November 17, 2024

Daily Log Digest – Week 45, 2024

2024-11-10

OS X CLI Utilities

Useful built-in macOS command-line utilities

Some nice ones:

• security
• networkQuality
• caffeinate

Uruguay and Teslas

TIL, Uruguay is a great place to import Teslas: Where to buy Teslas in Uruguay: imported straight from China - Rest of World

Uruguay, a small country with a robust public charging network, tax cuts for EVs, and minimal bureaucratic hurdles for car imports, has become a natural landing pad for Teslas.

2024-11-11

Economist on ADHD

Researchers are questioning if ADHD should be seen as a disorder

As somebody who recently realised I had very clear ADHD-like symptoms for most of my adult life, I have spent way too much time researching and understanding the disease. I have posted about some of the stuff I have uncovered before.

It is like being inside a pinball machine with a hundred balls,” says Lucy. “Three inner monologues,” says Phillip. “Like several tracks playing at the same time,” says Sarah. This is how people with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) describe what is going on in their heads at any given moment. With so many thoughts jostling for attention, it is a struggle to concentrate. Appointments fly by. Relationships founder. Feelings of inadequacy—alongside anxiety and depression—start to creep in.

…

But for a growing number of experts, the evolving scientific understanding of ADHD is leading them to question whether it should be seen as a disorder at all.

Instead, they say, ADHD may simply represent another point on the spectrum of neurodiversity: the range of different ways of thinking and behaving that count as normal. They point to other, non-pharmaceutical interventions that have been shown to make a difference to people with symptoms, from building a supportive environment that harnesses their strengths to offering tools that help them cope with the challenges of daily life.

Day of the Jackal

Loved the first four episodes: The Day of the Jackal (TV Mini Series 2024– ) - IMDb #tv

2024-11-12

Podcast Recap

• How money moves, with Erik Torenberg - Good summary of money, and also about the latest developments in the Stablecoin ecosystem and how it ties back to the core concepts of money
• Transcript: The geopolitics of chips — Chips in the USA - Good overview on the latest on the TSMC factory in Arizona, and Intel's efforts to manufacture cutting edge chips in US.
• Jancis Robinson on how to start collecting wine | FT Weekend Podcast - Good intro for somebody like me who has not interest in or knowledge about wine. Don't plan to start collecting, but the podcast was informative.

LLMs and Go

Some links to work with LLMs in Go #golang #llm

• ML in Go with a Python sidecar - Eli Bendersky's website
• GitHub - skeeto/illume: scriptable command line program for LLM interfacing
• Everything I've learned so far about running local LLMs

2024-11-13

Math Roadmap

Good roundup of math topics.

thanks to @aagrabakijasmine on X

Dating Standards and Hot People

Too much exposure to hot people is warping our dating standards | Dazed #dating

These quotes are so relatable, but the whole article is well worth reading!

It’s been well established that the digital ubiquity of “unrealistic beauty standards” is whittling away at our self-esteem and mental health. What has been unpacked less exhaustively, however, is the impact it’s having on our dating lives. Online, men are calling Sydney Sweeney and Margot Robbie “mid”, rating the latter a seven out of ten on the universal scale of hotness, and a lot of my gorgeous friends lament never being hit on in real life. “Back in the olden days they [men] would see like 200 baddies in their whole life and now it’s like, they are desensitised to it,” posited influencer Tinx, to resounding agreement on TikTok and beyond. Over half of US adults say dating has gotten worse over the last ten years. Has overexposure to good-looking people skyrocketed our standards?

…

A 2014 study conducted by Carlota Batres, assistant professor of psychology at Franklin & Marshall College and the director of the Preferences Lab, found that participants with access to the internet favoured more masculine men and thinner, more feminine women. “The internet influences our perceptions of what it is that we find attractive,” she tells Dazed. It’s a theory bolstered by a later study by Batres, which found that our visual diet – or the faces we see most (on or offline) – shapes our perception of what’s beautiful. It’s no wonder that a dissonance is occurring when we step out of the lacquered digital realm into the real world of idiosyncrasies and textured skin, where we’re illuminated by fluorescent overhead lighting instead of ring lights, and you see every angle of someone’s face.

It’s a take echoed by psychologist and researcher Michelle Drouin: “I think you can put it down to basic habituation. We have now become habituated to the images that we’ve seen online and we think that that’s our reality… Physical attraction is what makes someone walk across the room for someone else. And if you don’t have that initial prime attraction, because you’re so habituated to all the beautiful, perfect images that you see online, then what’s the trigger that makes you walk across a room?”

Life is a Gift

Nov 11 was Dostoevsky's birthday, and X seems to be flooded with a bunch of quotes. This one caught my eye

2024-11-14

Lampy

Came across this really cool lamp: Lampy – shop.absurd.industries

Linguistic Observer Effect

How the word 'slop' went mainstream.

the linguistic observer effect - The Etymology Nerd

By lending “slop” the legitimacy of the New York Times, we would instantly be elevating it against potential synonyms, giving it more of a platform to spread than its competitors. Alternatively, we could kill the word by making it seem unnatural, like Taylor Lorenz likely did with her 2021 article about the then-nascent word “cheugy.” I called this the Linguistic Observer Effect: by publicly observing a word, we inadvertently alter its trajectory.

Ben went on to publish his article, and I wrote a substack post wondering what would happen to the word.

Six months later, I think we have our answer. “Slop” has reached sustained usage in the media, and I’ve even heard my friends casually use the phrase (though I know they weren’t saying it earlier this year). This almost definitely happened because of the Times piece:

tty demystified

The TTY demystified #tty #tools

Tribalism in Human Beings

Tribalism and Modern Elections - by Alice Evans #evolution #culture

book recommendation from the article: Tribal by Michael Morris: 9780735218093 | PenguinRandomHouse.com: Books

Two Fundamental Psychological Systems:

• Peer Instinct: Humans are uniquely attuned to peer behaviors, conforming to group norms to gain acceptance and avoid isolation. This creates social codes.
• Hero Instinct: People look up to high-status individuals as models of admired behavior, which promotes status-seeking through valued community contributions.

Tribalism in the Digital Age: Epistemic Tribalism In a fragmented media landscape, people form echo chambers, valuing in-group cohesion over objective truth.

How to do great work

From: x.com

2024-11-15

Been rewatching Andor S1 since I tweeted about it a couple of days ago.

Tokyo

Lots of Indians are going to Tokyo, and I keep seeing pics on X. But they also seem to be doing the same stereotypical things, that I did back when I was there several years ago.

This NYT article about visiting Tokyo has a slightly offbeat 3-day itinerary: 36 Hours in Tokyo: Things to Do and See - The New York Times #tokyo #japan #travel #offbeat

Jung Quote

"People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn theosophy by heart, or mechanically repeat mystic texts from the literature of the whole world – all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls."

Carl Jung Psychology and Alchemy

The Bro Vote

I read about this in the Vox Culture newsletter from Rebecca Jennings. The newsletter doesn't seem to be accessible online, but there is a members exclusive article which covers the same thing: From Joe Rogan to Theo Von, Gen Z podcasts and livestreams helped Trump win | Vox #trump

Could it be that growing up in a fundamentally different media environment than generations before them, one populated by individual influencers who often preach the values of entrepreneurship, self-improvement, and, ultimately, self-interest over everything else, galvanized the youngest voters to vote for a man who shared that same spirit? Or could it be that young men have helped make this content popular because they like what it says?

What’s clear is that Donald Trump catered to the bro vote and won.

…

Ten years later, men are even lonelier, more likely to be single, more skeptical, and more afraid than ever. They find solace and community online, in places that older folks still don’t understand, where they see idealized versions of masculinity winning. They cheer on UFC fights and boxing matches, use “edgy” slurs, trade in risky crypto investments, bootlick Silicon Valley billionaires, listen to toxic dating advice, and denigrate women.

They vote for a man who has done everything you’re not supposed to do — steal, lie, rape, idolize Hitler — because his election fulfills their fantasy that men really can get away with whatever they want.

For now, it seems they’re right.

Male Loneliness

The article above about The Bro Vote triggered a journey down the rabbit hole of male loneliness.

My starting points were two articles I had come across in Sept from Alice Evans (and linked in the daily log as well), which I re-read:

• Automation, Ageing & Men's Loss of Status - by Alice Evans
• Ghosting the Patriarchy: Female Empowerment and the Crisis of Masculinity

Found this report titled State of American Men 2023 from one of Alice Evans' other articles (which is only tangential related). PDF here (the executive summary is great): STATE-OF-AMERICAN-MEN-2023.pdf

Read a few more articles but came away a bit unsatisfied. Decided to ask ChatGPT to give me a succinct breakdown, and I thought it did a pretty good job.

Male loneliness has increased in recent times due to shifting societal norms, changing labor markets, and evolving relationship dynamics. Traditional forms of male bonding, such as workplace camaraderie and community-based activities, have diminished with the rise of remote work and urbanization. These changes have led to fewer opportunities for men to form and maintain deep friendships. Research by Niobe Way, author of Deep Secrets: Boys’ Friendships and the Crisis of Connection, highlights how boys are often socialized out of forming close emotional bonds as they age, leading to a lack of intimate friendships in adulthood. This socialization, combined with modern lifestyles that prioritize individualism over community, exacerbates male loneliness.

Additionally, the decline in marriage rates and delays in forming long-term relationships play a significant role. Sociologist Eric Klinenberg's work in Going Solo reveals how the increasing prevalence of single-person households—particularly among men—contributes to feelings of isolation. Digital dating culture, while ostensibly expanding opportunities to connect, often fails to provide the deep, meaningful relationships men seek. This is compounded by the fact that men are less likely than women to maintain social networks outside of romantic relationships, leaving them more vulnerable to loneliness when those connections are absent or fail.

Finally, mental health stigmas continue to inhibit men from seeking help or sharing their struggles. The societal expectation for men to embody self-reliance and emotional stoicism discourages them from building supportive networks. Studies such as those by Brené Brown on vulnerability show that the inability to express emotions openly hampers relational depth. These combined factors underscore how recent societal shifts have uniquely affected men, leading to increased loneliness and a pressing need for cultural and structural solutions.

Kyla Scanlon on How Trump Won

How Trump Won, What Happens Next, and How Disconnects Drove Democracy

Kyla is already great at taking disparate narratives and summarizing them. So I am not going to attempt to quote from her piece. Just go read the whole thing, it's great!

The majority of the article is focused on economic and policy analysis, but even she refers to the idea of Trump winning over young male voters, by linking out to this Bloomberg article: Trump’s Appeal to Young Men in Three Charts: Election 2024 - Bloomberg

More Trump and Election Analysis

Just gonna collect the random links under one heading:

• Donald Trump won the vibes. Now America's anti-democratic coalition seeks vengeance | Salon.com
• Five Reasons Why Trump Won Again – SAPIENS
• The changes in vibes - why did they happen? - Marginal REVOLUTION (this is pre-election but turned out to be really prescient)

Selection Effects

Selection Effects by Byrne Hobart in the Capital Gains newsletter

The last para is killer, and I can really relate to it as a person with wayyy too many interests

One irony of all of this is that these filters are self-reinforcing: if you select into a particular peer group that's really excited about political activism, recreational math, vegan cooking, cryptography, or whatever, you get constant evidence from your daily life that these are universally interesting topics. And if you've selected into these groups, you'd probably rather live in a world where that perception is true! So being aware of selection effects has tradeoffs: you'll know more about the rest of the world if you periodically check yourself in that way, but a lot of what you learn makes the world a slightly less friendly place.

Living Fossils - Just Tell Me What To Do

"Just Tell Me What To Do" - by Josh Zlatkus #psychology #therapy

Yet another banger of an article from the awesome folks at Living Fossils. It's so beautifully written and yet hard to summarize. It covers the usual topics that show up in other Living Fossils posts around technology upending culture and religion and the limits of therapy.

Humans rely on many sense-making methods to patch together an understanding of the world around them. One of these methods is, of course, our senses. If I touch a bush and get pricked, that’s enough information for me to avoid that bush in the future. However, if I want to know how the bush came to be prickly, then I must rely on more than my senses. I must instead rely on something like religion, culture, or science. I think of these as sense-making institutions; they try to explain what our built-in senses cannot.

…

So here’s the big picture. Science has stolen like a fox into the henhouse and killed many of our ancient ways of making sense of the world around us. For some questions, science has provided more accurate answers which tend to be less comforting than those made, at least in part, for comfort. For other questions, science has discredited existing answers without replacing them. It’s up to those in the modern world to fill in the blanks. To some extent, all of us are playing Mad Libs.

Obviously, the increased accuracy, transparency, and choice that science offers can be good. At the same time, the shifting, open landscape that it creates can be deeply confusing and disorienting. It often leads people to seek shelter, to cast around for something—or someone—to tell them what to do.

Andor

The Power & Beauty of Revolution in ‘Andor’ | by Nick | Medium

The quality of Andor’s writing is clear here. The directness of its politics is demonstrated. And the series underpins one thing: only through sacrifice, collective action, and the long slog of inches gained, will true revolution come.

2024-11-16

Spent the whole day outside and did fun things!

Dot Mandala

Made this dot mandala at StoryZone and had loads of fun. We were given a 3 min intro with the tools and off we went for two hours just randomly trying out things. I chose to focus on bright colors and simple patterns. Check out the result below.

HSR Food

Tried two places in HSR Layout:

• Gavran Misal: This has been around for a while, but I never got around to trying it earlier. Finally tried it today and it was great 👍🏽!
• Godavari Cafe HSR: A new place that opened up recently. I believe they are marketing themselves as an Andhra style darshini place with good outdoor seating.