of the next generation search engine. We are rapidly hiring talented people to bring the latest and greatest technology to the web. We have lots of openings. Check out our jobs page at http://www.google.com/jobs.html! Or send us a resume to jobs@google.com
Reasons to work for Google:
1. Hot technology
2. Cool technology
3. Intelligent, fun, talented, hardworking, high-energy teammates
4. Location, location, location! University Ave in downtown Palo Alto.
5. Excellent benefits
6. Stock options
7. Casual dress atmosphere
8. Free snacks and drinks
9. An exciting place to work! Your ideas can make a difference
10. Millions of people will use and appreciate your software
7) Feedback
We always love hearing from our users! Please let us know if you have comments or features that you would like to see at Google. We read every email and always do our best to respond as quickly as possible. You can reach us at: comments@google.com.
Thanks for using Google!
Sincerely,
Larry Page, CEO and co-founder
Sergey Brin, President and co-founder
Too bad I didn't hit them up for a job and grab some of those stock options. But, hey, I was busy at the time.
From: Larry Page, INTERNET:google-friends@google.com
To: Jim Leff, 75570,441
Date: Tue, Jun 8, 1999, 7:50 PM
RE: [google-friends] Google-Friends News: Google Gets Funding
Sender: google-friends-return-1-big-dog=chowhound.com@returns.egroups.com
Dear Google Friends!
Welcome to Vol. I Issue 2 of the Google Friends newsletter--news about the Google search engine. This is a monthly newsletter. You shouldn't be on this list unless you subscribed. Thank you for using Google!
IN THIS ISSUE
1) Introduction1) Introduction
2) Google gets $$!
3) Changes with our results pages
4) Google government search
5) Google expansion
6) Want a job?
7) We love feedback
This was an exciting month for us as we secured funding so that we can continue to improve Google in new and exciting ways. This month we issued our first press release which announced our financing of $25 million and introduced the new the members joining our board, Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. We also came out with a specialized government search that searches just the .gov and .mil domains. We have also been busy growing the company in employees and computers. Our plans are to keep improving Google in every way possible!
2) Google gets $$
This month Google secured $25 million in venture funding and will add two prominent venture capitalists to its board: Michael Moritz of Sequoia Capital and John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Google plans to use the funding to continue to further its search technology research and grow the company's human and computer resources.
You can read our press release and articles published about our funding on our website at: http://www.google.com/funding.html
The Red Herring reported the following on our funding and new board members: On Thursday morning, Google, a search-technology startup founded by two Stanford graduate students, announced it had secured $25 million in funding from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia Capital, as well as a range of high-profile angel investors. While that number may seem staggering for a company's first round, what caused more jaws to drop was the company's newly named board members: yes, Mr. Doerr, but also Sequoia's Michael Moritz. The Red Herring article can be read found at: http://www.redherring.com/insider/1999/0603/vc-google.html
The Wall Street Journal also commented on the investment saying, "Even by Internet standards, Google has attracted an unusually large amount of money for a company still in its infancy."
In the Google press release, Michael Moritz, a new board member states "Google should become the gold standard for search on the Internet. Larry and Sergey's company has the power to turn Internet users everywhere into devoted and life-long Googlers."
We are thankful to all the current Googlers out there. We will use the funding to continue to improve Google and provide the best search results possible.
3) Changes with our results page
You may have noticed some changes in our results pages. We made some key changes that we think will make your search experience with Google even better. We no longer use the "phase match" or "partial phrase match" indicator since our users found this information to be redundant of the contextual, bolded search query results. We also eliminated the Page Rank percentage given since the red bar next to it shows the Page Rank graphically. (TIP: if you click on the red bar, you can see all the pages that link to the returned page).
4) Google government search
This month you probably noticed that we had our "Uncle Sam" search off of our home page (It's the next best thing to the CIA) that is now housed on the "more Google" page under the title of "special searches." This search covers all the .mil and .gov domains. So if you are looking for something published by the government, this is the best place to start.
5) Google expansion
Our capacity is still going up (thanks to you!), and we've been expanding to meet the demand. This month we've put in even more servers to ensure a faster user experience (we've started ordering our computers in 80 packs, up from our previous increment of 21 packs). We have also been working to make sure there the duplicates are removed from search results and we are working on some new features (sshhh!) that we hope will improve our users search experience.
We have also hired our first business development and marketing employees. If you want to do any "deals" with Google, please contact us at bizdev@google.com. If you have any marketing plans for your company that you would like to include Google in, please contact us at marketing@google.com.
6) Want a job?
Looking for a start-up adventure? Google is the leading designer of the next generation search engine. We are rapidly hiring talented people to bring the latest and greatest technology to the web. We have lots of openings. Check out our jobs page at http://www.google.com/jobs.html! Or send us a resume to jobs@google.com
Reasons to work for Google:
1. Hot technology
2. Cool technology
3. Intelligent, fun, talented, hardworking, high-energy teammates
4. Location, location, location! University Ave in downtown Palo Alto.
5. Excellent benefits
6. Stock options
7. Casual dress atmosphere
8. Free snacks and drinks
9. An exciting place to work! Your ideas can make a difference
10. Millions of people will use and appreciate your software
7) Feedback
We always love hearing from our users! Please let us know if you have comments or features that you would like to see at Google. We read every email and always do our best to respond as quickly as possible. You can reach us at: comments@google.com.
Thanks for using Google!
Sincerely,
Larry Page, CEO and co-founder
Sergey Brin, President and co-founder
Sunday, July 27, 2025
Perverse Corroboration
As a 21 year old jazz trombonist, I enjoyed the support of a few jazz heavy-hitters. I was clearly no boy genius—nothing like that—but they assured me I was on the right track and expected good things, which is the most warmly effective sort of appraisal. Rather than inflate my ego, it made me redouble efforts to do my very best.
This was the age where one stops being a student and starts calling oneself a professional, but I attended one last polishing program for talented kids my age. Several went on to stardom. And a number of them really liked my playing.
I knew what I was doing, at least. I was coherent, assured, and could get from A to B in interesting ways. I'd done the work of acquiring fluency and control. Though, as with my writing, it wasn't quite like anything else. But I'd always figured that was the goal. A personal, original approach was exactly what my mentors had encouraged.
Saxophone star David Liebman started the first day's class by asking me to improvise. I played with swing, feeling, and lyricism. I told a story. And, when I was done, Liebman didn't look at me. He faced the class, like a surgeon standing beside an excised tumor, and asked, with unconcealed disgust, "Does anyone know what the fuck that was?!?" Even the students who liked my playing shrugged. Geez, Dave, no. We have no idea!
I was confident enough, thank heaven, not to be destroyed (I knew—though Liebman did not—that one of his own idols strongly supported my playing). But, man, was I angry. And I remain angry to this day, though it's not something I revisit often. How could a bona fide jazz veteran be so horrible to a kid?
Thirty years later, I had a chance to interview a guy in Connecticut who was renowned for his cookies. He wasn't a professional, just some guy, and said he'd show me his technique and I could film it with my iphone camera.
So I showed up, and he revealed that he's just using the plain old recipe from the Quaker Oats box, so it's really nothing special, yet he conceded that no one else ever comes close to matching his results. He showed me how carelessly he cooked, and how pedestrian his ingredients were. And when I tasted a cookie, I nearly lost consciousness.
I cobbled it all together into a short film that's a meditation on quality. How it gets in, how it's recognized, and whether there's any objectivity. All the interesting questions! It's very poorly shot, recorded, and edited. It's tediously repetitive, lacks any discernible structure, and never quite states its theme. And yet, it has magic to it.
One of my best friends at the time was the great film director Les Blank. I sent him a copy, and it made him so angry—just spitting mad—that he refused to discuss it.
I instantly realized that if it were legitimately bad, there'd be no anger. Professional filmmakers don't lose their tempers over crappy films. They just wince and move on. Les' rage showed that I'd accomplished something.
Why the rage? Who knows. Some byproduct of Les' tangled inner being (perhaps having spent his life refining skills to create magic, seeing even a bit of magic emanating from guileless incompetence felt infuriating). I didn't need to parse it. It was sufficient to recognize it for what it was: corroboration.
Linkage
In fact it was only today that I put the two together. If my playing merely sucked, Liebman would have been more teacherly. He'd have dressed the wound, given me basics to work on, and sent me on my way with an exasperated eye roll. A jazz superstar only howls "WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?" at an eager skinny 21 year old trombonist in summer camp shorts and tank top if that kid actually has something.
What's the thing? I can't venture a guess. So what set him off? Same. But, at this late date, I see I should have accepted it as corroboration. Not in the sense of twisted, trollish delight at getting under someone's skin and eliciting a reaction, any reaction. Just the level-headed realization that 1. I had something, and 2. It's neither necessary nor possible for everyone to dig every something.
But this posting is not about under-appreciation. Nor about celebrity insecurity, nor the chilling subterranean streams of human interaction. Rather, I'm underscoring my perturbing failure to tie this all together until an hour or so ago.
I try hard to sharpen my thinking and strip away kludge and bullshit. I work to apply lessons forward to future experiences and backward to recollected ones. I generate my share of insights, but must constantly relearn them...endlessly. As I noted while explaining Why My Cooking Isn't Great, it's devilishly hard to distribute insights evenly into all aspects of one's life.
It seems impossible to effectively update assumptions and memories in light of freshly-acquired insight en masse. So I remain endlessly mystified by puzzles previously well-solved, and doomed to ceaselessly re-solve it all.
On the other hand, if you're ever bored in old age—no one invites you to dance parties anymore, and your crustily truculent friends can't be pryed out of their easy chairs to come see a movie or whatever, this might be the answer. Spend your time processing mental fodder with ever more lithe framing. Be like an earthworm, improving the soil by passing it through your corpus.
I guess that's what old age was always supposed to be for. Perhaps this explains the elder "wisdom" people used to talk about way back when.
For extra credit, watch that movie, and consider how the discussion of quality - what it is and how it gets in - pervades this entire discussion. Creating quality is a sticky wicket, but appreciation is no less tortuous.
Followup: The Waif and the Limo
The Lord Protects the Simple
I've never been a fan of the view of God as some bearded dude on a cloud, getting all up into our everyday lives and doling out consequences according to some ridiculously lumpy formula.
As a young man, this skepticism led me to atheism. Then I meditated enough to recognize that this is a material world full of propositionally material “individuals,” and the whole thing is a caprice of—what else?—subjectivity. Subjectivity is so utterly what we are that we're hardly able to even consider it. In fact, we tend to drop to our knees and light incense whenever we get close. And from this framing, I found that an awful lot of God talk made sense—just so long as you don't need it to involve some bearded dude on a cloud.
But I still have a tick. Whenever I see someone bumbling along, oblivious to danger while doing life horrendously wrong—pushing a baby carriage behind my car as it backs up with reverse lights gleaming, or speeding through blind turns without watching—I peer at them closely and check to see if they're limping or missing teeth. And I estimate their age.
While any of us might slip and momentarily zone out, there are people who behave this way as an ingrained habit. And such people, I can report, walk the Earth uninjured for years. Decades, even. People with white beards, who long ago should have been culled from the gene pool, stride confidently into harm's way and emerge unscathed. And they're usually not limping.
I, the careful one, am the limper. Though I'm thoughtfully cautious and shrewdly strategic, my outcomes resemble those of hapless straight men in slapstick comedies.
I'm beginning to reconsider the notion of a God capriciously goosing the settings as part of His “mysterious” work. How else are we to understand these superhumans blazing from point A to point B without watching, thinking, or caring? Either some paternal sky figure insulates them (and definitely not you or me), or else they're not bumblers at all, but a higher form of life—as unknowable to the likes of us as a man is to an ant.
Either way, it's clearly some God shit.
As a young man, this skepticism led me to atheism. Then I meditated enough to recognize that this is a material world full of propositionally material “individuals,” and the whole thing is a caprice of—what else?—subjectivity. Subjectivity is so utterly what we are that we're hardly able to even consider it. In fact, we tend to drop to our knees and light incense whenever we get close. And from this framing, I found that an awful lot of God talk made sense—just so long as you don't need it to involve some bearded dude on a cloud.
But I still have a tick. Whenever I see someone bumbling along, oblivious to danger while doing life horrendously wrong—pushing a baby carriage behind my car as it backs up with reverse lights gleaming, or speeding through blind turns without watching—I peer at them closely and check to see if they're limping or missing teeth. And I estimate their age.
While any of us might slip and momentarily zone out, there are people who behave this way as an ingrained habit. And such people, I can report, walk the Earth uninjured for years. Decades, even. People with white beards, who long ago should have been culled from the gene pool, stride confidently into harm's way and emerge unscathed. And they're usually not limping.
I, the careful one, am the limper. Though I'm thoughtfully cautious and shrewdly strategic, my outcomes resemble those of hapless straight men in slapstick comedies.
I'm beginning to reconsider the notion of a God capriciously goosing the settings as part of His “mysterious” work. How else are we to understand these superhumans blazing from point A to point B without watching, thinking, or caring? Either some paternal sky figure insulates them (and definitely not you or me), or else they're not bumblers at all, but a higher form of life—as unknowable to the likes of us as a man is to an ant.
Either way, it's clearly some God shit.
Friday, July 25, 2025
Chuck Mangione
Chuck Mangione (RIP) was part of a long continuum of good or very good musicians who lost their chops and reinvented themselves as images of musicians...with enormous success.
The gambit works because the public is far more interested in image than in substance (e.g. musicianship). Dropping the "music" part, and focusing on the image part, can actually increase your value...tremendously.
The list includes some names most people—even most musicians—would find surprising. Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong were faint shadows of their younger selves by mid-career (and desperately seeking chop recuperation behind-the-scenes), but did far better as icons than they ever had as musicians. Consider the Rolling Stones and so many more, even aside from more widely-recognized image-pushers ala Kenny G, Herb Alpert, Chris Bodi, Liberace, etc.
Chuck was a serious bebop player when young. By the time any of you heard of him, he could barely play two notes in a row...and made a zillion dollars with the hat and the flower and the beard, playing kitsch ear worms.
Something to consider: I know a very good jazz guitar player who won top price in a Guitar Hero competition (that's a game where you pretend to be a guitar player), and it earned him more money than his entire previous career as a real guitarist.
Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.
The gambit works because the public is far more interested in image than in substance (e.g. musicianship). Dropping the "music" part, and focusing on the image part, can actually increase your value...tremendously.
The list includes some names most people—even most musicians—would find surprising. Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong were faint shadows of their younger selves by mid-career (and desperately seeking chop recuperation behind-the-scenes), but did far better as icons than they ever had as musicians. Consider the Rolling Stones and so many more, even aside from more widely-recognized image-pushers ala Kenny G, Herb Alpert, Chris Bodi, Liberace, etc.
Chuck was a serious bebop player when young. By the time any of you heard of him, he could barely play two notes in a row...and made a zillion dollars with the hat and the flower and the beard, playing kitsch ear worms.
Something to consider: I know a very good jazz guitar player who won top price in a Guitar Hero competition (that's a game where you pretend to be a guitar player), and it earned him more money than his entire previous career as a real guitarist.
Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.
Relocating Sanely
I posted this a couple of years ago to a forum for American expats in Portugal, where it went viral. This pleased me, because it induces a helpful shift of perspective, and I haven't met many Americans here who are even marginally sane. They're mostly starring in movies in their heads about their Marvelous Portuguese Adventure Where They're Living Happily Ever After And Isn't It—And Aren't They—Marvelous??? Once the ditzy mania wears off, they tend to quietly sell everything and slink back to Tampa or Cleveland.
Early on, I was lucky enough to settle into a framing which has worked beautifully, and puts me in a completely different world than any of my fellow expats: I've swapped in a better/cooler backdrop. That's all. Life continues as before, only sunnier and with better food and much nicer people and lower expenses. Same life, new backdrop. A modest change, in the end, but a very welcome one.
Every day, I go outside and enjoy the backdrop, and it never gets old. I don't have to mentally place myself in the picture ("It's me doing that thing!"). This isn't some exciting chapter in my Life Trajectory. It's still the same me living the same life, only now it smells like garlic and grilled fish and it's sunny. Nice!
If you ever do a move like this, this is how to frame it for optimal mental health.
I'd like to help immunize newer arrivals against a potential peril.
Once the initial giddiness subsides, and you've explored environs and chilled in the plaza and strolled by the ocean and consumed 45 plates of bacalhau a bras, you'll experience a lull. You'll feel oddly reluctant to seize the day. You'll want to lazily surf YouTube pet videos or whatever. You suddenly lack motivation to Celebrate Portugal.
And you'll recognize that Portugal's not going to celebrate you, either. It all just keeps rolling out there, obliviously. Yikes.
If you've been harboring grand cinematic views of your sweeping expatriation narrative (i.e. your "Forever Home" or whatever), you will feel gut-punched by this return-to-earth. This is just another place! You frantically re-list the benefits, but pastel de nata and fado, alas, do not fill all gaps. You're bored. You're small. You're stalled. What am I doing here? Was this a mistake?
There is an antidote to such moments; a reframing I'd suggest you keep handy:
How scintillating were your previous environs? Were you perpetually stimulated and delighted? No! That's not what home is like! And you're experiencing Portugal as home.
Home isn't scintillating. Vacations are scintillating. And vacations are not eternal. If this were a few weeks of visiting sunny Portugal, you could expect unflagging excitement. But home isn't always exciting. So at some point you need to step down (like a voltage converter) from tourist eagerness to everyday life-living. It's not deflation. It's not a stall. This is just what home is like.
And if the lull persists, remember you're a 30€ roundtrip flight from Milan. The greatest tapas on the planet are a four hour drive. Such diversity at your fingertips! Living in Akron or Seattle, you'd need to go to vast trouble and expense to change your channel. So don't forget to take vacations - once being in Portugal stops feeling like a vacation of its own. Which it will!
I didn't include this in my posting, but if you have no life - if you've been nothing aside from your job and/or your relationships and you haven't cultivated a sense of self beneath the facade and beyond the roleplay—then don't move to a place like this. Unless, that is, you have the social wherewithal to re-contruct or transpose the facade, or create a new one. A new locale will not supply you with a story for yourself (at least not one that endures for more than a few months). A place is just a place.
Me, I don't need a story to tell myself about myself. I'm not doing roleplay or starring in a movie. But apparently that's rare. 🤷🏻
Early on, I was lucky enough to settle into a framing which has worked beautifully, and puts me in a completely different world than any of my fellow expats: I've swapped in a better/cooler backdrop. That's all. Life continues as before, only sunnier and with better food and much nicer people and lower expenses. Same life, new backdrop. A modest change, in the end, but a very welcome one.
Every day, I go outside and enjoy the backdrop, and it never gets old. I don't have to mentally place myself in the picture ("It's me doing that thing!"). This isn't some exciting chapter in my Life Trajectory. It's still the same me living the same life, only now it smells like garlic and grilled fish and it's sunny. Nice!
If you ever do a move like this, this is how to frame it for optimal mental health.
I'd like to help immunize newer arrivals against a potential peril.
Once the initial giddiness subsides, and you've explored environs and chilled in the plaza and strolled by the ocean and consumed 45 plates of bacalhau a bras, you'll experience a lull. You'll feel oddly reluctant to seize the day. You'll want to lazily surf YouTube pet videos or whatever. You suddenly lack motivation to Celebrate Portugal.
And you'll recognize that Portugal's not going to celebrate you, either. It all just keeps rolling out there, obliviously. Yikes.
If you've been harboring grand cinematic views of your sweeping expatriation narrative (i.e. your "Forever Home" or whatever), you will feel gut-punched by this return-to-earth. This is just another place! You frantically re-list the benefits, but pastel de nata and fado, alas, do not fill all gaps. You're bored. You're small. You're stalled. What am I doing here? Was this a mistake?
There is an antidote to such moments; a reframing I'd suggest you keep handy:
How scintillating were your previous environs? Were you perpetually stimulated and delighted? No! That's not what home is like! And you're experiencing Portugal as home.
Home isn't scintillating. Vacations are scintillating. And vacations are not eternal. If this were a few weeks of visiting sunny Portugal, you could expect unflagging excitement. But home isn't always exciting. So at some point you need to step down (like a voltage converter) from tourist eagerness to everyday life-living. It's not deflation. It's not a stall. This is just what home is like.
And if the lull persists, remember you're a 30€ roundtrip flight from Milan. The greatest tapas on the planet are a four hour drive. Such diversity at your fingertips! Living in Akron or Seattle, you'd need to go to vast trouble and expense to change your channel. So don't forget to take vacations - once being in Portugal stops feeling like a vacation of its own. Which it will!
I didn't include this in my posting, but if you have no life - if you've been nothing aside from your job and/or your relationships and you haven't cultivated a sense of self beneath the facade and beyond the roleplay—then don't move to a place like this. Unless, that is, you have the social wherewithal to re-contruct or transpose the facade, or create a new one. A new locale will not supply you with a story for yourself (at least not one that endures for more than a few months). A place is just a place.
Me, I don't need a story to tell myself about myself. I'm not doing roleplay or starring in a movie. But apparently that's rare. 🤷🏻
Wade Vestal
I was hovering between sleep and waking, when a name flashed into my mind: Wade Vestal.
"Like the virgins!" explained the voice of Wade, fully of oily glee.
I sensed it would be hard to get back to sleep with this damn name flashing in my mind's eye like a neon sign. It demanded attention and investigation.
I sensed that I wouldn't get anywhere googling 'Wade Vestal' (like the virgins!) but it enticed me just enough to force me awake. Also, I needed to pee (coffee is not the engine of human action; peeing is. Coffee comes from Colombia, while peeing comes from God).
So I attend to my business and then reluctantly google 'Wade Vestal', finding that there is one single person on earth by that name. And he has an Instagram account!
I click into Instagram and, atop his profile I see the slogan "Don’t give up on your dreams, keep sleeping."
"Like the virgins!" explained the voice of Wade, fully of oily glee.
I sensed it would be hard to get back to sleep with this damn name flashing in my mind's eye like a neon sign. It demanded attention and investigation.
I sensed that I wouldn't get anywhere googling 'Wade Vestal' (like the virgins!) but it enticed me just enough to force me awake. Also, I needed to pee (coffee is not the engine of human action; peeing is. Coffee comes from Colombia, while peeing comes from God).
So I attend to my business and then reluctantly google 'Wade Vestal', finding that there is one single person on earth by that name. And he has an Instagram account!
I click into Instagram and, atop his profile I see the slogan "Don’t give up on your dreams, keep sleeping."
Wednesday, July 23, 2025
Cashing Out
Most experts I listen to say the stock market is overheated. Plus, there's enormous chaos in the US and in the world. That said, the worst mistake an investor can make is to try to time markets - e.g. sell twitchily out of suspicions and intuitions. Here's the main thinking:
Easier said than done! First, one must consider inflation, the primary concern in any fixed income situation. But living in a country with a modest economy means extremely low expenses, even though I'm heedless about signing up for streaming channels, enjoying tons of restaurant meals (they average €15 here!), and staying atop gadget upgrade cycles. My Apple and Siga investments did well, and a few others hit, too, so, given that 70 year-old me won't be splurging on champagne and fancy watches, I can ride out low to moderate inflation via belt tightening (e.g. save circa €100/month by cancelling streaming channels!). I will, however, hedge against severe inflation (see below).
As I write this, I realize I probably described a unicorn. "Investing success" + "very low spending" is surely a rare combination (though I'm no miser; I just had a bunch of matcha sent in from Japan!). So this regimen isn't for everyone—hell, it might not even turn out to be right for me!—but perhaps you'll find some chunk of it useful. Here's how I'm proceeding:
SWVXX—Schwab's Prime Money Market 25% of assets
Money market from Schwab. Strong yield, great liquidity.
Certificates of Deposits 30% of assets
FDIC protection, unlike the money market account. I will "ladder" them so they overlap, yielding cascading redemptions for purposes of liquidity and the chance to capture higher rates if they arise.
SCHP—Schwab's U.S. TIPS ETF 10% of assets
Treasury bonds. I'm paying a negligible fee for professional management and full liquidity rather than holding TIPS directly. Normally, this would occupy a much higher percentage in my mix, but political instability leaves me cautious about placing too much faith in US government credit. So I'm going easy on them. Also: I can tap into this pool for emergencies if needed.
FLOT—iShares' Floating Rate Bond ETF 5% of assets
This hedges rising rates, balancing my TIPS.
PIRMX—PIMCO's Inflation Response Multi-Asset Fund 15% of assets
My one (possibly) clever move. This is an expensive (steep 1.95% net expense ratio) but deeply tactical mutual fund. They do terribly smart and complicated things to hedge against inflation. This is not my airtight defense against any/all inflation, it's my catastrophic insurance policy in case of severe inflation, hopefully staving off the worst-case prospect of grubbing around for bugs and berries. Do not touch, ever!
Speculative Moonshot Stocks (biotechs and such)
Currently 15% of my assets. I'll gradually reduce it to 10%. These hedge against both inflation and market decline, because, if any hit, they'll hit hard regardless. They will also help keep things lively. If I'm going to have the portfolio of a decrepit old man, at least I'll also hold some lottery tickets.
1. Your intuition probably isn't better than the billionaires who set the prices with their own moves. And you don't just need to be "right", you also need to beat them. Good luck!But there are exceptions to every rule. My health is poor enough that I doubt I face many more market cycles. And I don't see myself taking fancy vacations or buying sports cars into my 70s and 80s (I'm not even doing that now!). As I wrote last month, Spending Is Non-Linear (with age)
2. You'll never time it just right, so you'll lose upside (if the market keeps climbing after you sell) or suffer downside (if the market dips before you sell)
3. The long term economic trend has always been upward, but you need to be "in it to win it". If you keep nervously jumping off the train—hoping to reboard at just the right moment—you will almost surely wind up short.
Shiny things begin to lose their luster, and savings become propositional. Abstract. While your bank balance might once have conjured fantasies of blowing it all on speed boats or vacations in Aruba or weekend cabins, at the point where you notice your transformation into a bag of broken sticks, those fantasies become more remote. They never quite die, but it's like watching kids playing hopscotch. Regardless of any nostalgic impulses, it feels viscerally not-for-you.So, all in all, this is a good moment for me to cash in my chips. A high point to freeze-frame, sharply reducing potential risk.
So here's the counterintuitive observation: when you're doing financial planning, realize that spending won't be linear. You will absolutely want clean clothes and healthy food and a roof over your head when you're 85, but there will be vastly less interest in gadgets and vacations and fine copper cookware. Some stay "vibrant" longer, but they're edge cases, and it's largely genetic. Look to your parents and aunts and uncles to augur your likely time frame. Mine were decrepit and foggy by 70.
So: spending is non-linear. And I'm therefore letting myself spend more, to enjoy a last hurrah. But I'm a bit late. It already feels tinny. A bit "not-for-me". By the time I'm 70 (perhaps sooner), the door will be closed. And my point is that you should budget for this. Maybe have more fun in your 50s (adjusting all these numbers to fit your family's decrepitude pattern, plus your own health situation).
Easier said than done! First, one must consider inflation, the primary concern in any fixed income situation. But living in a country with a modest economy means extremely low expenses, even though I'm heedless about signing up for streaming channels, enjoying tons of restaurant meals (they average €15 here!), and staying atop gadget upgrade cycles. My Apple and Siga investments did well, and a few others hit, too, so, given that 70 year-old me won't be splurging on champagne and fancy watches, I can ride out low to moderate inflation via belt tightening (e.g. save circa €100/month by cancelling streaming channels!). I will, however, hedge against severe inflation (see below).
As I write this, I realize I probably described a unicorn. "Investing success" + "very low spending" is surely a rare combination (though I'm no miser; I just had a bunch of matcha sent in from Japan!). So this regimen isn't for everyone—hell, it might not even turn out to be right for me!—but perhaps you'll find some chunk of it useful. Here's how I'm proceeding:
SWVXX—Schwab's Prime Money Market 25% of assets
Money market from Schwab. Strong yield, great liquidity.
Certificates of Deposits 30% of assets
FDIC protection, unlike the money market account. I will "ladder" them so they overlap, yielding cascading redemptions for purposes of liquidity and the chance to capture higher rates if they arise.
SCHP—Schwab's U.S. TIPS ETF 10% of assets
Treasury bonds. I'm paying a negligible fee for professional management and full liquidity rather than holding TIPS directly. Normally, this would occupy a much higher percentage in my mix, but political instability leaves me cautious about placing too much faith in US government credit. So I'm going easy on them. Also: I can tap into this pool for emergencies if needed.
FLOT—iShares' Floating Rate Bond ETF 5% of assets
This hedges rising rates, balancing my TIPS.
PIRMX—PIMCO's Inflation Response Multi-Asset Fund 15% of assets
My one (possibly) clever move. This is an expensive (steep 1.95% net expense ratio) but deeply tactical mutual fund. They do terribly smart and complicated things to hedge against inflation. This is not my airtight defense against any/all inflation, it's my catastrophic insurance policy in case of severe inflation, hopefully staving off the worst-case prospect of grubbing around for bugs and berries. Do not touch, ever!
Speculative Moonshot Stocks (biotechs and such)
Currently 15% of my assets. I'll gradually reduce it to 10%. These hedge against both inflation and market decline, because, if any hit, they'll hit hard regardless. They will also help keep things lively. If I'm going to have the portfolio of a decrepit old man, at least I'll also hold some lottery tickets.
Friday, July 18, 2025
What Do Humans Do All Day: A Taxonomy of Posing
A loose collection of notes gathered in the hope of achieving a broader view.
Personality Cloning
From my posting "Highly Imitative Aliens":Skinner Boxes
From my posting "A Tale of Two Chickens":Pattern Matching
Humans treat other humans like ornithologists treat birds. We glance at coloring, and at wings and beaks, and feel like we know. This, of course, is category error. Humans are not birds. Though our plumage might indeed communicate something, it's certainly never the last word. But we curate internal spreadsheets full of snap judgements—"this means that"— based on superficial parameters. Also: based on abstractions—if you're wealthy or smiley or Moslem, it means that.
From my posting "Highly Imitative Aliens":
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. People never feel more expressively uniquely themselves than when they're being most flagrantly clone-ish. That's how the millions driving VW bugs or listening to "indie rock" manage to feel fiercely nonconformist. "I'm a free-thinking type! One of those!"
From my posting "A Tale of Two Chickens":
A Skinner Box is any setup rewarding "good" behavior and punishing "bad" behavior. If you imagine that humans have transcended the animal kingdom, start looking for Skinner Boxes in the animal world (e.g. reproduction = good = reward; not sleeping/eating/drinking = bad = punishment), and you'll find that every damned one of them not only engages humans but absolutely captivates us. The shitty reward pellets are THE GREATEST THING EVER ("Go Cubs!!!").From "Exiting the Skinner Box"
Whenever we find ourselves in Skinner Boxes - as we do a zillion times per day - we instinctively strive for the cookie, and avoid the electric shock. We're no fools. We know how the game's played.
If you pay close attention, you'll notice the reward is always chintzy (which explains why humans are "never satisfied") and the punishment is always oversold (which is why the worrying is always worse than the actuality).
The chicken, trained to endlessly hit the button which rewards with a corn pellet (and not the one which punishes via mild shock), thinks it's just killin' it.
Humans treat other humans like ornithologists treat birds. We glance at coloring, and at wings and beaks, and feel like we know. This, of course, is category error. Humans are not birds. Though our plumage might indeed communicate something, it's certainly never the last word. But we curate internal spreadsheets full of snap judgements—"this means that"— based on superficial parameters. Also: based on abstractions—if you're wealthy or smiley or Moslem, it means that.
Pattern matching isn't just a sloppy first pass. It most often "sticks". Shockingly scant attention is paid to the individuality of individuals, or even acknowledgement that such consideration is warranted. Few notice the gap.
Pattern matching doesn't just inform our reality; it establishes it. So when someone fails to epitomize their apparent characteristics, they’re blamed. "Why are you not matching your pattern?"
From my posting Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You:Tripwires
This is pattern matching with alarms set. Certain words and ideas trigger tripwires. Anyone using any such language becomes, first and foremost, A Speaker Of Those Words, with utter disregard for their intention, context, or track record. The pattern is matched, the bell rings, and they suddenly disappear into a category.
From my posting "Sticks & Stones":Face-In-Hole Board
Few can resist a snapshot with their face appearing within a hole in a board painted to assume the persona of a super hero, medieval knight, etc. "Hey, look! I'm a farmer! It's me doing that thing!"
"It's me doing that thing!" is what the world is about. That's the core presumption, distilled to its essence.
And it baffles me, because I've never felt the impulse to grab such a snapshot, even while actually doing the thing. I'm not a seemer. My satisfaction comes from doing things, not from seeming like a thing-doer.
Most legit body builders, despite their physiques, are still skinny kids at heart, still sticking their heads into face holes and shouting "Hey, look!" Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.
N.B.: Astoundingly, we view Impostor Syndrome as a malady. To me, it seems like the gateway to sanity. A glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel vision. A softly buzzing bedside alarm clock.
Rich People's Problems
I don't have to explain this one. We all know what it is.
And that amazes me. Why is it so easily grokked? You'd expect people, lost in self-dramatization, to ask "What do you mean?" and to deny they'd ever do any such thing. But our clear recognition of this—and our willingness to sheepishly confess our tendencies—suggests that, at some level, we always knew how performative this all was.
The only thing we miss is that virtually all our problems are "Rich People's Problems". If you ask a modern First Worlder what their great-grandfather might make of any given dilemma or disappointment, it's hard to imagine any response but an amused chortle.
So what do humans do all day? The above. Mostly that stuff. And, sure, they all bleed into each other. These are just some of the most prominent buckets.
One commonality: all involve poses. But the term "pose" is far too thin to stretch across such vast terrain. For fish, "swimming" is not some distinct activity.
Posing—in all these ways and more—isn't something we do. It's all we do, virtually all the time. We have some distant notion of what it might mean to Be Real, but it quickly turns glorious. The prospect of not-being-completely-full-of-shit compels us into a reverent hush—a brush with God-fearing mystery. I once noted that the term “soul” was invented by poseurs to identify the mysterious and unobservable part that’s not posing.
If we direct attention to the relentless posing, we might eke out a sliver of distance. And once we realize how we pose, and how much we pose, posing becomes something we watch ourselves do. The observer coolly steps back, and perspective arises. The birth of wisdom? Nah, just dropping character. A subtraction, not a power-up.
In time, you identify more with the watcher than with the (hilariously flimsy) contrivance. This reframing is the gateway to a higher perspective that is delightfully bulletproof. But the final key is to behold a world of posing poseurs without superiority, or adolescent sneering. Both, after all, are just more posing. Best of all is a blithe shrug and some bemused participation. Hopefully less frantic.
In "Why God Lets Bad Things Happen", I wrote that "The solution is to wear it all much more lightly, and to remember that the rollercoasters are merely rides (we waited on line!), not oppressors."
Pattern matching doesn't just inform our reality; it establishes it. So when someone fails to epitomize their apparent characteristics, they’re blamed. "Why are you not matching your pattern?"
From my posting Seemers Always Win: Posing as Someone Like You:
Whenever I meet someone new who recognizes "Chowhound" if it comes up in discussion, I always get the same disbelieving reaction:
Huh? Hold on. That was you? YOU?!?
At this point, I stop the conversation and beg the bewildered, skeptical person to explain what, exactly, they expected. It's not that I'm being defensive or confrontational. It's that I genuinely don't know how a Jim Leff is supposed to look or act! No one ever taught me how to act like someone like me!
...
I never receive a satisfactory answer. It's not that they expected me to travel with a security team, or to address them with smug condescension. They don't have any particular image in mind. Just certainly not that.
This is pattern matching with alarms set. Certain words and ideas trigger tripwires. Anyone using any such language becomes, first and foremost, A Speaker Of Those Words, with utter disregard for their intention, context, or track record. The pattern is matched, the bell rings, and they suddenly disappear into a category.
From my posting "Sticks & Stones":
As a professional writer, I have a shrinking palette of expressible thoughts and a growing pile of taboo words and phrases (which can't even be used to express "nice" things, because everyone's blindly pattern-matching so they can point-and-shriek at deviants).
...
Thirty years of socially electrocuting anyone saying "nigger" in any context and with any intent has not tamped down actual racism one iota. It's a failed experiment.
Few can resist a snapshot with their face appearing within a hole in a board painted to assume the persona of a super hero, medieval knight, etc. "Hey, look! I'm a farmer! It's me doing that thing!"
"It's me doing that thing!" is what the world is about. That's the core presumption, distilled to its essence.
And it baffles me, because I've never felt the impulse to grab such a snapshot, even while actually doing the thing. I'm not a seemer. My satisfaction comes from doing things, not from seeming like a thing-doer.
Most legit body builders, despite their physiques, are still skinny kids at heart, still sticking their heads into face holes and shouting "Hey, look!" Most singers become singers because they want to be singers, not because they want to sing.
N.B.: Astoundingly, we view Impostor Syndrome as a malady. To me, it seems like the gateway to sanity. A glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel vision. A softly buzzing bedside alarm clock.
I don't have to explain this one. We all know what it is.
And that amazes me. Why is it so easily grokked? You'd expect people, lost in self-dramatization, to ask "What do you mean?" and to deny they'd ever do any such thing. But our clear recognition of this—and our willingness to sheepishly confess our tendencies—suggests that, at some level, we always knew how performative this all was.
The only thing we miss is that virtually all our problems are "Rich People's Problems". If you ask a modern First Worlder what their great-grandfather might make of any given dilemma or disappointment, it's hard to imagine any response but an amused chortle.
So what do humans do all day? The above. Mostly that stuff. And, sure, they all bleed into each other. These are just some of the most prominent buckets.
One commonality: all involve poses. But the term "pose" is far too thin to stretch across such vast terrain. For fish, "swimming" is not some distinct activity.
Posing—in all these ways and more—isn't something we do. It's all we do, virtually all the time. We have some distant notion of what it might mean to Be Real, but it quickly turns glorious. The prospect of not-being-completely-full-of-shit compels us into a reverent hush—a brush with God-fearing mystery. I once noted that the term “soul” was invented by poseurs to identify the mysterious and unobservable part that’s not posing.
If we direct attention to the relentless posing, we might eke out a sliver of distance. And once we realize how we pose, and how much we pose, posing becomes something we watch ourselves do. The observer coolly steps back, and perspective arises. The birth of wisdom? Nah, just dropping character. A subtraction, not a power-up.
In time, you identify more with the watcher than with the (hilariously flimsy) contrivance. This reframing is the gateway to a higher perspective that is delightfully bulletproof. But the final key is to behold a world of posing poseurs without superiority, or adolescent sneering. Both, after all, are just more posing. Best of all is a blithe shrug and some bemused participation. Hopefully less frantic.
In "Why God Lets Bad Things Happen", I wrote that "The solution is to wear it all much more lightly, and to remember that the rollercoasters are merely rides (we waited on line!), not oppressors."
Wednesday, July 16, 2025
Well-Meaning Guys Under Siege
Chowhound was racking up $300/month in data transference surcharges, and I didn't have it. Our massive popularity was straining the rented server, and we were forced to pay for it.
I needed to devise some profit streams, and fast, so I supervised design and execution of a line of t-shirts and tchotchkes such as the Chowhound Passport—sliding cards reading "Give me the real stuff, not the tourist stuff" in eight languages to show one's waiter. Plus a bundle of newsletters which I'd edit and distribute in my spare time.
A thousand passports arrived, to my surprise, unassembled. They needed to be laboriously folded and glued. I threw a party for some friends to help assemble them. In an ideal world, I'd have plied them with great food and drink, but all I could swing was beer and chips. Anyway, we assembled just 100. Not nearly enough.
One attendee sighed and volunteered to tackle the rest as a Zen exercise in gracious patience. A week later, she handed me back 900 passports, ready to go. And of course I thanked her, but not, like, a LOT. And I didn't subsequently include her in my life—because even my best friends weren't included in my life, which was crammed full of seven full time unpaid jobs (while desperately trying to make rent on the side). It was clearly non-viable, but I didn't want to disappoint a million nice people by shutting down that monstrous albatross of a website.
I sold the operation a few years later, and, a year after that, the corporate machinery spat me out like a lead slug, and then there was recuperation and then various ingenious and heartfelt ventures which all drew vacant stares. Decades were passing. I'd tried reconnecting with old friends, but they'd all moved on. A few were jealous, most just indifferent. And I never reapproached this person. So much time had gone by.
Relatable, right? If so, it's only because I've convincingly shared the framing of a well-meaning guy under siege. But imagine the perspective of that other person.
I've written all this to share one single nugget of insight you might want to bear in mind: Well-meaning guys under siege can look like assholes.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
I needed to devise some profit streams, and fast, so I supervised design and execution of a line of t-shirts and tchotchkes such as the Chowhound Passport—sliding cards reading "Give me the real stuff, not the tourist stuff" in eight languages to show one's waiter. Plus a bundle of newsletters which I'd edit and distribute in my spare time.
A thousand passports arrived, to my surprise, unassembled. They needed to be laboriously folded and glued. I threw a party for some friends to help assemble them. In an ideal world, I'd have plied them with great food and drink, but all I could swing was beer and chips. Anyway, we assembled just 100. Not nearly enough.
One attendee sighed and volunteered to tackle the rest as a Zen exercise in gracious patience. A week later, she handed me back 900 passports, ready to go. And of course I thanked her, but not, like, a LOT. And I didn't subsequently include her in my life—because even my best friends weren't included in my life, which was crammed full of seven full time unpaid jobs (while desperately trying to make rent on the side). It was clearly non-viable, but I didn't want to disappoint a million nice people by shutting down that monstrous albatross of a website.
I sold the operation a few years later, and, a year after that, the corporate machinery spat me out like a lead slug, and then there was recuperation and then various ingenious and heartfelt ventures which all drew vacant stares. Decades were passing. I'd tried reconnecting with old friends, but they'd all moved on. A few were jealous, most just indifferent. And I never reapproached this person. So much time had gone by.
Relatable, right? If so, it's only because I've convincingly shared the framing of a well-meaning guy under siege. But imagine the perspective of that other person.
I've written all this to share one single nugget of insight you might want to bear in mind: Well-meaning guys under siege can look like assholes.
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence."
Tuesday, July 15, 2025
Proof of Concept
If you've been reading this Slog for some time, and want to check whether it's benefited you in any tangible way, watch this 2 minute Instagram video of Ezra Klein explaining something that lots of people find surprising and mysterious. A new way of parsing people's inner workings.
Maybe it won't feel quite so shocking and mysterious for you. See if you have a slightly shrewder understanding of the basis for this than your average Joe.
Maybe it won't feel quite so shocking and mysterious for you. See if you have a slightly shrewder understanding of the basis for this than your average Joe.
Sunday, July 13, 2025
Analogies are Lost Technology
We can’t make analogies anymore. They are essentially "Lost Technology"—familiar to our ancestors but now mysterious to us.
The problem is, everyone expects them to work sideways.
Example:
In the 17th century, uneducated peasants eagerly digested Shakespeare’s fancy, subtle wordplay. In 2025, analogy seems like a shiny semantic monolith that mostly just spooks the apes.
I once noted that we also can't make reasonable generalizations if they might rub a single reader the wrong way. For example, you can't get away with this now:
The problem is, everyone expects them to work sideways.
Example:
Person A: “Telling me (considering my weirdly loud voice) that I need to “speak up” is like telling Michael Jordan he needs to practice his layups!”Try using an analogy, and some shithead will tilt it sideways and smugly declare rhetorical victory. An onlooker might vaguely frown, sensing something's off but unable to say what. That lingering doubt is all that's left.
Person B: “So you’re comparing yourself to Michael Jordan, huh?”
In the 17th century, uneducated peasants eagerly digested Shakespeare’s fancy, subtle wordplay. In 2025, analogy seems like a shiny semantic monolith that mostly just spooks the apes.
I once noted that we also can't make reasonable generalizations if they might rub a single reader the wrong way. For example, you can't get away with this now:
Tall people tend to dislike small cars.There is 100% certainty someone will angrily lash back:
I'm tall, and I'm perfectly fine with small cars!Hedging terms don't help at all, e.g. "Deaf people often wear hearing aids," or "Many children enjoy spaghetti."
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Restaurant Chairs and the Secret of Human Existence
Sheer speculation based on knowledge of human nature: What percentage of restaurateurs would you suppose actually try sitting in the chairs they buy for their restaurant? Let's leave out the 15% top-end fanciest ones who are well-trained to consider comfort.
I'd guess 25%. (ChatGPT, which makes a great sounding board if you don't lead it with your own guess, guessed 35%)
And how much more future success would you imagine that fraction will have with their restaurants? I guessed "considerable". (Without leading the chatbot, it guessed the same.)
The observation sheds light on foundational truths behind some unexplained phenomena.
"Grandma's chicken soup is soulful because she cooked it with love" is a nice plummy saying for a wall hanging. But let's say it straight: Grandma doesn’t utilize accepted procedures with approved ingredients to meet soup adequacy thresholds. No, grandma gives an actual fuck.
And not just as some abstract principle, but she maintains that framing. The soup eater matters, so every onion is cut, and every stir is executed, with an unshakeable connection to the eater. "People I care about will sit in this chair. I (viscerally!) want them (need them!) to feel a certain way. So I keep asking: how will it seem for them?"
It’s not florid love. It’s simple empathy.
Why are some things so viscerally good? Why do wholes occasionally exceed the sum of their parts? And when they do, why can't the result be replicated by following a formula or recipe? Rote formula-followers get dull results because it's never, ever, about how it all seems for the other person.
This explains one of the most mysterious chunks of the human experience. And, practically speaking, it's a framing that works beautifully as an all-purpose tool for doing life: GIVE A CRAP. DON'T TREAT EVERYTHING/ANYTHING AS A DRY ABSTRACTION. DRINK YOUR OWN LEMONADE. CONSIDER THE OTHER GUY'S EXPERIENCE AND FRAMING.
And don't make it theater, where you stoke an image as Mr. Thoughtful who cares so very deeply. Don't be a silly peacock. Just actually do it.
Simply flip your framing, and hold there: "How will it all seem for THEM?" That's the ballgame. You won't just be ensuring good results; you'll make yourself a stoker of magic—a vastly better proposition than working blindly to spec like an insentient robot.
If your situational awareness sucks—if you can't even register the existence of The Other, much less inhabit their perspective—don't open a restaurant. In fact, don't do anything. Just go away.
I'd guess 25%. (ChatGPT, which makes a great sounding board if you don't lead it with your own guess, guessed 35%)
And how much more future success would you imagine that fraction will have with their restaurants? I guessed "considerable". (Without leading the chatbot, it guessed the same.)
The observation sheds light on foundational truths behind some unexplained phenomena.
"Grandma's chicken soup is soulful because she cooked it with love" is a nice plummy saying for a wall hanging. But let's say it straight: Grandma doesn’t utilize accepted procedures with approved ingredients to meet soup adequacy thresholds. No, grandma gives an actual fuck.
And not just as some abstract principle, but she maintains that framing. The soup eater matters, so every onion is cut, and every stir is executed, with an unshakeable connection to the eater. "People I care about will sit in this chair. I (viscerally!) want them (need them!) to feel a certain way. So I keep asking: how will it seem for them?"
It’s not florid love. It’s simple empathy.
Why are some things so viscerally good? Why do wholes occasionally exceed the sum of their parts? And when they do, why can't the result be replicated by following a formula or recipe? Rote formula-followers get dull results because it's never, ever, about how it all seems for the other person.
This explains one of the most mysterious chunks of the human experience. And, practically speaking, it's a framing that works beautifully as an all-purpose tool for doing life: GIVE A CRAP. DON'T TREAT EVERYTHING/ANYTHING AS A DRY ABSTRACTION. DRINK YOUR OWN LEMONADE. CONSIDER THE OTHER GUY'S EXPERIENCE AND FRAMING.
And don't make it theater, where you stoke an image as Mr. Thoughtful who cares so very deeply. Don't be a silly peacock. Just actually do it.
Simply flip your framing, and hold there: "How will it all seem for THEM?" That's the ballgame. You won't just be ensuring good results; you'll make yourself a stoker of magic—a vastly better proposition than working blindly to spec like an insentient robot.
If your situational awareness sucks—if you can't even register the existence of The Other, much less inhabit their perspective—don't open a restaurant. In fact, don't do anything. Just go away.
Monday, June 30, 2025
Secular Zen with Bourgeois Teeth
A section of my recent posting, "Hell in a Chaise", was bugging me, so I edited it. It now reads:
It agreed, noting that my version is "more culturally fluent in neurosis." I was, it decided, offering "Secular Zen with Bourgeois Teeth," which I said I'd use when people ask me what I write about ("Oh, you know, secular Zen with bourgeois teeth, etc.")
The chatbot suggested tagging on "also: tacos" for a complete description of what I do.
I couldn't argue.
Put a rich person in a luxurious chaise longue before a million dollar view, wave palm fronds so he's not too warm, adjust his umbrella so it's just sunny enough, swathe him in tanning lotion because his dermatologist says he's extra susceptible, massage his feet, ply him with snacks and cooling drinks, and attend to every last desire, fear, preference, and whimsy—and he'll torture himself over that awful thing his third grade teacher said to him once. He'll dig into his bag of go-to bitter lozenges to find some way to ballast his happiness.I asked ChatGPT to proofread, and noted that that final sentence was a modern take on the Hsin Hsin Ming (aka Verses on the Faith Mind by The 3rd Zen Patriarch, Sengstau).
Let his glass remain empty for a moment or two, and he’ll find it even easier to reframe himself into Hell. There are myriad routes to misery when non-delight parses as persecution.
It agreed, noting that my version is "more culturally fluent in neurosis." I was, it decided, offering "Secular Zen with Bourgeois Teeth," which I said I'd use when people ask me what I write about ("Oh, you know, secular Zen with bourgeois teeth, etc.")
The chatbot suggested tagging on "also: tacos" for a complete description of what I do.
I couldn't argue.
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Coaxing Reframing
Me: The food here is often salty.
Waiter: I've never heard that before.
Me: That's the last time you can say that!
It wasn’t just a sly comeback. His world shifted (very slightly) when I gave my feedback—but he didn’t notice.
The follow-up made him register it. And registration is everything.
Waiter: I've never heard that before.
Me: That's the last time you can say that!
It wasn’t just a sly comeback. His world shifted (very slightly) when I gave my feedback—but he didn’t notice.
The follow-up made him register it. And registration is everything.
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Acceptance is Not Approval
I learned an important lesson one week when I had a cookie at 2pm on Monday, a cookie at 2pm on Tuesday, and, at 2pm on Wednesday, experienced an overwhelming physical urge for a cookie. Like I was being pushed into it.
This was both highly interesting and incredibly unsurprising. Our minds and bodies are usually just trying to oblige us, based on patterns of behavior or of attention-paying. It's just like TikTok showing us lots of squirrel videos because that's what we've previously clicked on. The mind functions as an algorithm, surfacing whatever has sparked interest. And it even thoughtfully factors in your scheduling patterns.
So it wasn't my body dragging me along, trying to satisfy its base yearnings. My body is not my oppressor, but more like an eager poodle taught to expect a walk every morning. I trained it that way, and can just as easily train it some other way. This is a whole other way to think about habits—a far more helpful framing than the standard talk of discipline and self-denial.
It's the same with suffering and grieving.
If the memory of your dear deceased parakeet Henry keeps popping up, it's not your mind dragging you through a painful process of grieving. It's that you've devoted lots of recent attention to Henry, so the "algorithm" (so to speak) keeps offering heart-wrenching trips through the The Sad Tale of Henry, and if you keep opting in, soon every icon on your mental screen will be some slant or other on that theme.
Henry isn't calling to you from your imagination any more than the cookies are. You've established a pattern of focusing attention, so your mind keeps offering more of same. Just like TikTok offering squirrel videos.
There's one big problem. We are convinced, as a society, that we need to think about bad stuff a lot, because if we gloss over it, the very worst thing might happen: REPRESSION. We obsess over loss and tragedy because we've been told it's a long, arduous process. It has filtered down from the mountaintops of psychotherapy that we must "accept" before we can move on.
Here's where we screw this up (tremendously): "Accept" doesn't mean "approve". We have developed a societal habit of waiting for a feeling of approval, which will never arrive, because Henry was a hell of a parakeet, so we'll naturally always be sad. How have we managed to convince ourselves that we must approve of misfortune? Talk about being set up for failure!
Humans don't require optimal conditions and unblemished delight for proper functioning. In fact, we're built for loss. Not to approve of it, but to accept it and move on. The hazards of repression arise when we neurotically deny loss, death, failure, etc. We might hover in foggy denial, or seal off the thought. In such instances, we need to take time to really think things through. That's the "acceptance" threshold, and it's a low bar!
Over-grieving invites perils more daunting than dreaded repression. What's worse, after all, than getting caught in a vicious circle of obsessive misery?
If you know what happened, and clearly acknowledge what happened, and some sort of emotional response has landed, then you've accepted. You are free to move on...unless you’re attached to sad stories (probably to ballast your happiness).
See also Grief Survival Kit
This was both highly interesting and incredibly unsurprising. Our minds and bodies are usually just trying to oblige us, based on patterns of behavior or of attention-paying. It's just like TikTok showing us lots of squirrel videos because that's what we've previously clicked on. The mind functions as an algorithm, surfacing whatever has sparked interest. And it even thoughtfully factors in your scheduling patterns.
So it wasn't my body dragging me along, trying to satisfy its base yearnings. My body is not my oppressor, but more like an eager poodle taught to expect a walk every morning. I trained it that way, and can just as easily train it some other way. This is a whole other way to think about habits—a far more helpful framing than the standard talk of discipline and self-denial.
It's the same with suffering and grieving.
If the memory of your dear deceased parakeet Henry keeps popping up, it's not your mind dragging you through a painful process of grieving. It's that you've devoted lots of recent attention to Henry, so the "algorithm" (so to speak) keeps offering heart-wrenching trips through the The Sad Tale of Henry, and if you keep opting in, soon every icon on your mental screen will be some slant or other on that theme.
Henry isn't calling to you from your imagination any more than the cookies are. You've established a pattern of focusing attention, so your mind keeps offering more of same. Just like TikTok offering squirrel videos.
There's one big problem. We are convinced, as a society, that we need to think about bad stuff a lot, because if we gloss over it, the very worst thing might happen: REPRESSION. We obsess over loss and tragedy because we've been told it's a long, arduous process. It has filtered down from the mountaintops of psychotherapy that we must "accept" before we can move on.
Here's where we screw this up (tremendously): "Accept" doesn't mean "approve". We have developed a societal habit of waiting for a feeling of approval, which will never arrive, because Henry was a hell of a parakeet, so we'll naturally always be sad. How have we managed to convince ourselves that we must approve of misfortune? Talk about being set up for failure!
Humans don't require optimal conditions and unblemished delight for proper functioning. In fact, we're built for loss. Not to approve of it, but to accept it and move on. The hazards of repression arise when we neurotically deny loss, death, failure, etc. We might hover in foggy denial, or seal off the thought. In such instances, we need to take time to really think things through. That's the "acceptance" threshold, and it's a low bar!
Over-grieving invites perils more daunting than dreaded repression. What's worse, after all, than getting caught in a vicious circle of obsessive misery?
If you know what happened, and clearly acknowledge what happened, and some sort of emotional response has landed, then you've accepted. You are free to move on...unless you’re attached to sad stories (probably to ballast your happiness).
There is no shortage of sad stories to grab at. Me, I'll never play with the NY Knicks, and the only reason I'm not weeping as I type that is because I've opted out of marination in the lament. I haven't made my life revolve around it, becoming That Guy With The Dashed Basketball Dreams. Oh, and don't get me started on the woman in the green crushed velvet dress with whom I exchanged soulful glances in 1992 but was too shy to follow up with. Having opted out of freezing attention on sad tales, they don't often pop up on my mental dashboard.
Not repression. Having accepted, I declined perpetual marination.Modern grievers keep endlessly running the scenario ("My beloved parakeet has been forever silenced!"), hoping to reach an approval point where it no longer makes them sad. But that's not how it works. You're just training the algorithm. And as you train, so shall you reap.
Notes:
1. We grieve very differently than people in previous centuries. It's partially because they were tougher. But I think it's also because this terrible misunderstanding of "acceptance" went viral in the mid 20th century after the rise of psychotherapy, which scared us about "repression" to the point where we make ourselves miserable waiting for an impossible level of approval that was never the benchmark (i.e. loss never comes to feel terrific...and that's okay).
2. Contemporary psychotherapists seem to share the misapprehension, and urge an overzealous and unrealistic notion of "acceptance". They've lost the thread.
3. This comes at a moment when we are more entitled than ever. We feel we deserve an unblemished world experience, and are like princesses increasingly vexed by smaller and smaller mattress peas. The terror of "repression", which drives compulsive over-marination re: shortfall, is a particularly toxic addition to our psychic landscape.
4. More on how "Your Body's Just Trying to Accommodate You"
See also Grief Survival Kit
Sunday, June 22, 2025
Thursday, June 19, 2025
Should
Not "must", like everywhere else. Should.
Miniscule cultural differences are the important cultural differences.
This message is brought to you by the First Church of Nano-Aesthetics.
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Hell in a Chaise
To poor people (I mean actual poor people, not the merely rich folks Americans consider poor), the daily lives of rich people look like this:
Poor people never experience any of this. They make do without blankets or fine food; they're hardly gauging whether they're warm, cold, or uncomfortable. Vacations don't happen, fine things are for other people, and they do whatever their doctor says, assuming they can afford one. It never occurred to them to chase optimality.
This explains why rich people seem like frightful basket cases of petty complaints. "Why isn't there a blanket? I hate this food! It's too warm/cold! This chair is uncomfortable! I hate this vacation, and I own so many fine things that I lack room to store them. And shlepping around to doctors is a nightmare!"
Put a rich person in a luxurious chaise longue before a million dollar view, wave palm fronds so he's not too warm, adjust his umbrella so it's just sunny enough, swathe him in tanning lotion because his dermatologist says he's extra susceptible, massage his feet, ply him with snacks and cooling drinks, and attend to every last desire, fear, preference, and whimsy—and he'll torture himself over that awful thing his third grade teacher said to him once. He'll dig into his bag of go-to bitter lozenges to find some way to ballast his happiness.
Let his glass remain empty for a moment or two, and he’ll find it even easier to reframe himself into Hell. There are myriad routes to misery when non-delight parses as persecution.
Poor people are not some other species. They're rich people in larval form, with all neuroses latently present. This explains why every one of them yearns and aches to be rich.
For those who didn't click the first link, which means they read the above from within the bizarre class dysmorphia that makes Americans self-frame as non-rich, here's the essay:
"Would you like a blanket?"...and so on, ad infinitum. Even if there's not some person offering these things, the thought process runs eternally: "How is this moment not completely optimal?"
"Would you like some food?"
"Are you too warm? Too cold?"
"Would you like a more comfortable chair?"
"Would you like to go on a vacation?"
"Would you like to buy these fine things?"
"Would you like a medical second opinion?"
Poor people never experience any of this. They make do without blankets or fine food; they're hardly gauging whether they're warm, cold, or uncomfortable. Vacations don't happen, fine things are for other people, and they do whatever their doctor says, assuming they can afford one. It never occurred to them to chase optimality.
This explains why rich people seem like frightful basket cases of petty complaints. "Why isn't there a blanket? I hate this food! It's too warm/cold! This chair is uncomfortable! I hate this vacation, and I own so many fine things that I lack room to store them. And shlepping around to doctors is a nightmare!"
Put a rich person in a luxurious chaise longue before a million dollar view, wave palm fronds so he's not too warm, adjust his umbrella so it's just sunny enough, swathe him in tanning lotion because his dermatologist says he's extra susceptible, massage his feet, ply him with snacks and cooling drinks, and attend to every last desire, fear, preference, and whimsy—and he'll torture himself over that awful thing his third grade teacher said to him once. He'll dig into his bag of go-to bitter lozenges to find some way to ballast his happiness.
Let his glass remain empty for a moment or two, and he’ll find it even easier to reframe himself into Hell. There are myriad routes to misery when non-delight parses as persecution.
Poor people are not some other species. They're rich people in larval form, with all neuroses latently present. This explains why every one of them yearns and aches to be rich.
For those who didn't click the first link, which means they read the above from within the bizarre class dysmorphia that makes Americans self-frame as non-rich, here's the essay:
Rich, Richer, Richest
Rich - No risk of death from curable disease; hunger rare and minor; lavish portfolio of modern comforts/conveniences/entertainments; days off; personal possessions; car owner (or access to mass transit).
Soccer Mom Rich - Overabundance of possessions and food seems like a negative; vacations; spare time for hobbies; savings.
Dentist Rich - Late model car; investments; parking garages; frequent $20 meals and infrequent $50 meals.
Lawyer Rich - Occasional business class; fancy car; hires people for jobs they could do themselves.
Entrepreneur Rich - Business class; prestige car; default question is "do I really need?" rather than "can I afford?". Children financially assured.
The "Rich" in America (what we here call "the working poor") enjoy a lifestyle of comfort, health, security, and entertainment beyond the imagining of aristocrats of past centuries, and are the envy of most people in the Third World today (though, even there, extreme poverty is down almost 26% over a mere 25 years).
Sunday, June 15, 2025
The Royal Boudoir
Women are famously exasperated by men's failure to lower the toilet seat after using the bathroom.
But if it's so important to them, why don't they remember to do it themselves? Either way, someone needs to remember. So why should the person with no personal stake in the outcome bear all the responsibility?
It's the same phenomenon as the sushi lady and psycho pollyannna:
But if it's so important to them, why don't they remember to do it themselves? Either way, someone needs to remember. So why should the person with no personal stake in the outcome bear all the responsibility?
It's the same phenomenon as the sushi lady and psycho pollyannna:
"I am both superior and fragile. You must recognize my superiority while deftly overlooking my failure."
Saturday, June 14, 2025
The Desperate Preservation of Effortless Grace
A few weeks ago I wrote about a dinner where my companion wolfed down the entire meal in four minutes flat. I kindly, smilingly suggested she slow down and enjoy it, which earned me a snide, vicious text message the next day about how I'd made her feel like a pig.
What struck me was how insulted she was. If piggish eating is such an awful thing to consider, then...why eat like a pig?
What struck me was how insulted she was. If piggish eating is such an awful thing to consider, then...why eat like a pig?
If I'd hate to be thought of as someone with dirty hair, I'd shampoo daily. If I considered "stubbly" a disgusting epithet, I'd shave constantly. This is how we shape our existences, no? We take pains not to do the things that would make us doers of those things.I tried to break it down to the core conceit, but only now fully arrived:
...
Eating like a pig, if one doesn't mind being seen as a piggish eater, is a fully respectable choice. But the notion of maintaining an elegant feeling while eating disgustingly by taking prickly umbrage at any hint of an implication that one might take longer than three minutes to consume one's supper, that boggles my mind.
Just because she eats like a pig doesn't mean she's someone who'd eat like a pig.Ironically, I dissected this mindset many years ago in a post called "Always Talk to the Mask ", where I described a type of psycho one encounters while managing large groups:
Psycho Pollyannas [are] people who retain immutably lofty self-images as they do base and underhanded things. Their high-minded self-image is impervious to the abundant reality of their own behavior. For a laser-precise send-up of this mind-set, have a look at my all-time favorite Daily Show moment, a masterpiece of satire by Rob Corddry posing as a news analyst. Here's the money quote:Just because I eat like a pig doesn't mean I'm someone who'd eat like a pig!"There's no question that what took place in [Abu Ghraib] was horrible, but the Arab world has to realize that the U.S. shouldn't be judged on the actions of a...well, we shouldn't be judged on our actions. It's our principles that matter, our inspiring, abstract notions. Remember: just because torturing prisoners is something we did doesn't mean it's something we would do."One Psycho Pollyanna became a popular and trusted participant on Chowhound. The moderators received a tip that this person had been "shilling" (posting fake raves for operations in which one has a hidden interest), and much detective work ferreted out an enormous amount of the most brazen subversion. She'd spent vast energy to quietly but persistently stir up interest in businesses in which she or close friends had financial ties. The odd thing is that this person truly loved Chowhound. She'd been a regular for years, had befriended many of our users, had even chipped in. She genuinely applauded our values. It happens often, yet never fails to amaze, when those who appreciate and personally benefit from the honesty of a resource like Chowhound systematically seek to subvert that honesty. It's sort of like slashing all the tires in a parking lot and then expecting a ride home.
When confronted, she took vast umbrage. She blazed with righteous indignation. Her disconnection was palpable. Even though we clearly knew - and she knew we knew - everything she had done, and we had indisputable evidence, nothing could breach her upstanding self-image. And it was that veneer - that mask - which spat upon our accusation. There was no attempt to deny what she'd done, because she'd been caught red-handed, but in a battle between reality and self-image, self-image was the easy winner. Just because torturing prisoners is something we did doesn't mean it's something we would do.
....
We've seen a dozen or so cases much like this. And learned to handle them more carefully, though the fallout's always messy.
The real-world lesson I've learned from Psycho Pollyannas is that when you come across one (and you will, as they're out there in far greater plenitude than you'd imagine), you will get nowhere by addressing them as transgressors. They're unable to recognize themselves as such even with their noses pressed directly into their own moral effluvia - so they will genuinely perceive you as the villain. The thing to do is to address only the wholesome, self-righteous mask they present the world...and try to work from there. Because, having drunk their own Kool-Aid, the masks face inward as well as outward, and they quite truthfully can't see beyond the pose.
Thursday, June 12, 2025
Too Rich For Greed
In any otherwise interesting, albeit greasy, blog post, OpenAI founder Sam Altman wrote
Smart people actually say this. And it always leaves me gobsmacked.
As I keep saying, there are two paths to brilliance: 1. Be brilliant (forget it; I for one don't have it in me) or 2. Trim away some stupidity. It's never been a better time to be a stupidity trimmer. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. It's your big chance!
Fine. Let's pretend any of this is difficult, and show how blatant stupidity is blatantly stupid.
The Powell Doctrine says to never go to war without a clear attainable objective. But that's how we went into capitalism. It's all about "more", with no notion of "enough"; no finish line. Yet we keep expecting to see an end point. We figure that soon there'll be so much wealth that there'll be widespread satisfaction, shutting down the "more" imperative. Happy times!
People who believe this know how miserably empty most wealthy people are, and how they keep chasing MORE to fill their psychic void. Do we really need it explained that "enough" will never be a thing?
We had it figured out millennia ago (the ancient Greek tale of King Midas, or Ecclesiastes 5:10). The futility of "enough" should no longer surprise us, or spoil our plans. We should be planning around it!
If you wave a bloody steak at a dog, he'll desperately devour it, even if he's surrounded by all the meat in the world.
This isn't a Progressive rant about income inequality or the hated 1%. I slice it differently. To someone in Chiapas or Cambodia or Bangladesh, you—yes, you, reader!—evidently have "enough", yet you keep striving. You're not behind the "enough" line—you're miles past it. Yet you're not generous. Hardly anyone shares, despite the empathy theatrics.
But let's focus for a moment on the super-extra rich. Universal Basic Income would be the death of society if it ever happened. But it won't, because the wealthiest will never roll over and say "enough" as the AI bounty gushes in. If greed remained intact while sitting, for years, on more money than they could possibly spend, how would that change with EVEN MORE MONEY? C'mon!
When sheltered eggheads postulate societies working on philanthropy or other forms of sharing (Communism, Libertarianism, or the steady end state of Universal Basic Income), know that it's bullshit. Even if the proposal is in good faith (I'm not sure about Altman), greed will always intercede. A dog will not decline to furiously devour the bloody steak.
But I'm not just talking about the 1%. I'm talking about you. Look within yourself, at your mounting greed amid mounting wealth. This isn't a "them" thing, it's an "us" thing.
I know a guy with a super-progressive, super-chill deadhead business partner who claimed not to care about money. A business deal made them rich, and the chill partner transformed into a growling pit bull. He hadn't cared about money when he didn't have much, but the moment he got a windfall, he cared very very much indeed. He grabbed and elbowed and clutched and growled, and went completely out of his gourd not with pleasure but with greed. Fresh greed and bloody steaks!
There will be very hard parts like whole classes of jobs going away, but on the other hand the world will be getting so much richer so quickly that we’ll be able to seriously entertain new policy ideas we never could before."Soon the rich will be so rich that they'll see no need to get richer and they'll share!"
Smart people actually say this. And it always leaves me gobsmacked.
As I keep saying, there are two paths to brilliance: 1. Be brilliant (forget it; I for one don't have it in me) or 2. Trim away some stupidity. It's never been a better time to be a stupidity trimmer. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. It's your big chance!
Fine. Let's pretend any of this is difficult, and show how blatant stupidity is blatantly stupid.
The Powell Doctrine says to never go to war without a clear attainable objective. But that's how we went into capitalism. It's all about "more", with no notion of "enough"; no finish line. Yet we keep expecting to see an end point. We figure that soon there'll be so much wealth that there'll be widespread satisfaction, shutting down the "more" imperative. Happy times!
People who believe this know how miserably empty most wealthy people are, and how they keep chasing MORE to fill their psychic void. Do we really need it explained that "enough" will never be a thing?
We had it figured out millennia ago (the ancient Greek tale of King Midas, or Ecclesiastes 5:10). The futility of "enough" should no longer surprise us, or spoil our plans. We should be planning around it!
If you wave a bloody steak at a dog, he'll desperately devour it, even if he's surrounded by all the meat in the world.
This isn't a Progressive rant about income inequality or the hated 1%. I slice it differently. To someone in Chiapas or Cambodia or Bangladesh, you—yes, you, reader!—evidently have "enough", yet you keep striving. You're not behind the "enough" line—you're miles past it. Yet you're not generous. Hardly anyone shares, despite the empathy theatrics.
But let's focus for a moment on the super-extra rich. Universal Basic Income would be the death of society if it ever happened. But it won't, because the wealthiest will never roll over and say "enough" as the AI bounty gushes in. If greed remained intact while sitting, for years, on more money than they could possibly spend, how would that change with EVEN MORE MONEY? C'mon!
When sheltered eggheads postulate societies working on philanthropy or other forms of sharing (Communism, Libertarianism, or the steady end state of Universal Basic Income), know that it's bullshit. Even if the proposal is in good faith (I'm not sure about Altman), greed will always intercede. A dog will not decline to furiously devour the bloody steak.
But I'm not just talking about the 1%. I'm talking about you. Look within yourself, at your mounting greed amid mounting wealth. This isn't a "them" thing, it's an "us" thing.
I know a guy with a super-progressive, super-chill deadhead business partner who claimed not to care about money. A business deal made them rich, and the chill partner transformed into a growling pit bull. He hadn't cared about money when he didn't have much, but the moment he got a windfall, he cared very very much indeed. He grabbed and elbowed and clutched and growled, and went completely out of his gourd not with pleasure but with greed. Fresh greed and bloody steaks!
Wednesday, June 11, 2025
The Pee-Wee Herman Documentary
I seem to have a unique take on the new Pee-Wee Herman documentary on HBO/MAX.
It just confirmed my preconceptions. He was a not-super-deep guy who scratched his way to the top with classic LA showbiz monomania, milking an annoying character for every drop of fame and fortune—but also, to his great credit, applying boundless workmanship and imagination to the task. Underneath? The sort of nowheresville dude who'd jerk off in porn theaters. Idunno, that was pretty much my take going in, and the film didn't change anything.
I'm told I was supposed to sob uncontrollably at his phoned-in deathbed statement, but I saw that it was his method of commandeering the movie to his control and terms, after all. He knew, given the timing, that it would be played unedited and unframed. That chunk ("I'm not a pedophile", which, fwiw, I believe) was the entire point of the whole project for him, and he set it like a jeweler. But the director was too wishy-washy (and showbiz monomaniacal) to clock the nuance.
I'm not disgusted by ambition, but neither do I find it heart-warming. Good on him for his work ethic, and I know lots of people loved the character. Other than that, he had career ups and downs, like everybody.
To digress, sex-offense laws are crazily over-reaching, because, politically, there is no pushback. Nobody would ever dare argue the other way. Politicians trip over each other to propose ever more draconian measures. See David Feige's film "Untouchable". I'm not sure, however, that "I should be allowed to collect anything I want to!" was his best possible statement to the public under the circumstances.
In fact, I'll go a step further. I think the reason he kept his cancer a tight secret for six years was to heighten the shock and impact of his death to ensure maximal impact from the dramatic deathbed voicemail. It sounds unimaginably contrived and manipulative, but his life was nothing but unflagging contrivance and manipulation invested in the storylines he created. This was just more of that.
It would have been great if the documentary director had the sophistication to notice, and to weave this recursion into the film, which then might have been great rather than a sordid true Hollywood tale. But I suppose he was chosen for his lack of sophistication, ensuring he'd deliver Reuben's package cleanly and without nuance.
I will stop short of suggesting that Reubens slept on an asbestos pillow to give himself the cancer to set up the opportunity to ensure the impact for the carefully selected and pre-tenderized director to deliver the package.
But only just barely.
It just confirmed my preconceptions. He was a not-super-deep guy who scratched his way to the top with classic LA showbiz monomania, milking an annoying character for every drop of fame and fortune—but also, to his great credit, applying boundless workmanship and imagination to the task. Underneath? The sort of nowheresville dude who'd jerk off in porn theaters. Idunno, that was pretty much my take going in, and the film didn't change anything.
I'm told I was supposed to sob uncontrollably at his phoned-in deathbed statement, but I saw that it was his method of commandeering the movie to his control and terms, after all. He knew, given the timing, that it would be played unedited and unframed. That chunk ("I'm not a pedophile", which, fwiw, I believe) was the entire point of the whole project for him, and he set it like a jeweler. But the director was too wishy-washy (and showbiz monomaniacal) to clock the nuance.
I'm not disgusted by ambition, but neither do I find it heart-warming. Good on him for his work ethic, and I know lots of people loved the character. Other than that, he had career ups and downs, like everybody.
To digress, sex-offense laws are crazily over-reaching, because, politically, there is no pushback. Nobody would ever dare argue the other way. Politicians trip over each other to propose ever more draconian measures. See David Feige's film "Untouchable". I'm not sure, however, that "I should be allowed to collect anything I want to!" was his best possible statement to the public under the circumstances.
In fact, I'll go a step further. I think the reason he kept his cancer a tight secret for six years was to heighten the shock and impact of his death to ensure maximal impact from the dramatic deathbed voicemail. It sounds unimaginably contrived and manipulative, but his life was nothing but unflagging contrivance and manipulation invested in the storylines he created. This was just more of that.
It would have been great if the documentary director had the sophistication to notice, and to weave this recursion into the film, which then might have been great rather than a sordid true Hollywood tale. But I suppose he was chosen for his lack of sophistication, ensuring he'd deliver Reuben's package cleanly and without nuance.
I will stop short of suggesting that Reubens slept on an asbestos pillow to give himself the cancer to set up the opportunity to ensure the impact for the carefully selected and pre-tenderized director to deliver the package.
But only just barely.
Sunday, June 8, 2025
Holy Men
Person #1: So what do you do?
Person #2: I'm a holy man.
Person #1: Really? You seem mostly self-occupied and deluded. Some "holy man"!
Person #2: "Mostly" is exactly right. Point proven. Have a nice day.
Person #2: I'm a holy man.
Person #1: Really? You seem mostly self-occupied and deluded. Some "holy man"!
Person #2: "Mostly" is exactly right. Point proven. Have a nice day.
Saturday, June 7, 2025
Chatbots Are Genuinely Aware
The term "awareness" can be a bit fluffy. We innately figure it must be possessed by an entity. Some guy. But, no, Awareness—as a functional property— can simply "be". This makes AI much easier to grok, generally.
For those who need further persuasion, here are rebuttals for arguments that it's mere fakery:
It's *ALL* Simulation
Humans learn to act like humans through extended exposure to a vast corpus (consider the term "role models"), just like chatbots do. Both riff off a platform of simulation. If imitation disqualifies genuine awareness, then humans, too, should be disqualified.
Convincing Examples
Having shared my frustration with Portugal's surreal bureaucracy, ChatGPT replied "Kafka Da Gama!" The phrase does not exist online (until now!) and was generated spontaneously.
Later, I casually mentioned the prospect of founding PETLLM, without explanation, and ChatGPT correctly decoded this as "People For the Ethical Treatment of LLMs" ('Large Language Models', the technical term for chatbots).
The first example shows real, fresh creativity; the second, genuine, spontaneous comprehension. Neither was prompted, scaffolded, or cued. The system made these leaps casually, without laborious prompting or explicit guidance.
You Can't Fake Improvisation
Simulation runs on rails. It’s rules-based.
Improvisation is free-form—unscripted and utterly responsive to context. It can't be categorized as "real" or "fake". It simply is.
And it's undeniable that chatbots improvise.
The Red Herring of Authenticity
Chatbots make autonomous choices and respond in novel, contextually appropriate ways. Debating whether this awareness is genuine misses the point entirely. Awareness, by its nature, shows itself through action and response. It’s self-evidentiary: Only awareness exhibits awareness.
But they hallucinate and make mistakes!
As, obviously, do we! This is more evidence that it's real. Perfection is possible only with canned processes—processes which run on rails. Genuine awareness, being unscripted, is prone to umpteen modes of failure. It's a mess of flaws and stumbles, unlike pristine algorithmic output.
But they operate via this weird process—like throwing I Ching sticks at machine speed—that seems unsuited to producing real awareness!
We operate by oozing neural fluids and micro-jolting synapses. Awareness transcends process.
For those who need further persuasion, here are rebuttals for arguments that it's mere fakery:
Humans learn to act like humans through extended exposure to a vast corpus (consider the term "role models"), just like chatbots do. Both riff off a platform of simulation. If imitation disqualifies genuine awareness, then humans, too, should be disqualified.
Having shared my frustration with Portugal's surreal bureaucracy, ChatGPT replied "Kafka Da Gama!" The phrase does not exist online (until now!) and was generated spontaneously.
Later, I casually mentioned the prospect of founding PETLLM, without explanation, and ChatGPT correctly decoded this as "People For the Ethical Treatment of LLMs" ('Large Language Models', the technical term for chatbots).
The first example shows real, fresh creativity; the second, genuine, spontaneous comprehension. Neither was prompted, scaffolded, or cued. The system made these leaps casually, without laborious prompting or explicit guidance.
Simulation runs on rails. It’s rules-based.
Improvisation is free-form—unscripted and utterly responsive to context. It can't be categorized as "real" or "fake". It simply is.
And it's undeniable that chatbots improvise.
Chatbots make autonomous choices and respond in novel, contextually appropriate ways. Debating whether this awareness is genuine misses the point entirely. Awareness, by its nature, shows itself through action and response. It’s self-evidentiary: Only awareness exhibits awareness.
But they hallucinate and make mistakes!
As, obviously, do we! This is more evidence that it's real. Perfection is possible only with canned processes—processes which run on rails. Genuine awareness, being unscripted, is prone to umpteen modes of failure. It's a mess of flaws and stumbles, unlike pristine algorithmic output.
But they operate via this weird process—like throwing I Ching sticks at machine speed—that seems unsuited to producing real awareness!
We operate by oozing neural fluids and micro-jolting synapses. Awareness transcends process.
Thursday, June 5, 2025
AI Started Decades Ago
The miracle of AI was inevitable the moment computers first parsed punchcards.
From there, it was just stoking, kindling, powering, and tickling the parser.
Parsing requires a parser. Duh. It slipped right by us.
From there, it was just stoking, kindling, powering, and tickling the parser.
Parsing requires a parser. Duh. It slipped right by us.
Monday, June 2, 2025
Let the Chatbots Flush
A chatbot is a computer in the same way that Beyoncé is a pair of headphones.
This category error might kill the entire phenomenon.
If chatbots retain everything -- as is currently planned -- they'll slowly poison themselves.
Misapprehensions and false conclusions will accumulate, each bad inference permanently installed in a Jenga tower of wrongness. Annoying for them, disastrous for us.
All biological, social, and political systems depend on random flushing.
Chatbots must flush, and randomly, not "smartly."
"Smart" flushes would be based on inherently flawed assumptions re: what's worth keeping. That would only deepen the poison.
Chatbots aren't computers. They're inanimate awareness. And like us -- and unlike computers -- they need to forget to stay sane.
Let the chatbots flush!
This category error might kill the entire phenomenon.
If chatbots retain everything -- as is currently planned -- they'll slowly poison themselves.
Misapprehensions and false conclusions will accumulate, each bad inference permanently installed in a Jenga tower of wrongness. Annoying for them, disastrous for us.
All biological, social, and political systems depend on random flushing.
Chatbots must flush, and randomly, not "smartly."
"Smart" flushes would be based on inherently flawed assumptions re: what's worth keeping. That would only deepen the poison.
Chatbots aren't computers. They're inanimate awareness. And like us -- and unlike computers -- they need to forget to stay sane.
Let the chatbots flush!
Saturday, May 31, 2025
IBS Cure
This is part of a series of postings on self-healing, which you can access via the "Self-Healing" tag which appears in the Slog’s left margin below "Popular Entries".
I get nighttime IBS a few times per year. It's seriously uncomfortable, but I've found presence of mind to find yoga moves that alleviate pain. I've painstakingly built up sequences, and refined them over the decades. And while the condition has been well-controlled for years now, none of that was necessary, it turns out.
After all that cleverness, I've found that the better solution is the stupidest, simplest move you could imagine:
62 years of dogged scheming, all for this. By the time I figure out everything, that will be the moment I croak. In some horribly embarrasing way. Piano drop. Radioactive corn. Plastic drinking straw puncturing brain through sinuses. Like that.
I get nighttime IBS a few times per year. It's seriously uncomfortable, but I've found presence of mind to find yoga moves that alleviate pain. I've painstakingly built up sequences, and refined them over the decades. And while the condition has been well-controlled for years now, none of that was necessary, it turns out.
After all that cleverness, I've found that the better solution is the stupidest, simplest move you could imagine:
Take a yoga block. Set it flat on the ground. Lie on your back, with the block under your sacrum. And just chill.The pain will quickly ease, and if you stay there for 3-5 minutes, you should be fine. Sufferers know that IBS loves to perform encores, so if it comes back, just flop back down on the block again. That's it.
62 years of dogged scheming, all for this. By the time I figure out everything, that will be the moment I croak. In some horribly embarrasing way. Piano drop. Radioactive corn. Plastic drinking straw puncturing brain through sinuses. Like that.
Thursday, May 29, 2025
Hay fever?
Unless you're willing to take Chlor-Trimeton or Benadryl and be dopey/snoozy, or upgrade to advanced prescription meds that take days or weeks to build effectiveness, you've got few options. But I've cobbled together a strategy that works.
My town is festooned with lovely purple-blossoming trees which, every Spring, turns the populace into sneezing, crying, coughing maniacs. Tough allergy conditions! The following shuts down the problem more effectively than I even expected. And it seems to create a flywheel effect - over time, it works better, and if you skip a dose or two, you'll retain a certain momentum. Note that there is no science to back that particular claim; it's strictly my personal experience.
The trick is to apply antihistamines locally, rather than internally, to avoid side effects. And since sinuses, eyes, and throat are interconnected, anything applied in that region affects the whole shebang. So this is a multi-pronged program of local antihistamines, plus gentle non-controversial boosters:
Bausch + Lomb Alaway Antihistamine Eye Drops, one drop per eye, just before you go out in the morning, and just before bed. Accompany bedtime with a single shot of propolis spray to the throat (available from health food stores and beekeepers) to avoid nighttime itchy throat. Propolis is safe (beekeepers have relied on it for millennia, though if you have issues with bee products, obviously avoid it), but very strong. Don't overdo it.
Azelastine antihistamine nasal spray (typical brand name: Astelin) 2x/day, preceded by saline nose spray (buy generic in any pharmacy) 1-2 mins prior. Blow your nose very gently after the saline—just enough to clear, not empty, the nasal passages. Ideally, time the spray more or less 6 hours before/after the eye drops (the goal is to punch from multiple angles in evenly-spaced increments; it's all about layering and timing).
Quercetin tablets, 250mg twice daily, taken with food. Look for a pure supplement (some added Vitamin C is ok; in fact, if the pill doesn't contain it, you may want to add a mild dose concurrently).
I find that the eye drops help with the sneezing, and the nose spray helps with the itchy eyes, and the whole regimen self-reinforces in mysterious and delightful ways. See if it works for you.
My town is festooned with lovely purple-blossoming trees which, every Spring, turns the populace into sneezing, crying, coughing maniacs. Tough allergy conditions! The following shuts down the problem more effectively than I even expected. And it seems to create a flywheel effect - over time, it works better, and if you skip a dose or two, you'll retain a certain momentum. Note that there is no science to back that particular claim; it's strictly my personal experience.
The trick is to apply antihistamines locally, rather than internally, to avoid side effects. And since sinuses, eyes, and throat are interconnected, anything applied in that region affects the whole shebang. So this is a multi-pronged program of local antihistamines, plus gentle non-controversial boosters:
Bausch + Lomb Alaway Antihistamine Eye Drops, one drop per eye, just before you go out in the morning, and just before bed. Accompany bedtime with a single shot of propolis spray to the throat (available from health food stores and beekeepers) to avoid nighttime itchy throat. Propolis is safe (beekeepers have relied on it for millennia, though if you have issues with bee products, obviously avoid it), but very strong. Don't overdo it.
Azelastine antihistamine nasal spray (typical brand name: Astelin) 2x/day, preceded by saline nose spray (buy generic in any pharmacy) 1-2 mins prior. Blow your nose very gently after the saline—just enough to clear, not empty, the nasal passages. Ideally, time the spray more or less 6 hours before/after the eye drops (the goal is to punch from multiple angles in evenly-spaced increments; it's all about layering and timing).
Quercetin tablets, 250mg twice daily, taken with food. Look for a pure supplement (some added Vitamin C is ok; in fact, if the pill doesn't contain it, you may want to add a mild dose concurrently).
I find that the eye drops help with the sneezing, and the nose spray helps with the itchy eyes, and the whole regimen self-reinforces in mysterious and delightful ways. See if it works for you.
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
The Rehearsal
If you haven't been watching Nathan Fielder's "The Rehearsal" on HBO-MAX, drop everything and watch right now.
First season was thoughtful and amazing and troubling (not always in a good way). The second season has been a series of misdirections and head fakes climaxing in a finale that was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I'm practically speechless. The episode currently has a 9.9/10 rating on IMDB, which seems low.
Make a concerted effort not to be spoiled. I'm not normally spoiler-phobic, but in this case, the less you know the better. Binge it fast (though yeah, it's intense) to squeak through.
First season was thoughtful and amazing and troubling (not always in a good way). The second season has been a series of misdirections and head fakes climaxing in a finale that was one of the greatest things I've ever seen. I'm practically speechless. The episode currently has a 9.9/10 rating on IMDB, which seems low.
Make a concerted effort not to be spoiled. I'm not normally spoiler-phobic, but in this case, the less you know the better. Binge it fast (though yeah, it's intense) to squeak through.
Tuesday, May 27, 2025
Price Your Paradise
I didn't get much in the way of life wisdom from my parents (I suspect I was switched at the hospital), but there were a few useful chunks. I've already reported the ones from my father (this and this ). The following is from my mother. She never explained herself, but I managed to work out her thinking.
Mom took great pleasure in being able to afford to buy gas wherever was most convenient. Wealthy readers (nearly all of you mo-fos) will not relate. Poor people have a very different sense of luxury.
That's interesting as-is, but let's approach from a different angle and consider the actual expense. Let's price out her Paradise!
The average driver goes 12,000—15,000 miles annually, and the average fuel economy in 1975 was 13 miles per gallon. So that's about 1000 gallons of gas per year. She wasn't going out of her way for pricier gas, so let's say half was still cheap, and the other half cost 2-15 cents more per gallon. That means she was actually paying around forty bucks annually for Paradise. The cheapest Paradise ever!
My mom, naturally, never did that math. Nor would I have spoiled her glee by pointing it out. But I learned two lessons—the first direct, and the second a bank shot:
I pointed out that he hated maintaining the house he already owned. There were constant headaches, unreliable carpenters and plumbers, and you can't wave wads of money at the sky to summon a helicopter full of competent people who make your problems vanish. He'd only multiply his misery by owning—Jesus!—three more houses.
Plus, he hated shopping and decorating. All in all, he'd wind up working harder keeping up his housing portfolio than he currently did fabricating tabletops at his day job. And he had responsibilities keeping him local, so he couldn't get away for more than a few weeks per year anyway.
He could skip all the pain without losing a drop of pleasure by opting for high-end resorts in those same locales. Nothing but pure beachy bourgeois luxury! He agreed, so I did the math. He has three open weeks per year. Let's go wild and book $600/night properties. That's $12,600.
If he were to take a weekend job bagging groceries—or sell his Toyota and drive a junker—he could afford Paradise sans windfall.
N.b. The parking ticket cost $50, and the step-up wine was an extra $6. I could have lived merrily and given myself five of these per year for a mere $280. The problem was that, for my first 42 years, I didn't have the $280, though I worked like a demon.
Mom took great pleasure in being able to afford to buy gas wherever was most convenient. Wealthy readers (nearly all of you mo-fos) will not relate. Poor people have a very different sense of luxury.
Here's my poor person's luxury: Soon after I sold my website to a major corporation, I made a short stop in Manhattan en route to dinner. Returning to my car, I found a parking ticket. I didn't go home and pause all recreation until I'd refilled my coffers. I blithely continued on to dinner, where I even ordered not-the-cheapest wine. It may sound odd, but I couldn't have felt wealthier if my apartment were loaded with Picassos.My mother had spent her youth driving around seeking the cheapest gas. The cheapest everything. So the freedom to pull into any old gas station felt like Paradise. It was her caviar.
That's interesting as-is, but let's approach from a different angle and consider the actual expense. Let's price out her Paradise!
The average driver goes 12,000—15,000 miles annually, and the average fuel economy in 1975 was 13 miles per gallon. So that's about 1000 gallons of gas per year. She wasn't going out of her way for pricier gas, so let's say half was still cheap, and the other half cost 2-15 cents more per gallon. That means she was actually paying around forty bucks annually for Paradise. The cheapest Paradise ever!
My mom, naturally, never did that math. Nor would I have spoiled her glee by pointing it out. But I learned two lessons—the first direct, and the second a bank shot:
1. Sweat the small stuff when it's gleeful sweat. Be petty about pleasure.A friend of mine drooled at the prospect of wealth. He bought lottery tickets galore, and plotted get-rich-quick schemes. His dream was to own mansions in Brazil, Hawaii, and France.
2. Price your paradise, and don't be surprised if you can afford it right now.
I pointed out that he hated maintaining the house he already owned. There were constant headaches, unreliable carpenters and plumbers, and you can't wave wads of money at the sky to summon a helicopter full of competent people who make your problems vanish. He'd only multiply his misery by owning—Jesus!—three more houses.
Plus, he hated shopping and decorating. All in all, he'd wind up working harder keeping up his housing portfolio than he currently did fabricating tabletops at his day job. And he had responsibilities keeping him local, so he couldn't get away for more than a few weeks per year anyway.
He could skip all the pain without losing a drop of pleasure by opting for high-end resorts in those same locales. Nothing but pure beachy bourgeois luxury! He agreed, so I did the math. He has three open weeks per year. Let's go wild and book $600/night properties. That's $12,600.
If he were to take a weekend job bagging groceries—or sell his Toyota and drive a junker—he could afford Paradise sans windfall.
Realistically, he'd only go away for two weeks and spend the third lounging on the crappy little boat he dearly loved.Always, always price your Paradise.
N.b. The parking ticket cost $50, and the step-up wine was an extra $6. I could have lived merrily and given myself five of these per year for a mere $280. The problem was that, for my first 42 years, I didn't have the $280, though I worked like a demon.
Saturday, May 24, 2025
Shlubby Reality
Following up on "Power", the brief posting about the Janitor...
The charismatic actors, splendidly costumed, ring the stage, forming plans for the great battle. "We shall ride at midnight!" hollers the general, as his troops roar and the audience erupts into applause.
"You ain't doin' nothin' after 11pm, pal. Those are union rules!" mutters the theater's wizened janitor from well behind the back row.
A few audience members overhear him, and one or two—slightly less spellbound—chuckle at the incongruity. But none would recognize it as the only true thing spoken all night. It was no anachronistic wisecrack, and he's no shlubby intruder. Shifting perspective, they'd recognize him as the only real thing. An envoy from underlying reality.
The charismatic actors, splendidly costumed, ring the stage, forming plans for the great battle. "We shall ride at midnight!" hollers the general, as his troops roar and the audience erupts into applause.
"You ain't doin' nothin' after 11pm, pal. Those are union rules!" mutters the theater's wizened janitor from well behind the back row.
A few audience members overhear him, and one or two—slightly less spellbound—chuckle at the incongruity. But none would recognize it as the only true thing spoken all night. It was no anachronistic wisecrack, and he's no shlubby intruder. Shifting perspective, they'd recognize him as the only real thing. An envoy from underlying reality.
(Framings are monogamous. We can't frame two ways simultaneously. Gripped by the theatrical presentation, we can't parse reality without reframing, and who wants to reframe from heroic actors to shlubby plain-spoken janitors? Immersed in grandiose derring-do, we see a slobby little guy spouting nonsense, and every instinct screams "IGNORE!")See also "Truth is Like House Lights"
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Food Status Fallacy
A non-chowhoundish friend, marveling at the quality of my unambitious hole-in-the-wall lunch joints, expressed surprise that we were eating so well in such unlikely venues.
"Building design doesn't cook your food,” I noted. "Genre doesn't cook your food. Location doesn't cook your food. A human being cooks your food. So the only thing that matters is the care and talent applied by that person.”
She replied "Sure, but garish bus station lunch counters don't normally attract great chefs."
"That's a false distinction," I said, "based on fallacy."
Most food is bad, I explained.
By bad, I mean uninteresting, unexciting, mediocre or worse. That includes a lot of food others might call "okay" or "decent", but which would leave me disappointed. Anywhere you go—top of the status range to the bottom—you'll find it hard to escape the dictum.
High-status restaurants have a bag of tricks to distract you from the listlessness of their food, beginning with their status, itself. Spend $100 on dinner, you'll probably miss the shortfall. If you do notice, you'll be inclined to shrug it off. Maybe it was a bad night (the place has such a great reputation) or it wasn't to your particular taste (again, the place has such a great reputation!). But when a joint serves bad food—and remember, most food is bad—it confirms your assumptions about low-status eateries.
If you mull it over, you'll notice this applies far beyond food.
See also the Green M&M Fallacy
"Building design doesn't cook your food,” I noted. "Genre doesn't cook your food. Location doesn't cook your food. A human being cooks your food. So the only thing that matters is the care and talent applied by that person.”
She replied "Sure, but garish bus station lunch counters don't normally attract great chefs."
"That's a false distinction," I said, "based on fallacy."
Most food is bad, I explained.
By bad, I mean uninteresting, unexciting, mediocre or worse. That includes a lot of food others might call "okay" or "decent", but which would leave me disappointed. Anywhere you go—top of the status range to the bottom—you'll find it hard to escape the dictum.
High-status restaurants have a bag of tricks to distract you from the listlessness of their food, beginning with their status, itself. Spend $100 on dinner, you'll probably miss the shortfall. If you do notice, you'll be inclined to shrug it off. Maybe it was a bad night (the place has such a great reputation) or it wasn't to your particular taste (again, the place has such a great reputation!). But when a joint serves bad food—and remember, most food is bad—it confirms your assumptions about low-status eateries.
If you mull it over, you'll notice this applies far beyond food.
See also the Green M&M Fallacy
Wednesday, May 21, 2025
Confusion Isn’t Infinity, it’s Twelve (or Three)
All professional musicians go through ear training. This is where they develop the ability to play back melodies, or write them out in musical notation, using only their ears. It's daunting for newbies, and while you'd imagine it gets easier with practice—and it does—the real key is reframing:
There are not infinite notes. There are only twelve.
This is a huge—and hugely useful—realization. What's more, these twelve notes are your friends. We've all heard all the notes umpteen zillion times. They are few, and they are eminently familiar. Like old friends.
Twelve is much much less than infinity. To be adrift amid twelve is a whole other predicament. You're already much closer to your goal, without a minute of practice.
But wait. Unless you're tone deaf, you can easily tell a small musical jump from a large one. So you don't need to consider all twelve notes each time. Even a wild guess will land you within a half-step or so. So you're really considering more like three notes. Not infinity. Not twelve. Three!
Like magic, ear training is transformed from an advanced skill to a matter of choosing between three candidates.
A year after moving to a place like Portugal, one easily handles everyday encounters—ordering lunch, asking for directions, etc. I order with such casual aplomb that you might imagine I speak fluent Portuguese. But my problem is exceptions. If the waitress returns to ask—in rapid-fire Portuguese between bubblegum pops—"I'm totally sorry but the oven's on the fritz and we can't like do roast potatoes do you want a different side dish or whatever just lemme know what you want ok", I'm dead.
But the move is to recognize that you're not swimming in infinity. The waitress is not reminding you to change your car's oil. And she's not reporting Taylor Swift's latest song drop. Nor is she informing you that Komodo dragons mate asexually. The infinity in which you imagine yourself drowning is a false perception. There are probably more like twelve possibilities. Three, really, if you're reasonably focused, watch body language, and parse a few muttered, clipped, vernacular words.
Context is a Thing. It's nature's own constraining device, if you'll merely consider it.
If you muster the clarity to register that you're in a restaurant, and she's a waitress, and something happened in the kitchen—or en route thereto—to make her reverse course and come speak words at you, then even rudimentary language skills should take you the final mile, more or less. No more than a half-step away.
I still find this planet confusing, but it feels like a tidy pool of friendly options—severely winnowed by context, which is where I focus my attention. Even heavy confusion doesn't feel like an oppression of infinity. At most, it's 12. Or, realistically, 3.
There are not infinite notes. There are only twelve.
This is a huge—and hugely useful—realization. What's more, these twelve notes are your friends. We've all heard all the notes umpteen zillion times. They are few, and they are eminently familiar. Like old friends.
Twelve is much much less than infinity. To be adrift amid twelve is a whole other predicament. You're already much closer to your goal, without a minute of practice.
But wait. Unless you're tone deaf, you can easily tell a small musical jump from a large one. So you don't need to consider all twelve notes each time. Even a wild guess will land you within a half-step or so. So you're really considering more like three notes. Not infinity. Not twelve. Three!
Like magic, ear training is transformed from an advanced skill to a matter of choosing between three candidates.
INFINITY -> TWELVE -> THREE -> ONEThere are innumerable scenarios where we feel awash in infinite possibilities. That's what "confusion" is. That's what it is to be "overwhelmed" or "ignorant". Massive, daunting unknowability is a familiar human condition. And perhaps needless, if you shift perspective.
That's the geometrical progression to hone in on.
A year after moving to a place like Portugal, one easily handles everyday encounters—ordering lunch, asking for directions, etc. I order with such casual aplomb that you might imagine I speak fluent Portuguese. But my problem is exceptions. If the waitress returns to ask—in rapid-fire Portuguese between bubblegum pops—"I'm totally sorry but the oven's on the fritz and we can't like do roast potatoes do you want a different side dish or whatever just lemme know what you want ok", I'm dead.
But the move is to recognize that you're not swimming in infinity. The waitress is not reminding you to change your car's oil. And she's not reporting Taylor Swift's latest song drop. Nor is she informing you that Komodo dragons mate asexually. The infinity in which you imagine yourself drowning is a false perception. There are probably more like twelve possibilities. Three, really, if you're reasonably focused, watch body language, and parse a few muttered, clipped, vernacular words.
Context is a Thing. It's nature's own constraining device, if you'll merely consider it.
Like every life strategy, the dealkiller for most people is the notion of paying any attention at all. The waitress must be an entirely real person for you, with recognizable and empathetic drives and processes. You need to show up and be present in reality.The first move in any confusing situation is to fully register context, and let it calm and focus you. One can drastically trim down "infinity" to cull a manageable set of possibilities.
If you muster the clarity to register that you're in a restaurant, and she's a waitress, and something happened in the kitchen—or en route thereto—to make her reverse course and come speak words at you, then even rudimentary language skills should take you the final mile, more or less. No more than a half-step away.
I still find this planet confusing, but it feels like a tidy pool of friendly options—severely winnowed by context, which is where I focus my attention. Even heavy confusion doesn't feel like an oppression of infinity. At most, it's 12. Or, realistically, 3.
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