quandaryitem - Tumblr blog

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and i think about the unfinished projects and stale dreams

i could get real good at piano i could get real good at guitar i should buy a bass guitar and get good at that theres that article i told someone i would write i should get started on that track for that mixtape what if i release a concept album what if i make a video game what if i learn to draw nude figures what if i get really good at film photography what if i make a movie, like a feature film no that's crazy i could make a short film tho what if i get back into cycling i don't wanna do it right now tho, just feels weird what if i become a randonneur. i bet i wouldn't even have to train much i should make some more furniture what if i get really into sharpening hand planes should i buy a tormex if i got really into any kind of craft i could go to a small town in japan and learn from the master i should learn japanese i should learn german i should learn dutch i should learn spanish i should do knee strength and mobility exercises i should do a pull up i should reduce my life goals into small pieces so that i can feel like i can start i should express my life goals in the most grandiose and expansive terms possible so that i can feel excited about them i should make ceviche i should buy my produce locally i should plank i should grow herbs again i should voice call some people from my middle distance past and see how they are doing i should study the jhanas i should do metta i should do vipassana i should sleep more i should sleep less i should read more of infinite jest i should read more of 2666 i should read the rest of the accursed share i should reread the first part of the accursed share i should floss right now i should pickle vegetables at home i should say something cute to my girlfriend i should just do whatever i feel like doing in the moment i should put on more lip balm i should sell all my possessions i should go on holiday i should look up flights i should plan a journey around the world i should buy a car i should fix up my bike i should get back into running i should get back into badminton i should do physio for my pinky finger i should get back into weightlifting i should make more friends i should hang out with my existing friends i should join some kind of cult or the military or the church and have someone tell me what to do all the time i should learn how to be better at sex i should relax i should focus i should enjoy things as they are i should change things i should move my furniture around i should shave my armpits i should shave my face i should shave my pubes i should buy coconut oil i should buy shea butter i should get back into drinking yerba mate i should stretch i should go to lisbon i should go to berlin i should go to paris i should go to tokyo i should go to singapore i should go to mexico city i should go to istanbul i should go to bangkok i should make more plans i should bail on all of my plans i should just stop trying to do much shit i should stop wasting my free time doing fuck all i should invite my friends round for dinner i should write a book i should read more books i should read more magazines i should go to art galleries i should listen to live music i should watch movies i should watch anime i should stop using my electric toothbrush i should make a robot i should make a lamp i should code something i should make a decentralised social network i should drink more tea i should drink less coffee i should sing more i should throw up i should lie down on the floor i should do more self massage

etc etc

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this just makes me want to learn more about both

Ngl i prefer the 2016 version purple on the right.

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There was a reddit thread about Hunter S. Thompson’s last published work before killing himself (an ESPN article about playing golf with Bill Murray of all things) and about half the comments were tut-tutting Thompson for some combo of being a bad husband/father, being a dick at local bars, and being completely drug-addled for the last 35 years of his life to the point of non-functioning.

And on one level I get it. People like him are easier to admire from a distance than actually deal with, and the people who did have to deal with him have every right to be angry or disappointed with him. People should, for the most part, not try to be like Hunter S Thompson, and the world should probably have as few Hunter S Thompsons as necessary. (Norman Mailers, Harlan Ellisons, etc.)

But some people are inevitably going to become Hunter S Thompson, even if they’re not trying to, and ‘as few as necessary’ is not ‘zero’. Thompson was a brilliant writer and journalist who saw the world very differently than most people, and you don’t get one without the other. If you’re going to insist people stop ignoring the negatives, it’s not fair to insist they ignore the positives. There’s probably some universe where his brief stint in the USAF squeezes the proto-hippie out of him, and he’s a straight-arrow military lifer who’s still alive today at 86. Is that a better world?

Maybe it is. I dunno. There’s obvious problems with ‘follow your id no matter who it hurts and break the bonds of normie morality’ becoming enshrined as folk wisdom, but there’s also problems with the idea that the only thing worthy of respect is living a quiet, humble, actuary-pleasing life in which you, as @vriskakinnieaynrand might put it, ‘make more of Society’. And I feel like we’re a lot closer to the second one being the default conventional wisdom these days than the first, even (perhaps especially) among people who perceive themselves as progressive, open-minded, and creative.

Imagine reading Fear and Loathing and putting it down with disgust and saying “What this guy needs is to stop doing all these drugs and go home to his wife and get a real job!” That person was a crewcut white-picket-fence conservative when the book was written in 1972. Who are they now and why do they think that?

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I think the moment that convinced me the operating logic of our society is truly fucked in a way that cannot merely be reformed was after that eclipse in 2017 when the articles started coming out about how much money had been lost by productivity dropping from people stopping momentarily to watch it happen. To measure the world by the metric of the dollar to such a devotion that any cult leader would be jealous of that you would look at one of the most sublime experiences in nature which we, our ancestors, and even a not insignificant number of non-human species, have been observing in awestruck wonder for millennia, and decide that such a moment of profundity is something to be fought and preferably expunged from the human experience because it briefly impacts quarterly revenue.

It's a feeling that has been coming up repeatedly, but with increasing frequency in the last few years. That being: what is all of this for? Where are we going? Nobody who defends the status quo can seem to answer it. What's the point of an uninterrupted quarterly revenue stream if we can't even look at an eclipse every few years? What's the point of hustling and grinding 50, 60, 70 hour weeks if you never have time to have dinner with your friends, talk to your family on the phone, but on a bigger spectrum, what's the point of all of that if you still don't have any way of retiring in the future? With the way that our lives are being increasingly monetized and squeezed every second, what is there to look forward to?

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i want to see old men with full beards learning ballet and i want to see terrible art from people in their 30s who have only just got their first tablet and i want to see mothers picking up their old hobbies from before they were told it wasn’t okay to have hobbies and i want to see people in their early 20s figuring out how to be alive by making bad music in their bedrooms and i want zines to be handmade paper pamphlets of devotion and i want creation to be fun again instead of a competition where we all have to monetise joy until we lose the invaluable currency of unashamed love again

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really not a fan of entire (mostly black) music genres being compressed and confined to being seen as "video game" music to be totally honest

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why do i want to write in prose?

i have this recurring fantasy of writing, like Writing writing. but idk, it rarely happens. i wanna get to the bottom of why i actually want to do it, so that it's not an obligation that is just ominously floating around making me feel guilty, but something i can connect to where i am right now and what my needs are. maybe then it'll be easier to start. in the same way that it is easier to eat food when you are hungry, what is my hunger

so one thing i want is to know what is true, or at least know what feels true to me (and in doing so get a better notion of what my values and desires are). i think that sitting down and writing can help with this. i read somewhere that "writer's block" is a thing you get when you try to write something that feels inauthentic, i.e. something that you deeply think is wrong or not true. so if you're stuck, your heart probably isn't in it. obviously this should be taken with a big grain of salt, because if there is some *other* reason why you are struggling to write, you may end up confused about what it is you really believe. this should be contrasted with conversation or tweeting, where it's possible to get high off your ego or the pleasure of being seen by others, or end up in a socially satisfying exchange where you and your partner are giving each other permission and encouragement. i think in those cases it's possible to become intoxicated and to fool yourself into saying basically anything. i think to some extent i am addicted to that feeling, i definitely spend a lot of my time chasing it and while it feels good, idk if it is useful... maybe even sort of harmful in that it leads me to feel like some sort of genius. i need the sobriety of the blank page

i want my ideas to be seen by future me, so that i can see changes and continuities in what i believe. this seems like useful information because i can then see how circumstances in my life affect how i think, the most salient example of this is probably when i am really depressed or lonely and write something super nihilistic or fantastical, then later on when i have dealt with whatever emotional issue i had, i can look back and consider whether i rly cared about that thing or if it was a sort of cry for help. another use for this is to look at where i changed my mind, especially on stuff like politics, e.g. to see what opinions i have really moved on from but are clinging onto for identity reasons

i want my ideas to be discovered by others. as a social media addict, i post a *lot*. i think this means i have a lot of ideas? are any of them good? i would at least like to be able to share the good ones, put them in some place where there aren't a few tens of thousands of them... maybe over time i get some idea of what is bullshit and what isn't and i can push those to the top of the pile. i want them to be subjected to scrutiny!! sometimes a post or an opinion is like a wish, like i am asking the world to solve a problem or clarify something for me. when i do get feedback on a post (most of them don't get any feedback), it's always so heartfelt and valuable and helpful compared to the average tweet reply. oh also there's the ego thing (yeah i'm contradicting the "truth" section here a bit) - i want to be seen being smart in public

i want to scratch my own itch. sometimes i am thinking something and i can't stop thinking it, the idea just rattles around in my head forever. i get tired of my own thoughts and end up drifting online or getting absorbed in stupid activities in order to stop thinking for a bit. tweeting the idea sometimes satisfies it, but it's too weak!! i know that it'll be buried, there are always nuances and things left over, little scraps that continue to torment me. sometimes i literally cannot sleep, because i am obsessing over something. sitting down and writing (sometimes just writing in a notebook by hand works) is much more powerful. and if it's something that i keep wanting to explain to other people, i don't even need to think i can just send someone a link (if they don't bother reading it then they maybe don't care, which honestly saves both of us time). socrates said that writing makes you forget, i think that's good

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i am disappointed to find that upon going on holiday and deactivating twitter, my Internet Friends™️ have not automatically decided to adopt my new interests, which are:

- walking around - looking at things - eating - being sleepy

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what the fuck do you think gonzo journalism is

so somebody mentioned The Bostonians which has been on my notional to-read list (that doesn't rly exist until i see the books in 2nd hand shops and then i buy them and they go on my shelf, which is used to impress women) for a long time. mostly this is due to a single person harping on about it, in a way that makes me think there really really really is some deep wisdom/insight hidden in it that we need to uncover. i do think books can be like this, like if you read any book before book X, then it's sort of a waste of time because book X will produce such a deep meaning-shift that you'll have to go back over all those other books to discover their new transformed meanings. like replaying super mario 64 with luigi i guess. nobody likes him but you gotta do it

anyway so The Bostonians - this is all hearsay but it's about a guy in 19th century boston who writes about these various society figures, i assume that there is drama, there are interactions, there are descriptions of various types of guy. i don't think anything is unique about this by the way, but the author was apparently quite famous so this particular novel has gained some amount of historical significance. i don't think it's anywhere close to being his most famous novel (i didn't see it in the (Top) section for him on wikipedia) but it's by him, so there

i think something interesting about this is that while i'm sure the writer was trying to entertain (aren't artists so pure of heart, they just want to give us a thing to enjoy, bless them) and also record some historical moment (i love how people say this nowadays, history is made up of moments, it's like a moment when you are with a girl and the sun goes down and you kiss. that's history) but ALSO devilishly, to use the collected charisma and notoriety of the figures as feedstock for his own process, to produce his novel and publish it and secure his own fame. it goes both ways too though, the people depicted in the novel (i don't think it matters if they are real or fictional characters, they're obviously based on real people they always are and no doubt they made sure others knew it) get more fame if the novel is a hit

so there's this symbiotic relationship, the author and the people he is writing about. they let him into their life and he writes about them, hell it doesn't even need to be true as i have mentioned, it's about setting the personalities in amber. i think something that bugs me about this is how this is always being sold as a new idea. i remembered the phrase gonzo journalism and just how mad it makes me, like as if hunter s thompson was the first person to acknowledge that the writer is subjective. of course he didn't invent that phrase, it was invented by a journalist. who was trying to make their own name, right? they thought of this pithy original phrase to describe a thing that's so old and so obvious to anyone, to make their own name. i was gonna write something like "maybe that's what writing is all about" but that adds a wistful curious incomplete note to something i am so, so sure of

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Questions about smart assistants

My smartphone (iPhone 13 mini) does this clever thing where if I plug it into the wall in the evening, it "knows" that I am probably going to keep it plugged in all night while I sleep, so it charges the phone more slowly in order to maximise the battery's lifespan (rechargeable batteries tend to degrade if they are repeatedly charged quickly). The general pattern here is that my phone is observing my behaviour (e.g. when I typically unplug my phone) to modify some feature (e.g. how quickly it charges) in order to meet some objective (e.g. improved battery life).

There are a number of questions one could ask here:

What is the device observing?

Where does information about the user's behaviour go? Is it shared with anyone else?

Does the device tell the user what information it is collecting?

Does the device explain how its own behaviour has changed?

Can the user disable this feature?

Can the user modify the parameters of this behaviour?

Can the user introduce new behaviours of their own accord? Or are these behaviours only triggered if the device observes certain conditions?

Does the device explain why the behaviour has been enabled/suggested?

Does the device explain who the behaviour is intended to benefit? Does it explain possible second order consequences of the behaviour?

How does the existence of the pattern affect the user's relationship to the device? Or their own preferences, or their sense of agency?

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🎵When the sun hits the sky and you can’t be alive🎶

🎵That’s executive dysfunction🎶

🎵When your friends don’t reply so you curl up and cry🎶

🎵That’s emotional dysregulation🎶

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the people i would leave behind

I read this cute NYTimes article the other day about some high school kids who had set up a "Luddite Club" where they hang out every Sunday and just do stuff not on their phones. Not exactly a new idea (think pubs that ban phones, the "phone stack", etc) but there was a quote that touched me:

“It’s a little frowned on if someone doesn’t show up,” Odille said. “We’re here every Sunday, rain or shine, even snow. We don’t keep in touch with each other, so you have to show up.”

It's almost as if living a life where you minimise your reliance on technology involves sacrifices! In the case of Luddite Club, this meant committing to being in a particular place at a particular time every week, to the exclusion of all other activities one could be doing. People talk about "JOMO" but I feel like it cheapens the things one might be missing out on - yes, a lot of Twitter and Discord is frivolous banter, but I have made friends on the Internet too! If I reduce my usage of social media, there are a bunch of people I will probably slowly drift away from if I do not keep in regular contact with them. I don't know if I am ready to do that.

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a way in which i am getting stuck

I've noticed a way in which I am getting blocked (or blocking myself) when looking for jobs. Here's what happens:

I see an advert for an exciting and interesting job. Some of the skills listed on the job ad are things I have experience in, some are unfamiliar to me.

I decide that in order to prove to the prospective employer that I am qualified for the job, I should take some time to learn about the unfamiliar skills listed on the job ad.

This becomes a project or an attempt to read some textbook.

After hours or days or weeks, I give up, with nothing to show for it (https://twitter.com/djmicrobeads/status/1553879990726434818).

I never apply to the job.

What's going on here? I want to apply to jobs. I am attracted to jobs that offer the chance to do something that I haven't done before, but that inherently means that I risk not understanding the new thing and FAILING. So I try to prepare, but most things worth knowing can't be cram-studied for like I am passing an exam.

Why don't I have more confidence? If I simply believed that I could adapt to new problems then I wouldn't need to prepare for things in advance. Not to mention the fact that in tech, doing a mundane job that is aligned with your present skillset will inevitably involve learning about new technologies and problem domains anyway. Sure, they might not be exciting but it's still learning, I still have to confront the fact that I don't know everything.

Am I sabotaging myself? I feel like it's easy to get into a spiral of guilt when I think about being "blocked" as self-sabotage, as if there is a part of me (a part that represents a deep truth about myself) that is deciding to stop me, maybe because what I am trying to do is misaligned with what I "really" (?) want or because it will harm me in some way that I am not yet conscious of. Nothing good (https://twitter.com/djmicrobeads/status/1537751354034233351) has ever come of me doing things through self-coercion, either I end up doing the bare minimum or it comes through in a warped and inauthentic-feeling way that doesn't really make me feel stronger.

Ok, those are some thoughts. I wanted to write this to bring it to my attention, for all I know this might be enough to dissolve it. Maybe the individual parts of it can be unpicked carefully. I don't know. I'm curious about what anyone reading this might think, though.

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kitchen table

i keep having this notion that i need to make something of my life i haven't achieved much. i am not rich or famous. i haven't really created anything except some stuff i was told to do at work which didn't seem that important now and then i look within and wonder what it is i want to do, like what do i really care about an image appears, a kitchen table. i'm there, my friends are there, my family are all there we're sitting in silence or working or talking or just listening to the trees and birds outside, some of them can be seen out of the window someone is cutting up an apple or peeling an orange and sharing out the slices someone is making a big pot of coffee or tea there is a plastic tub opened filled with biscuits of various kinds and maybe some cake if we are lucky it sort of doesn't matter where it is

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the thrilling and hilarious ordeal

so sick how the only way you can get experience is through experience. and the only way you can get good is through the humiliating ordeal of sucking ass at it