Elliot @Elmkast@refactorcamp.org

What's going to happen in 2019?

Almost every "life hack" is worthless in comparison to the difference a good haircut makes.

I mean the reality is that there are many many people who are *not* victims of a capitalist society (or whatever). these ppl are not mega rich but they can afford dental/healthcare and education and a material lifestyle. and these people by and large and unconcerned/uninterested in class war or the revolution. so i guess despite nominally not being part of the billionaire/elite class they draw a lot of ire from leftists

so much leftist ire is directed towards ppl one step higher on the socioeconomic ladder than them and it's rly frustrating

it's a bizarre role reversal to see music written so long ago as being avant-garde or provocative within the current musical context

I've been listening to a lot of Bach and it's amazing how *hyperactive* he is musically

the US media machine is rly something

was doing lin. alg at school and a guy "explained" to his friend at the next table the turkey/syria rojava situation and my brain actually melted hearing him basically make stuff up.

are you part of a material culture? * this is hard to know absolutely but you probably have a good guess. **

*someone could "clock" you with reasonable accuracy based on clothes, way of speech, way you spend free time

**my best guess for myself is "premium mediocre hipster"

My lin alg textbook is the first math textbook I've used that is actually...useful. It's amazing how many are just paper weights.

@machado BTW, on twitter, @Vinncent is in portugal and covering the elections in english. he's american but has done a lot of work in brazil and indonesia and I hold his perspective in very high regard.

I would say that my life has been rapidly changing for about two and a half years now. and it's been accelerating in the past year. The changes are by a large margin good but I've realized that rapid life change carries a certain inefficiency - psychological and physiological problems that were once "solved" can easily come undone.

I don't mind my life being disordered. I mind not knowing how it's disordered.

like the moment just before I fall asleep used to be very pleasant. now it's like I have a hyper awareness of various parts of my mind essentially going into hibernation, which is disconcerting

in moments of high stress I do suffer from morbidly existential intrusive thoughts mostly based on how bizarre it is to be essentially a machine, with millions of tiny working parts that could (theoretically, I'm pretty healthy) fail at any moment. a feeling of being trapped either in my brain or my body. it's all very weird

has anyone else experienced this? I'm realizing the solution is to go back to how I used to be, which is to just forget about this and enjoy life as it comes. not that easy

follow up to this is that young English Canadians don't get enough credit for being farrrrrrrr less corny wrt language than their francophone counterparts

"mekanaï du weed man faut me hit up"

"bro c'est LIT!"

imo the only legit cool thing rn is haïtian slang (partenais, ket) and some Arabic derived phrases like "bon dieu voit"

so many of the words I use (we all use) are context dependent and I use a lot of words thinking ppl will get what I mean but it's not guaranteed (like it would be easy to imagine someone thinking "it's chill" means "it's cool/good" when I don't use it that way at all though I guess tone should show that)

"do you still have to go fill out that paperwork?"

"yeah no way out of it, whatever, it's chill"

i think the difference is that other ppl say it in an unironic positive sense e.g "his apartment is super chill" but I use it like "it's fine, whatever"

when I moved here I noticed how young english canadians would use "chill" as an adjective all the time and I thought that was pretty lame tbh but now I often can't think of another word that conveys the sentiment so I end up saying it a lot now. this has been my linguistics ted talk tyvm