Professional computer toucher, amateur wizard, full-time soup enthusiast
I’m going to start living on minimum wage. Sort of. Not really. It’s complicated. Some types of sophistication won’t make you enjoy the object more, they’ll make you enjoy it less. For example, wine snobs don’t enjoy wine twice as much as you, they’re more keenly aware of how most wine isn’t good enough. Avoid sophistication that diminishes your enjoyment. — Conor Barnes In the beginning God created a budget There’s basically two parts to a budget.
Some of the concepts and terminology I’m about to use, as well as the title of the blog post, were lifted directly from here. Having said that, I think I’m going to end up at a very different final destination than the original poster. So, credit where credit is due, but don’t feel compelled to read the original to understand my point. King Power King Power is money. I think the original article would try to lump in other things, like status, but one of my foundational operational primitives is that all of those things are fungible with money.
The fundamental question: whether to prioritize security or fulfillment – to “run for office” or “build a rocket”.
We’re a couple days over one quarter of the way into the year, so I sat down and worked on a template for planning around my yearly theme. Part of a yearly theme is not to plan too hard. There’s a reason it’s not a yearly goal or, so help me, new years resolution. But I thought having some sort of light framework for checkin and intention setting would be useful, so that’s what I’m working towards.
My thoughts on working with AI have evolved a lot over the last year or so that I’ve been actively using them. I’ve gone from “this is an interesting toy, but it doesn’t seem very useful” to “wow, people are using this all the time and it gets important things wrong” to “actually if you’re smart about how you use it this can do some really useful things” to “I’m using this more and more every day, it seems unlikely that’s going to change.
“What a week, huh?” “Lemon, it’s Wednesday.” — 30 Rock, S4E2 “Into the Crevasse” Without exception, the smartest people I know are all in agreement that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is on the way in the next three years. That could mean a lot of things. Good things. Bad things. I think it’s reasonable to assume nobody can predict what the world will look like beyond that horizon.
The society I happen to have been born into is based on consumption. It tells me that my worth is measured in my economic contributions. That I will be judged by the clothes I wear, the car I drive, the establishments I frequent.
“The tactical result of an engagement forms the base for new strategic decisions because victory or defeat in a battle changes the situation to such a degree that no human acumen is able to see beyond the first battle.” Or, “No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” -Helmuth von Moltke the Elder Nearing the end of the year, I’m starting to think about next year’s theme. But before I get into that, I think it’s worth reviewing how this year’s theme went.
You might surmise that this is a political post. And it sort of is, but also it isn’t. Because winter has always been coming. And most likely, winter will always be coming. Winter might be Trump, it might be climate change, it might be an asteroid that strikes the Pacific ocean and obliterates all life as we know it. We don’t know when winter will come, nor what form it will take, but winter is coming.
I might be the only person you know who doesn’t shop on Amazon.
I spent most of last night talking with a dear friend about community and connection in the current age of the Internet.
I really hated the Libre 2 continuous glucose monitor (CGM.) A friend asked for some detail about why, which lead me down a long-winded story about the last five years of my health journey. About halfway through I thought “this should be a blog post.” So…
It’s the last day of the Year of Time, and I think of it broadly as a success. I’ve cut my commitments to the bare minimum, and for the first time in forever have been making solid progress on self care and relaxation as a goal. Most nights, after work, there hasn’t been more work. The Steam Deck has been life changing, being a system perfect for the playing of games and almost nothing else.
I quietly set the goal of spending no money for a week and almost managed to do it. There’s nearly enough food in the house that if I’m clever I don’t need to supplement much to make a week’s worth of meals. Even though we ended up making a few grocery runs, we avoided eating out so I’m still calling it a success. Heading into 2024 I’m wondering how long I can extend the concept.