I’m a fan of Substack, was never a fan of Medium, but I do worry that Substack will gradually get better and better for writers, and then gradually worse and worse until it becomes unusable.
Being opinionated is a fine quality, but only if a healthy dose of curiosity is maintained. Otherwise, an opinionated and incurious person, which tends to be an argumentative person, adopts a pattern of behaviors that satisfy their ego, but which are also less selfishly beneficial. It is better to learn by listening than living and dying by fixed opinion.
I've been doing an exhaustive review of my diaries from the last 6 odd years. I am amazed by how many sentences start with one idea, lapse in the middle, and conclude almost as if another person had taken over. Evidently, some thought had transpired in that interval, but I failed to transcribe it to the page.
Their style and affects converge, maybe, as the hardworking nerd models his idea of cool on the fraternity members at university, mostly because the nerds were too busy working hard to pause and think about their individual identity. The entitled frat bros were the readiest to hand working model for important social markers.
I’ve been amazed at how much the desire to mutually communicate gets undermined by the anxious anticipation of both parties to reach a conclusion that was their desired outcome going into the conversation. I would take special pains to be absolutely calm when communicating complicated ideas to others. I would also do everything in my power to listen to their ideas, understand their idea, and convey this understanding.
Is the first problem not the immediate implication of laying people off through an Anti-Racist/Anti-Oppression lens? You have to assume that the lens selected not exclusively on merit, but also on factors like race, gender, orientation, or creed, in some measure, or in at least one instance. Otherwise, the lens could be said the exist, ever vigilant in its purpose, and yet was not required in this particular batch of layoffs, thank God. The belief that individuals were affected due to their race, orientation, gender, or religion, may be far more pervasive due to the framing than is actually warranted; that I concede.
Acute loneliness awaits you on both extremes of attention. That is where I believe the real problem lies, but it is one that I find is grossly exacerbated by these systems. It never seems entirely feasible to opt in or to opt out.
It's difficult because there is not a lot of news or pressing issues in fiction. Contemporary fiction is not robust enough for it to be the basis of an aspiring writer's study. Canonical works are. This is distinct from coding, where new methods, and news about developments in technology, are directly applicable to the best work being done. You would need to create a sense of urgency about literary criticism, but this requires an abundance of reading on the part of the user base.
The mob threatens, kills or maims people for failure to pay. They have no other enforcement mechanism. This negatively affects entire communities, or even major cities, regardless of whether or not you see it.
Why does this article describe the west coast of Michigan as “runs north of Chicago”? The west coast of Lake Michigan runs north of Chicago, but you’re going to have a hard time getting to Traverse City if you leave Chicago going north. The scouting report from these folks seems pretty darn sloppy. Maybe visit before you declare Michigan the world’s climate change bastion.
Wasn't the preexisting power structure the Soviet military? I thought that that Soviet generals stationed near large and valuable resources simply decided that these large and valuable resources had become their private property. Organized crimes and powerful politicians filled in the gaps.
But the people that are actively misleading you are the same ones that are supposed to implement the solutions. How are we supposed to trust these people will effectuate incredibly difficult tradeoffs if they fail basic litmus tests of accountability?
Reading the diaries and letters of great authors helps. Kafka's, in particular, gave me an idea as to why keeping a literary diary is useful and interesting.
Madison has a great small business community in general. I am always really impressed by the number of small, independent establishments of good quality when I go.
I don't know if I got lucky or not, but I went into a MicroCenter, because I burnt the RPi 4 I was using for a hobby project and they had the RPi 400 kit in stock. They somehow had one loose RPi 4 2GB. MicroCenter will only sell them in store, it seems.
This is interesting. Of course, it all depends on the execution. I maintain a literary diary, which I flag at the time of writing if I find the writing merited, and that I subsequently brush up and post months, sometimes years later. For something like the July 4th shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, which is where I live, I recorded my feelings immediately, but I know they will take a considerable period of time to write about adequately. It is a very helpful process, and I think the rhetorical import of a slower process is compelling.
Movies, TV, and forum posts are simply not old enough to enjoy the same legacy of robustly elucidated gnosis as do books. Books are objectively superior in that respect, although they are perhaps not absolutely superior, as other media could develop a similar capacity to articulate notions specific to the soul of man. I agree with you about wisdom, as wisdom is as wisdom does, and wisdom is different life to life, but knowing is an altogether distinct matter. It is naive to pretend there are no differences, not least because the mediums select for different persons.
Except that mountain biking, reddit, and tv are never up to the task of presenting secular solutions to the quandaries of the soul. Mountain biking, unlike reddit or tv, might provide a sense of purpose or fulfillment, but all of them are inadequate to the task of formalizing the nature of the human condition. Not all writing participates in the formalization and the resolution of our foremost concerns, but the best does.
The famous Munger, Buffet, Graham adage is to only invest in a quantity that you understand, with the implication being that you understand how its operations are going to make you money. Munger might also advise against investing in internet companies that are difficult to distinguish from crypto projects. You can, of course, due to your misunderstanding call something nothing when it is really something, and thereby miss out on the windfall. But the other adage of the Munger, Buffet, Graham school of investing is that there are no called strikes in investing.
I do not find the game fun or interesting. All I got was a drum track that could have been pretty much anything for the first 4 attempts, and then the song was obvious the moment the singer started singing.
One of the benefits of keeping a diary, particularly if you are or aspire to be a good writer, is that the daily practice will inevitably lead to the recording of tedium. If you push through the reflex to stop at this point because it only seems like you are wasting time on a record of no significance, you will begin to see how the structure of a sentence, and its minute variations, can tease out the structure and variety of tedium. Writing from that point on becomes a game of presenting elegant contrasts. Committing one’s self to a record of how one feels, I would argue, is frequently onerous and forced. It does not seem dependable as an exercise. I simply play the game and wait to see if my true feelings are revealed to me.