Alcohol as Escape From Perfectionism

And truth was, believe it or not, I got a lot done when I was drinking. In my alpha dog years—when I was holding down a senior job at a magazine, raising an artistic, athletic young man, giving speeches on the circuit—life was more than full. Alcohol smoothed the switch from one role to the other. It seemed to make life purr. I could juggle a lot. Until, of course, I couldn’t.

That’s the thing about a drinking problem: It’s progressive. But for a long, long time, alcohol can step in as your able partner, providing welcome support—before you want to boot it out.

Sometimes I’m amazed at the amount of work I accomplished during 2010 and 2011, the worst of my drinking career. I would often get up before the sun and work for 3-4 hours before going to work.

These days I can barely pull myself out of bed, even after the fourth snooze.

#alcoholism

Up to 70% off everything but prob doesn’t apply to the website — http://www.sciplus.com/

#photos #sciencesurplus

An Entirely Other Day: The Empathy Vacuum

But we — the majority of us — apparently do not need help remembering to text our significant other. (Or — cough — think we don’t.)

And that’s the difference, isn’t it? What we can imagine ourselves doing, or needing, or wanting. Those people who don’t need the help feel free to judge those who do.

They judge us by our failures and not our desire to improve. They judge us by our tools and not what we can accomplish with them. They judge us by their own standards, without a breath given to the possibility that a different perspective might exist.

Which is pretty much the Internet in a nutshell, isn’t it? Exposed to the entire spectrum of human enthusiasms, it’s basically impossible not to judge. Our empathy overloads and gives up and we sit, staring at the screen aghast, that somebody, somewhere might actually believe that what they’re doing is OK, is acceptable, is even appropriate.

Everybody is somebody else’s monster.

At one time it was easy for me to not think that there’ll be another person on the other side of what I’m writing — be that a text message, an email, a Facebook status update, or a post here…be it a single human reading or a group.

But…I’ve witnessed (and been a party to) careless words smashing through lives though and those kind of hurts can last forever. Some are simply impossible to forget.

#advancedsoul

Drunk poker bet loser gets ridiculous new name

Here’s why you should never get drunk and start placing ridiculous poker bets.

One unfortunate New Zealander found out the hard way after losing a bet which involved his friends choosing him a new name if he lost.

The 22-year-old did lose and is now called Full Metal Havok More Sexy N Intelligent Than Spock And All The Superheroes Combined With Frostnova.

I would never make such a bet and even if I did, I wouldn’t honor it if I lost. But.. his new name isn’t half bad.

President Obama will introduce the series premiere of ‘Cosmos’ on Sunday night

The reboot of Carl Sagan’s classic show Cosmos is coming tomorrow night in a huge international launch, and Fox has announced that the series will kick off with a message from President Obama. The new Cosmos, headlined by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, is a blend of CGI fiction and science that explores the universe and humanity’s role in it. Fox says that Obama’s opening video message “invites a new generation to embrace the spirit of discovery and inspires viewers to explore new frontiers and imagine limitless possibilities for the future.”

I listen to most every podcast episode of StarTalk by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Tune in tonight folks!

In related news.. the Bill Nye, Obama and Neil selfie.

#podcasts #cosmos

If you’re into that kinda thing, here’s the link: /comments/rss/

If you don’t know what that means, it’s for nerdy people like me.

If you’re mildly curious, have a look at what Wikipedia says about RSS.

In other news, there’s a new Quick Tip at the bottom when adding a new post: 2. Posting Links. Following that is how I get the uniform look when linking to other sites.

#tcr

12 Things You Might Not Know About T. rex

The world’s most famous dinosaur is a lot more interesting than many people realize. Some 65 million years after its extinction, Tyrannosaurus rex is still captivating scientists, movie makers, and the general public alike. Here’s some neat stuff you might not know about the “tyrant lizard king.”

#meanwhile #dinos

How Silicon Valley Became The Man

A great example of this on the ground in Mountain View where I live today is Google. Google treats its engineers extremely well, offers extremely flexible work spaces, has built essentially a culture of collaboration and creativity that looks very communal and very wonderful, even as around those engineers it has cafeteria workers who are making something very close to minimum wage, and often lack the ability to get proper health insurance. That’s the kind of old communal mindset right there, where you bring together a kind of elite, give them a shared mindset, all the resources they need to live in that mindset, and yet surround them with folks who are relatively impoverished, often racially different, certainly members of a different class. In that sense, the communes were already The Man. And we’ve inherited their legacy.

Long but good.

#google #worknews

Windows 8 and the Microsoft Surface

When Jobs introduced the iPad, he wanted it to be seen as a productivity device. He had Phil Schiller demo Keynote, Numbers, and Pages.

I used the Newton as a productivity device. I used the P800 as a productivity device. But at least for me, the iPad never turned out to be a good productivity device. It turned out to be great for browsing the web, watching movies, and playing games. Great for reading books and comics. Great for consumption. But not great for production.

I’m in complete agreement.

I have a Nexus 10 and I might peck out an email or two but other than that, I don’t do ANYTHING but consume content. Anything more than banging out a few letters leads to sheer, utter and absolute frustration.

When posting to this site with it, I might send a one-liner but never a full-on post. The Nexus 10 has a good size display but when the on-screen keyboard comes up, it fills pretty much half of it. Any special characters— I need to go into a sub-menu and fancy special characters, a sub-sub-menu. Then my train of thought is blown.

Trying to research something in one place and then typing in another, you know that whole multi-tasking bit — forget about it. When I have a browser tab open and type in it, and then switch to another app, even another tab, and then come back to the open-typing tab, it’ll refresh.

And then I loose EVERY THING that I typed. 90% of the time it does this and it reminds me of the old days of typing something into Notepad before pasting it into Internet Explorer because I was worried of losing my hard-won wordage.

Sure, I could type it first in Evernote since it (and most every app) will auto-save when it looses focus but then I have three different apps that I’m working with. All of this to write a simple post. Again — forget it.

I could get a bluetooth keyboard I suppose and dink around with that but then I remember I have a 13” MacBook Air that I use for work and for play. I wrote the code for tcrbang.com on it, do all of my work stuff with it, all our household finances, write long form emails, blah, blah, blah.

Plus the bastard is portable as a goose — I sit at my desk, in the conference room, in the basement, at the kitchen table, in the bedroom, on the couch. The battery lasts for hours and it weighs less than 3 pounds. And it’s (more or less) only 3” bigger than the Nexus 10.

The touch screens are great for watching Netflix, looking at Instagram, listening to Polish Girl, and/or playing The Room but if you wanna pound out that thesis on automatic CS paper generation, don’t waste your finger strokes. Just be a receiver.

Oh, and I read shitloads on the Nexus. I mean shitloads of comiXology and web articles. And doodling is kinda fun.

#microsoft #geekystuff

List of sunken nuclear submarines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Eight nuclear submarines have sunk as a consequence of either accident or extensive damage: two from the United States Navy, four from the Soviet Navy, and two from the Russian Navy. Only three were lost with all hands: two from the United States Navy and one from the Russian Navy. All sank as a result of accident with the exception of K-27, which was scuttled in the Kara Sea when repair was deemed impossible and decommissioning too expensive. All of the Soviet/Russian submarines belonged to the Northern Fleet. Although the Soviet submarine K-129 (Golf II) carried nuclear ballistic missiles when it sank, it was a diesel-electric submarine and is not in the list below.

Something to help you sleep.

#HeavyMachina