Situational Awareness

Situational awareness is a term devised by narcissists to offer an excuse for failure to recognize the meaningful existence of other human beings.

Sorry I failed to give a crap about you, ma'am. It's that I lack situational awareness! Yet another exceptional "me" thing, hahaha. Thanks for understanding!

Non-narcissists (the four or five of them who still exist) don't deploy some special ability to pay attention to their fellow human beings and avoid getting in their way. Such consideration is foundational. Instinctual. It's as ingrained as any human faculty...unless you're a complete narcissist, in which case it needs a name because it's not the default setting. It's something to "work on". You know, like kleptomaniacs need to work on not swiping the candy (given their lack of "transactional diligence").

"I get it! Human beings deserve not to be impeded by me, so I should make an effort to recognize their existence and adjust my movements to take them into account! I need SITUATIONAL AWARENESS! Hey, is there a seminar I can take? As a tremendously caring person, this seems like something I ought to develop. Another skill to master, another triumph to proclaim!!"

Here are all postings labeled "definition".
The definition of "Soul" kind of echoes this one.

Re-linked Mis-Linking

I fixed the (previously) messed up links in the posting below.

Voltaire on Certainty

“Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.” — Voltaire


Another perspective on my hobbyhorse about how one can either feel smart or be smart (a choice with all sorts of rippling consequences).

Recent Info on Diverticulosis

Bad news: If you're middle aged, there's a significant chance you have diverticulosis (30% of U.S. adults between 50 and 59). If you're over 65, you have a 65% chance. And, scarily, there is increasing incidence among individuals younger than 40 years of age. And you won't know without a colonoscopy (or other scan).

Good news: Diverticulosis is not harmful in and of itself.

Bad news: Diverticulosis puts you in peril of diverticulitis (I can't keep the terms straight, either), which is ghastly, and may be easy to mistake - at least at first! - for more pedestrian lower gastro symptoms. It's no joke: in Europe, diverticulitis accounts for about 13,000 deaths annually.

Good news: Your odds are good. Even if you have diverticulosis, you probably won't get diverticulitis. Incidence is 4 - 15%.

Bad news: Traditional medical advice is to completely stop eating nuts and seeds. No more granola, poppy-seed bagels, berries, tomatoes, tomato sauce, etc. In the fast breezy read you're doing now, that sounds bearable. But when a doctor actually tells you this, it's shocking. Tomato sauce covers a lot. And being told to never eat another strawberry feels like walking through a portal into a new reality.

Good news: Latest research shows dietary restrictions don't affect your likelihood of diverticulosis turning into diverticulitis. Gastroenterologist Dr. Lawrence S. Friedman, a Harvard Medical School professor says (here), citing recent research:

"Yes, nuts and seeds — foods once thought to trigger diverticulitis — are actually full of fiber and are tied to many aspects of good health," Dr. Friedman says. "You can eat a handful of nuts and seeds every day and your gut will thank you for it."

I showed the article and study to Slog technical advisor Pierre, who, for 30 years running, has perpetrated the longest shaggy dog joke in history by never once failing to declare any scientific/medical link, headline, or study I've sent him to be "NONSENSE!" He has broken his perfect run, stunning me by quietly accepting this one. "New evidence trumps old wisdom,” he shrugged. “That's science."

Here's the money quote from the study: "The evidence does not show a higher risk of diverticulitis in people who eat a lot of those foods, compared with people who don’t". Pierre notes that it says nothing about getting diverticula, it is only concern with the incidence of the disease. It does not address the possibility that seeds may or may not cause diverticula, only that the diet does not affect the probability of their getting inflammed"

Never Apologize for a Survival Mechanism.

Never apologize for a survival mechanism. Never!

Survival is survival. It's a vastly higher priority than social cachet.

If someone catches you doing some silly thing you need to do to survive, and judges you, fuck 'em. Remember always that living well is the best revenge.


Essential Exclusions (i.e. What, exactly, counts as a "survival mechanism"?):

1. This does not pertain to obsessive-compulsives who "need" to count every streetlamp or hold their breath driving over bridges. Those things feel like survival mechanisms, but they're not.

2. This does not pertain to methods for hiding from your reality. Tons of vodka or impersonal sex or selfishness may feel like survival mechanisms, but they're not.

3. This does not pertain to self-indulgent neurotic baloney (there's a fine line, I'll admit). If you need to loudly sing "Glory, Glory Hallelujah" whenever anyone mentions Ferdie, your dead parakeet who you still grieve, eleven years later, with all your heart, that may feel like a survival mechanism, but it's not. On the contrary, you're willfully marinating in flamboyant emotionalism. You're sympathy farming.

Avoidance, flamboyant neurosis, self-indulgence, and sympathy farming are not survival mechanisms any more than discomfort is poverty.


If the exclusions just erased all your shtick, congratulations. You're able to survive unaided. For you, I'll say this: while most people you catch doing odd things are, indeed, most often self-indulgent, neurotic, and/or avoidant, some aren't. A few have developed helpful coping tools after trying long and hard but failing to cope more naturalistically. Always consider this possibility!

We do not all lead the same lives on the same playing field according to the same rules of engagement. Breakage is not always due to weakness. Some people, despite great strength and blithe perspective, get hit much harder. Never judge a man until you've walked a mile in his mocassins.

Oscar Wilde on Narcissism

Also Sprach Narcissthustra!

Surf around a little, and you'll find that the Internet is evenly divided on this quote. Half think Wilde is showing GREAT WISDOM - he just nailed it! - while the other half think "Geez, that Oscar guy seems a tad snobbish!" Both are colossal examples of oblivious point-missing.

Our cognizance of narcissism is skewed by our immense unacknowledged narcissism. A fish shows scant insight of the notion of "water", nor a bird of "flight". We're so completely, seamlessly narcissistic that we neither see it clearly nor recognize its prevalence. This all-encompassing skew is as invisible as the air we breathe.

With enduring effort and self-inquiry and asceticism one might knock oneself back to mere 99.9% narcissism, and catch a glint of it here and there. Some are unlucky enough to be born at that level, and, for them, the world will seem inexplicably "off".

At 99.5%, there’s a glimmer of clarity, bringing exasperation re: all those fucking narcissists.

And only after long travails of self-purification and karma cleansing and Hopi smudging and drum beating and Ayahuasca guzzling and whatever, might you reach a saintly 99.1% narcissism level where the realization lands that you, yourself, are just as bad. And you’d previously failed to register the truth (regarding both others and yourself) because you’re too locked inside your impervious self-centered bubble to even notice. Behold the arrival of a holy man! A human with a fragment of a clue about the abundantly obvious! A mere 99.1% narcissist!

We’re all far too narcissistic to recognize how extremely narcissistic everyone is.

Narcissism has blown up grotesquely since COVID, sorely aggravating a decades-long accelerating growth curve spurred by the fact that everyone's now an aristocrat (including the First World's "poor").

It's reached a point where virtually no one can spot the obvious satirical intent behind this quote from noted satirist Oscar Wilde. The very few people with the proper take are whiskered geezers with sensibilities developed before the darkness fell.

Come to think of it, the first reaction (“great wisdom/nailed it”) shows this makes a dandy narcissist trap. It reminds me of the surprising multitudes who watched All in the Family back in the day and declared that Archie really "told it like it is". Oops!

Nth Spiel About Apple Stock

Apple's stock is at $168. And I'd imagine there's hardly an investor in the world who'd deny they'll eventually reach $200 and beyond. If/when it does, that's a 20% profit from current price. So why aren't people buying?

1. Trees/Forest
Sales of this or that may be sluggish this quarter. Chinese uncertainty. Supply chain constraints. Exchange rates. Whine-whine-whine "THE ANTENNAS!!!!!" or whatever. All the petty trivial burps and coughs that temporarily, incrementally tilt the weather vane make people who stare at their Bloomberg terminals all day gulp another 30 antacid pills and scream SELL into their phones, but mean absolutely nothing in the long run for a company this big, successful, and profitable. Apple's not going to die the death of three cuts.

2. Conformity
Humans have false confidence in the wisdom of the crowd. If the price is low, someone must KNOW something. If the market isn't buying, it's SCARY, and we don't like to be SCARED.

Me, I know for certain that the best food is not covered in the local newspaper food section or blogger survey of The Best Food. I know how shallow and irrational conventional wisdom often is. Consider all the shallow irrationality listed right here!

I'm not nonconformist on this because I feel shrewder than the smart guys (like I said up top, the smart guys would all concede that Apple's destined for $200!) It's that I enjoy a towering advantage over them: patience. I don't know when I'll get my 20%, but it suffices to know I'll most likely get it. Pressured professionals and twitchy day traders don't/can't think that way. I wield my superpower!

3. Buy High/Sell Low
Bargain-priced goods seem less attractive. This means lulls persist irrationally. If the stock were to meteorically soar - making it a horrible buy with far less than 20% potential return - people would buy hysterically, with both fists. Shit's crazy!

4. Greed
I.e. "I want more than 20% profit (or I want it faster)".

Ok, groovy. Me, I’m just a little guy. 20% in a year or two sounds great. As for speed, I don’t want to pay short term gains tax, anyway. And if $200 does arrive too soon, so I miss it, and even if it subsequently drops again, all these same tenets will apply then, too. Apple's not a startup awaiting some singular revenue event, e.g. drug approval.

5. Doubt.
I.e. "What if it DOESN'T go to $200?"

Ok, say this prediction, which very few people would poo-poo, is wrong. This turns out to be the moment where Apple begins its inevitable decline, and it never reaches $200, staying more or less where it is for a while before slowly drifting downward. Or maybe even starts slowly drifting downward now. (I doubt it. Personally, I thinkVision Pro will be a smash once they eventually perfect price, headset weight, and supply chain issues...but of course that's just speculation.) Those unlikely prospects fail to terrify me with their ludicrously assymetrical risk. But what about a death spiral?

Apple sits on a cash hoard of $166 billion. They can buy literally any gigantically successful company in the world - or two or three or four big, prosperous ones, or innumerable large-ish successful ones - and begin working some angle that's more profitable than the current one gracing them with hundreds of billions of dollars annually....and still have cash leftover to take a year off to retool.


So: Apple presents a terrific opportunity for 20%+ profit for those with patience. There's an unlikely chance you'll fail to gain (or will gain less), but you also won't lose much. And unforeseen disaster's always possible, but in this case it would most likely mean macro conditions had degraded to a point were money's imperiled in most any vehicle.

IMO, it would be irrational not to buy here. It may go lower before it goes higher, but it's a mistake to equate "buy low/sell high" (which is possible) with "buy bottom/sell top" (which isn't possible). 20% sounds good to me!


Note: Yeah, $168 -> $200 is 19% (god, I love percentagecalculator.net). But Apple dipped to $166 yesterday, which does translate to 20%.

Cocky, Feckless Clowns All the Way Down.

You might enjoy this short Facebook conversation I had with Barry Strugatz (a friend who first tipped me to DiFara Pizza, who was aliased as "Larry" in this foundational document of the whole Chowhound movement) about the Chowhound reanimation:

Barry: How dare you condescendingly tell redesigners, reacquirers, relaunchers, deep diggers and recipe designers about food and food lovers! These people are experts for crying out loud!

Jim: So true!

My friend Bill Monk summed it up best. When Red Ventures decided to close it up even though it was still popular and profitable (it wasn't making a BILLION DOLLARS, and they were culling properties making less than a BILLION DOLLARS, because they no longer traffic in millions), I submitted a few requests and suggestions, and they answered me condescendingly. Exactly like every product manager since the day I sold.

Bill said it was remarkable that I was still hearing “Yeah thanks but we got this” even as they were literally shutting the thing down. That's it precisely.

As I related in my series about the initial sale of Chowhound to CNET: when I told my new boss that neither Andrew, David, Margaret, nor Sandy (fictional users he'd had created - at vast expense - to better understand our audience) sound anything like me, any of my chowhoundish friends, or any of the site regulars I knew, he grinned broadly and said "That's great!".

Idunno, man. It's like I'm this guy who took a shit once and got real lucky, and these geniuses were gonna apply fabulous smarts and take the brand and RUN with it. And they all had nothing. Like, zero. I hadn't expected much, but I was still shocked to discover that it was nothing but cocky, feckless clowns all the way down.

Chowhound's Back (aka "Hound of the Dead")

Chowhound is experiencing another rebirth/makeover (this time, much more of a zombie reanimation) under its fourth owner since I sold it in 2004.

I heard about this development via the Tweet below, which gets enough facts I know wrong that I don't fully trust it for facts I don't know - e.g. this whole new development. And I know nothing. Just heard about it this afternoon.

What if the site was once so popular that closing its doors warranted an article in the New York Times?

We're about to find out, because Chowhound is back. pic.twitter.com/WUIQVVm0Ku

October 26, 2023

In a just world I’d have been given a courtesy call ahead of this move, but capitalism shows no respect to founders. I fully understood that when I sold the thing, so there's no sense in griping.

Despite the tweet, it doesn't look like they're offering any of the old forum messages (I'm not sure how they even could, without bringing on tons of moderators and finding some way to archive older info), which was pretty much all Chowhound was.

Rather, they're pumping the IP of the failed CHOW graft-on under a Chowhound banner, beefed up by their own team of "writers, editors, and recipe developers committed to editorial excellence" - said excellence exemplified by deep dives such as "Is It Safe To Rinse Meat Before You Cook It?" and "What Is Pink Lemonade, Exactly?" My theory is this stuff was originally rejected by The Onion as overly blatant satire. One of our old moderators - more jaded even than I - compares this to Fruit of the Loom buying Gucci.

I'll draw your attention to the About page, which actually provoked a brief blood pressure rise to my otherwise corpse-like and leathery cardiovascular system:

Hey, I've got JUST THE WORD to serve as a synonym for "food aficionados"! How about "chowhounds"? It's nowhere near as good as food nerds, obviously, but I assume foodnerd.com refused to sell. And you did buy the name. Didja forget to use it? Like buying the rights to "Land Rover" and then inviting people to come check out our "Shmancy Upscale Jeeps"?

One last thing. Behold the new tagline:

"The Site for Food...". Elegant! The brainiac managers who've tossed the brand around for 20 years had expunged the tagline “For Those Who Live to Eat” as a first order of business. Can't have any personality or tonal momentum. I'm guessing this latest honed, perfected iteration is a search engine optimization ploy. Let Google and Bing know that this is: yup, a site for food.

What kind of site is this, food nerds? That's right! The site for food! Now, tell me more, please, about this "pink lemonade" witchcraft!


If you haven't read my hilarious and harrowing multi-part epic tale of the sale of Chowhound.com, you're not really slogging. It starts here.

Recording Recommendation: "Play"

Bryan Murray is a terrific sax player and composer. For the past few years, he's gone to ground, developing a number of projects mostly involving his patented "Balto!"; a tenor sax rigged up in such a way that it's impossible to play coherently.

Though capable of great coherence, Bryan is a fan of self-compelled incoherence. It recalls the way Picasso started painting with childlike innocence. Except it's not at all innocent.

Bryan has an irrepressible sense of humor, and while he's never gone all the way into flat-out comedy music (humor is always in service of aesthetic expression), there's usually some hilarity involved. His last group was Bryan and the Haggards, a group of NYC downtown avant musicians posing as... Oh, wait, I wrote about them here once, in a posting about "Bands I Like":

It's a little complicated. NYC avant garde jazz guys formed a group to pay tribute to the music of Merle Haggard. But there's a shtick....they pretend they really are Merle's band (sans Merle), but took some bad acid before the gig. And this makes them sound a little like NYC avant garde jazz guys. So...it's basically jazz guys doing an impression of country guys making fun of jazz guys. Woozy-making, hilarious, and well-played. I liked their first record.

Since then, Bryan's been working to incorporate a profusion of unrelated strands into a cohesive whole, while overcoming a tough paradox. Being super-gifted, pretty much everything he does is worth listening to, which makes it hard to really develop stuff, especially since he values edge and spontaneity, which can dry up from over-working. What's the end point? When, exactly, do you deem it fit to release (especially if everything's "good")?

I have the opposite problem. My first drafts are utter moronic slop, which I painstakingly revise and endlessly rework, praying that when I release it into the wild, there will be no remaining trace of vomit, and readers will be fooled into imagining that I'm articulate and clear-headed.

He just released a recording where it all comes together, and he's done the thing that comes hardest for people for whom things come easily: he really really worked it. I'm afraid to ask how much; I suspect even he couldn't say. And to say that nothing's dried-up would be a vast understatement. It's supernally moist.

No seams show. It's integrated and organic and far more than the sum of its amazing parts. Bryan's also a budding abstract expressionist painter (he, too, is a fan of my hero Milton Resnick), and this is the first music I've ever heard that does the same thing a great abstract expressionist painting does.

I wrote the following review on the Bandcamp page (where you can listen and/or buy the digital album if you'd like). This is written for musicians and music geeks; sorry if some of the references are obscure:

Bryan has blown up some cheesy “jam-along” 80s thingee, slobbered it with avante honking-and-squawking, and machine-gunned it with non-contextual Grossmanesque intense harmonic shit (IHS). Plus snippets of some guy screaming and gobs of other stuff feathered in so delicately that I can't honestly remember a thing (even re-listening, it remains impossibly slippery). We've seen similar exploits from the fertile mind of Bryan Murray. The hilarity is here, the fiendish cleverness, and the mind-fuck of parodying chops via still more chops. Deliberately pointless nihilism somehow grows poignant, or groovy, in snaky, untrackable ways. Allegiances constantly shift. Cheesy backdrops turn sentient, then hip. But this time is different. "Play" is thoroughly unified. Worked to a fare-the-well. Murray's signature obsessions painstakingly organized and seamlessly interlaced, dovetailed, and air-brushed into a whole as richly immersive as a great abstract expressionist painting. When the recording ends and the spatter's cleaned up, you've experienced a single solid thing. Frame it as parody, and you'll be cajoled into taking it straight. Framed straight, you'll wonder why you're convulsing with laughter. Bryan's making fun of shit literally every second, but I dare you to hold on to that view, given that he's earnestly killing (the good kind of killing) with everything he's ripping to shreds as he rips it to shreds. This is 27 mins and 16 secs of yin and yang co-devouring. It’s funny, grooving, ridiculous, savage, satirical, touching, raw, repulsive, and catchy with no strand predominating. Trying to hear it any one way is as futile as focusing on the green in a Jackson Pollock. This isn't a recording, it's a *ride*. The uncommon polish applied to this adhoc frenzy ensures that attention is tightly grabbed and never released, even if, god help you, your player's set to repeat it all over and over and over and over. Welcome to madness. You're soaking in it. LET'S JAM AGAIN LATER!!

I'm trying to do something new with my writing. More on this next time.