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Lightly Child, Lightly.

 

“You know what this entire session has been about, don’t you?”

No, I said.

“It’s about being forced to sum up. Looking at your life. Asking yourself if you’ve truly lived it. Asking yourself what you’ve really got to leave behind. This is something everybody has to face. It’s hard to face. But if you face it now, and make whatever changes you need to make, you’re going to have a shot at dying peaceful.”

Joan Didion, in a discussion with her therapist, in Notes to John (Knopf, April 22, 2025)


Notes:

  • NY Times Book Review: “Peeking into Joan Didion’s Years of Psychological Thinking. Drawn from her previously unpublished reflections on sessions with a therapist, “Notes to John” is at once slightly sordid and utterly fascinating.”
  • Guardian Book Review: “‘I dealt with everyone at a distance’: what do Joan Didion’s therapy diaries reveal about guilt, motherhood and writing?
  • Post Title & Inspiration: Aldous Huxley: “It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly. Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

Live & Learn

24 Apr 2025 at 08:22
#

Had the Switch 2 pre-order in my cart but kept changing my mind, gonna skip it until there’s a game I really want. Hopefully won’t be too hard to get later. 🕹️

Manton Reece

24 Apr 2025 at 05:34

Scripting News: Wednesday, April 23, 2025

 

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Yesterday I wrote a piece that summed up Twitter as an entrepreneurial project. "It would have been better if the founders had made less money, and opened the door for lots of competition right from the start. That's the philosophy of the web. Instead they captured the web, amputated all its good features, and locked it in the trunk and then cut off its air supply. That was inevitable given the path they went down. Yes they changed the world, and in turn are creating a lot of misery." If anyone writes the history of tech in Silicon Valley in the early part of the 21st century, I hope they focus on the damage done, not just the money made. Don't glorify the fortune, it's our freedom that's paid for it. And the amazing thing people will discover if they look closely is that the open technology cost very little to develop, so you don't need the backing of VCs to create open systems, you just have to be right at the right time and have the ability, focus and ambition to create enough base technology to bootstrap the idea.#

My programmer friend#

  • Good morning from Oaxaca in Mexico. We are here with my sad and depressed programmer friend, back from his European tour of glee club train compartments, receptions and cheese races with Europeans named Gouda, happy and carefree while my programmer friend, pictured here, thinks about returning to the good old United Snakes of Americans. As he sits on the beach, admiring the sunrise over the Pacific Ocean, he considers taking a job at a local Burger King. He enjoys their hamburgers even if he is not enjoying life at the moment. His eyes are tearing up as he remembers the tragedy that befell him and others in the Great Gouda Race of Luxembourg. #
  • On the beach, dreaming of hamburgers.#

The runner of life and freedom#

  • Start with the dark imagery of the Ridley Scott commercial for Apple in 1984. A woman athlete is running toward a screen carrying a big hammer, getting ready to hurl it at a huge screen with Big Brother's head, lecturing a huge hall filled with lifeless people listening. He has dead eyes. The runner represents life and freedom. The overall image is dreary and lifeless but she is a bright light of hope for the future. Inspire me with this image. I want to be inspired.#
  • He has dead eyes. She represents life and freedom.#

Scripting News for email

24 Apr 2025 at 05:00
#

Darcy took some photos today during our trip to Madison, IN. A great little town, if you’re ever looking for something to do for a day in southeastern Indiana. We usually go at least once a year.

jabel

24 Apr 2025 at 00:09

Consolidating my email handling in Emacs

 

If I were to only have one computer, I’d use notmuch for email in Emacs. I might also import non-email stuff as notmuch messages so I can search everything in one place.

But, I now have 3 computers; 2 running macOS and one running (Fedora) Linux. Notmuch takes too much of my energy to keep synced between machines. So what about Mu4e? Mu4e is probably the “nicest” Emacs package for managing email, but it still requires a local synced copy of all my messages. This means configuring mbsync on all machines, etc.

It’s a lot, so I’ve decided to “simplify” things and use Gnus exclusively for email in Emacs. Gnus is weird and hard to get ones head around, but it’s built-in and it only requires a ~/.gnus.el file on each machine. Gnus works directly with my email service’s IMAP back end, so everything is the same everywhere, without having to think about it.

I don’t get the fancy search features of notmuch, and I don’t get an offline copy of my email store. Honestly, having local email is one of those “but what if…?” things that never need an answer.

With Gnus, I get fewer dependencies and not nearly as many “How do I keep this all in order?” issues.

Baty.net posts

23 Apr 2025 at 20:53

Brian Regan Helped Me Understand My Aversion to Job Titles

 I like the job title “Design Engineer”. When required to label myself, I feel partial to that term (I should, I’ve written about it enough).

Lately I’ve felt like the term is becoming more mainstream which, don’t get me wrong, is a good thing. I appreciate the diversification of job titles, especially ones that look to stand in the middle between two binaries.

But — and I admit this is a me issue — once a title starts becoming mainstream, I want to use it less and less.

I was never totally sure why I felt this way. Shouldn’t I be happy a title I prefer is gaining acceptance and understanding? Do I just want to rebel against being labeled? Why do I feel this way?

These were the thoughts simmering in the back of my head when I came across an interview with the comedian Brian Regan where he talks about his own penchant for not wanting to be easily defined:

I’ve tried over the years to write away from how people are starting to define me. As soon as I start feeling like people are saying “this is what you do” then I would be like “Alright, I don't want to be just that. I want to be more interesting. I want to have more perspectives.” [For example] I used to crouch around on stage all the time and people would go “Oh, he’s the guy who crouches around back and forth.” And I’m like, “I’ll show them, I will stand erect! Now what are you going to say?” And then they would go “You’re the guy who always feels stupid.” So I started [doing other things].

He continues, wondering aloud whether this aversion to not being easily defined has actually hurt his career in terms of commercial growth:

I never wanted to be something you could easily define. I think, in some ways, that it’s held me back. I have a nice following, but I’m not huge. There are people who are huge, who are great, and deserve to be huge. I’ve never had that and sometimes I wonder, ”Well maybe it’s because I purposely don’t want to be a particular thing you can advertise or push.”

That struck a chord with me. It puts into words my current feelings towards the job title “Design Engineer” — or any job title for that matter.

Seven or so years ago, I would’ve enthusiastically said, “I’m a Design Engineer!” To which many folks would’ve said, “What’s that?”

But today I hesitate. If I say “I’m a Design Engineer” there are less follow up questions. Now-a-days that title elicits less questions and more (presumed) certainty.

I think I enjoy a title that elicits a “What’s that?” response, which allows me to explain myself in more than two or three words, without being put in a box.

But once a title becomes mainstream, once people begin to assume they know what it means, I don’t like it anymore (speaking for myself, personally).

As Brian says, I like to be difficult to define. I want to have more perspectives. I like a title that befuddles, that doesn’t provide a presumed sense of certainty about who I am and what I do.

And I get it, that runs counter to the very purpose of a job title which is why I don’t think it’s good for your career to have the attitude I do, lol.

I think my own career evolution has gone something like what Brian describes:

  • Them: “Oh you’re a Designer? So you make mock-ups in Photoshop and somebody else implements them.”
  • Me: “I’ll show them, I’ll implement them myself! Now what are you gonna do?”
  • Them: “Oh, so you’re a Design Engineer? You design and build user interfaces on the front-end.”
  • Me: “I’ll show them, I’ll write a Node server and setup a database that powers my designs and interactions on the front-end. Now what are they gonna do?”
  • Them: “Oh, well, we I’m not sure we have a term for that yet, maybe Full-stack Design Engineer?”
  • Me: “Oh yeah? I’ll frame up a user problem, interface with stakeholders, explore the solution space with static designs and prototypes, implement a high-fidelity solution, and then be involved in testing, measuring, and refining said solution. What are you gonna call that?”

[As you can see, I have some personal issues I need to work through…]

As Brian says, I want to be more interesting. I want to have more perspectives. I want to be something that’s not so easily definable, something you can’t sum up in two or three words.

I’ve felt this tension my whole career making stuff for the web. I think it has led me to work on smaller teams where boundaries are much more permeable and crossing them is encouraged rather than discouraged.

All that said, I get it. I get why titles are useful in certain contexts (corporate hierarchies, recruiting, etc.) where you’re trying to take something as complicated and nuanced as an individual human beings and reduce them to labels that can be categorized in a database. I find myself avoiding those contexts where so much emphasis is placed in the usefulness of those labels.

“I’ve never wanted to be something you could easily define” stands at odds with the corporate attitude of, “Here’s the job req. for the role (i.e. cog) we’re looking for.”


Reply via: Email · Mastodon · Bluesky

Jim Nielsen's Blog

23 Apr 2025 at 20:00

Accessions | 230425

 

I promised myself I would cut down on buying books this year. Lucky for me things, I backed on kickstarter ages ago are arriving.

Today after quite a bit of back and forth with the postman, the cards for Downcrawl 2E a game by designer Aaron A. Reed finally arrived! So its time to log this new game rulebook into the library.

Downcrawl is a tabletop roleplaying toolkit that lets players build and explore a weird, wondrous underworld together.

Evocative prompts help frame your stories of dangerous journeys through forgotten labyrinths, strange folk trading dangerous fungus, and subterranean cities so far from the surface that that sun has become mere legend.

Revised and expanded from the original edition (a DriveThruRPG Platinum seller), Downcrawl 2E features new rules for solo or collaborative play, and an optional deck of idea cards that makes sparking weird underworld adventures easier than ever.

The post Accessions | 230425 appeared first on thejaymo.

thejaymo

23 Apr 2025 at 19:59
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