July 29, 2021

This is my own personal blog so I'm not going to expound only on all the ways I'm stupid, reminding my kind readers again for a moment I know some calculus and stuff. There are very much different types of intelligence, different people have different strengths and weaknesses. Most of us have had some moment or another when we felt so utterly discouraged that we completely gave up. Many many people have said to me, "for some reason, math just won't fit in my mind." Mathematicians will try to tell anyone, that's the nature of mathematics. Math does not fit in a human's mind, there is just too much of it available. Even if someone just started at the number one, and counted perfectly upward, never making a mistake, counting one number after another, they would not make even a dent in all of the numbers. They could spend a lifetime doing absolutely nothing else, and statistically they would end up counting basically 0% of all the numbers. Even if they counted well past a trillion, for their entire life, they would have counted only 0% of all the available, infinite numbers. There are very interesting things in mathematics, and some of them just won't ever be understood by any human being. Even the smartest human mathematician will come to some impasse where the math no longer fits in their mind. That's a math lesson. Some people are good at math. I'm not even that good at math compared to many people I know, but I really do know some calculus and stuff, seeming so lofty and awesome, which it actually really is. There are some things in there that are just conceptually beautiful ideas, really fascinating stuff. Other people are smart at building the Eiffel tower, which is impressive also, making such a good burger people will travel from all around just to try it, or even just mowing their lawn. All of these are things I'm not only not so good at, I am actually bad at these things. I know some calculus, people say I'm a smart guy kind of often really, and I'm telling you there are other humans who know thousands of times more mathematics than me. Even those people know essentially 0% of all mathematics. Only God could ever truly know something like all of mathematics.

July 27, 2021

I feel so crappy sometimes! Luckily, I can't come in to work today. There's always a silver lining. I want to leave some notes for posterity anyways, in case I don't make it.

I wrote some papers and stuff for you folks. There may be enough pearls in here for someone to find a good idea. I'm almost completely convinced that has happened before, at some time in the past, and humanity really does come up with amazing things sometimes like houses and arithmetic. I'm almost completely sure human beings really did do that kind of stuff, at least in the distant past, and may even continue on, and do so again. Sadly, I have no actual proof to verify any such thing ever actually happening. So, I tried to come up with some papers about ideas some other humans I do very much believe exist thought might be interesting, but alas... when I looked around to see what was going on, all that seems to be trending in the general blogosphere is still just prison, etc. I had such lofty dreams of teaching science, such hubris! I can hardly believe my own folly looking back on it. At least now I'll have some kind of blogpost shat up on here...

Anyways... if I do succumb to this truly awful plague or whatever, it is my last wish that after you check and are absolutely sure I'm completely dead, please at least nail my carcass by the nutsack to the prow of this sinking orgy and figure out how you can keep these things from happening to your nerd collection so we can write papers with numbers and symbols in them and stuff for you. I do completely understand your complaint, nerds are such overconfident brutes. Get out of my classroom.

July 21, 2021

For some reason, when people turn 10 years old, everyone says something to them like, "wow! Your age is measured in two digits! Congratulations!" and shit like that. People almost never buy flowers for their mom, though that is more of a tradition around 0 years old.

Ten years old ain't shit really. At 0 years old most people don't pay a fuckin' lick of attention. I can't honestly remember a thing. Now, at about 20 years old, that's kind of an actual milestone. That's about when your mom gets to full power yelling at you to get a fuckin' job, stuff like that. Traditionally we all start bitching no one cares about us around then or so.

40 is another major turning point. Like people say, around 40 years old if you've been a successful engineer, something like that, they take you out back and shoot you.

What's fucking astounding about that... tons of people actually survive that. People have told me around 60 years old it really starts to sink in, no one has ever, or is ever likely to, notice you. Statistically there is a 0% chance of it. The idea is life just goes that way, continues on, kinda 20 year intervals or so. I don't know much about it.

I was trying to explain to someone helpfully, if you get all fried out and crazy somewhere in there, something happens, sort of, so they asked me, what's that? Well... not a whole hell of a fucking lot. I don't know of that ever happening, but looking around myself, those people seem to get up the next day and go into work. No one notices, mostly. Probably not even them.

People have assured me, pointedly, to relax. About all of this. Someone is in charge of this, and they actually want to be. An actual human being, presumably. I can't fathom it, but whatever.

I was so worried I would go insane someday, and thank God it just never ended up happening. There are a few mental health issues going on, which only happens to other people. I was trying to explain exactly that to a man in a tree the other night, around midnight or so. I do understand the complaint, not everyone gets a yard of their own to hang out in and stuff, and the fellow wasn't causing any problems for any of us here.

I scanned through the Bill of Rights trying to see if there were any legible parts left, and yep, I did find one here, this one is entirely on me... homeless veterans do need some jackass to at least pretend to give a fuck about them too, really, and I wasn't about to leave such a good fellow out, say, in the yard all night.

I thought about that too much next, and I still can't figure out how we decide what all are going to be our deep cultural scars as a society. There are some supposedly true facts we can look up on fake news sites and shit, but we all do know, and agree, rather angrily as to how, but certainly not why, that one of the most upsetting fucking things that has happened in our recent cultural memory, was the police action in Vietnam. To this day, as a man born a decade after it ended, it makes me almost physically ill to type that. There are around 60,000 names of Americans who died in that war, tens of thousands of them younger than 20 years old. The war itself lasted just about exactly 20 years. It is not ok. If there is a single thing America agrees on, it's that this shit is not ok.

There are around 350 million Americans these days. I was trying to think of a really stupid mathematical model for something here, overthinking some perspective people say. If the population were perfectly stable and predictable, everything went pretty much as perfectly as could ever be hoped for, every American lived a long and healthy life to exactly the age of 100, then died after a good meaningful life... that would mean that exactly 1% of the population would die every year. 3,500,000 Americans would die every year, someone would give quite a fuck about them each, but they would each be exactly 100 years old, which would actually be not too bad.

July 19, 2021

JOE

"I'm not just virtue signalling when I say this," the winning player
says to me.  The loser looks discouraged.  He folds, setting down his
hand for all of us to see.  One motorist, that's about it, not even
white.  I set down my hand too, sure I've won now.  Four law
enforcement officers and a young mother pushing a stroller.  The
winner smiles cruelly and shows us.  The loser groans.  2pac shooting
all the badguys in their asses.

I'm pissed.  I stand up from the card table.  If this were a real
cartoon, smoke would be coming out of my ears.  I say nothing for a
moment, seething.  Then I scream at the smug winner, "this entire
system is fucking rigged against autistic communist junkies!" He
chomps down on the most consistent, most regular institutional burger
one could possibly imagine.  He stares at me, chewing like some
animal, his mouth practically moving side to side.  Chomp.  Chomp.  He
says nothing.

The loser looks at what has to be some kind of watch these days, and
says, "looks like it's that time again." People don't know shit
anymore.  I stomp out of the room trying to cool off.  I just need
some space, some time for myself, and it's just nowhere.  I try to
avoid the next problem child but I just can't.  I veer to the side but
he's seen me, it's too late for me.  I push past him to get into the
queue, but I can't block out the noise coming out of him.  I sadly
admit it, near tears.  I do understand, I do.  People do need to know
this.  Yes, there is actual fucking candy growing on fucking trees.

Joe is passing out the medication tonight.  Just my fucking luck.  I
get to the front of the line, it's my turn, and of course, he's
irritated as hell.  I try to make small talk.  It pains me to see this
poor fellow.  It does.  "Your name is Joe, right?" I ask him.

He stares me down like a winner.  "That's not even the first thing
that pissed me off here," he says angrily.  "You know what you've
fucking done."

I feel guilty as shit.  I know it shows on my face.  What can I say to
him now?  I have to address this somehow.  I just have to.  "I
know..." I look at him with as much sincerity as I can imagine into my
eyes.  "I know.  I feel it, brother.  Your job is making even me
miserable."

July 14, 2021

Fire

I'm trying to figure out some things that are going on here. Today, on a personal note, marks one year for me without a single joint or beer. I feel... about the same as ever, from my point of view... letting myself feel proud about this, today...

Last night at about 2 AM sirens were going off and stuff here, which woke me up. I was concerned by the smell of smoke. I just found out there was a fire here, in town, which was contained. I don't know any more absolutely clear and verifiable facts about it. A few years ago there was a huge investigation about an awfully destructive fire, which turned out to have been set by some kid, in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of people.

People have said in roundabout ways to me, many times, something about "some people" who are "ahead of their times." I am worried by that concept, that someone would ever look at me in that way. I don't want that kind of responsibility on me. My father, in the mid 1980's, said something like, "computers are sure interesting," though I'm not sure that was even true. He even said things like, "it probably does need a modem."

About ten years after that, a well-meaning father of a friend of mine gave us both magnifying glasses, in the hopes of furthering our education and development. That really was actually the technology of those days, that kind of thing makes a lot of sense. We (I?) quickly realized we could light fires with the things using only sunlight. How avant-garde of us. My friend's father was very upset by that, as one might imagine. He scrambled to figure out how to deal with the situation. All he could manage to do was trick us (me?) into bragging about it as he recorded us with an actual tape recorder, characteristic of that era.

In my mid 30's, this year, just a few months ago, I finally even managed to shed my very last reason to carry a cigarette lighter in my pocket everywhere I go. I am kinda proud of that.

July 08, 2021

Speaking on behalf only of myself, I have had ongoing technical problems which have only been getting worse. Reflecting on the events of today in particular, and my reactions to them, I want to make a case that this is more than an issue of my own hurt pride as someone who has studied computer science at quite a bit of length.

I had two appointments today, at 3 PM and 5:30 PM. I spent well over an hour trying to get my computer ready for the appointment at 3 PM, and it did seem to be functioning correctly for the appointment by about 3:45 PM, at which point I had rescheduled it, it was marked as a failure on my part to show up. I proceeded then to begin to turn off my computer, planning to turn it on again later and go to the different appointment at 5:30. The computer finished running its update process and shut down completely around 6 PM, half an hour after the other appointment had started.

That computer is usually booted to one OS, Linux, which I set up for the 5:30 appointment rather specifically, which it works more or less well for. Part of the process of preparing for the 3 PM appointment was spending some time determining that getting that Linux system to work for that (if it could at all) was going to be such a pain in the ass that I should just use Windows. As I said, after an hours' work with it, Windows did work for that purpose, but didn't shut down in time (3 hours later) to attend the other appointment.

I wasn't sure who to lodge any kind of complaint to about this without just being laughed at, as someone who thoroughly understands, for example, and with pride, things like multivariate calculus for machine learning. I called a couple likely people and measured the amount of time the computer took to unfuck itself. I am legitimately a bit sorry to drop that trick of mine here as, in my experience, it will now stop working. I got some suggestions about the computer problems from non-computer-scientists, and it all worked out to this point where I am writing this, on a computer.

I have questions. Is any of this even about me? What can I possibly do about any of it? The best I could come up with is to write about it, and I have definitely already noticed some pros and cons of doing that about these such things. I could write a book about all of this, but I will do my very best not to, considering. Please, if anyone has any answers, questions of their own, or comments, I am completely open to hearing them. I completely understand the reprecussions of making such a statement, and I stand by it anyways.

Edit

I really do have a lot more thoughts about this...