speaking terms / heat wave — snail mail

i into started listening to lush because i wanted to post a spotify link of my favorite song on twitter, all in attempts to get a like from a hot guy i (briefly) met at a house party. that aside, these two songs are some of the best indie rock to come out in recent memory. i’m most impressed with jordan’s guitar playing, switching between pretty abrasive strumming patterns and intricate finger plucking seamlessly. these songs also pair narratively: speaking terms seems to have the narrator assert their agency over an unloving partner insisting that they have unknowingly gone too far. despite this, heat wave starts with (presumably) the same speaker, waking up in their clothes having dreamt of them. we also can’t forget:

and i hope whoever it is holds their breath around you 'cause i know i did

on an oddly specific personal note, this song represents expansion. i remember looping this album as it accompanied me walking in between classes my freshman year of college. how crazy was it to be free for the first time?

detour / need for speed / basketball — kim petras

she needed a win so bad that she pulled out an unreleased sophie demo… this shit means something to her!!! no but seriously, i was really impressed with this album in an unexpected way. granted, i’ve been off kim petras since feed the beast came out with lackluster reviews, all of which she probably agrees with given her intentional (and 100% initiated) move away from massive record labels that have stifled her creative vision. even before that… wasn’t there an n-word scandal brought up by old tweets?

aside: i think we forget that miss petras was at the center of hyperpop before its transitional period to becoming that much more mainstream. this was back when charli xcx was signing douches at meet and greets after concerts and every self-proclaimed Twitter Gay was sending mine by slayyyter to all of his mutuals.

anyway… i’m glad she was able to independently create this project with a series of top notch producers like frost children and margo xs given that classic bubblegum pop sound with bright synths and opaque percussion was flattened by previous collaborators in her record label projects.

funny — broncho

i listened to this song when the weather just started to get warm in toronto after what felt like an eternal winter. spring was totally eclipsed by subpar temperatures and the need to put on a sweater every time you left the house in early may—basically an attack on my entire bloodline who lived in dewey temperatures for most of the year. ryan lindsey’s lyrics washed over me as the sun hit my skin not as a relief from cold but a reminder of warmth re: take a moment / for a moment / and i liked it.

the feeling — steve lacy

his voice has persisted throughout his progression as an artist. even if the production value increases, the writing remains honest and unique to lacy. i’m often wondering if the narrators in his songs are aware of their ego. in the feeling, he asks if he’s still cared for (am i your baby?) and states an eagerness to rekindle a toxic relationship (i’m not scared to bleed, you know our history).

the video for this song reminds me a lot of what he did for playground—a dreamy sequence of scattered, colorful visuals punctuated with lacy singing to the camera right in the foreground. he needs to keep kathleen heffernan on his production team ALWAYS!

Have you ever had a tension headache? Or a study, thinking headache? That tired feeling in your brain after doing a lot of learning — probably you felt it during your highschool exams and college thesis times, probably you felt it when you were trying to learn something new and really struggling. That’s because… learning things isn’t easy. Your brain has to do a lot of work, running through existing connections and building new ones. Over the course of my career as a software developer I became aware that the more I felt I was struggling, the more I was probably learning. It was only weeks or months after the fact that I could reflect and conclude, “oh, I was having a tough time because I was doing something new — and here’s what I learned”.

Learning thing is hard actually

I once experienced this most dramatically when things ‘clicked’ for me in Object-Oriented Programming. I’d been bashing my head against code for months. My approach was to just copy code from examples and tutorials, assert that it works (through mostly manual tests at the time — we’re talking 2003 – 2005 after all), and mumbling to myself “I don’t know why this works but it does”. I learned that in order to understand something, I first needed to put up with the frustration of not understanding it.

Now, everyone learns in different ways. Some people do great by just absorbing an entire manual and then know everything that was in it. Some people do best when watching videos, or having a teacher/mentor explain it to them. Me, I learn best through imitation, followed by examining what I just copied. “I built something that worked, because I did it like this — but why does that work?” Rather than making sure I get it all perfect and understand it perfectly before I build anything, I learn by doing and then reflecting on what I did. (I daresay I’m not unique in this and in fact most developers learn like this, which is why they’re great developers.)

I remember quite vividly the first time I typed something in Java like Button button = new Button(); At that point, I didn’t know what a class was, or an instance, or an object. I just knew I typed four words and three of those were the same word and I thought that was really funny. And that amusement spiked my curiosity and so I learned what those words meant in that context.

Why am I saying all this? Because obviously, nobody wants to learn anymore.

I think with the advent of AI everything, we’ve kind of forgotten that learning things is inherently taxing, frustrating, difficult, time-consuming, and just like, annoying to do. It burns energy, it gives you a headache, it might even make you feel bad about yourself. Because that’s what learning feels like! You don’t start at A and then magically, frictionlessly, arrive at Z. You gotta walk the steps.

But AI allows us to skip many of those steps. It has the capacity to think so you don’t have to, then give you the bullet-list, bolded-keywords, easily-readable version. But in my previously established pattern of learning, if AI writes the code for me, and I then review it by asking about what it just wrote, maybe I’m still learning, though? Maybe… maybe not.

Because I also distinctly remember typing over the example was much more effective than copy-pasting. In a similar vein, if you really want to commit something to your brain, write it down with your own hand. Physically. On paper.

There’s increasing amounts of research pointing to how increased use of LLMs decreases your brain’s capacity to think critically and learn things on its own. “Dumber” or “stupider” is quite a incendiary label, and I prefer to be a bit more precise about it, but the accumulation of cognitive debt is a real thing. And that’s because of the alphabet-journey I described earlier. If you’re skipping steps, you may get there faster, easier; but you simply won’t have picked up the learning along the way (the ‘debt’ the research points to).

Now think about how much time and effort you’ve spent during about the first 20 years of your life in education. School was hard work. Homework sucked. Studying for exams and taking them was so tough you might still have dreams about it. Writing your thesis, pretty much one of the toughest things you ever did cognitively, at least, up until that point. This is not to overvalue traditional education (there are plenty other ways to learn – on the job, self-taught, and so on). But my point is, none of that was easy. Your brain was working hard.

And it’s beautiful. (Source: Unseen details of human brain structure revealed, Google Research & Lichtman Lab, Harvard University. Renderings by D. Berger, Harvard)

I’ve been thinking about this a lot because I had a period last year where I was using LLMs quite intensively. I didn’t feel like I was getting dumber at the time, but that’s the thing, if I was then how would I know? This is the cognitive pitfall – if you are truly losing your cognitive thinking skills then you won’t be able to entirely catch and prevent that from happening. That’s what alarmed me. I was like, “well, I think I’m critically reviewing this thing’s output and still using my own thoughts and judgment but if I wasn’t then how could I be sure?”

The answer maybe is “if you’re at least still questioning that, then you’re good”. At the very least, it’s probably better to doubt yourself, than to just assume whatever the LLM responds with is always correct. If you’re not verifying the output in any way, then you’ve probably already been led astray and you’re not even aware of it…

Anyway, I’ve only been talking about learning so far, but there’s another aspect to this I want to bring up: creation.

Creating things is also not easy, turns out

Just like learning, making things is hard. Truly sitting down and making something out of nothing with your own mind and body is difficult, time-consuming, exhausting, challenging… and you often have to do it a lot, and deliberately, to even have it turn out kinda decent. This was humanity’s shared truth for a long time. Even when things came along that made creation more convenient, it still wasn’t easy. It required real cognitive effort. It’s why professional artists, musicians, writers, will often struggle with a creative ‘block’ where they just can’t synthesize something new; because it’s just that hard sometimes. Especially if they’re faced with their own perfectionism: knowing from talent or expertise what they want the result to be, and then not being able to get there.

The process of creation, and the process of learning, are very similar. When you make something, you are learning, and like me in order to learn anything you often have to go through the process of creation. An obvious example is knitting: you can’t learn how to knit by just watching videos. Your hands have to actually make something. A scarf, a beanie, a blanket. You make mistakes along the way, and you learn, and your knitting improves. You make less mistakes. Your stitches are more uniform. You knit faster.

AI makes it trivial to make something out of nothing. Using only a prompt, you can generate entire essays, songs, graphics, animations. I wonder if it’s because historically we’re used to creation being hard, thus valuable, that we haven’t adjusted to this reality where creation is easy, but we still value it as if it cost a real person blood, sweat and tears — when in fact it just cost you tokens. Because I’m curious and want to understand things I actually played around with these generators, and I found that the quantity is huge and the quality is just… not there. Certainly not the specific quality that I appreciate in any creation, which is the human quality.

I mean, you’re reading a blog post where every word was typed by me (yes, really!) I’m the woman who burst into tears the first time I saw The Sunflowers by Van Gogh and The Water Lilies by Monet. Real, human-made art affects me deeply, and I’m kind of hyper-sensitive to any creation that doesn’t have it.

That’s why over the past months I’ve grown increasingly frustrated and exhausted and annoyed with the AI slop that is just… everywhere. You see, I don’t necessarily mind if things are made with the help of AI (‘help’ doing a lot of heavy lifting in that phrase) Like, I get it, especially in a corporate context. We want more profit faster and what better way to get it than with automation instead of slower more expensive humans? (Although by now it seems humans are the cheaper option.)

What just truly grates me is the bad quality of it. Hands with too many fingers, graphs that are melting, words that are mangled, eyes that just aren’t quite right. Every blog post and LinkedIn post that now just reads the exact same effing way (which is why I am adamant about typing every word here, and if it still ‘sounds like’ LLM-speak that’s because I have unfortunately been influenced by reading and using it too much). Every single time I read “That’s not X, that’s Y” or a bullet-point list with sentences that don’t really say anything. UX designs that all look the same. Video thumbnails that all look the same. Everything is just the same, uninspired, AI-generated sludge. And it sucks, and it’s boring, and it’s just a waste of time to read/watch and a waste of resources to generate.

We can do better. Even if you want to generate things to get a headstart or whatever, you can still use your own judgment, add your own flavor. Hell, if you’re adamant about generating all your social posts at least teach the LLM to write like you so it’s not the same as every post out there nowadays.

Humans are imperfect, so everything we make ourselves is imperfect, which is exactly what makes anything interesting. I love reading something that’s clearly written in someone’s own voice and style. I love listening to music and seeing visual art where I can tell it has the maker’s characteristics there. Not everything has to be smoothed over. More importantly, if everything that’s created is the same, then why even do it? What’s the added value if it’s not expressing who we are and what our own story is? Am I the only one deeply annoyed by how samey everything is getting? (That’s separate from every other criticism leveraged against AI, mind you.)

The real kicker is, as I said, I’m not fully opposed to it. But what I see happening is that the “actual helpful use cases” are blurring together with “garbage output”, probably exactly because using LLMs intensively decreases your critical thinking skills. In other words, you might start out using it critically for specific applications, and end up not being able to distinguish quality stock photography from melting architecture and polydactyl people. You stop seeing what the big issue is. Endless LinkedIn posts full of “That’s not X. That’s Y” don’t even bother you anymore. You’re deep into the slop pool and the feeling of everything being that same gooey AI texture starts to be comfortable, like your mind sinking into digital oatmeal.

I’m not comfortable, here. I keep trying to use AI tools in meaningful ways, but I can’t do that and also tolerate all expressions of human creation and communication turning into grey goop.

There is real, measureable, significant value in the things we make ourselves and in the process of learning and creation, exactly because it’s hard. So go out there and make something yourself today! It’s worth the effort.

Because effort isn’t the enemy. Every blog post written like this is.

Especially if it ends like this—hitting hard.

With lots of periods.

And em-dashes.

HELP MAKE IT STOP NOOOooo—

Watching an old episode of Stargate SG-1.

And the adventure continues.

Among YouTube's better suggestions was to start showing me – around three or four years ago – home-made videos by the New York-based trio New Jazz Underground: this one, for example. For some time thereafter I kept up with their activity on Bandcamp, hoping for some of their music to appear on CD or vinyl. More time passed and eventually I stopped looking. By happy coincidence though, just last week something else on YouTube alerted me to the recent arrival of the trio's debut album Hoodies. A copy arrived here on Friday.

It's great to finally hear them playing in a studio setting, where their talent & technique shines, with no loss of the soulfulness & spontaneous charm that was obvious in their YouTube days. Most of the compositions on the album are by bassist Sebastian Rios, and he performs solo on one of the tracks – the marvellous ‘Las Salinas (Prelude)’. Saxophonist Abdias Armenteros demonstrates a clear and beautiful tone — not to mention a fine singing voice, which we hear on two songs. Drummer TJ Reddick meanwhile demonstrates equal facility with metronomic grooves and more elastic time-keeping. It’s a highly enjoyable record.

Another week, another old anthology of translated poetry, this one German Poetry 1910-1975, edited and translated by the estimable Michael Hamburger. It's a successor volume to an earlier one (Modern German Poetry 1910-1960) that he had co-edited with Christopher Middleton. In his introduction, Hamburger writes that, in place of the ill-defined notion of ‘modernity’, he substituted “a criterion quite as vague in itself, but meaningful as soon as it is applied to specific poems, specific poets: the criterion of authenticity, an authenticity usually bound up with novelty of one kind or another...”

I was already at least slightly familiar with the work of a number of the poets included (Rilke, Trakl, Brecht, Huchel, Bobrowski, Celan, Bachmann & Enzensberger). Among those whose names were new to me a couple that stood out were Yvan Goll and Ernst Meister. Also very interesting were the poems by authors better known for their prose: Robert Walser, Thomas Bernhard, Günter Grass & Peter Handke. The book is organised chronologically by the poets’ year or birth, which works well up until the end, where a variety of the youngest authors (perhaps then still not well-established names) are represented a little unsatisfactorily by a page or two apiece.

Cheese of the week – Baron Bigod, which must be up there among the best of English cheeses, akin to a very good Brie de Meaux. From the Fen Farm Dairy website: “Beneath the nutty, mushroomy rind, Baron Bigod has a smooth, silky golden breakdown which will often ooze out over a delicate, fresh and citrussy centre.” I first tasted it a few years ago, since when I've returned to it several times, finding it reliably excellent. I bought a ‘Baby’ 250g cheese (Fig. 26) from the Town Gate Butcher's shop in Chepstow on Saturday.

Photo by AS Photography from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/purple-petaled-flowers-in-mortar-and-pestle-105028/

“HERBALISM AND HEALTH RESOURCES I’VE USED”:

https://filedn.com/ljIKsiFxDsuSKJBJorqrS74/Herbalism%20and%20Health%20resources%20I've%20used%206-8-26.mp4

Camp Nelson Military Cemetery – image by Loran Joly on Armed Forces Day, 2026

These days, someone’s death certificate may say someone has died “of’ “HEART DISEASE”, “CANCER”, or “ACCIDENTS”, ….

CAUSE OF DEATH?

The MODERN AGE?

An age FULL of ANGER and FEAR?

I introduce this article I wrote, today, and it has information on herbs, as per Dr. Edward Bach, and much, much more:

“Cause of Death: The Actual Causes or the PSEUDO-Causes?”:

https://medium.com/@loranjoly/cause-of-death-the-actual-causes-or-the-pseudo-causes-f9383503c1f2

We might also see:

“The Neurotic Personality of Our Time – Karen Horney – Summary”:

https://youtu.be/WMGE4C4AD_0?si=UCGuvGsdbBLCSDkb

Something for the men in the audience because I think a lot of us don’t necessarily get explicit training on this.

I was fortunate enough to be trained as a high school teacher, so I did get explicit instruction on this: I was told to not be alone with students with the door closed, to not touch or hug students, and to be constantly aware of, basically, the worst possible interpretation someone could put on your conduct.

“But I’m not a teacher!” you say. Okay, but the same rule applies. You’re gregarious and social and want to talk to people but have no creepy intent? Sorry, but creepy guys have ruined this for you.

“It’s not fair for people to assume I’m creepy!” That is true. It’s also not fair that women get sexually harassed. They’re playing the odds here, willing to forgo knowledge of you personally in order to protect themselves from potential creeps. You don’t want women to consider you a potential creep? You need to go out of your way to show them that you’re not.

Let’s start with physical space. If possible (obviously if you’re jammed into a packed subway car it’s not, but otherwise), give women more space than you think they need. And if you’re walking in the same direction as them, maybe cross the street or slow down to give them space or speed up to get past them. Just send the message that you are about your own business and not trying to interact with them. “Geez! That seems like a lot of work!” It’s not actually that much work. It’s just a small exercise in empathy. Now obviously if you’re on a crowded street it’s different, but if you’re the only ones on the block? Especially if it’s nightttime? Give her some space. Now give her some more space.

Now on to conversations. Again, you need to remember that every time you open your mouth to talk to a woman you don’t know, you’re setting off her creep alarm. Perhaps your intentions are innocent, but what’s happening here is especially unfair because you get to be relaxed and she gets to be tense, waiting for the conversation to take a turn, or just resentful because she doesn’t get to decide whether she’s having a conversation on this flight.

“But people like to talk to me!” Do they, though? Because you should know that most women are very good at humoring men. Perhaps they’re like the woman I saw on a recent train ride who spent the entire length of Connecticut being regaled by a guy, said, “it was such a pleasure to talk to you!” to him as she got off the train, and then slumped, laughing and exhausted, against her companion as soon as she was off the train and out of sight.

Now if you’re a gay man or a trans man, do these rules still apply? Yep! You still need to give women personal space and assume they don’t want to talk to you.

But what if you’re neurodivergent? Irrelevant! Giving women extra space and not forcing conversation on women are within the capability of every single neurodivergent person I know. Except for the ones who use their neurodivergence as an excuse for being an asshole. Don’t be that guy.

But how will I flirt and find a romantic and/or sexual partner? By meeting someone at a party, or being introduced by friends, or because you’re both working in your community garden plots or because your kids are in the same first grade class or whatever! Demonstrate that you are a person with interests and not just a random perv, and then women will talk to you! If they feel like! And not if they don’t! And that’s okay!

This marks the day before my last day. It could be one day, one week, one month, or longer… only time will tell how long I'll be out. I have not felt the same amount of motivation to track this blog as I did last week when I started, but I think that is what makes it a good challenge. I also think the emotional toll will start showing more as we continue.

Now I feel like I procrastinated the last bit of what I have to do and left it entirely for the last day. I need to finish up between today and tomorrow so we will keep this short.

This is my last Monday. I feel tired today and don’t have much else to say.

I would have probably sat with some uncomfortable feelings today had I not signed myself up to volunteer for eight hours. I am dreading the next few days of work a little bit, but mostly because it is my last three days and I am feeling tired. There is also the fact that I don’t actually have any work to do so I am really just going to hang out but not do anything besides sit at a desk in front of a computer. I can’t even try to make myself useful, since I would only be able to complete projects that don’t take more than three days.

It hasn’t fully hit me that after Wednesday my schedule will look a little different. I am taking it one day at a time, but I am ready for rest and time to reevaluate a lot in my life.

• Occult rituals in the Epstein files.

• “Just hang in there.” – Suzanne Vega for The Creative Independent.

• “An indie horror with internet origins has beaten the legacy franchise “Star Wars” at the box office this weekend.” – NBC news on the unexpected success of BACKROOMS and OBSESSION.

Migraine day today; No productivity for me.

#radar

druklame Dankzij Datae Banken, C_telen in de puntCom van Tijd

Op een gegeven ogenblik begin je te wiebelen neem je steeds een andere positie in omdat het niet lekker meer zit maar niet in onze zetels. Wij hebben ze ontwikkeld met speciaal universeel gecertificeerd Zit vermogen, daarmee kunt u tijden verpozen op die ene unieke locatie waar u onze stoel heeft laten installeren. Andere stoelen en banken gaan snel vervelen, worden op een zeker moment door kwade geesten bezeten, vreten energie terwijl u daar eigenlijk juist bent gaan zitten omdat niet te laten gebeuren. Uit onvrede en onrust door verkeerd zitten ontstaan bouwt u op u zitplek een emperium aan spullen om uw lijf en lede maten heen zodat u zich minder bewust bent van alle drukte in en om u heen, daar nerveus wriemelend en wroetend in spieren, organen, zenuw- en bloedbanen terwijl u enorm lijdt hangend op en aan u gemankeerde zitplek. Zittend op al onze Datae troon zetels komt u daarentegen juist tot zeer diepe rust. Allemaal dankzij het in ons lab ontwikkelde Zit vermogen, we hebben deze dan ook jaren voor aanvang elke dag op ieder moment en elke wijze getest, de zitters onderworpen aan elke mogelijke uitdaging, oorzaken waardoor u op iedere andere zetel iets zou doen waardoor u onnodig veel energie gebruikt, energie volgens ons alleen nodig voor heel stil zitten kijken naar een fictief punt ergens voor u zielen oog, niks meer en zeker niks minder dan echt niks.

Onze klanten zijn dan ook honderd procent tevreden, ze zeggen feitelijk allemaal 'dankzij jullie in mijn huis vastgepinde zetel heb ik pas echt goed leren zitten', 'Het duurt soms dagen voor ik opsta en ik geniet ondertussen van elk zinloos moment. Zonder echt goede rede sta ik niet eens meer op, niet voor de bel, niet om pakketjes te ontvangen, een natuurramp, insecten plaag, niet voor de gids of voor visite. Het zit gewoon wel goed. Waarom zou ik mij dan al die problemen op de hals halen. Ik raad iedereen deze zitplek aan!' zegt Van Voorbijgaande Aard een van Smægmå's bekendste inwoners en dan ook nog onze langst zittende klant.

We adviseren u wel op zijn minst twee maal per week een paar minuten te gaan staan, Dit vooral om u zit niveau te herladen en voor een diepere zetel intensiteit. U energie verbruik op onze Datae bank of stoel is zo laag dat u amper meer slaap nodig heeft dan de bank al voor u heeft ingesteld, zittend slapen is trouwens ook veel gezonder, Een aantal gram eten is genoeg voor 28 uur zetel genot, met twee handjes vol pindas en een banaan komt u de werkweek makkelijk door. Wat ons betreft hoeft u eenmaal daar op de aangeschafte plek deze nooit weer onnodig te verlaten. En weet u, zitten op andere zetels dan de onze is bewezen ongezond, slecht voor u lichaam en bijbehorende geest maar bij ons is het juist beter voor u, u leven gaat er zonder meer op vooruit, u heeft telkens voldoende energie voor helemaal niks doen en daar veel zin in.

De paar dingen die u nog bewegend moet doen zult u snel doen en tevens goed dat allemaal dankzij het door ons ontwikkelde zitwaar en zit vermogend concept, waarmee menselijke arbeid concentratie en focus op kortstondige interactie enorm worden verbeterd en daarnaast wilt u natuurlijk ook zo snel mogelijk weer gaan settelen op onze Datae troon dus sowieso al sneller beter handelen. Laat meteen Datae u dagelijks bestaan reguleren dan zit het ogenblikkelijk goed vast. Datae tronen leveren perfectie voor op bilnaad toegespitst leven. Zit! En Af! Nee, geen poot.