“If you’re thinking without writing, you only think you’re thinking.”—Leslie Lamport
Declan Molony
Karma: 1,167
I actually tried talking to my mom about this 6 months ago. As I elaborated further and further on all the reasons A-Z why we’re fucked, she saw that it was distressing me.
She told me, “If it’s bothering you, why think about it? You can choose to go think about something else.”
“You’re basically saying that I should stick my head in the sand like an ostrich and ignore it?”
“Yes. If we’re heading towards the end of the world, which I highly doubt, then you should spend the rest of your time doing what makes you happy.”
15 minutes later, I finished the story. Jesus. You’re getting really good. I was gripped until the very end.
If there was one amazing line that stood out among the rest, it was this:
a now-raw soul rubbing against a world of broken glass.
I told him about the angel on the train, how he was beautiful even as he died.
^When I got to this line in the story, I noticed I was confused. I had already forgotten that you had described the absorbed man as “angelic”. I didn’t make the connection when you then later mentioned an “angel”. I had to Ctrl + F to find a previous mention. Angelic is an adjective describing the man, whereas angel is an entirely new noun (in my head).
Besides that, you also wrote “on the train”, but there’s no mention of a train previously.
You’re an excellent writer and I’ve loved reading your fiction. I thought that I would mention, for the sake of feedback, that these two things took me out of the story enough to come write this comment.
Waking up at the same time every day is as important, if not more important, than the quantity slept (up to a point).
For example, if I go to bed 1-2 hours later than usual, I will still choose to wake up at the same time the next day to maintain my normal circadian rhythm. But if I stay up 3+ hours later than usual, then sleeping in makes me feel better.
I’d do some research online to confirm this for yourself, as well :)
I hereby propose that this song by Marc Rebillet be the official anthem of Inkhaven (especially the spoken word part in the middle of the song) :)
The call and [Redacted] response reminds me of author David Foster Wallace’s book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. He puts a blank question, followed by a response from interviewees. Really forces me to pay attention and try to fill in the blank.
Yours is fun to read, nice job!
No you shouldn’t be concerned. What you’re doing is a form of HIIT training (ie: High Intensity Interval Training), which is great for cardiovascular health and boosting your metabolism.
While you’re choosing to perform HIIT with running, it’s not really running in the general sense that I’ve described in this post. For example, you could perform HIIT with biking, or jump rope, or swimming; anything to increase your heart rate for the duration of some intervals. The sport of running is more about completing longer distances for a sustained time.
As long as you feel healthy and nothing hurts, I don’t see anything wrong with doing HIIT as frequently as every other day for your general health. I like your approach of gradually increasing the intensity and shrinking the rest periods. Seems good!
My cross country coach in high school taught me the technique for side stitches. Sucks to do in the moment, but it works every time.
100% agreed on the mileage. The 10% Rule becomes more important once you cross that 10 miles/week threshold.
I also have aphantasia. I found out that I had it at 22 years old when my friend recommended I read The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.
30 pages in, I told my friend, “This sucks! It feels like Tolkien is trying to paint a picture with his words and I cannot see it!”
She replied, “Uhh, I think you might have aphantasia.”
“A fan what?”
I’m not the guy to ask. I’ve never tried barefoot shoes.
Your explanation for forefoot striking makes sense to me.
Toe-striking is preferable for sprinters since they want to spend as little time on the ground as possible. Plus, sprinters are starting from a crouched position which forces them to toe-strike initially.
For casual running, toe-striking places more pressure on the calves. The calves are a smaller muscle group compared to your glutes, hips, quads, and hamstrings (which can absorb more impact).
If you toe-strike and you’re pain-free, then there’s no problem with it. If, however, you’re feeling pain and want to change your foot strike position, do so very slowly (over a few weeks with reduced speed). Any changes to foot position introduces the use of new muscles in the feet that are not used to that type of impact.
Injury free for 15 years is impressive. Nice!
If you’re going to switch to barefoot shoes from cushioned shoes, go very slow and take it easy. There are a lot of foot muscles that are weaker by using cushioned shoes regularly. A sudden jump to barefoot shoes can easily lead to injury (I know some people who’ve gotten injured switching to barefoot shoes and immediately just doing their normal runs).
I’d recommend walking in them for a week, then light jogs for a couple weeks, before attempting any serious runs.
Sounds like they’re working well for you, though, so that’s good! If you want to switch back to cushioned shoes, the same slow process is required.
Good question. If you’re new to cardio and running is too painful for you, I’d suggest trying another less strenuous discipline like biking. As you get better at biking and your cardiovascular fitness improves, you could try running again at a slow pace.
Another option is to walk on an incline treadmill. You could increase the incline steepness each week or go for longer to improve.
I don’t know your fitness/general health. If you smoke, for example, I can’t imagine your lungs would feel good during a run.
Agreed, thanks! I changed the preceding paragraph to reflect this:
Many people run by landing on their heels (known as “heel striking”) too far in front of their bodies (known as “overstriding”)—don’t do this!
In general, a 10-16° forward lean should take care of both heel striking and overstriding.
A Comprehensive Guide to Running
I think this post would benefit from the inclusion of supply/demand graphs. If someone hasn’t taken econ before, they’ll probably be confused when you mention shifts in the supply/demand curves.
Plus, people like pictures :)
I dug out my old copy of The Communist Manifesto. You’re right that Marks & Engels merely create an aesthetic, but not a substantive replacement for capitalism.
The authors begin by stating “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” and conclude their manifesto by saying that the Communists “openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”
They wish to bring about their revolution by the means of ten proposed principles. Which include: abolition of private property, abolition of inheritance, centralization of credit in the hands of the state, and more.
Before we can even consider these, earlier in the manifesto they claim that “the condition for capital is wage-labor. Wage-labor rests exclusively on competition between the laborers.” But with AI, the value of wage-labor is decreasing. When the proletariat are no longer the base/foundation of the capitalist machine, they’re stripped of all their political power.
This got me thinking today: what use is there for a redundant class of people that do not, and cannot, meaningfully contribute to the accelerating techno-economy? What happens to the Malawi people that have practically zero chance of breaking out of their chronostratified environment? Well, they’ll probably still exist. They just won’t have the opportunity to join the upper echelons of society when socioeconomic mobility grinds to a halt. Globalism as the preeminent narrative of the 21st century—that strives to raise the tide for all boats—may disintegrate as wealthy, isolated groups of people dominate the economy and win all the money.
So the Malawi people won’t go away. They’ll still be there. And it’s possible they keep living their lives as is. And so will I.
I’ve noticed that much of my confidence/self-esteem is derived from my place in my local status hierarchy. I’m better than my friends at pickleball and that makes me feel good. But being chronically online always makes me feel depressed because there is always someone displaying their life who’s more impressive/richer/more successful than me. So the locally optimal solution may be to dig my head in the sand and enjoy/contribute to my local community, and the Malawi people can do the same, while we all collectively ignore the techno-elite who are busy building mega space yachts to explore the galaxy.
One of other posts I wrote, Perceptual Blindspots: How to Increase Self-Awareness, is about being kind to your friends by breaking the social convention of niceness and making them aware of something they ought to know about themselves (even if it hurts to hear in the short-term).
From a reader’s perspective, this post did not capture my attention. The first sentence does not explain what the book was about. Nor did the second sentence, nor the third...etc. It’s not until the seventh sentence with “At a large scale” am I able to intuit that this book is about world history. Before then, I was just reading your opinions on a subject matter that was not made clear to me.
The first sentence of a blog post is the most important one—it should induce someone to read the next sentence. Your first sentence is that there exists a great book. Okay? There are a lot of great books, but you didn’t explain why I should care about this one. I didn’t read the rest of your post for this reason.
I’ve been enjoying many of your posts this month :) But this one lost me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯