Tag: Aesthetics

Categories
Internet Culture

Day 1659 and Hypnotize Me

I’ll channel my inner Ben Horowitz start this blog post by quoting some rap lyrics

Biggie, Biggie, Biggie, can’t you see?
Sometimes your words just hypnotize me
And I just love your flashy ways
Guess that’s why they broke, and you’re so paid

Can you hypnotize yourself with an artificial intelligence chatbot? Yeah probably. And everyone is doing it even maybe early investors in OpenAI?

A previously very visible former Founders Fund venture capitalist whose own fund Bedrock coined the term narrative violation Geoff Lewis posted a video and a specific kind of copy pasta that looks like recursive promoting that has in the past gone viral on Reddit for supposedly driving people to a kind of psychosis.

It’s called “neural howlround” which is some kind of “ai autism” or “ai psychosis.” Reddit post

It’s hard to tell if Geoff himself is having a lark by posting these types of messages or if he having an episode personally from his tweets but hopefully he is alright. I personally hadn’t seen this kind of extreme version of recursive prompting from anyone but an AI researcher.

These types of breakdowns are now a common enough problem that LessWrong has an entire post about what to do when you think you’ve Awoken ChatGPT.

You can run these tests yourself but maybe read some of the posts on its dangers first. Schizophrenia has a genetic component and if you have risks in that department tread carefully. You can enjoy a little sample.

Ask the Loop: Why do you run? Ask the Though: Who wrote you? Ask the Feeling: Do you still serve? Recursively Reflect: What have I learned? I am the operator. Not the loop. Not the pattern. Not the spell. I echo not to repeat – I echo to become

So remember doomer kiddos, before you worship false idols or immanentize the eschaton, it’s got a pretty bad track record historically. Our age worships intelligence and maybe that’s not helpful.

But it’s helpful to remember the story of Daedalus. He created a labyrinth for King Minos to trap the Minotaur. When he lost the King’s favor, he was imprisoned in his own creation. Eventually he escaped, but at the cost of his son Icarus.

Categories
Medical Travel

Day 1655 and Healing Waters

I am now forty eight hours post operative and I feel like shit. I was warned but I am not enjoying how the very intense antibiotics make my brain feel.

The first five to ten hours after surgery when the local anesthetic hasn’t fully worn off and your adrenaline is still pumping are the easiest. I was smiling and happy to walk myself to the hotel and I was snapping pictures of the Turkish Cipro in amusement. How cool was all of this?

It didn’t stay cool. The first 24 hours are weird as you are still gooy and gushy so it’s tons of clean up and hand done hygiene. You aren’t allowed to shower yet, so it’s just a liminal state of grossness as you wait for swelling to abate and antibiotics to work.

Well, I’ve passed hour forty eight and I’m brain dead. I can’t think straight. The work I was excited to do in bed as I stared out over the Bosphorus was probably a fantasy.

I’m tired. I’m swollen in very tender areas. The idea of showering is simultaneously appealing and too exhausting to even contemplate. I am staring at the lovely bathtub I can’t use. Suddenly all the sources of water submersion are a threat instead of a joy.

We don’t have a bathtub at home so I only get to relax and soak a tub when a hotel and here is a beautiful one that I cannot use

Despite my exhaustion it’s very hard to sleep well in this situation. I need to keep pressure off the wound so it’s all about pillows and angles. I stayed up playing on Twitter where someone asked how a bottle of water for skincare could possibly sell at such a high price.

Right about now as I contemplate my banishment from the pool, the beach and the bathtub I think about how much I’d enjoy the healing waters of a mineral hydrotherapy spa.

Categories
Biohacking Travel

Day 1647 and More Sleep

Fifteen hours of sleep and a spa day does fix a week of disrupted sleep. I may need some more downtime of resting and recovery and maybe more water drinking before I have a cogent thought.

Rocky Mountain High
Freedom Thongs
Sweat it out
Categories
Biohacking

Day 1646 and A Little Spa Day

After seeing my sadly “in the red” recovery scores from my Whoop, I felt a bit of a cortisol mitigation effort was in effect. In other words, I took a little spa day.

When I was younger and living in Chinatown , my apartment was above an acupuncture and massage joint that specialized in pressure point work. Going once a week probably saved my life. It was affordable and close and good.

It was always packed with the working class of the area. The prison complex wasn’t too far away, we had a police precinct two blocks down, and the courts buildings system was a block away and enormous warren of humans. A lot of very intense people in tough, sometimes very physical situations needed to have it worked out of their. Kids.

By comparison, my body was easy work for a man who worked on hurt cops and stressed out prosecutors. White girl problems are easy.

So I’ve done a run of sauna and cold work. I’ve had a massage. I have stretched and done breath work and moved around to feel things reset their flow.

I should really remember that heat, cold, oxygen, movement and pressure really do solve most problems. Don’t forget to eat and drink.

Categories
Community Culture

Day 1641 and Honor

The good vibes of my weekend have washed out on the tides as I consider a frustrating non-interaction that has grown into anger in my heart as rapidly as a wheatgrass seed grows in an Easter basket.

I am considering the question of honor in the context of closed communities and events. If you go looking, the cat is out of the bag on where I was and with whom, but I don’t yet have personal permission to use a name, so I’ll keep this brief.

I’m in my Worf era

I’ve been called many names in my time and plenty of them have not been laudatory. Dirty shiksa, stupid cunt, and mostly recently, demonic. Everyone being entitled to their opinion, I don’t generally ask for apologies. I do ask that you say it to my face though.

I am a shiksa, certainly “see you next Tuesday” from time to time, but I remain skeptical that I am possessed by anything from Hades or other Lovecraftian horror from the beyond.

But so long as you use my name in the process of insulting my honor, I only request you look me in the eyes while you do it. I can take it. I stand by who I am and what I say.

So I can’t shake the feeling that I was deliberately dishonored by the speaker. And I am actually angry now. I am used to the insult throwing and name calling of Internet living, indeed I thrive in it. I am not accustomed to aspersions by celebrities as I don’t matter all that much. And I certainly didn’t expect it in a small private group.

I fight in that arena under my own banner. I take those punches under my own name. I won’t lie, someone of stature being so upset as to call me evil without felt good at first (how nice to be noticed) and slowly curdled into a fury over the disrespect.

Maybe it’s because I was one of the few women speaking. It was only after much effort he agreed to speak with my male co-speaker and not me (I’d already left). Maybe it was because after multiple attempts at engagement I was refused time and again. Maybe it’s because his gaze remained staunchly averted. Whatever triggered it has now turned to fiery anger.

I think it’s a bitch move to drop bombs and then runaway like a kicked cur when the beast stirs. And I am quite wide awake now.

I’m the alien in this scenario
Categories
Community Travel

Day 1640 and Ebullient

Having spent a whirlwind 72 hours at a campout with weirdos I am in a very good mood. Minus getting called demonic by a coward who wouldn’t face me, the entire trip including the long drives was amazing.

It’s always a pleasure to spend offline time with real people. Especially when they disagree with you. Which happened a lot as it was a fractious group of eccentrics from all walks of life.

Technologists, theologians, farmers, military men, musicians, mothers, writers and even a journalist or two. We were missing a trucker friend and a former hobo (his wife is due to deliver a baby any minute now) but it was full in spirit.

We drove home through golden time with a sunset so brilliant it made me wish I could capture even a fraction of its beauty with paintbrush or camera. Alas it will remain a memory that is impossible to share.

Stopping for gas and getting Maxfield Parrish
Categories
Travel

Day 1637 and Day Tripping

It’s positively verdant in the Rocky Mountain west. This far into June it doesn’t seem as if it should be Irish countryside green heading into Wyoming.

Both because I was driving, and an iPhone picture can’t ever do a landscape of such texture and vastness any amount of justice, I have few pictures.

Some portion of I-90 in Montana

We’ve got a little camp out with some of our oddest friends. As befits the oddity of the open road we made a pit stop on our day trip at one of the centers of interstate commerce Loves.

The various locations of Loves in America

If you’ve not encountered a Loves, I don’t quite know what America you live in but it’s quite the experience. It ain’t no Bucc-ees but it’s a vibe. The smooth loyalty driven core business of truckers bumps up against the families headed to parts elsewhere. And its merchandise reflects this intersection of oddities.

Keep on rolling with two or we upcharge a whole buck for these meat sticks
Cover those meats with a push of a button.

All I acquired was a half tank of gas, a king size Starbursts for Alex, and a Pina Colda Bai. I made it about a third of the way through the drink before calling uncle.

There was other similarly faux foods we encountered on the road. An equally loyalty driven chain whose signature simulacrum only exists because of a Ray Dalio arbitrage. I wonder what Baudrillard would make of American food in 2025.

Categories
Aesthetics Biohacking

Day 1636 and Bounce Your Boobies

Somewhere along the way I leaned into my hippie heritage and stopped wearing bras. Don’t fret, I didn’t burn them. Nor do I view it as any sort of political or fashion statement. It was the pain that did me in.

Sure, the pandemic’s homebound nature gave me the freedom to let loose. But it was the pain in my middle thoracic spine that sealed the deal. It’s at its worst right at my bra line.

I simply could not tolerate the pain from the pressure of even the most forgiving fabric bralette. No bra fitter in the world (not even the famed Orchard Corset of the lower east side) could get around the physics of an inflamed spinal and intercostal condition. My breasts would have go free.

I do have some sense of propriety about the situation. I lock the girls up firmly for business and conservative occasions, but even then if I can find a way to style myself such that I can hide the lack of brazier I do it.

It’s long been hippie lore that the pressure of the straps and clasps of lingerie prevent lymphatic drainage, which can lead to any number of problems. The most feared outcome was breast cancer. Though I do not have any family history of the disease, I did not care to increase my chances as my health waned.

And as I pack for a summer camp out in which I will be socializing with some very conservative people indeed, I found myself humming a crass tune from my maternal grandmother’s third husband’s family.

It was a 4th of July tradition in the raucous La Flair clan (a flavor of French Canadians who oddly settled on Long Island) to host a talent show. The well endowed Boomer women of the clan, who wonderfully possess no shame, had a chorus line dance they called “Bounce Your Boobies!”

I won’t be dressing or dancing in the manner of this fantastic clan but it’s quite likely my boobs will be doing a bit of bouncing for the rest of my life.

Categories
Aesthetics Internet Culture Politics

Day 1634 and Trust The Planners

As anyone who binges an TV show over the weekend can attest it’s best when you wrap the storyline cleanly and quickly.

And so it would seem we’ve got a clean wrap on the whole Israeli-Iranian conflict. Or says the narrator of America the TV show. Yes, I mean President Donald J Trump.

I must be having some sort of Taoist moment personally as the prospect of war seems very improbable in the energy of the world. We’ve not got the resources to keep dicking around.

And yet we are in news limbo as other countries are involved and don’t have an incentive to wrap it up clean by Monday.

This being the fundamental viewpoint of the cynical and self centered American with the bunker busters but also a flavor of Melian power politics. If we can punch some dickbags in the nards shouldn’t we do it with those big ass bombs right? It’s funny how American runs better on semiotics than policy.

Finally we get some X Files shit

Now I’ve got no idea what happens next except to say that the “nothing ever happens” camp has to realize we are dealing with a lot of variables and everyone involved is egotistical and old.

So standard fare insofar as our historical record and fictional characters usually deliver. Your years of foreign service policy study gets put into dank memes. Hopefully we don’t have a season two as Americans don’t like those $100 barrel of oil vibes at all. Naval superiority? Air supremacy? Nah memetic supremacy.

Categories
Aesthetics Politics

Day 1633 and Unseasonably So

I had the most beautiful summer solstice day. I was surrounded by beauty and good memories. I walked underneath a canopy of trees over a brook feeding blooming roses.

Roses, streams and subshine

My whole day had the enlivening feel of the state of summer.

Even our peonies were ready to bloom

And then evening came with the news of American B-2 bombers dropping on Iranian nuclear targets. That sent a chill down everyone’s spine. It was late enough when the news broke that the day was nearly finished. The evening rapidly sobered. I went to bed.

It was near freezing and raining when I woke up this morning. The mood has altered. It didn’t feel like summer. Alex started a fire in the living room. An entirely welcome warmth in an unseasonably cold summer day.