Howdy y'all! 🤠 welcome to my bear blog 🐻 Here you'll find stuff about computers (I'm a software engineer by trade), rambling thoughts on many life topics,...
No one is pressuring me to get hobby stuff done more quickly. I'm super lucky and blessed to have the ability to escape the pressures of capitalism for a few moments a week and do whatever I want to do. Why do I apply the pressure to myself? The "humans are machines" mentality is so deeply ingrained in our culture that it's hard to escape. Hobbies are an opportunity to exercise our human desire to…
I really really hate AI writing. It's immediately obvious when someone's used AI to produce writing, even if they edit it themselves afterwards. Writing is a uniquely human act. It connects people across time and space in a way that few other media can – it plugs us directly into the brain of the writer! I want to know what you are thinking, not what some machine decided to output as a summary of…
There don't seem to be many leftists on LinkedIn. Or at least not openly leftist people. There do seem to be plenty of openly right-wing/conservative/capitalist folks tho! Interesting.
Or in other words, "how you do anything is how you do everything". I'm trying to keep these mantras in mind lately. I think it's even more important with young kids. Having kids really pushes one to a higher standard, often against one's will. But that's good for us all. How can I bring this attitude to all parts of my life today?
I think I complain too much. I want to complain less. Or rather, I want to stop letting my circumstances, many of which I cannot change, dictate whether my baseline feeling is good or bad. So I'm going to try to not complain for the rest of the day. I'm posting this at 11:38am EST; I'll update later tonight and report back on how the day went! My hypothesis is that I'll be a bit more cheerful.…
I love Christmas. I love Christmas shopping too, honestly. Looking for presents is fun and exciting! But it's always kinda sad to see the giant piles of stuff that are jammed into stores during this time. I mean, who even buys this stuff?? There's just seemingly endless streams of stuff everywhere. What would Christmas look like with less stuff?
I had a great conversation with a co-worker this past week. We covered a lot of different topics, but one thread of our conversation stuck in my mind today: if the incentives at the root of a system are not aligned with societal good, the system will lead to bad states even way downstream. We talked about how the venture capital model is highly optimized, just not for anything like product…
Today was a simple day. Did some tidying around the house. I really think that getting a weekly (if possible ofc) reset where you tidy up your space leads to a much better week. Cleaning is so hard for me to get started, but once I do, it’s extremely satisfying. Much more so if I’m able to do things that I’ve been putting off for a while. It was a cool, gray day, not too cold. We had sandwiches…
I’m curled up on the couch, sipping a hot chocolate in the light of our Christmas tree. Our cat is curled up at my feet. Outside the wind is howling and it’s getting colder by the minute. But I’m in my warm house, surrounded by my family. Is there anything better?
I was disturbed to hear the news of the murder of UHC's (United Healtcare) CEO today. Mainly because of people's reactions to it online. It's disturbing to see so many people be so callous about the death of another human being, even if that human was part of a system that perpetuates a great deal of suffering. As a leftist, I reject basically everything that this person stood for. But as a…