gbjw

Jesus, Simone Weil, John Wilson, Norm Macdonald, Cormac Mccarthy, David Cayley, William Blake

I have a PhD in STEM. I started believing in my late 20s in graduate school. Readings that were influential included: accounts of high profile scientists who were also believers (e.g., Freeman Dyson), Tolstoy's "Confession", poets like William Blake and thinkers like Simone Weil, philosophers like Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard, and apologetics from C.S. Lewis and GK Chesterton.

My motivation to read any of this was downstream of some other internal feeling that I couldn't shake and slowly began to gnaw at me in my 20s -- that what I could sense around me (or sense at all) couldn't be all that "is". I suppose one way to phrase this is that I became increasingly disturbed by my inability to answer fundamental "where?" or "why?" questions (e.g., "why did the Big Bang happen?", "where is the singularity?", etc.). The standard retorts that some things are simply mysteries didn't satisfy me. Instead I started to suspect that much of what I thought was "territory" was actually just various "maps" that people have created in their minds to help navigate the territory. Around this time I stumbled onto Immanuel Kant's antinomies and realized that many people had thought along these lines in the past. Once I was on this trail, I've never strayed.

> Fun example from a friend: his family were extremely direct but his girlfriend’s family was very indirect. As a young naive guy he was having dinner with his girlfriend’s family and her father asked: “is there any salt” and my friend looked up at the glass salt shaker and said “yes” and continued with his meal.

Are we supposed to side with your friend here? The fact that he couldn't infer that the father might want some salt is, at best, very shortsighted and pedantic. It's roughly equivalent to a teacher responding to "Can I go to the washroom?" with "I don't know, can you?" -- except in this case it's not said in jest.

Don't think it's 16:9, just lower PPI than the air -- Neo: 2408x1506, Air: 2560x1664.

On the announcement page, they say "Studio Display XDR replaces Pro Display XDR" in the footnotes, so doubtful.

Yeah the quote assumes you're riding without speed limits. In a typical commute, it does get easier once your cardiovascular ability exceeds the upper speed limit given the route.

Strange "curse" if it can be rid of with some perspective change.

You think it's a curse to be alive?

“ Intelligence is one of the greatest human gifts. But all too often a search for knowledge drives out the search for love. This is something else I've discovered for myself very recently. I present it to you as a hypothesis: Intelligence without the ability to give and receive affection leads to mental and moral breakdown, to neurosis, and possibly even psychosis. And I say that the mind absorbed in and involved in itself as a self-centered end, to the exclusion of human relationships, can only lead to violence and pain.” - Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon

Because we all sold out to the man. Culturally, we have chosen the lavish life promised under the man's umbrella, to doing the work of trying to go our own way. We now reap what we've sown.

Whoosh.

Fruit is plant flesh that is meant (designed?) to be eaten.

“Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” - Aeschylus