a comedy of gifts

A comedy of growing up "smart" is that you start getting annoyed from a very young age, when people say "that was clever / you are clever" ... because it implies :

1. speaker has a low-expectation of cleverness about the general environment

2. maybe speaker is dumb; speaker could be manipulative; now we have extra work to do, if we want to test if either is true or false

3. if either is true, the fact as it is discovered is depressing

4. one learns to not trigger such comments, by avoiding surprising behaviour in public

5. resultingly one has a sort of reverse imposter syndrome, as one generally pretends to be less clever in public, because commentators are annoying

6. at some point one stops being annoyed, and just hoses random strangers with odd behaviour, as one achieves the enlightenment of understanding that one does not owe society the comfort of familiarity

7. thereafter, life is simply becomes a game of balancing empathy for dumb people, against personal convenience 

meta analysis of eating out

1. I'm on vacation and looking at restaurants online. So I am thinking about how I think about food.

2. I normally eat at home, and when I eat out it is a trade on convenience for time.

3. Having previously done a bit of research in Horeca ( skipping the deets ), my conclusion to-date is that there is almost nothing I would pay someone else to cook as a matter of their personal expression, except as a favour, since generally I prefer my own expressions to the expressions of others. ( Sure, pay ME to consider your expression, I could do that. )

4. Besides convenience, there are other things I can't DIY at home : ambience, is generally the term for a scenic location. Don't give me some built environmental stuff, why would I want that when I can build my own environments?

In conclusion : I should peruse HoReCa mainly on the basis of scenery. Views of traffic or landscapes of various sorts. 

case study : sexual fantasy in response to knowledge of betrayal

Interesting case study, surely a general pattern :

- X expresses loss of trust ( oxytocin + cortisol )

- Y perceives X's state

- Y reacts by seeking to establish trust with X ( oxytocin target + serotonin target + dopaminergic driver )

B12 and me

Current model : I normalise a low operating baseline for serotonin, because I have cultural biases against mania

Taking B12, boosts serotonin production, increasing motor neural reaction times, and sense data rate. Downstream, that aids melatonin production - methylcobalamin specifically, is a further cofactor

This is related to my study of how to sleep without dreaming, while in college, and my inability to feel fully rested without dreaming when I ran a 24-hour business over a decade later

serious relationships

Many people looking for a serious relationship, can't handle one. But that is simply because "serious" is a weasel word meaning "define it later". That is not a serious proposition.

A serious relationship is based on facts, terms, conditions, exit clauses, underwriting, incentives, penalties, diversified risks, control mechanisms, documentation, and execution. 

"Agree to love me unconditionally", is a fools errand. At least, say you want a foolish relationship, not a serious one. Hah

identity politics and funerals

Identity politics is always fun, for the same reason they say that funerals are for the living. 

For the most part I do not think it is important to be human, until I hear some bozo making ridiculous claims about what it means to be human. 

I do not think about my nationality, race, religion, professional qualification, or personal experiences, except when someone else speaks to me about them.

Then, usually, I am happy to spiral into a long list of opinions which are happenstance in my mind. But sharing such opinions with people who actually think about those identities day in and out, is not so useful, simply because their identities and my own are definitively different in that we do not think about the same things, daily.

Most of the time, in society, the opinions I share are not my own ... merely a copy of how I wish to be represented in public.

That is the mere nature of managing political relations.