What's That Blue Thing Doing Here?
A generic introductory post, including some necessary disclaimers
I may be jinxing myself. Like a surprising number of others, I’ve tried to start writing-in-an-organized-and-collected-space many times before, on many platforms, each attempt including some bit of fanfare and an introductory post explaining that this is my purpose here and I am so excited to be etc. etc.
Yet, it seems like a good idea to get a few things out of the way before diving into the meat(s) of the matter(s).*
First and foremost, while I am currently in the process of steeping myself in the canons of several relevant fields, there are many thoughts that have been well and truly thunk and whose thunken status is still unknown to me, a mere mortal who has only had so much time to read.
Imagine if I tried to google every idea or framework that popped into my head just to establish whether or not it had already been thunk, and if so, by whom, and in what context.** Impractical! A poor use of time! And so, dear reader, we do not do this, and instead leave many thunken statuses unknown.
If you are already familiar with an idea, framework, pattern, or what-else-have-you, please do leave a comment including a link to the relevant material or one or more high-yield search terms, since, shockingly, I like to read about the things I write about.
First-pass not-giving-a-rat’s-ass-about-thunkening is the first disclaimer. The second disclaimer is that my approach to several topics may be upsetting to the sort of reader who becomes upset when they disagree with something they read on the internet, or who becomes upset when somebody uses a different model than they do to understand a familiar concept. I don’t claim to possess the “one true correct model” of anything other than my own conscious experience, but I don’t plan on censoring my experience of the world, even if it’s inconvenient.
The third disclaimer is that I say “ass” a lot.
The fourth disclaimer is that my tone is about as consistent as a population with a growth rate of 3.9.***
Ding dong, it’s meat time!
Mixed imagery there, wrong onomatopoeia, eh, whatever.
The meat of the matter is this: I am going to try to write things and put them here, and these things will cover a variety of topics, and many will tie into the principle from which I crafted the title of this newsletter, and some will not.**** Boy these footnote markers are getting long.
Regardless of how close the ties are to the title, a writing habit is a good habit to have. (A hiding rabbit is a good rabbit to have. Words, like rabbits, are delightful in the way that they are.)
*Many matters, many meats, no guarantee of a uniform distribution.
**Even if I were to do this, the pursuit would with high probability fail at delivering the desired results due to the particular limitations of our current search engine technology. More on this later.
***Chaos! Lovely Chaos! Chaos (J. Gleick) is found at the top of every reading list I’ve ever written.
****Save with some complex mental gymnastics, which we Like here.