Sufficient Unto the Day
=== 2025-03-31 10:38:53 Monday
In a way, the relationship between the internet and an alleged "real reality" is similar to the relationship between our modeling of an alleged reality, and that alleged reality itself.
Might we call the combined situation "nested enshittification"?
=== 2025-03-31 09:21:30 Monday
Pretending to be a/the model of [ineffable] is the root of all additional evil.
Words are modeling easily taken to be their referents, leading to an endless cycle of needing more words for the ineffable reality being more than any finite number of words could seemingly contain.
=== 2025-03-31 08:07:12 Monday
Coffee made. Wife still sleeping in.
Today's agenda includes a conference with some geneticist my wife wants me to consult with about ruling out my having some kind of cancer risk due to my mom having died from pancreatic cancer, and an aunt having died from whatever syndrome (can't remember the name) we'll be discussing.
FWIW, I consider most medical "experts" to be charlatans.
But I want my wife happy, so.
We also need to vote for a mayor.
I need to put a gate on the new pool deck.
There's also a huge hunk of new kitchen counter I need to cut into a larger chunk (to contain a new sink), and a smaller chunk for atop a small cabinet that's in a space kiddie corner to where the sink-containing chunk will rest.
It shouldn't be too difficult to map out and make the cuts.
But, of course, there will be Murphy to contend with.
Later in the week I'll need to remove the old and install the new, which will involve plumbing work, which I tend to despise because of how friggin' devious water can be.
However, new counter top is sorely needed. We already had someone paint the cabinets really nicely.
=== 2025-03-31 07:25:18 Monday
Improvements to my gemini2gopher script (run automatically when updating this place) have gopher hyperlinks coming out correctly.
So now this place lives in two https places, one gopher place, and one gemini place.
All I have to do is:
- create a post in a file named 'z'
- run "./e" to edit the overall index.html file
- run '!/in' at point of new entry in index.html
- quit vim
At that point, index.html is saved, then converted to index.gmi, which is converted to 'gophermap'.
I can examine each of those files locally via appropriate browsers if I'm feeling nervous about how they might look.
Then I:
- run "./upload"
which sftp's the various files to where they belong.
*Peasy* is how easy!
=== 2025-03-31 06:59:54 Monday
No amount of knowing, acquisition, friends, family, etc. solves the loneliness of individuality.
In fact, all such are merely attempted distraction from that loneliness, that misery.
The seeking attention?
Attempted distraction from individuality.
Getting together with friends?
Attempted distraction from individuality.
Online doom-scrolling?
Attempted distraction from individuality.
Online *anything*?
Attempted distraction from individuality.
Same with books, sex, music, learning, blahdie blah blah blah.
Turns out that the only way out is in....
=== 2025-03-31 06:36:11 Monday
It's simple, but it isn't.
Clinging to the idea of an individual self is clearly and obviously the embrace of suffering, for an individual self implies time, and time is suffering (see also: "to suffer time").
And yet letting that go...? The very act of letting go affirms the problem for demanding the existence of the individual self to do it.
Abiding in awareness solves this so long as it isn't an individual self doing the abiding....
=== 2025-03-31 06:22:19 Monday
This piece is in the vicinity of how I've been increasingly feeling.
Just the God. Damned. Hopelessness. Of the seeming overall situation.
I want every last vestige of thoughts of it gone. I want to be staring off into space in the kind of peace that can have a person on the street have a bus go by half an inch from their face, and not flinch.
As though it's not even there.
That's how I need this world of others to become: a passing, utterly uninteresting bus that touch detachment therefrom.
It doesn't help that I've written the author before, and never a response. Why the goddamned fuck make an email address available if you're not going to have the decency to acknowledge incoming?
Cold Showers contains a useful mental trick, although of course mental tricks have a way of "wearing out", I think roughly in the way an earlier entry (below) referred to a downside of oversimplification.
Day 80: I hate negativity is a serious does of hypocrisy, waxing negative about others being negative, judging others for judging.
As we've become fond of saying, you can't make this shit up.
But, then, isn't all blogging an exercise in pandering/whoring for attention by way of letting others know what a fool one is?
It's. Just. You know.
=== 2025-03-31 05:57:29 Monday
I need to become more resolute in my avoiding other people.
I mean, it could be that most of what I see/read/hear online is mostly manufactured bullshit to get a rise out of others.
But... so? Even if "merely" that, isn't a species hellbent on doing that to each other not worth anyone's time?
How many turds finally become too much for a given space?
I'm pretty sure the answer is one.
And since we bring ourselves everywhere we go, guess what?
=== 2025-03-31 05:32:37 Monday
Six and a half hours of sleep.
It'll have to do.
A couple fairly convincing dreams, I think. Can't remember them. Just that lingering sense of "something about it seemed so real".
A couple McCartney songs from his "Tug Of War" album came to mind no long after awakening, I think because one of the add-on singers from Friday night's performance reminded me of their existence: "Ballroom Dancing" and "The Pound Is Sinking".
What a great album. Haven't listened to it in at least a decade. Haven't listen to much of anything else, for that matter. Streaming somehow killed the joy of music for me. It was better when it *wasn't* so easy. There was something better about dealing with the physical media.
You work so hard to simplify, and suddenly find you've over-simplified something important out of the scene.