The Thinkulum

Weeknote for 8/9/2020

Posted on August 11, 2020 by Andy

Math

🤔

I feel more motivated to study math. Thanks to David Tall and some handily organized course descriptions from California State University, I found out that I won’t get to the interesting, formal mathematics I’ve been waiting for till I’m done with calculus. So that motivates me to keep moving.

Last week I reformatted the math in my notes and found that adding more notes was much more enjoyable now that I know some LaTeX and don’t have the mental friction of making up my own notation.

I spent the week’s last few days pondering how to gain a fuller sense of mastery over the material. OpenStax sometimes leaves me wondering how the procedures work, so I ended up revisiting the EngageNY math curriculum and my math student simulator project. I had dropped both of those in favor of speeding through the OpenStax textbooks, but I might work with them after all to give myself a more solid foundation. I’ll try not to slow to a crawl.

This week starts the Thinkulum project month of August. I want to spend a little time assessing my progress and plans, because now that I’m in the middle of this long-term math learning project that’s only somewhat defined, I’ve become lackadaisical about actually managing the project, which seems like a mistake.

Space

😎

I introduced myself to the new space age. Since I’ve been ignoring spaceflight most of my life, I’m behind in my knowledge; and since I seem determined to talk about this topic, I decided to get organized so I’ll have a clue. The overview articles I found last week led me to a book I’ll be listening to very soon, Space 2.0 by Rod Pyle. Meanwhile, watch Joe Scott talk about why people get excited about watching SpaceX and why that’s a good thing.

AI

🙂

I found a history of AI. I picked up some search terms from the Wikipedia article and landed on The Quest for Artificial Intelligence by Nils J. Nilsson. I’ll get to that one after Space 2.0.

My reaction to AI skeptics has clarified the research I care about. At least in the near term, I want to read sources focused on exploring the space of possible minds and on integrating AI paradigms. But I’ll wait till after I’ve taken in the sweep of AI history.

Health

🤔

I’m sticking with Remicade for now. We’re going to try a shorter interval between infusions. My symptoms are very good right now, better than other times I’ve been on prednisone, so I think my latest Remicade infusion is working. In a couple of weeks I’ll be done with the prednisone, so we’ll see what happens to my symptoms. Then if the earlier dose of Remicade doesn’t improve them, we’ll switch to something else, most likely Xeljanz.

Prednisone is weirdly boosting my energy. I was expecting this side effect based on previous experience. This time it’s less like hyperactivity and more like doggedness. I still feel pretty slow, but sometimes jittery at the same time, and I have a lot of inertia to continue whatever I’m doing just because I can’t be bothered to change tracks. This all has the benefit of letting me (slowly) push through fatigue so I get more done and the drawback of making me feel spacey when my body is wired but my brain is tired. Apparently, just because you’re able to sleep less doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Deliberate naps have been helping (as opposed to the spontaneous ones I usually take).

Fiction

😎

I felt strangely at home in Perdido Street Station. I had very little idea what to expect when I started, but as I see it, it’s a fantasy novel about cognitive science, especially on the topic of possible minds (timely!), and it gave me interesting paths to explore branching off my usual trails of thought. The writing was also very listenable, despite all its weird content. I rarely felt lost and befuddled. If the sound of a grittier, non-satirical Ankh-Morpork appeals to you, I recommend it, and I’ll definitely come back to China Miéville in the future.

Posted in AI, Fiction, Health, Math relearning, Space, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 8/2/2020

Posted on August 3, 2020 by Andy

Health

🤔

I’m researching new medications. My Remicade infusion on Monday seems to have worked this time, and my flare-up has calmed down immensely. But my doctor made the good point that new medications have come out since I started Remicade that may be more effective for me, so I’m going to research his recommendations and talk to him again this week to make a decision.

As you will see in the rest of this post, my mind has opened back up, which I take as another sign that my health has improved.

Math

🙂

I started my math programming cheat sheet. My first goal is to add the LaTeX examples that will help me make decent-looking Anki flashcards for the material I’ve read so far. I’ve added them up through basic fractions. After LaTeX I’ll add Python examples.

Math modeling is trying to sidetrack me. This math relearning project is reminding me of math’s role in my project on modeling. A large part of that project will be understanding how different disciplines engage in modeling so I can integrate their approaches. Applied mathematics models real-world situations, and math applies so broadly and fundamentally that I think it should be one of the first fields I examine.

But math also contains models of itself, which is what has caught my attention. I’m hoping to find the kinds of analysis I wrote about in “Fundamentals” and “Number Sense” and that I read about in the Common Core Progressions. Mathematical logic and related areas seem promising. Of course, to understand this stuff, I need to learn math, which pushes me back to my current project.

Space

😎

I watched the Perseverance rover launch. It’s convenient that we’ve entered this new space age right as I was discovering futurism and just as our world is entering these crises that require some hope to pull us through. At the moment I think of this new era in terms of (1) cooperation between national and commercial space programs, which is what the Crew Demo-2 flight was about; (2) a focus on sending humans to the moon and Mars, which is what Perseverance and the Artemis program are about, among other initiatives; and (3) glimmers of commercial enterprises, mainly space industry and space tourism.

I see these types of programs as the bridges that will lead us from the present world to the one I daydream about with my fellow futurists. There’s a launch or a landing or a test to watch every few weeks, and they’re helping me keep this vision in view. I’m grateful to The Oatmeal for putting me on this path back in 2018 by getting me to care about the landing of InSight.

AI

🤔

I’m suddenly interested in AI again. I don’t know what sparked it, but after a long while of almost forgetting the subject, last week I became very intent on finding classic books on AI, finding a book covering its history, and listening to AI skeptics.

I got through pieces by Peter Kassan, Eric Siegel, and Maciej Cegłowski, each of whom brought up important points but, in my opinion, missed the bigger picture. My view is that hype and disappointment over AI shouldn’t govern a sober assessment of its prospects. As I see it, this is the most complicated research program anyone has ever undertaken, and it’s way too early to declare it a failure. And while the well-known AI doomsday scenarios aren’t inevitable, we still need to have a broad and ongoing conversation about AI risks that includes them. Matthew Graves responded to Cegłowski with similar thoughts.

For an AI skeptic I can agree with, I’ll probably listen to Gary Marcus’s Rebooting AI soon, and I’ll look into Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans by Melanie Mitchell, whose name keeps coming up in my recent searches.

I’m trying not to let this new obsession derail my math relearning.

Social issues

🤔

The End of Policing offers reasonable solutions. I listened to it last week and found that it was less radical and more realistic than the title might suggest. Here’s a video interview with the author. Vitale’s point is that abusive policing comes from the fundamental purposes we’ve assigned to the police, and typical reform efforts have failed because they don’t address those purposes. Deeper reforms that do tend to work would include “ending the War on Drugs, abolishing school police, ending broken-windows policing, developing robust mental health care, and creating low-income housing systems” (p. 222).

People

🙂

I hung out with Jeremy. Saturday we picked up dinner and sat at a picnic table outside my apartment building and jabbered for a few hours. It was nice to get together again, and I’ll probably do more of it.

Posted in AI, Conceptual modeling, Health, Math relearning, People, Social issues, Space, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 7/26/2020

Posted on July 27, 2020 by Andy

Math

😐

I continued my prealgebra review. I was juggling work and naps for most of the week, so I was only able to squeeze math in on the weekend, but I was pleased at how quickly the note-taking went. I should be able to finish that this week, enter the flashcards, and get back to algebra.

Health

😐

I’m waiting on some test results. My doctor put me on prednisone as a temporary measure, which calmed down my intestines, and I felt much better, like my mind had been let out of a cage. We’ll see how long that lasts. Meanwhile I’m still having my next infusion on Monday, which may or may not do anything, and at some point the test results will tell us what changes to make.

Fiction

🙂

I listened to Come Join Us by the Fire, a free anthology introducing Tor’s horror imprint Nightfire. When I’m in a gloomy mood, I find that creepy stories are less demanding on my emotions than cheery ones, yet their creativity still lends me some energy. The collection’s narrators were very good, and many of the stories stood out to me.

At least a couple of the authors I want to explore further. One is Brian Evenson, whose story, “Black Bark,” distinctly bored me until the sudden, eerie revelation in the middle that things were not normal in this world. It was like a moment from Lost. The ending left me wanting more.

The other author was China Miéville, whose story, “The Design,” felt like a return to Angie Sage’s Septimus Heap, especially since the narrator was the same, Gerard Doyle. But unlike in the magical world of Septimus, the mystery in “The Design” wasn’t just a problem to solve but a baffling intrusion on the natural world, which made it more mysterious and intriguing.

Even though my mood has been better in the past week, I still have an itch for the surreal, a feeling captured nicely by a video I ran across on liminal spaces. So I’m on the lookout for anything similar. I’d been meaning to try China Miéville, so I decided to take advantage of my curiosity and continue my exploration with Perdido Street Station. It’ll take a couple of weeks at least. It’s not quite the surreal I was looking for, more like a more serious Discworld, but it’s still interesting and surprisingly relatable for me.

People

🙂

Sunday I tested some online board games created by a friend. He’d coded both the games and the platform they ran on. He was testing them with 4+ players, so we had a little voice chat party. The games were good, we helped him find some bugs, and it was fun to hang out with Dutch people.

Posted in Fiction, Health, Math relearning, People, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 7/19/2020

Posted on July 19, 2020 by Andy

Health

😕

Last week’s theme was dealing with my health.

My COVID swab was negative. The doctor recommended self-isolating for 10 days just in case, since it could be a false negative. That period will end after Tuesday, though my other medical issue is still keeping me from going out.

My ulcerative colitis has been acting up for two months. It’s worse than it’s been in a long time, so last week I talked with my gastroenterologist about what to do. We’re working through a series of tests. I might end up switching medications.

Mysterious illness is depressing. The slight symptoms I’ve been having on and off since March still take turns surfacing in their vague way. Fatigue hangs around the most and seems greater than my usual level. But even when the symptoms are absent, in the background I just have this persistent feeling that things in my body aren’t quite right. I’m hoping getting my UC under control will alleviate most of that sense or at least help clarify the situation. It all leads to the feeling that my life is on hold, and in the background I often ask myself if and when and how things will ever get back to normal. In the meantime, I keep life moving however I can.

Math

😐

I got my notes2flashcards app into a basically usable state. Despite my medical issues, I managed to do a lot of work on the app, and now it will convert a YAML outline into a set of lists and front-back notes I can paste into Anki.

I’m reviewing prealgebra. Now that I have an easier flashcard setup, I’m flipping back through the prealgebra chapters and taking some basic notes so I’ll at least remember what it covers.

Politics

🤔

I listened to Too Much and Never Enough, Mary Trump’s memoir about her family. Here’s an interview that gives a good overview. She’s a clinical psychologist and the niece of Donald Trump, so I was interested in her analysis of their family dynamics and the effects of those on the president. And on her own father, Freddy, since a lot of the book was about his struggles and decline. But the two are linked, because Donald’s mentality was largely shaped by watching how their father treated Freddy. Her assessment of Donald wasn’t radically different from other opinions I’ve heard on his psyche, but it gave some extra depth and clarity to that view.

Posted in Health, Math relearning, Politics, Weeknotes | 2 Comments

Weeknote for 7/12/2020

Posted on July 12, 2020 by Andy

Self-improvement

🤔

Choice architecture might help me make better everyday decisions. Continuing in my theme of social engineering, I listened to Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, which promotes libertarian paternalism, designing the way choices are presented so that people will choose to benefit themselves. As my brother pointed out to me, this notion is controversial, and I will be digging into that controversy at some point. But for my immediate purpose of improving my own decisions, the book’s tips can be helpful, at least for decisions that don’t require expert knowledge.

😐

Still waiting on energy and order. Due to various factors I’ll explain, I basically ignored the previous week’s advice to myself on sleep and time management, so I still feel like I’m in a netherworld of dysfunction. But every day is a new beginning, so I’ll see what I can do this week.

COVID-19

😐

I got tested for COVID and other issues. Tuesday night I had my second brief fever in about a month, accompanied by the vague symptoms I’ve had on and off since March. So Wednesday I talked to a doctor, he ordered some tests for COVID and inflammation, plus a chest X-ray, and I did all that Thursday morning. The X-ray results were normal, and the COVID antibody test was negative. I’m waiting on the others. Other than tiredness I currently feel fine.

😕

I’m starting to feel the stress of this pandemic. Taking care of my medical situation and dealing with a lot of fatigue made the week feel strange and wasted. Plus I worried that I’d been exposing people to COVID, especially at the dentist appointment I kept just before I got the fever (after rescheduling it because of my last fever). The negative antibody test made me feel a little better.

The first few months of lockdown were actually a relief to me. Since I don’t have a family to take care of and I could work from home, it simplified my life so I could focus on fewer concerns. Now that things are opening up, I’m beginning to feel the complexity of managing people’s expectations for what I’m willing to do and then doing those things safely. I can only imagine the stress of parents, teachers, and policymakers deciding what to do about school next month.

Math

😐

I took significant baby steps on the notes2flashcards app. Life and bad time management crowded out the project last week, but I managed to adapt my old code to Cement, a framework for Python console apps I decided to try. It might replace my generator-python-cmd project.

I’m extending the math project again. This week starts the Thinkulum project month of July. As tempting as it is to move back to conceptual modeling or maybe my software development notes, math is too important to too many of my other projects to put it off again. I want to get through at least intermediate algebra and possibly precalculus before I return to other projects.

Cooking

🤔

I’m reworking my meal strategy. There are two factors:

I put off cooking the whole previous week, because the next recipe was going to take too long and I was feeling lazy. So I need to switch to my simpler cookbook (The Four Ingredient Cookbooks), and I’d like to pick recipes that share ingredients so I have flexibility without wasting food.
Last week after 6 months of dieting, I managed to glide past my weight goal. So now I have to figure out how to eat more daily calories without overloading on saturated fat.

Fiction

🙂

As a follow-up to the 2001 movie, I listened to Arthur C. Clarke’s novel. It was fine and clarified the plot, but for artistry and emotive impact, I actually liked the movie better, which is rare. An interesting tidbit I learned from the introduction: Kubrick and Clarke collaborated on the movie, and Clarke wrote the novel specifically as a precursor to the script.

I forgot to include this in the post about the movie, but I thought the interpretation of spaceflight as a dance was brilliant and perfect, and the first space scene with “The Blue Danube” reminded me of the recent SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo-2 flight. Happily I was not the only one to make this connection (Blue Danube Demo-2 video).

Posted in Cooking, COVID-19, Fiction, Math relearning, Personal development, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 7/5/2020

Posted on July 11, 2020 by Andy

Math

😐

I worked on my notes2flashcards app. It’ll give me an easier way to create lists for Anki’s Cloze Overlapper add-on.

Self-improvement

🤔

The Octalysis framework might help me gamify my life. I listened to Actionable Gamification by Yu-kai Chou. It was a decent introduction to the framework, which seems broad and useful, though I think it’d be hard to apply it in a way that doesn’t feel manipulative. But applying it to yourself is fine, which is what I hope to do.

😐

My new printer and whiteboard give me more self-motivation tools. My first project will be my own version of the Elastic Habits tracker. Later I’ll print motivational quotes and images to scatter around the apartment, maybe even a set of rapscallions, if I ever get around to picking them.

🙂

I tried to get back into journaling. The idea is to orient my day around it so I reflect more on what’s happening in my life, capture more of my stray thoughts, and keep my ideas flowing. I tend to feel more satisfied with life when I journal. I did pretty well last week, writing most days.

🤔

Stochastic productivity might work for me, but stochastic living does not. Reflecting on my lower mood the past few weeks, I rediscovered two keys to my happiness–energy and order, which translates to sleep and some degree of time management. So I’ll try to return my focus to those in the coming weeks.

TV shows

😎

I started watching season 3 of Dark. After a long wait, it finally came out June 27. I’ve only gotten through one episode so far, but it’s very good as usual. Also still confusing.

Posted in Math relearning, Personal development, TV, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 6/28/2020

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Andy

Math

🙂

I paused the math learning to set up some tools. To make it easier to study lists in Anki, I installed the Cloze Overlapper add-on; and to create a math programming cookbook, I learned how to work with Jupyter notebooks (video tutorial).

People

🙂

I had a visit from my friend Cam and his family. It was really nice to catch up and to get to know his family better and reminisce about our college days.

Health

😐

I’m waiting to see if my socializing was safe enough from the virus. It’s been a week, and so far so good.

Productivity

🙂

Antonio Cangiano’s Technical Blogging has a lot of promising advice. I’ve decided I need to do more writing, so I’m thinking of ramping up my blogging as a way to do that and to build some kind of presence in the cognitive science community.

🙂

Neil Fiore’s The Now Habit is like productivity therapy. It had a lot more to say than the two things I remembered from the first time I read it (the unschedule and focusing meditation), and this time I want to think through his advice on reframing “have to” messages.

🤪

I spent all Saturday on the harrowing process of finding a new printer. I’d been putting off replacing my old, broken one because I do everything digitally, but for some kinds of inspiration and motivation I think print-outs will help me more than apps.

Movies

😎

I was pleasantly surprised by 2001: A Space Odyssey. When I half-watched it as a teenager, I thought it was way too slow and boring, but it turned out to have way more content than I expected, and this time I found it very evocative, especially having learned about uplift (video by Isaac Arthur). About AI I learned that it’s good to have manual overrides, though HAL was fortunately not as capable as some of us expect a superintelligent AI to be. Hmmm, if HAL had won, would he have become the Star Child?

Music

😎

The best part of watching 2001 was discovering György Ligeti. It kickstarted a project I’d had in the back of my mind, a playlist I’m calling The Numinous Void.

Social issues

🤔

Latasha Morrison’s Be the Bridge is an engaging and gentle introduction to racial reconciliation. I may have discovered the next shell to crack in my personal education in race relations, since I found myself partially resisting the idea of collective guilt.

I paid some cautious attention to Neil Shenvi’s critiques of critical race theory. I only got through a few articles, but I thought his “Critical Race Theory and Christianity” and his review of Stamped from the Beginning offered some reasonable counterpoints.

Posted in Health, Math relearning, Movies, Music, People, Productivity, Social issues, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 6/21/2020

Posted on June 21, 2020 by Andy

Math

🙂

I learned about linear equations and inequalities. At this stage I’m reading three overlapping textbooks, so I’m carefully reading the new content from each and skimming the repetitions. It’s going a bit slower than I expected, but mostly I’m satisfied with my progress. Mostly it’s just nice to be past prealgebra. I’ve also done a couple of the examples on paper now, as opposed to just in my head, and I’ve started taking notes on the less familiar content directly in Anki.

Productivity

🙂

The distraction blocker is working well. I’ve left a few non-work sites unblocked to keep work from feeling oppressive, but I’ve blocked the distractions that feel uncontrolled. It’s been helpful so far, but we’ll see how it is in a few weeks or months when I lose motivation to obey the blocker.

Stochastic productivity. While I’m putting together my ideas on staying productive when your life is disordered, here are some of my inspirations for this idea that may interest you:

Elastic Habits by Stephen Guise
“Structured Procrastination” by John Perry
Transforming ADHD by Greg Crosby and Tonya K. Lippert
“Tedium Management” by Lew Mills (“Time Management and Organization” also looks promising)
Advice on motivation during depression from The Financial Diet and The Mighty

Health

🙂

I got approval to work from home. Thank you to my generous employer. I’ll probably still try to work in the office when I feel up to it. It’ll depend on how under control my ulcerative colitis is at any particular time.

I got back into walking. I was expecting to put off exercising for weeks or months longer, but I was feeling tired and weak at the beginning of the week, and I knew exercise could give me more energy, so I took a walk around the neighborhood and decided that would be the start of my new exercise program. Since I have no timetable, I’m starting slow and without much of a plan. But I’ll make exercise part of my elastic habits.

🤔

I might be slightly sick. I’ve been feeling vaguely off lately, with a slight fever for a few hours a couple of weeks ago, some achiness, some shaky fatigue, an overly warm feeling, a little cold sensitivity. It comes and goes, so I don’t know what to make of it, but since it’s so slight, I’m just watching it.

Movies

🙂

Alien: Covenant is about the AI control problem. I watched it last week just because it came up in my Netflix DVD queue, and I was surprised to see it really belongs in my AI movie project. It explores some possible motivations a superhuman AI might have and how those could benefit or harm its creators. I’d heard Alien fans didn’t like this movie, but I didn’t see much that was obviously wrong with it.

Social issues

🤔

Stamped from the Beginning gives me a framework for thinking about antiracism. This was a long history book, so not my usual cup of tea, but I got myself through it. I appreciated Kendi’s opinionated take on the history, because I need a guide in these matters. Some key points:

He divides ideas about racism into three categories: racism, antiracism, and assimilationism (supporting a degree of civil rights but with an ultimately racist rationale).
He observes that a Black person can still have racist ideas about Black people, such as by taking an assimilationist view.
He observes that several strategies for combating racism have always failed, such as uplift suasion, using the success of Black people to persuade white society that Black people are worthy. Racism simply finds new ways to justify itself.
Rather than some flaw in Black biology or culture, he traces the Black community’s problems to circumstances: poverty that results from racist policies.

Sometime soon I’ll listen to his book How to Be an Antiracist for what I hope will be a deeper dive into some of these concepts.

Posted in Health, Math relearning, Movies, Productivity, Social issues, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 6/14/2020

Posted on June 18, 2020 by Andy

Math

🙂

I finished the prealgebra chapters. Last week completed the project month of June, and this week starts my version of the extra month of Sol. The OpenStax prealgebra book continues, but at that point its content overlaps with their algebra books, so I’m considering it algebra. I’ll start on that this week and see what my pace looks like. Since it saves time, I’ll keep doing the examples in my head until I feel confused enough to need paper.

Productivity

🙂

Joseph Reagle’s Hacking Life critiques the life hacker movement. I like to think broadly and consider many perspectives, so this book was important for me. You can read it for free on the publisher’s website. Some key points: (1) Treat yourself and other people like people, not cogs or machines. (2) Consider what hardships your life hacks might place on other people, such as those you outsource your work to. (3) The advice of life hack gurus doesn’t really appeal or apply to everyone, mainly to well-off Silicon Valley types. (4) Life hack gurus often give up after a few years, or they move from one hackery lifestyle to another. (5) The advice can be disingenuous or un-self-aware. For example, Tim Ferriss works way more than four hours a week; he just doesn’t consider it all work. (Plus, he chose the title using market research, not out of a concern for accuracy.) (6) Health hacking can lead to questionable science.

I’m experimenting with stochastic productivity. Now that I’ve regressed from my new-idea enthusiasm to my low-energy, undisciplined mean, I’m trying a different approach—assembling a system of practices that fit into my haphazard way of life. But I didn’t get around to planning from Elastic Habits last week like I’d intended, because I was undisciplined and was also preoccupied with some other tools.

I started exploring the Notion app. For the past few years I’ve used Nirvana for task lists and Evernote for notes. I need a way to mix those functions, and Notion might fit the bill. It’s very flexible, and YouTube tutorials offer a lot of intriguing applications.

I’m trying out a distraction blocker at work. I’ve avoided these because I’ve been worried I’ll block too much or too little or it’ll be too easy to work around. But my discipline has flagged lately, and I wanted to try altering my environment like all the gurus recommend, so I’m finally looking into a blocker. I only need to block websites rather than apps, and I only really need to make them inconvenient enough that I think twice about spending time on them. Out of a list of apps I found, I chose StayFocusd because it’s free and lets me block everything and then apply a list of allowed sites rather than only blocking a few specific sites, because it’s not just Facebook or Twitter that distracts me—it’s the whole Internet. I didn’t start the blocking that week because I needed to sift through a lot of domains from my web history to create my allow list, but I pretended the blocking was on, and so my workday on Friday was way more focused, though not very happy.

Health

🤔

I’m not looking forward to going back to the office. Illinois is on track to enter Phase 4 in a few weeks, and my employer will be bringing people back to the office, with case-by-case exceptions. I might have a good case, since at home it’s way easier for me to work while managing my ulcerative colitis. My friends and family want me to try for it. But I’m also curious how well I can handle my time back at the office, so I might try that even if I can get permission.

I also vaguely worry that I’ll get sick or at least come in contact with a confirmed COVID-19 case and have to postpone my next Remicade infusion, which would result in a disruptive flare-up. But my latest infusion hasn’t improved my symptoms as much as I expected, so I’m keeping an eye on that.

People

🙂

An old college friend called. My friend Cam called to catch up on the past many months and to make tentative plans to bring his family by in a couple of weeks. They’ll be road tripping through the area. We’ll probably be wearing masks, but it’ll be good to see them. I was in their wedding.

Social issues

🤔

My church nudged me into exploring antiracism. On Sunday my church’s powerful service of lament with an earnest message from one of our African-American members got me to stop procrastinating on learning some Black history and digging again into issues of racism. To give me context, I’m starting with Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America. I think of this project as the fourth phase of my education in feminism and race relations, and I’m looking forward to what I will learn.

One theme that’s in my mind is a point I came across long ago by philosopher Stuart Hackett, that “persons, merely as such and just on account of their personhood, possess intrinsic value or worth. What that means is that persons are not to be construed as merely means or instruments of further ends, but rather as ends in themselves”. This point was reiterated last week by a Twitter thread I found by @jameyhatley: “On [Instagram], white folks are explaining why their Black friends matter. Because they are special. I ain’t special. I matter because I am. Period. … If my neighbor with the loud ass heavy Chevy doesn’t matter, if my conspiracy theory cousin, the strippers, the unhoused, the loud, the crass, the unwell Black folk don’t matter, then none of us do. Including your exceptional lil friends.” All Black lives matter. A truth for me to grow into.

Futurism

🙂

Futurism is my escapism. I think everyone needs some mental escapes from the heavy times we live in, and I’m finding myself drawn back to the future. Thinking about humanity’s positive possibilities expands my vision and reminds me that the world isn’t at a dead end, or at least it doesn’t have to be. My latest source of inspiration is the upcoming launch of the Mars Perseverance rover, which will do research on enabling humans to live on Mars. It’s set to launch Saturday (Edit: Oops! The launch date is July 20, not June.). NASA has a launch calendar and a YouTube channel where you can keep track.

Posted in Futurism, Health, Math relearning, People, Productivity, Social issues, Space, Weeknotes | Leave a comment

Weeknote for 6/7/2020

Posted on June 13, 2020 by Andy

Math

😐

I got through another chapter. I finished the fractions chapter and part of decimals. I still wasn’t protecting my project time, and I also spent a lot of time on grocery shopping and meal planning. This week I’ll try again to finish through chapter 7, which will take me up to elementary algebra.

Cooking

😐

I spent a lot of time on groceries. I planned the next week or so of meals, which will cover Cauliflower Cheese, Savory Summer Cobbler, and Barley Risotto with Peas. These called for cheese, so I spent a lot of time setting up my shopping list for a new Instacart store that carried some low-fat and fat-free cheeses that would fit into my diet.

Health

🤔

I might exercise soon. I listened to Spark by John Ratey, a book presenting new research on the effects of exercise on brain-related issues (specifically learning, stress, anxiety, depression, attention deficit, addiction, women’s hormonal changes, and aging). Exercise has a life-long place toward the bottom of my priority list, so I was expecting to procrastinate on this book for a while, but several of my other self-improvement books have extolled the benefits of exercise, so I felt ready for this one. I was pleasantly surprised when the book kicked off with a story from a school district in the Chicago area, a revolutionary PE program in Naperville that emphasizes fitness rather than sports, keeps students highly motivated and supportive of each other, and improves their academics. In any case, these books have all motivated me to try to get some exercise back into my life.

Productivity

🤔

I started planning my self-improvement. To make use of all these self-improvement books I’ve been listening to, I did some initial planning. I collected a list of a bunch of sources to draw from; a list of areas of my life that I thought could use improvement, along with some general goals for each; and a list of issues these sources address. Then I used a simpler set of topics to categorize the sources based on the main focus of each to help me sequence my study. My plan is to glance through each source, pick out the advice that seems the most useful to me, and create a basic plan for trying it out. I expect to take this project slowly so I don’t overwhelm myself.

Meanwhile my actual productivity has been on hold as I give myself a break from effort. Not that I’ve been doing nothing, obviously, but I haven’t been trying to optimize my time like I was before. As a result my bedtime has been pretty late, and as I mentioned, I haven’t protected my project time.

While I do want to order my time again, surveying the issues from these books has highlighted that they don’t all take the same approach. For example, two options to reach for happiness are to acquire more of what makes you happy and to learn to be content with less. My default has been maximalism, but I might move my inner needle closer to minimalism. So maybe my productivity should be intentionally flexible. That’s why my experiments will start with Elastic Habits.

I learned how to treat life like a chef’s kitchen. I listened to Everything in Its Place by Dan Charnas (published in the UK and in audio as Work Clean), a discussion of the culinary philosophy of mise en place as a way of managing work. It’s one of the higher intensity self-improvement books in my list, so I don’t know if I have the energy to tackle its advice at the moment, but I do want to try at some point. Most of the productivity sources I’m reading overlap to some degree, and this one is basically a more comprehensive framework to surround GTD, though I’m still waiting for the personal productivity book that advocates all-out professional project management.

Rationality

😐

I learned how to treat life like poker, but not enough. To help me make decisions when considering all these self-improvement approaches, I listened to Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. It was good but not quite the book I was hoping for, having more to do with counteracting cognitive biases than with specific probability-based decision-making techniques. Still, for a while I’ve thought of all belief and action in life as a set of gambles, so it was nice to hear from someone else who thought the same way, and unlike me, as an accomplished poker player she knows what she’s talking about.

Social issues

😠

The police need serious reform. I spent some time appalled at police treatment of protesters around the country, and their blatant abuses of power have put me in sympathy with calls to reform or even defund the police, though I have questions about disbanding them. To maybe give me some answers, The End of Policing by Alex Vitale is going somewhere in my listening queue.