I now understand that there are so many kinds of errors, we cannot stamp them out by systematically eliminating everything that might be
considered harmful.I now understand enough about my propensity to err that I can accept it as a fact of life; I now can be convinced more easily of my fallicy when I have made a mistake. Indeed, I now strive energetically to find faults in my own work, even though it would be much easier to look for assurances that everything is OK. I now look forward to making (and correcting) hundreds of future errors as I write[.]
—Donald Knuth, Literate Programming
This is straight-up blogging, amateur prose written quickly and with neither guiding stricture nor sober editing. I am going to tell it like it is, right from the heart.
—Paul Ford, Rotary Dial
Many [view] blogging as civic engagement for themselves and their readers. As a practice of critical thinking, blogging provides the space for writers to work through ideas before the polish. It affords an enclave to challenge ideas and arguments before the work is complete.
—Catherine Knight Steele, Digital Black Feminism
Beginning to move
So I’ve begun to clear my apartment out in quite some earnest. I’m way ahead of schedule (my lease ends in this apartment on this coming 31st of March) but I reckon there’s hardly such a thing as too early early when it comes to moving: if I’m prepared for the end, then I won’t be rushing around stressed.
(...)End of Master's Check Up
I haven’t been sleeping well the last couple nights. I took my last final on Tuesday: that’s the very end of the Master’s in Computer Science. I have no doubt that I’ll pass the course, but I’m waiting on a final assignment to be graded to see whether I’ll get out with a 4.0. I keep thinking I could have done more, could have studied harder; you know, the usual shit. It’s been keeping me up at night, and I’ve been trying to distract myself. I’ve played around with Instagram and TikTok, but got pretty sick of them. They led me down a rabbit hole into pornography, which feels filthy every time. I don’t know: I just can’t enjoy myself like I used to. I’ve been devouring books (Voyage Au Bout De La Nuit, Fahrenheit 451, The Plague of Fantasies, currently on De Rerum Natura), writing, practicing the guitar, tidying around the apartment. I broke up with my girlfriend two weeks ago, so that’s put a lot of time back in my life. I’ve been spending more time with my cat.
(...)Help me
I don’t think I can look at computers as a source of leisure right now. Even this is an addiction: it’s like a narcotic. I just read Avital Ronnell’s Crack Wars. She’s a sexual assaulter whose career was ruined by her actions. My space bar is sticky. Right now there’s a lot of friction when I use computers, and I don’t know anymore how to do simple things, or have to think carefully about them.
(...)Happy birthday
Today’s my birthday. I’m sitting in the apartment on Hutchinson Ave I’ve occupied the last two years. My girlfriend is working in the next room. I’m quite happy.
(...)Apocalypse vibes
The word apocalypse comes, via Latin, from the Greek word apokalyptein, “uncover, disclose, reveal,” itself a compound word made up of apo-, “off, away from,” and kalyptein, “to cover, conceal.”
(...)Post from the grave
It’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post here. I have been tinkering around with concepts for redoing the site, but for now I am mostly happy with the way this works. Of course the appearance isn’t great, but that can be fixed with some CSS, once the underlying HTML is doing what I want it to do.
(...)Addiction considered harmful?
So it’s become clear that there exists a class of applications whose purpose is to be addictive. Their profit model is advertisements, and the number of advertisements the user sees is a function of how much the user uses the application. So perhaps “addiction” isn’t really the best word: it implies to me that it is difficult to quit a substance, but not necessarily that the amount of time spent using the substance increases. I want to particularly focus on the goal of maximizing the time spent using, for which “addiction” is a good enough term.
(...)Rejection is not expulsion.
Expulsion means being removed from a community. When the community expels you it sets itself as a unit against you, who are stuck apart from the remaining community and separated from as it if by a barrier.
(...)All art is advertising.
“Art” properly speaking is an advertisement for itself.
