Bryan Kam @bryankam@writing.exchange
Writing about/discussing complexity, step changes, and revolutions in between drafts of a Victorian-style novel of ideas
Joined Jul 2020
I highly recommend this podcast which puts the past year into historical context, and which includes an incisive close reading of Capra's It's a Wonderful Life. From the consistently brilliant @Historiansplain podcast:
Here's me thinking aloud about the connection between vision and theorizing/ideas/abstraction https://bit.ly/30occDE
Started 2004 with Ubuntu 4.10. I didn't really felt I understood it so I switched to Slackware. I learned a lot but it was a pain. After a few months I went to Arch Linux. Maybe 2011-2016 I ran Debian, then I switched back to Arch, and I'm still on Arch now. Also run a FreeBSD (once it was OpenSolaris) fileserver.
I started writing about the myth of "the West" https://bit.ly/3DjQoYs
I wrote a few more reflections on the crazy note-taking system called a Zettelkasten which I've now been using for two years https://bit.ly/3w9XLPx
I recorded a podcast on Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human, Kuhn, and A. C. Graham. https://anchor.fm/bkam/episodes/Nietzsches-Human--All-Too-Human--Kuhn--A--C--Graham-e12gv1c
I recorded one of Thomas Kuhn's lectures from 1973, on "Objectivity, Value Judgment, and Theory Choice" https://bit.ly/cs_tk
You might also be interested in my very long twitter thread on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) https://twitter.com/bryankam/status/1303688412923400192
I wrote about the syntax of feelings https://bit.ly/3p0r96V
We're listening to/discussing one of my favourite albums, "I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight" by Richard and Linda Thompson in just over an hour (7pm BST) on clubhouse if you're interested. 😊
https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/PARG5oZx
I wrote about Epicurus https://bit.ly/3fWPAO4 and his view on death https://bit.ly/3g6seGd
Olivia Laing's The Trip to Echo Spring, about alcoholism and the writing of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Williams, Cheever, Berryman, and Carver is almost unbearably beautiful https://amzn.to/2JkpZlZ I remember The Lonely City being like this too.
This argument is similar to Julian Jaynes' account of the origin of language, but for Jaynes command precedes communication (based on apes) https://psyche.co/ideas/our-greatest-invention-was-the-invention-of-invention-itself
Darwin's notebooks missing
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-55044129
I wrote about what it was like taking a five day break from eating, speaking, screens to read, write, meditate, and exercise. And to see if time slowed down... https://bit.ly/36EESYo
Wrote about the heritability of variability in Darwin https://bit.ly/3lpvFt3
Reading Darwin, he's pretty sure all domestic pigeons came from rock pigeons. But I had no idea there were such crazy-looking ones, called "fancy pigeons" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fancy_pigeon
Anyone done a dopamine fast? https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/07/style/dopamine-fasting.html
Can anything top "The Silversword Alliance" in terms of an awesome name for plants? I want to join.
Sounds like Lisa Feldman Barrett is going the way of Friston and Heyes? I.e., that basically everything is culturally constructed, and all about interpretation/predictions? I'd be really interested to discuss this trend. https://fs.blog/knowledge-project/lisa-feldman-barrett/
Writing about/discussing complexity, step changes, and revolutions in between drafts of a Victorian-style novel of ideas
Joined Jul 2020
