2022.02.17
It's interesting how rereading a book that felt monumentally important to you long ago on its first read makes a kind of one way, clouded dialog between your old and current selves; you ponder how your old self responded to certain passages the first time.
Also interesting to be reminded that humans were still beating computers at chess; one suspects that AlphaZero is doing something akin to the kind of "chunking" that gave 1980-era human chess masters a strong edge over computers of the time.
Still bothered there's not a digital edition of this book; I suppose the references to illustrations would get fiddly but not insurmountably so. Does anyone know... like when a book gets reprinted, how has it been stored in the meanwhile? What are the 1980-era and modern forms of commercial black and white printing and storage?
There are two types of drivers. Those that pretend the emergency brake button launches missiles. And those that pretend it controls the nitrous booster.
via headspace-hotel who adds "Dear god, please support your local library because there's no way in hell that idea could be re-introduced once it lost its existing foothold in the world."
Musing on Scientology and "Body Thetans". Like, I wonder if there are some parallels between thinking in terms of "Body Thetans" attaching themselves to our true selves and the idea of "mind as a committee", like where there might be one self "committee member" who is the slow-deciding narrator, but other parts of the mind seem to have their own agenda (see also Internal Family Systems). If that inner narrator has the right to claim "truest selfness" is an open question for me.
I mean, empirically, there might be pragmatic good to come to individuals in Scientology, though likely outweighed by what the church itself demands for its own secretive powermongering. And, maybe looking at like Travolta and Cruise as possible "success stories" is like judging the lottery by the winners.
I wonder if sympathy for Body Thetans is ever encouraged. I mean here you have these poor aliens chained to a volcano by Xenu or whatever... aren't they just looking to get along, like everybody else?
Peloton's new Lanebreaker - I think it's good they're making a game out of the physical activity, but hope they get to something like the arcade game Prop Cycle - why not pretend to fly??
ripping the lil panties off a Reese's is the most erotic thing you can do
Heh, missed the physical vs NFT auction for Steve Jobs' job application.
You want me to pay attention to the details? The thing that the devil is in?
How perfectly goddamned delightful it all is, to be sure.