Oh look it's a forum

[tangent]

aren't you going in too many directions at once?

I always am, but I'm getting better at dealing with it? I dunno.

• Tags: You reminded me of something I wrote before, but forgot: "Folders, categories, and tags are all fundamentally the same thing. They’re like the Dewey decimal system, trying to fit all of possibility into a logically ordered structure. Reality refuses to fit in this box. Use these sparingly or not at all whenever possible. They limit your ability to organize rather than help it." They're useful, but it's so difficult to make them work for you.
• I don't see it as a brand difference because I write in a fundamentally different way on each of those platforms. On Bluesky, it's try to be succinct as possible. I have to be careful what I say because nuance is disallowed. On a blog, I spend a significant amount of time trying to perfect an argument. It's a "final" published work - but with the benefit that I can improve it later. I fairly often will revisit old posts to improve them, add links and details, or even remove something I later realize wasn't good. I promoted this pop-psych idea because I thought it was valid at one point, but much later removed it with an explanation about how wrong it was. (I've still failed to properly retract my mistake on the time dilation note/post.. I made a fundamental error that invalidates the whole thing..) Here, I let the thoughts flow as they will and then post without concern of how long it gets (well, mostly). On Telegram, I tend to try to be shorter, but also since it's a real-time chat, I will post rapid short messages.
• Unicode

what are you expecting to gain from programming a website?

Fun, experience, uniqueness, silliness, the satisfaction of building something useful. I used to have a custom website with a whole database for managing uploaded files, a blog, a voting thing (that was a joke, but it taught me how to implement some stuff).. and I think a couple other things I don't remember now. It's partially a desire to return to some of the cool stuff I built before, partially a desire to expand and make more from what I did before.

I've sadly lost a lot of the ideas and experiments I did before. I had figured out some clever little hacks and tooling to do interesting things, but was so bad at organizing it that it became a horrible clusterfuck. I even made a couple difference online games through a website interface before. I want to return to that level of interaction and experimentation, but also I've grown and learned a bit since then, so I won't screw it up as badly this time around. xD

Hell.. I made two complete implementations of an image board before. It's been so long I forgot they existed until just this moment. I was unsatisfied with available options at the time so I rolled my own. It had some problems, but was pretty neat too. I want to do that again. I know it's not "good enough" for various reasons, but it was good enough for me, and fun to figure out how to make things work.

(I also started making a smut game as a website multiple times, but never got far enough to actually play it. I was inspired by Corruption of Champions' interface. Ironically, I started trying to make a space-themed derivative of that, and since then, the developer made their own space-themed version of it. Though, I don't like some of the decisions there.)

[tangent]

I should point out that the blog post I linked to, while still having good insights, has some bad ideas too that I've since abandoned. I've been meaning to write a follow-up about how I've changed my notetaking system (the bones of which are in this note), but there's so much to cover and I've been very lazy about making it!

[don't know]

> I always am, but I'm getting better at dealing with it? I dunno.

and you probably are. i would be scared of that because it sounds like multitasking. of which i was sure i was doing it to perfection. till i got that i was just being busy. no connection between our experiences. i am just pointing out why i asked that.

> Folders, categories, and tags are all fundamentally the same thing.

aren't folders just exclusive tags? in the sense that one article can have only one tag, not any other value.

and categories and tags. i always see them in photo managers, and all sort of managers, and can't possibly see how the two terms are not interchangeable.

yea, when it comes to the state, sure: category is something good, labels is something bad. so x is in category male -- it says so on the existence license -- and in category white -- because it is science. it's one more rehash of the halal / haram, blessed / cursed dichotomy.

> On a blog, I spend a significant amount of time trying to perfect an argument.

yea, i admire you. the best i can get is have the first draft ready. like here, in these exchanges. and it gets misunderstood most of the time. but i can't be bothered with the second draft, my mind is already in a different place. perfecting? how do you do that? how do you know there isn't a N+1 version to be written?

> I fairly often will revisit old posts to improve them, add links and details

a couple of years back i got in the habit of noting the thoughts i have. i do that not because of some self help guru, but because it is so damn frustrating: i had a great idea that changes the whole existence this morning, and now i don't have the faintest idea what it was all about. was it about planes, or about soda bottles? and a few times in a year i do turn the pages back: what was it? but usually i never go back and the notebooks just pile up on the floor. which reminds me: i should throw all this shit in some box and make some space to move around.

> but much later removed it with an explanation about how wrong it was.

were you wrong, or just found something that suits you better?

> Fun, experience, uniqueness, silliness, the satisfaction of building something useful.

so what are you waiting for?

> I should point out that the blog post I linked to, while still having good insights, has some bad ideas too that I've since abandoned.

you remind me of myself with the books i have read. i love them. a few years later i wonder /what was i thinking to like that crap/. and it happens so often i don't even mind it. not that you are changing your mind so often, i do. and i feel like i know what you are talking about when you say you have abandoned some of those ideas.

[tangent]

but usually i never go back and the notebooks just pile up on the floor

I've been there. I still have a lot of notes I've never gone back to. The thing that's hard to accept is that it's okay to not always go back. Sometimes just writing it down is all you needed, because writing helps you think. I think it's always worth keeping a backup/archive/copy though. Eventually you find something you want to do with it, even if it's something silly like see how an AI hallucinates from your notes. (I actually do find this kind of thing helpful sometimes, because while it censors, gets things wrong, and assumes things, it still forces you to react to how wrong it is, which helps you strengthen your understanding.)

were you wrong, or just found something that suits you better?

It was just flat out incorrect. A correlation that itself wasn't even accurate, treated as if there was a cause.

---

I'm not waiting so much as I'm bad at managing my time, and doing other things. I waste a lot of time, but I also still accomplish some things. Like yesterday, I spent quite a bit of time working on a wrecked car, and a lot of reading. I also have a lot of interruptions in my life. I'm finding it hard to get to a place where I can solidly focus for a while on one thing. That's probably what I most need to work on, establishing a pattern where I can have dedicated time.

Being unwilling to change one's mind is a sign of mental weakness. But, also, there's a difference between changing your mind and just refining your thoughts. Like, I've seen organization systems fail me over and over again, and each time I get slightly better at it, but I also have completely changed how I thought things should work a few times.. I think? I don't remember exactly. xD

[i don't know]

> It was just flat out incorrect. A correlation that itself wasn't even accurate, treated as if there was a cause.

it certainly seems that all labeled science today is based on 20 cherry picked cases that at best might prove a correlation. so you might as well have your phd on what you call incorrect