2022-05-20 from the editor of ~insom

2022-05-20 from the editor of ~insom
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This post by Maya puts words to a lot of what I've thought
about my website and my small-web stuff lately.

=> https://maya.land/monologues/2022/05/20/missing-concepts-link-culture.html

I had a blog, so I structured my site as a big list of posts
ordered by date. But while most of my stuff was deciduous
stuff that doesn't stay relevant, I had been bad at tending
to evergreen (or at least, useful and often updated) things.

For blog-engine-related reasons I have left those things as
posts, but at least called out the three (3) things that I
am proud of or think that someone should read on my website.
And now I have a homepage, I guess, rather than a list of
posts that tails off in the latter half of the 2010's and
into this decade.

=> https://insom.me.uk/

---

I am reading "The Crying of Lot 49" again. I tried it around
15 years ago and I didn't stick with it -- it's a difficult
read and at that point in my life I was severely sleep
deprived and my attention was shot.

Anyway, I am not sure if I like it. Maybe I do. As a kind of
"trip". There's a lot to dislike about it; the style is a
bit grating for me, the characters are 1D and there's casual
misogyny and paedophilia references. It's not making me want
to read any more Pynchon, that's for sure, and I'm almost at
the end.

The Goodreads reviews are a bimodal distribution of 1 and 5
star reviews. Maybe all reviews are like that though? I
can't remember too many books I rate as a 3.

I was made aware of it because of Justin Frankel's
W.A.S.T.E. software, and the idea of a private underground
postal service for the dropouts and alternatives of San
Francisco (and beyond). That's the idea that's kept me
reading, I guess. Also, determination: it's a short book,
and I can cross it off my list in about 40 pages time.

---

One thing that I had already been thinking of before I
stumbled across a good example: how absolute numbers in
media age poorly. Sometimes it's inflation, but other times
it could be technology.

I thought about the $5 milkshake in Pulp Fiction -- because
I've paid way more than $5 for milkshakes in my time and
they weren't that special, but someone on Quora already did
the work to show that's about a $15 milkshake with today's
purchasing power. ($18 CAD! Plus Tax and Tip!)

That number was meant to be obviously large in 1994 but if I
was rewatching this without knowing I'm sure I'd be thinking
"Yes, and?".

=> https://qr.ae/pvAda7

Anyway, "The Crying of Lot 49" talks about a dim place that
looks like it's lit with 10W bulbs. But 10W bulbs are pretty
bright, now that we use CFL or even LED. I don't even know
if they really sold 10W incandescents, about the lowest I've
ever seen were 40's.

I recently got an 80W LED fitting for my office. That's less
than a "standard" 100W that I'd have grown up with in
Ireland in the 80's, but it puts out about 8000 lumens,
which is about the same as ~350W security light. When I turn
on the main light (which I use infrequently) it's like the
sun has risen in my office.