Today's thoughts
Funny
Thanks for this, Kottke.
Zed
Zed continues to be great. I’m still using it to remotely edit my notes. And I’m still flopping back and forth on Vim mode. The latest flop is in favor of it.
Allergies
JTR is right: ‘Tis the season. I’ve been taking Allegra for the past two days, and I think it made me feel really groggy. I’ve felt that side effect with Zyrtec before, but I was hoping Allegra would be more mild. I might prefer to suffer the allergies at the moment. They haven't been too bad yet.
Information hygiene?
I read ldstephens’s post, The Trillionaire Problem, where he talks about an episode of the Pivot podcast. I’ve had this podcast recommended to me before. The subject of this one is the possibility that Elon Musk becomes the world's first trillionaire and controls the world’s communications backbone.
It reminded me that I really don’t like “what if” speculation about worrisome future possibilities over which I have no influence. I find myself almost immediately fatigued by it. But a lot of people seem drawn to it. That’s not meant to be a criticism of those people; rather, I’ve half-assumed those other folks have more intellectual drive than I do and therefore find this stuff more interesting to explore.
I asked Gemini for thoughts on the matter. (I wish I could snap my fingers and make AI disappear, but since I can’t, I do use it for some things.)
The takeaways aren’t shocking:
Worrying about things you can’t control creates unnecessary stress.
But, there’s a middle ground between head-in-the-sand avoidance and fixating on speculation about events outside your control.
AI said I was practicing "information hygiene" and suggested I ask myself: “If I had this information about the future, would I do anything differently tomorrow?” If the answer is no, then it’s more reasonable to just avoid it. I think that’s a decent approach.
I'm gonna go skateboard now.