Flowers for Algernon Diet

A fun thing about YouTube is how touchy its recommendations algorithm is. I look up a few YouTubes on fasting and bammo! I'm immersed in the keto fat blasting world, full of freakish exceptions to the rules (you too could be one of them).

I'm doing what I call my Flowers for Algernon diet. There's some unpacking there if you're new, but its about a miracle drug, el dopa (L-DOPA), that unfroze a bunch of catatonic people and made them move again. Eventually, however, this miracle effect wore off.

Although Charlie is not catatonic, is more your average joe not-an-Einstein, he becomes an Einstein, briefly, thanks to his Algernon Diet. The parallels are there.

Anyway, today was the day to get back into glucose cycling. That's why I avoided those yummy snacks at Meeting: I was a man with a plan. Good to connect with y'all Quakers. 

I walked home by way of Movie Madness, renting two David Lynch movies. Why? I'm a student of Synergetics, as a kind of weirdology (explorations in thinking, the geometry of). Mark Fisher is a current focus, the British philosopher, and honorary subgenius (in my flight patterns).

Mark Fisher and David Graeber (anthropologist) both write eloquently about "BS jobs" i.e. looking busy as a profession in itself, even if you're really just pacing the hallways, like my friend Glenn did, when at NSA, post seeing action in Vietnam. 

Lets distinguish between "doing a meaningless job" and "making oneself useful to the world". These may well be orthogonal, but then orthogonal doesn't mean "at odds" or "in conflict" but rather "independently of" as in "still free to". 

You're free to make yourself useful to the world even where and when you consider the job in itself to be meaningless. 

For example, in taking in the human experience of being a bartender in Vegas, you're setting yourself up to be insightful and curious, as the best bartenders are. They're also multi-dextrous in the sense of able to multitask at the level of an experienced restaurant chef, in many cases.

Lots of jobs are changing though, not because of AI, but because of apps like TikTok (including TikTok itself) that allow a bartender or train engineer to hang a phone and live stream, sharing an over the shoulder view of what it's like to do the job. 

Not only that, the engineer is free to chat. 

No, I'm not saying "looking down into a device" and making the world unsafer thereby.  Engineers: keep your eyes riveted where they should be and all your attention on "the road" (whatever that means in your field). Pray that I do the same. But then let peripheral cues stay important too.

It's actually easier, not harder, when you have others watching, to maintain a state of acute awareness (coffee also helps sometimes). Many religious have prayed for similar supervision from the angels, whereas now ordinary mortals are free to supervise (be the guardians of) one another.

So that was four days with no eats, only fluids. I had a hamburger Tuesday night. Today is Sunday. 

Those fluids were not exactly calorie-free, as the Spindrift grapefruit seltzers have other juices mixed in, and therefore sugars. I drank lots of coffee, in addition to water, but then I do that anyway.

I broke my fast after Quaker Meeting (I walked to and from) with an old favorite: fresh cooked pinto beans in an Instant Pot (a one hour process) added to melted cheese on a spinach-tinged burrito wrap, large size, with raw uncooked onion and spinach, nutritional yeast, Picante hot sauce (that's a brand). 

Just one will do for the time being. I don't wanna sink back into "catatonia" too quickly.

A first sign I was slipping was this afternoon, after eating, when I tested the new toaster, from an estate sale, but without toast. A dry run. 

It would have worked fine (the toaster was in mint condition) had I only remembered to remove something plastic I'd slipped in to one of the slots, during transport. I neglected to dump it out, and instead filled the kitchen with obnoxious fumes as whatever it was melted and fused to the internals. 

There's no way to rescue it; worth way more than the $5 I paid for it, but no more.

For those unfamiliar with "ketotonics", the theory is that our hominid ancestors developed the fat cycle in order to undertake prolonged hikes, from A to B, without any ready source of food. 

The promise of a feast at the far end, once Valhalla was attained, was sufficiently alluring, i.e. realistic, to propel the fat-burners to set about thoroughly exploring their globe. Chimpanzees, in contrast, according the YouTube authorities, don't really have a fat burning cycle i.e. they can't feed their brains with "calorie bricks" saved up as adipose tissues in various places. 

Humans know how to plump up and press on. Fat is money in the bank (saved calories) if you're planning on lean times, perhaps already scheduled per your religious and/or secular practice.

And so, the theory goes, when you get off the glucose treadmill (eating food) and experience lean living, your brain starts eating "keto bricks" and yowza wowza they "taste good" (metaphorically, brains having no taste buds, really). 

In subjective terms, many entering ketosis experience enlightenment or other forms of satori. What you get depends on you and your brain and how its all wired. Be OK with varying mileage.

The fact is, a male of my make and model is capable of going without food for many days on end. When that's imposed, as a cruel form of punishment, then other hormones kick in, not a pleasant experience. But if I'm voluntarily pursuing objectives, such as happiness, then the trip may be well worth my time, and worth repeating.

Homeowner Talk

Neighbor (texting): It’s amazing what you can do with the right tools. Thanks for the glamour photos.

Me (texting back): Yeah, today I learned that pressure washer fitted with rooter nozzles on the business end, will snake and “jet” a pipe i.e. scour it from the inside. Not cheap but might give up to five years of service. This is according to a pro who came by, free of charge. We also discussed the pipe replacement option. This is all in reference to my upstairs rusty downpipes, shared by sink and tub (we’ve worked on it). He informed me my mental model of the downpipes inside a protruding encasement was incorrect, it does something else. I was glad to have my thinking corrected.

A MultiModal Adventure

Although I gave up alcohol completely back in February, I've mostly retained the mostly sedentary lifestyle. I have a bicycle, a pretty nice one, sturdy enough to handle my frame (idiom for meaty skeleton), but I haven't been riding it much. 

True, I added a bike rack to the car, upside down at first, but that was to take Yarrow to and from his bike camp (in town). I have yet to mount my metal steed (the two wheeler) on the back of my four wheeler (maxi taxi). 

Sam diagnosed the upside down problem when I was visiting his farm. I specifically asked him to take a look at it. I got the frame from Steve Mastin, one of our Wanderers. Sam gave me the bike in the first place, some years ago when he was living closer by and working on Flextegrity.

But that's only to say I have no real excuse for not driving out the Columbia Gorge and taking advantage of some of the best bicycle-friendly routes ever.

Anyway, this weekend I had a realization: that I have access to multi-modal transportation, meaning I'm free to start my journey on the bicycle, but then roll it onto a light rail train, or clamp it to the front of a bus. 

In practice, I was looking forward to rolling the metal steed onto an FX2 articulated bus, as it was getting dark. I was coming back from Oaks Park on Springwater Corridor, having paid a visit to the business side of the mausoleum where Humphrey Bogart's 3rd wife's remains are kept, an historical fact about which Portland is proud. 

I'd take the FX2 from the OMSI stop to around 36th and Division, was my plan. Alas, the bus that came wasn't one of the articulated ones, and both bike slots were already full. So I got more exercise then, taking Orange Line to SE Clinton and cycling up the hill to SE 36th, home to Harrison, instead of bussing it.

The main event we attended (Beth and Derek by car), was free summertime music, Hank Sinatra in the parking lot.

I'd done a similar ride the day before, cycling to Sellwood and riding the Orange line coming back. This is a habit I could see getting more into: multimodal adventures. One of the perks of living in an urban area with bike-friendly infrastructure.

Bucky Birthday Lecture

MathArtStream 4 ~ Kirby Urner: “Dimension" in Synergetics

I'm pleased with this pithy synopsis of key elements within my signature Silicon Forest curriculum, namely Quadrays and how these integrate well with Synergetics (Bucky's).

July 12 would have been Fuller's 129th birthday. Active Inference Institute just happened to have an open slot. 

Thanks to Daniel for introducing me to this little bevy of math-artist enthusiasts, already on the topic of visualizing a 4th dimension, and giving me the floor for an hour.

I felt like I was finally able to give the talk I'd have given at Bridges (rejected), although since then, the content has only multiplied, while becoming increasingly incisive.

True, I somewhat flubbed my last answer, miss describing what the hypertetrahedron would look like in 3D. The pentatope or pentachoron (5-cell) looks like the quadrays apparatus itself. Thanks to Tom Ace for the correction.

Movies for Kids

I took in both Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 at the Bagdad this summer. Both times, I attended a matinee with plenty of kids and their parents in the audience. Although having food and drink with the movie is encouraged, I didn't indulge in either (I have plenty in the past) and so didn't need a countertop in front of me. I sat fairly close, probably in the same seat both times.

Inside Out 2 is about diving into the psyche of one child in particular, Riley, a female entering puberty and intensely anxious about her future popularity and acceptance levels while adapting to the high school scene. The fact that her best friends from middle school are headed to a different high school raises the spectre of loneliness and abandonment. She will end up sacrificing these old friendships at the risk of flubbing the more critical new ones.

The story focuses on Riley's constituent personalities: joy, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust. With the onset of puberty, anxiety, embarrassment, envy and ennui (boredom) enter the picture. The newer emotions, anxiety especially, seize control of the "bridge" leaving the original team to recover and resurrect Riley's old self, a journey that eventually leads to a better-integrated, more adult, newer self, a more inclusive amalgam of internal empaths.

Illumination: Despicable Me 4 is more about family and sociopolitical dynamics and exploring the concepts of truth-telling, deception, blackmail, secrecy and villainy. One of Gru's arch enemies, Maxime Le Mal, is on the loose and out for vengeance with a plan to kidnap Gru's baby. So Gru and his whole family are put into the Anti-Villain League's protection program, which necessitates assuming phony identities, which for the adults means roleplaying in new professions. Felonius Gru becomes a solar panel salesman and his wife Lucy Wilde, a beautician. Neither has much of a clue what to do.

However, Poppy Prescott, about the same age as Riley, is a budding villain like Gru and uses blackmail, the threat of revealing Gru's identity, to get the latter's assistance on her risky prank: the theft of a school mascot, a crazed otter, from Gru's old alma mater. Chaos ensues, abetted by the famous Minions for which this franchise is best known. Yes, I caught the allusion to Ian Flemming.

Fast and Efficient

A lot of times people take to their blogs and / or to X, with the intent to register some complaint regarding some insult to their person. I'm not saying I'm not guilty of doing that. Negative feedback is a commodity in and of itself, like garbage, or rather its removal and recycling.

Especially in movie reviews and such, one is expected to be critical, even if "critical thinking" doesn't have to involve dissing. Seeing what might be called flaws and deficiencies need not involve excessive moralizing, such as is characteristic of righteous outrage.

However, for a change of pace, I have to say I received fast and efficient service on two fronts today, and some positive feedback is in order. I'm using my blog to log some figurative fist bumps and high fives.

Over the weekend, I complained on MyChart about a medical condition that I thought maybe shouldn't wait until my regularly scheduled  appointment in August. My own primary care doc was out of the office until the end of this month.

Likewise around July 4, when I was driving all over Seattle, my "service engine soon" light came on, just around when Maxi Taxi was due for an oil change anyway.

I had my own theories around both conditions and wasn't far off. However what I needed was help from professionals and that I got, for both conditions, and with practically zero waiting time. A doctor saw me the next business day, even though the expected wait time is more like five.

That "service engine soon" light will likely go off by itself, as the underlying condition was likely transitory. I blame my inexperience with Seattle's steep streets, and unnecessarily gunning the engine that one time.

We'll see how it goes with my medical treatment. The prognosis is quite positive, and I'll have the follow up visit with my regular doc soon enough. I expect to continue using these blogs to chronicle how things are going healthwise. I don't have any large public or fan base, but I do have my trackers and backers. I believe in transparency, to a point.

So thank you Jiffy Lube (Hawthorne and 39th) and Portland Clinic (NE 50th and Sandy).

A Gentle Genius

remembering Tom Connolly

Explorers of these blogs may find references to Transportation Reaching People, a "socialist" version of Uber, meaning run by the county (Clackamas at first) and involving mainly retirees, compensating their mileage, and providing a socially useful role, an opportunity for community service. Tom Connolly was a main reason it all happened.

Tom and his family hailed from Missoula. One of my big adventures was packing up Gutless, my first car, a Honda Civic, and driving back to Montana with Tom, so he could show me around. We backpacked in to Lake Bertha in Glacier Park along the way. He helped me relive some of his memories as a thespian, connected to some troupe in that university city.

Tom looked like a pirate and knew how to act like one if called upon. He had a comedic stage presence, mixed with a gentle intelligence, that endeared him to all the volunteer drivers who signed up to take mostly elders to various doctor appointments, and to shopping malls. Trimet's mandate is to get people from where they are to where they need to go, a challenge only partially solved with fixed route busses.

Tom played several other characters, including a goofy version of Zoltar.

What I learned from Tom is community organizing is a lot about entertainment. Providing a fun working atmosphere around projects with purpose is not just icing on the cake, it's substance. We're talking about volunteers. Only mileage was compensated. They would get to know their regulars. My role was to code a match-making scheduler, to pair up rider requests with drivers. This was in an age pre phone app. It wasn't precisely like Lyft or Uber. One needed a lot more advanced notice for one thing.

Tom was like an older brother and mentor for me in a lot of ways. Upon his retirement, we didn't manage to stay in touch. He passed away several years ago. Tomorrow, I will gather with his family, whom I'd come to know, and we will honor him with a more formal ceremony at a military cemetery.