Bees, AI, and Pizza.

In the last two weeks:

Visited a friends newly made and inhabited beehive and learned about the complex reproductive and social/work structures of bees. Spoiler, it's not at all a good analogy for what the "the birds and the bees" is supposed to be an analogy for. It's totally alien to our human way of doing things, and even our anthropomorphization of bee's is fairly incorrect. I won't go into detail, but it's probably worth researching if you're interested in weird science.

Started working in earnest on the homework that is due for my Montessori training come summer. Just finished a story of a mathematician, or in this case, mathematical theorem: Bayes Theorem. (probably too advanced for any but the oldest and smarty-pants-est of the elementary kids, but really fascinating and a fun challenge to try and tackle, for any that it does appeal to. And an essential understanding for statistics and probability, that few people really understand.) In any case, while researching its uses, which include creating high quality AI's, I stumble across the AI generated pictures of celebrities that don't exist. They are super high resolution and impossible to distinguish from real pictures and people. It's... I don't know how to feel about it. Cool, fascinating, creepy, worrying. Looking at the progress of what AI's can do over the last 7 years or so, it's like watching an artist progressively getting better at drawing until they are photo-realistic. You're going to be able to fake... anything. They've animated the mona-lisa, to make a video where she's talking. Fake news just became way harder to distinguish. You could have video's of trusted people doing and saying things they did not do. Generated by AI's.

Fascinating fact: one of the most powerful AI structures is what they call... I forget the name... GAN's? oppositional networks: that is, one AI tries to make a realistic face, and the other tries to spot the fakes. You have them grow in proficiency at about the same rate, so they're both learning from each other and getting smarter from each other. This takes out the human element, where you need a real live person telling the computer, "no, that looks weird." And so the evolution can happen much more rapidly. Another fascinating thing they're doing, is... again, I forget the exact name, but self-awareness programs, where the program checks in with itself, about what it's already done, to help it figure out what needs to happen next and if it makes sense in the context of the whole (whole picture, in this case)


Suzannah made pizza! Normally we get a frozen pizza and add our own toppings, but this time she made the dough from scratch. It came out great! I love having such a creative person as my partner. She's been gardening, making things carpenter style, knitting... I feel like she is even more into my homestead/permaculture lifestyle that I've dreamed of, than I am. Certainly in her actions, though I took a break from pursuing that to get clear on my job situation. At some point, when that's settled down, I look forward to getting back into that kind of stuff more. I'll probably come at it more from the primitive skills and permaculture perspective, which is very complementary. We are very complementary, in so many ways. It's something I often think of with gratitude.

Everything is blooming and sprouting. It's beautiful, it's no longer cold, but also not hot. It is the most beautiful time to be in Fairfield.

The deer are eating Suzannah's garden, despite an extensive fence. She is preparing to shore up defenses. Really what we need is a friendly neighborhood cougar to hunt them. Their population is out of control.

I'm so greatful to have a bit more time that usual, even though I'm back to work. I've had a backlog for so long, it feels wonderful to finally be making headway with it, rather than just adding to the pile. I think as a society we work too much. It's not healthy. Not healthy for our bodies to sit that much, or healthy for our families to have so little time for them. Not healthy for our society, or earth, that gets neglected in the face of overwhelming personal concerns.

At the same time, I think there are some people who have figured out a system whereby they delegate, ignore the unimportant, and efficiently do the important, and somehow manage to get everything done on time without chaos or burnout. I'd like to become one of those. I think I'm working at it, but it's currently not top of my priority list, though perhaps it should be, since it's one of those foundation skills that will translate into better performance with everything else I do... kind of like I set out to learn how to learn/grow effectively a while ago, and learning that skill has been incredibly helpful for the rest of my life. (Though there's still plenty of improvements I could still make)

OK, I think that'll be all for this week. Take care everyone. It's a strange time: we have lots of extremes: some people are out of work, doing nothing, some are working harder than they've ever been with an extra serving of stress. Some are having a vacation experience, others are on the verge of death, or worried about the death of a friend or loved one. Nobody knows what to do, or what's going to happen. But we still have each other, we can still go for a walk under the blossoming fruit trees. We can play and laugh and count our blessings, we can help each other and love each other, though mostly from 6 feet or more away.

Love and peace,
-Isaac

Lists, Aristotle's vice of excess and deficiency, Birth, Death

I think the list format is efficient and fun for getting a lot of happenings and flavor to you without a lot of text, which is perhaps good for both of us. So here's another one.

The past two weeks:

Found out that one of my closest teachers/friends from my graduate program died last year of cancer. Goodby Terri, your passion, compassion, and insight lives on in my mind and heart.

Close friends just had their second baby. Name: Gaia.

More than most things, I feel like birth and death mark the passage of time powerfully. There is a reality to it. Something significant has changed. Strong emotions are interwoven into the event. Hope, wonder, celebration, grief, reflection.

I'm working on balance in work and having fun. Previously I was fairly all or nothing, working for months without a real break and then binging fun things for days on end. This approach is not the most healthy, though it does avoid the difficulty of starting something fun and then having to stop it. But I think it's time to improve that ability.

Makes me think of the psychological concept of "hot brain, cool brain." In brief, we have two modes of functioning. Hot brain wants rewards and enjoyment now, and doesn't think about future repercussions, it is emotional. Cool brain sees the future results of our actions, it plans and delays gratification, it keeps us from being impulsive. Both are important. A life with no play, with no enjoying of the present moment, is a bit sterile and cold. A life without thinking of the future and pushing through difficulties for some worthwhile goal, is shallow and often full of regret.

Which makes me think of another concept I heard that I really love. It comes from Aristotle via Brian Johnson (he runs "Optimize")
The vice of excess and deficiency:
It goes like this: every good quality/activity has a certain balance, the "right amount," or balanced application. If you have too much or too little, if you apply it without common sense and balance, the goodness becomes badness. Like the idea that the difference between medicine and poison is dosage (and I'd add, context)
For example: Enthusiasm: good when balanced. When too little, it's depression or apathy. When too much, it might be mania, overzealousness, or burnout.
Another example from my community: Meditation. Right amount: awareness, peace, focus. Not enough: stress, 'noise', superficiality. Too much: escapism, ungrounded, physical deterioration.

Pretty much anything you think of as a virtue or something good, would benefit from being run through this excess/deficiency algorithm to keep it in the healthy, balanced zone. Though what that is will vary from person to person.

I have more to list, but I've got two weeks to make up, so I'll continue this on another post.

A list for early spring

This is kind of a placeholder post. I stipulated when I began this blog, that some weeks I might only have time for a sentence, but I'd try to post every week. I think I subconsciously feel like that's not enough, which makes me post less often.

In any case, last post was for two weeks ago, this post is for this last weekend. I will do it Kenko style, as a simple list.


Spring things I've been noticing:

buds expanding, green at the seams
succulent new shoots from bulbs
increased squirrel activity
a nest of baby bunnies in a leaf pile
tiny ants invading the house from all quarters
the smell of spring rain
birdsong in the morning
long days
tiny new leaves on the bushes
tasty-looking dandelion greens
the smell of fresh cut grass

Check-in. The nerds have been training for this. Respect for teachers.

It's been over two weeks and thought I don't have a lot of time, I feel like I should post something short in case anybody is worrying because of the radio silence. So far, we're fine. Getting used to quarantine and all the new routines has taken some time and is continuing to. But that is always the case when my life changes and I have to adapt to a new set of circumstances and learn how to thrive in them. I'm starting to get there, and am enjoying the beautiful spring weather we've been having. A bit cold at the moment, but the sunshine and fresh new growing things always puts me in good spirits.

I'm an introvert and a gamer, so being quarentiend is not a big deal for me, socially. It's been easy enough to move Friday night games to an online format, and I'm with my fiancee, so I've got someone to cuddle. Which is frankly more positive social interaction than I've gotten for years, before we got together, when I was just single, working through my Masters and such. And thankfully we're still allowed to go out for walks, and we've got a yard out back, so I'm pretty set, if things stay as they are.

I do wonder how long things will stay as they are though. It seems signs point to this quarantine lasting for a while, in which case, you've got to wonder if some of the various systems that are being stressed right now will break down. I suspect we will be generally ok. We have power, we have food.

It is however, quite the wake-up call for me. I've taken a number of classes with Tom Brown Jr., on nature survival, the philosophy of living with the earth, and with some classes he's talked more about disaster preparedness, and this really makes it strike home in a real way: that can happen to me, not just other people. And once it's hit, it's not a good time to start preparing for things. You want yourself well prepared before things get hairy. So I'm thinking to myself: do I have potable water? do I have food? Do I have way of meeting up with family if I can't use my cell phone? Do I have a plan if X, Y, or Z happens? Food for thought, and more than thought, action. Climate change is a thing, and that means more and more uncertainty about the world around us.  Things are going to keep getting more tumultuous until we change how we do things, and for a while afterwards, due to the momentum of such a large system. To not be prepared for that is the illogical thing. Though it's normally easy to do, because we end up complacent, overwhelmed with our normal day-to-day lives.

But now, with many of us having extra time on our hands, is a perfect opportunity to reflect and plan. Do you have a rendezvous point for family, where you know to meet up if something happens and communication lines are down? Maybe you want a little victory garden for food security (and stress reduction, gardening.)

Also, some of you now have more time for things that are most important to you: family, passion projects and hobbies, maybe a spiritual practice. You may have more time for these things now. If your a parent struggling with children, that may not be the case. You may just have a newfound respect for the teaching profession.

Heaven and Hell are often a matter of perspective, and while there are certainly scary things going on in the world, and things to be careful of, there's always good that can be found in the situation at hand. I've yet to encounter a situation where I couldn't do that, even if it was just, "this is unpleasant, but teaching me something valuable."

Take care of yourselves, take care of each other, pray for those who need it.
Love,
I