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April, 2023
April 30 On Christ's Passion and Resurrection:
The story reveals the archetypes and structure underlying the narratives of Western culture; it's a passionate, transformative struggle that brings man closer to God — a journey from the ordinary world, to Hell, and back. You'll find that same structure equally in the The Odyssey and in Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Christ's Passion is the model for the monomyth.
April 29 Now, every time it rains I think of Iceland. Something that used to be dreary and draining now brings me feelings of nostalgia and bliss. And I'm reminded of the Icelandic saying, "If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes."
April 28
Ungodly Sounds
There are harsh sights, unpleasant smells, prickly surfaces, and repugnant tastes in nature. But there are few, if any, ear-piercing, ungodly sounds.
That's why, when I hear the screech of a subway or feel the decibel-boasting bass from concert speakers, I'm reminded of humanity's negative byproducts on nature.
April 24
Subject-Object Pronouns
Few people have the lexicon or categories to delineate these two types of pronouns. It's easy once you know the difference.
Subject: We humans are made in the image of God. Object: God made us humans in the image of God.
April 22 Seeing something as black or white is like seeing life as either birth or death. What about the glorious gradient between? What about living?
[[Live in the Third]]
April 21 The interrogative mood is underrepresented in online writing.
Thoughtful questions help the reader discover their own insights. Isn't that the value of writing anyway — what it inspires in you, not what it says to you? The interrogative mood admits uncertainty and invites the reader's thoughts to interrupt the author's indicatives and imperatives.
Ask questions. Be provocative, not prescriptive.
April 19
Don't Train on Me
- You've seen the AI Impressionist paintings. You've heard the automated musical Frankensteins. You've read the LLM adaptations of your favorite authors. AI's impersonations will only get better, which means that art will only get worse.
- Encrypt the Internet to soil the training pool and give the LLMs gibberish to draw from. Castrate them at the source: human language.
- Maybe a short Story where a crypto bro pumps and dumps a coin that infects the Internet and prevents AI from training on natural language
April 16 Potential book (or short eBook idea): Research, analyze, and synthesize creation myths from across eras and cultures, searching for overlapping evidence of the elementary characteristics of the human experience.
Shave on Sundays
You can always decide where rock bottom is — you must. Because there is no bottom, only more of a cavernous pit. That is, if you keep falling down.
If you decide, you can right the world's axis in a day. You can turn it around and set yourself on an entirely new path. You must first recognize their falling, then have the strength to pivot.
To get reps of this skill — pivoting — I think I'll adopt a new practice. I'll shave on Sunday — no matter how many times I shaved during the week or how recently I last shaved. I'll make Sunday a weekly rep of pivoting. Sunday will prompt me to check myself and see where I've fallen and what wagons I want to mount for the weeks ahead.
The chorus of "Kilby Girl" is a great example of economic storytelling.
Expected value is one of those advanced mathematical concepts that everyone would benefit from knowing. It helps me make prudent decisions without being risk averse-averse. You weigh the options based on probabilities of their future value.
April 13 Morality is human, partial. The universe is amoral, indifferent. A star's sneeze could scorch our planet and make our species extinct.
(It wouldn't be some divine punishment. It'd just be a cosmic coincidence.)
— — It's the difference between foul play and natural causes. A murderer owes an immeasurable debt to their victim. But Nature owes nothing to us when a hurricane sweeps hundreds into the sea.
April 12 In all writing, there is the essence and ornaments.
When you revise, clearly identify and communicate the essence, then prudently adorn it with entertaining ornaments.
April 11 Good feedback is different than positive feedback. Measure the quality of feedback by how much it improves the product.
April 8 The Promethean Struggle:
Go under so that what you've created may go beyond you, may transcend you.
Give without expectation to what you value.
April 5 The only way to write for everyone is to write exclusively for yourself. Write something you'd want to reread, revisit, and revise 'till the end of time. If that's how you feel about it, maybe someone else will read it once and find some value in it.
Misery creeps when you share something you have no interest in reading and that played no part in your personal growth to create.
April 4 Misery comes from dreading the next moment. When you don't wish for time to move in a different direction, you dwell pleasurably in the present moment.
April 3 To all those who claim to have no religious beliefs, or no personal matters of faith, consider this:
Every morning, when we wake up, we operate under the unverifiable belief that this is reality and that a dream.
Dreams and Ideals
An ideal is a dream that gets you out of bed. Like a dream, it is a hallucination of something you can clearly conceive yet never grasp. Any experience of the ideal is one you wake up from, realizing that you have not yet arrived.
And if you ever reach the ideal, you wake up and realize that there's still more to do, further to go.
A Faith in Dreams
Dreams are the only natural mystery — the only grand mystery that I can confirm isn't fiction, which is why dreams are the centerpiece of my personal faith.
Every night, we hallucinate an entire reality. I call it a "reality" because (unless lucid) we cannot distinguish a dream from our waking experience.
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