I get the automated message from Kim. The same I get each week day morning: “Good morning ❤️! ☕ please 🙏🏻” I know it’s 07:30. Next I know, and I kid you not, I get the second reminder tone about the same message. Two minutes have passed by. What’s going on?! I felt I just blinked, and two minutes passed. Something’s broken.
horsie thoughts“Time is an illusion, a construct made out of human memory. There’s no such thing as the past, the present, or the future. It’s all happening now.”
philosophy thoughtsA quote from Flemming Rose (whom I got to know about a bit more today):
philosophy quotes thoughts“If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.”
Morbid thought of the day: when I die, just like my corpse, everything I manage today online will rot. Digital rot, and vanishment.
philosophy thoughtsThoughts whilst walking at lunch time. For someone obsessive, having chrome faucets, door handles, and a only-glass shower is a major problem. The reasons are obvious, right? Possible remedy: use car wax to slightly coat the chrome surfaces, and Rain-X—or similar—for the glass surfaces.
life thoughtsI have long struggled with the concept of ownership. I might be perceived as fastidious but, do we truly own anything? We don’t. We use things, we enjoy things through our lives calling them ours. In reality we merely borrow them for a—in the greater scale of things—very, very brief period of time.
I should aim to remove anything that denotes ownership from my thoughts. Let’s see how well I do.
philosophy thoughtsSon got a little melancholic when I told him I might not be around for the next total solar eclipse in 2045. “Come on, papá, take care of yourself, exercise, and be healthy. You can do it!” — he told me.
I live for the people I love, for the people I care about. I want to continue, I want to be around. If anything, for him, for my family, for my friends.
family life thoughtsFinding beauty, pleasantness—even calm—in imperfection has changed the otherwise obsessive, rigid, inflexible, in me.
philosophy thoughtsI want to do something different this weekend, but I don’t know what. I don’t know why I chose to wait till the weekend; I could do something different today. Yet, it is human nature to pick a special occasion, to do something special (different, in this case), and we generally consider weeekends a treat.
life thoughtsWe must set, and use, and enforce, Azimov’s “Three Laws of Robotic” on the now called AI:
If I am lucky to live until I am 80 years old, I only have 1280 Sundays remaining. That number sure puts things in perspective, doesn’t it? You can add the extension to your Chrome, or Edge browser.
interesting life thoughtsWhy should I be happy? How can I? My friends Chuck, and Justyna, have cancer. They have suffered, and continue to suffer, very, very much. Their family, and friends, suffer.
War rages on in Ukraine, in Israel, in Palestine. Conflicts, and deep poverty, remain in Africa, Asia, Central, and South America; pain and death everywhere. Children are being exploited, and women, and people all over the world. There is so much suffering, and horror. How could I be happy? Where can I fit a bit of it?
I can’t be happy. Nobody truly should.
life politics thoughtsMiscellaneous things. Every day when I wake up I feel thankful by the simple fact I did wake up. I also think of everyone I care about, and wish them well. Yes, that means you.
Even with my deafening tinnitus I try very hard to enjoy a moment of “silence” each day. I do my best to welcome each Monday as if it was a Friday.
health life thoughtsOnce again we are beating records, with September breaking them “for the highest temperature anomaly of any month”. And we are doing next to nothing. Are we really that stupid? I am sure we know the answer by now.
politics thoughts weatherI started writing a note on my thoughts about “wisdom”, prompted by this submission on Hacker News. It became too long to be a note, so it made it to my blog instead. It is short, just not short enough.
philosophy thoughtsA thought came to me this morning about how would secular people from past history communicated with each other. By secular I mean the common people, not the decent-to-filthy rich kind. Did they scribbled notes? Did they even know how to scribble? Would they keep journals and, if so, what ever happened to them? Were they simply discarded, thrown into the bin? I know I kept journals at various stages of childhood. None of them survived. Nor did the many notes, and letters I wrote, and received.
Come to think, after all, all things in life truly are ephemeral.
life thoughtsThis blog post is everlasting. Since 2018, when it was written, things have gotten worse. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel anytime soon.
tech thoughts unixWe put virtual machines inside Linux, and then we put Docker inside virtual machines, simply because nobody was able to clean up the mess that most programs, languages and their environment produce. We cover shit with blankets just not to deal with it. “Single binary” is still a HUGE selling point for Go, for example. No mess == success.
I am not a prude; I am far from it. Yet, I found “Foundation’s” amorous relationship scenes developing too early, too fast, and too often. Especially involving someone who is supposed to come from a planet with a repressive religious society. I mean, really?
If this isn’t toned down a little it will lose a star, or will not gain one. I mustn’t write in haste, perhaps, as I am only on the second episode.
appletv series thoughtsSmall pet peeve. People sending emails from their mobile devices, and having a signature that reads, more or less, “Sent from phone, please excuse typos and brevity”. If you are going to send, or reply to, an email, do it right. A mobile device isn’t an excuse for not paying a little bit of attention to what you are doing.
rants thoughtsWe are definitely different from the bad people in history.
The immoral fools tricked by Hitler into saluting the iron cross and casting their votes in favour of genocide, the spiritually corrupt slave traders of the colonies in Africa, the Europeans pillaging and raping (culturally and literally) the indigenous people of the “new worlds” of America, Australia, etc; the brilliant geniuses talked into developing the atom bomb, the monsters who then dropped those bombs over Japan in the name of peace.
We are definitely different from them.
The most efficient systematic slaughter of sentient beings the planet has ever seen, the complete indifference to the ecocide required for our day-to-day lives, the endless belief in infinite growth on a finite planet, the quantification of all that is sacred into mere resources and business opportunities, the utter carelessness toward the world our children will inherit. All this we manage to stand for in the name of progress and humankind’s superiority over all others.
No, we are definitely different.
We are worse.
This, from the Punkist, summarises how we—humankind—are no different at all, in the various stages of what’s considered, more or less, modern times. I slightly formatted it for legibility.
humans thoughtsFound myself questioning, smiling, chuckling, and nodding in agreement to Joshua’s list of 100 opinions that he holds.
interesting thoughtsIn my experience, the easiest and most difficult people to work with are those on a short countdown to retirement. Easiest because they become really agreeable, or disagreeable—but they don’t masquerade it. Difficult because they become almost impossible to get a hold of—they stop giving a duck about things.
thoughts workToday’s News Minimalist email reads, and I am not paraphrasing:
Today ChatGPT read 1003 top news stories. After removing previously covered events, there are 2 articles with a significance score over 7.
That is, according to ChatGPT, there are only two significant news today. We are beating yesterday, thought. Yesterday there were none.
llm tech thoughtsThis is a good read. The OP makes sure the preamble is set before stating very valid points.
design thoughtsI am a designer because I want to solve problems. I want people to be less frustrated when they use technology. I want to make their lives easier. I don’t want to make anyones life more difficult. These two sentiments sound the same, but they are not. I find both are important to consider.
I believe one can’t experience death. One can only experience that that one can live to talk about. A near death experience? Of course. Yet, I think I understand what Mu-An is referring to.
philosophy thoughtsAfter finding a font I liked online today, and checking which one was it, and downloading it, and saving it to my “fonts” directory all neatly organised with the rest of them—which is something I often do—I had an existential thought. “Why am I doing this?” Will anyone “inheriting” my collection care about them like I did?
I often find myself second guessing what I do, or a direction/decision I am heading/taking by simply going over and over my thoughts on the meaning of life. Latent depression?
fonts thoughtsNot a day goes by without hearing on the radio about global warming, and how we aren’t doing anything—or very, very little—about it. Our lack of action is nothing but the reflection of who we are. We smoke, even though we know for certain it is bad for us. We indulgue with unhealthy foods; we don’t exercise. We insist in hating, and hurting each other. Our lack of care for our planet is just a continuation of our own stupidity.
politics rants thoughts