Reflections on ~9 years of anime
-Reflections on ~9 years of anime
+It’s hard to accurately(?) estimate how long I’ve been watching anime. My AnimeBytes account is about 9 years old, so that’s a lower bound.
diff --git a/html/buddhismstarternotes.html b/html/buddhismstarternotes.html index b535b6f..58d8e6f 100644 --- a/html/buddhismstarternotes.html +++ b/html/buddhismstarternotes.html @@ -203,9 +203,9 @@Compendium of Notes on Starting Meditation
-Compendium of Notes on Starting Meditation
+last modified: 2022-10-03
diff --git a/html/gwernopen.html b/html/gwernopen.html index f569652..cccaca6 100644 --- a/html/gwernopen.html +++ b/html/gwernopen.html @@ -203,9 +203,9 @@Guessing to Gwern’s open questions
-Guessing to Gwern’s open questions
+last modified: 2022-10-03
diff --git a/html/posts/blog-tech.html b/html/posts/blog-tech.html index e832264..9a04bcc 100644 --- a/html/posts/blog-tech.html +++ b/html/posts/blog-tech.html @@ -203,12 +203,12 @@Blog Tech
-Blog Tech
+chuu
+chuu
Bad Arguments Against Something Can Become Good Arguments For It
-Bad Arguments Against Something Can Become Good Arguments For It
+A decisionmaking trick I often use is to take bad arguments against something as arguments for that thing. As a general qualitative principle this of course does not work - Reversed Stupidity is not Intelligence. Rather, I use this technique in a quantitative way.
diff --git a/html/posts/diary/week-3-2023.html b/html/posts/diary/week-3-2023.html index 884726d..cdaeab3 100644 --- a/html/posts/diary/week-3-2023.html +++ b/html/posts/diary/week-3-2023.html @@ -203,13 +203,13 @@Week 3, 2023, “Week of Systems” report
-Week 3, 2023, “Week of Systems” report
+Introduction
-Introduction
+
Last week I worked on the issue of “life systems”, by which I mean systems such as to-do lists, good habits such as exercise, schedules, plans, that sort of thing. At various times in the past I’ve had various such systems, some working better than others. I used to make a list of the day’s goals every morning and cross them off throughout the day. I also keep a file called life.org where I keep track of to-dos and leads to look into at a later point and such. Other things I would consider “sytems” include my daily meditation practice and various attempts at regular exercise I’ve made in the past.
Desirable Traits
-Desirable Traits
+The primary issue with life systems is therefore the overhead, the burden of maintenance, the stress. Rather than simplifying life, it is easy to add an administrative burden. In light of this, I’ve isolated the following properties that I think a good system should have:
@@ -235,9 +235,9 @@ The primary issue with life systems is therefore the overhead, the burden of maiSpecifics and the Problem of Ends
-Specifics and the Problem of Ends
+The above is about as far as I got in terms of definitives. I did not start there; I started at neither the level of specifics nor of generalities, but in between, dealing with things such as “managing stress” and “measurability” and “dimensions of personal development”. At this level, however, it was far easier to write things down than to strike them through; easier to complicate than simplify, and I ended up with a basket of disjointed ideas, aims and cautions that I realized would be difficult to unify into a simple, coherent system. I was able to extract properties that the system should have, but not specifics of how the system should work.
@@ -256,17 +256,17 @@ This, I think, is the biggest open issue in this matter, the issue of motivatAssorted Raw Materials
-Assorted Raw Materials
+What follows is more-or-less a brain-dump of generated ideas that do not fit in the earlier sections.
Weekly Themes & Reports
-Weekly Themes & Reports
+The astute reader will observe that this article itself, as a report on a weekly theme, itself constitutes a system. I have been playing with the idea of daily, weekly, monthly &c themes for a while; weekly themes seem like a good sweet spot. This is the first weekly theme so far, and I’m quite satisfied with it; having a theme gave me something to fall back on, something to work on when I didn’t know what I should be doing, something to keep in the back of my mind. Writing this kind of report on it is also helpful; it’s free-form enough that it’s not burdensome, yet the fact that I intend to report on my thoughts helps keep me focused and organized.
@@ -277,9 +277,9 @@ This gives me hope; it’s quite difficult to balance all the constraints onDynamic Automatic Recall of Intentions
-Dynamic Automatic Recall of Intentions
+I like to keep to-do lists, both short-term and long-term, but long-term lists can be hard to manage. It’s natural to add things to them faster than you can tick them off, it’s normal to have more things you want to do than you actually end up doing. However, unless you are very aggressive about cutting things out, this tends to lead to a large to-do list over time, with many things of low priority on it. This makes it much more effortful to maintain and to extract activities from it, defeating the purpose of a to-do list, which for me is primarily to get all of these things out of my head and onto a document.
@@ -298,9 +298,9 @@ This way, I would not have to personally worry about forgetting anything; I woulChatbot as UI
-Chatbot as UI
+In context of the previous section I’ve been thinking about how to best send myself notifications. I’m sure there’s turnkey solutions for this, but the matter is personal and simple enough that I’d rather roll my own thing than rely and work around something readymade. I considered phone notifications and email notifications, but I found what I think would be a nicer interface: a Discord bot.
@@ -315,9 +315,9 @@ I would not want this to be the only interface, however; I would want theCatastrophic Failure
-Catastrophic Failure
+I’ve spent a good chunk of time thinking about “catastrophic failure”. By catastrophic failure I mean the bad days, weeks and months. The times when you get nothing done. When you fail to wake up in the morning, brush your teeth, clean the house, exercise. When getting meaningful work done is not even on the table. I sketch here an extreme case; milder equivalents are possible.
@@ -332,18 +332,18 @@ I am now armed with some principles for preventing catastrophic failure,The Matter of Mood
-The Matter of Mood
+Mood matters. Inspiration matters. It is far easier, it takes far less energy, to do something we feel inspired to do, something that we are in the mood for, than something that’s a pain in the butt. This is a natural part of the dance of life, the chaos of existence, but my models currently do not take it into account. I have taken into account variations in the quantity of our capabilities, through the trait of smooth scaling, but I have yet to deal with variations in the quality of our capabilities and desires.
The Practice of the Practice
-The Practice of the Practice
+My meditation practice intersects strongly with this topic, yet I have not yet managed to marry them effectively. This is a very promising direction of thought that I fully intend to follow up on.
@@ -351,9 +351,9 @@ My meditation practice intersects strongly with this topic, yet I have not yet mWeekly Diary
-Weekly Diary
+This week was pretty tough, but I managed to mostly turn it around towards the end. I struggled with depression, loneliness and avolition. I dropped my daily meditation streak and indulged in too much cannabis. I spent a lot of time reading, mainly LessWrong. Having this weekly theme helped, since at least I was managing to make some progress on some things. In the end this report ended up being far longer than I had anticipated, certainly far longer than my notes for it, so I guess I made more progress in the end than I thought I did.
@@ -364,9 +364,9 @@ I struggled with all the things that this document is supposed to help resolve.Next Week
-Next Week
+I’m gonna leave this topic here for the time being. I don’t think I have what I need to continue the research, so I’m just gonna wait. I’ll try and follow up on some of the more actionable things, try and pick earlier systems of to-do lists and so on back up. I intent to follow up on the Discord-bot-as-planning-interface idea too.
@@ -377,9 +377,9 @@ I’ve been enjoying reading and learning a lot lately, so maybe next week (Closing Words
-Closing Words
+I feel a lot better now! Bringing myself to write for this blog was quite a hurdle, but overcoming it has energized me. I look forward to writing more. Bless you, dear reader. May you be happy, may you be at peace, may you be free from suffering. May you be kind to others, may you find meaning, may you be victorious.
diff --git a/html/posts/essays/aimish.html b/html/posts/essays/aimish.html index ea8efb5..e3d9a7c 100644 --- a/html/posts/essays/aimish.html +++ b/html/posts/essays/aimish.html @@ -203,9 +203,9 @@A Modest AI Alignment Proposal: Kill all non-Amish
-A Modest AI Alignment Proposal: Kill all non-Amish
+so yesterday I had an idea abouth ow to deal with the [2:00 PM] diff --git a/html/posts/expression/unusual_words.html b/html/posts/expression/unusual_words.html index a44e932..917d957 100644 --- a/html/posts/expression/unusual_words.html +++ b/html/posts/expression/unusual_words.html @@ -203,13 +203,13 @@
Reserved Jabbing with Pokey Words
-Reserved Jabbing with Pokey Words
+Digesting the Writing Advice
-Digesting the Writing Advice
+I was reading a little style guide on Slate Star Codex. Now truth be told, I generally find this kind of “don’t say this, say that instead” style guide somewhat patronizing and quite irritating (more of a testament to my own rebellious spirit than any indictment of any author) and unhelpfully unnuanced (a more practical complaint), and my first instinct was to want to argue this lack of nuance. On the other hand, Scott is a very skilled communicator and an examplar in how being an enormous dork need not be a barrier to popularity, and there is a more helpful general principle hidden in these rules.
@@ -232,9 +232,9 @@ I am fairly sure this is all supposed to be strongly related to the linguistic pFurther Thoughts
-Further Thoughts
+Having arrived at a nice concise principle of communication, let’s take a step back and generalize a bit, because I think this idea of the brain as constantly predicting sensory input and responding to surprises is useful and interesting. Specifically, while writing this it called up something I have read about schizophrenia. In a nutshell, schizophrenics commonly experience something what is called “delusions of reference”, in which they interpret innocuous things (e.g. newspaper headlines, things said on radio) as having special meaning to them. In some theories of brain function, there is an explanation for this that goes as follows: the brain is constantly predicting upcoming stimuli. In people with schizophrenia, this sometimes goes awry in a way that makes the brain flag something innocuous as deeply surprising. To the schizophrenic person, this feels as though the stimulus in question is somehow deeply meaningful to them personally, presumably in the same way that choosing an unusual “pokey” word instead of a more common synonym feels deliberate and meaningful.
diff --git a/html/posts/framework.html b/html/posts/framework.html index f79f459..e8f9c16 100644 --- a/html/posts/framework.html +++ b/html/posts/framework.html @@ -203,13 +203,13 @@My Experience with the Framework Laptop
-My Experience with the Framework Laptop
+Ordering
-Ordering
+I’d been eyeing the Framework laptop since somewhere in October 2021, but the EU release got delayed and they were very hesitant to give time estimates. I only managed to get my hands on it in late February, and I ended up having to have it delivered to France. I understand the difficulty of setting up logistics especially these days, but I broke my previous laptop and being stuck in limbo like this was not fun.
@@ -221,13 +221,13 @@ I asked their customer service to make a small change to the delivery address, bSet-up
-Set-up
+Hardware
-Hardware
+I got the DIY edition with the (lowest-end) i5-1135G7 CPU, 2x16GB RAM. I brought my own 1TB SSD. The higher spec CPUs didn’t seem worth the money to me. The RAM is probably overkill.
@@ -255,9 +255,9 @@ The more you look at it, the nicer it gets!Software
-Software
+I installed Gentoo GNU+Linux on the laptop, just like I have on my desktop. I used an Ubuntu live CD as the install medium together with the Gentoo stage3 tarball, and it worked well. I didn’t really have to jump through any laptop-specific hoops, it was a very nice experience. I did use the dist-kernel rather than configuring my own.
@@ -267,9 +267,9 @@ The laptop held up well during compiling. It’s not as fast as a desktop ofDisplay scaling
-Display scaling
+
Simply setting Xft.dpi: 192 in .Xresources was enough for the vast majority of applications to use 2x scaling, which looks very good on this display. This is on X11 obviously; I don’t use Wayland.
Display manager
-Display manager
+I used SDDM which works very well. I wanted to go for something a bit fancier looking, and this delivers. I don’t usually use things in the whole QT ecosystem, so it’s refreshing.
Hibernate/suspend-to-disk
-Hibernate/suspend-to-disk
+This required setting up a swap file and setting a kernel command line parameter to refer to it, but it was easy to do. It works well. I’ve observed the laptop auto-hibernating when the battery runs out, but it doesn’t do this reliably, so I should probably configure it myself.
Guake-like transient terminal
-Guake-like transient terminal
+
-Using some fish scripts, bspwm, picom and xst I rigged up a transient, transparent terminal to use for quick shell jobs. I used the scripts and config file in Appendix A to do this. The implementation is a bit hacky, and it’s not impossible to break, but it serves my purposes well (and more important, it was fun to make)!
+Using some fish scripts, bspwm, picom and xst I rigged up a transient, transparent terminal to use for quick shell jobs. I used the scripts and config file in Appendix A to do this. The implementation is a bit hacky, and it’s not impossible to break, but it serves my purposes well (and more important, it was fun to make)!
Wallpaper-setting script
-Wallpaper-setting script
+I wrote a script to set a random wallpaper.
@@ -335,11 +335,11 @@ I wrote a script to set a random wallpaper.Lockscreen
-Lockscreen
+
-I hacked together some pretty crappy code to lock the screen using i3lock, with my wallpaper composed with a little lock icon as the background. Very overengineered.
+I hacked together some pretty crappy code to lock the screen using i3lock, with my wallpaper composed with a little lock icon as the background. Very overengineered.
@@ -353,34 +353,34 @@ Is there a better lockscreen out there that will let me set my own image as the
TODO
-Impressions
-Impressions
+Build Quality
-Build Quality
+The laptop is made of aluminium and feels solid but light. The screen does seem pretty flimsy, though. I probably wouldn’t want to drop this thing. It looks sleek and elegant, but pretty muted.
Screen
-Screen
+This is my first time ever using a high-DPI screen, and I’m very impressed by it. Text looks unbelievably crisp and pleasant to read. I was somewhat worried about the linux high DPI situation, but I am having no issues whatsoever.
@@ -395,27 +395,27 @@ The brightness goes up quite high, but colours feel somewhat washed out at highKeyboard
-Keyboard
+Framework seems to advertise their keyboard as having particularly deep travel, but it mostly just feels like any chiclet keyboard to me. Not a bad chiclet keyboard, but not that great, either. The layout is fine, but it makes me miss the thinkpad.
Touchpad
-Touchpad
+I’ve never had a decent touchpad before, so I was pleasantly surprised. I expected to miss the trackpoint on the thinkpad a lot, but this is fine, though it’s still a step down. Pinch to zoom doesn’t work very well, but I don’t use that functionality a lot. I miss having dedicated mouse buttons; the clicking functionality on this touchpad works fine for me, but it’s hard not to mess up left/middle/right click. That’s a good incentive for me to practice relying on the mouse less, though. There’s plenty of work being done on the Linux touchpad experience software-side, too. It’s a nice time to be a linux laptop user!
Battery
-Battery
+
With the disclaimer that I haven’t tested very intensely and I haven’t tuned power settings very much.
I seem to get about 6.5 hours of real-world use time when using Emacs and doing light web browsing. I don’t have a good benchmark for more intensive tasks, but compiling does hit the battery pretty hard. All in all I’m very happy with it, getting decent battery life on Linux is hard. It might be worth eventually buying a power bank for it though, for travel~
@@ -423,18 +423,18 @@ I seem to get about 6.5 hours of real-world use time when using Emacs and doing
Expansion cards/ports
-Expansion cards/ports
+The little expansion cards are one of Framework’s big marketing things. I think they’re pretty neat, though I don’t always quite understand the way people talk about them, as “dongle killers”. I would find hotswapping these about equally obnoxious as carrying dongles. The idea of aftermarket expansion cards is interesting, though - these are low level, high bandwidth ports, with I think similar capabilities to the ExpressCard ports on old business laptops, but more modern with a USB-C port. I’m looking forward to the USB4 era!
Performance
-Performance
+So far I haven’t felt limited by performance at all, the experience has been really snappy. I haven’t thrown particularly difficult things at it, though, but that’s fine - most of what I do on a laptop is reading, web browsing, and text editing. I played some Factorio on it and that seemed fine, but using the touchpad felt limiting so I didn’t play very much.
@@ -442,9 +442,9 @@ So far I haven’t felt limited by performance at all, the experience has beClosing words
-Closing words
+Getting this laptop set up has been really fun! It’s a good opportunity to take stock of where we’re at. On the hardware side, I am very impressed that it’s now possible to make a laptop that’s this user-servicable, this well-specced and still not that expensive. It’s a reminder of how much better things could be.
@@ -460,9 +460,9 @@ Personally, I’m getting a rare chance to critically examine all the littleAppendix A: Transient Terminal Sources
-Appendix A: Transient Terminal Sources
+
togglescratch
Appendix B: lock.py
-Appendix B: lock.py
+#!/usr/bin/python3 import os diff --git a/html/posts/grocery-log.html b/html/posts/grocery-log.html index 958292c..f5d973c 100644 --- a/html/posts/grocery-log.html +++ b/html/posts/grocery-log.html @@ -203,13 +203,13 @@