Jay Hoffmann

I don’t know what to call this yet

Tag: Philosophy

  • #39: Transitions

    I heard some good advice once. Never waste a transition.

    Life is full of transitions, big and small. So some, just naturally, are going to pass you by. But I have a big one coming up. My oldest is starting Kindergarten. And there’s a lot that’s about to change. The butterfly effect of his now slightly altered schedule and transition to the bus is going to basically change up my entire routine.

    And that can be a bummer, if I let it be. But I’m not going to let it be. It’s going to be a chance for me to have some 1 on 1 time with him, which is something I don’t get enough of. It’s going to be a chance for him to try some independence. And for me, it’s going to let me move things around in my day so that I can have longer hours of being productive.

    Here I am, putting it out into the universe. A transition is coming, and I’m going to embrace it.

    Kierkegaard on the nature of regret


    If you marry, you will regret it; if you do not marry, you will also regret it; if you marry or if you do not marry, you will regret both; whether you marry or you do not marry, you will regret both. Laugh at the world’s follies, you will regret it; weep over them, you will also regret it; if you laugh at the world’s follies or if you weep over them, you will regret both; whether you laugh at the world’s follies or you weep over them, you will regret both. Believe a girl, you will regret it; if you do not believe her, you will also regret it; if you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both; whether you believe a girl or you do not believe her, you will regret both. If you hang yourself, you will regret it; if you do not hang yourself, you will regret it; if you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both; whether you hang yourself or you do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This… is the sum of all practical wisdom.

    Notes Block – hello from the saved content!

    Full episode of Never Waste a Transition:

    This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today’s tip is to never waste a transition. When there is a change happening in your life, consider whether there are any other changes you’d like.

    To bundle with it. So I heard this story about advice given to a couple preparing for marriage. They were anticipating several moves in the early years of their life together. Rather than wasting these transitions, they were advised to be intentional about how they wanted to shape their life together

    by reflecting on their norms and routines with each move. I think that is great advice, not just for newlyweds, but in lots of contexts. Transitions create fresh starts, and that makes it easier to start new habits. For instance,

    the start of a new school year or the first day of a new job can both be great times to take on a new morning routine. Maybe you’re getting up at a different time now and the morning is already ordered differently, so it might not be quite so strange to add five minutes of yoga to the mix. Transitions also create natural opportunities for ending routines or breaking

    habits that aren’t serving you any more. Maybe a weekly coffee shop date with your aunt was life giving when your daughter was a new born, but feels stressful now that your daughter is an active toddler. If you’re moving to a new apartment in a different neighborhood, this could be a natural time to find a new way to

    connect with your aunt. Or perhaps this snooze button has been an ingrained habit for years, even if you know it doesn’t do you much good. The transition to a new job, with its new morning routines could create a great occasion to swear off the snooze button too. In addition to being great times to start, stop, or change habits,

    transitions create ideal occasions for reflection. What do you want your life to be like? What are your hopes and goals? Maybe when you start going into an office three days a week, you become more intentional about taking breaks with colleagues in order to build in social time because you

    have reflected on the importance of professional relationships. The truth is, transitions don’t even need to be huge to nudge some sort of changes. If you buy a new kitchen tape that can be a reason to rethink your family dinner routine.

    So try to recognize any sort of transition when it is happening, then decide not to waste it. Anything can be an occasion for building good habits or changing something that isn’t working. Making the most of transitions can help us build the lives we want In the meantime, This

  • #25: Superhero movies were a blip

    Dune’s been on my mind. Not simply for the technical mastery on display, or for its commitment to theatrical spectacle, or even for its place in the larger cultural landscape of 2024.

    I’m just kind of impressed that its a bonafide modern franchise not tied to some sort of superhero source material. It’s not even all that original. Obviously, it’s adapted from a very popular sci-fi series, and it’s been tried before. But the (in some ways far too incessant) comparisons to Star Wars go beyond its thematic and stylistic similarities. It’s a generational blockbuster film franchise that’s self-contained, in its own world, sweeping through audiences. It’s big and epic and interesting and exciting in a way that we haven’t seen in a while.

    It does feel like this year we are starting to see some return to movies as they existed before the days of Marvel. There are summer blockbusters, and mega franchises. There are shots in the dark like Everything, Everywhere all at once. Kevin Costner is even making Westerns again.

    When I first met my now wife, we used to go to an indie theater every week and see whatever was out. There was always some indie rom-com (this was the era of 500 days of summer) or drama that was fun and stylistically original and had a nice self-contained story to it. Then movies got split into either mega blockbusters or super low budget, barely watched indies. All those middle of the road films disappeared.

    So it’s fun to see a movie like this about a woman who tries to reconnect with her boyfriend, who passed away, through connections through music. It’s exactly the kind of thing we would’ve went to the movie to see. Maybe those kinds of movies are coming back.

    And it’s possible that after all of this, superhero movies and never-ending, interconnected IP will be more of a blip of film history rather than a seismic and enduring paradigm shift.

    Maybe multiverses will be all too much.

    Maybe we’ll be able to just make movies again.

    Bookmarks & Notes

    When ChatGPT and it’s many, many competitors began flooding the market, I started to use it a bit in my writing. Mostly I would set it up with something I had written and ask for a revision, then pull some things here and there I liked. But over time, it’s for sure slipping out of use for me. I like this guide from the iA team, Writing with AI . It’s more pragmatic than a lot of other things that I’ve seen. It’s advice essentially boils down to turning to something like ChatGPT at times when you are stuck. Like a rubber duck, but for ideas. But this caution is so important for me:

    AI can and will ruin your voice and credibility if you lazily let it write in your place. As writers we can not allow AI to replace our own thinking. We should use it to simulate the thinking of a missing dialogue partner. To write better, we need to think more, not less.

    I was also feeling that AI was beginning to rob me of my voice. And without that, what else do I even have?

    We Need to Talk About the Front Web. As a generalist, that works with a lot of full stack developers, I have mixed feelings about the division between the front-end and it’s tradeoffs with back-end expertise. But I do understand the way that the intention and semantics of HTML is under attack, and in slow decay. And so I really do appreciate Angela Ricci’s point of view here. The whole thing is absolutely worth a read, I enjoyed every bit of it.

    That’s the web today: abstractions, intertwined dependencies, heavy tools, thirty-party libraries, client-side JavaScript frameworks… SPAs! — we simply broke the web with these.

    And man does the web feel broken sometimes.

    I don’t know if I see No Labels as a “dangerous” experiment, but after reading the profile on them in The Atlantic I’m left wondering, what is even the point of this (other than to placate the egos of it’s founders)?

    Kierkegaard on the root of despair

    The relation to himself is something a human being cannot be rid of, just as little as he can be rid of himself, which for that matter is one and the same thing, since the self is indeed the relation to oneself… With despair a fire takes hold in something that cannot burn, or cannot be burned up — the self… To despair over oneself, in despair to want to be rid of oneself, is the formula for all despair.

    Notes

    Prepping for Easter

    Check Asana
    Clear out Reeder
    Check Inbox Note
    Read through emails
    Go through “To Sort” In Raindrop
    Film List
    Comics List
    Add to Books
    Revolutions
    Review projects in Obsidian
    Add to collections in Obsidian
    Set a weekly focus
    Publish Weeknote