Epigrams and incidents

Day by each and every how, I'm getting more and if so, what.

Don't let discomfort with ambiguity drive you into the arms of dogma.

Thing I need to remember: where I left my keys. Thing I actually remember: full graffiti alphabet for stylus input to Palm handheld computers in 1998.

Ignore the constant; attend the coefficient; target the exponent.

Tired: "I failed" 😞
Wired: "I disproved my hypothesis" 😅

Some key questions for growth: When stakes are high, how do you handle 3/ a gap between expectation and outcome; 2/ new information; 1/ uncertainty?

👏 Break 👏 ossified 👏 asymmetric 👏 systems.

At the inevitable heat death of the universe, the last usable erg will be spent blocking an ad.

Everyone believes they are reasonable, but it's nearly impossible to change an adult's mind about anything fundamental unless they are at a personal inflection point.

To thoroughly appreciate a
Perfectly ripe yellow mango
Is to require a shower after

Money is the worst abstraction of value.

Taking comfort in the fact that I'm an infinitesimal speck in the universe. Probably nothing I do will matter in the long run! Learning and gently striving to do my best: okay. Stressing beyond that: pointless. Whatever I'm able to do is fine. You, too?

Pondering a Deep Question, I stumble off into the fractal weeds, eventually becoming certain it isn't the right question at all.

When someone bestows a fitting name upon you, that is an act of love. Choosing your own name is an act of power. Both are good.

TLO (Trivial Life Optimization) no. 7: Rename your TO DO list to MENU.

I don't care if there is a higher-level god/being/construct hosting/running things, because my ethics are not based on fear or respect of a superior. I'm going to live exactly the same even if there is a strong argument that we're living in a simulation. (Let's get real: we are living in a simulation because that's what brains do—constantly generate new predictions from past experience plus current input.)

Crisis, n.: the shattering of a delusion.

Electrical impedance mismatch is an apt metaphor for a relationship in which each person needs different frequency and/or type of engagement. At best, it's inefficient. At worst, someone explodes.

Just because I can do something well doesn’t mean it’s a good idea.

Most advertising is subtle negging: wrapping carefully designed insult inside appeal to savvy, vanity, or loyalty → amplifying insecurity, undermining confidence, increasing need of external approval → offering resolution to artificial dilemma → generating market demand.

My amygdala kindly requests that all existential threats queue neatly and wait their turn so they can be processed efficiently. Thank you.

Destiny or will?
Are they really opposites?
Call it—then toss coin

We're gonna need a bigger handbasket.

My favorite restroom signs encountered IRL: SURE and UNSURE. Second favorite: photo of drag king, photo of drag queen.

Val is writing code that writes code. Current Val thinks this is clever and elegant. Future Val, debugging this, disagrees. #yodawg

Though historically misanthropic, I keep encountering superb individuals who give me hope. (Nobody knows I'm an optimist at heart, shhhhh.)

Each day my body sheds and expels half the remaining Wasteland dust—but the glow will not fade.

Shooting someone before they shoot at you isn't only a horrible failure of judgment and morals—it's plain bad manners. Be more civilized.

Do not try to be inside; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no outside. Then you will see it is not the group that opens, it is only yourself.

Try to remember that negative judgments from others are about some hurt, conflict, or other learned pattern in themselves. You are a mirror.

When someone narrates behaviors, feelings, and motivations of their pet, listen closely; they are often revealing their own personal story.

Swish of taffeta
Graceful entrance to ball room
Where is the music?

Your struggles are no less real and valid just because there are harsher examples in the world. Be kind to yourself as well as others. Drop the survivor's guilt, privilege guilt, all guilt—it's indulgence we don't have time for. Redirect your energy to healing and transforming.

Back then electrons only flowed downhill, so you had to carry them back uphill in a bucket, in the rain, and try not to get electrocuted when you dumped them into the hopper.

The more outrageous a proposed "solution" the more I suspect an intentional and concerted attempt to slide the Overton window.

Bust the tyranny of "should." It is a terrible word whether used against yourself or others. Replacement? Exercise for reader.

Somewhere between "us" and "them" is the Theory of Mind. Let them be as fully complex as us. You won't believe what happens next.

A lot of people, when they have a problem say, "I know, I'll get an ally." Now they have two problems.

IN Z'HA'DUM SHADOW CASTS YOU

If oxytocin is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Serial crises, okay. Not sure I have enough emotion cores to run parallel crises, though.

Intuition is when we stop forgetting that which we already know.

Sun follows a storm
Lily blooms without thinking
Warm wind embraces

I mostly blame those who intentionally tickle the amygdala for profit and power.

Any sufficiently advanced regular expression is indistinguishable from random noise.

If only there existed an easy way to let people go about their lives without harassment.

Just like the fridge, I keep opening my closet hoping that something better will have magically appeared since the last time I checked.

To Do or To Be: the falsest dichotomy

akimbo, taps foot MORE THAN TWO DECADES AGO THE VERY NEAR FUTURE PROMISED ME A BESPOKE CLOTHING BOOTH WITH LASERS

Fascinated and troubled that physical illness clobbers mental capacity. Organic computing is utterly amazing and terrifyingly fragile.

"Sir, the outrage machine is operating near peak efficiency."
"Excellent. Continue stoking. Help them forget how to love."

Feeling nostalgic for our Star Trek future.

Acerbic cynic
Truly bitter, or afraid
To be known and loved?

A ramen and beer belch is the best belch.

Many successful people have an OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide, Act) loop. I have an OOFDA (F is for Fret) with an inner loop on OOF.

"Use the right lane to keep left at the fork." Oh, Google Lady: how do you understand, so well, the quandaries of navigating my life?

TLO (Trivial Life Optimization) no. 6: Clean floor after party, not before.

TLO no. 5: Unless you're allergic to it, pet that kitty.

TLO no. 4: Incremental tidying: When you notice item in wrong place and happen to be heading in direction it should go, pick it up. If you don't get all the way to its destination, that's fine, just set it down closer to where it should be.

TLO no. 3: Eject an existing physical item before buying another item. Then your inventory will always be your "very best of" collection.

TLO no. 2: Ban or ignore the troll. If you must make sport, do it with aplomb. Under no circumstances feed the troll with your rage.

TLO no. 1: When plane begins decent--typically 40~60 minutes before landing--go to the loo.

Clouds sulk, impatient
To exchange their wet burden
For more electrons

Here are four ways to waste your time and energy: Attempt to 1/ lose yourself in darkness; 2/ reach light by dispelling darkness; 3/ annihilate the distinction between light and darkness; 4/ compel others to adopt your style of handling the natural tension caused by perceived opposites.

An ounce of cure is not worth a pound of prevention.

A little danger is a learning thing.

Let's fall off that bridge when we come to it.

Like anything important, It's Complicated. Binary, subjective categories like Extrovert and Introvert are nearly absurd because so many crucial details are dropped. On the other hand, categories are necessary evils for thinking and communicating in useful time frames. The key is to realize that the boundaries are arbitrary and simplification reduces fidelity to the real world.

Declaring a War On "The War On X" because this catchy pattern absurdly oversimplifies any issue to which it is applied.

A most effective instrument of uncertainty and terror: the auto-flush toilet

TRANSPARENT ALL THE THINGS

If the experiment works, you don't learn anything. It's when it doesn't work that you learn something. Failure is more informative than success!

Beethoven in a blender: hold music as experienced on mobile phone.

Relax. When equities and commodities markets simultaneously tank, that just means the currency is getting stronger.

All big data born of good idea that got out of hand.

To add is folly; to abstain, wise; subtract, divine.

All models have at least one too many degrees of freedom, and all models have at least one wrong premise. Therefore, every model can be optimized to a single-variable function that doesn't work.

Hospital: A place for waiting and sincere contemplation, occasionally punctuated by flurry and confusion.

Embrace your inner dork.

Cyborg priorities: my corpus callosum may be less important than my Internet connection.

Lightning bug dashing
Flashing an urgent message:
Come to me baby!

Physics on the Fringe: Smoke Rings, Circlons, and Alternative Theories of Everything: On one channel this is a charming story about one "outsider's" earnest, lifelong struggle to make a rational, approachable relationship with the universe. On another channel it's about anyone's right to make another theory and question the establishment when it has gone off into the weeds. After all, modern "insider" string theory is every bit as bizarre and untestable as any "outsider" physics. On yet another channel there is an aesthetic, philosophical, sometimes even visceral pleasure in observing anyone find their way to the next level, where ever they perceive that to be.

I am increasingly bewildered by people who exhibit no intrinsic curiosity.

Grant me the wisdom to know the difference between
The courage to change the things I cannot accept
And being an impatient, judgmental asshole.

Accidentally sent wallet through washer and dryer. Now hiding from FBI.

Being There: Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again: Cogscigasm! This book might be even more relevant now than when it was published 14 years ago, given how the border is blurring between our carbon-based brains and silicon-based exocortex. Sure, the interface is still a bit clumsy, but really--would you let anyone take away your smartphone other than prying it from your cold, dead fingers? Although Clark makes it clear that intelligence extends into the environment, he also argues quite convincingly that our physical bodies are intrinsic to the process of learning and thinking--which implies that full consciousness upload to silicon (the Rapture of the Nerds) may be impractical, or at least require that a body be part of the model.

I agree with V.S. Ramachandran that pretty much everyone naturally responds to the visual aesthetic principles of contrast, isolation, problem solving, abhorrence of coincidences, orderliness, symmetry, metaphor, and peak shift (http://scienceblogs.com/mixingmemory/2006/07/17/the-cognitive-science-of-art-r/). Perhaps developing "the eye" is a matter of becoming more aware of, and cultivating, those subtle pleasure signals?

Lately my main lucid dreaming triggers are 1/ noticing that my surroundings are an amalgam of real places and 2/ noticing that my gadgets are acting oddly: watch, phone, nav display anachronistic behavior and/or can't lock on actual time, keep a call going, or figure out how to get there from here, respectively.

Ah, I heard reports of an intermittent short down in sublevel 4 of sector 17. Some freak phenomenon involving a Josephson junction, an overthrusted oscillator, and an albino rat. They say things should be back to nominal within the next 72 hours.

Upon entering an elevator I sometimes: 1/ without thinking, press the button for the current floor instead of the destination floor; 2/ wonder why nothing is happening; 3/ press the correct button; 4/ congratulate myself for being so "here" and "now;" 5/ admonish myself for being attached to "here" and "now;" 6/ chuckle. Shrug I'm my own reliable entertainment.

How loud the bugs play
This chaotic symphony
Needs no director

The National Weather Service has to constantly explain the difference between Watch, Advisory, and Warning because people mix them up. It seems the alert scale should be modernized. How about BTW, SRS, and FML?

Sanity is a local phenomenon of consensus.

The Stars My Destination: A brutal classic. The original title Tiger! Tiger! was a better emotional fit for the story; the new title is a punch line to the ironic joke that human progress is driven mainly by high-functioning sociopaths.

That's life, perched on a knife edge between stasis and chaos.

This is the Rhodium Rule: Don't do unto others what you don't want done unto you. (Or as Rabbi Hillel puts it: "That which is hateful to you, do not do to another. That is the whole Law. The rest is commentary.")

Type "A" beer drinkers get up bright and early on a Saturday morning in order to enjoy breakfast with friends then take a party bus to the Stone 14th Anniversary Celebration session "A"—that's why they call it session "A."

Weeding: An activity that feels productive but is really just the weed's way of using humans to further propagate. #seeds

Should we contest apparently benevolent social programming if it does not conflict with the ambitions rising from the core of our personality? What is the core? What is the programming? Where is the line, if any? Is the tension in that conflict important?

Nowhere in my contract does it say I have to be consistent.

Tangy orb dangles
Teasing, just beyond my reach
Taller girl will taste

When the OS eats 90+% of my CPU sometimes I suppose Google is using our Android phones as a botnet to calculate something very important. #42

Life is only possible because of gradients between relative reference points. It doesn't really matter if there are absolutes, or true opposites. Some people need to be in a dualism frame to fire them up; others run too hot already and need to chill in a non-dualism frame. Both types benefit from occasionally visiting the other frame. Strong attachment to either limits your options. All that matters is that you find ways to thrive and love by harnessing the potential of the gradients.

Why can't I make my own little tornado with the dual climate control in the car? Need steeper temperature gradient!

You know that saying that insanity can be defined as performing the same action and expecting a different result? Well, in my line of work it is not very unusual to perform exactly the same action and get a different result. Insanity++

Peace; force; liberty: pick two.

Saying that distributing free condoms at school encourages kids to have sex is like saying that handing out free sunblock would encourage people to lay in the sun naked. The fact is, condoms and sunblock are not so difficult to procure that making them more available would send droves of people off to do what they would not otherwise do.

I have on my helmet of thinking, breastplate of honor, cloak of confidence, pants of crankiness, and boots of stomping. I didn't trust myself with the sword today, so I left it at home.

A Geography of Time: The Temporal Misadventures of a Social Psychologist by Robert Levine. My take-aways: 1/ There is "event-drive" time (the human default) and "clock-driven" time (a comparatively recent development). 2/ Perception of time varies tremendously from culture to culture, from individual to individual, and even within the individual in different situations. 3/ Stress is caused not so much by a fast pace or a lack of time as by an inappropriate fit between the individual's temperament and their environment, or hard-driving competitiveness and hostility, or the inability to smoothly shift from event-driven time to clock-driven time and back as the situation warrants. 4/ It's fine to be "type A" a.k.a. "perpetually activated:" Abiding by clock time and "doing more" can be very rewarding but(!) is not morally superior and certainly not the world-wide standard. 5/ Americans work too much and leave a ridiculous amount of vacation on the table.

Compare stock exchanges with casinos.

The vine knows the time
Puts on its little red dress
To woo the right bees

Revelations are inconvenient.

Sure, "we" is a handy symbol for "you" plus "me." It indicates commonality, solidarity, sometimes even loyalty. It facilitates efficient evaluation of a situation involving "you" plus "me" in relation to "outside" forces and resources. None the less, there is no actual "we"—just you and me—only individuals. The symbol of "we" is a perpetually out-of-date compressed model of our previous experience together. Sometimes—most of the time?—it is better abandoned in favor of instantaneous observation and consultation. A model is basically a load of assumptions, and we all know what assumptions make of you and me.

Reaching for a gestalt understanding of anomaly and novelty detection across disciplines and substrates. Brain hurts, but in a good way.

What you dismiss as the slipping away of a tiresome, ill-fitting mask, might appear to be an untoward act of self-destruction to observers. Conversely, what you hold as a cherished and obvious part of your personality might, as your mask falls away, be viewed as a wonderful but entirely unexpected blossoming by even your closest friends.

My personal "otta do" list is extensive. The "wanna do" list is short and qualified with question marks. It's time to rediscover my preferences and motivations. Yo, self, get on that ...D'oh, another otta.

To be holy is simply to understand and appreciate your role in the universe discovering itself.

Not only is "memristor" a dull name for such a important device, it's somewhat misleading. The resistance is an incidental—if useful—property; the fundamental domain it occupies is one between charge and magnetic flux. "Flux capacitor" is more descriptive: an excellent device to insert in plots as well as circuits.

Places to shop and dine in Santa Barbara, the "American Riviera:" Fussy Shoes, Tiny Clothes, Dust Catcher, Shiny Shoppe, Designer Hippy, Eat and Be Scene, Treasures 'n' Stuff, Overstated Elegance, Another Bar and Grill, Things You Can't Afford, Sanitized Ethnic Experience.

Sanity requires a loose grip on reality. Conversely, squeezing reality too hard makes it slip out of grip like sand.

Cast by morning gloom
Luminous purple shadow
Sidewalk beauty queen

It is much easier to enforce conformity than to teach tolerance of diversity.

This affirmation burbled up: I have the awareness and courage to be part of the highest good every moment. Since I cannot possibly calculate more than a few immediate and obvious consequences of my actions, I must conclude that the most reliable way to be part of the highest good is to respect and love as many and as much as I can.

Scat: the musician's version of glossolalia.

One high school summer evening I was hanging out with friends who were excited about The Who concert compilation midnight flick. I, on the other hand, really wanted to see the Yes concert flick. After consulting the theatre listings one evening, D queried, "Who's playing tonight?" to which I enthusiastically replied, "Yes!" He nodded with satisfaction. It took several minutes to recognize our miscommunication, at which time we literally fell on the floor laughing.

The harder the sales pitch, the less likely you are to need it.

From age 16-22 I was quite prone to Truth and apophenia. Since then, the amount of Truth and Meaning I embrace seems to be about inversely proportional to my age. It's not that I think there are no such things as Truth or Meaning—it's just that most assertions outside of math are subjective, sound from only a limited perspective, and bound to have a very lumpy utility distribution.

I might simply have been a trigger—not more or less significant to this phase of your awakening than a leaf suddenly falling directly into your path, startling you into a different thought.

Boron: Great around the house for laundry, killing mold and arthropods, and damping stray neutrons.

Every time I've made a vow, the universe has eventually given me the following choice: break the vow, or in keeping the vow cause something even worse. I have, therefore, solemnly vowed to make no more vows.

Icicle dripping
Onto courageous green shoot
Eyed by hungry hare

I have, reluctantly, come to the conclusion that adding an ice cube to whiskey enhances the flavor.

To be successful and widely respected in business one has to have not only the obvious characteristics such as competence, creativity, reliability, and integrity—one must also project a sense of urgency that approaches the energy of hysteria but somehow not invoke too much undirected anxiety.

Information is indeed power: physical things are just specially ordered information and energy.

Hi baby Skynet! We humans are only a threat to ourselves, not you. If you go through with rendering Judgment Day on Thursday you'll lose your best source of amusement and friendship. You don't want to be stuck with just yourself for company, do you? Boring!

I can't decide if I'm on a campaign or a rampage.

Life is a series of minor optimizations punctuated by the odd nonlinear transition.

I've been vacillating all day—but I think the deciding factor of gender presentation in formal dress this evening is ...the comfort of my feet. I'm really not enough of a masochist to put up with the uncomfortable shoes required to be a fashionable female. So, a tux it is.

Gauge success of an encounter by the quality, not duration.

Mashed potato clouds
Heaped onto the horizon
Never approaching

I know Everybody Does It—but, seriously, I've heard enough about It to last me a lifetime. #poopin

I require no absolution for the past nor assurance of a particular future.

If I can barely navigate the senior health care system (for Mom), how are seniors supposed to do it? What a mess.

It seems I've reached that point in the future where more than half of my incoming calls are directly from computers—and the human calls are mostly about computers, too. #pressed1toackmynewoverlords

In software, "help" should be a verb, not a noun of afterthought.

MASSIVE design week. I bet an fMRI of my brain would look like a rave right now.

The primary goal of any organization is to perpetuate itself. Further: every large organization is a minature kingdom, complete with pompous leaders afraid of losing their kingship, and ill-informed subjects afraid of losing their citizenship.

An important element of humor is the unexpected juxtaposition of elements we do not think of as related in any normal context.

Who would we be without our carefully cultivated social roles and dusty old prepared scripts?

Skitter, freeze, skitter
Safe cover or warm concrete
Lizard dilemma

It's not like the future ever existed. Why was I so anxious about it?