audio

by

Audio post about a new book I’m reading

This post relates somewhat to my regular post from earlier today.

Here is a link to the book I mentioned.

by

Here is my threatened audio post

You’re gonna love it!  Or not.  One of those things.  That’s logic for you.

by

I forgot to give this a title at first

This is another lapcom post.  That’s three in a row!

It’s Wednesday now, though why today is named after the “Allfather” is far from clear to me.  Maybe because it’s the “middle” of the week, and Odin (AKA Wodin  AKA Wotan, etc.) supports the weight of time or some such.  I don’t know.  That sort of sounds good, at least.

Anyway, of course, I’m going to work.  It’s payroll day, and the boss should be back from a brief vacation.  It’s remarkable to me how often some people take vacations and so forth.  I’m not against vacations, don’t get me wrong.  But it’s quite annoying when someone takes a vacation while everyone else is working after having asked us to work on days when other people are taking a day off (e.g., Memorial Day).

It doesn’t really matter, I guess.  I have nothing to do on days off, let alone during any prolonged vacation, anyway.  I certainly have no one with whom to spend my time off, whatever it may be, except in rare snippets.

I don’t know.  I suppose some people out there might think I ought to do something about that, but the fact is, I don’t feel good about myself, whatever that might mean, and it is hard to try to inflict myself upon other people; this blog alone already feels presumptuous and probably annoying.

It is a persistent aspect of my experience of myself and the world that I feel strong self-disgust and self-contempt.  This is quite contrary to the concept of “self-compassion” often touted in discussions of getting an autism diagnosis as an adult and learning about it and some of why your experience in life has been the way it has been.

Getting diagnosed and learning more hasn’t given me any more generous attitude toward myself, at least not so far.  Maybe if there were more resources and support available, I might be doing better with it*.

I have also read suggestions about finding discussion or support groups or online meetups or even in person meetups.  This seems a slightly contradictory suggestion for people who are, as part of the very description of the disorder, socially troubled.  I even get tense whenever new people come to work in the office, until I get used to them.  I certainly don’t see myself trying to interact with groups of strangers, even if they are neurodivergent.

I had a little bit of connection on Instagram with some sort-of communities.  At least, there were other people there with some degree of similar experiences, though interaction was minimal and artificial.  Anyway, Meta arbitrarily kicked me off their platforms without telling me why, so fuck them to death.

I used to be better at this socialization sort of thing.  I probably would be better at a lot of it if not for chronic pain, but it’s rather futile to dwell on that very much.  In this, I try to follow the recommendations of the Stoics.  But sometimes I dwell on it, nevertheless.  Sue me, Marcus Aurelius.

Anyway, I don’t think I have anything productive to discuss today—not that yesterday’s weird, meandering post, which ended up focusing on prime factorizations somehow, was productive—and I don’t know that anything is likely to spill out of me at this point that’s going to be of any use to anyone, even for entertainment.  Sorry.

I did a brief audio recording yesterday about something that was nagging me relating to Sean Carroll’s answer to a listener question on his Mindscape podcast.  He does an “Ask Me Anything” podcast every month; it’s usually more than 3 hours long and is a real treasure trove of thoughts and insights about many things, since he’s a smart guy and a professional physicist and philosopher.  I was somewhat disappointed and therefore annoyed by his mentioning of Sam Harris and free will, because he somewhat misrepresented the arguments Sam has made.  I also thought he didn’t quite give adequate serious thought to the existential threat posed by AGI, though he certainly recognizes many potential drawbacks.

Anyway, I just recorded aloud my thoughts in response.  They may or may not be coherent to anyone else, let alone be very interesting.  Nevertheless, I’ll include the recording below.  I think it’s about ten minutes long.

In the past, I’ve been known to turn these audio recordings into “videos” to be posted on YouTube, but I don’t know how many people, if any, ever watch any of them.  But if any of you, listening to these audio files, think I should make them into “videos” too, please let me know.

I did get at least one person replying to a comment I made on another site that they miss my YouTube channel.  That surprised me.  It still exists, of course, but I haven’t added to it in a long time.

Maybe I will.  But it’s so hard to summon the will to do very much.  Maybe my will can become stronger, I don’t know.  Much of my effort and energy in that area is spent just getting through the day while dealing with pain and being alone and anxiety/stress and depression, frankly.

Oh, well, enough moaning.  My apologies.  I’ll try to make tomorrow’s post better, assuming I do one.  I hope you all have an excellent day by your own standards.

*I am diagnosed as Level 2, which is supposed to mean “requiring moderate support”, rather than level 1, which says someone only needs minimal support or some such.  So I’m not even expected to be able to make it very well on my own.

by

That blog is our last hope!

Told you, I did.  Reckless am I.  Now, matters are worse:  I’m writing a blog post on a Saturday, because I am going to the office to work today.  I didn’t truly promise, but I did say it was likely.

Speaking of speaking like Yoda (see the opening sentence) I did a little, very brief, voice recording yesterday, as a whimsically silly set of questions arose in my head‒there is nowhere else my questions can arise arise, after all‒regarding an aspect of the Star Wars universe, and I decided to record them.

I didn’t really check my mic placement before I started, so after my quick edit in the form of doing “noise reduction” in Audacity and renormalizing the inherent volume, my voice sounds somewhat weird.  It’s a bit tinny or echoey or something along those lines.  Heck, maybe that’s just what my voice sounds like in real life these days.

That’s pretty unlikely, though.  I’ve heard recordings of my voice, often made by me, since I was quite young (remember those personal cassette recorders in the 70s?).  Still, I couldn’t say with 100% certainty that it isn’t the case.  Indeed, one can never say anything empirical with 100% certainty.

There is after all always the possibility (in principle) of something like Descartes’s imagined malevolent demon, tormenting a mind with entirely illusory experiences.  Anyone who thinks they know some aspect of external reality to 100% certainty is poorly calibrated, doesn’t understand probability, or they’re exaggerating and/or not really thinking about what they’re saying.

Of course, there are many things about which we are so close to 100% implicit certainty that we are willing to risk our lives, usually without even considering that we are taking that risk.  We’re pretty sure of gravity in general, but we implicitly trust the floor beneath us, even in very high buildings.  We’re also pretty sure we won’t die in a car accident on our way to…well, wherever we’re going.  And very nearly 100% of the time, we are correct.

But, of course, every now and then, someone does get killed in a car accident, sometimes on a very short trip, perhaps to the corner store to buy a lottery ticket.  It’s more likely than actually winning that lottery.

They used to say that the vast majority of car accidents happen within five miles of the home.  But don’t worry, once I heard that little bit of trivia, I moved the hell away from that place!

Ha ha.  I have to laugh at my own stupid jokes, otherwise, a lot of the time, no one would laugh at them.

Anyway, as you can probably tell, if you think about it‒though you are not required to do so, your thoughts being your own‒I have no real direction when it comes to this post, and no spontaneously forming topic seems to be appearing, unlike a few times earlier this week.  So, I’m just meandering about in blog post phase space.

That’s okay, though.  It’s Saturday, and I’ve been working all week, and this is my 6th blog post of the week.  WordPress will no doubt send me some automated congratulations on this, my latest “streak”.  They keep doing that, and I know it’s intended to make people feel good about their posting, but it’s just obviously automated and so is annoying.

Also, it sometimes even engages some pathological demand avoidance, arousing a twisted sort of “I’m not doing this for you” feeling that makes one‒well, it makes me‒less enthusiastic about blogging.  The programmed feedback subroutine in WordPress is not my target audience, so getting positive feedback from it doesn’t make me feel that I have accomplished something worthwhile.

Don’t mistake me.  I like getting the specific information, or at least having it available, but it doesn’t have to be accompanied by a cartoon party popper and a “Congratulations!”, as if I’d achieved some kind of merit-based award.  Is this part of the lamentable trend of grade inflation and giving everyone trophies just for participating?

I think some of the mindless, automated, misdirected feedback is part of why I don’t use Brilliant dot org more often*.  They have this “experience point award” thing for when you do problems and exercises and finish sub-courses.  That in itself is okay, because it’s not really too intrusive, and maybe it would be good if you could eventually exchange them for…something, I don’t know.

But instead, they put you in these “leagues” and show you how you compare to other people using the app that day.  That can be kind of annoying, because I don’t go to educational sites to be competitive, except with myself.  I don’t even like multiplayer online games.  And, the trouble is, I get briefly caught up in the league score, because I am intellectually competitive, but that in turn gets distracting and negative (not much, but it’s there) and it discourages me.

I don’t know what I would recommend be done instead; I haven’t really thought about it, I was just expressing a feeling I have about such things.  Maybe other people enjoy these sorts of feedback a lot, in which case, hey, keep it up.  The strength of such enjoyment is almost certainly far greater than my own minor annoyance.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  Below, I am embedding my weird little recording.  I hope you have a good day and a good weekend.

Really, I do hope it, for whatever that’s worth.

*It’s not the only reason nor the most powerful one.  Mainly it’s mental inertia of some kind.

by

I’m not sure about fury, nor about sound, but as for the nature of the tale-teller…

Here we all are on another Wednesday, the middle day of the “traditional” modern work week.  This week, it’s also the middle of my work week; I do not work on this Saturday*.

I’m going to try to keep this post a bit short, just to see if I can conserve some personal energy.  I’m very tired, but somehow that rarely seems to prevent me from continuing to drive myself into the ground.  I did have a slightly better sleep last night than the previous few nights, which is relatively nice but still inadequate.

Also, though yesterday morning had relatively low amounts of pain**, at least for me, starting in mid-afternoon, it flared severely, especially on my right side/hip/knee/ankle and back.  I also had some neuropathic trouble with my left hand, but I think that was unrelated, and was likely due to an arthropod bite.

So, that all made the day quite frustrating; it followed something of the pattern of the “peak-end rule” as first described relating to old school colonoscopies, but it occurred in the reverse of the desired approach for colonoscopies without conscious sedation.  This would be expected to discourage someone from wanting to do another one, whether it be a colonoscopy or just another day.

Alas, I have relatively few options when it comes to “not wanting to do another one”.  There are only a few available ways to avoid another day.  One is to remain unconscious throughout that day, but remaining unconscious is something with which I seem to have difficulty.  The other form of evasive action is more drastic.  It remains, as always, an option.

Anyway, as I said, I mean to try to keep this short today, though I’ve intended that before and have failed many times.  Still, I’m very mentally fatigued at the moment, so I might find it relatively easy to keep things to reasonable lengths.

On an unrelated note, I’ve been thinking of doing some recordings of my writings again, like I did for several of my short stories and for the first several chapters of The Chasm and the Collision.  I would probably start with the next CatC chapter, but before doing that, it would be nice to know whether anyone out there has listened to any of my audio, whether on YouTube or here.

It’s a relatively large amount of work to read a chapter out loud and to edit the audio (and to make it into a “video”).  I enjoy it, to some degree, but a large part of that enjoyment depends upon the expectation that someone might listen to it and enjoy it themselves.  In an amazing, almost impossible world, someone might even tell me that they liked it (if they liked it).

A trouble I have, and which I have had for a long time, is that people will compliment me (from time to time) for certain things, but mainly for things that are easy for me and not terribly important to me.  Whereas the things that do feel personal to me, my creative output‒the rare things that have to do with me about which I feel good‒mostly don’t even get noticed.

Say whatever else you might*** about my ex-wife, she honestly liked and praised my music playing and writing (and singing), my drawing/painting, my sculpting (rare though it was), and most particularly, my fiction.  Even when she was pissed at me, she would not denigrate nor allow the denigration of my creative and intellectual output.

No one else in my life, before or since, has been as supportive in that way as she and her family, though of course others (e.g., my own family) have far surpassed that in relative and absolute terms in different ways.  My family, including myself, have difficulty with praise and emotional expressiveness, at least in direct communication.  Heck, in my family, we’re probably all on the spectrum at some level, so it’s neither surprising nor deliberate nor unkind if we have a difficult time showing (and frequently, knowing) how we feel.

Okay, that’s enough.  I suspect this has been quite boring for you, and for that I apologize.  I would appreciate feedback on the “audio of my stories” question, though, so if any of you have any of it to give, it would be welcome.

Thanks.

*Barring, as always, the unforeseen.  I really ought to feel fine with just leaving this caveat unsaid, since it is always the case that any predictions we make do not apply in the case of the unforeseen.  That’s more or less true “by definition” if anything is.  Unfortunately, I feel compelled to say it explicitly, lest I be unclear or misunderstood.

**By which I mean that I was in relatively low amounts of pain.  I don’t have any idea how much pain the day itself experienced; I honestly doubt that it can experience pain, or anything else.

***No, you really shouldn’t.  If you think I’ll enjoy hearing you badmouth the mother of my children, the woman I married, then I want to disabuse you of that notion.

by

There’s hope a great blog’s memory may outlive his life half a year.

Hello and good morning.

First of all, 

Actually, that was second of all, wasn’t it, following my traditional Thursday blog post salutation?  I would almost count that greeting as not being a first thing, however; it is practically automatic, requiring no new knowledge and very little in the way of thought.

Still, there clearly is some caloric expenditure in my nervous system related to doing it, and obviously there are impacts upon the world immediately around me.  And once the post is posted, that impact expands, at least a little.

After a very short while, I suspect, any impact that my writing that particular opening had will be entirely washed out by noise‒even thermal noise at some point.  Like the man said, “The world will little note nor long remember what we say here”.

Of course, the irony is that Lincoln’s speech is what we do remember most from Gettysburg.  By “we”, I mean Americans in general.  I don’t know if anyone in the rest of the world ever reads Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (though it is a very well written, concise, and moving speech).

And yet, his point is that we ought to remember the battle, and the lives of the soldiers involved in it, and (to my mind) we ought to try to understand the causes of the Civil War and to wonder to what degree the soldiers on each side really were committed to the arguments and ideas supporting their group, or if, deep down, they were just fighting for “our group” against “their group”.*  Yet we most remember, ironically, the words of the man who said that the world would little note nor long remember what he said there.  That was the point I was making.

Anyway, it’s January 1st, the first day of 2026.  Huzzah.  Rah.  Yippee Kiy Yay.

I don’t think it bodes well for the year to start on a Thursday, since this is the day that DentArthurDent had such trouble getting the hang of.  On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing, since Thursday is and has been my blog day for quite some time, even when I was writing fiction every other weekday.  Probably neither fact matters.

Of course, I am going to work today, despite it being such a universal holiday, and I am not at all happy about it.  I did no celebrating overnight, of course; what on Earth would I celebrate?  But my sleep was not good, anyway, because of all the fireworks and nonsense.  Also, the people with whom I share a house had a big family get together that had barely ended by the time I started writing this.  And, of course, I have chronic insomnia anyway.

It’s actually rather cold here in south Florida‒in the mid-forties right now‒and that makes getting to work slightly less pleasant than usual.  Also, the transit systems are on holiday schedules, and I have a long commute, especially since I have no vehicle.

I also feel that I might be coming down with a cold, but I’m not going to call in sick, because then it would look like I was pretending to be sick so I wouldn’t have to come in on New Year’s Day.  Still, my ears are plugged and my throat is a bit raw, and what might be just my allergies is acting up more than usual.  I’m not really coughing or sneezing, though.  Still, maybe I’ll develop pneumonia and die.  Fingers crossed!

Speaking of ears (I was, you can go back and check), all of a sudden in the middle of the night last night persistent tinnitus began in my left ear.  I have had chronic tinnitus in my right ear for about 18 years now, probably largely due to recurrent ear infections, which have tended to localize to the right side more often than the left.  When you have chronic tinnitus for so long, you get to the point where you…almost…don’t notice it anymore, though I do notice how bad the hearing is in my right ear.

And now my left ear feels very much like the right, with the high, sharp, intense pitch constantly sounding.  Mercifully, it seems to be roughly the same pitch as the noise on the right, a very high D note.  But it is quite annoying, and I fear my hearing is going to be too reduced for me to enjoy music, which is not so much terrifying as horrifying.

Ah, what are you gonna do?  This is life‒it’s a load of crap, but at least you get to die at the end.

I suppose I’ll be writing another post tomorrow, and probably Saturday as well, so you have that (those?) to which to look forward if nothing else.  I don’t know how many people will even read this post today, to be honest.  Will it be fewer than usual?  Will it be more?  Does it matter?

I know the answer to the last question at least.

Again, Happy New Year.  I’ll leave an optimistic-seeming GIF here below for you.  I don’t necessarily share the sentiments, but to be fair, as the Doctor knows full well, great isn’t necessarily good.

TTFN

*I’m reminded of Faramir’s words (in the movie) regarding the fallen soldier on the field:  “The enemy?  His sense of duty was no less than yours, I deem.  You wonder what his name is, where he came from.  And if he was really evil at heart.  What lies or threats led him on this long march from home.  If he would not rather have stayed there in peace.  War will make corpses of us all.”