guitar player's journal

Where are you and where are you going?
guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@mathiverse, thanks! I have only very vaguely known it, very classical-music-y! I see a few people attempted it on a guitar and it isn't awfully complicated, I might just learn it.

@Lemur, this sounds really good, I am going to investigate next week. The reality is that due to inertia of a huge organisation, lots of work will likely remain in SAS so I will end up being good at it.

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 46/52

Job

008/156 weeks in (ca. 5.1%).

I am working on my second publication. Spent a good day trying to figure out a way of cleaning data with SAS but finally gave up as the clerical data I check against is just so messy. So now I am down to compare and contrast of csv files and updating the SAS code that spits out the cleaned data frames. It will be a pleasant job writing this report once I have a clean data set.

I now ken (experientially learn) what people mean when saying that working as a data handler is cleaning data for majority of the time. I hope in the future to move to some higher levels of operating and working on processes to maybe automate cleaning data? Attended a quick talk about Reproducible Analysis Pipelines, one prof mentioned 'data curation' as a major growing field in the data world. I thought of art curation but also immediately imagined curing cheese or jamon serrano haha.

I had the training about effective communication, it was essentially about how to wing it.

Financial future planning

Warning for libertarians reading as this will involve some leaps of hope regarding the future of corporate state. I ran some numbers re our financial old age outlook as things stand now. In about 4 or 5 years we will have accrued enough social security + I will have accrued enough defined benefit pension, so that when we are old (67 as of now) we will be getting an inflation adjusted sum that roughly covers our present annual living costs. I think this is a good hedge. Basically a UK Government backed annuity at a very small cost, of course might default.

Independently in about 4 or 5 years we will have, lets say conservatively, 20 years of annual living costs in assets. I write this generally as assets, as we might materialize some of cash in the form of bricks and a roof and then annual living costs would go down. This is less important, mostly I feel like it makes good sense to lock in on those annuities. So it is important to do things at work in such way that work remains personally meaningful for that time. I think there is enough wiggle room to direct work so that it remains so.

I had a chat with DW about it, we feel we have a well rounded life.

City foraging / scavenger economy

DW found an app that is basically a structured dumpster diving where there are certain people volunteering to go to supermarkets and collect food that is going off, then keeping some of it and advertising the rest on the app. Today we are going to go and collect mushrooms, avocadoes, raspberries, broccoli, tangerines and brown rolls (will spoil ourselves with some baked goods, normally don't eat such).

This is good for exploring Glasgow too. Finding neighbourhoods to maybe purchase property. That sort of initiatives and where those volunteers are concentrated gives one an idea of what sort of neighbourhoods these are.

Stoic exercises

Week 44: Decompose Desired Externals

I feel like in general I live by decomposing so this came naturally.

Week 45: Study each impression scientifically

Of course Pigliucci would write such chapter, having earned a PhD in philosophy of science.
Marcus Aurelius wrote:What is the object, ask, that now produces the given impression upon me? Of what is it compounded? How long has it to last? On what virtue does it make demand? Gentleness, courage, truth, good faith, simplicity, self-help, or what?
Stoic physics deals with how the world works - what are the facts
Stoic logic deals with facts not speaking for themselves - how to interpret the facts
Stoic ethics deal with why we are doing things - an attempt to live a life worth living (eudaimonic life).

who - stoic wannabes
where - here
when - now
what - facts
why - ethics
how - logic

One departure point is to ask yourself - do you ever suffer from too much reason? (not too much ruminating over stuff which can happen, this is covered in previous chapters on anxiety)

The task for this week is to apply three steps:
1. decompose an impression and present it objectively (from last week)
2. take in the whole situation (view from above, zooming out in time, zooming out in social realm)
3. which of the virtues that can be exercised in the situation (wisdom, temperance, courage, justice)

_________________________
Aside: how does this parallel sound to you?

wisdom - integrity
temperance - objectivity
courage - honesty
justice - impartiality

Would you reshuffle it for it to be more well fitting?
_________________________________________

Music

I would like to play tremolos better to keep up quick playing Asturias. Looked up the ideal fingernail length, mine were to long (they were Butler's way long). So I filed them.

Maths and Stats

I have covered logistic regression with covariates and factors as explanatory variables. I am working on the classical inference theory now. I will be looking at the theory behind point estimation later today.

I got 92% on the first 'applied statistical modelling' assignment. Rounded too much too quickly, and left metrics out of the discussion section when discussing two models. Rookie mistake.

Household

In the last 7-8 days we have used 27 kWh energy in our home. So looks like daily usage is between 3.5 and 4 kWh. Financially, we use the majority of the energy at night with the aid of slow cooker and setting laundry to be starting at ca. 4am; I also normally wake up early and normally cook grains at the electricity night rate. So we pay around £10-£12 / week for energy.

Thanks for reading!
Last edited by guitarplayer on Fri Dec 02, 2022 3:56 pm, edited 3 times in total.

sky
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by sky »

Wisdom is the combination of knowing the outcome of behavioral choices, knowing which behavioral choices are most beneficial in relation to the cost or effort to achieve the happy outcome, and having the discipline to choose those most beneficial behaviors.

This is my interpretation of Epicurean philosophy, a disciplined approach to maximize happiness.

avalok
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by avalok »

Would you mind sharing the name of the dumpster diving app? It would be good to see if it has much of a user base "down here".

Your energy use is amazing; inspirational. Nice one.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@sky thanks! Reading how you look at wisdom makes me want to, out of the four nouns I have for the four stoic virtues, assign wisdom to integrity. Integrity has an ephemeral ring to it, but adjectifying (this is a made up word) it, it can be seen as having to do with an integrated life which is along the lines of what you have described. I have amended my post to reflect it.

@avalok not at all, it's Olio, I would imagine it having strong presence across the UK.

Yep feels good looking at the number! I am mindful that of course we use heaps of energy outside of the household+stored energy in our belongings. But still, a nice simple metric as long as one is not to focused on it. I really like the fact of cruising below the subsidy level so that we are effectively paid for unused energy!

________________________________________________________________
Notes to self:
- Entropy enters unused space, get only what essential. So rather not too big a place. It was pure joy to clean the flat yesterday, so quick. This is because it is small.
- Capitalizing on positive associations built with camping. Being in small space makes one more mindful.
- Capitalizing on positive associations built with bothies. A scarf and a hat indoors feels like holidays.
- Important to reduce overhead, be mindful of the overhead.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

I didn't know about the bothies -- how awesome! I would love to be involved with something similar.

I had a change of perspective on small living spaces around covid. Before, attic rooms with slanted ceilings that made alcoves really appealed. After, i still like small spaces (if you would like to create positive associations in yet another way, there is a small army of minimalist "lifestyle" youtubers whose "vlogs" are a joy to watch -- or at least they give me a very zen vibe*) -- but it's become really important to me to have ample windows, a view, and a source of daylight. I got Trash Place (how I've gotten to call my dilapidated hoarder home apt back home) specifically because as a corner unit, it had great views. I'm sharing this to say that 1. it's important to look at particular features of the small space you find aesthetically pleasing, not just utilitarian, and 2., if you find you have an aesthetic/psychological need, don't suppress it just because it's impractical. At least to me, the aesthetic of my living space matters -- otherwise i disassociate.

*fumio sasaki himself -- his tiny but daylight-filled space is so pleasing. He'd agree with you on the joy of cleaning small spaces: the positive, pleasing result comes so much sooner and takes so much less effort so that in the end the activation energy necessarily to clean is minimal.

Frugalchicos
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by Frugalchicos »

@ertyu -
"the aesthetic of my living space matters -- otherwise i disassociate." - Totally agree with you. If I don't find the place pleasant, nice enough and comforting, I stopped caring and see it as a 100% practical space vs a home.

I think if you are planning in living in that space for a medium/long term, having the minimal confort is always a plus that will make your everyday life more pleasant. It is hard to find the happy medium tbh. Having enough things but a "good" standard of confort.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Yep I see what you mean. Sometimes when I am not easy about some aspects of the living arrangement, I think of the boundary conditions.

For example, I feel that the place is small and I need to be thoughtful about how I go about it (not to leave things laying around etc), but then I am like 'well, homeless people have all the space in the world, but there are certain nice comforts in my current arrangements and most of them would probably gladly swap with me'.

One other exercise I practice now that I live in a city is treating the city as my house. public libraries become my alternative 'study rooms', galleries are free to access, shops are my pantries, office space is my 'office', parks are my grounds, there are some gardens around that I am eyeing maybe getting involved in. So essentially organic city living. Then the actual living space loses significance, because it is put in a broader context.

_________________________________________________________
Note to self: second painting knowledge infrastructure. Revisiting things learned.
Last edited by guitarplayer on Thu Dec 01, 2022 3:28 am, edited 2 times in total.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

I like the idea of treating the city as your house. For me, that's another thing that got shattered with covid. Fumio Sasaki has this idea, van dwellers who get a gym membership to shower have this idea, etc. But it really messed with my head how once the lock-downs happened and gyms, cafes and libraries were closed, none of that could happen. It's a rug I didn't expect to get pulled from under me, but it did get pulled, and I on some level I still haven't really processed that. It has updated my beliefs on how resilient those lifestyles are (less than I thought) and it's impacted the range of safe possibilities I see in the world.

avalok
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by avalok »

Great way to view the city. Certainly goes hand-in-hand with a compact living space. That view of the city really shows how unnecessarily wasteful the isolationist neighbourhoods are. A good city gives you a lot, merely for being a citizen.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by Western Red Cedar »

guitarplayer wrote:
Mon Nov 28, 2022 3:16 am
One other exercise I practice now that I live in a city is treating the city as my house. public libraries become my alternative 'study rooms', galleries are free to access, shops are my pantries, office space is my 'office', parks are my grounds, there are some gardens around that I am eyeing maybe getting involved in. So essentially organic city living. Then the actual living space loses significance, because it is put in a broader context.
This is one of the lovely benefits of living in a city. It allows for a minimalist lifestyle in a manner that is not possible with rural living. Great public spaces are common features among the best cities in the world. Urbanists in the US have been concerned for the last 50-60 years about a trend of privatizing public spaces. Fortunately, European culture seems a little more resistant to this trend.

Navigating the city and accessing beautiful spaces without spending (much) money adds an element of excitement. Embracing your inner flaneur is one of the best ways to experience a city.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

@ertyu, yep I think it could be challenging for DW and I to be exclusively in this flat other than going shopping for long stretches of time. We were lucky in that throughout the pandemic we barely felt limited at all due to super rural environment and lifestyle at the time.

@avalok, timely, pertinent will be A city is not a Tree which I got referenced to in my Maths and Stats text on graphs (trees, in particular). Christopher Alexander seems to be in some esteem on the forums here (I haven't read that Essay by the way, I thought I would be maybe 15 pages but turns out it is 241 pages). Now I cycle around a bit more to get free food and I see how scarred Glasgow is.

@WRC, 'Embracing your inner flaneur' - phrase of the week.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

2022 update 47/52

Job

009/156 weeks in (ca. 5.8%).

9 weeks in, wow. I got feedback from the other team about some of the data, so now I can say that I have experience liaising with other stakeholders etc. so perhaps I will get promoted soon enough. Half jokes aside, frankly I think this will happen, because in my relatively young organization the publication cycles are really short, internally we produce stuff daily, so there is lots of exposure to variety of tasks.

I am enjoying it, the learning curve is still steep.

City foraging / scavenger economy

We got quite some goodies from the app DW found.

That in the can is an acorn coffee from Lithuania, looks like pretty high end drink. We are used to Pukka from our old place, also.
Image

The bananas were perfect, had them mashed with cocoa and ground almonds (got 2lb ground almonds from somebody). There were also some exactly ripe avocadoes that a supermarket deemed 'out of date'.

Image

Occasionally there are even some supermarket organic things, like these onions.

Image

It pains DW and I getting all this plastic, but hey otherwise both the plastic and the food would go to bin. And if not that, we would probably still buy food wrapped in plastic. This is difficult to get used to again after a few years of almost no waste plastic in our household.

Otherwise, the system ticks many boxes for many people and could also work as a community building exercise on some level. One person we went to get stuff from was talking about having an autistic son and how the son loves going to the supermarkets to get all the food. I wouldn't be surprised if the lady were a single mum and also getting quite something from the interaction. Another person was telling me about her health problems being the reason for giving away some of the food. People who collect the food, like us, obviously get free food. DW and I get to know parts of city we would not otherwise go to. We get to bike around town as well. For the supermarkets, I guess it is a sort of PR move.

I am very happy to see that there is heaps and heaps of greens for grabs, particularly brasicas like kale, savoy cabbage, brussel sprouts, mustard leaves, rocket. On the contrary, there is also heaps and heaps of bread which is tempting but we try to resist. Still, got some brown rolls and wholemeal pita bread like on the photos.

We are joining @Ego in the decomposer economy movement (not that we have not been in it so far, just now there is more opportunities for practicing).

A yes, I also got two pairs of black casual shoes through the app. Will be good for keeping appearances (e.g. at work), as so far I have only had barefoot shoes and two pairs of hiking footwear (shoes and boots) + footwear for home.

Stoic exercises

Week 46: Pause when Angry
Epictetus wrote:Remember that foul words or blows in themselves are no outrage, but your judgment that they are so. So when any one makes you angry, know that it is your own thought that has angered you. Wherefore make it your first endeavor not to let your impressions carry you away. For if once you gain time and delay, you will find it easier to control yourself.
Practical wisdom tells us that insults are not truly bad for us and righteous anger is not truly good. There seems to be a tendency for people to want to be angry, to vent and talk about all that is wrong in the world. But getting angry at the world is not good (for us). And it is not good for decision making, it is a temporary madness. So in the CBT manner, the way to go would be to recognize anger in us and then play on time to cool down and become sane again. This is tricky, because recognizing anger calls for some reason, but anger is temporary madness. Catch 22.

The task for this week, I don't find it the best task to practice. Pigliucci and Lopez ask to train ourselves to recognize first signs of anger in us, and then once these signs appear, practice CBT.

What I am going to try to do is to integrate anger. By this I mean, I am going to think of situations, events, thought that make it more likely for the first signs of anger to start compounding. Then I am going to approach these situations, events and thoughts with reflection. I am not sure how this will pan out.

Maths and Stats

I am a bit on hold with the third assignment for applied statistical modelling. I am now reading about graphs, networks and design again. I am hooked on different instantiations of binary trees, as in different ways pairs of people in a room full of 2n people can shake hands, or mountain peaks going up and down and up and up and down etc. Catalan numbers. I would really like to get it, started thinking about it yesterday. Till Sunday night I would like to write an assignment on this, + the network and the design part. So I might need to leave fully getting Catalan numbers until after I am back from South America next year. But in fact, since I have now discovered this wiki page on Catalan numbers, I might just read it.

Household

In the last 6-7 days we have used 27 kWh energy in our home. So looks like daily usage is between 3.5 and 4 kWh. Financially, we use the majority of the energy at night with the aid of slow cooker and setting laundry to be starting at ca. 4am; I also normally wake up early and normally cook grains at the electricity night rate. So we pay around £10-£12 / week for energy.

Thanks for reading!
Last edited by guitarplayer on Sat Dec 03, 2022 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

guitarplayer wrote:
Fri Dec 02, 2022 4:42 pm
The task for this week, I don't find it the best task to practice. Pigliucci and Lopez ask to train ourselves to recognize first signs of anger in us, and then once these signs appear, practice CBT.

What I am going to try to do is to integrate anger. By this I mean, I am going to think of situations, events, thought that make it more likely for the first signs of anger to start compounding. Then I am going to approach these situations, events and thoughts with reflection. I am not sure how this will pan out.
My father is the sort of guy who works himself up into fits and then rants for hours (with the occasional smoke break pause, during which he geared up with more rant material), so from a young age anger was an emotion which was important for me to learn to deal with. As a teenager, I swore to myself I won't be like him, and this led to the other extreme for a bit -- suppressing my anger: socially less destructive, but no more functional.

With anger, the approach I like best is to view it as a secondary emotion. Did someone hurt me? Do I think something is unjust? CBT before going through the anger and down into the hurt or into the disappointment that things are not just and good only leads to stuffing the anger down. That is my suggestion for "approach these situations, events and thoughts with reflection" -- step number one is move through the anger to the real emotion that gave rise to it. This also helps with the "temporary madness": by the time you're at "this hurt me because XYZ" or "i am tired at the end of a long work day and feel stuck in my life, with nothing i can do to avoid this useless commute -- thus road rage" one is out of the madness and well on one's way to finding the correct response to the situation: "am i hurt because there are things from my past that are being activated? do i want to talk to this person and ask them to make a change in their behavior?" "do i want to look for a new job?" etc.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

Yeah I think the stoic approach to anger is generally (from other readings) a bit contentious in the contemporary anger management framework. If one takes the position of a sage, then

'Did someone hurt me?' loses its significance as it is not others and their actions that hurt us - it is our perception of them and their actions,

'Do I think something is unjust?' makes no difference, as we have control over us being just and not the world at large.

'Integrating anger' up above was a shorthand. I imagine anger being a mountain on my way. Ideally I would pass around it, but sometimes I can't. Then I want to leave the mountain behind me climbing along as gentle of an incline as possible. The absolute elevation is irrelevant and it is the incline that matters. The steeper the incline, the madder I get when climbing it.

The above, I aim to reflect upon sitting in a cozy chair on a plain or some other comfortable position. Then, it might be possible to reinterpret the mountain and alter the inclines, flatten the mountain or turn it into a plane all together.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

guitarplayer wrote:
Sat Dec 03, 2022 1:08 am
Yeah I think the stoic approach to anger is generally (from other readings) a bit contentious in the contemporary anger management framework.
In the end, the framework doesn't matter. Does the approach work for you to effectively and functionally get you from not-peace to peace? That's all that matters. I guess I was projecting; to me, the approach you describe would feel like suppressing the emotion rather than working through it; did someone hurt me? gets me on the path with the mild incline because when i answer to myself, "yes, and this is what i was hurt about" i give myself the chance to respond to myself with compassion and let go where my father would have continued to rant (s/he had no right to hurt me!!). I like your image of the mountain. In the end of the day, whatever gets you around or over it easiest is what matters.

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 47/52

Job

010/156 weeks in (ca. 6.4%).

Getting my second publication ready for pre-release next week. I am also going to be away for a Statistics conference for two days.

City foraging / scavenger economy

We have been collecting lots of great food and now with about 70kg of grains and legumes that we got at semi wholesale prices, I anticipate going to shops only very occasionally.

Stoic exercises

====================
Side note: There is a colleague at work who does 30min meditation sessions three times a week, I take part in it and lend DW a set of headphones too when she is around. It’s a great guided meditation from a well seasoned practitioner. Took part in two sessions so far, one focusing on breathing and one on a body scan. I'll come again!
====================

I think I did well in my exercise of pausing when angry! There were a few times when I did get angry, but overall, I think I managed to navigate through the emotional landscape well.

Week 47: Analyze anger

Seneca argues that delay is the chief defense against anger, there is no point trying to conquer the emotion. Then afterwards, when not angry, it is good to do a sort of anger clinic – picking anger apart to see why it emerges. In particular:

Who causes anger?
What that they do causes anger?
Why they do things that make you angry?

Regarding ethical wrongdoing, Pigliucci and Lopez bring an argument that people have evolved a tendency to act pro-socially and so on average will tend to point of wrongdoing of others (come to think of it, it makes sense - pointing fingers feels good, doesn't it?). So, the others will undergo some sort of correction, on average. Besides, wrongdoers do no good (in the Stoic sense). They are not helping themselves to become sages, and this is the ultimate good after all. You leave them be and just keep on getting wiser!

The exercise for the week is the who-what-why exercise of analyzing anger. Seneca gives examples.

Object of anger: A person who doesn’t know what they’re doing (e.g., a child)
Possible rebuttal: They are acting out of ignorance.

Object of anger: A person who’s benefited you in the past (e.g., a parent)
Possible rebuttal: Remind yourself of the kindness they’ve shown to you previously, or that you’re getting angered at something well-intentioned

Object of anger: a circumstance
Possible rebuttal: a circumstance will not apologize anyway

Object of anger: an ethical person
Possible rebuttal: if they are ethical, you are probably misinterpreting their action

Object of anger: an unethical person
Possible rebuttal: that is what unethical people do, unethical things. They are not helping themselves doing that.

So whenever feeling a stirring of anger pause, identify the object of anger, and meditate upon rebuttal. I think this can also be done for hypothetical scenarios.
Pigliucci and Lopez wrote:[…] the Stoics believed that it’s our own thoughts that cause our anger, and our thoughts happen rapidly.
Maths and Stats

Got 98% for second mathematical statistics assignment and 88% for graphs, networks and design. I need to look into the latter to see what did not go well there.

I am learning now about kinematic design in particular about kinemaric pairs and Reuleaux pairs.

Household

I got another payment subsidy for using less electricity than covered by the subsidy. Other than that, the city council sent a letter saying that we would need to pay 75% council tax as DW does not qualify as a student. I think she does, it is just a technical thing in how her classes are laid out across the year. I appealed to the decision. 100% council tax is about £1200-1400 / year. I already have figured out for the future that if we ever quit jobs or go part time, we can in perpetuity study stuff with one distance learning uni with no payment (as of today), and also not need to pay council tax. Then use the app to get greens for free. Then get a small place for cash, or nearly for cash. It is sometimes fun to construct such scenarios of super low cost interesting living. I have a few such scenarios.

Thanks for reading!
Last edited by guitarplayer on Sat Dec 10, 2022 2:19 am, edited 2 times in total.

AxelHeyst
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by AxelHeyst »

guitarplayer wrote:
Fri Dec 09, 2022 5:44 pm
It is sometimes fun to construct such scenarios of super low cost interesting living. I have a few such scenarios.
+1 to that. I think it is also helpful for helping me to relax/not be too attached about if my current primary scenario will work out or not. Hey, it's cool, I've got 13 alternative ways to play this game in my back pocket.

ertyu
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by ertyu »

Another +1, the scenario you're describing sounds wonderful

guitarplayer
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Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 48/52

------------------------------
My week count went sideways so now I have to squeeze five weeks in the 2 2/7 remaining weeks of 2022.

There is about 5.75 million more people on the world since half November 2022.
------------------------------

Job

011/156 weeks in (ca. 7.1%).

Collaborated on my second publication with two other colleagues, it is getting published next week.

Went to a conference about statistics, heard about good approaches to communicating it. One person in their talk mentioned how reducing language complexity to grade 9 + introducing quotations from a statistician (Milgram experiment, white coat effect (parallel mine)) in the publication increased interest in the publication in that it had been more cited in the media. After the talk I chatted with the person, he indicated that they started with grade 6 but could pull it off with a straight face.

Maybe writing children's books is a good side gig from the WoG point of view. Or short poems, or getting in touch with the OpenAI to learn from them.

Was also talking with software engineers producing software used in rule based disclosure control for large datasets. They were looking down on R and Python, one of them mentioned TypeScript.

I did some general networking.

City foraging / scavenger economy

The opportunities for free food are endless. Just now in our kitchen there is about 20 bananas. Earlier this week I collected 10 avocados. I recon we harvested food of street value of hundreds of pounds off of scavenger economy in the last ~three weeks.

It is tragic to see that a red spring onion has travelled all the way from Egipt to end up in a Glasgow bin. Or Colombian bananas. Also apples and plums from South Africa, because clearly these also do not grow in Scotland. All wrapped in plastic over plastic over plastic. When I was telling my parents what a luxury it is to have chopped and clean broccoli, or washed greens, compared to growing this stuff and having o rinse it all, they smiled and nodded. This is because they are old enough and come from the countryside. Many people would probably just be puzzled hearing this. Sobering.

At the conference, I was staying in a very fancy hotel from the times of the second industrial revolution. Fancy soaps, towels, stuff people normally like to take from hotel rooms. They had those two baskets of apples by the entrance. Over the two days there, I have managed to casually snatch about ten apples, other than the ones I actually ate. I will leave the soaps and towels to others.

Stoic exercises

Week 47: Analyze anger

Two examples from analysing anger:

At the conference I got in touch with a guy from one software company that did some showcase work on one old census. I casually mentioned that this nicely cleaned data that can be quickly tabulated could easily serve as a basis for a PhD in social history or something like this. The man lit up and took my email address. I later that evening shared the idea with a colleague who also lit up about it and went to the former, then they had a chat about a possible collaboration.

Got me angry because felt like somebody took an opportunity away from me. But I was not even looking for the opportunity and would not be in a position to exploit the opportunity.

Felt some anger about others signing pieces of work we are doing regarding the publication I am working on. That being said, other people doing some bits of work allowed me to go for a 2 days conference and finish early on a Friday. So hey, now I actually feel happy about it.

Week 48: Counter anger with maxims

I think this has been mentioned before that the model of anger here is a three stage model. The first stage is the initial stirring of emotion. Then there is the cognitive stage where we give assent or not. Then there is full blown anger or a decay of anger. We normally have a window of opportunity in the second stage. So the task for this week is, in the second stage, to use maxims to let go of the initial stir of emotion. My maxims are going to be:

Do not attribute to malice what can be attributed to ignorance.
Know what is in your power and what is not.
What is it if not a drop in the ocean of experiences.

Maths and Stats

I am working an assignment on logistic regression, on course to generalised linear model. I slowed down because I went for a conference.

Household

Winter came to Europe the last week, the temperature in the living room went down to a low of 7 degrees Celsius, it stands at 8 most of the day. We took out the down sleeping bags and constantly feel like on camping holidays. Just that we have extra conveniences we wouldn't otherwise had, like a comfortable bed and unlimited hot drinks and meals.

Since 2 Dec we have used 56kWh of energy, or about 4kWh / day.

Thanks for reading!

guitarplayer
Posts: 1300
Joined: Thu Feb 27, 2020 6:43 pm
Location: Scotland

Re: guitar player's journal

Post by guitarplayer »

2022 update 49/52 (squeeze in)

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Thanks @AH and @ertyu! @AH, when things don't work out I still get annoyed, but I work on it, stoically.
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Job

011.2/156 weeks in (ca. 7.2%).

The publication goes live today. How can I use learning about the publishing process outside of work?

City foraging / scavenger economy

Went for a 1h run after work yesterday to use the abnormal 12 Celsius outside after over a week of -7 C. Went to a nice Victorian neighbourhood with big houses (a tower block overlooking them). Got plum tomatoes, two iceberg lettuces and a bag of kale. All neatly prepared for me in a box. DW went other way, across the city centre, she brought lots of mushrooms, greens, apples (expired apples, can you believe?) and some other stuff.

Stoic exercises

Week 49: Speak just the facts about others

Since most of the value judgements are false, let's refrain from them. We anyway most often do not have enough information to form an informed judgement. Let the facts speak, speak about facts. It is ethical to suspend judgement, just because we don't know.

/*uff, this sounds hard */

If some real injustice takes place, use your stoic courage and justice to intervene.

If my thinking goes:

He really wants to make it hard for me

I can say:

I find it hard to understand this explanation

Rephrasing in factual language makes one more charitable and also more serene.

We can never look into other people's heads, so attributing particular characteristics to them is likely to leave us incorrect.

Maths and Stats / Studies

9/19 assignments done. I finally finished the assignment on logistic regression, it was slower because I worked through the material a while back so the info was not fresh in my mind.

I got in touch with one PhD who in the past wanted to collaborate with me on research off of one psychometric tool I had developed. I wrote to him saying that I might some time for collaboration from June.

I watched a very obscure interview with one of my old professors, a big shot professor in his niche. There is another interview with him I want to watch. There is also an interview with another professor. Watching these will be a bit like watching the videos for my 'Graphs, Networks and Design' course from 1980's I found around summer time.

I got in touch with the above mentioned professor, told him about the Goodhart law by the way of something. He responded promptly, looks like academics have the habit of doing it even past retirement.

I was looking into MSc degrees in data analytics / data analysis in policy making / data science that my employer could pay for. I am not sure if I want to give myself another year of structured learning. What do you think?

Thanks for reading!

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