Infoxication
Wander around the web long enough and the chances are you'll end up coming across the latest buzzword, the coolest terminology of the week, sometimes even of the day. Today I came across infoxication, a term I had never heard before.
Infoxication, according to what I briefly learned, refers to the state of being overwhelmed or excessively bombarded with large amounts of information. A person can become infoxicated if they are exposed to an abundance of information big enough to exceed their capacity to effectively process and comprehend it. This may lead to feeling overwhelmed, distracted, and having difficulty making sense of or prioritizing the information.
OMG. Looks like a modern era disease to me.
Fortunately, one I have been using some medicine to combat: my RSS feed subscriptions, for one. My absence from main stream social media, for another, which helps ignoring the FOMO. And journaling — be it in private or in public, like now, when everything else fails.
Week 44, 2023
✱ This week didn't start as the brightest one of the year. Far from it, actually. I went to work in person again on Monday, as the final presentation of the Obeya room we had been working with — to our CEO — was finally going to happen. While on the one hand everything went smoothly and turned out well, thanks to a nicely executed work during the past weeks, culminating with much praise received from him, on the other hand I was struck by a very unwelcome and unneeded depression attack. Looking back on it I do know where it came from and why, and had I had this knowledge then, it would have avoided so much unnecessary misery. Thanks god someone noticed what had happened and talked me out of it in time to avoid ruining my day — and week.
✱ With heatwaves coming and going in my city all the time lately, I finally decided to take action and improve home life quality a little bit. I bought a gigantic — if you can call a 60 cm diameter gigantic — turbo max fan, which thankfully arrived overnight and, as soon as I had it assembled, took it to my living room which currently doesn't have air conditioning setup and turned it on. This purchased proved worth from the first refreshing seconds. And, as it's portable, I can carry it around freely, as much as I want. It will be very welcome, because the only two air conditioning devices I have are in my bedroom and the children's.
✱ I'm a true crime genre fan. This week, along with my wife, I've watched the Suzane von Richthofen's real crime movie trilogy. Suzane murdered her parents in 2002, during the Halloween night, helped by her boyfriend and his brother, in one of the most shocking Brazilian murder crimes. As a result she was sentenced to 39 years and 6 months in prison, leaving it on parole in 2023. The 3 movies were created as biographical representations of the period around the crime, based on information collected by the Justice department and the police during investigations and trials. The Girl Who Killed Her Parents and The Boy Who Killed My Parents, both released in 2021, tell the facts according to Suzane's boyfriend's and Suzane's point of view, respectively. The last movie in the trilogy, The Girl Who Killed Her Parents: The Confession, was filmed in 2022 and released in 2023, depicting the first days after the crime, the investigation, the confession and trial of the perpetrators. All in all, I liked the movies and learned a detail or two about the crime.
✱ I reviewed my reading list this week, as I started to feel overwhelmed. To me, a person who would swap non-fiction for fiction anytime, this sensation was worsening because of the growing number of non-fiction books I was simultaneously reading. I needed to make peace with my reading, so I ended up declaring one book finished with and (temporarily) abandoning other two. That not only opened time for resuming my fiction reading — what I desperately needed as a much welcomed scape valve —, but also and mainly brought me peace of mind.
✱ November second was All Souls' Day in Brazil. Thus I've had a shorter work week, which ended on Wednesday. This year, as I usually do, I remembered my maternal grandmother, Amélia, who left us in 2012. She helped raising my sister and me while both my father and mother worked. I have so many good memories of her and I miss her so dearly that I'm lucky to be Brazilian and, this way, be able to use the word saudade, maybe the most Brazilian and Portuguese word, to describe what I'm feeling. Love you, granny, and I always will.
Making peace with my reading
Nine books. Until earlier this week this is the number of books I was currently reading, and that anyone visiting my Literal.club profile would see.
Some might say it's too much to read in parallel, but I prefer to consider that they're all stories being concurrently followed along… like many people do with TV and/ or streaming, following many episodes of many shows at a time, except that these are made not of images, but of words.
It's all tsundoku's fault, as I like to say.
But nine books at a time was starting to feel, say, a little too overwhelming, even for someone like me. And worst of all, even feeling overwhelmed I just didn't want to give up on reading any of them. Yeah, for some odd reason that escapes me now, I had totally forgotten about my rule of the three.
But then, while talking to my son this week, I mentioned how three of these nine readings were not entertaining me at all, but, instead, getting on my nerves. The first was a book about learning techniques. The other two, about the Japanese language. From the first one I was hoping to get additional insights for my lifelong learning journey. From the latter books, I was just trying to get hints on Japanese that maybe, hopefully, would make the language stick easier to my mind.
In retrospect, it seems that besides forgetting my rule of the three, I also forgot my principle for what is reading a non-fiction book. So double blame it on me.
I really needed to make peace with my reading because I crossed the point where it stopped being fun or enjoyable, or entertaining.
That's when my son reminded me of my own rule, the rule of the three. In conjunction with what I consider the definition for “read” in the case of non-fiction books, I wound up reaching two different conclusions.
I had already learned the insights I wanted in the case of the book about learning techniques, so I stopped reading it where I was, and that's ok. And regarding the books about Japanese, I decided to abandon both — not because I wouldn't profit from them, but because I wouldn't profit well enough from them right now, as my knowledge about Japanese language is still minimum. So I'll return to them in the adequate moment. No pressure.
In the end not only did I like the decisions. I also got happier with reading and picked up Elven Star again — a (very nice) fantasy fiction book I had suspended reading in favor of these three aforementioned non-fictions. Everybody (me, myself and I) wins.
The rule of the three
We live in a world currently dominated by new media releases, everyday, all the time. Wherever I look there's always a new TV show, a new movie, a new book — and for me, most recently —, a new anime or a new manga. All of them are great, all of them the kind you wouldn't like to miss, because… well, just because.
It is humanly impossible to keep up with everything newly released so I don't even try. But for those released media that do call my attention, I try to be very selective. That's why I've come up with a personal principle, a rule: I call it the rule of the three. And to be clear, that's a practice I've developed after having seen it (or read about it, or listened to it, I just can't recall it) or a close version of it, so I'm not claiming originality, far from it.
The rule is very simple: I take a book, and read three chapters into it. I take a TV show and watch three episodes of it. After that, I decide whether I'm hooked or not. Has it been interesting or compelling so far? if I answer yes, then me and myself have a deal, and I keep reading the whole story, or watching the whole TV show season.
With movies, it's honestly harder for me to apply the rule of the three, mostly because 3 minutes into a movie plot there usually isn't any guarantee so much will have been perceived about the plot. So I might double, or triple the time — even round it to ten whole minutes depending on the circumstance. But the idea remains: have a feel of the general idea, the overall plot and weight the worthiness of my while. Easy.
To be honest I may also occasionally read one or two additional chapters of a book or watch a couple more episodes — also to grab the story and its potential value.
Believe me when I tell you: my rule of the three has been with me for quite some years now, and it has spared me from spending — wasting — precious, limited time. This way I could redirect my time and enjoy the best content possible among the endless possibilities.
Querida mamãe
Esta semana terminei de ler "Make it Stick", de Peter C. Brown, que aqui no Brasil, graças às fabulosas traduções que são pensadas pelas editoras, ficou com o título de "Fixe o conhecimento". Falando sobre técnicas e a ciência da aprendizagem, o livro me interessou porque, como o tema lifelong learning me atrai bastante, imaginei que haveriam bons insights que eu poderia obter com a leitura.
Como em vários livros de não-ficção, o autor vai intercalando os conceitos que apresenta com histórias e relatos diversos que comprovam ou demonstram suas explicações. E uma dessas histórias, sobre o escritor americano John McPhee — considerado um dos pioneiros da não-ficção criativa —, me chamou a atenção.
Falando sobre bloqueio criativo em um artigo seu para a revista New Yorker de 2013, John McPhee disse que "escrever, como qualquer forma de arte, é um processo iterativo de criação e descoberta". Disse também que muita gente que aspira a escrever não consegue se expressar por não ter a "certeza do que querem dizer, não conseguem mergulhar no assunto".
Na revista, ele supõe estar escrevendo sobre um urso pardo. Só que depois de olhar para a tela por seis, sete, dez horas, nada lhe ocorre, nenhuma palavra aparece. É quando aparecem o bloqueio, a frustração e o desespero. Mas McPhee tem uma solução.
Quando ele enfrenta a falta de inspiração ou a falta de criatividade impede que ele continue criando, ele simplesmente escreve uma carta pra mãe dele.
Escreva, ‘Querida mamãe…’. E então conte pra sua mãe sobre o bloqueio, a frustração, a inépcia, o desespero. Você insiste que não foi feito pra esse tipo de trabalho. Você choraminga. Você faz birra. Você descreve por alto o seu problema, e menciona que o tal urso tem uma cintura de um metro e quarenta e um pescoço de uns 76 centímetros, mas que poderia correr nariz-com-nariz com o Secretariat. Você diz que o urso prefere se deitar e descansar. Que o urso descansa catorze horas por dia. E você continua assim por quanto tempo você conseguir. Daí você volta e deleta o ‘Querida mamãe…’ e toda a choradeira e birra, e fica só com o urso.”
Tradução livre que fiz do artigo Draft No. 4, de John McPhee, na New Yorker em 2013.
Achei genial isso de escrever uma carta para minha mãe. Porque em parte eu imagino que isso elimine de fato certas barreiras criativas e certas pressões que existem no ato de escrever. Barreiras que eu, que nem escrevo direito mas que gostaria de escrever mais, fico colocando e criando para mim mesmo. Barreiras que escrevendo uma carta para a minha mãe, eu posso transpor.
E para quem fizer isso, McPhee sugere que há luz no final do túnel. Segundo ele, o mais difícil mesmo é terminar o primeiro rascunho. O primeiro rascunho é sempre mais demorado e se desenvolve de forma desajeitada, porque cada frase que se escreve afeta todas as demais, não importa se vieram antes ou se virão depois. Ele cita que a primeira versão de um texto seu sobre geologia da California levou cerca de dois anos para ficar pronto. Mas que a segunda, terceira e quarta versões, juntas, levaram seis meses. E que essa proporção de escrita de 1 para 4 é consistente no caso dele, mesmo que ele perca apenas alguns dias no primeiro rascunho. Isso se deve ao fato de que, ainda segundo ele, há diferenças de fase para fase e que depois da primeira fase vencida, é quase como se uma pessoa completamente diferente assumisse o trabalho. O medo de continuar a escrever desaparece e os problemas, quaisquer que sejam, tendem a se tornar menos ameaçadores e mais interessantes. A experiência ajuda mais, como se nosso lado amador fosse substituído por um profissional tarimbado. Será mesmo?
Para saber, acho que só mesmo seguindo o conselho dele e enfrentando meus próprios ursos.
Counting sheep
Sheep in human clothing has got to be one of the funniest comics I’ve ever seen in my life. I had seen it before and completely forgot about it until this week I came by it again. That’s from The Jenkins Comic, an awesome site to be followed, if you ask me about my opinion.
Week 43, 2023
✱ Good news coming from my cardiologist this week. After my blood exams results came back he said my general status is as good as it was back in 2018 — specially my glucose index, which thankfully came down to 85 from 109, causing me instant relief. Also I've lost 1.5kg in weight, what I'm not at all complaining about. The idea is to keep taking care and go back for another appointment with him within 6 months.
✱ This week I'm completely worn out. I have gone to work in person again because of the work I mentioned in my previous weeknotes, which is still in progress. The difference this week is that I could meet some work colleagues — and very good friends — in person after a very long time. Really, being able to talk face to face to people that I didn't meet in years was really awesome and felt rewarding in many senses. Still, I'm thankful for being able to WFH most of the time.
✱ Due to the fact of being so tired this week I ended up accumulating two unwatched Loki episodes, meaning that now I'm officially behind in terms of second season — although I might have listened to some disturbing spoilers, specially in regards to episode 4. I do intend to get up to date during the weekend, though. And for the same reasons, my progress watching One Pieceis also temporarily stalled — not to mention Spy x Family, whose second season started airing without me watching even a single episode of it.
✱ According to my sons, "that time of the year when dad does nothing except for watching TV is back". They are, of course, referring to the return of NBA, now in its 2023-2024 season. They aren't completely wrong about it, as I do like to watch games whenever I can, but I have, of course, my preferences. Miami Heat goes on occupying the spot of my favorite team, but I also like to watch Lakers, Celtics, Raptors and Bucks (although depending on the day, any game will do). And after so many years, it's the first time I'm following a new NBA season from day one. I'm happy! ☺️
✱ This morning I took the kids to play soccer. They love doing it — going to the soccer field at least 3 to 4 times a week, normally taken there by my wife while I'm working. But this Saturday morning it was my turn. I'm not at all a great soccer player (I'm a lousy one, believe me), but I took advantage of the fact not only to spend some quality time along with them, but also to exercise. It was really worth the while.
The barking of Luke
Do you have a dog? Does he bark a lot?
Here, no one can leave the house without Luke, our dog, accompanying us, while barking along the way. He simply loves barking, either to show that he wants to go with us, or because he detects the presence of people he doesn't know.
Think of a suspicious animal.
This week, in one of the times I needed to take out the trash, Luke came, barking from the furthest depths of the house. When I opened the door he didn't stop. And as I closed the door, I noticed that the neighbor was outside, coincidentally with his dog, who he was going to take for a walk.
We got into the elevator and he laughed; he told me that my dog really likes to bark. So much so that the other day Luke even scared his dog (one of a much bigger breed, by the way). And given the amount of Luke's daily barking, no one in their right mind would be able to justify what the neighbor said.
What I didn't know is that Luke's breed, the Yorkshire terrier, is notorious not only for its great intelligence, but also for its barking! This breed is made of small but full of attitude dogs. All of them are extremely territorial, which means they feel the need to protect their home against intruders — and it is this need to protect that causes them, including Luke, to start barking at the slightest sign of noise that appears.
Small steps are still progress
This image by Hayley Murray had to illustrate this particular entry. It called my attention from the very moment I found it, earlier today, while browsing Unsplash for a completely different purpose.
“Small steps are still progress" is quite a meaningful sentence to me. It instantly made me think of Kaizen, a Japanese continuous improvement philosophy that teaches us how to get better at something by establishing a goal and breaking the needed actions in gradual and incremental steps. So if one wants to walk 10km a day, but is not used to doing so, one first walks 100m a day until properly used to doing so, before defying longer distances. And if 100m is too much, then start with 50m. 25m. Getting used first, by repeating it in an everyday routine, is exactly taking small steps and making progress towards the final goal.
As I've recently come to work in a business area completely new to me, remembering small steps are still progress is key. I've met lots of very nice professionals who excel at what they do, things that I also need — and want to properly learn how — to do. But the difference between them and me is that they've got years of experience in those activities. So it will take time for me to run the same 10 daily kilometers they do — and that's ok, no matter how many times my anxious mind wants to tell me or convince me of the opposite. I need to keep in mind that for now, running my 100m is enough, even though it might seem too little. Small steps are still progress, and slowly progressing will pay off in the long run.
Aw, snap!
I've always been so careful about all my websites. Always. Never before I lost any data from any of the ones I've maintained over the years… I even have a static version of the longest running blog I kept until I decided to retire it — and I still intend to unarchive it and recover the most interesting stuff, if any.
But then excitement got in my way.
I've mentioned the Pods plugin in my latest weeknote, and how I've seen the wonderful things it made possible in a website I also mentioned there. So, moved by pure excitement, I've been experimenting with the plugin, as my colleagues from the IT department would say, straight in the production environment.
Kids, don't do this at home.
Long story short, I applied a couple of settings that went wrong and, when I saw what happened… puff! went all my posts down the drain. Of course the first thing I did was to log into my cPanel to recover my database backup…
…which was NOT enabled.
Aw, snap. I was taken victim of Murphy's Law and I feel I owe all my readers (the one dozen of them), a sincere apology, as I've messed things up.
I spent this Sunday's early morning up, recovering whatever I could, setting up proper backup measures and safeguarding my data. My weeknotes, written from either Obsidian or Drafts, were the first ones back up. Other posts I had written in the same means also came back right after them. I had less than 130, but each had to be restored manually, a real nightmare. And a whole lot of them, without backups, had to be retrieved from the cache of sites like The Internet Archive, Google, Bing and others.
Like I said. Real. Nightmare.
There are a couple of posts that I've redrafted so I can recover the images I used. Some others went back online but stripped from images. I got tired. I also changed the permalink structure of the posts in preparation for the changes I still intend to process here as I get better acquainted with Pods. Please forgive me for any trouble.
There's also something terribly wrong with the ActivityPub here. So I beg my 10 subscribers to stop following daniel@danielsantos.org in the fediverse and following it again — I myself needed to do it, but I haven't figured out just yet why is this that new posts are NOT being sent Mastodon way. I guess I'll need help from someone more experienced — so if by any chance you are that person, please help me.
Bear with me. I've learned this lesson. And I want to improve things here the best I can. They will improve.
Aw, snap…
Week 42, 2023
✱ I've gone to work in person a couple more times this week as week, as the works with the Obeya room progress. It's very likely I'll need to drop by in person next week too, although maybe less often. As much as I appreciate the idea of visiting the company's premises — after all, I've spent 19 years going there everyday —, I have to admit that working from home is something I appreciate as well. I guess what I'm trying to say is that a little balance every once in a while might be good, but I wouldn't appreciate it very much to have to go to work in person every week… and I thank God everyday for being so lucky as not having to. It's wonderful!
✱ Following doctor's prescriptions, I've gone to the lab this week in order to have my blood tested — as part of an upcoming routine appointment scheduled for next week. If I'm not mistaken, I've already said it here, in a previous weeknote of mine, that I was lucky to find a good cardiologist again. And I'm somewhat anxious about the appointment itself, as I've been looking forwards to see how my body is, generally speaking, as to perform the needed route corrections: I'm pretty sure there are route corrections to be made… 🙈
✱ It was my birthday this week! 🥳 I'm thankful for completing another round around the Sun being mostly healthy, satisfied with the way my life and my work are doing as of recently, and with no significant reasons to complain about. I hope this new cycle reserves me nice surprises and challenges.
✱ I've been gifted with a new pair of cargo shorts and a very nice fleece jacket for colder days for my birthday. They were exactly what I needed! ☺️
✱ I've had this wish to play a certain board game from my childhood that just won't go away for the last couple of weeks now. The game is Interpol, released in Brazil in the now far-away year of 1983 (now that I think of it, making it 40 years old!!) with this name, but known mostly everywhere else in the world as Scotland Yard. I know of digital versions of this game created for Tabletop Simulator on Steam, but although fun, they're not the same as playing on the table with friends. With the game out of production and sale for years here in Brazil, I tried looking for an used box set, but with no success, as the games I found were either missing pieces or too pricey for something used and/ or in bad state. When I was about to give up, it occurred to me that maybe some company somewhere around the world could still be producing it. And one eBay search later made me very happy! I found the game still being actively produced and ordered myself a copy — hey, it's my birthday after all, right? This will certainly give me and my folks at home lots of guaranteed fun.
✱ I've written about experimentations I have done with Blot.im for the past weeks, as I fancy both the idea of posting without being stuck to a timeline as it is the case with conventional blog posts, and also to finally set up my digital garden notes with proper backlinks support. I've even set up a very satisfying automated workflow for posting to Blot, using its git repo hosting option and connecting it to Obsidian using the obsidian-git plugin. But then… I came across Winnie Lim's website and learned about how she's using pure Wordpress to create a learning and reflection tool, mixing journal, digital garden and commonplace book altogether — all with the help of a single (yet fantastic) plugin called Pods. This made me realize that with proper time and acquired knowledge I'll be able to create something similar, what is actually my objective. So I'll probably postpone leaving Wordpress just yet.
✱ The Wordpress theme bug bit me this week — and I have to confess that I hate it when that happens, because I'll just start going in circles trying to find a theme that will fit my taste. The problem is nobody makes good Wordpress themes anymore. Of course, there's Anders Norén who is the man in terms of nice looking themes nowadays. Also, Matthias Pfefferle created the fantastic Autonomie theme, which I was using so far. But if I intend to create something in the likes of a digital garden, I just need it to be almost bare. Text only. And they don't do it these days. Fortunately, I remembered Raam Dev and his Independent Publisher theme, which I used for years and… it still works nowadays! So I instantly activated it again here — how did you like it?
Week 41, 2023
✱ This week I spent 2 days working in person at the office. We are preparing a set of materials and information for an upcoming presentation to our VP and other board members, which is being laid out in a Obeya room, so all information we would normally exchange virtually needs to be placed on the walls of a room so it's presented, discussed and reviewed. I have experience with Obeya rooms but it had been sometime since I set up the last one, so it was very interesting and exciting to get my hands dirty with it again. Next week me and a couple of colleagues will be repeating work in person for at least two more days to get things finished.m — and as Obeyas require a continued updating routine, some governance will need to be established, as well.
✱ Speaking about work, I finished reading Plataforma: a revolução da estratégia, a very interesting book about the business of digital platforms, its strategies, governance and a lot of other interesting information. Unfortunately I had to postpone the reading many times and for many reasons in recent months, but this week I was finally able to finish it. It gave me a lot of good and helpful insights to be discussed with my colleagues. Lots of notes to reread, rewrite and review, too… 😅
✱ My son and I finished watching Only Murders in the Building season 3 in only 4 days. It was nice to see Mabel, Charles and Oliver investigating yet another murder, this one set in a Broadway show environment. After 3 seasons I can't say I'm tired of it, and thank God it has been renewed for season 4, a move only natural after Hulu said it had the most watched season finale in 2023. Personally, I consider the greatest quality of this mix of comedy and crime show the ability the writers have to keep us from finding out the real crime perp to the last minute, and misleading us all the time, making us come for more episode after episode.
✱ This week I've also left One Piece's Alabasta Arc behind. That's the fourth season, and first longer arc in the anime series, and my son had already warned me this is, in his opinion so far, the best arc ever (he's on episode 360 or something while I'm just passed 132). I have to agree with him. The plot, the characters that were introduced, specially Princess Vivi, are all very likable… I even wish she had become part of Luffy's crew! Although Nico Robin, who indeed joined his companions, is, again according to my son, the best One Piece character — although I have liked her so far, in that case, this has yet to be seen.
✱ I had a very grateful surprise this week, coming across Web of Weeknotes. As the name already gives out, it is a site where a group of dozens of people posts weekly, individual blogposts about their working week, only for the sake of sharing out in the open. Some of the weeknotes I've seen in the site, which is powered by Medium (IMHO a downside, but that's ok), have got me thinking about the way I myself post them — and maybe, just maybe for now, I could change something in my own notes' organization. Anyway, if you're into weeknotes, maybe you should check that out.
✱ Yesterday, while enjoying a break amid a national holiday here in Brazil, my son asked us to take him to a mall. The reason? He wanted to go shopping, what is, of course, ok. But one of his purchases totally suprised me. He got a wristwatch! And nothing smart or digital — it was an interesting, dark background analog model from the Orient brand, a classical watch manufacturer. Noel I have always used wristwatches myself… even nowadays, there's always one in my wrist. I've survived people's urge to replace it with the cellphone and resisted bravely for years now. But I'd never imagine he's wanting to buy one! When I asked him why, he simply said, “well, I find them nice”. I'm so happy! 😀
(Oh, I'm also trying out Blot.im, as I mentioned in another weeknote… so, this text is also there!)
Week 40, 2023
✱ This week my son received his JLPT N1 Proficiency certificate! It came by mail, a couple of months since he took the test in São Paulo. The delay lies in the fact that each and every test taken is manually reviewed and assessed… but the important thing is that the results are in and he got it! I told him to hang his certificate on the wall, but he refused — too humble to do so. I’m so happy for him!
✱ I had one of the most amazing career and life coaching sessions this week after talking to my manager. I hadn’t had the opportunity yet, but that was an hour and 20 minutes, approximately, that totally paid off. Lots of teachings and insights, specially on the personal side. I could address harmful situations like the risk of burnout and anxiety, among so many other things. Really, really amazing.
✱ Flowershow App developers have added some interesting features to their digital garden publishing solution as of lately. Among these, the abilities to create a blog category and to migrate from WordPress. This is extremely appealing to me, as I’ve always dreamed of finding a tool where wiki and blog could be merged together effortlessly. Maybe that’s the moment, although I couldn’t make Flowershow work with my Github account, yet. I’ve asked for help in their forums, though, and now I just need to wait for a while and find out what I’m doing wrong.
✱ By the way, Flowershow app might contribute, if well implemented, to my digital gardening experience in place of Blot.im, that I mentioned having subscribed to last week. And, best of all, totally free of charge. I’m really excited to try it out as well, so I’m anxious to see what answers I’ll get from the forum question I mentioned above…
✱ Oh… Loki is back for season 2. That’ll be 6 more episodes telling a very interesting story and they’ll be released weekly. For now I’ve watched the first one with my son, and my God… I almost decided to rewatch the first season, as I wasn’t recalling everything that was happening 😅. I guess that’s because season 2 took quite a while to be released: more than two whole years, actually, as S1 aired between June and July, 2021, while S2 premiered only October, 2023. Fortunately, as the first episode of the new season unrolled, memories started to come back.
Week 39, 2023
✱ Last Sunday my soccer team, São Paulo FC, conquered the 2023 Copa do Brasil championship title… for the first time! Among Brazil’s soccer championships’ titles, this happened to be the only one São Paulo had been unable to conquer before, so its corresponding trophy was the only one not in my team’s gallery. The final round, consisting of two matches between São Paulo and Flamengo, ended up 2-1 in the aggregate score, thus resulting in our victory. It was amazing to finally witness this feat, and as a long time supporter of São Paulo, this made me very, very happy!
✱ I’ve watched Reporting for Duty, on Netflix. That’s a Brazilian police comedy sitcom suggested to me by Netflix algorithms, which I’ve decided to trust and check out. Comprised of 8 episodes in its first season, it revolves around Suzano, a police chief in the fictional Rio de Janeiro state countryside city of Campo Manso, where he was also born and raised. After inadvertently helping capture a criminal, Suzano is promoted to chief of the 8th precinct in the capital, Rio de Janeiro, where his new officers are not very welcoming. The series’ teaser trailers made me remember the likes of Brooklyn 99, but it was a grateful surprise to find out it had both humor and a plot of its own. After finishing the 8 episodes in two days, I started to wonder whether there’ll be a second season, as for when Netflix is involved, one never knows. I do hope so, though, and a proper cliffhanger for it was at least provided. Something odd, too, was to find out the name of the series in English so I could mention it in this post — in Brazilian Portuguese, the series’ original language, it is called B.O., acronym for Boletim de Ocorrência, or Police Report in English.
✱ I’ve finished 16 more episodes of One Piece, meaning that I’ve left its second season — Enter the Grand Line, containing the Whiskey Peak & Little Garden arcs — behind. It’s been quite entertaining to watch more of the episodes and I have to admit that it surprised how much has happened in these few 23 minute stories. The imagination of Eiichiro Oda is quite amazing — and I’ll have to read the manga sometime soon in the future. For now, I’m 3 episodes into season 3 — Enter Chopper at the Winter —, where I know, thanks to a little spoiler from my son, that a new crew member, Chopper, will join Luffy and his gang.
✱ The internet is such a big place, isn’t it? It’s amazing to unexpectedly find useful websites in it once in a while. This week I’ve stumbled upon Lunapic, an online image editor where you can add lots of effects to your graphics, such as cropping, scaling, rotating them, but also removing the background, replacing it with another and adding filters. I don’t usually need too many of these features, but from what I’ve tested, it works very well. If you can combine usefulness and free, then, I’m completely sold.
✱ I’ve decided to experiment with digital gardening again, this time by purchasing a Blot.im subscription. I already knew a lot, and had previously paid for a month there, eyeing the amazing support it has for wikilinks, the [[same kind]] used by Obsidian and other notetaking tools. This has made me start to work in connecting both, in a temporary address, where I’ve also imported my weeknotes as a test — two things I must warn you if you decide to check it, though, are that the posts are all in Brazilian Portuguese and that everything is still messy: the dates, the links… I’d also like to mention that while I was deciding whether to take Blot for a second spin, @humdrum‘s The Independent Variable had an important role as he uses Blot and creates one of the nicest sites I’ve seen to date with the tool.
Sobre jardins digitais
Já tem algum tempo que eu flerto com a ideia de jardins digitais. Acho o máximo a forma que cada jardim digital adquire, porque o conteúdo depende da vontade única e exclusiva de quem está cultivando pensamentos e ideias, e interconectando pensamentos.
Eis que me deparei hoje com o Untitled Presentation, um projeto das irmãs consultoras em estratégia de comunicação, Anna e Kelly Pendergrast, Juntas, desde dezembro de 2018, elas têm construído uma coleção de pensamentos e ideias, como forma de realizar um experimento de pensar em público. E o mais interessante: elas estão usando um deck de apresentações do Google Slides, em que vão acrescentando um novo slide por semana.
A ideia ocorreu às irmãs depois que tiveram contato com duas crianças de 8 anos de idade, que usavam o Google Slides para trocar fotos de carros entre si depois da aula. E hoje já são centenas de slides diferentes.
O que vai no jardim digital delas é exatamente o tipo de ideia que eu tenho, e que tento registrar no meu wiki: ==ideias que são maiores do que aquilo que caberia em uma postagem de rede social, mas ainda não significativas o suficiente para se tornarem um artigo, ou post no blog==.
Week 38, 2023
✱ As I finished my previous weeknotes talking about Luke, I guess there's nothing better than starting this week by talking about him again. I've just bought a dog door in order to make both his and my lifes easier: during the day, while I'm working, Luke likes to keep me company, what, while adorable, also makes me have to interrupt whatever I'm working on at the moment to open my office's door so I can let him in (or out). I know it doesn't seem to be much, but the thing is it actually is. So after some consideration I bought this dog door, and while these are normally set up on exterior doors, I'll be placing mine internally… kind of a weekend project.
✱ I have finished reading Perseguindo Adeline, second book in a duology, making me advance to 12 books read this year — still 8 behind my personal year goal. The two books belong to the dark romance genre, something new for me, where dark, normally disturbing themes are openly treated by the author. I have nothing against dark romances, but I do have a point against badly written texts. The Brazilian Portuguese translation is awful and made me think more often than not about dropping the book. It's so bad that it looks… either very amateur or totally translated by an automated service like Google Translate. So I can't recommend the book. Not really.
✱ While I'm speaking about books, this week I've come across Why Flying Is Miserable: And How to Fix It, an upcoming book to be released in November by Ganesh Sitaraman, an American legal scholar from whom I've read an article in where he speaks about how modern airlines have become more similar to banks than to transportation industry options, all due to detailed regulations. This is a subject which interests me so it was very nice to enjoy the article and find out about the book. Already added to my "Want to read" queue.
✱ I'm not the biggest fan of rainy days. But these last days have made me reconsider it a bit as it's been hot as hell here in Brazil. Temperatures can still rise to over 40 degrees Celsius (104°F) in the days to come, all due to greenhouse effect gases and El Niño combined. I guess I can call myself lucky as I've been working from home and I don't need to be on streets all the time, but still. No fan or air conditioning seems to be sufficing… so either rain coming, or this heat wave going, I'd welcome any.
Week 37, 2023
✱ I had an appointment with my cardiologist this week. First things first, I went through an echo doppler exam to see how things were going after more than two years without undergoing this same exam. It made me very happy to find out that, fortunately, as it happened before, everything is still fine with my heart for my age. Then I've run the treadmill for many minutes, while performing an exercise electrocardiogram: this kind of routine usually exhausts me, but there's something good in it, as for years I was unable to finish the whole procedure due to feeling tired or feeling pain, except when I ran the treadmill two years ago and beat the exercise, although very tired: I did it again this week, that is, completed the treadmill routine again, what was praised by my doctor who said although I still need medication and exercise (who doesn't need exercise, after all?) I did very good in the treadmill. But the apex of my appointment was when based on these exams' results, he dismissed the upcoming need of performing an ambulatory blood pressure monitoring exam, the one I hate the most in terms of cardiology as it has you attached to a device hung from your waist during 24 hours in a row, even disturbing your capacity to sleep well. My doctor also adjusted some of my medications dosages and that certainly contributed to improve my well being… 😊
✱ I've fallen a little behind my 2023 reading goal — although there's still time for me to recover. Even so, this week I could finish reading Assombrando Adeline, a book whose details, as a librarian, I've personally contributed to Literal.club, by the way. This was the 11th book out of 20 I want to read this year, and it was a story different from anything I had read before. It just didn't prove better than it was because of the translation errors that showed up… maybe a pet peeve of mine, but still enough to impair the whole experience… still, finishing the book made me start reading the second volume right away (the author told her story in a duet) and this means soon enough I'll reach 12 books read 📚.
✱ Luke really got me scared this week. Normally a very active little Yorkshire dog, always after us and willing to play and keep us company, this week he spent two days whining as if he'd got hurt, yet for no apparent reason. It looked like he was feeling pain in his rear legs. He usually jumps up and down our sofa and beds but he just didn't during this time. After observing him for some time I even set up an appointment with the vet — only to see him recover after my wife gave him a small spoon with two drops of anti inflammatory medicine, following a previous' back pain episode he suffered a couple of years ator for which we kept the vet's prescription. Thank God this made him better. Luke's been with us since 2017 now and he's as part of the family as all of us. We all love him and felt very relieved as soon as he came to his old self again. Nice to see you well, buddy.
Book peevishness
I found this Mastodon post by user Danie Ware, where she mentions her pet peeve about book reviews quite interesting:
Pet peeve:
A book review is a review of the book. You read the book, and you write down whether you liked it or not.
It is not:
Whether the postman bought it on time
How it was packaged
If it was left out in the rain
Whether your local store had it in stock
The publisher’s selling policy
What kind of paper the pages were…Etc.
Why is this a difficult concept?
It instantly got me thinking how I both totally agree and disagree with her opinion at the same time.
On the one hand, one’s thoughts about the storyline, the characters and the writer’s ability to give you the next page turner or the worst thing you’ve ever read is exactly what the core of a written book review is, and that’s the kind of informed opinion I’m after whenever I feel like reading a new book. I look for confirmations and, in that sense, want to know how far my expectations could go if I read a new book.
But, on the other hand, I simply cannot think of a book disregarding its handling and packaging. The quality of its cover, its printing, the fonts used and its adaptation to my language, for instance, if I’m reading a translated work. I mean, how could I fully enjoy my experience with the best plot ever in my hands if the font is horrible or there are typos, translation or printing errors? How less amazing would it be to read a new book when it’s torn or crumpled? I don’t know. Just like driving the fastest car ever made while it is all dirty?
Don’t get me wrong. I totally understand Danie’s point of view. I just guess a book’s review should be split in two parts, say, the story part, plot, writing and author originality included; and the user experience part, embracing shipping, delivery, quality and anything else related.
As (almost) everything must be paid for twice, it is only fair to be able to evaluate both these parts. After all, no matter how well written and innovative a book is, you might not be able to pay the second time for it, that is, engage in the effort and the initiative required to collect the benefits one would have after the reading is done something already hard in itself, only turned even harder due to any book mistreatment.
But this is only my pet peeve, and you’re free to disagree — or not.
How many things do you pay twice for?
Only recently I was able to come across a very interesting article, discussing that everything you buy actually needs to be paid for twice, otherwise that’ll be wasted money — and that this should be a finance lesson taught to anyone in school.
And I couldn’t agree more, even though this made me reflect very deeply on how many things I buy but don’t pay the second price for.
There’s the first price, usually paid in money. This is the usual price you have to pay if you wish to gain possession of whatever that is that you desire to have, be it a book, a new software or a game.
But the thing is, only after we pay the second price will we see any return on the first one. And this second price consists of all the initiative and effort required to gain its benefits — a price that could prove to be much higher than the first one.
In that sense, I quote this passage from the article:
A new novel, for example, might require twenty dollars for its first price — and ten hours of dedicated reading time for its second. Only once the second price is being paid do you see any return on the first one. Paying only the first price is about the same as throwing money in the garbage.
I had never in my life seen things this way. This has made me feel bad and terrible ever since, because — taking only books as an example — I have bought many, many, many of them during my life yet I haven’t had time to read half… no, a quarter of them, and this is all my fault. I know I have linked this post many times here, but, yes, tsundoku. That is an addiction, and maybe I’ll have to live and deal with it, because I love books, even those I haven’t read yet, although bought.
But wait, there’s more. After reading this one article I stopped to think how many streaming services I pay for monthly, even yearly, only to go weeks in a row without watching a single movie or series episode. How many online courses have I bought at Udemy, Coursera or the likes of them, without ever finishing them — without ever starting some. How many games did I buy in Steam and never played (the number would have you scared) only because I thought it would be a good idea to take advantage of their semiannual sale, never finding the will to start a single match.
This is me examining my own conscience aloud. This is a public confession, where I state that I should do different from now on: enjoy what is there to be enjoyed, yes, but cancel services, subscriptions and recurrent expenses whenever although paying for them I’m unable to reap the full benefits because the time to pay for the second price never comes, never presents itself.
I hope I can remember this self analysis later in my life and then be able to say that I’m paying twice for more of the things I wish to possess.
Have you ever considered this? Have you been paying for your acquisitions twice?
Cookies, esses monstros da internet
Foi em 1994 que o engenheiro da computação Lou Montulli, da Netscape, inventou o cookie. A partir dessa invenção as páginas web ganharam a capacidade de se lembrar de nossas senhas, preferências, configurações de idioma e várias outras informações relevantes.
Quem não gostaria de fazer compras com um assistente ao seu lado, escutando nossas preferências e segurando nossas sacolas enquanto andamos pela loja e escolhemos o que queremos, não é mesmo? Os cookies de Lou viabilizaram essa possibilidade, ou seja, a invenção em si foi revolucionária ao estabelecer a gravação de blocos de dados localmente — isto é, no dispositivo em uso pelo usuário enquanto ele acessar o site — para recuperação posterior, ou seja, em uma visita futura do mesmo usuário a este site. Tudo isso, então, configurava uma troca privada de informações entre usuário e site.
Mas menos de dois anos depois, as empresas que comercializam anúncios descobriram como hackear os cookies para uma função muito menos nobre e invasiva: rastrear o comportamento dos usuários. Estes novos cookies do mal começaram a ser chamados de cookies de terceiros, ou third-party cookies, em contraposição aos first-party cookies originais, que trocavam dados apenas entre usuário e site. Os cookies do mal são como aquelas escutas que são plantadas em filmes de espionagem: captam tudo o que está sendo feito pela vítima, mas só compartilham estas informações com seus aliados. Os espiões podem colocar seus cookies nos sites de outras pessoas, para armazenar o que você visitou e que tipo de dados você informou.
É graças ao trabalho desses cookies espiões que, se eu buscar pelo termo escova de dentes no Google, começo a ver um monte de anúncios de escovas de dentes sendo vendidas por sites que variam desde supermercados e farmácias até a Amazon ou o Mercado Livre. Por mais que alguém possa argumentar que cookies são um mal necessário e que seria impossível navegar na internet atualmente sem esbarrarmos com eles e cedermos nossos dados de navegação, eu acredito que esta coleta de dados é uma invasão de privacidade que torna os antes inocentes cookies verdadeiros monstros da internet.
Ao longo do tempo e durante anos, os cookies foram coletando dados de forma cada vez mais descontrolada, graças à falta de regulamentação quanto a rastreamento e vigilância de usuários online, um cenário que só mudou a partir de 2018, com a introdução de legislações de proteção à privacidade como a GDPR (General Data Protection Regulations) europeia e a LGPD brasileira, responsáveis, aliás, pela grande quantidade de popups que atualmente aparecem pedindo para você aceitar cookies sempre que visita um site na internet. Não é nem de longe a solução perfeita, mas pelo menos agora é possível termos noção do que cada site quer rastrear e porque, e concordar (ou não) com esse rastreio de informações.
Mas não é apenas clicando e consentindo (ou não) com a utilização de cookies que podemos combater o uso inapropriado de nossas informações pelos anunciantes. Também podemos escolher usar navegadores que desabilitaram totalmente o uso de cookies de terceiros: os primeiros que fizeram isso foram o Safari, da Apple, em 2017, e o Firefox, da Mozilla, in 2019. Já o Chrome, produto do Google que, caso não esteja claro, é antes de qualquer coisa uma empresa de comercialização de anúncios online, acaba de implantar um recurso chamado de Privacy Sandbox, que diz substituir os cookies terceiros mas que, ainda assim, coleta muitos dados pessoais dos usuários, alimentados por um processo de opt-in em que você concorda com a coleta de dados mas apenas porque não o entende direito, ou não consegue evitar.
Se você não está pagando pelo produto, você é o produto.
Em relação a empresas como Google, Facebook e tantas outras, normalmente disfarçadas de redes sociais, nunca é demais repetir aquela velha máxima que diz que quando não estamos pagando por um produto, é porque nós somos o produto: quer um navegador de internet gratuito? Ótimo. Apenas tome cuidado com o que está adquirindo (ou com o que está concordando) ao usá-lo gratuitamente.