On this day

July 2nd

The pause between

July 2, 2023

I often discover I’m really enjoying myself when I am simply submerged in experiencing. Novelty will of course afford this opportunity (but it’s dangerous to chase novelty.) Unfortunately, if I find something mundane which I discover I’m enjoying I shift to wondering if I can make my enjoyment be productive.

If you’re trying to get through your work as quickly as you can, then maybe you should see if you can find a different line of work. And if you’re trying to get through your leisure-time reading and watching and listening as quickly as you can, then you definitely do not understand the meaning of leisure and should do a thorough rethink.

~ Alan Jacobs, from And Then?

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I sometimes grasp leisure. Far too often I feel compelled to turn leisure into work. I once used “festina lenta” as my touch phrase for a year, and now that’s sounding like a perfect example of my turning my leisure into work.

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Mindless malice

July 2, 2023

Even when one is crossing it at seventy miles an hour on a four-lane highway, the desert can seem formidable enough. To the forty-niners it was unmitigated hell. Men and women who are at her mercy find it hard to see in Nature and her works any symbols but those of brute power at the best and, at the worst, of an obscure and mindless malice.

~ Aldous Huxley

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Who is really in charge?

July 2, 2022

In democracies, policies are correlated with public opinion, but why? The obvious explanation is that people choose representatives, and those representatives give them what they want. But maybe the causal arrow points in the other direction—maybe elites choose policies, and the public gradually figures that since that’s how things are, it must be right.

~ “Dynomight” from, The death penalty as a lens on democracy

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The death penalty is usually a third-rail—touching it means instant, well, death to reasonable discussion. In this case, the death penalty happens to be a rare topic for which good data exists, and is one upon which nearly everyone has a strong opinion. That combination enables the discussion in that article. It’s not about the death penalty being right, wrong, good, nor bad. Rather, the discussion is asking: Who indeed is really in charge in a democracy.

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Willing acceptance

July 2, 2021

To do harm is to do yourself harm. To do an injustice is to do yourself an injustice—it degrades you.

And you can also commit injustice by doing nothing.

Objective judgement, now, at this very moment. Unselfish action, now, at this very moment. Willing acceptance—now, at this very moment—of all external events.

That’s all you need.

~ Marcus Aurelius

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Were mistakes made?

July 2, 2019

The biggest factor in getting something to go from hard to easy is normally exposure. The more you encounter something, the less intimidating it gets. Your emotional relationship changes. There’s less uncertainty, your skill in dealing with it improves, your resentment for it fades, your craving for ease or salvation disappears. It has become easy.

~ David Cain from, How to make hard things easy

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That is so obvious, yet it’s so worth repeating.

What lies outside your comfort zone? Growth.

Yes, there are other things beside growth, outside your comfort zone: Fear, danger, and mistakes, for example. Irrational fears you know you should work through. Danger you know you should avoid. But what about mistakes? When’s the last time you made a mistake?

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Real-time chat

July 2, 2018

I believe attention is one of your most precious resources. If something else controls my attention, that something else controls what I’m capable of. I also believe your full attention is required to do great work. So when something like a pile of group chats, and the expectations that come along with them, systematically steals that resource from me, I consider it a potential enemy. “Right now” is a resource worth conserving, not wasting.

~ Jason Fried from, «https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d»

Certainly there are situations where real-time chat is the right tool. But I think real-time chat is the rare case.

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Exercise is the least important part of the equation

July 2, 2015

I looked at him and smiled and said, “Okay, then don’t exercise. Let’s deal with that a few months from now.” He replied with a face that looked something like this, and asked how I could possibly not recommend he start exercising if he wanted to lose weight.

My reply was simple: “I’m not interested in getting you to lose the most weight as quickly as possible. I’m interested in helping you get healthier, permanently.”

~ Steve Kamb from, Why Exercise is the Least Important Part of the Equation | Nerd Fitness

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The weight of the past

July 2, 2014

This is not to say that nostalgia is our inescapable fate. The lesson I am trying to draw from reflecting on the examples of Snowden and the N.F.L. is not that the thrill ends early. Rather, in their extremity these examples bring out something else. For most of us, as our lives unfold we simply do not, we cannot, know whether we have peaked in an area of our lives — or in our lives themselves — in ways that are most important to us. The past weighs upon us, not because it must cancel the future, but because it is of uncertain heft.

~ Todd May from, The Weight of the Past – The New York Times

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Peak oil

July 2, 2013

We can see that PPUE for most regions peaked around 2000. The big exceptions being Canada in 1992 and Europe and Africa in the mid 2000s. What this means for the majority of the world is that in little over ten years the average number of barrels of oil a single rig produces has almost halved. Put another way oil companies have had to double the number of rigs in operation just to maintain oil production at 2000 levels. This is the very definition of drilling faster just to stay still.

~ Andrew McKay from, Drilling Faster Just To Stay Still: A Proposal To Use ‘Production Per Unit Effort’ (PPUE) As An Indicator Of Peak Oil

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One way to gauge the cost/effort of producing oil is via Production Per Unit Effort (PPUE).

“Peak oil” is not simply about the quantity of oil being produced; it is about the cost/effort of producing oil. For most of the history of petroleum production, the cost/effort was decreasing or steady. But now the cost/effort is increasing; That’s an inflection of the second derivative of the cost/effort versus production relationship.

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