Professional software engineer, musician, gamer, stoic, democratic socialist

  • 9 Posts
  • 208 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 2nd, 2023

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  • The best way I can describe the cerebral part of it is:

    You are free to think deeply about many things that you normally take for granted and see them as you would with a child-like curiosity. You second guess societal abstractions that used to feel like common sense. You see more plainly the motivations for things and connections between them. You start to feel much more viscerally present in reality rather than caught up in your psychological habits of thinking. The world of metaphor and symbolism starts to feel much richer.




  • Although it might seem contradictory, something can be abstract and concrete at the same time. These are relative qualities.

    Relative to anarchy, the state is abstract. It depends upon a socially shared model of thinking that gets acted out by individuals. Take away this layer of abstraction and you are left with anarchy, i.e. the precursor of the state.

    Prison is itself an abstraction, though its consequences feel very concrete to a prisoner. All of your thoughts and feelings are abstractions, and yet they seem concrete to you.






  • Talking at shows doesn’t really work. If you’re able to carry a conversation, chances are you are being rude to the people trying to listen.

    There are many ways that a concert can go wrong outside of the performer’s control. All of these have happened to me:

    1. Bad audio engineers. Too loud. Poor EQ.

    2. Venue sold too many tickets and it’s too crowded to dance or even stand comfortably.

    3. Incompetent management results in poor logistics. E.g. long lines making people miss the show.

    4. Venue itself just has poor acoustics that can’t be fixed.

    5. Crowd has assholes. People putting their phones up to record the whole time blocking your view. People shoving their way to the front. People not understanding how to behave in a mosh pit and hurting someone. People doing so much DMT that you can’t breathe without smelling it.

    6. Venue failing to provide free water.

    Don’t let that sour you on concerts though. I’ve been to way more good shows than bad ones. Usually if you find a good venue, it will stay good. Some performers are even so professional that they eliminate all possibility of the aforementioned issues by having their own staff take care of everything.