Generating worlds, exploring them, losing the thread.
A world-historical sleep, maybe eight hours, but, more importantly, a deep sleep fraught with deep dreams. Up at 7 am and feeling pretty good. No time for exercise; Sara’s going to give me a ride to the Skytrain station.
But things start to go wrong. What the hell is this? Can a good sleep cast as dark a pall over proceedings as my usual insomnia? My laptop refuses to connect to our router, so I can’t back it up … Read more
Human beings – evolution’s cutting edge, at least in our experience and overlooking our possible supersession by machine culture – have recently evolved an insatiable lust for gadgetry, much of it iGadgetry. But is this in fact something new?
No. Gadget lust first emerged somewhere between 4.5 and 3.8 billion years ago.
Plus ça change
Science has concluded that 3.8 billion years ago or even earlier, life on Earth – a vast variety of microorganisms – … Read more
Smartwatch dementia
If her Polar smartwatch tells her she slept like a baby last night, Sara asks, how can she feel the way she feels this morning?
I’ve had similar experiences with my Apple smartwatch. One morning it will report, on the basis of four different measures, I should be all bushy tailed and ready to rock, never mind I can hardly drag my butt to the teapot. The next morning it claims I had no “deep sleep” at all, … Read more
So has my Muse fled the scene forever, or is she merely suffering pandemic burnout?
Psychologists are reporting a rise in “pandemic burnout” as many people find the current phase of lockdowns harder, with an increasing number feeling worn out and unable to cope.
The Guardian
So here I’ve parked, this past year, largely confined to home with computers and ideas for books on all sides, shielded from such distractions as a social life. Liberally supplied with food, water, tea … Read more
This week’s post follows on from last Thursday’s look at the selfie culture found within coffee shops of a certain standard.
Trying to account for what I witnessed, I was stuck by the notion that many of my fellow citizens seek refuge in new and improved realities. And these realities are socially and digitally engineered according to criteria that remain opaque to mere humans – including, arguably, the IT whiz kids responsible for the tech underlying these new cognitive dimensions. … Read more
Alternate universe #1
Cutsie coffee shops: Where do they all come from?
After many years in the trendy Ari Samphan area, I’ve moved to quite another flavor of Bangkok neighborhood. Like Ari, however, this one comes replete with fashionable coffee shops, and, as with the Ari area, the trendier the physical plant the cuter it is – the more it’s garnished with flounces and flowers and filled with comely young ladies dressed to the nines and brandishing camera phones. … Read more
Digital social networking can sometimes resemble pandemic STD, harmful to individuals and groups everywhere. Digital echo chambers and the silo effect — too often products in part of deliberate manipulation — can divorce us from realities we might hold in common and, instead, set us at each other’s throat.
But while the relatively privileged classes allow themselves to be distracted, refracted and dangerously abstracted as they retreat into digital parallel universes, the truly disadvantaged of this world, denied the money … Read more
In line with much of the general population, I rarely get a full night’s sleep. Neither a world leader with many responsibilities nor a wild young lad, I’m merely an insomniac.
Recently – yielding to Sara’s incessant advice that I buy a smartwatch – I acquired an Apple Watch. I still wasn’t too sure why I’d done this, so Sara badgered me into loading it with an app called AutoSleep. Every morning, now, AI independently verifies my latest defeat in … Read more
Thirteen days, one likes to think, till Trump vacates the White House.
Do we need a word to describe the irrational fear of Trump policy initiatives (otherwise described as ‘tweets’)? Maybe not. Many will argue that such a fear is in no way irrational, and hence may not be properly described as a phobia.
Whatever. I hereby present three phobias I’ve mentioned before on this blogsite. All three, I’ll suggest, will serve while we search for a more Trump-specific expression.… Read more
Even among loyal fans, after only four or five Kicking Dogs chapters and a few SIDECARS, interest in this project has waned. Fizzled away to fuck all, in fact.
The last bit is classic Leary alliteration, though he’d never say “fuck.”
… Read moreLeary habitually seasoned his conversation with “gosh” and “darn.” Gosh was salt, and darn was pepper. Sometimes, if a communication required a bit of mustard, he might go so far as to say “frigging.” That’s how I knew the