"Habit is thus the enormous fly-wheel-of-society, its most precious conservative agent" -- William James

"Beneficent-spirals, operating by benign feedback, mean that everything needful is not required at once" -- Jane Jacobs

"In my end is my beginning" -- Mary Queen of Scots

out for a walk, sees the neighborhood cats fighting, recalls an idea about social institutions - brains are funny things

"Out of this aboriginal sensible muchness attention carves out objects, which conception then names and identifies forever" -- William James

"The perceptual-flux as such... means nothing, and is but what it immediately is. No matter how small a tract of it be taken, it is always a much-at-once" -- William James

"universal" - a word that seems to have a newtonian orbit

when we close off the rational, the vision of what should-work - its like an answer waiting to be seen, or heard, has a better chance

closes eyes, sees the answer to an issue - brains are funny old things

thinking that thinking about thinking differently is harder than doing things differently and thinking about it later

an earworm is an annoying thing, but an olfactory dream stuck in a feedback loop is so much more primal

nonconsensual hallucinations r us

someone is describing farmyard aromas, and evocative doesn't quite capture the sensory imagination we have

"If you're given a choice, you believe you act freely" -- Teller

reframe and represent - such contrasting views

"we take these matters very seriously", they say, seriously, after being found out - at least xbox banned that-guy we're not supposed to be like

the appeal of audiophile equipment - buttons, dials, knobs - handy, inviting participation, personally being in the loop, not just passively consuming content

"originally designed to..." - an interesting turn, unexpectedly useful - missing the origin story we may assume it was designed to do what we see now, as-if the inventors knew it up front

uncertainty sounds like something to fear, yet mystery is so attractive for both we seem to creatively invent stories to fill in the cognitive gaps

becoming vexiphobic

Grasshopper Escapement - a band with world class timing

"Faith feels simple and doubt feels sophisticated" -- Alec Ryrie

now trying to figure out how to do something simple - search the internet, ignore the ai which doesn't answer it, actually clicked on a microsoft site (el oh el), plain old blog (remember those) had the answer - biggest software company in the world?

used windows-11 today, tried to copy a file, apparently its been 'simplified', they removed the 'copy' from the right-click menu - wonder if windows-12 will put it back again?

watching the five-hour thing about metadeception, thinking of systems, people under a spell, active participants 'as teller says' - meta indeed

stumbles across an old tv-program, seen once, and unseen for twenty years, remembering details - freaky how much we have in our heads

reflecting on how-bad recommendations are.. serving up fresh content - freshness presumably lacks a history, and is being gamed will the algo learn its being gamed? sigh, click bait the name of the game

"An Old Norse word for it was kinnroði, literally "cheek-redness," hence, "blush of shame" - etymology is fun

"A great poem is a fountain forever overflowing... new relations are ever developed, the source of an unforeseen and an unconceived delight" -- Shelley

unsight - gaining insight by noticing the unexpected working better than it should

finds inspiration for daily reflection - thats a nice feeling

feels sorry for the eh eye summary as clicks on the wikipedia link...

just had a minor epiphany, and, reflecting, it came from a conversation several hours ago - the mind, thinking away, in the background, and an answer pops up later - if we seed it, let it simmer, and let it come

TFW Harold Budd comes on in the stream, so quiet, calm, yet instantly makes things better

was thinking that aggregate statistics are a legacy technology, then watched someone making decisions using excel - need a beer now...

reminded that we can remember more than we imagine - reviewing notes, and memories come flooding back

"This sort of thing has cropped up before... and it has always been due to human error" -- HAL9000

automatic mute when joining conference calls, team meetings - wonder what the back-story on that is

looking at cast for 2001 - ape, ape, ape... "ape attacked by leopard"

turns off the latest software feature, that gets in the way, and breathes a deep sigh of relief

loop - a four letter word we don't pay enough attention to

"How Emotions are Mad" as my typo-de-hour

former police officer, Craig Guildford, reflects on effective use of ai technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Guildford

stops to reflect - what if.... finite scroll, or, wait, a page metaphor?

TFW you go down a rabbit hole to find a whole warren of underground connections, an invisible network

a double satisfying day, going down two rabbit holes, both entirely serendipitously

"The symbol in itself signifies literally no one thing in particular, but it can be associated with almost anything" -- Lippmann (1922)

"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself" so says the quote, on a youtube channel, with 'synthetic material' - an actual-illusion of whats real?

outside, in the dark, sees something odd, just a shadow... if we see what isn't there in the dark, what about the other times?

so interesting one just one-word can lead to another-word, opening unexpected insights