Points to Ponder

08:11 Monday, 5 January 2026
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Words: 361

Finally had a decent night's sleep. Still coughing.

Wasn't particularly inspired, but figured I'd drop by and offer something anyway.

I've mostly adapted to the Apple wireless keyboard, though I'm still having some trouble hitting some keys reliably. I don't think I'll be doing a lot of writing in the stand-up position. Or I need more time to get used to it.

It is nice to crank the thing up and stand for awhile though.

Joan Westenberg hits another one out of the park:

There is a rude but clarifying question here: are you collecting information to use it, or are you collecting information because collecting feels like intellectual work? If it's the latter, you're not building a Second Brain; you're building an anxiety management system that happens to look like productivity.

RTWT, as the acronym goes.

I think a key element of Joan's "embodied" approach to knowledge is, "Write what you remember in your own words. If you can't remember enough to write anything useful, you've just learned it wasn't worth saving."

And it's also the greatest challenge for all of us who swim in a digital ocean, where our faculty of attention has atrophied to the point where it exists only to serve the novelty-craving part of our conditioned minds.

One advantage of getting older is that the whole "future me" project is much smaller, and therefore more manageable. It can feel a little melancholy too, but that's better than anxiety.

Here's a post from Kevin Kelly that feels just ripe with sentiment, good-vibes, wisdom of the ages (sages?), Beat Generation-adjacent, I got my Kerouac thing goin', ain't I precious?

Read that thing. Seriously. Luxuriate in warm, golden glow of deep spiritual insight born of personal experience.

Then think of two words: Survivor bias.

Two words that never crossed his mind. Two words that are a privileged middle finger to every victim of senseless cruelty or neglect. I guess they just weren't manifesting enough, or something.

Anyway, sorry to be so, you know, cruel. But I'd like to extend a little kindness to those whose struggle every day, many of whom don't survive.

Carry on.

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