I re-read House of Leaves over the last few nights. Not all of it, just Navidson’s story as told by Zampano and as put together by Johnny. I skipped the footnotes, I skipped Johnny’s story, I skipped the Whalestoe Letters. Navidson’s story is fun. It’s also a quick read. If it were a novella, it would be great. Maybe the experts have other options, but I don’t think the footnotes of fake academic citations add anything. I don’t think doing fancy tricks with the text helps (well, maybe on the first reading). ...

The first draft is just the beginning. A short stop before the real work begins. And the first draft is no good. It’s complete shit. The first draft of anything is shit – Ernest Hemingway The first draft only captures the first ideas. You’re not done. Far from it. Read it, just five things wrong with it, fix those five things, repeat. Repeat until you run out of time or you get sick of it. ...

When I’m working on a larger project, my brain want’s to get all distracted. To go off and read “news” or “socials”. To do anything other than the next step to move things forward. Especially after finishing a task. This may also happen at the beginning of a work session before starting a task. We’ll it did before I really dialed-in my warm-up routine. I have a trick to pull myself out and get back to it. ...

I was thinking about how sauna is supposed to reduce all cause morality, according to some random paper. I asked GPTSearch to find the paper and summarize the data. We found: Association between sauna bathing and fatal cardiovascular and all-cause mortality events (2015) (I didn’t read the paper, the numbers below could be hallucinated, I’m just having fun this morning) Summarized by GPTSearch: Data Summary: Frequency of Sauna Use: 1 session per week 2-3 sessions per week 4-7 sessions per week The study found that compared to men who had one sauna session per week, those who had 2-3 sessions per week had a 24% lower risk of all-cause mortality, and those with 4-7 sessions per week had a 40% lower risk. ...

I just tripped over a cute tweet by sama + gpt4.5. pic.twitter.com/pGe6AOHbhs — Sam Altman (@sama) March 3, 2025 He was asking if we are close to the singularity. GPT4.5 responded, yes, and that we are already beyond the event horizon. The rationale is that AI is already influencing human thought, creativity, communication, and identity. Good reasoning. I agree. But by that reasoning, the long ramp started decades ago. I guess we’re going exponential soon-ish.

I have a yellow sticky note that says: “Move it forward!” It means: stop procrastinating. Stop thinking. Don’t think. Now is not the time for that. Now is the time for acting. Take action. Do one thing to move the project forward. No matter how small. Read a thing. Format a thing. Edit a thing. Talk through a thing. Doing one small thing will kick-start the engine and get things moving again. ...

I think Michael Crichton’s “Eaters of the Dead” is cool. I watched the movie adaption “The 13th Warrior” first, probably when it came out in ‘99. Watching it, I was thinking: this is Vikings + Arabs. Historical fiction. Fighting. Yay! I read the novel later, I was thinking: this is like cooler version of Beowulf. Here’s the synopsis (via grok3): Published in 1976, Eaters of the Dead is a historical fiction novel that blends fact, legend, and adventure. The story is narrated by Ahmad ibn Fadlan, a 10th-century Arab courtier from Baghdad, who is sent as an ambassador to the Bulgars but becomes embroiled in a journey far beyond his original mission. Based loosely on the real Ibn Fadlan’s historical account of his travels, the novel takes a fictional turn when he encounters a band of Norse warriors led by Buliwyf, a Viking chieftain. ...

I re-read a ton. Maybe 1/4 of the books I read in a year. Sometimes more. Taking “Do you have books you re-read regularly?” as a prompt, I commented the following: I re-read the following each year: Ambergris (3 books), Vandermeer Area X/Southern Reach (3 books), Vandermeer Hyperion, Simmons Enders Game, Scott Card Flowers for Algernon, Keyes Some others I’ll re-read every other year: Blood Meridian, McCarthy The Fountainhead, Rand Do the Work, Pressfield Call of Cthulhu, Lovecraft Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig Solaris, Lem Antifragile, Taleb Why? I guess to recapture the feeling of that first read :) ...

Just read the following on the benefit of writing to help thinking: Write to Escape Your Default Setting Fantastic piece. Great writing too. For those of us with woefully average gray matter, our minds have limited reach. For the past, they are enthusiastic but incompetent archivists. In the present, they reach for the most provocative fragments of ideas, often preferring distraction over clarity. Love it. Especially “reach for the most provocative fragments of ideas” and “often preferring distraction over clarity*”. ...

There’s a scene in Authority that freaks out most who read it (as evidence on r/SouthernReach). Its in Chapter “03: Break Down”. The “Whitby” scene. Oh man. “Control”, our protagonist has climb up into the roof cavity in the store room of their large scientific installation next to the southern reach. He’s found a horrible mural panted on a wall up there with the faces of the staff. He’s also found a sleeping bag like someone is spending a lot of time up there. ...