on happiness
2019-02-15
We live in a world where people think happiness is a condition, but it’s not; it’s a sensation. It’s momentary. So do I have little moments of happiness? Yes. Is that my general condition? No. Is that anyone’s general condition? I can’t believe that’s the case. Are there people that are generally more buoyant than I am? Yes, most people. I don’t think of myself as being unhappy, I think of myself as being morose, but it’s just natural, it’s not my circumstances so much. I can be in bad circumstances like anyone else, or I can be in good circumstances, but in general, if you broke into my apartment and I didn’t know you were there, you would not see me whistling around the house.
Sober musicians
2019-01-26
Anastasio: I had a sort of different situation than most people, in that I was facing felony charges, based orn what was in my car when I was pulled over. So I did end up going to a felony-drug-treatment court, which was the greatest thing that ever could’ve happened to me. I had to move within half an hour of the jail, which was in Fort Edward, New York, because they call you in for random urine tests and stuff. So I basically had to stop my life for 14 months. I did 250 or something hours of community service—cleaning the bathrooms and toilets at the Washington County fairgrounds, putting up fences, parking cars, breaking rocks—and court-ordered outpatient [treatment], and drug-court meetings. I just had to move up there and spent 14 months just getting sober and complying with the rules. They’re very strict. If you miss a meeting, they put you in jail for 48 hours. Which happened to me—I had to go to jail a couple of times. This is the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.
shame
2019-01-04
ASK POLLY: I’m Broke and Mostly Friendless and I’ve Wasted My Whole Life
Learn to treat yourself the way a loving older parent would. Tell yourself: This reckoning serves a purpose. Your traveling served a purpose. Your moving served a purpose. You’re sitting on a pile of gold that you earned through your own hard work, you just can’t see it yet. You can’t see it because you’re blinded by your shame.
Anyone unfamiliar with the term “geek” should seek out and read William Lindsay Gresham’s now-classic 1946 novel, Nightmare Alley, for the most chillingly accurate description ever set in type. A geek is usually a wetbrain; that is, a young or old man so far gone into alcoholism that his brain has turned into prune-whip yogurt. When he sweats, he sweats sour mash. A gilly locates a skid in whatever town it’s in, and carries him to the next stop, and as many stops as it can get out of him before he either dies or wanders off. For the splendid honorarium of a bottle of gin or two a day, the skid will dress in an animal skin, go without shaving, sleep in a cage, and on cue wallow in his own shit, eat dead snakes, bite the heads off live chickens. No reputable carny will carry a geek. It is a terrible thing. It plays to the basest hungers and most primal fears in the human repertory. Anyone who could derive enjoyment from watching a debased creature, seemingly only half-human, scuttling across the floor of a foul, stinking pit or pen, smearing itself with feces, rubbing its privates on the gnawed skin of a dead rattlesnake, moaning and rolling its eyes as it devolved before one’s eyes, reverting to a stage of subhuman existence not even Cro-Magnons knew… such a person is beneath contempt, lower even than the poor bastard in that cage.
I have seen hordes of rural goodfolk, pillars of their communities, churchgoing Christians and advocates of the Protestant Work Ethic, who devoutly enjoyed watching a geek. Stand behind the tent flap. Watch. You’ll learn more about human nature than you ever wished to know.
— Harlan Ellison, “Gopher in the Gilly”, 1982
loud.
2018-02-26
a last word for #bellletstalk 2018
2018-02-03
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHIxRcD22MA
also this was funny.
Atwood on #metoo
2018-01-15
My fundamental position is that women are human beings, with the full range of saintly and demonic behaviours this entails, including criminal ones. They’re not angels, incapable of wrongdoing. If they were, we wouldn’t need a legal system.
Nor do I believe that women are children, incapable of agency or of making moral decisions.
[…]
The #MeToo moment is a symptom of a broken legal system. All too frequently, women and other sexual-abuse complainants couldn’t get a fair hearing through institutions – including corporate structures – so they used a new tool: the internet. Stars fell from the skies. This has been very effective, and has been seen as a massive wake-up call. But what next? The legal system can be fixed, or our society could dispose of it. Institutions, corporations and workplaces can houseclean, or they can expect more stars to fall, and also a lot of asteroids.
If the legal system is bypassed because it is seen as ineffectual, what will take its place?
Margaret Atwood takes to Twitter to respond to criticism of #MeToo Globe op-ed
New manifesto
2018-01-04
On my temple in Delphi there are two words written: Know Thyself. It’s good advice. Know yourself. You are worth knowing. Examine your life. The unexamined life is not worth living. Be aware that other people have equal significance. Give them the space to make their own choices, and let their choices count as you want them to let your choices count. Remember that excellence has no stopping point and keep on pursuing it. Make art that can last and that says something nobody else can say. Live the best life you can, and become the best self you can. You cannot know which of your actions is the lever that will move worlds. Not even Necessity knows all ends. Know yourself.
Programming language stuff
2018-01-04
The market for new programming languages, as I write this in 2017, is competitive but not impenetrable — but like a freshly minted Ph.D., no one seems to be sure of Perl 6’s market prospects, and like a just-turned-in dissertation, no one seems to know whether the fruit of many years’ labor is actually worth a damn.
It is now possible to glimpse a future in which all that code is written in specific C replacements with strong memory-safety properties. Go, or Rust, or Cx – any way you slice it, C’s hold is slipping.
The big break in computer languages
The largest trend driving development towards [Garbage Collection] languages haven’t reversed, and there’s no reason to expect it will. Therefore: eventually we will have GC techniques with low enough latency overhead to be usable in kernels and low-level firmware, and those will ship in language implementations. Those are the languages that will truly end C’s long reign.
a reason for not doing a Ph.D.
2018-01-04
The Career Move That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Imagine if we all just stopped believing that the only way to be an academic is to be constantly employed by a university. There—wouldn’t that make people’s lives a lot better? Let’s just do that.
