deathmtn

On one hand, writing in a notebook regularly has helped me think a lot of things through that I would have otherwise struggled with or given up on.

On the other, I spend a lot of time searching for misplaced notebooks.

We finished watching Legend of the Mountain, which was good, but I'm not sure what happened at the end, and the fan base isn't big enough such that I can just find something on the web telling me exactly what happened.

I have a job that I feel bad about not being satisfied with. It's really good, environment-wise and has a lot that has been lacking in previous jobs. But I just feel like it's going to be a good use of my time, going forward. I should probably at least look around.

No pull ups. Couldn't fit in/am too wiped now.

I feel burned out…again.

I frequently complain about there being too much bad abstraction in software development, meaning that the abstraction is either unnecessary, misleading, faulty or all three. There's a lot of cases in which something is packaged up for software engineers such that they do not have to think about a problem – until the abstraction breaks. At that point – under pressure – the software engineer has to understand both the abstraction and the original problem.

A guest on this Talking Politics episode about the ways in which oligarchs and criminals can legally hide and move money using elite financial institutions says this at one point:

There’s this great line in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, which I’m sure you’ve all read intensely, when Mr. Weasley scolds his daughter Ginny at the end because she’s been possessed by a diary which was sort of inhabited by the spirit of Lord Voldemort. And he says ‘How many times do I have to tell you. Never trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.’

And that’s the thing about dark money, offshore money, is it’s acting, it’s influencing our politics. It’s buying assets. It’s buying houses. It’s paying for the media. It’s paying for, you know, political campaigns, but we can’t see where it keeps its brain. And I think this is a problem because obviously the owners of dark money are many and they are various and they are all over the world, but they all have one interest in common which is they don’t want to be exposed because if they get exposed they might have the money taken away from them. And that is a threat to democracy because the core function of a democratic government is to tax its citizens. And if a democratic government can’t tax its citizens then is it a democratic government anymore. So I do think that this dark money is a threat to democracy I think it’s a growing threat to democracy and I think that it will be never easier to do something about it than it is right now because the amount of money is growing and the more money there is the bigger threat this malevolent poltergeist is.

It occurs to me that this is a similar problem. We have abstracted things in such a way that most people do not understand some workings of the world that are incredibly critical to our well-being.

1 check today.

Wow. Notebook doodles at their highest level!

Another good project night! It's basically always good to make stuff with your friends and to remember that programming is fun. Tonight, we animated a squirrel. The bugs were hilarious.

Also, I wanted to remember to remind a friend to vote if he hadn't already. I forgot! But he mentioned that he did already vote and was more up on the election. Very active in democracy for someone that believes we are ultimately doomed!

Space Streaking has noisy guitars, saxophone, and a lot of beat switches. I feel it hovers somewhere between Sigh and Fantomas. I am fascinated.

Gab and the decentralized web

An often-repeated argument about deplatforming fascists is that we'll just drive them underground. In my opinion, this is great: when we're literally talking about Nazis, driving them underground is the right thing to do. Yes, you'll always have neo-Nazis somewhere. But the more they're exposed to the mainstream, the more their movement may gain steam. This isn't an academic problem, or a problem of optics: give Nazis power and people will die. These are people who want to create ethnostates; they want to prioritize people based on their ethnicity and background. These movements start in some very dark places, and often end in genocide.

I think a lot of people have this idea that only good ideas gain steam. There are quite a few bad ideas that have massive support. Hence: The Marketplace of Ideas! (Nevermind that most real marketplaces exclude deceptive or blatantly consumer-harming goods.)

Some examples of bad ideas that have gained steam besides Nazism:

- Vaccines being more harmful than good (look at how many people died of diseases that are no big deal now before there were vaccines if you think this, BTW)

- Human-influenced global warming is not real (this is actually incredibly dangerous, even though it seems much more bloodless than Nazism)

- Women are not as smart as men

- The world is roughly 6,000 years old

Do I know exactly why people believe these things? No.

I think it's a combination of both interest (as in, people sometimes know or feel that they will benefit from believing something that is probably wrong) and educational background (e.g. knowing how the scientific method works and what came before it).

All of that is moot, though; whatever the cause, unreasonable, inhumane, and harmful ideas do gain steam. So, we do need to be responsible with which ideas we promote and where we promote them.

1 check today.

Really grateful that there's a block near us that takes Halloween to the limit. It's an amazing place to take your kid to.

Costume reception report:

The guy: Lots of people called out "Marshall!" Was also cool that we ran into one other Marshall, as well as Rubble and Chase.

Katt: Only two people visibly recognized the Hilda costume, but one of those two people was a tween in a Hilda costume herself. They knew they were down instantly upon seeing each other.

Me: Again, no one knew what I was supposed to be, but then it was a last-minute costume based on a vague concept (ans Katt actually did the making for me), so I'll take it!

Another really good genre writeup from Bandcamp. This one is about funeral doom, which apparently started with Thergothon, a band I remember from end of the nineties, but did not really get into.

Mournful Congregation's The Book of Kings, though, is one of the most easily jumped-into 30+ minute songs I've heard!

I was sitting at my desk, trying to come up with designs for something, and getting sleepy. So, I got up and walked outside and thought about stuff. And I came up with stuff!

So, yeah, leave your desk when you can.