The Milkmaid Dec 03, 2020

The Milkmaid, by Johannes Vermeer.

I have had a soft spot for Vermeer, the 17th Century Dutch artist, ever since I was compelled to write about him in high school, and I especially like this painting. I think it’s a particularly good example of how his painting of textures makes them seem almost supernaturally pleasing. I wouldn’t usually think of myself as a huge fan of textures. But here—the seed encrusted bread looks so crisp and solid, I can imagine the sound of my hand knocking some seeds off as I pick it up, or the thud of the loaf if I tapped it.

Inbox zero day Dec 02, 2020

Today I spent the entire day emptying my main work email inbox of all its emails, many of which had lived there for years. Apparently it was last empty around when I got that email in early 2014. I had committed to someone that I would archive anything left in that account without reading it at 10:30 tonight, and thereby give up on getting to it. And I wanted to at least glance at things. The point of all this was to not have the ever-present sense of a giant backlog of things I am supposed to deal with, of which mounds of non-given-up-on emails are one piece. (Another option would be to just give up on everything that was ever pending, but I’m not quite up for it.)

Points for anxiety Dec 01, 2020

I have an intermittently crippling anxiety disorder, so I recently started trying a new kind of therapy to mitigate it. I’ve been finding sufficiently great so far that even if it doesn’t work long term I will probably think it was worth it. So I’ll tell you about it.

It is based on Reid Wilson’s ideas, I think as described in his book, though I haven’t read it and most of my understanding comes from my therapist, my friend who also does this, and a set of humorous videos on Reid Wilson’s website.

Here is the practice, as I practice it:

Sincerity trends Nov 30, 2020

I have the impression that sincerity, earnestness and straightforward conviction used to be more popular flavors of attitude and have been replaced (at least in the public sphere) by more self-conscious, ironic, critical, half-hearted, cool type attitudes. I went hiking with a friend today, and he mentioned the same impression (though I may have got mine from him), and we speculated about the reasons.

Does everyone share this impression? Over what time-scales? Do we have good explanations?

Another point of view on the details Nov 29, 2020

This morning my boyfriend and I did an activity where he followed me around for a couple of hours and observed as I started the day and did some tasks. (I’ve also done something like that before with a friend who was trying out anthropology.) I suggested it this time because I often find it enlightening to hear an outside perspective on things that I do, and his in particular. And it seems rarer to hear about the details and tactics, versus very high level questions: I often know what projects another person thinks are good, but rarely know what they would do if they got an email asking to hang out from an acquaintance, or if they were feeling antsy, or how they would decide where to start on the project in question, or when to stop.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a 1996 taste datapoint Nov 28, 2020

My household watched the 1996 Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame recently. A notable thing about it to me was that the humor seemed in such poor taste. Which made me wonder, was 1996 just culturally different? Slapstick humor includes an emaciated old man imprisoned in a cylindrical cage tumbling over and over while someone runs on top of it, before he escapes, only to accidentally fall into some stocks. Ha! During a song, romantic rivals are jovially represented as hanging in the gallows. Various jokes are made around two men being sentenced to hanging without trial or ability to speak (‘any last words? didn’t think so’). Maybe I’m wrong that this would all seem weird to current viewers, and instead I’m just out of touch.

No need to refrigerate Nov 27, 2020

If you are wondering whether a food needs refrigerating, you look at the label until you either see an instruction to refrigerate it, or have looked at the label enough to exclude the possibility of it containing that instruction somewhere. This seems clearly worse worse than the label just always saying whether or not the food needs refrigerating, so the procedure terminates as soon as you find that sentence.

It’s only a tiny bit worse—only a few seconds are at stake each time—but it is so clearly worse, it is interesting to me that it remains in the worse state.

Air walls and empty currents Nov 26, 2020

There is an experience archetype in my world that goes like this: you have been carefully navigating around a landscape of walls, or inching forward against an overwhelming current. Intently battling hard obstacles. Then you tentatively try walking right into a wall, and realize that they are all actually just air, and you can just walk straight through them. Or you find a turn of mind where you can just stand up straight against the wrenching current—not through huge effort and force, but through the current suddenly losing all physical relevance to your free motions.

Is this familiar? What circumstances are like this?

Salience costs and other lives Nov 25, 2020

Alice has a car that can only drive at 65mph.

Bob has a car that can drive at 70mph.

Every time they both drive 70 miles to the city, Alice spends almost five extra minutes driving.

When Bob’s car breaks down, he borrows Alice’s car. Driving it, he constantly has his foot on the accelerator, to no avail. The visceral slowness is encumbering and distracting. He spends more than an hour overcome with frustration, plus that extra five minutes driving.

Bob finds it hard to believe that Alice puts up with this, and supposes she must be really struggling in life, or making errors of judgment, if she hasn’t got a new car already.

*

There are many ways that you can fail to appreciate how bad other people’s problems are. But I think you can also systematically fail to appreciate how bad they aren’t, for the person. What is salient in moving from your world to theirs is not necessarily salient in theirs, so when most of the cost is from the salience, you might be overestimating it.

Room cleaning haikus Nov 24, 2020

Autumn clothes
from old websites
in my drying machine

Thin cardboard box
with pictures of face creams
now roaming nearby

Handful of tissues
collected from drifts
many tears and lunches