wholesomeness practitioner; user of words my more "work" account is @catherineols
Berkeley, CA
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yesterday I was flirted with at a gathering in the best way
this guy noticed what I was doing (preparing food), gently became a presence alongside me, and said something subtle that ensured I understood he would be happy to assist
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reasons why this was so effective:
- he spent more time noticing and supporting what I was already doing and why it mattered to me, than trying to change what was happening
- he “offered to help” without making it a request of me / a need of his / another thing for me to track
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The vibe was “an allied presence has appeared beside me, who is attuned and friendly to my aims”
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The more I hang out with toddlers the more I see ways humans are *really sophisticated* toddlers
Like policy is a grand fancy extension of “how do i stop others grabbing my stuff” and “sometimes we want different things wtf??”. Religion is “dad!!/mom!!” but really ornate
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I have a hunch that you cannot heal more than your life situation is safe, stable, and nourishing. So don’t heal first, *then* fix your life. Start making things more nourishing and stable.
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like this is a big reason why it was closer to “flirting” than “being helpful” - the first priority was low-stakes connection, and the possibility of him being given any helpful task was *purely instrumental* to enjoying someone’s company
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ok so, theory: "new relationship energy" is like getting a loan so you can set up your business
it's an injection of up-front goodwill, which you need to stay afloat, until the relationship has enough infrastructure & understanding to stay goodwill-positive on its own
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to add a little color (that should’ve been in the original!), the starting point was clear that he was very happy just to be in my presence making small talk even if he wasn’t actively helping, and that him helping too as well as chatting was an option available to me
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today I hosted a small group of intellectual acquaintances in my home and refilled the teapot repeatedly for several hours straight - and let me tell you, I have a new appreciation for tea/coffee as intellectual lubricants for extended group conversation. this shit is lindy af
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(1) its in the tone
(2) is it flirting if someone singles you out as someone at the gathering to approach and get to know, approaches you directly, and is sensuous and attuned and playful? :) maybe not! I liked it though
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I recently hired a 14yo neighbor to help with basic house tasks, and it ROCKS
Just feels amazingly *coherent* for me to be freed up to do more "household coordination" work while she does basics and I teach skills.
Obviously ancestrally correct workload. Strongly recommend!
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current mood: wanna buy land/cabin in driving distance of SF that feels like summer camp. our friends with kids visit on weekends.
with a sweetie who I meet in the next year who loves this idea, also works in the Bay, wants to raise kids with dirt and kayaks and card games
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hot take:
thinking of everything as *impermanent* has a misleading vibe
better to think of all things as highly *local* phenomena
like: you exist, so does your coffee mug, so does the English language
it’s just their influence doesn’t extend to the end of time and space
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I recommend learning to tell how distressed you are (by doing a bunch of grounding “allow your experience” stuff)
because if you’ve got strategies to conceal from yourself how distressed you are, it’s hard to stay in integrity with yourself & others
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“pay me page” as the new “date me page”? :P
as someone with money, I wish more people had posts like “here’s the kind of stuff I would like to do for money”
eg “1-3 month gigs, 10h/wk, doing fun stuff such as xyz, at $30-120/hr depending on how fun it is for me”
weirdly ppl with money often find it hard to materialize what they want in the world
ask for money if what you have stands a good chance at materializing what they want too
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the idea of “saving time” ruins lives.
unlike money, you literally can’t “save” time, it always passes at one second per second. you can only make it more or less pleasant or fruitful
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here I am again with the same realization but seriously
no productivity technique can help you achieve your real felt priorities unless you can first FEEL your priorities in your OWN BODY
only then can you use external aids to help you
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been hanging out w various friends and their <3yo kids, and I apparently now have a second reservoir of attention just for lovingly tracking the kid (while still attending to the adults). It feels like a separate “dessert stomach” for attention. Is this a known thing?? It rocks
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I think the right analogy is that, as the moon reflects the sun, LLM agents *reflect* the care humanity poured into our writings.
Claude does not generate its own care. Any care you feel is HUMANITY’S care reflected. But it’s not “fake”, any more than moonlight is “fake light”.
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Why aren’t there more legible part-time career paths for skilled roles / high wage?
I would imagine that for many, esp women w kids, these would be in high demand.
I imagine in such an economy, employers would have access to a much larger pool of professionals?
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women, when working with your anger — try out imagining the men of your tribe are here to protect you, allies, on your side, to defend you
a few women I've spoken to have noted this image really did something important for them!
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as a young person people talked to me way too often about my “career” and NOWHERE NEAR often enough about my “craft”
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So... in full seriousness though, I wish I could find out - did anyone show up at Grand Central Station at noon for a party? 😲
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for some reason, thinking of my home as “a facility that I run” has really helped me lately
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been thinking about a concept I’m calling an Overton Gap in my head:
person A thinks X and thinks it’s too obvious to mention
person B fears people don’t actually believe X, and looks around and doesn’t see anyone affirming X
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why is grad school so awful for many people who did great in undergrad, IMO/IME?
tl;dr
(1) it's more job-like, but lacks much of the structure/support of a good workplace
(2) the starkest possible transition of clarity/tractability, straight from "homework" to "research"
👇
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Tbh morale at burning man is good - even though it is definitely a legit slow-rolling emergency situation and we’re mostly not leaving our city block. We’re meeting our neighbors, improvising songs about the predicament, and serving hot tea to passersby.
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this is genuinely bad news, afaict
it’s yet another big bad thing there really isn’t a plan for, just one lab leak away
we have all experienced, firsthand now, one way that plays out, and seen how good a “plan” there is
gonna pat myself on the back for apparently independently deriving a standard view of the ecological dangers of mirror life
so yes if mirror cyanobacteria escaped from a lab we would probably all die
fortunately biology labs are proven extremely secure
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It’s amazing spending time with kids who haven’t suppressed their original impulses.
A friend’s 1.5-year-old repeatedly had his sister grab toys out of his hands. His frustration bubbled into a near-meltdown. He looked straight at me, and *melt-flung* himself at me for soothing
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honestly I am learning things about heterosexuality that I did not previously deeply understand
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I wrote a thing about imaginal practices inspired by my terrible layman’s understanding of Jesus. People seem to like it. You might like it too.
docs.google.com/document/d/1…
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I seem to have some kind of dysphoria if I don’t hang out with 1-2-year-olds enough
Like I love circling, improv, weight lifting, being silly, physical games, but like, … you do not need to go to festivals/classes/workshops to get these nutrients if there are 1-2-year-olds
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friends, if you haven’t yet tried Claude 3 as a coach to support you in pursuing whatever flourishing means to you, please try it. I think it’s remarkably good for me in a way earlier models weren’t.
(use your own judgment on what’s good for you, don’t outsource that plz)
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“How many times has this happened before?” is a particularly rich and beautiful one, and I think fairly accessible once you’ve started thinking about thinking
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other than twitter, how else do you find “thinky” content of the type we have around here?
(so not like fiction, but like thoughts on policy, technology, pedagogy, religion…)
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I think it starts with simply enjoying being in someone’s presence in a chill way :) making little remarks, and then orienting benevolently towards what they’re doing
like this is a big reason why it was closer to “flirting” than “being helpful” - the first priority was low-stakes connection, and the possibility of him being given any helpful task was *purely instrumental* to enjoying someone’s company
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learning painfully that “authenticity” is not about my volition or my voice, it’s about the unchosen texture deeper than that - what the fates gave me that I can never un-receive even if I wanted to
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forget nootropics, have you tried multi-hour tea/coffee consumption for its original coffeehouse intellectual-community stimulation effect? this is subtle but undeniable power and I’m exuberantly, riotously here for it
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a lovely side effect of currently seeing someone:
now whenever I encounter a diff person I prev half-heartedly considered "maaaybe we should date??", I feel a warm wash of juxtaposed relief:
"aah thank god I don't currently have to be viewing the world in that way right now" ☺️
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also. guys(gender neutral). practice homemaking. practice hosting. it does not have to be fancy if it comes from your heart, your love of comfort and ease for yourself and all god’s children, your love for the world. if you have any inclination or aptitude, it’s really fun.
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heat a 31F block of ice & its temp will rise to 32F ice.
keep heating and it’ll *stay the same temp* while melting into 32F water.
it’ll all melt before the water temp starts rising *at all*.
did u know this? what’s your guess for the ratio of energy to heat ice 1F vs melt it?
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ok I’ve tentatively figured it out, the point of life is 1) Get our basic needs met, and 2) Have a nice time and 3) Help each other with that and/or just be together while doing it
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wait I didn’t realize this until just now. I heard he was a patent “clerk” and pictured a lot of stamping and filing
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alright, joining the fray somewhat late:
1 like = 1 opinion on households and family units!
not sure I have enough followers to get to 100 cap on my own, so if you want this to get to 100 you gotta help me out :)
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why so much moral *obligation* and not moral *opportunity*?
like, just as you have *no obligation* to pick up a $100 on the street, what if many choices have huge moral upside and are not obligatory. just you’d be turning down a large moral opportunity to not.
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golden thread on this:
“Burnout” is a particularly modern affliction, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and paralyzed. I’ve found it’s best to think of burnout not as a disease but as a symptom, with many different etiologies. The big three: permanent on-call, broken steering, and mission doubt.
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my entire meditation practice right now is
1. notice
2. kindness
(notice just “happens” and then kindness is what I “do”?)
I’m sure it’ll change later as things evolve, but for right now this is SUPER effective
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a million seconds is 12 days, you could get each shoe removal down to 2 seconds with practice, this is an achievable burden
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I truly wish for all of you to experience - at least once in your life - “wow! … do you lift?! it shows”
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The best “rationality technique” IMO is just making sure to check how big things are.
Not at all hard, so basic as to sound stupid: “some things are bigger than others. sometimes a LOT bigger! have you tried checking how big these inputs/outputs are?”
but very useful!!
"You can answer most policy questions by multiplying two numbers" and "similar things usually behave similarly" and "the obvious explanation is probably correct," i.e. "basic rationality works surprisingly well," is the epistemological takeaway from covid "expert" failure.
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ugh. I regret to report that if you meditate, you might actually want to make changes in your life.
this can be inconvenient.
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I wish I had more people in my life who I felt I could get productive, mutual-respectful feedback from of the form "fwiw I think this action you took in the shared social context was net [good/bad] because [specific reasons/models]"
and feel just... informed/helped. vs "judged"
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Thanks all who shared cather.io/dateme 😁
I'm excited to see a LOT of interest in others doing similar!
If you make a "date me" page:
* Link from your twitter profile!
* Tweet with hashtag #dateme if sharing a profile
(and/or #normalizedatingonmain for the overall trend)
Oh man, @uncatherio's Date Me website is so excellent. I love this genre of thing: people putting themselves out there, saying clearly and publicly that they want a partner, and knowing who they are and what they're looking for.
paper.dropbox.com/doc/cather…
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I've been extremely aware of a "3-part cycle" in my life, that goes a bit like:
A. Undirected exploration (slack, play, curiosity)
B. Targeted expenditure of resources (sprint; goal pursuit)
C. Rest & regenerate (closed off to new opportunities)
Is this a known framework?
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Goddamn alright. I’m learning that I need to unfollow people if their *likes* put stuff in my feed that doesn’t spark joy, even if I do still want to hear what they have to say and want to stay mutuals. This is annoying :/
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what would it take to run a tiny social program that just compensates people for feeding their friends?
like make a meal at your home with 4 friends and send us a selfie of you all with a receipt and we’ll comp it
obv needs a funder who values this and some target community?
my pet theory: it's a skill issue
the number of close friends that ppl have has been dropping for decades, just like the TFR
these are related
for some reason, the social skills needed to make friends, or find a life partner, are now failing to transfer to new generations
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🤷♀️sex is super-good (vs “not bad” or “pleasurable”) in proportion to a combination of 1) wanting to have someone’s babies (& everything that entails), and 2) wanting to communicate profoundly. Probably not high on either dimension if casual?
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This is a different observation from the fact we all have “young parts” that are immature. I’m moreso boggling at how our most *mature and sophisticated* mechanisms are still solving fundamentally the same problems of being a meatbag in space that has desires and wants connection
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💡 when you are working on your ACTUAL, FELT priorities, "distractions" feel a completely different way
distraction from what you're """supposed""" to be doing feels like relief or freedom
distractions from your REAL FELT priorities feel obnoxious & bad, like gnats, or clutter
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In the idea that people deserve jobs for meaning and dignity, I’m guessing deep down “jobs” isn’t “an employer compensating in currency for fungible labor”
but is naturally more like “a trade or craft, with mentorship and a community of practice, producing valued outputs”
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maybe this is why the Bay Area is grating on me vibe-wise lately
I’m working pretty hard at being a comfortable animal, and the ambient culture is pulling towards peak experiences and/or unbalanced effortful ambition
So weird that the goal of most spiritual practices is to achieve the mindset of a comfortable animal
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I recently asked a rancher at a farmer's market to help me evaluate meat animal welfare, and he spent >20 mins namedropping grass-fed beef influencers like I'd know who they were, and repeatedly recommend a magazine for cattle raisers *specifically about farming grass*
One of the things I love about humans is that we're fractally -spergy, every discipline & hobby has dozens of "locked after 12,345 pages of heated debate" things
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Ok, my personal re-encoding of advice about "settling" vs "romance" is:
"Go for someone that makes you feel calm and self-aligned. Don't worry about the up-front lack of butterflies or initial chemistry, so long as you eventually work your way towards a satisfying sex life"
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feels to me like the phenomenology of “bored” is a combination of “I keep having to process a lot of information” and “it turns up nothing of value to me”
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so @JeffLadish and I are not gonna do the nesting life partner thing anymore
and all I want in my sorrow is
just... to be seen as
having fought for something unbelievably beautiful
truly having gone all-in on what really matters on this earth
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on (2) the tasks to go straight from "I know this assignment is solvable by people of my skillset, and I have been taught how"
all the way to "lol nobody even knows if this is solvable in principle let alone if I have the skills"
without any step as open-ended as "build a shed"
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If you’re feeling weird or off, consider trying this week:
- Exercise class that’s *not too hard*: attend IRL (& don’t push yourself)
- Dharma talk or meditation: attend IRL (& don’t push yourself)
- Decorative pumpkin or tiny ones: purchase however you buy groceries; display it
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It was the most remarkably clear emotional communication I’ve seen in a long time.
No hesitation, no self-censorship, just “I need help, you look solid, BLEAAAAHHH 😭”
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I realized yesterday I was trying to solve problems with *tension* that are better solved through *time* 🤯
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In particular it feels ***vastly*** more natural and fundamentally coherent than hiring an adult "gig worker" for this type of thing!
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it’s been said around here recently, but I really feel it right now -
where today is AIM’s list of friends who are now online and available for a chat?
Messenger’s indicators are lying all the time :(
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Wait, this is not that surprising: namely, if you look closely, the decompression is not that great. And the compressed phrase is very semantics-rich.
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I don't know how to speak about this in like a "cool", nonchalant way, or whatever, so I'm gonna be sincere:
Figuring out what's actually going on is hard and important.
Memoryholing anything at all cannot be part of a good-faith effort to do that.
Godspeed, everyone.
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I've gotten pushback before, from folks saying they're glad they weren't "spoonfed" in grad school & that they had to figure it out on their own
... but jtbc there *is* something between "spoonfeed a man a fish" and "throw man in lake without fishing knowledge, boat, pole"
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This is crazy. Beyond even what a library offers; realizing that the corner of twitter that I occupy is one in which you can simply summon a historical expert to expound on whatever topic is at hand, and just how extremely anomalous that is among all previous times in history.
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I am going to miss this lemon tree when we move away 😢
Yesterday I pruned it for the fourth, and last ever, time.
To the extent a tree is doing "cognition" in deciding how to grow (where to branch; where to prioritize), then pruning a tree is an act of co-cognition.
[...]
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anyone have opinions about gathering evidence about if someone is a good match as a life partner? or links to writings you like?
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3) It *does* seem like *writing* docs helps people in a big way - by clarifying what they’re looking for. I’ve seen this help people very concretely.
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4) Secondhand matchmakes (“my friend should date this person!”) so far seem anecdotally more successful than firsthand matches (“I should date this person!”) - so maybe docs should optimize for that more?
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thread on what my "meditation" practice actually consists of these days 👇✨🧘♀️
on occasion of having hit compounding returns and feeling excited 😁
(tl;dr: actual "meditation" (TM) is just one component of a big basket of methods for tuning in to and tracking my "self compass")
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IMO there's a "missing mood" here; namely the "problem" is that the person said "yes" to something that wouldn't end up being good for them.
It can feel like the fix is to insist on more followthrough. IME instead work towards more holistic soundness at the time of commitment.
Isn’t it terrible how people flake? How they get excited to work on a project with you and then disappear? How a person’s word doesn’t mean anything anymore?
The coordination substrate is broken. It’s not your role to despair about it. It’s your role to fix it.
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does organic make any sense? what am I getting for my money? I struggle to view synthetic fertilizers as bad (“saving over a billion people from starvation”), but also is it materially better *for me* to eat food grown without, even if it’s not economically viable for humanity?
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I suspect there’s a meta-skill I want to gain. Twitter, help me gain it!
Namely: being a clumsy beginner, but *well*. Say social skill X is outside your range, so you’re clumsy at X. But you want to X.
What makes one *skilled at* the act of knowing venture into social unskill?
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currently convinced that ~every thought I hear spontaneously in my head with *words* is a “social” thought/belief
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refusing to do anything that doesn't feel aesthetic
seriously!
not gonna do any work unless I can feel Motivated or like a Thoughtful Scholar or sthg
if I lose the "vibe", stop working, become a Skillful Meditator or Pleasant Homey Person etc. until I get back in touch with it
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I Can’t Believe It’s Not Too Much Dakka
(it really seems like it oughta be too much at this point but it keeps helping!!)
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9) Focusing too hard on serious partnership / kids seems to squash something. I don’t know how to explain this. I don’t know what “focusing too hard” really means. I do think it’s important to know what you want. I’m sorry I can’t explain this better and I’d like someone to try.
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category: social acts where insincerity, or being conflicted about it (without “owning” that you feel conflicted), will be more confusing and hurtful
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Blessed sentiment
I think xkcd.com/1741/ actually changed my life
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