interesting discussion … well, for all of reddit’s flaws, at least I’ve never encountered people on there using “gay” as a diss, when saying “weird/dumb” would work just as well. Boo to homophobic language.

can I see the original comment the mod is referring to?

it’s kind of like the cherry on top or the icing on the cake

referring to your profile, I agree that nationalism sucks (and doesn’t make sense). The alternative is probably to learn the histories of countries.

I need to motivate myself to make wood ear mushrooms more. So good, but it’s a chore/process because they are sold as the dried form. So 1) soak in cold water (my grandma specified that they need to be soaked in cold water … I didn’t think to ask why), then, 1a) pick off the hard stubby ends, 2) boil, 3) add in to some dish (cook with sauce). The whole thing takes an hour? It just takes a little extra planning.

Last night I reread the ending of A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki. I had forgotten how the plot had been resolved… It was a complex braiding of different people’s feelings and their choices and actions. To put it simply, it involved Ruth in the present time, and Nao in a past time (but it also involved Nao’s great-grandma in a dream). The emotions hit differently this time for me. The last time I read this book was before my own grandma died. Reading the ending, where Nao’s great-grandma is dying, and how before she did, she encouraged Nao and her dad to live (生) … was suddenly way more emotional for me then the last time I read it. That time, years ago, I suppose the feeling was like, ‘yes, this makes sense. This is one of the puzzle pieces that resolves things.’ Sad, but satisfying.

I woke up this morning with this chorus section in my head, “Hold onto hope if you got it. Don’t let it go for nobody. They say that dreaming is free. I wouldn’t care what it cost me.” I couldn’t place it at first, like ‘ooh this is a familiar song, but who is it by?’ (It’s the song ‘26’ by Hayley Williams of Paramore)

Oh, I just noticed a funny connection. Towards the end of the story, Ruth and her husband Oliver have realized that currently, in their present time, Nao is not 16 anymore, but probably around 26 or 27 years old.

Connecting these two works, the ‘hope’ in the song refers to how at the end of the story, even though Nao’s personal story has resolved for Ruth, she still doesn’t know what has happened with her, since Nao lived in Japan, during the year 2011, when the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami happened, which then also led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.

So the book ends with Ruth writing a letter back to Nao. Earlier, she and her husband had realized that somehow, by believing in Nao and what she wrote ‘to them’ in her diary, they were actually causing the diary to continue to a conclusion, rather than ending abruptly. And their belief in Nao, somehow resonated back towards themselves. So even though Ruth has no way of knowing if Nao had died along with so many others in the tsunami, she wrote her a letter, hoping that her belief in her still carries meaning.

🍓 a 2 lb. box of organic strawberries on sale for $5.99 at the store today

🥑Avocado ice cream (from a company that makes Filipino flavored ice creams) $12.99 (1.5 quarts)

The organic strawberry sale was a surprise. I saw the avocado ice cream last time and was debating if I should try it despite the high price.

… it’s good! And has a much lower sugar content than other ice creams. Also, for color, they used turmeric and red cabbage … surprising since it’s the mild green color of pistachio ice cream.

the character of Nao Yasutani in , by Ruth Ozeki. This book helped make Zen/Buddhism approachable and understandable for me.

Nao, and her dad, both wanted to commit suicide… then her great-grandma, a Zen Buddhist nun was dying, and left a message… Ruth, the narrator, also had a strange dream connection with Nao’s dad. This made Nao and her dad want to live again. Her dad worked on an internet anonymity tool, and Nao went on to study French to read the writings of Marcel Proust. Ruth the narrator, feels happy with her life with Oliver and their cat.

The coffee table and book has been outlined. Finally got the perspective decent without erasing the paper too much. The only tiny problem is that my table doesn’t really have room for the rivet details that the original one has (those little circles on the edge), but whatever, that’s okay.

#theowlhouse #ink #sketch

is he trying to look like a pope?

nice and simple, except comment threads are annoying to scroll because when you click into a comment then go back, you have to scroll all over again.

didn’t Ray Dalio recently

write an article on LinkedIn about how the world is in a transition phase, and we are leaving the model of having one main country be the ‘world power’?

also it’s hard to imagine that the chinese currency would become the main world currency in the way that the USD has been…

oh that app sounds helpful! my other strategy along with the night shift mode, and lowering brightness is to just not use screens much after like 7 pm … meditate …

it also might be related to the fact that I haven’t been to get my eyes checked since 2019, and I found out that my left lens prescription was a little too high. So I got that fixed, and got transitions lenses for outside. Soooo much better.

I think it’s not so much the ‘light’ that affects my sleep, but more like the speedy pacing of online activity that gets me mentally jittery. A lot of online activity tends to be about ‘volatility’ in many areas.

not in other countries, and also not for Taylor Swift or her fans.

I started with chapt. 1, then skipped to read some of the later chapters, including this one. The main thing is, as I read it I get it, but afterwards I don’t really remember it. So I think it takes re-reading and taking notes.

I recently started to use the ‘night shift’ mode on my phone and laptop. That adds like a warm yellow hue, also I lower the brightness.

This was mainly cuz I noticed a sensitivity to light/dark contrasts… didn’t really have any issues with sleeping though.

cute how they are rounder and puffier than housecats

I had to take notes watching the interview between Lyn Alden and Max DeMarco. This is from ~ the first four minutes.

I really liked how she describes human history through the lens of the history of money, and also the history of technology. Specifically, the technology of information transfer + communication technologies, like the telegraph (!) and how that ties in with how people could exchange money in different types of transactions. I never thought about the ‘settlement’ part of it. I just thought, okay transaction is done, and done.

But it is important to separate out the ‘settlement’ part of transactions, because … that is where the centralized authorities come in (mainly banks, but also, governments). And in this case, American centralized authorities having this … big influence over developing countries. And a lot of unfair things have happened.

And so, following the 2008 global(?) financial crisis, Bitcoin was invented in 2009. The first time that not only are digital transactions possible due to internet encryption, but now also, digital settlements.

So, digital transactions are the digital paperwork and records that are sent between people. Digital settlements are … actual digital money (composed of open source software code). This was a big problem because if not for this code, you’d just be sending pictures of money, which means every time you send that picture, you just copied and pasted that money amount.

So I think that’s the gist of it. It took watching the video a 2nd time, played at .75x speed, and frequent pausing in the first four minutes to take notes… and also reading certain chapters of beforehand, which served as a warm up to familiarize on these concepts.

#Bitcoin #lynalden #maxdemarco

The proportions of this coffee table behind Luz is really hard to get right. I think it made me realize something about perspective drawing, which is - lines need to be parallel. As in, the main lines of the room (floor/wall) should line up in a parallel way with the rectangular furniture in the room.

I think I finally got my version of the coffee table to look right in the ‘perspective way’. So next is to add the details, then outline with ink.

Then maybe I can finally paint something and add some color.

Watercolor practice is so slow. Based on the reference drawings I’m choosing, I can’t do the actual ‘color’ part until the drawings is right… and the drawing part already has its own difficulties (drawing in a background)…

So my ‘achievable goal’ is to outline the coffee table in the Owl House. 🦉

ooh favorite video. So easy to follow and understand, and also funny at the end. A weird coincidence - about a week ago, I saw two posts on r/bitcoin that was asking the same question that was bought up at around the 16 min. mark - pointing out that there are about 70 *million* millionaires in the world. I saved that post because it really finally visualized the perspective of the ‘scarcity’ that is a main feature of BTC for me.