Writing is great for me, but I do way too little writing. I put my feelings about this into a small poem, here: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/vMNPQvFfgNmRWsJBi/intake-rumble-spew

Since shortform posts are, short and don't require high epistemic confidence and seem compatible with social media style posting, I will now write shortform posts regularly so that I get at least some writing done. This will help process the torrent of data and thoughts swirling around in my head like some chaotic vortex. It's hard to do anything with that vortex there, but writing helps quiet it and feels good, in particular, having written feels amazing even though the act of writing can be painful.

I think listing out a small selection of what I've read today will help with processing, maybe. I'm going to try it and see what happens!

Hacker News stuff: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25493804 - read the comment thread even though camera technology is not among my main or even tangential interests, not sure how much I value having read this.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25499361 - read the comment thread and the article. I value having read this, Apple and EVs (and the automotive industry generally) are contained within the set of things I find highly interested. Apple is a mystifying and infuriating company, but they do genuinely novel things and are legitimately their own huge niche within the computing industry, I find them worth studying. EVs are cool, and I want their to be more EVs.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25497772 - read the comment thread and skimmed the article. I value having read the commentary, it was okay. When I lived in the city I jaywalked ALL THE TIME and will probably continue to do so whenever I'm living in a city again, because on a non-busy street I don't think it makes time nor efficiency sense to walk a block or more just to cross at a crosswalk. Also, pedestrians should own the road, cars can shove off. I'm into cars and like them and think they are really cool machines, but the US really needs to change its transportation approaches and switch to walking / biking / bus / subway / rail / other public transit systems as the predominant transportation focuses instead of focusing as much as it does on cars. Living in a car dominated place is really frustrating, I like to walk and bike places but it's not safe to do that here. I miss the city.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25492880 - read the comment thread and read the article. I value having read both things, I love learning more about computing history + Apple stuff so reading both those things was fun and valuable to me. The discussion of Bay Area housing prices during the 80s and California living during the 80s was cool too.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25495334 - I enjoyed reading the comments here and found the perspectives shared within quite valuable and relatable. I'm way too into tech for my own good, I love the stuff, but got so burned out at my last job that I hated tech for a month or two after leaving it...am feeling better about things now though...but, I do have a lot of issues with the tech industry's culture, norms, etc. The tech industry feels like it's simultaneously as evil as the old oil and railroad barons of the US gilded age, but it also seems to represent so many utopic visions / promises, innovation, human improvement, and so on. I feel very conflicted about working in the tech industry. But, such is where my passions seem to be, and I won't ignore my passions. Besides, without great amounts of tech innovation we won't ever get to a world where death has been defeated, human augmentation is common and prudently done, and so on.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25495768 - Good! The US healthcare system feels like it took the worst from private enterprise and public enterprise and combined them into some Molochian nightmare. We should probably just copy Australia and start again from there for our healthcare system.

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/dLJv2CoRCgeC2mPgj/the-fallacy-of-gray - I liked this post, it illustrated something I feel strongly about: perfection may not be achievable but we can damn well try to make improvements and get as close to the asymptote of the limit of perfection as possible.

That seems like enough for now, I think I'll go actively message friends instead of reading more stuff for the moment, that seems more enjoyable. I enjoyed writing this shortform and will be doing this kind of thing again, it feels great that I wrote a bit about and processed some of the things I read today, it's nice!