Ego's Journal

[C40]

That's cool. I saw those jeans on the news

[zbigi]

When I saw him this morning he was digging through a 50¢/piece pile of clothing and was as happy as a pig in shit. You can't buy that kind of job.

I don't remember if I mentioned that here already, but I have a friend who does exactly that. He regularly sifts through used cloth stores in the region (of which there are legion, probably at least 30 within an hour drive) and find clothes of lesser known designer brands that the locals don't even recognize. He then buys them and sells online, with up to 5000% markup. This business has grown so much that he has a couple full time employes now helping him with the online sales part. However, he reserved the sifting through the clothes for himself, as it is just fun for him. (Btw, he discovered his love for this kind of thing as an amateur Magic cards trader in his late teens. With Magic, it was similar - you spent hours pouring through other people's collections to occasionally find a rare gem to whose value the owner was oblivious. Btw, this aspect of Magic trading died after the advent of smartphones - everyone can now Google price of any card on the spot, so the knowledge advantage is gone.)

[7Wannabe5]

However, he reserved the sifting through the clothes for himself, as it is just fun for him.

Any activity like this, from bargain shopping to mushroom foraging, tends to be very fun for humans because we are essentially an omnivorous scavenging species. Used book scavenging became more competitive when the "scanner people" started attending sales, but humans can still make snap judgments based on intuition faster than a machine. Since objects and materials, unlike energy, simply cycle around and around, although tending towards more degraded form, in a world with unlimited cheap energy, intelligent machines( or machine/human/other species combos such as the book scanner people) could theoretically eventually simply go out and gather constituent materials in any form and then "use" recipes to create other things.

[Ego]

Yesterday my overstock grocery friend showed up with ready made pie crusts at 5/$1. Mrs. Ego is expert at chopping up overripe apples from the 99/bag rack at the grocery store, reducing them in a pan and turning them into apple pies. Perfect for obligatory holiday confections.



He also had these cases of Organic India Tulsi Ashwagandha tea for $2. Each case has 6 boxes of tea with 18 tea bags each. Less than 2 cents per tea bag. I drink a lot of tea so I bought three cases.

[Ego]

Mr. Overstock showed up today with Chinese noodles at 6/$1. These are just plain wheat flour, not the instant ramen type that are chock full of oil. I bought six.



He also saved me some 13oz bags of Bob's Redmill organic quinoa at 3/$1.

41¢ per pound for organic quinoa, not bad.

[davtheram12]

Wow Ego! Nice score on the grocery goodies. I showed my DW and she responded with "we need to go to this swap meet!" This is coming from someone who generally dislikes rummaging through swap meets items

[Lemur]

That's a steal on the quinoa. We used to have a guy in our neighborhood who would set up these food giveaways at the local park for food that would otherwise be thrown out by the local Walmart. I'd get a ton of produce and freeze them. Items that were just 1 day past "expiration." The bananas were nice. These opportunities are great considering that food is our 2nd largest line item after rent.

[Ego]

I've been buying from him for years and each time I made a purchase I would remind him that I like healthy foods. It wasn't until Mrs. Ego began accompanying me on Saturday afternoons that he remembered my name and what we liked. Now, he brings something almost every week.

[Ego]

"He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand."

https://www.ebay.com/str/goodmoodua2020

Authentic part of a Russian Ka-52 that was hit down in Babyntsi near Gostomel airport in March 2022

Tail number 12-03, 14 blue: RF-90304
Serial number 35382612003
ASN Wikibase Occurrence # 276127 (copy and see more information about this Ka-52 in Google, please)

295 g
42x20 cm

Russo-Ukrainian War

[Ego]

Even if nearly every fact of human biology was at my finger tips, where would I choose to begin my argument?

Paul Graham has a new essay today that addresses where to begin from a slightly different perspective.
http://paulgraham.com/want.html

[daylen]

This creates a duality between wanter and wanted.

What else is there outside experience? If experience can seem fixed and unfixed then why fixate on one or the other?

Proof is at least an abstraction away. Infinite regressions may not halt on computers but could somehow in "experience". Zeno's paradox and all.

Also, I am presuming that "you" are not just a body but an alignment across scale. You do not just exist at the scale of a few meters but also at the cellular and galactic levels and beyond. Entities that experience do not just appear at a particular scale. There is a continuous developmental process with perhaps multiple branches of the self in time. Go back far enough and you are space that fluctuates or something. That expands to include everything. There is nothing outside this "pre"-birth.

Maybe

[Ego]

What else is there outside experience? If experience can seem fixed and unfixed then why fixate on one or the other?

Understanding the difference between how things seem and how things actually are is an insight.
Having that insight actually changes me, the way I interact with the world and others in it.

[daylen]

Then that serves as a model of self. I am saying that it is just a model and proving that you are not free or free is kinda absurd because what "we" are isn't obvious.. or maybe it is and there is no understanding to be found.

[Ego]

A tenant received a box from Imperfect Foods last night and left for vacation this morning, leaving the box on top of the trash. This is a portion of the delivery. We ate some of the fruit with breakfast.



@daylen, it seems to me that there is a benefit to having both the conscious and unconscious minds operating on the same understand as to which one is in charge, even if we can't agree on what we mean by "we".

[daylen]

Unconsciousness can be thought of as a lack of experience. The recall or memory of which would be a gap in experience. It seems there is no limit to how close experience can get to "nothing going on" while still "waking up" to experience the memory of "have been there without gap". Whether "you" bring something back to share or not depends on what you are in relation to other. So if you consider the self to be unfixed and caused by the other, then that is what you will tend to neurally anneal towards in your understanding (as a hypothesis or model to be tested). Nothing wrong with this as it provides a stable sense of other and a flexible sense of self but it is feasible to switch between that and the inverse of the self being fixed (other unfixed), or to have the unfixed/fixed relationship be atomized and spread between the boundary of what is inside and outside (with the self/other being an adjustable lens in two or three virtual dimensions of space). The brain is just part of the story as the whole body participates in memory. There is more research being done on how various organisms can lose their head, grow it back, and then remember prior details about the environment or the state of the lost limb/organ.

As talked about in this podcast between Michael Levin and Joscha Bach.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgMFnfB5E_A

[Ego]

Mrs. Ego made two apple-peach pies for Thanksgiving using two pie crusts each from my grocery overstock friend. She used canned peaches from the trash and apples left by a tenant who works at a senior services agency that received a donation of hundreds of pounds of apples that nobody wanted. Apparently seniors do not eat apples. 40 cents each for the pies.



Days before Thanksgiving the tenants began emptying refrigerators in anticipation of leaving for the holiday. I ended up with all kinds of strange things including a variety of unopened La Croix drinks which should last through Christmas. The entirety of our holiday potlucks were covered for under $1.

[davtheram12]

I ended up with all kinds of strange things including a variety of unopened La Croix drinks which should last through Christmas. The entirety of our holiday potlucks were covered for under $1.

I find it refreshing that someone else approaches the holidays in a similar fashion. I regularly find items around November and December that are perfect as gifts or ingredients for dishes. It makes for an interesting story and unique way to approach the, typically stressful, holiday season.

[shaz]

How odd that someone got rid of the unopened La Croix drinks. That seems like something that would keep until they returned from their holiday.

[Frugalchicos]

Wow, very impressed about the food swap. I have never heard of anything like that.

I found very interesting the story of your friend's Levi's. Very smart guy an glad he will make good profit selling them to somebody else. It is just crazy somebody would pay that much for a pair of jeans.

One of our neighbors used to order from Doordash all the time but never picked the food up. We had sushi for free for like two weeks and didn't get sick from it LOL. It is crazy how much people waste.

[Ego]

I find it refreshing that someone else approaches the holidays in a similar fashion. I regularly find items around November and December that are perfect as gifts or ingredients for dishes. It makes for an interesting story and unique way to approach the, typically stressful, holiday season.

Hah. Back at you! 100%

One of the potlucks was at the home of a friend from the swap meet who specializes in vintage designer apparel. To the rest of the world she appears to be a great success in the fashion industry, which she is, but her customers and friends would not imagine her digging through piles of used clothing as I know her. Mrs. Ego quietly told her the story of the pie and mentioned our grocery overstock friend. She responded, "You mean the guy who sells used food." We all laughed as she pointed out things at the party she picked up from a different "used food" vendor.

How odd that someone got rid of the unopened La Croix drinks. That seems like something that would keep until they returned from their holiday.

I will never get over the binge/purge nature of tiny apartment dwellers. They order cases of stuff from Amazon Prime Fresh then discard it all when they run out of counter or refrigerator space. We have a second refrigerator in the basement that is perpetually full of my green smoothies and found food.

I found very interesting the story of your friend's Levi's. Very smart guy an glad he will make good profit selling them to somebody else. It is just crazy somebody would pay that much for a pair of jeans.

I saw him last Wednesday and asked how it was going. He still hasn't sold them.