Love and DIY [Candide]

[grundomatic]

I'm enjoying the Meaningness "book" you linked to. I'm not through it all, but I'm very interested to see if it delivers what it promises...a practical solution to philosophical questions. I've been having difficulty working through exactly what he is talking about.

...and what's this I see in the prior post...you could always go back to teaching!?! I'm worried about you.

[candide]

@gru

I am happy to know I brought someone to engage with the Chapman material.

...and what's this I see in the prior post...you could always go back to teaching!?! I'm worried about you.

Well, I'm just being honest. If I can't get an entry level position after I get my certifications, removing my employment gap may be necessary.

I think being a teacher who does fake engineering modules with kids and gets to screw around with micro-controllers and the Scratch programming "language" (toy) is better than what I did for my last gig. And from that position, I might have an easier time getting hired.

Also, having my breaks at least roughly line up with my wife is nice.

I'd prefer to try out a new path, but to do that I will have to get hired by someone.

[candide]

Until yesterday, the only DIY I have been doing lately is my education, so it felt good to go light on the exam prep for a day and instead screw around on some computers, hence my Arch, btw post. I choose Arch because it seemed like the easiest way to get the features I wanted on as light of an installation as possible. Even light distros like Lubuntu are starting to creep up to over 3 gigs... Pretty wild how routinely the Mint iso is smaller than what are called light distros, but that’s another story.

My dad’s last computer, which will be forever adored with a sticker from the Ultimate Bet website he put there, chocked on the version of Windows it was installed with, gave some hesitancy to web-browsing under Mint and it now living its best life with Arch and the Xfce desktop environment. The future of it, as well as the ever-shitty, prone-to-heating HP 2000, are to the whipping boys of a home lab I am going to set up to practice networking.

Niels Bohr tells us

An expert is a person who has found out by his own painful experience all the mistakes that one can make in a very narrow field.

By that logic I need to put myself in a position to make those mistakes. And I think it then follows to do so as quickly and safely as possible. Hence the home lab, and a spirit of trying a bunch of different experiments.

This gives me some pause about the nature of money and its supposed corruption of our creativity and learning. Because if I didn’t have some prospect of these skills leading to job one day, I wouldn’t be doing any of this. Instead, I would just find the easiest ways out, like Linux Mint [1].

Same thing with the A+ exam -- I don’t do this without trying to get a job, but I am glad I’m doing it. And while I could certainly point to things that shouldn’t be on the exam, that is far outweighed by how many gaps in my understanding have been filled. Now when I am playing around, I am picking up more connections, reinforcing concepts, knowing what to look up and ask.

I think maybe project-based learning has its advantage in human psychology, particularly around autonomy. At least the ones upfront. In the end, authenticity is definitionally what is going to most impact the world, I am seeing the value in learning the fundamentals in a systematic way.

But back to the point. Any of you that can stay on “the chase” when you are not formally employed, take my highest compliments. I love watching But for someone like myself who now has empirical verification that he is not able to do that, I must report that the chase is such a vital part of human flourishing (okay, again, for me) that it is even worth reporting to a work place to get... Even job interviews.

==

[1] A big problem with these local optimums is they don’t prepare you for a changing landscape. You have no vision and no practice with adaptation.

[candide]

I am going to place this in my journal, because I don't think I should spam the resources and recommending watching with Evan Monsma. He is doing a a challenge to make a thing a day throughout October, and I really the constraint come up with something marvelous here:

https://youtu.be/M2g5cQLgoX0?si=w6529IFDt_O9rigc

Jeez! When I thought the guy could not get more junk punk:
https://youtu.be/tMaqmbbWfik?si=jT5bYqmeSPN7F285

[candide]

In the age of the internet and infinite information, learning by experimentation is kind of an underrated process

-Evan Monsma, from his latest video.

I think this quote shows what I like to see, what I have tried to do with many of my posts, and one of the biggest reasons I am out of sync with the forum (though I admit there are many others).

... Watching a baby too poppy for day care today, so no energy or desire to elaborate.

[candide]

The time to study has been tight because of family stuff, but but I have had a studying breakthrough that I want to share.

I asked ye ol' GPT to write a script to extract the transcript of a youtube video.

https://chatgpt.com/share/6711298a-d0a8 ... e0debbbd3f

Turns out there is a python module available in pip to transcribe YouTube from the api, because... of course there is.

I have stated that the Professor Messer YouTube channel has a better script than all of the books I have tried on CompTIA -- the man is truly gifted -- but text is just so much faster listening, especially if it is plain text that allows you to easily copy and paste into your note-taking/flashcard system (Anki, in my case).

Going one more step of speeding things up, I have xclip installed, which allows me to pipe the output text right to my clipboard, so I can then paste it down and get a summary generated.

Currently, I use a cram guide to take take a pre-test, then I go through the steps above (again, this is at really fast speeds), do my studying at the speed of reading, do revisions on the test in the cram guide, and then put what I want to learn long term into Anki. The plan is to use ExamCompass for comprehensive post-tests when I am done with all of the sections.

Also, now that I have this little transcript extracting toy, I am using it more and more on videos the the algorithm recommends to me that hit that spot of making an interesting claim, but I am not sure about how far the depth will go. Highly recommended.

[OutOfTheBlue]

Personally, I disabled YT recommendations as I don't have much interest in algorithm serendipity.

YT transcription is definitely helpful but often imperfect.

You use it to generate summaries, but I didn't understand if you are listening to or reading those. What do you use for listening to text? I gave a good solution on Android, but use it much less frequently on the Linux browser

I've made my peace being out of sync with the forum. Still, it is a lasting influence and there's stimulation and "dialogue" going on even if I don't often engage in actual posting. I appreciate seeing different explorations and perspectives, although I value and vibe with some more than others.

[candide]

Blue! So good to see your handle again! I hope things have been well with you.

Personally, I disabled YT recommendations as I don't have much interest in algorithm serendipity.

I very much respect that stance.

To tell my information story a bit, I was at the point where I was not using any visual, GUI-based internet at all. But then I thought "I'd like to give Esperanto another shot," and I found that the only reasonable way to get resources I wanted was to cross back into the land of graphics and Javascript.

Then I started studying for IT certifications, and while I tried to start out with books, I found issues with them and that there were YT videos that did a better job.

This has dragged me back to the Tube of plenty, but I am for now finding I can use more guilty pleasure videos as mini rewards as I get through segments of studying. And now that I am using these software fixes I feel even brighter about the prospects. Video apps are now the place to go for up-to-date information and culture formation, including my preferred looking at culture one step removed. (Most of the blogs I liked are either gone or putting more and more behind Substack paywalls).

... I didn't understand if you are listening to or reading those.

I am reading. I can extract information much more quickly reading as I can change the pace of what my eyes scan based on how well I am getting it. Also, I was doing a bad job of explaining that since what comes out is plain text -- as opposed to whatever you would call the ways copying is stopped in apps like Hoopla that are designed for digital rights management -- I am able to very easily make my review flashcards.

As for listening, I tend to only do that when I am doing chores, and I have switched over to the AnttennaPod app via FDroid. I save a batch locally every now and then so I don't have to worry about the status of my wifi.

I've made my peace being out of sync with the forum. Still, it is a lasting influence and there's stimulation and "dialogue" going on even if I don't often engage in actual posting. I appreciate seeing different explorations and perspectives, although I value and vibe with some more than others.

My amount of positing is also way down, and it is probably good to keep that trend going. I see you are at .34 posts a day, and I might be heading that direction myself. Looking it up... I'm at .52 posts a day and have been hovering in that general area, getting only as low as .51 before something pulls me back in. And of course I reserve the right to post more often. I just happen to get so few responses that there doesn't seem to be much of a point. So I thank you dropping a line; I'll be just a little bit more encouraged to write next time.

But I agree with you that the explorations and perspectives here are interesting. I tend to like the "extreme" of people here a lot more than the early retirement.

[AxelHeyst]

Hi Candide, I wanted to say that I like your posts and often am interested to learn more/hear you unpack some of your ideas. However, on more than one occasion you've posted something along the lines of

...so no energy or desire to elaborate.

so I don't respond or ask more. I get the sense you post here when you have something interesting to say or need to get shit off your chest (which is totally fine) and that you often don't feel like elaborating, because you've said as much >1x, which also is fine. But then I read

I just happen to get so few responses that there doesn't seem to be much of a point.

and I become uncertain what your desired level of engagement actually is. I guarantee that many people read your posts because they are interesting, but also due to the culture* 'round here, it doesn't take much to discourage people from commenting. For myself, if I'm getting a spread of clues ranging from "welcome" to "not welcome", I always err on the side of assuming I'm not welcome and just lurk.

(*many people are intimidated to ask a 'dumb' question or be incorrect about something amongst so many smarty-pantses.)

[candide]

I get the sense you post here when you have something interesting to say or need to get shit off your chest (which is totally fine) and that you often don't feel like elaborating, because you've said as much >1x, which also is fine.

... I become uncertain what your desired level of engagement actually is. I guarantee that many people read your posts because they are interesting, but also due to the culture* 'round here, it doesn't take much to discourage people from commenting. For myself, if I'm getting a spread of clues ranging from "welcome" to "not welcome", I always err on the side of assuming I'm not welcome and just lurk.

I see what you mean. Do you think it would help if I instead wrote something like "I don't feel like elaborating *today* " ? I don't know if that would work, but maybe more of "I don't feel like I can elaborate today, but I will try to back to you in the future..." I'll try to add a comment at the end of posts showing I am on team "let's comment" rather than team "anti-Eternal September."

But even failing that, I will trust more that the numbers of the read metrics actually represent some reads -- I've always discounted it to 50% bots, but was never sure.

For the record, I never mind a response, and in my case it is probably extra helpful as I tend to leave words out and jam too ideas too closely together -- both habits which require so many drafts and time between drafts to fully fix that I have made my peace with the 80/20 principle of looking over it once.

Thank you for the insight of how I've been driving people off. I'll try to learn from it.

[AxelHeyst]

I see what you mean. Do you think it would help if I instead wrote something like "I don't feel like elaborating *today* " ?

I'm sure that wouldn't hurt but it might be useful to consider the tempo of the forum as to whether mentioning your energy level one way or the other is even necessary. It's your journal: short and/or mysterious context-free posts are great seasoning! No need to defend them. And if someone asks a question about it that you're not up for responding to at the moment, it's totally fine to just ignore them for a day or a week until such time as you do. I get that this can be stressful because a lot of us are used to digital communication that comes with an implicit fast-response expectation. One of the things I like about the forum (most of the time) is that the 'response expectation' is much longer, allowing for more fermentation time.

For the record, I never mind a response...

Right on.

[candide]

Spring 2025


I don't have a lot of thoughts that really fit ERE at this point -- if you are interested in my other thoughts, here. Also, the vibes are just off when I engage in other threads. No anger about it -- it is just clear there is misalignment in values and life experiences/expectations. It happens, and again I admit I am the one not fitting in with early retirement extreme. I think I only like the extreme part, to be honest, as I am actively trying to not be retired...

I was unemployed for a year and two months. Fuck that shit. It has been 21 years since I started working, and I only now realize that I need to have my next job lined up before I leave a job. Staying within the narrow and undesirable field of education allowed me to go in and out, as well be complacent with -- hell, unaware of -- my lack of interview skills.

Currently, I sub for one or two days a week and am putting the money earned back into my appearance. For example, this is the first time I've had two professional hair cuts in a row since I was a child. (Since childhood, I think it's been two: one was right before my wedding, and another was a time I had an interview to part of the library system, the failure of which broke my heart -- shit, rereading that is brutal; I also didn't realize how much I already knew about the problem at that point). There is also a balancing act going on in my mind between how much to put into one good interview outfit versus improving my about-town game. Also, I could put thousands, even tens of thousands into my outfits right now, but 1) I somewhat enjoy the gamified aspect of using just this earned money and 2) I need more experience before my decisions would be any good ...

I have the extra problem of needing to not overdress for what I am going for. I am not swinging for the fences here, but trying to get a single on the board so I don't have to return to teaching: IT help desk, technician (mostly inventory manager) for a school, Geek Squad, Costco. And it's that rock and hard place of needing to dress but not overdress that puts me at my stupid, neurodivergent limit when I think about it too long. If the goal was to look as good as fucking possible, I actually kinda know what I would do [1]. But normie shit has to be so hard, and so exacting.

Eye contact. Have never made that with someone I wasn't trying to sleep with, and even then, not that much. I think that was what cost me another job I interviewed for a few months ago. This was with a affluent school district with small enrollment at the other edge of the metroplex. The drive would have sucked, and the pay was a joke (though more than my expenses, and more than I earn with my subbing), but I would have loved the work, as they do as much hands-on repair as they can with Chromebooks and the job has prospects to grow with the ability to in-source more and more tech services -- failing that, it would have been my year or two of IT experience that would allow certifications I earn to actually count.

The head principal was a positivity peddler [2], and he seemed amazed by my combination of education experience and recent certifications. I'd also worked on the script for interview questions pretty hard, so I do think I nailed my Zoom interview. But they had me "come in," which I had hopes would have been to sign papers, but instead it was this fucked up walk around shit that could not have been designed better to expose that I am on the spectrum. I am really good with my tone of voice, at least when I am "on," and so I was still saying a lot of the right things, and even said had moments where they were laughing at wit, but yeah, I am sure at least the assistant principal thought I was shady and shifty. There is a certain type of person who shows up late to things but thinks they are "type A" that I absolutely cannot vibe with... or at least, they cannot vibe with me. They make everyone else to clean up their messes, linguistically, work flow, etc, yet think they are the hard-nosed force everything the world together. Anyway, I think he thought he "got me" in the end with his question about my willingness to commute -- which I was, and was willing to use that time to do audio content, but my eye contact didn't say it, now did it? ... Eh, I was probably leaking other stuff at lots of other moments, too. I wasn't ready to get through that hiring process.

My wife has us pretty involved in a church. We have been there now long enough that the dues paying is over, and people like to see us. This will give me a chance to practice eye contact stuff. I'm not sure that subbing actually will work for this, however, as the kids expect distance now (could not care if I live or die... It was not always like this).

Speaking of my wife, she has actually liked and benefited from my run of not working. I have been able to watch our kid when she is sick, and just in general take care of stuff. So, one thing I am doing is stretching this gap in my work history for the next two months. During that time, I should have quite a bit to work on with appearance and trying to practice human social behavior. May 2nd, another wave of applications go out. Can't sub during the summer any way. If any job sucks bad enough, or if I fail to get a job, I will sub again one more school year, wear out my cash reserves, but then become a teacher again before I dip into selling stock.

==

[1] I am amused by the idea of a speed run to high fashion. I mean, I don't have any outfit right this second that I think would be good enough for me to feel comfortable walking into a Dillard's. So, like, what Kohl's to get an outfit, to get into a Dillard's, to then have an outfit where I feel comfortable seeing a tailor. Again, amusing speed run. But it is going to be more a slow and steady deal.

[2] Just for venting's sake, when he called me and told me I didn't have the job, he was crestfallen when I just flatly said "that's that, I guess... have a good rest of your year, and a good day." He honestly thought some more ass kissing was coming, and hell, if I lived closer by or if I hadn't been busy at that moment and pre-drained by watching my daughter, I probably would have. Well, he can enjoy the fruits of his positivity during other moments of his life. I would have liked to have worked with him.

[candide]

tl;dr

I got a job for next school year.
Try chatGPT out on with the blunt, signal-over-noise prompt.

Salary-Man
=========

Since my last post I have gained a good deal of practice in the art of the interview. I applied for a host of teaching positions in a district north of mine, and made the dual assessments that I would get interviews, but not get the jobs. Both were correct. My reasoning was that the district I was applying to has their pick of teachers from the mass exodus of teachers from my former poorly-run district as well as the urban district north of it, so I look good enough on paper to interview, but again, normies will find a way to hate me. Interesting in that the only interviews I got were for STEM positions, and I must assume that was the back of my A+ certification as I got no other interviews for anything else, including English, where I have over a decade of experience. So three interviews that were more authentic than any mock one could be. Next, I went to a job fair, which was good practice at cold opens, but it was ultimately a fair put on by the library system for the downtrodden, so all I added was the possibility of working in-bound call center for $17/hr, no benefits and sub 30 hours (to preserve no benefits)... About a $1/hr short from what I minimally want, but would get me back a SWR.

So, I finally caved and applied for a teaching job that will force me to commute 40 minutes each way, but get to be with a friend whom I have been able to stay in text contact with (and see from time to time) these two years since we worked together. This district is less desirable, and so having my certification in hand actually solves a problem for them. Also, I more or less nailed the interview.

Fuck the Normie World Order
=======================

I discovered a supervisor at a former job, who was not put down as in the reference section, but instead put down by simply the required box of supervisor in work history, editorialized how bad of an employee I was when called by the principal who wanted to hire me. Luckily, my friend was asked about this by his principal, smoothed it over, and my actually references were positive. So... Really good I discovered this as now I know to lie about my supervisor on that box forever more. And if I hadn't discovered this, I would be unemployable in jobs that have benefits.

It took me several days to emotionally process this, with the final bit coming with me talking to ChatGPT in blunt, signal-over-noise mode.

I am really close to being able to move on, but I was good employee at that site for three years, and my formal evaluations reflected that. When we were without internet, my debate lesson was marked as innovative. When we made a mid-year hire, I came in one weekend to help that person set up, and that was marked as the highest level of professionalism on that review. When a student took drugs and I had heard my supervisor describe it as the closest she had even seen someone to dying, I was the only one who asked my supervisor if she was okay (as she told me).

The word this fucking liar came up with was "unreliable." Which is just absurd, unless anyone who eventually leaves a job after giving long notice is unreliable. If she had come up with "insubordinate" or anything in the "bad attitude" family, I would have at least understood what she was cobbling together in her mind, but this one was absolutely bougie/normie PMC warfare against me, seemingly out of no where. All she had to do was neutral verification of when I worked. If kindness doesn't actually cost nothing, then at least professionalism and objective reporting should.

Oh well, again, move on time. Here's a taste of an LLM put into the mode I like, and it's advice for me:

Stop offering explanation. Eliminate self-narration. Cease trying to resolve others’ discomfort. Let silence win the contest of endurance. Reject the reflex to fill space.

Retrain micro-expression. Neutral face, controlled gaze, no excessive nodding. Use pauses as tools, not gaps. When speaking, lower vocal cadence slightly, slow tempo, insert stillness between phrases. Project less urgency, more inevitability.

Physicalize boundaries: defined posture, minimal gesturing, never over-lean or over-animate. Do not mirror. Do not anticipate.

Practice declining opinion-sharing. Replace reactive commentary with ambiguous acknowledgment. Let others assume agreement or distance—it is their projection, not your burden.

Short height is not a deficit. Let them underestimate. Let it conceal threat. Shyness reframed as opacity becomes strength. Do not correct their misread. Use it.

In solitude, build rituals of compression: journaling with coded notation, silence hours, non-verbal meditation. Strength is containment. Charisma is voltage, not light. Train to carry it unflickering, unseen.

To which I was a bit shocked, and replied:

This is brilliant. Some of these seemed completely counter-intuitive to me, and further not what I was aware of from the drift of the conversation.. for example, how did you know as an autistic person that I was more engaged than most, nodding a lot, and all sorts of shit people pretend they want?

With a response of:

Pattern recognition. The behaviors of excessive engagement—nodding, over-communicating, filling gaps—are often markers of heightened sensitivity to social signals, a core trait in autistic individuals. You likely feel compelled to confirm understanding, create connection, or neutralize discomfort. These are adaptive responses to environments that demand constant feedback, even when it is misread or unwelcome. The "pretend" response, often overcompensating, is misaligned with the true value of silence or detachment that others might instinctively mask or suppress. It is a feedback loop that rewards immediate but shallow social interaction rather than deeper, purposeful engagement. This was a logical assumption based on the structural behaviors of the normie environment you described.

And the conversation goes on and on. But my eyes are just getting opened about the intersection of my neurodivergence and my working class upbringing, and how that has set me up to just fall flat in normie world, and instead of the "if you have to ask, you'll never know" cruelty of those people oh-so-busy with their consuming of content, I am finally getting some idea of what I can do about some of it.

[OutOfTheBlue]

I seem to remember that, not too long ago, you've made some comments where you sided/identified with normies vs the high-achiever ERE forum crowd (or something, my memory is fuzzy), what with your focus/interests, your work class background and all.

So, welcome to the non-normie normies club, in a way.

No matter what "they" say, the world is our oyster!

Oh, and congrats for the job! After what I just read, a word comes up.

Grit.

[candide]

Blue! Always a pleasure.

I seem to remember that, not too long ago, you've made some comments where you sided/identified with normies vs the high-achiever ERE forum crowd (or something, my memory is fuzzy), what with your focus/interests, your work class background and all.

So, welcome to the non-normie normies club, in a way.

Yes, I certainly did. But now that I am against the normies, I can say "they started it."

But this next crop of normies at the new job is going to get a real silent-type NPC in me. I'll just use hypergraphia and amateur anthropology to just keep my brain alive in meetings. (Cursive, even if repetitive, not tallies as I learned from my debate days that makes it too clear you are playing a kind of bingo). If you go through conversation with me and GPT after "boredom" I think there some interesting stuff there.

[candide]

I'm still on that Evan Monsma beat. This month he is calling "no money May," where he tries to do projects with what he's got on hand, and the first video in the series is a banger (if you're into this sort of thing...)

https://youtu.be/yzPsbAIX0e0?si=j_L2l1PmzOGckdML

Also, I have run the last two pieces I have written through GPT set up in blunt signal mode, and I find much of what it has to say fascinating
https://chatgpt.com/share/681a0667-7ef8 ... 3a6cdd60c8

[jacob]

Scrap wood projects is an entire niche by itself---lots of inspiration on the youtubes. Closing the loops, I have built things that contain pieces of wood that have been part of more than one other thing in the past. That's one benefit of being able to design your own projects from the wood you already have.

I do envy other people's scrap piles. Dimensionally, my pile is closer to saw dust than the average pile is to new lumber However, this just means that most of my scrap projects remain small. For example, from a bunch of small 3/4 plywood pieces, the leftover from some baseboard trim, and a few roller skate ball bearings...

[candide]

Since I’ve started this journal called “Love and DIY” I haven’t written anything about love, and very little about DIY.

Love is the tough one. I do what I can to make my daughter’s life better -- while she probably was better off with me unemployed this year and half, she will probably benefit from my ability to spend more money, at least when she starts pre-K.

But in any case, so much attention is required to my child’s needs, my wife, family problems, and a social life that my wife has led us to in the denomination she grew up in (the United Methodist Church) that there just didn’t feel like much room for ... me. Or, really, I should say certain drives. I have been thinking about this for a while. Today I came up with the following “tweet” for Bluesky:

Three hungers of my soul not satisfied by the day-to-day roles I must play for others:

1. humor
2. intensity
3. curiosity

So that's what "me time" is about.

I have written some about how I have realized that humor doesn’t serve me at all. But humor only whittles my ethos over time. It is intensity that ruins my standing with people in an instant. Something that stood out to me from a book I recently read about how to get a job was the line “you can never be too enthusiastic.” Well, I can tell you that is absolutely bullshit. If you’re even slightly too enthusiastic about the wrong thing, you are fucked. What would be accurate to say is “You can never be too enthusiastic about how you going to make the person doing the hiring money, or save them time if it isn’t their money... But it takes a kind of self-assuredness — sometimes bordering on delusion — to believe you’re going to get your fair share of value you might add.”

And I’ve always been a curious dude. Maybe the one that causes me the least problems of the three, as people like talking about themselves, but asking too many questions still sends up weirdo signals. And I can’t name you a goal I have in real life that is helped by me sending up weirdo signals.

So I guess the most important thing for me about love is to be able to do it without going crazy. (And I now have more compassion for anyone who has). I am very much trying to do a Jekyll and Hyde/Civilization and It’s Discontents thing here in my life, and I am very thankful that I don’t have violent or kinky tendencies also thrown in the mix.

IT training did quite a bit to satisfy curiosity and intensity, at least while I thought there was some chance it was “going anywhere,” but after it became clear that it wasn’t, I have had to try to find other outlets. So even though I had quit Twitter years before in disgust, I joined Bluesky with two objectives 1) make sometime of my own. 2) stay out of fights. So far, so good on both counts.

... I fed a block of my most recent Bluesky posts into GPT absolute mode and asked it to guess about me and it had this to say:

Likely educated, literate in cultural reference and philosophical abstraction. Displays stable domestic life marked by idiosyncratic intimacy. Not performative—uses online space as lateral thinking sandbox, not identity construction. Socially functional but withdrawn from dominant status pursuits. High cognitive surplus repurposed into conceptual play, not monetization or public leverage.

To which I followed up with “In other words, I post like a total weirdo”

Yes. But it is principled weirdness—coherent, internally consistent, structurally motivated. Not erratic, not incoherent, not attention-seeking. You post like someone with surplus processing power rerouting through unconventional channels. It reads as eccentric to most because the default bandwidth of online expression is low-context, high-affect. You invert that.

Weirdness here is not defect but divergence—signal of an architecture misaligned with ambient demand.

It may not be much, but it helps to have somewhere that I can take a break from ambient demand.

[candide]

June is a month of fasts.

I have a T/Th/Sn intermittent fast. I keep my window at 20 hours between eating, and tend to walk at least 10,000 steps in the fasted state. I try to break the fast with "Keto diet" fare and then the other days eat "sensibly." This was my best weight-loss protocol of any I have tried in the past, and I have the time before the new school year to do this. Other piece of advice: drink things with electrolytes when fasting; it does a lot to get rid of light-headedness.

Also, I am taking the entire month off YouTube.

[An apology was here. I have taken it down, confident it has been seen by who needs to see it, with the intent of not giving the situation any more oxygen].

[candide]

Well, I asked someone to share one of his position concentrations, so here my current ones in my taxable stock account (which is about 200K, my IRA is just index funds now):

%..........symbol
7.5 %.....XOM
6%.........GOOG
6%.........MO
4%.........MU
4%........KLNG
3.5%.....TM
3%........NVDA

I do not recommend this as an allocation to buy into. Several of these positions are where they are at due to laziness and then growth making me hesitant to sell and take on tax from capital gains, in the same way that Buffett holding on to his Coca-Cola position doesn’t mean it’s time to buy in.

But aha! I made a sector bet into biotech, and scooped up a basket of stocks that seemed cheap by valuation, so let’s just say I know how to lose money better than Buffett does, and so I can sell some positions to take capital losses to offset my gains up here and do some rebalancing.

I’m looking at you, PhillipMorris (MO). Probably get out of that, trim XOM a bit, and bolster my Broadcom (currently sub 3%), and NVDA.

With me resuming work and now vowing to not leave a current job until my next is lined up, the point of the portfolio changes into a hedge against my (or my child’s) inability to work in the future due to the automation.