Health
😌
My ulcerative colitis medicine arrived, and I started taking it again. There are a few loose ends to the insurance situation, but for now the crisis has passed, though I’m still processing the implications. In a couple of weeks I’ll find out if there are any hiccups in switching to the new pharmacy.
Elections
😐
I started looking into my election candidates, but I didn’t finish as I was hoping. I’m going to try to wrap that up quickly so it doesn’t eat too much into my learning project. This means leaning more heavily on endorsements, so it’s a good thing newspapers still write those for local races. They’re cutting back on national ones.
Learning
🤓
This week starts a couple of months on developing a memory system. The goal is to help myself remember everyday information and conduct long-term learning more efficiently. To do that I’ll organize memory techniques into a broad system that covers my main use cases. To fill in the system’s details I’ll collect existing memory techniques and invent others as needed, and I’m expecting to make intensive use of LLMs like ChatGPT, which I believe are well suited to this kind of information.
As usual, this is an experiment I’m doing because I have a deep seated need to try it, but if it stalls or bogs down, at least I’ll have a better sense of what works and what doesn’t. I’m also not expecting to finish the whole project this iteration, just to get a decent start. This week will be for laying out the overall requirements and plans.
To put my mind in a memory system mood I’m catching up on the learning-related books I’ve picked up since the last time I focused on this subject. I’m in the middle of Joshua Foer’s Moonwalking with Einstein, which is giving me both a historical perspective on mnemonics and a personal look at what it’s like to train for a memory competition. Here are Foer’s TED talk and a talk by his memory mentor, Ed Cooke.
History
😍
I finished listening to Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography Leonardo da Vinci, read equally wonderfully by Alfred Molina. I was hoping to get some tips on productivity from the prolific polymath, and I suppose I did, if it involves getting paid to do your hobbies, being obsessively curious and perfectionistic, amassing copious notes, and rarely finishing anything. So basically what I already do, but more. 😉
But I also came away with the notion that biographies just might be a way I can finally get into history. The book made me care about Leonardo as a person, which made me care about the people and events he interacted with, and the book made those feel real too. So now I just need to find more biographies that are as engaging as this one. Fortunately, if I get stuck, Isaacson has a few more to offer.
