deathmtn

10-4-4-4-4-10.

Also moved two of the window unit ACs to the basement. Seriously, that’s the most worthwhile thing I did all day.

36-minute run, 12 pull-ups. Really pleasant overcast run weather.

From The Captive Mind, written in 1952.

Feeling that there was nothing in him, Dante could not have written his Divine Comedy or Montaigne his Essays, nor could Chardin have painted a single still-life. Today man believes there is nothing in him, so he accepts anything, even if he knows it to be bad, in order to find himself at one with others, in order not to be alone. As long as he believes this, there is little one can reproach in his behavior. Perhaps it is better for him to breed a full—grown Ketman, to submit to pressure and thus feel that he is, than to take a chance on the wisdom of past ages which maintains that man is a creature of God.

Milosz here was talking about people embracing varying degrees of totalitarianism because the alternative was to be cut off from a lot of people. This happens to apply to people today with respect to social media, whose effects they see harming their way of life and personal mental cohesion. It also applies to people in China and the Chinese Communist Party’s (even more) increasing control over their lives. And of course, it may well apply to the corporate surveillance state and an explicitly undemocratic near-future America. I’m disturbed by how universal that observation that is.

Is a thriving ketman culture (Ketman is a practice from Islamic cultures in which one strategically praises official thought while secretly fostering different private beliefs) the best we can hope for? Americans perversely lionize individual economic risk while also stigmatizing non-participation in corporate platforms.

Insert hopeful counterpoint here

Single set of 14. I was actually not as busy today. I was less motivated to work out because I felt good.

It’s funny how there’s lots of things that’ll get you to skip workouts. It’s like I have to have this perfect level of discontentment in order to do the full workout every day.

Donald Trump and first lady test positive for coronavirus

I hope the ventilation was good and that Biden scrubbed the hell down after that debate. Both candidates dead by November would be a chaotic situation, though a less chaotic one than if Trump stays alive.

Much like I was the near the beginning of the pandemic, I felt sleepy all day today.

Snapshots by Shin Noguchi Frame Candid and Enigmatic Moments Observed on the Streets of Japan. I'm into the everyday strangeness.

35-minute run, 12 pull-ups.

This is neat. Andrew Plotkin made a virtual tour of his personal library. I try not to view them as representative, but I do enjoy looking at other people's books.

10 burpees, 12 pull-ups, 5-3-1 deadlifts.

One of the many problems with online learning: Seesaw, this sort of LMS for kids, sometimes links to YouTube. YouTube, of course, automatically has autoplay on as well as their big list of recommended videos. These are extremely distracting for kids.

I happened to be there, so I deleted the recommendation pane in dev tools. This was intended to be an “on your own” lesson, though.

I thought about whether or not we should write off the country if Trump wins legitimately. (If he forces it, that’s a different set of considerations.) Trump explicitly backing White supremacists (the Proud Boys) again puts this in a slightly different light. A majority of people voting for blatant racist terrorism would make it hard to imagine having any faith in this country’s ability to improve, even if all of the broken democratic mechanisms I complain about all the time were fixed.

Danny Trejo is on an episode of What We Do in the Shadows! It doesn’t matter what he does on any given show; it’s always uplifting.