2016 in Review
Another year gone. I could basically produce a rehash of my “New Year’s Day Message” from last year and it would basically still model my thinking today. I wanted a leaner information diet, which is a resolution that I easily chalked up as a failure back in October– Politics ruined my consumption habits. This year, I am more »
Reflecting on Recent Failures
Game Design Competition I read The Power Broker as a prerequisite for a game design competition revolving around the book. I did finish the book, but never got around to organizing my notes to post. We did build a game (several, actually, in pursuit of a good mechanic) and though we landed on something we liked, the more »
Self-Congratulation
I’m starting Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. I will probably share some notes or thoughts, but I’m actually trying it as an audiobook (there’s no ebook! What was I supposed to do?) so my usual e-annotation method won’t quite work. I’ll work out how I’ll write to it. — I more »
The Internet is a Red Pill Dispensary
I very clearly broke my promise to “see you next week”. I deserve to be shamed. Below, I take what I think might be a pretty mixed metaphor, and stretch it pretty badly. As I’ve done before, I figured I’d publish it as a snapshot of an idea-in-progress to reference and clean up later. I would promise to get more anchored more »
How I Have Become Even More Boring (Part 1 of 1000)
This recent(ish) Ribbonfarm article about banal ideas becoming loaded with meaning got to me. I immediately deleted an old draft I had left unpublished on a similar topic, one of a flurry of scribbled-out ideas from my post about Law of Unrecognized Novelty last year that I never picked up. The gist of it was that phrases or concepts can become imbued with incommunicable more »
Coatesian History
Reading this warmed my heart: God does not care about history, and history does not care about humans. It’s a great joy to find someone articulate your beliefs even better than you do. It’s perhaps an even greater joy to find those string of words that you almost feel that you felt all along. It’s more »
24
Every time I open my browser there is a countdown to my death, according to some actuarial table. It’s a big hit at work. Anyway, broadly speaking I am expected about 21000 days to live [controlling for almost nothing]. I turned 24 earlier this month. It is an intimidatingly small number. It also maps cleanly to more »
On 2014
I’m certain that no one finds my own wrap-up posts more interesting than I do. That’s fine. I can review old thoughts, I can condense, and with some distance I can ask myself “How could I have said this better?” I’ve complained about this before, but I still don’t edit much before publishing. There are miles to more »
Notes on Graham Harman
Did I finish the Fukuyama dive this week like I said I would? No. Are you gonna do something about it? Nope. — These notes are pulled from a few online lectures I’ve listened to by Graham Harman. I still haven’t read any of his books but the signals are good that he’s a person worth reading more »
A belated halloween post
Two times makes a tradition, right? Thomas Ligotti’s The Red Tower was the first fiction piece of his that I’ve read.