Jim Willis

Month: February 2024

  • Personal Density and Journaling in Day One

    On how journaling impacts self and temporal rootedness and its disorienting yet grounding effect on understanding personal growth and the passage of time.

  • Read: Vision Con

    Unable, then, to see the world because I have forgotten the way of being in the world that enables vision in the deepest sense, I can then be convinced of the superiority of virtual worlds.³ Increasingly captivated by virtual worlds, I am less likely to demand anything more or better. The tools that diminish my…

  • Read: I Made This

    Suppose Bob writes an email to Sue, who has no existing business relationship with Bob, asking her to draw a picture of a polar bear wearing a cowboy hat while riding a bicycle. If Sue draws this picture, we all agree that Sue is the creator, and that some arrangement is required to transfer ownership…

  • Only half-jokingly wondering if Amazon’s AI’s emergent capabilities are due to being trained on audio from all of those Alexa devices out there? 🤔 #AI #Alexa Also on:

  • Not going to lie, I’ve been ignoring all the hype around Drafts and sticking with emacs to my detriment. I dismissed Drafts as a rabbit hole for Zettelkasten-types where you spend more time tweaking the system than using the system, but Drafts is really close to what I imagine emacs would be if it were…

  • The impermanence of the web is a weakness. I have a journal entry from 19 years ago with 8 hyperlinks in it, many to major news outlets and publishers. Every link is broken resulting in some kind of 404-ish error. Archivists were right to mistrust this thing. Also on:

  • Installing Python on New Mac

    As per this great video (on maintaining local python environments using pyenv), the Python that comes built into the Mac is for the Mac to use, not for programmers to use! Moreover, sudo should be unnecessary when working with installing modules, etc. for python. This magic is achievable by doing the following: Install Homebrew The…

  • Read: Is It Time to Shake Up Your Coffee Routine?

    The large majority of the world’s decaffeination still happens through chemical-based processes that use things like methylene chloride or ethyl acetate. I don’t know what those are but it doesn’t sound like I want it in my body! Luckily, there are brands out there who are using a more natural method of stripping caffeine from…

  • Albert Music Hall

    Played to a capacity crowd with Vinny and Mike last night. (great photo by Bob Yellen) Posted a couple of videos up on Facebook but will try to get them on YouTube, too. Also on:

  • Read: The Thing That Is Silence

    All the forces at play within us and without seem to be centrifugal forces, pulling us apart. I remain interested in understanding the nature of these forces. The critical conversation remains important. But I’m increasingly interested in how we might find and deploy alternative ways of being in the world. What are the practices that…