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I've gifted a couple friends Midori notebooks before. On the go, portable enough to carry in a jacket or back pocket, I'm partial to the A6 blank notebook. Otherwise, I like the free form factor of A5/A4 loose leaf paper, particularly on a spacious desk.

Oh, yes, exceedingly so. I found it to be extraordinary[1]. It has been on the back of my mind to-read since late summer of 2019, where the recommendation came from a soft-spoken lecturer.

1: For example, ranging from "...Nippers would sometimes impatiently rise from his seat, and stooping over his table, spread his arms wide apart, seize the whole desk..." to "...at leisure intervals I looked a little into 'Edwards on the Will,' and 'Priestly on Necessity'..."

Just finished reading, for the first time, the short story "Bartleby, The Scrivener" by Melville.

I have also been reading the essays in David Foster Wallace in Context[1], published in November of 2022.

And I'm looking forward to reading here soon the seemingly first ever English translation of Philipp Mainländer's The Philosophy of Redemption[2], just published several weeks ago.

1: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/david-foster-wallace-in...

2: https://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-Redemption-Philipp-Mainl%C...

UCSC should also have a psychedelics studies program (is there any better place?), particularly on account of their already unique (and wonderful) History of Consciousness program.

I remember an old and dear chemist friend of mine there who made me aware of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). I still have his copy of Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History he lent me after taking a sociology course on drugs in society, if I recall correctly.

The advice is excessive and idealistic. But otherwise, I think the default screen resolutions render text too small. On my laptop, I prefer the scaled resolution of 1024x640, compared to the default 1280x800. Other settings I use is increasing display contrast and making use of display color filters (filter: color tint; intensity: max; color: red).

> there is a whole new appreciation of being there

And yet, the always unsuccessful attempt of the photograph: "To annihilate itself as medium, to be no longer a sign but the thing itself" (Barthes, Camera Lucida).

Great latern analysis on your blog! I intially thought the Comet was right up my alley but seems like the Jupiter is a happy medium.

For as long as I may remember, I've had the same problem. I detest artificial light and I'm a sucker for the twilit, moonlit, and candlelit. Seems like modernization means having every single dark corner illuminated.

Aren't there types of candles that are long-lasting and which don't give off the seemingly bad chemicals I tend to hear about?

I've tried different browsers, more so these past few years, and always end up back with Ungoogled Chromium. It seemingly uses half of the memory of Firefox.

Although, the "pact with the digital has a price, which is this drastic loss of 'measure.'"[1]

1: https://www.publicbooks.org/changes/

A rare occurrence, a few months ago, I came across one (re: a dissertation that is both entertaining and for the lay): Neocosmicism: God and the Void (2013) by Ellen Greenham[1].

It seems like it eventually came into fruition as a full-fledged book: After Engulfment: Cosmicism and Neocosmicism in H. P. Lovecraft, Philip K. Dick, Robert A. Heinlein, and Frank Herbert (2022) by Ellen Greenham[2].

1: https://researchportal.murdoch.edu.au/esploro/outputs/doctor...

2: https://www.hippocampuspress.com/other-authors/nonfiction/af...

> The web of relationships extends to music as well.

Reminds me of a recent, first time listen of John Cale's rendition of Dylan Thomas's "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1dX00JlTF0

See also Josh Comeau's interactive guide to flexbox: https://www.joshwcomeau.com/css/interactive-guide-to-flexbox...

> classical texts are enmeshed in a dense web of relationships that can surprise and invigorate us, even after thousands of years

"[E]nmeshed in a web of relationships", i.e., intertextuality[1].

Further reading: Hermann Broch's novel, The Death of Virgil, and Simone Weil's lesser known compilation of writings, Intimations of Christianity Among the Ancient Greeks.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intertextuality

As for generative AI: "mimicry is always sinister" (Friendship's Death (1987), Peter Wollen).

It might be that the apophatic is best understood with it's counterpart in mind: the cataphatic. Whereas in the apophatic we are annihilating (sculpting into) whatever is not God (e.g., the finite), the cataphatic is constructing (amassing into) the good, the true, and the beautiful.

Furthermore:

In theology, the apophatic as a clearing of the unreal.

In mathematics, the invert as uncovering beliefs.

If you haven't already, the music from the 70s is worth exploring - some outstanding stuff[1]. I'm in my 20s and just started listening more intently to the era's music as a summer activity. Doesn't hurt Tidal has a fair amount of albums in max quality (up to 24-bit, 192kHz).

1. Jethro Tull's Aqualung and Supertramp's Crime of the Century to name a couple albums.

> I've never done a dive into package managers and just used what's been available.

See the Nix Package Manager[1].

1. https://checkoway.net/musings/nix/

Check out Franz Wright.

If only robbing a bank could get you state-sponsored Clojure (Quil) generative art freedom.