Said the 6th patriarch of Chán buddhism.
With this unplanned rant, make like Drake and start at the bottom

Said the 6th patriarch of Chán buddhism.
With this unplanned rant, make like Drake and start at the bottom
Of course, Paul Bach-y-Rita was one of the original OG’s in this realm.
To research or work on any of these technologies would be the opportunity of a lifetime, & I’d cancel pretty much everything in my life right now to pursue them if only I knew how. In the meantime the opportunity to sit back and learn is available & my cynical little mind is already shouting out some words of caution.
BRAIN-TO-COMPUTER-INTERFACES-ARE-NEVER-GONNA-HAPPEN!, says cynical brain
Well, nothing interesting that ever happened was ever-going-to-happen. New inventions are just crazy, that’s how it is!
(this back-and-forth arguing continues). The primary concern is whether or not a high-bandwidth brain-to-machine interface for general-purpose use would be a good thing. Musk & others are right when they say that a keyboard isn’t enough to transmit a certain amount of information back-and-forth. But is that enough to support the overall claim that as it relates to human beings using and interfacing with information technology, quality of communication is proportional to the bandwidth of the information being passed along? Childish idealism runs rampant in my thoughts now – I’d like to go to coffee w a clever human like Elon & ask them, ‘will the problems you foresee with AI actually be solved by brain-machine interfaces or will they be worsened? Will the malicious capabilities of technology be diminished if humans are more closely linked w technology?’ It seems even a pen and paper (even morse code!) are often not enough for humans to communicate effectively, promptly, or sufficiently. It leads me to wonder if the tech-augmented hippocampus & cortex, adorned with messy glued-on silicon chips, might not be a devastatingly unhealthy Matrix-esque nightmare of limbic slop.
That coffee date won’t be happening anytime soon so in the meantime I’ll have to scroll from afar & hope these technologies work, & serve the common good.
sleeves
snotted down blanket
chewed up counselor
bringing, wringing, bwrought. potatoes and stuff for samosas. a time machine. yourself. September nouns transition-word-ing into February nouns. if you count the poem in these syllables, something will happen
pause
clench
Stole two organ donor eyes to organize my disses. Now there’s no insight in-sight, diss-organized, Mrs.
me and I miss
didn’t plan on writing this & will simply type as quickly as possible
While digging through a “Free Swap” area on campus I came upon a forcefully optimistic series of etchings laid out on some sort of a plaque situation
The Optimist Creed:
Neat. A swirl of reactions shared that space behind my eyes after I located and skimmed over this. One reaction tasted like Wow this is psycho this is brainwashing and another reaction had some sort of a Yeah but you need it, you sick fuck type of overtone. Grabbed the thing, brought it home and made a commitment to memorize it. Thought I’d elect one item on the list as a area to focus on (optimistically, of course) & choose another that seems to be going ok. On typing out the list one jumped out as urgently in need of work and it was less clear which item I’m doing best with. Following that I’m curious to find/post at least an article or two on the neural substrates of positive/negative thinking.
Urgently in need of work: To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. This one screamed at me.
Doing best: Maybe To make all your friends feel that there is something in them, or To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future? The former case makes me smile because I think friends would have good things to say about that. The issue with the latter would be the hours spent daily ruminating about past/current failures. But the feedback I often get from adults is that in the long game I am overwhelmingly more resilient and future-focused than the other young folks they run into. The discrepancy between that externally-imposed feedback and the actual inner experience/introspective assessment is really jarring but hey, that’s psychology.
Materials & readings on optimism, pessimism, & associated neural bonanza:
From the NYT: Turning negative thinkers into positive ones
“What is Unrealistic Optimism?” (Jefferson, Bortolotti, Kuzmanovic)
In reverse chronological order:
19) Feel a momentary crunch of the small bits of eggshells embedded in your scrambled eggs. Think about easter. Type about it
18) Watch that rubbery pile of protein wobble. Realize silently that you forgot that water.
17) Use your hand. Germ theory is overrated
16) Fuck forks
15) *awful metal sound of fork scraping off the rim of the plate, awful cold feeling of fork on the inside of my forefinger*
14) Sit-fall down into the couch. Think of how accomplished you already are
13) A moment of guilt as you walk past your cats with any type of food: you know they don’t really eat your eggs, but one of the cats at least wants to, even though he just ate his food, , , , , ,
12) Hope that your cats won’t burn themselves on the burner. Put another pot of water on it as it’s cooling off. Don’t forget to bring some water over to the couch in the living room.
11) Eggs done – you resisted dusting them with salt – in your mind a toilet flushes and carries with it dissolving bits of ‘i’m not hypertensive but hey I skipped the salt, good job me’
10) Heat a pan (hear Anthony Bourdain’s voice saying pre-heated. Look at the 2 eggs you removed from the fridge and (hear Anthony Bourdain’s voice saying intermediate, uh, vessel) decide not to use a separate vessel for the eggs. Wonder if Anthony Bourdain would be weirded out that his voice comes into your head as you’re cooking eggs. Cook the eggs.
9) Be a fucking man already
8) Stare at blueberries and strawberries. Stare at freezer. Stare at blueberries and strawberries. Stare at freezer. (they are in the freezer and so you are looking at the frozen blueberries and strawberries inside of the freezer) Let out your first big yawn of the morning. Gleek onto the rim of the freezer. Smile and feel your face stretch in a weird way and think about crow’s feet. Remember that you need to eat. Remember that strawberries and blueberries won’t get you too far.
7) Remember that you need to eat
6) Flush your old coffee grounds and filter down the toilet and make sure that you don’t feel guilty about it whatsoever. Your coffee machine gurgles
5) Get up now you are feeding your cats now you realize you’re fucked get into the kitchen
4)
3)
2) After you agree to sleep separately you take some Benadryl to pass out. You take two benadryl to pass out. Instead they jazz you up for a while until
1) Tell your girlfriend she can’t come over, even if you’d like to sleep next to her. You are already so tired