Candide: Origins

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Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

=======
Previously on Candide (or The Pessimist).

viewtopic.php?t=12355

And now, back to our show . .

=======


How I got to these forums. The short answer is I got sick of Reddit, and noticed that I was linking again and again to the ERE blog, so I decided to look at the forum.

The short answer is usually less interesting than the longer one, however. . .

I had rejoined Reddit with a new screen name because I was looking ahead and trying to build a kind of hobby I could get in and out of when I enter the zombieland of sleepless nights when the baby comes [1]. (I don’t think Reddit will be able to serve as that hobby, but that is neither here nor there – that’s what I was thinking at the time).

[1] Yes, I am very concerned about that time period. I do particularly badly on a lack of sleep. But I am use to taking huge quality of life hits for defined periods of time to try to get something more meaningful in the future. I remember someone’s journal positing that this is probably a sign of high-functioning depression. Good call, I think.

Before that I had purged my life of social media. My first attempt at a replacement was as small email group where I wrote an essay on Saturdays. I called it “Candide’s Garden” in reference to the last bit of Voltaire’s Candide, which basically says to not worry about the machinations of the powerful, but rather to tend your garden.

I greatly enjoyed writing the pieces on Saturday. It was a great way to fill a day that I made sure to make a real Sabbath and do nothing productive for work or home, but my group wasn’t the best this project. Mostly there was apathy. Two of them read what I wrote poorly – twisting my words around to try to start an argument. Only one of them was part of a good back-and-forth, and so I just became his pen pal.

After I closed up Candide’s Garden, I got into the alternate internet protocols of Gopher and Gemini. Here’s an article on this with a guy who at least believes he is coming at it from a Solar Punk perspective [2]:

https://thedorkweb.substack.com/p/gophe ... ternet?s=r


[2] The originator of Gemini is also a self-identified solar punk. Other than that, I kept waiting in vain for the rest of the solar punks to show up en masse.

I was NetCandide on Gemini and Candide on Gopher respectively. This time period was also a lot of fun. I joined (with money) a public Unix called SDF, and that helped me to learn all sorts of shell commands rapidly as there were immediate purposes to what I was doing. I then switched over to Linux on my home laptop, and for a while I got my life down to terminal minimalism: Lynx as my browser, Nano to write, either piping music from streams (down to a the minimal bash command of ./d.sh) or playing a music collection I had saved as a local backup. There is a slogan that circulates somewhat in among Gopher and SDF – “plain text is beautiful.” And so it was. And so it is.

But as often happens when I have stripped everything down, I eventually felt an emptiness. I didn’t find enough action in those spaces to hold my interest – they were nice places to visit (and take lessons from) but I wouldn’t want to live there. In particular Gemini suffers from the problem of people just wanting to use Gemini to talk about Gemini. This is the way with people who work in technology. They start becoming the proverbial men with hammers, and hammers only, so they start to see every problem as a nail [3].

[3] This space, on the other hand, seems to attract a lot of people who look for other tools as well. It’s been heartening and fascinating to see as I keep reading on.

Eventually, I drifted to opening a more conventional web browser to listen to podcasts while I did chores, and then one thing led to another, and then eventually, a short while after my wife told me she was pregnant, I was back on Reddit.

. . . Man, Reddit sucks. Any sub-Reddit that has the prospect of being interesting to me suffers from either a) people asking dumb questions (ie let me google that for you) or b) people just wanting to challenge the very premise of the sub. For example, if you go to r/ValueInvesting and it is overloaded with either total laziness or people pushing index funds. And these are the posts that get sky-rocket to the top with the most likes.

In response to a particularly bad thread, I set up my own sub and wrote the following white paper:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nicheWorld/com ... che_world/

No one joined. But then, I did virtually no promotion, and may gotten on that, but luckily, I found this forum. . . See, I kept answering queries on r/leanFire (ha) and r/Frugal (haha) with links to the ERE blog. After doing this several times, I decided to decided to look into these here forums. . .

. . . And that’s the long version of the story.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Project: Wheelbarrow
================

Here was yesterday's progress:

Image

View of the wheel assembly in all of its slapped-together glory:
Image

On both sides is some cross-section of 2-by-4s glued together and positioned so the wheel has at least some limit on how much it can play.

At this point I went for a test run and the frame handled well. It was easy and intuitive to make my turns with it.

Then had I some glue-up to do, and so I had to take a break for the night. I frequently use school glue, as it is polyvinyl acetate, just like most things labeled as "wood glue." Now, I don't know if my stuff is watered down or has some other additives, but it works well enough for most things I make. Here, it was easier for me to put some glue on the bottom of the joints and then get my clamps around than find a way to drill and screw with everything set up. I then came back and screwed in the top parts of the joints, and then the bottoms as well, for good measure. It is often possible in this manner to boot-strap a joint until you are able to come back and add other fasteners. You can also use tape to do this kind of bootstrapping. (Or, you could have friends willing to help you and hold things).

Anyway, here we are in the endgame:

Image

Image

It's more of a dolly, but I tested it with a bag of soil, and it looks like it should fit two five-gallon buckets just fine.

Every piece of the material was salvaged, including the screws, so the only costs were the wear on the saws and less than 20 cents worth of school glue.

EDIT: Oh, yeah, duct tape as the tread should be counted as another cost.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Woodworking
==========

Yesterday, Rex Krueger came out with a video that shows good tips and tricks for using low benches and a minimal set of hand tools.

https://youtu.be/XoTGZPTQD_g

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Theory
======

One of the reasons for doing "Origins" is a vain wish on my part to have been part of the interesting conversations that had occurred here in the past. I have a few older pieces that I would like share. This will in part explain why some of these pieces might sound a bit off -- different than just riffing.

Enter me from 2019.


Locate the Minimum Effective Dose
===========================

Credit where credit is due, I first heard this explained in Tim Ferriss's The Four Hour Body. First, I'll paraphrase the idea and his explanation: there is a minimum effective dose (MED) of sun exposure that you need to get a tan. That is all well and good. But once you reach that amount of sun, not only do you not need any more sun exposure to get your result, but each additional unit at least risks something else bad happening -- such as a sunburn, dehydration, cancer.

Understanding the existence of MEDs and thinking about the risks in going over them are crucial critical thinking tools, necessary to cobble together a good life. (If you have a good life without the need for that critical thinking, then you should be thankful that you were raised in the best of families, one that ignored the culture around them and gave you everything you needed by habit. For the rest of us, we'll have to think and reflect.) In the modern world, we are for the most part blind to minimum effective doses, having much to do with the kind of de-skilling necessary to make consumerism (and our job system) work.

Show me a workaholic, and I'll show you someone jeopardizing their relationships with friends and family. What is more, a workaholic often engages in behaviors that endanger the work itself. From the book Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson (pg 25):
Workaholics miss the point, too. They try to fix problems by throwing sheer hours at them. They try to make up for intellectual laziness with brute force. This results in inelegant solutions.

They even create crises. They don't look for ways to be more efficient because they actually like working overtime. They enjoy feeling like heroes. They create problems (often unwittingly) just so they can get off on working more.
In all things, locate the minimum effective dose.

==


The MED is connected to the concept of Slack, as presented on Less Wrong.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLLkWMDbC9ZNKbjDG/slack

This comment also helps add domain-specific rigor:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/yLLkWMD ... jBdjxZ4kMv

If you work with distributed systems, by which I mean any system that must pass information between multiple, tightly integrated subsystems, there is a well understood concept of maximum sustainable load and we know that number to be roughly 60% of maximum possible load for all systems.
[. . . ]
"Slack" is a decent way of putting this, but we can be pretty precise and say you need ~40% slack to optimize throughput: more and you tip into being "lazy", less and you become "overworked".
Last edited by candide on Sat Apr 30, 2022 6:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by Riggerjack »

Wax or soap on your axle wearing surfaces will reduce friction/increase durability.

Do you do a lot of DIY shop work?

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

@Riggerjack

I really like making things in my shop. Most of what I make is little things, like toys, and that will continue with my daughter on the way, but I always like to try to make something out of scrap wood rather than buy when a need comes up. For example, I didn't like how my turn-in basket at school was a light, flimsy plastic because it moved around too easily. The one I made has quite a bit more weight, which works better for me than any I could easily buy -- if I wanted to, which I don't.

Another project was a stool to make it easier for my wife to cut my hair. This also turned out to be a nice little end table to put books and such.

The turn-in basket is at school, so I won't be going to snap a photo, but here is one of the end table, stool thing.

Image

The wood is all sorts of mismatching types so painting it is close to a necessity. Luckily, the paint was left over as well.

I am self-taught and have a lot of gaps in my skills, some very embarrassing. I'm only now about to start learning how to sharpen things with whetstones. But it is one of the joys in my life. And when it also has the potential to save money, I find myself very motivated to act.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Weekly Groceries
==============

A bit over $90. Lost the receipt.

FI Portfolio
=======

I am moving some money around from "cash equivalents" in one location to my taxable account. When that process is done, I will go through with the proverbial putting my money where my mouth is and expand my holdings in the long-vol positions of VXZ and TAIL from the current 10% of portfolio to 20%. After that, I plan to give one more max Roth IRA contribution at the start of next year to give more wiggle room to rebalance without triggering taxable events, and then be done putting money into the FI portfolio. Either my moves earn a real return or they don't.

Money outside of the portfolio is going to save for downside protection, intermediate goals, and my daughter's future.

Decline Portfolio
=============

The discussion on Axel's journal made me realize that I should build a more robust physical portfolio than "hey look, I've got a lot of silver."
viewtopic.php?p=257426#p257426

Bic lighters, eh? Well, beats using Whisky as a "liquid asset" and then drinking it when I get depressed.

Putting this article on Selco here for future reference
https://lulz.com/surviving-a-year-of-sh ... um-thread/

Also, I'll put The Alpha Strategy on the back-burner:
https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-Strategy-U ... 0936906049
https://zombieprepdotnet.files.wordpres ... reface.pdf

Edit: I was linking to the wrong Alpha Strategy, so I corrected it.
Last edited by candide on Thu May 12, 2022 11:54 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by jacob »

Incidentally, the first half of Pugsley's book is a decent intro to economics. Kinda like Hazzlit's (SP?) One Hour book.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by theanimal »

FYI, The Alpha Strategies book you linked to is not The Alpha Strategy (by Pugsley) book that @AH and @Jacob are referring to.

https://www.amazon.com/Alpha-Strategy-U ... 0936906049

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

@theanimal

Ah. I appreciate it.

I would have probably realized I was reading the wrong book pretty quickly, but I'm not sure I would have figured out what the right book was.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Theory (Anti-Theory)
================

This was a piece I wrote as I was coming out of my worst of times, around 2019.

As I reread the piece to format in for here, I also found it really helpful to look at it again. I cannot recommend the Perry piece enough.


Insight into Insight, as Well as Happiness
===============================

After reading Sarah Perry's Trying to See Through: A Unified Theory of Nerddom
https://www.gwern.net/docs/philosophy/e ... rough.html

I have been thinking a lot about my passion to understand the world -- my own nerddom, if you will. And I don't like what I see.

According to Perry:
Our overdeveloped, grotesque insight reward seeking is likely maladaptive, and is probably not even doing our individual selves any good.
I think that's about right. Putting a spin on the old saying about wealth, "if you're so smart, why aren't you happy?"

There is a strong bi-directional relationship between this seeing-through and depression. By being interested in insight rather than the day-to-day stuff people want to talk about, you can become socially isolated and depressed. Conversely, given that someone is socially isolated and depressed for other reasons, it might kick in depressive realism. Either way, what keeps the cycle going is probably the aforementioned "grotesque insight reward seeking."

So what does depression under insight do? Back to Perry:
Meaning is deconstructed in depression; social connection is weakened. Ideas and things that for normal individuals glow with significance appear to the depressed person as empty husks. The deceptive power of social and sacredness illusions is weakened for the depressed person (as are certain other healthy illusions, such as the illusion of control).
Furthermore, Perry claims that the inverse is true:
self-deception is strongly related to happiness; the consolation of insight may not make up for the loss of sacredness in terms of individual happiness.
This is where I see some hope for myself on the happiness front. I rarely lose the ability to perceive sacredness. I never lost it during my darkest times, where going on a walk into semi-nature was my mental salvation. It was actually later, when I went on my first sabbatical and ended up too socially isolated that I have a journal entry about going outside and feeling . . . nothing [1]. And that was a sufficient wake-up call to go back to work. It turns out, much to my disappointment, that I need contact with people other than my wife [2].

As I am trying to recover from my insight-addiction, I have started to use two phrases a lot in conversations with my wife: first "What would a happy person say/do right now?" and second is the lament "I can't not know . . ." because I know whatever it is that I know I know (and know I can't not know) is something a person happier than me wouldn't notice or would subsume into some kind of optimistic story (a technique I have only begun to experiment with; I'll try to report back later on my progress).

There are many things that I can't not know, but it does help to not dwell on them. I have learned to not rant. And most importantly, I have learned not organize my day around gathering more negativity.

Ran Prieur noted in 2017:
Over the last year I've sensed more toxicity when I go online. Maybe I just got better at noticing it, but that's why I'm trying to quit writing about what's wrong with the world. My working theory is, thinking about what's wrong with the world is linked to a general attitude, a subconscious habit of constantly scanning for wrongness, and it's like a dark universe that I'm trying to escape.
This is not to say there isn't a place for darkness, but darkness should be used, either for productive actions or some act of creation -- even including a good conversation, provided the parties know when it is time to switch topics. (What a rare trait in America, anymore).

Insight is a lot like whisky and cola [3]. Each individual hit seems reasonable enough, but eventually it starts to blur your judgement toward your quantity consumed. . . and then you have other problems.


===

[1] See Allie Brosh for what might be the greatest work on depression ever (cartoons are very much underrated at a medium).

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2 ... ssion.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2 ... t-two.html

I feel fortunate to have only been in the full "detached meaningless fog" at one point in my life.

[2] Humanity is still a passion best enjoyed with an eye on the minimum effective dose, and awareness of what can happen when I go over that dose.

viewtopic.php?p=257351#p257351

But it turns out that I could have never made it as a hermit.

[3] Perry uses the term "insight porn." Also, man, I was really into whisky, and had it on my mind, during those lowest times.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

The Alpha Strategy.
===============

Okay, I did not put reading the Alpha Strategy on the back-burner. I read it last weekend and have been turning it over in my mind since. For those in need of context, the Alpha Strategy by John A. Pugsley was written at the tail end of the United State’s last great inflation spiral and was an argument for hoarding. When I use the term “Alpha Strategy” from here on out, I am referring more to the strategy than the book itself.

First, I thought about the risk/reward of the strategy: it locks in an expected real return of zero with losses through the possibility of theft, natural disasters and the costs of storage and insurance. . . The safe withdrawal rate on a portfolio 100% Alpha Strategy could only be

* portfolio/years a person has left.

Speaking of a lifetime, the strategy works better the closer you get to a lifetime supply stored up. As a thought experiment, say you stored up a three year supply of an item you regularly use. Then for some reason, emergency-based or macro-economic, you start tapping into your supply. Once you use that up, the next time you purchase you will pay . . . the new cost, with all three years of inflation included. On the other hand, if you have a lifetime supply stored, you never pay the higher cost. Anything between those two extremes becomes a question of how much you are lowering your cost basis. More than once in the book Pugsley tried to make it clear that the Alpha Strategy is not about disaster preparedness, but rather wealth preservation. It wasn’t completely clear why he took pains to mention this, but I think this cost basis idea shows why disaster preparedness should, for the most part, be treated as an inventory system rather than a portfolio. (Another consideration is price per cubic foot).

So why would someone make an Alpha Strategy portfolio? It looks like it might serve as the most comprehensive and cheapest type of wealth insurance you can purchase. Governments – including the cases of bankruptcy and divorce – might come after, or even outlaw, gold, silver, and crypto, but it is even easier to hide something you are going to consume at a future point.

Here’s my list of things I am going to try to build my Alpha Strategy portfolio around, organized by ease of purchasing a durable lifetime supply: razor cartridges, blades (including saws), hardware (particularly screws).

Razors showed up in a chart in the book, listed as the highest value per cubic foot.

For the razor cartridges, I am going to make the frugal brag that by drying the blade after use and doing a semi-strop by running my thumb backward, I can keep a Mach 3 cartridge viable for 3 years.

Assuming I live another 60 years (none of my grandparents made it beyond 85; my father and uncle died before the age of 55), that means I need 20 more cartridges. Let’s use the ‘ol 50% margin of safety and multiple by 2 to get 40 cartridges.

I’ll start here and see if I can gradually build up my stores of other categories. My first benchmark will be 6 months JAFI.
Last edited by candide on Sun May 15, 2022 5:14 pm, edited 3 times in total.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by white belt »

What about the risk of changing your habits/lifestyle and ending up with a lifetime supply of an item you no longer use?

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

@white belt

Yes, I'd say that would be another limitation of the Alpha Strategy (AS).

Fungibility, liquidity, and portability are all features of currencies and most assets that we use, and are easy to take for granted, but man are they useful. It turns out that they are so useful that they compensate for how easy it is for intermediaries (banks and governments) to take their cut. . . Under most time frames.

Though I think I have shown some reasons why the AS should not be treated as disaster prep in terms of accounting, I'd say the best things on the list back up into things you could trade if there were . . . disruptions to the supply chain, including Selco events.

viewtopic.php?p=257446#p257446

Or, maybe invert that. The AS can seen as things you are using to prep a lifetime supply of (or over) that can easily back into things you can use. The razor example was the only one I can easily calculate as it is one that I know exactly how much I use it. Other than that, things get fuzzy, including the possibility of increasing my consumption simply because the item in question is prepped. And, yes, your point about changing what you consume and getting stuck with some items.

Frankly, prepping as inventory control is more important for downside risk control, even though it does very little to prevent you eventually paying inflationary prices.

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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Theory of Anti-Theory
=================

“In theory, there is no difference between practice and theory. In practice, there is.” -- not Yogi Berra
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/practice-and-theory/

When I wrote "Insight into Insight" I was exiting a bad place. Looking back, getting off the feeds, most particularly Twitter, was more important for my mental health than renouncing insight-seeking behaviors. However, there is still something that creeps in and sours my mood when I spend too much time around the insight seekers -- your Less Wrong types, or even Marginal Revolution.

Well, if it isn't insight I want, what it is? The short answer is fulfillment. And I feel that happens best via a craft. In my life, I have three that I can often get into some kind of flow state with: making stuff, teaching, and writing.

Making stuff. I have showed off some here, and will continue to do so as I finish projects. I think it is also the most relatable and potentially desirable -- I am pretty sure it was years ago that I read Jacob write about people who did a lot of mental work liked finding ways to work with their hands in retirement.

Teaching. Ah, teaching. Putting the notion of craft back into focus gives me a vocabulary for what place teaching has in my life. I haven't put it quite this bluntly, but teaching keeps me sane by giving me a place to go and people to see. But more than that, it gives me a place to practice a craft that I have put my time into, and I am good at. My instincts pay off, my adjustments, though often too subtle to be seen by the uninitiated, work. I probably sometimes get up to my "4 hour work week" just with bullshit I hate, but it is usually not much more than that. In part, being technically FI gives me peace of mind to avoid certain meetings and do persist in doing things the right way after the first bluff from administration (which is usually the only time I hear about anything).

Writing. I often enjoy doing it. But my flow leads to pieces that come off flowery and not in the spontaneous style that people have been trained to want. (I would argue as a part of the conspiracy to give everything to extroverts and sociopaths via their charisma, but, hey, don't look behind the curtain . . .That sounds like insight).

Well, anyway, here is one of those pieces. This one written about six months after Insight into Insight, and trying to reflect on the better place I had come to.

Wise Words
=========

Since I was little, I have loved words. I love to play with them, to pick them apart. And then, when picked apart for other reasons of play, it seems wasteful to not learn the etymologies of the morphemes of the lexicon. I have accumulated some of those over time, but the real thing is to play.

My love is a love of discovery, not really systematic understanding. Still, you figure things out over time if you keep going. And it is easier to keep going if you love what you are doing.

Amateur

This leads to our first word: amateur. I find it somewhat embarrassing that I didn't figure out this etymology for myself as I have studied enough Spanish to know that "amar" is "to love." Furthermore, I hope we all know about the kind of amore that hits one's eye in the fashion of a larger than average pizza pie.

That an amateur is someone who loves can be taken a few ways. For one, since they are not paid for the activity, it could be inferred that the only reason left to persist is some kind of love, hopefully for the activity itself, but someone could love attention as well, no? Another possible spin is that the word contains an old truth that to do something for reward takes away at least some of the love. Working for money puts you on deadlines, causing stress and forcing you to pick techniques and tools for speed and power rather subjective enjoyment and perhaps even safety. Because I am never on a hard deadline with my creative work, I get to choose the tools I like. Handsaws for wood, and first drafts written in pen on paper. (Update: I now write on computer again, and use power tools more often on projects).

Sadly, in our contemporary culture, if you love something you are encouraged to "go pro" in it. To do this, you first need the right (often expensive) credentials, and this process alone can take away the fun. Even if it doesn't, the grind of doing something every day, and to the specifications of customers, can. Lastly, you are almost in all cases forced to be "a pro" in only one thing. I would rather have the option to be an amateur in -- ie love -- multiple things.

Integrity

Even if our society can keep itself going on a material level, something which I have my doubts about, I think we are dealing with a crisis of integrity which threatens us psychologically. I don't just mean the dishonesty of our culture, where nearly everyone of a certain class works in PR, though that is a big problem. I mean that we are dis-integrated, socially, psychologically. Talking with people who are better adjusted to our systems, such as my wife, I often hear about how important it is to "compartmentalize." I contend that is a part of the problem. Putting everything in these non-integrated compartments makes it easier to accept more horrible things (fair enough as survival skills go), but it also makes it easier for those who do horrible things to feel fine and ultimately do more horrible things. This isn't quite the same as arguing there is a rise in sociopaths, or even sociopaths in high places, as has become a fashionable line of argument (something fashionable can be correct), rather a good many bad person and an army of enablers all think they are the good guys.

In order to join nearly any paying organization -- and many that do not -- it is expected that you will dis-integrate from any prior principles you might hold in order to serve the organization, the biggest two being clarity and honesty -- both part of the long-gone square-dealing.

As Wendell Berry writes in What are People For?
Professional standards, the standards of ambition and selfishness, are always sliding downward toward expense, ostentation, and mediocrity. They tend always to narrow the ground of judgment. But amateur standards, the standards of love, are always straining upward toward the humble and the best. They enlarge the ground of judgment. The context of love is the world (54).
The rituals surrounding dis-integrity start with the very beginning, with one's bid to join the system. In academic courses that deal with "values," it becomes telling a teacher what he or she wants to hear. In interviews, questions are built to force you into something other than real candor. "What would you say is your greatest weakness?" It would be smart to say something like "I work too hard ... some say I care too much" rather than what you know to be the truth, or what would know is the truth if you were a person of integrity. (It's even better for the systems if you are so out of practice with self reflection, or so practiced at giving these types of responses, that you don't even know you are playing the game).

Note: do what you need to do on the interview. These rituals have become so wide-spread that even some relatively enjoyable jobs have them. In the long run, you need some purchase within systems to live and in order to interact with first-order sane -- but second-order insane-- people (or maybe I mean vice a versa). Do not underestimate how unpleasant it is to have radicals, drop-outs, bohemians, or anarchists as your only emotional support system. Also, when you are inside systems you have to hide that you are doing the right thing, but at least you have some capabilities to act. My advice: render truth unto truth, lies unto lies, and bullshit unto bullshit and hope for (as well as work on) having the wisdom to tell the difference.

Fulfilled

Peter Korn's Why We Make Things and Why It Matters belongs right up with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and, in my opinion, above Shopcraft as Soulcraft, which I find a bit too reductive in its pronouncements.

There is a lot to the Korn book, and I highly recommend reading it all, but what stuck me the most was its observation on fulfillment. I will let Korn speak for himself.
Happiness and fulfillment feel like two distinct states of mind to me, and of the two, I find happiness greatly overrated by those who present it as life's ultimate goal. (124)
[. . .]
However recalcitrant the universe may be, when I am creatively engaged I have a sense of purpose and fulfillment that makes happiness seem like a bauble. Ask me if I'm happy when I'm making something in the workshop and I have to stop and think about it. It's not an important variable in the equation. (125).
He also gives this life pro tip
Creative fulfillment is not something to achieve and keep, like a college degree or an Olympic medal. It resides in the process of making the table, not in the satisfaction of sitting at it. Without generation, the wires go dead. (126).
These are profound truths, ones I am inclined to think our society does much to hide.

As I turned over the importance of fulfillment in my mind, it started to seem so simple: fulfilled is to be filled fully. And the only thing that fills you fully is what you can give all of your attention to. Unfortunately, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) does not back this up as the etymology, leaving me with more of a mnemonic (or less politely, a slogan) which I find charming. OED traces the earliest uses of "fulfilled" to objects physically filled to the brim, which is now archaic ("look how fulfilled that cup is!") When fulfilled moved closer to an emotional sense, it meant to completely supply what is wanted or needed. Unsurprisingly, the citations for this transition period are mainly religious -- the idea being that only God can leave you fulfilled.

Happiness

This etymology I came to through my time teaching. In Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says "Hence will I to my ghostly father's cell,/ His help to crave, and my dear hap to tell." Hap here means fortune, ie luck. In this case, the OED very much backs me up, showing that "happiness" as a subjective state does not even begin to show up until the 16th century. Shakespeare was alive for when the meaning began to shift.

The etymological sense of hap as what happens to us lives on in words like "hapless" and "happenstance." Whatever happens happens -- and in this view it is somewhat absurd to think your happiness is within your control.

There is, however, an old sense of "happy" to mean "successful in performing what circumstances require; apt, dexterous" that has citations as old as circa 1340 and 1400. While this doesn't sound much like the "happiness" that American consumers take as life's only goal, it is close to the fulfillment-via-craft Korn is alluding to.

I don't think it would be worth the effort to try to restore the older uses of happiness, however. After all, our current use has a meaning, one that be measured, researched, and even brain-scanned. Take Daniel Gilbert's book Stumbling on Happiness or Tony Hsieh's framework/checklist to get that subjective state so valued in our culture

1) perceived meaning
2) perceived progress
3) perceived control/autonomy
4) social connection

Well golly, these seem to have more to do with environment, much of it happenstance, than simply having a positive attitude or getting your mindfulness on.

Putting It Together

Pursuing integrity -- keeping myself together and down to relatively few compartments and faces -- makes it easier, or, in my case possible, to create meaning. Also, it frees energy to make progress. Furthermore, our culture leaves less and less places for autonomy as we shift further and further from the habits of a free people. Some proximate causes for this shift were 9/11 as catalyst within our culture of fear, reforms in our school systems, multiple generations of entitlement culture, and group-think as entertainment and brand engagement model. None of these seem to be going away, so autonomy will continue to be a rarer and rarer commodity. If you can find durable autonomy at your job, good for you. Most of us will have to find a place to retreat instead. I have my workshop and my pen.

Fulfillment-via-craft, even if it is not treated as it's own intrinsic value, is a vehicle to happiness. You can find progress, meaning, and control in it. But there is a great tension between craftsmanship and social connection. This is especially true in these times, as it turned out our social needs are very easy to hack into. If you have to be watching and/or performing at all times you are trading away time and energy you could use to be immersed in a freely chosen project. We should look at waves and cycles, rather than mindless habits. There is a time to create and a time to connect. In order to be psychologically integrated or get to all of the legs of happiness you must challenge the ideology of always needing to be connected and its enforcer: the fear of missing out.

candide
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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Garden
======

I have lettuce bolting already. Which makes sense as temperatures are already consistently hitting 90 degrees American (32 degrees Science). The more resilient strategy is work with shade. Another idea, that involves some building, is to make a frame to protect plants from cats and grow indoors under grow lights. I have two small lights left over from when I started all those tomatoes and peppers (only to finish with one each), so that is also a viable option to get a few lettuce plants growing, which is really all we need.

candide
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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Garden
======

This year is all about running different experiments to see what techniques I want to scale up and to have a rough idea what quantity of plants I will need during different parts of the year to be salad green self-sufficient.

When I was trying to research shade cloth I came across someone else advocating just planting lettuce much more thickly and on a quicker rotation – say every week – and just harvest young. That seems worth giving a shot as an experiment.

I have moved the containers of my healthy, non-bolted greens under some trees for shade – easier than building a structure – and I am starting some new plantings of lettuce [1]. May the best technique (for my situation) win.

From my microgreen experiments during the winter, I picked up a technique that I believe may be of some note. I have made little bits out of scrap wood which I then wrapped with saran wrap. I place these on top of the planting to retain moisture and keep the seeds in good contact with the soil.

Image

Image

Image

If either of shade or quicker turn around works, I can avoid using grow lights as a solution to my previous summer salad gap. This will make the system more resilient and economical.

[1] Here I am writing about my gallon-and-below planters. I am going to allow the lettuce and mustard go to seed in my 5 gallon sub-irrigated systems.

candide
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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by candide »

Mini-ERE
=======

When I first got into reading about alternate lifestyle stuff the terminology included

semi-retirement
mini-retirement

I got there, sigh, through Tim Ferriss and only later, off a different web crawl, came to ERE.

As I have done my catch-up reading on these forums, I have noticed that semi-ERE is a bit of a contested term. How it came about was innocent enough. If the only dimension is how retired one is, then to still work a bit is somewhat – semi – that state. Since ERE 1.0 had “retirement” right there in the title, it was natural enough to glue the two terms together. I do understand that when we look behind the curtain, ERE is really about being a Renaissance person and minding ecology, thus other dimensions can over-take retirement in terms of importance. Yes, semi- or dirtbag- ERE can be real ERE. Conversely, someone who has successfully FIRE’d can still be without skills, live in a way that maximally contributes to the meta-crisis, and have no resilience in the face of systems not working the way they are supposed to. They have essentially built their own trust fund, and now get to live like trust-fund babies -- better than many ways of life, but still with many problems for finding meaning and their impact on their communities.

But one term I’d like to see more of, and one I am going to apply to myself is mini-retirement and thus the blended term of mini-ERE.

So yeah, cards on the table, I am a public school teacher and thus I get summers off. I have a built-in, annual time to see myself as mini-retired, whereas taking three-months off would be a pain in the ass for most people to get organized and then would create uncertainty about what their re-entry would look like.

Next week is my last with students and then I will have two days to get my classroom in order, and then, mini-retired for two and a half months.

I really, really have liked having entire weeks blocked out where there is no deadline for anything. During this time, I think my brain works better. I can find a sweet spot for learning and experimenting that is pleasant and effective.

I have enjoyed this when it stretches to one month. I have enjoyed this when it stretches to two months. But I have found over the course of 15 years of summers off that the quality of the experience really diminishes for me after those two months. I really tried to pay attention last summer for when the lived-experience feels worse, and it really is around that time. This leads me to somewhat discount the impart of the confounding variable of personal tragedy for my mini-retirements that lasted longer than a summer. Yes, going through all that was bad, but being a “sad hermit,” to use AnalyticalEngine’s term, really does start settling in for me at about 2 months, and it gets terrible by 4 months in. After about that time, I had started doing less on the hobby front than I would be able to do with a job. (This might be where confounding variables rear their head).


Food
====

The basis of this topic is "can a home cook make things that taste better than going out at the $20 price point. . . how about $50?"

Thread:
viewtopic.php?p=258082#p258082

I’m going to give some examples here. I am not trying to present myself as an expert. In fact, very much the opposite. I want to point out how easy these things are to learn to encourage others to do so. In fact, this year’s mini-ERE is going to strongly feature me trying to tune up my cooking game, as I have some learning to do before I think I can go a month serving things my wife wants to eat. But here’s what I got so far for the Serve-It-Fresh All Stars:

Stir-fry. After a half dozen iterations I believe pretty much anyone can figure out their own ideal amount of time to cook it. One mistake I made was trying to make it a one pan meal when I cooked steak into it. Instead, it is better be able to control moisture levels on the beef and the vegetables and beef separately.

Better fries. Thinly cut potatoes, but don’t stress too much about how thin. Shallowly fry in vegetable oil, watching them and flipping fairly often. Once you figure the right color of skin, you’ll never unlearn it. Take them out of the oil in batches and immediately toss on some garlic salt. I get these out to my wife with the grease still glistening. The outside is fried perfection, the inside is a creamy texture. Absent a personal chef, you are never going to be able to buy this. It’s a side so good, it livens up left overs. This is not difficult to learn.

Lentil soup. Onion, lentils, beef bouillon. Put in some pasta, if you want. I have my wife, who is insanely picky, hooked on this, but only if it is fresh. I am fine with it warmed back up, or even cold, but fresh is very much an unomi synergy you have to taste to understand. Again, under a half dozen times to perfect it.

Grilled cheese sandwich. Use butter.

Steak. Served quickly moves you up over the next level. Levels: 1) cooked in over 2) grilled 3) highest quality cut at fancy place. But again, make a batch and serve as leftovers with better fries.

None of this speaks to getting something right out of a garden. Potatoes cooked within a half hour of harvest should be enough to get anyone out of the Matrix. I am very partial to green beans right off the vine.
Last edited by candide on Wed Jun 08, 2022 6:35 am, edited 2 times in total.

Western Red Cedar
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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by Western Red Cedar »

candide wrote:
Sun May 22, 2022 10:19 am
I have enjoyed this when it stretches to one month. I have enjoyed this when it stretches to two months. But I have found over the course of 15 years of summers off that the quality of the experience really diminishes for me after those two months. I really tried to pay attention last summer for when the lived-experience feels worse, and it really is around that time.
Do you mind exploring this topic in a bit more detail? It is something I've thought a lot about.

Do you think the time period depends at all based on personality type or individual dispositions?

Does the fact you have a clear start/end date potentially impact how you think about using your time? Or, conversely, how do you think your experience would change without a clear return date?

Does your experience with mini-ERE change if you are nomadic and changing your physical environment?

How do these experiences with mini-ERE impact your decisions to move away from a traditional career?

I took a number of breaks from work and/or school in my twenties. A couple of those were 12 months and 9 months long. I noticed that the experiences were all much more enjoyable when immediate financial needs were taken care of (a healthy savings account of at least 5k - which felt like a lot of money at the time :D ). I tended to appreciate an immediate period of decompression and relaxation, but would soon want to "schedule" events or projects. Often this just included visiting friends or family in different cities, camping trips, or working on my family's property. During the two longer breaks, I used international travel and some long-distance trekking to infuse some adventure and novelty into my experience. That seemed to work well, though I'm probably a different person now.

It is always interesting for me to hear about how others find purpose with long periods of unscheduled time. I suspect it differs significantly based on the individual, but that we are all still bound by the same basic psychological needs.

candide wrote:
Sun May 22, 2022 10:19 am
The basis of this topic is can a home cook make things that taste better than going out at the $20 price point. . . how about $50.
I think the answer to this question is definitely yes.* Its a little difficult to compare sometimes, because restaurant food is often cooked with large amounts of butter, sugar, and salt to improve the taste.

There are some really basic tips that you allude to in your post that really takes on cooking to the next level. The most simple is starting with good-quality, fresh ingredients. Just using fresh herbs has a huge impact on a dish IMO.

When it comes to stir fry, we always cook our protein source separately. Using decent quality rice really makes a difference as well.

When it comes to steak, properly resting the meat after cooking is something that a lot of people get wrong. Taking the time to brine or marinate meat, and resting it after cooking was something that dramatically improved the quality of our meals in the last couple of years.

*ETA - I realized I missed the broader discussion in @AE's journal. It sounds like everyone is basically on the same page here.
Last edited by Western Red Cedar on Mon May 23, 2022 2:00 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Scott 2
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Re: Candide: Origins

Post by Scott 2 »

candide wrote:
Sun May 22, 2022 10:19 am
Conversely, someone who has successfully FIRE’d can still be without skills, live in a way that maximally contributes to the meta-crisis, and have no resilience in the face of systems not working the way they are supposed to. They have essentially built their own trust fund, and now get to live like trust-fund babies
One of my most glaring lessons, from year one of FIRE, is how obvious unfairness in the capitalist model becomes. I was born with some privilege and played the system alright. So now I can piss away time, while others labor to my benefit. The difference goes well beyond a better car or bigger house.

When I was frugally working my way to retirement, ignoring the segmentation was easy. My bank account had higher numbers, but I didn't live different than anyone in my area. It was easy to hold the self image of a hard worker, earning their way.

Now - I drive by men doing construction in the beating sun, while I'm heading home from a morning swim. That might be the hardest thing I do all day. I could keep it up for the next 50 years. Fair? I earned it???

My self image had to change. The selfish nature of my lifestyle can't be ignored. It's one of the harder parts of FIRE for me to reconcile.

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