Ran Prieur

March 6.

2022-03-06T18:00:57Z

March 6. On a quick update from Friday, I can think of two things that are correlated with both achievement and unhappiness. One (thanks Zero Null) is tunnel vision, or narrow focus -- and this is especially true if you're zooming in looking for things that are wrong. That's how you perfect your own technique, but if it becomes your default way of looking, you're going to be miserable.

The other is a get-things-done mindset. If life starts to feel like a video game where you've completed all the quests, then you need to re-imagine the meaning of life as something other than quest-based.

March 4.

2022-03-04T16:40:56Z

March 4. Sad news from women's soccer. Stanford goalkeeper Katie Meyer, who made this all time great celebration after stopping a penalty kick in a championship game, has taken her own life.

Whenever a highly successful person dies by suicide, I always wonder if the thing that caused the success, and the thing that caused the suicide, are the same thing. For example, Anthony Bourdain once said this:

There's a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, and smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons and old movies. I could easily do that. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy.

If Bourdain had been satisfied to be that guy, would he still be alive? Maybe not, if being a celebrity chef was a way of running from something that was going to catch him either way.

Personally, I fight and fight to have nothing to do all day, and I always fail, because the world wants stuff from me. That's reason enough to not kill myself. The biggest reason is I have to finish my novel. But I think the most universal reason to keep living is the beauty of small moments. If you look for them, you can find them all over, and think to yourself, I'm glad I'm still here to see this.

March 3.

2022-03-03T15:30:36Z

March 3. Two "five things" links. Five Things You Notice When You Quit the News. The first two: you feel better, and you were never actually accomplishing anything by watching the news.

And Five Wild Things I Learned Analyzing 23,000 Illegal Drugs. There's a place in Vancouver where you can get your drugs tested for free. It turns out, blotter LSD is one of the safest drugs, but as soon as you get into white powder, it's risky. Three of the more common things that are in drugs and not supposed to be: fentanyl, caffeine, and viagra.

March 1.

2022-03-01T13:10:21Z

March 1. Obviously we're not in Cuban Missile Crisis territory, but I've seen some discussion of whether the danger of nuclear war is greater right now than in the 1980's. One difference is, in the 80's the media agenda was to point out the risk of nuclear war, and push for disarmament. Now, their agenda is to keep us calm. I still think the risk is low, but I don't feel qualified to say anything about what Putin might or might not do, or who would obey him.

Also, I just read this in the book The Dawn of Everything. Among the Yurok, a tribe in northern California, there was a "requirement for victors in battle to pay compensation for each life taken, at the same rate one would pay if one were guilty of murder." There's no reason we can't have that rule in the modern world, except the continuing political influence of states that want war murders to be free.