I first came across this collection of poems via the secular Buddhist author Stephen Batchelor (best known for Buddhism Without Beliefs). He compared the poem Dear Reader (https://fleursdumal.org/poem/099) with a quote from the 9th century zen monk Te-Shan.
The relevant lines from the poem:
But among the jackals, the panthers, the bitch hounds,
The apes, the scorpions, the vultures, the serpents,
The yelping, howling, growling, crawling monsters,
In the filthy menagerie of our vices,
There is one more ugly, more wicked, more filthy!
Although he makes neither great gestures nor great cries,
He would willingly make of the earth a shambles
And, in a yawn, swallow the world;
He is Ennui! — His eye watery as though with tears,
He dreams of scaffolds as he smokes his hookah pipe.
You know him reader, that refined monster,
— Hypocritish reader, — my fellow, — my brother!
The quote from the zen monk:
What is known as "realising the mystery" is nothing other than breaking through to grab an ordinary person's life.
The meaning I take is that the "final boss" of our journey, whether that's in meditation or programming, is confronting and integrating the non-zero possibility that we may never achieve our goals. It's not to dissuade us from even trying, it's rather to remind us where the true battle is: the immediate task at hand. Lack of focus and motivation aren't obstacles on the path, they _are_ the path, they are the final boss itself.
Thank you! It was really helpful to be reminded of this truth such an unexpected context. I am finally beginning to grab that “ordinary person’s life” & getting there has indeed been _the path_.
Whilst some here are critiquing this point of view due to writing's recency, there's actually some academic support for the ancient impact of "archival" if we can consider a broader definition for it, namely: linguistic works such as stories, poems, songs etc. A classic study of this is Walter Ong's Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word https://monoskop.org/images/d/db/Ong_Walter_J_Orality_and_Li...
The basic idea is that say, lyrics, are a technological innovation that "stores" information across time and space because it aides in recall.
Please provide instructions on how to boot Windows on the MacBook.
And, while I applaud all the efforts of the Asahi developers, many hardware components do not yet work(1)
Macs are great if you can live happily within the confines of Apple’s expensive walled garden. But leave that garden and soon the moats, mines or sniper towers will get you.
Do you need to boot Windows? Have you run Windows in a VM on Mac before? It’s sad that the fastest Windows laptop these days is… a Mac. I just use Parallels to run windows whenever necessary. Yes it’s a $100/year subscription but it works flawlessly and comes with Parallels Toolbox apps for Mac, many of which are actually useful. So I’m willing to pay for that. Oh and Windows laptops still can’t do low power states right, so good luck taking it out of your backpack after two days and attempting to use it.
I really want to like Zed, and their AI may actually be useful. But when I hear things like "new open model" I can only associate it with hype, which is more often about pleasing investors, not end users.
I think "quite interesting" is an understatement. This is the Game Of Life simulating the Game Of Life. I personally consider it to be one of the Great Wonders of software.
You know one of the hard questions here must be, what configuration exactly is it simulating? It has to be a configuration that simulates the same Game of Life at a higher scale. Any change you make to the configuration must also change the higher level configuration that it simulates.
And it occurs to me, a blank sheet of paper qualifies as the Game Of Life simulating the Game Of Life.
What makes GoL in GoL somewhat magical feeling is less "there are layers of logic being executed" and more "GoL rules and conditions are extremely restrictive yet still just complex enough to simulate nested execution of the ruleset itself". When you move up the complexity chain to "person with a sheet of paper" you lose some of that wonder to just end up with "extremely complex system can throw away most of the complexity to also simulate execution of a simple system" which feels a lot less surprising.
1. Game of life simulating itself
2. Lisp interpreter (in C? or in Lisp)
3. a game engine??
4. Bitcoin
5. Other distributed systems?? (Spanner?)
6. AI/deep learning representative. GPT4? AlphaGo? Pikadditions?
7. ?
- a lot of DSP stuff is pretty magical in it's various applications - digital filtering, modulation/demodulation, recovery of weak signals in noisy environments, beam-forming etc
There's a lot of really amazing, largely mathematical, foundation work that we now tend to take for granted and without which we'd be back in the relative dark ages.
I've been using simply `nvim "$(date "+%Y/%b/%d").md"` for about 5 years now. Every time I see a note-taking project or an article about it, like the Zettelkasten method for example, I'm comparing to my one-liner.
I think it'd be useful to have a gif in https://github.com/fdavies93/daily-notes.nvim like https://github.com/jakobkhansen/journal.nvim does. But even then I must say, I still can't intuitively see the benefits of installing a whole plugin. I'm not doubting there are benefits, it's just that I'm reluctant to invest the days and weeks installing and using these plugins to know how they work.
This is what I've used for years. I guess my use case is probably different than what OP posted as I don't understand what I might gain from his plugin.
I like to research, and found Zettelkasten to be a great way to do so. The benefit is that you build up a database of very well-reasoned notes that you can link together in different context and build even higher levels of well-reasoned arguments. I used to do it in a simpler way with just grep and plain old unix files, but the ability to quickly find, create and reference notes with something like marksman makes it easier to stay in the flow and be more productive. Even though I could technically do it before, something just clicked with this new approach.
I think it's good to try out different tools and workflows and see what work for you, as it helps you better grasp what your needs are. So even if you don't use the tools they don't have to be a waste of time.
I enjoy shows where I get completely engrossed in the world and the story. I love shows that I can fall in love with again on a rewatch. And I want to have lingering thoughts about it when it’s over.
True Detective S1 (2014) is perfect television, but is too old for the last-decade list.
+1 for both Andor and Arcane (although I would probably do a +10 for Arcane given how amazing it was inside the genre even not knowing anything about the background story)
Not familiar with all the other shows mentioned, but strong upvote for Andor. Possibly the best Star Wars anything. It's a shame that people might not give it full credit for the drama it is because of the Star Wars association.
Having caught a few episodes since it ended, I think the real tragedy of LOST is how good each individual episode was in comparison to how terrible the overall planning was. It was engrossing during the episode, but any time spent outside that trying to tease out meaning or clues was just wasted time. Ostensible foreshadowing was really just "wouldn't it be cool if?" with no further thought behind it.
I'd argue that quality actually makes it an amazing show to binge. It wouldn't "work" in the current climate of one-episode-per-week with bountiful time to analyze and Internet sleuths/theorists often coming up with better plots than the actual writing in each next episode, but Lost promises high quality episode after high quality episode for you to, well, just get lost in.
For anyone who hasn't seen it: you're in for a wild ride. Don't look up spoilers.
When it first aired, people definitely did that on the internet.
I'm of a firm opinion that there are two very different kinds of Lost viewers -- ones who care about the characters first and plot second vs ones who only care about the plot.
Personally, I took it as 'We're getting to see these things through these characters' eyes and how they react.' And we probably wouldn't have given a shit about the plot, if we hadn't actually cared about the characters first.
Lost did characterization very well. (Helped by an insanely talented cast!)
Meh. Saw it at the time. After season 2 I certainly got lost, but not “in it”.
The plot always thickens, back then there was the promise/hope that “everything will be explained”, but then the show ended with sooo many loose ends and inconsistencies. Utter disappointment, I’d like my time back please.
Hehe, I'm essentially the only person I know who loved the ending.
I appreciated that it was a tribute to the characters we'd grown to love, and also kind of a middle finger to the plot bits that didn't line up perfectly.
I'd rather watch a show with plot gaps and great characters than a perfectly plotted show with middling characters.
From is quite fun too. It is extremely similar to lost in its vibes and writing style. For the record I think both of these shows are not good shows, but are definitely entertaining shows.
Scavengers Reign is an amazing, 10/10 show and it's so depressing we'll never get a second season. I miss my telepathic dead wife salamander addiction metaphor.
And speaking of old goodness, The Wire, possibly the best TV series ever. And with the 1080p re-release, I’m going to claim it’s younger than 10 years old.
True Detective S01 seems more cultural for a time, rather than a good story. It's a very drawn out, non-interactive (meaning you can't figure anything out) detective story that's really more of a convoluted buddy cop story with lots of time skipping around. One cop is unlikable and the other is weird (nihilist). The best part is the title theme song and the main character actor performances. My wife and I think it's some kind of nostalgia for when there was nothing better on. Nic Pizzolatto was writing up until 2019 and the subsequent seasons weren't lauded. Probably because he's not that great of a writer.
Disagree. All True detective have some plot holes. Yet all the seasons are still in highest tier of the genre. Every season has very different setting. Because its series very much about mood people were upset after season 1 that instead of rural occult mystery they got casino gangster corruption. But if you accept its all completely separate mini series each season is pretty good on its own.
It started off as one of the best tv shows ever. Each season after that made you think it couldn't sink any lower, Game-of-Thrones-season-8 style. I think season 4 might actually have been trying to make fun of the first season, though I have no evidence for it. I do not accept seasons 2 through 4. I reject them.
It's fine, it's wrapped up enough. Watching it is totally worth it, and it won't leave you hanging. The authors were saying that a third season would've pursued a different storyline anyways.
Definitely The Americans as mentioned above, also The Expanse, The Man in the High Castle, Slow Horses (especially the panoramic London drone shots), Preacher (in which both Tom Cruise and a sewage treatment methane reactor violently explode for their own independent reasons), Babylon 5 (relaxing the last decade constraint), LEXX (a soft porn space opera), Farscape (with real MUPPETS!!!), A&E Network's "A Nero Wolfe Mystery" (with Maury Chaykin as Nero Wolfe, who was also just as grumpy in War Games), and Wilfred (both the original rough edgy low budget original Australian version, and the well produced clean cut American version with Elijah Woods).
Also anything with Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale, who was Claudia the KGB handler who liked playing PacMan in The Americans, Mags Bennett the ruthless head of the marijuana and moonshine smuggling clan in Justified, a fictionalized (or was it???) version of herself "Esteemed Character Actress Margo Martindale" in Bojack Horseman, records supervisor Camilla Figg in Dexter, and Ranger Liz in Cocaine Bear ("I'm sorry. Where'd the bear go?"), and a Canadian maple syrup smuggler in The Sticky. Such a wide range and prodigious rap sheet!
The Complete Margo Martindale Timeline | BoJack Horseman
Eddie Izzard putting in a serious character acting role as an Irish Traveler ner-do-well who essentially steals a Florida suburban identity. With Minnie Driver as his just out of prison addict wife.
I think more people actually know what ASMR is as opposed to ASR. Lots of ASMR videos are people speaking/whispering at extremely low volume.
I don't think it's quite out of the realm of the possibility to have interpreted as "Gemini LLM corrects ASMR YouTube transcripts". Because you know..they're whispering so might be hard to understand or transcribe.
Christian Ready made a great video on his Youtube channel, Launch Pad Astronomy, about NASA's plans for a solar gravitational lens. It's got some great graphics and visualisations, and is accessibly narrated. I was inspired and learnt a lot of new ideas.
I can highly recommend this video, and in case people do not know, Christian Ready is actually a person, not an organization run by religious fundamentalists.
The relevant lines from the poem:
The quote from the zen monk: The meaning I take is that the "final boss" of our journey, whether that's in meditation or programming, is confronting and integrating the non-zero possibility that we may never achieve our goals. It's not to dissuade us from even trying, it's rather to remind us where the true battle is: the immediate task at hand. Lack of focus and motivation aren't obstacles on the path, they _are_ the path, they are the final boss itself.tl;dr success is 1% inspiration 99% perspiration
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