O que acontece quando morremos?
Um pensamento lhe ocorreu.
— Então o que acontece quando morremos?
Jiang ergueu a sobrancelha.
— Acho que você mesma pode responder isso.
Ela refletiu por um instante.
— Voltamos ao mundo espiritual. Nós… deixamos a ilusão. Despertamos.
Ele assentiu.
— Não morremos, apenas voltamos ao nada. Dissolvemos. Perdemos o ego. De apenas uma coisa, passamos a ser todas as coisas.
— R.F. Kuang, em “A guerra da Papoula”.
Week 12, 2023
✱ As my reading of A guerra da Papoula, the Brazilian Portuguese translation of The Poppy Wars, by author R. F. Kuang progresses to ⅓ of the book, this week started greeting me with very nice news from the team at Literal.club. I can’t remember exactly when I applied to be a volunteer librarian for the app, but this week my application was accepted! This means that now, according to the admins at Literal, I have librarian superpowers, like merging, creating and editing book information. This makes me particularly satisfied because it’s usually very hard to find Brazilian Portuguese book information on these book tracking apps, and as a librarian I can help reducing this gap. I’m still in need to learn exactly how to do it, but I’ll get there.
✱ It’s been sometime now that I’ve been considering the idea of creating some kind of linklog, a place to share interesting things I come across daily — and it would be very nice to use weblog.lol to do it, so much that I’ve created a feature request in Discourse for that. My idea is based on the idea of using (currently non-existing) tag templates that could be arranged to display in a list, and be paged as needed. I’ve written about it there, so let’s leave it where it is (hoping that Adam sees it and gets to implement it in a neat way as he always does).
✱ This must be my Elvis-iest week ever. I like Elvis Presley songs and everything, although I’m not his biggest fan. But last Monday I listened to Suspicious Minds on the radio and listened later, again, and again, and again. The song became a real earworm. Then, last night, my son told us about this new Elvis (2022) movie he found on HBO and this afternoon we’ve watched it. The film focuses on the conflicting relationship Elvis had with his long time manager, “Colonel” Tom Parker, who actually narrates the story. Suspicious Minds appears quite a lot during the movie, and besides being a hell of a song, it mixes pretty well with the plot. If you haven’t watched it yet and can do, do it.v
Week 11, 2023
✱ Anxious as I was to watch the ninth (and last) episode of HBO's The Last of Us, I couldn't manage to do it on Sunday. It was hard to keep waiting until last night, when I finally could see where the story led Ellie and Joel. There was even… a real giraffe making a cameo appearance! 😃 I've stated before that I've never played the two franchise videogames in my life, but I read that these 9 episodes were going to wrap up all the first game and its DLC. In the end, this last episode went following a path that I liked — and that, at the same time, displeased my son, who said he shouldn't have wasted his time watching the series. Still, when I asked him what he'd have done differently, he muted. As any and many first seasons of series before it, it came to an end. Sometimes this end pleases, sometimes it doesn't. I can't (or don't want to) comment specifics here so I don't reveal spoilers, but let's just say that the final episode of season one was just fair as I could expect it to be. And count me in for watching season 2 when it premiers.
✱ Je me souviens du français. Bien… a petit peut. I've been touching French again as of lately and I am remembering how fun it can be to explore a different language. I studied French for around a year and a half in the past, but of course, due to not using it on a regular basis, ended up forgetting a lot of it. As I'm studying French by my own and don't want to pressure myself or anything, I decided to gather vocabulary through the lightest, easiest way that came to my mind: that is, by reading comics in French. It's somewhat hard to find French comics to download, but after some scavenging, I found a couple of them, Uncle Scrooge — Oncle Picsou magazines, and they're proving to be at the same time both challenging and lots of fun. Now I'm deciding whether to gather all my vocabulary into a flash card app to practice it through spaced repetition. Maybe I'll do it. Let's see. For now, it's the fun part that's keeping me moving. Now I'm deciding whether to gather all my vocabulary into a flash card app to practice it through spaced repetition. Maybe I'll do it. Let's see. For now, it's the fun part that's keeping me moving.
✱ Card Survival: Tropical Island is a game I had my eyes on for quite some time now. I'm not being able to dedicate much time to gaming this year, but considering that Steam's Autumn Sale is on until the next 23rd, 20% off its regular price was enough argument to make me decide to buy it. In fact, I got to play it this morning, and did it for almost 4 hours in a row. I like this deck building gente a lot, and although the game premise seems simple enough — you wake up on a deserted island only to find out you have to survive it till you escape it, or till you get enough resources and make it your new home —, it's perfectly possible to notice how deep the gameplay is. Devs are active and by the time I purchased it last night, I noticed their introduction of the 41st wave of updates in game mechanics. OMG 😱 In general, I'm finding the experience of having to watch my hunger, thirst, sleepiness, health, stress and so many other leves I have to keep eyes on while scavenging, chopping wood, making fires up and a whole lot of other things very… enjoyable. It does get complicated as the days pass by, and I'm a lousy survival right know, not having passed through my fifth day surviving on the island. Yet, I wasn't wrong buying the game, as I feel something will keep me pushing back to play 🏝️😃
Week 10, 2023
✱ I've been reading a lot — and creating a long reading queue — about AI these days. Part of it is because of professional reasons, and part of it is out of my sole, genuine interest. I've been trying to take notes to help make sense of everything I've discovered about the subject, but, for me , taking notes has proven to be more difficult than what I'd like to admit. I'm using Obsidian to help me, the same way I'm using it to write my blog posts, such as this very own hebdomadary post, but I have accumulated lots of unfinished texts to resume reading and notes that I've taken and excerpts that I've highlighted but haven't changed into notes yet. Still, I need to say that I can't help but consider AI a very interesting topic, starting from the fact that the term, in itself, is extremely commercial and filled with hype. Behind it, actually, there's computer science and a lot of research areas such as large language modeling, deep learning, neural networks, robotics and natural language processing, just to name a few. All these topics are interesting in themselves, so I'm probably getting busy with it quite some time yet.
✱ This week I had the opportunity to visit one of Google's offices in São Paulo. My work mates and I went to watch a series of dedicated keynotes on GCP, artificial intelligence, innovation and other subjects. I'm still to know someone who works with anything technology-related who doesn't want to know Google's offices. This was my turn to do it, as I hadn't come across a chance until then. It was a fantastic opportunity and, as such, I journaled about it in private.
✱ I've been reading two books at a time this week. Haven't finished them yet but I'm enjoying both of them. The first is Why Fish Don't Exist, by Lulu Miller. It's a book I came across very recently, which tells the true story of David Starr Jordan, a very obsessive taxonomist, possessed with the sim of bringing order to the chaos of the natural world. I wasn't going to start reading it right away, but, as it happens to me more times than I'd like to admit, after skimming through the first pages of the book, I was hooked. So, here I am. At practically 40% of pages read. The other book is Outlander, the Fiery Cross, by Diana Gabaldon. This is a book I had stopped reading and just recently resumed. I've been reading the Outlander series with interest due to the storytelling. Like I've stated before, I love long, well narrated books that makes me feel the story is endless. Man, are there so many chapters on each volume of Outlander, or what?
✱ While waiting for the last episode of the series to air this coming Sunday, I read somewhere that the first season covers the first game and its Left Behind DLC, and the second — and already confirmed by HBO Max — season will cover the second game, currently the lastest to have been released, in 2020. From what I read, it's not clear whether HBO will split the second game in two seasons (as it looks like the story follows two characters and intertwines) or not, but the producers have made it clear that if no new game is produced by Naughty Dog, nor will further series development. I find it fine. The series has been awesome, but I tend to agree to the producers in saying that some works just are not made to span through 5, 6 or 7 seasons in a row. And for me, it's ok.
Sobre a futilidade da vingança
Havia uma história sobre uma águia e um lagarto de cauda azul, na qual a águia, atacando o lagarto, mergulha e arranca sua cauda.
O lagarto, ferido e em busca de vingança, escala até onde está o ninho da águia e devora vários dos ovos que ali estão, pensando, “Estes ovos têm a quantidade exata de carne para me fazer crescer uma cauda nova”.
E assim, águia e lagarto continuam. Ela, mergulhando em seu ataque, para arrancar uma nova cauda do lagarto, o lagarto escalando ao ninho para comer mais ovos, repetidas e repetidas vezes, nenhum dos dois adversários realmente chegando a ser vencido, pois sempre haveria “carne suficiente na cauda para fazer mais ovos, e carne suficiente nos ovos para fazer crescer uma nova cauda azul.
Eis, então, a futilidade — e o círculo, sem fim e vicioso — que se encerra no ato da vingança.
Adaptado por mim a partir de trecho do livro “Why fish don’t exist”, de Lulu Miller.
Week 9, 2023
✱ I've come to the conclusion that 2023 is really the year I can say I came back to a more decent rythm with my reading. This week I could finish yet another book, the fourth this year, and that gave me free time to resume reading Outlander, a series written by Diana Gabaldon which is composed of 9 books so far, each one a huge tome with more than a 1,000 pages. I love long, well narrated books, the kind that makes us feel the story is endless, and God, was I in need of diving into some fiction lately. I'm currently reading the fifth book in the series, The Fiery Cross, and I do intend to take it to the end, after pausing it in the past due to some personal affairs I'd been dealing with. The thing is I discovered this Answer in Progress YouTube channel this week, and enjoyed watching Sabrina's videos so much that when I saw Why you stopped reading I felt I needed to start reading Why Fish Don't Exist, by Lulu Miller, just because. So this is the latest book to have jumped my reading line, but… I don't actually care. I can handle Diana's fiction and this non-fiction resembling fiction written by Miller at the same time. Bring them on :)
✱ I started to… tried to start journaling using Day One, just to give up on its free trial this week. I guess I'd better keep my reflections in a more private way, like a dedicated Obsidian vault. They're supposed to be more text than imagery anyway, and I feel more relieved by keeping my thoughts at hand in a more controlled way…
✱ Some years ago I was studying French. All of a sudden, this week, I've been bitten by the learning bug again, so I'm thinking about starting to read en français encore une fois. I've got a thing with languages. When I was still a kid, I took one of these vocational tests where I found out I could learn languages easily, and since then, it's been a way filled with discoveries and lots of fun… 😃 Are you a French speaker willing to talk to me and teach me more of this marvelous language in the process? Get in touch 🇫🇷
Pelo fim da monogamia literária
Há alguns anos atrás participei de um treinamento corporativo sobre técnicas de apresentação. Naquela oportunidade, pouco antes de o treinamento em si começar, o instrutor resolveu fazer uma daquelas dinâmicas de quebra-gelo, onde as pessoas, que naquele caso não se conheciam, pudessem se apresentar umas para as outras.
Eu gostaria muito de poder dizer que me lembro o nome de um dos participantes — e infelizmente, não consigo agora, mas me lembro de algo muito interessante que ele disse. Assim como eu, ele também gosta muito de ler, e dali veio a declaração que me fez mudar a forma de encarar minha leitura.
Ele disse que lê vários livros ao mesmo tempo, coisa que eu até então não fazia. Para mim, era sempre ler um livro do início ao final para, só então, passar para o próximo. O próximo, também lia todo, até o final, para só então pegar um terceiro, e assim por diante.
Mas ele disse que, assim como a esposa dele, que adorava novelas, podia acompanhar a das 18:00, a das 19:00 e a das 20:00, ele também fazia a mesma coisa com os livros: podia, por exemplo, ler o das 18:00, o das 19:00 e o das 20:00, e até mais do que isso.
Eu fiquei curioso e perguntei a ele se isso não fazia com que ele esquecesse o que tinha lido, mas obviamente ele me disse que não, e eu, mais tarde, tendo começado a ler mais de um livro ao mesmo tempo, pude comprovar por conta própria.
Foi a partir dali, adotando a leitura de mais de um livro, portanto, que eu abri mão da monogamia literária, e isso foi muito bom.
Muitas pessoas já fazem isso. Nunca leem um só livro de cada vez. Passeiam entre títulos e mídias diversos sem medo de ser feliz nem preocupação em perder o fio da meada ou esquecer algum detalhe. Essa liberdade e controle do processo funcionam como um estímulo a ainda mais leituras.
— Conrado Schlochauer
Foi devido à esse trecho acima, do livro Lifelong learners: o poder do aprendizado contínuo, do Conrado Schlochauer, que eu me lembrei dessa história.
Esse participante do treinamento mudou minha vida. Ele certamente usufruía há muito tempo dessa liberdade literária, dessa poligamia. E me ensinou uma valiosa lição, a qual resolvi deixar registrada em palavras, pois talvez seja útil também para você, que leu este texto até o final.
Sobre o hábito de ler e sua importância para um lifelong learner
Sem conhecimento factual, não sabemos o que não sabemos. Com isso, acabamos terceirizando para intelectuais, jornalistas ou influenciadores a digestão do que se passa no mundo para, a partir daí, escolhermos como será o nosso ponto de vista em relação a determinado assunto. Aprender em profundidade, ler livros de grandes autores ou assistir a aulas difíceis vai além de conhecer o conteúdo. Essa prática nos permite interpretar o mundo com outros olhos e, às vezes, descobrir sentimentos e perspectivas que você tinha e nem sabia. Nem sempre ser o mais rápido é o mais importante. Resumos ou infográficos são excelentes recursos para decidirmos se queremos comprar um livro ou para lembrar do seu conteúdo, mas eles não substituem a leitura.— Conrado Schlochauer
Este é um trecho extremamente interessante do livro Lifelong Learners: o poder do aprendizado contínuo, de Conrado Schlochauer, que demonstra o preço que a mudança no hábito de leitura pode causar: quando você não lê, ou decide que vai passar a ler apenas superficialmente, como parece ser o hábito de muitas pessoas das gerações mais novas, você acaba delegando seu entendimento do mundo e formação de pontos de vista a intelectuais, especialistas e influenciadores.
Acredito piamente que esse é um preço muito alto a ser pago — e por isso sou grato pelo hábito continuado de leitura que possuo. Leio muito e acumulo muita coisa pra ler. Talvez não consiga ler tudo, mas não abro mão de formar minhas próprias opiniões a respeito das coisas do mundo, e de mudá-las, quando e se necessário, por continuar aprendendo e tendo contato com outras experiências.
Week 8, 2023
✱ Due to Carnival celebration in Brazil, this last week was a much shorter work week: though the holiday itself was on Tuesday, several companies in my country, including the one I work for, usually concede an extra day off on Ash Wednesday. So, all in all, counting from last Sarturday on, I had a long holiday consisting of 5 whole days. I'd say it's the longest period off we have in our country's calendar. Thus, I only worked on Thursday and Friday. I don't celebrate Carnival the same way many of my fellow countrymen do — actually, I don't like celebrating it at all, like I said in this blog post I wrote last Tuesday, in Portuguese. So I usually enjoy my time off catching up with my read-it-later backlog, binge-watching series and reading books. And that's what I did.
✱ In January I started reading Solomon Kane: a saga completa. This is a book with the complete Solomon Kane adventures, as written by Robert E. Howard. Howard also created Conan, the Barbarian, a much more famous character, but my interest in Solomon was instantaneous when I learned he was a puritan who fought against the evil and the supernatural. Howard's character is the first representative of the sword and sorcery literary genre, one that I love so much. It was only natural that I read the book — and it read very fluently, so it was delightful. Besides, as soon as February started, another edition of Solomon Kane's complete works was published here in Brazil. An illustrated edition that I soon acquired and started reading in parallel. Most of the two books' contents was the same — after all, the tales and stories were most the same —, but before you call me nuts for reading two equal books at the same time, I must say there are differences. The newer book, published this month and called Solomon Kane: edição completa e definitiva is an illustrated edition — with very well made artwork, I should say. It also contains a series of fragments of stories I didn't know about which were certainly useful for my personal purpose of diving as much as I could into the character's universe. The older book had a lot of letters Robert E. Howard exchanged with other authors and mentions to an officially released movie — which doesn't seem to live up to Solomon Kane's character — and a fan made, 3 minute short. I mean to read at least 20 books this year. These two were finished during this holiday and, along with Galaga, a collection of curiosities written by Michael Kimball about the classic 80's arcade, now I completed 15% of my goal.
✱ The Last of Us remains strong and interesting. My son found the latest episode a little lacking in action, but I guess it's all part of the story. And man, what a cliffhanger… we're looking forwards tomorrow night to see where things will be going. More episodes of Spy X Family watched as well. Many of them.
Um portal mágico para construir o que você quiser
Estava lendo hoje um artigo da Wired sobre a história de Marcus Hutchins, white hacker e pesquisador de segurança da informação que em 2017 derrotou o WannaCry — à época, e até hoje, uma das pragas digitais mais perigosas que já existiu. Se você ainda não leu o artigo, recomendo: poucos meses depois de ter salvo o mundo digital, ele foi preso pelo FBI.
Enquanto o artigo contava a infância de Marcus, esse trecho me chamou a atenção:
Hutchins had begun to be curious about the inscrutable HTML characters behind the websites he visited, and was coding rudimentary “Hello world” scripts in Basic. He soon came to see programming as “a gateway to build whatever you wanted,” as he puts it, far more exciting than even the wooden forts and catapults he built with his brother. “There were no limits,” he says.
Porque eu, assim como ele, desde criança, sempre fui muito curioso.
Quando eu era pequeno, brincava muito com Playmobil. Na minha imaginação construí cidades com carros, cavalos, polícia e outras coisas, meus mundos alternativos, meus faz-de-conta.
Mas por volta desta mesma época, também me acostumei a ver meus pais programarem em Clipper, usando bancos de dados criados em dBase III+. Tudo isso num PC XT, de onde vocês podem imaginar a minha idade aproximada.
Meus pais, também movidos pela curiosidade, chegaram a desenvolver programas que vendiam para empresas da cidade, entre elas despachantes que usavam software escrito por eles para imprimir as (agora ultrapassadas) guias laranjas de IPVA em impressoras matriciais de 80 colunas alimentadas com formulário contínuo.
A partir disso foi que comecei a pensar que, se eu aprendesse a programar, poderia construir o que quisesse — a imaginação seria o limite, tal qual quando eu brincava de Playmobil e criava meus mundos próprios. Programar seria um portal mágico para construir o que eu quisesse. Tal como pensou o pequeno Marcus Hutchins em sua infância.
E por conta dessa observação que eu fazia do que meus pais faziam foi que eu comecei a programar. Foi em BASIC, usando o manual que veio com o Hotbit que meus pais compraram na Mesbla, algum tempo depois, pra usarmos em casa.
Carnaval? Não, obrigado!
Eu sou assim: me digam onde está acontecendo uma daquelas folias de Carnaval, que eu vou imediatamente começar a rumar na direção contrária. Não gosto, nem nunca gostei de muvuca. Então é natural que na hora em que as pessoas pegam o caminho do salão de festas, eu fique na minha.
Que eu me lembre, mesmo quando criança, nunca consegui ver a graça do Carnaval. Eu cheguei a ir a algumas matinês, levado ao clube pelos meus pais — lembro até mesmo de uma fantasia do Homem Aranha que usei. Mas ficar no salão ouvindo marchinha e jogando confete e serpentina pra cima simplesmente não me despertava a emoção que tanta gente parece sentir.
Não me leve à mal, Carnaval. Não é você, provavelmente sou eu mesmo.
Pegar fila em estrada lotada, onde o trânsito para? Enfrentar falta d’água, falta de energia, fila do pão, fila do mercado, crise pra estacionar? Hmmm, não. Eu passo, muito obrigado.
Ficar assistindo desfile pela televisão? Escola de samba após escola de samba? Samba enredo um depois do outro? Ouvir comentarista de desfile? Hmmm, não. Eu passo, muito obrigado.
Para mim há apenas um aspecto bom do Carnaval: já que o país inteiro para por cinco dias inteiros — considerando a quarta-feira de cinzas, e eu paro junto, aproveito a folga do Carnaval.
Nessa folga, faço tudo o que tenho direito, pinto e bordo do meu jeito.
Eu aproveito para recarregar minhas baterias, então durmo bastante. Aproveito para colocar meu consumo literário em dia — entre a sexta-feira passada e hoje, quando estou escrevendo esse texto, por exemplo, consegui terminar de ler dois livros inteiros no Kindle. E continuei um terceiro.
Aproveito para maratonar minhas séries. As do momento são The Last of Us e Spy x Family. Vários episódios assistidos e tempo de tela muito melhor aproveitado por nós aqui em casa do que se estivéssemos “olhando a Beija Flor aí, gente”!
Aproveito para pensar. Me organizar. Me renovar. Aproveito cada minuto a meu favor, da melhor maneira possível. E se você é da bagunça, da folia, da farra… do Carnaval no sentido mais popular e convencional, está tudo bem. Porque se há uma coisa verdadeira sobre essa festa popular é que ela é democrática pra caramba, então tem para todos os gostos.
Aproveita daí, que eu aproveito daqui 😊
Google is now useless
Google is now effectively useless as a means of finding information on the web. Its first priority is to deliver ads, not information. Its default assumption is that every time you search for a thing, you're intending to purchase that thing or other similar things.
The internet needs to be shut down, torn down, and reassembled from the dirt up.
— De uma postagem no Mastodon
Números sobre a humanidade
Eu adoro bons infográficos. E através deste post no Mastodon eu descobri um muito interessante, criado por Max Rosen, do Our World in Data.
A ideia de Rosen foi colocar em perspectiva toda a humanidade, passada e atual, representada como grãos de areia de uma ampulheta. Através dos cálculos de dois demógrafos que estimam que a humanidade começou há cerca de 200 mil anos, foi possível estimar que cerca de 109 bilhões de pessoas já viveram — e morreram por aqui. Somadas aos 7,5 bilhões de nós que estamos aqui agora, são cerca de 117 bilhões de humanos. Ou seja, somos apenas 6,8% de todos os humanos que já estiveram por aqui.
O infográfico que vi na verdade aparece publicado por Max no artigo Longtermism: The future is vast – what does this mean for our own life?, que traz estes e outros dados, inclusive sobre o futuro da humanidade que, se bem pensado, pode tanto ser aqui mesmo na Terra — desde que contornadas condições críticas para a sobrevivência de nossas gerações futuras, como evitar guerras nucleares e pandemias — como também em outros planetas.
Seja qual for o cenário, a partir da leitura do artigo, é possível perceber que estamos no começo da história da humanidade: consideradas estimativas que Max detalha em seu texto, há ainda cerca de 800 mil anos garantidos de existência para a humanidade na Terra enquanto espécie mamífera, tempo suficiente para que 100 trilhões de pessoas nasçam, vivam e morram.
Mas como não somos qualquer mamífero, e sim mamíferos que geraram o conhecimento tanto para nos destruir com uma bomba nuclear ou uma pandemia criada em laboratório, quanto para nos proteger de meteoros similares aos que extinguiram os dinossauros, então pode ser que vivamos pelo tempo em que a Terra deve permanecer habitável, aproximadamente um bilhão de anos — nos dando tempo de fazerem nascer 125 quadrilhões de bebês humanos, sendo cada quadrilhão o número 1 seguido de 15 zeros!
E se desbravarmos o universo como em Star Trek, e ficarmos apenas próximos do nosso Sol, que deve ficar por aí ainda mais uns 5 bilhões de anos, enquanto vivermos em outro maneira, podemos chegar, no fim, a uma espécie que terá gerado 625 quadrilhões de indivíduos.
Realmente, é ainda o amanhecer da humanidade.
Week 7, 2023
✱ My weely posts have worked just they way I’d like them to. As regular prompts for me to write and reflect. I’ve just decided to do them the same way others are doing and, instead of numbering my posts sequentially (this would be the 4th in the series), I decided to name them according to the year’s current week number, which is why now the title now reads the way it does. I guess it makes better sense this way.
✱ I’ve always known about Obsidian’s daily notes and also experimented with them sometimes. But this week I decided to try it in a “more serious” approach, if I may call it this way. As after setting up the very nice Remotely-save Obsidian plugin I could finally start syncing my iPhone notes to my OneDrive account, I realized daily notes would be a perfect location for all of my quick, unstructured notes, including small reflections I come to during the day, sites and news I find, work and life achievements, book indications, and so on and so forth. I just write whatever and sync it to my OneDrive to be preserved. Then, from there, it goes (or doesn't go) anywhere I want it to go to. The approach felt the most frictionless for me — and it even allowed me to create more blog posts as a side product: I wrote Office calendars are all wrong and Notetaking has to go your way after starting to use daily notes. So this looks like a keeper to me.
✱ Another very nice effect of writing my personal daily notes is to be able to better combat imposter syndrome, a bad thing which sometimes strikes me. Writing my personal and professional achievements in daily notes is like leaving messages to my future self. Whenever the syndrome strikes me, I can just scroll through my daily entries looking for achievements and deeds that were only possible because of my competence. Et voilà, instant antidote.
✱ I came back to watching one of my favorite cartoons, Bob's Burgers, on Star Plus. This week, after some long hiatus, got to see 3 more episodes, all properly registered at Trakt. I love adult-oriented cartoons such as Family Guy and even The Simpsons, but Bob's got a special spot. I'm way behind on seasons (still on the sixth one) but, hey, I kind of prefer it this way, because it allows me, when I have time, to binge watch.
✱ On other series, me and the kids kept watching Spy X Family, having reached episode 10 of the 25 released for season one. I keep my opinion, it's an amazing anime, and it makes me very happy to know season 2 is coming in 2023, along with a movie. I'm also up to date with The Last of Us, in this case looking forwards to new episodes, released weekly. For a series based on a videogame franchise, it's going pretty well.
✱ When I was a teen there was this jingle of a FM radio comedy show I used to listen to. It aired during lunch time and, when it was summer — as it currently is here in Brazil —, it used to sing something like "summer is a damned season". Although long gone, I've always had that jingle on my mind. Summer is my least favorite season of the year because heat is something I like to avoid as much as possible, although I try to get by it as best as I can. But this year's temperatures in our city are edging the unbearable for me. For example, it's 3PM while I'm typing this and 29°C (84°F) outside. It's a nightmare for me. Luckily, each season lasts for only 3 months, and fall's scheduled to begin by March 20th here, roughly 1 month from now.
Notetaking tem que ser do seu jeito
Sobre notetaking, uma reflexão interessante feita pelo Mark McElroy via Mastodon:
I used to have this elaborate system of tagging #FleetingNotes and #EvergreenNotes and #LiteratureNotes …
Now, I just have notes (my words, with a link back to what inspired them as appropriate) and quotes (someone else’s words, formatted and attributed clearly).
The only other level I need, at present, is what I’m calling “arguments.” #Dramatica theory claims every work of art is an argument; I’m seeing every hypothesis as an argument with ideas that reinforce or subvert it.
Não sei a respeito dessa Dramatica theory a que ele se refere, mas com respeito a todo o restante, depois de muito refletir sobre meu próprio processo de notetaking, já havia chegado há algum tempo à conclusão de que essa história de fleeting notes, evergreen notes e outros nomes são alegorias.
Não digo que não tenha seu valor em certos círculos e aplicações, mas num contexto mais pessoal, tudo o que “classificar as notas” me fez experimentar foram ansiedade e atrito. Por isso, atualmente, tal como o Mark, opto por anotar com minhas palavras e manter referências para voltar onde eu encontrei inspiração — ou cito alguém com as devidas referências.
Porque no fim quero que as notas que tomo sejam conversas do meu eu futuro com meu eu passado. Me trazendo ideias e lembranças, seja para produzir algo publicável, o que não é necessariamente minha prioridade, seja para reflexão e organização de pensamentos. Não existe um método matador para tomar notas. No meu caso, Zettelkasten de lado, vou vivendo desse misto de anotações, mais formando um commonplace book do que qualquer outra coisa.
E está tudo bem desse jeito. Do meu jeito. Do seu jeito.
Os calendários do escritório estão errados
Stuart Frisby gerou um ótima thread no Mastodon ontem, quando afirmou que “os calendários que usamos no trabalho deveriam assumir que as pessoas estão ocupadas o dia todo e que só estão disponíveis para reuniões em slots especificamente indicados por elas”.
Para ele, a premissa de agenda vazia é horário disponível contribui para um estado permanente de distração das pessoas, que são arrastadas para reuniões que parecem trabalho mas normalmente não são — busywork, ahem.
Há várias coisas que penso em relação a reuniões demais que batem com o racional do Stuart. Então depois de acompanhar a discussão, ponderei algumas delas:
Primeiro, um canvas vazio (que deveria ser nossa agenda), acompanhado de um botão “criar reunião” não espelha em nada a nossa realidade. Aliás, quando computadores não existiam ainda era normal as pessoas marcarem seus compromissos nas respectivas agendas particulares, de papel. Ninguém ficava olhando os slots dos outros e todos assumiam que no momento em que não estava em reunião, era porque uma pessoa estava ocupada trabalhando.
Um design thinking bem pensado para um app revolucionário de calendário devia começar com todos os dias ocupados por inteiro, exceto onde fosse explicitamente indicado pelas pessoas que estão disponíveis para se reunir. Esse app poderia também indicar o que será gravado, não requerendo que a pessoa esteja na reunião naquele instante — e principalmente, ajudar a preservar os bloqueios sagrados, dentre os quais o mais sagrado é o horário da refeição, o seu direito de parar pra almoçar.
As agendas deveriam ser bloqueadas por padrão porque se estou sendo pago — recebendo salário para trabalhar durante o expediente — deveria ser óbvio que estou ocupado com algo, e não apenas esperando até alguém querer marcar reunião comigo.
Reservar horas de foco no seu calendário, como permite o Microsoft Viva, que está em uso na empresa onde trabalho, por exemplo, é uma abordagem super válida e que ajuda muito no progresso das atividades. Por outro lado, se agendar horas de foco para “trabalhar” é necessário, então concordo que há algo de errado. Chega a ser até mesmo paradoxal — eu e amigos no trabalho consumávamos dizer: “se estamos o dia todo em reunião, que horas então sobram pra fazer o trabalho que se acerta que de mãe ser feito durante as reuniões?”
Outras duas questões interessantes me vem à mente em relação a agendas bloqueadas por padrão.
Primeiro, não há nada de errado em assumir que qualquer pessoa que esteja em horário de expediente esteja trabalhando em alguma coisa relevante para a empresa. Assim seu tempo está “reservado“ ou “bloqueado“ para foco em atividades que a pessoa foi remunerada para fazer, e interromper esses focos precisaria ser negociável. Afinal, agenda vazia não é sinônimo de não se estar fazendo nada — embora, infelizmente, eu tenha conhecido muita gente ao longo da minha carreira que se orgulhava de agendas lotadas como “sinônimo de importância relativa”.
A segunda questão se refere a um princípio para agenda das pessoas que seria similar ao que se faz em segurança da informação. Todos os acessos são bloqueados por definição, e liberados somente mediante negociação e aprovação. Uma agenda bloqueada, então, somente teria espaço para reunião conforme liberação, negociação e acordo.
Two cents about myNoise, a wonderful service
Scrolling through Mastodon this morning, I was happy to see MyNoise mentioned by Daryl White. If you don’t know about myNoise, you’re missing out: that’s an amazing service, comprising not only a website but companion mobile apps, used to generate relaxing background noise, ambient sounds and relaxing music. You can use it for free, or contribute with it — as I’ve been doing now for two years in a row — if you think it’s worth your money.
Personally, myNoise has helped me uncountable times so far: be it because I needed to focus or concentrate in a work activity, be it because I was in search of relaxation, either to think or sleep. I’ve even used its generated sounds to read (and to write) better. Thus, it’s no surprise that I catch myself hailing a big thanks to its creator, Stéphane Pigeon, who is a Belgian Brussels born signal processing engineer with a strong passion for sounds who takes care of the whole thing totally by himself.
Seeing that mention on Mastodon made me pitch in with the service again, what made me happy and is certainly good to help keeping up with myNoise, but also brought bad news: On myNoise blog, a post from January, 19th, 2023 has Stéphane stating that he’s not been feeling well for weeks, and has had trouble to walk and to do other simple taks. After seeking for medical assistance, he says he was diagnosed with an auto-immune desease, the mild version of a syndrom called Guillain-Barré, of which I had never heard, although it it helps nothing in making its name less scary.
On February 12th, still in the blog, Stéphane says that he’s decided to move to the hospital full time for the disease treatment; thus, myNoise should hibernate in its current state of development for a long time, with no new soundscapes expected to be recorded or produced in the upcoming weeks or even months. He also reassures people concerned with his state by saying that in Belgium, everything is being covered by his mandatory social insurance.
Still, it is known that Stéphane has no other income than the one from his myNoise project. For people both already contributing to the service and using it for free, supporting the author in this difficult time, even with no new content to be produced for a while, would be really great. This is how he’ll get to keep an income during his time away. So, be you someone who already knew about myNoise, or someone who still didn’t, pay the site a visit and, if you can, contribute by donating.
Week 6, 2023
✱ I have rediscovered Omnivore, a very nice, complete and open source read-it-later application for anyone like me who likes reading — or, maybe, pile up things to read, at least… 😅. It all started when I posted about coming across Cubox, yet another bookmarking and read-it-later solution. Soon I engaged in an interesting conversation with Brandon, and soon the devs were involved. They are thankfully not only on Mastodon too, but also are very responsive to suggestions. The thing is I downloaded the app again and, in a few days time, I could notice how I improved a whole lot since I had walked out on it. So much that now I wonder if I’ll keep using Readwise Reader or Matter, which are similar solutions. My only certain move is to keep using Upnext, app for which I have a lifetime subscription and that I (also) love. Omnivore devs also won me after they said they had just implemented notes export in markdown format, but specially because after I suggested them a couple of things, they were so quickly implemented: first, Brazilian Portuguese as a TTS (additional) language and, second, adding Atkinson Hyperlegible to the available fonts for article text rendering — it even became the devs favorite font.
✱ On my crusade towards adding Atkinson Hyperlegible font to other services I use, I had asked Bazqux developer, Vladimir Shabanov, to add it to the feed reader. He thanked me for the suggestion, but refused it:
Hello, thank you for the idea, but I'm afraid I won't add more fonts. Everybody wants their font and every font has some layout issues, so I need to test how it looks in various browsers. And in general at the moment reader is in support only mode (as I changed the country and have a full-time job now). I making sure that it's running but don't develop any new features.
No problem. He has a point regarding everyone wanting their fave fonts everywhere, and also, as he’s working fulltime now, it’s comprehensible to only keep the things running.
✱ My older son has been studying Japanese for a couple of years now (I do like that but am every day more convinced I wasn’t cut out for learning eastern languages 😂😂). Anyway, thanks to his interest in the language he’s been watching a lot of anime, among which, Spy X Family, series which — you may have guessed — is about spying. A very talented spy has to accomplish a new mission, but, for that, will have to arrange himself a family, what he ends up doing. It’s just an uncommon one (I won’t spoil anything, but Anya, his daughter, is the cutest 😍). Now, besides The Last of Us, that we have caught up with the 4th episode this week, Spy X Family got itself a spot in our hearts here.
✱ This week I worked in office for 3 days in a row, the last one yesterday. Our director is visiting Brazil and wanted to perform a series of one-on-one meetings with us, besides taking the time to promote a workshop. It was very nice, lots of hard work done with the collaboration and camaraderie of friends. In the end it all paid up and we moved a little more towards our objectives. I guess as next week our director will still be here, we’ll end up going at least once more to our office premises. I’m sure it’ll be nice once again — the only thing I have to admit is that I’m not used to the commuting and office routine so much anymore: I felt very tired after three days and also concluded I’m not used to wearing long pants and shoes any longer… felt so hot compared to my bermuda shorts and flip-flops.
Seja curioso, perca seus debates e aprenda
Derek Sivers é um americano que começou sua carreira como músico, foi palhaço de circo e se tornou empresário e palestrante do TED Talks. Também é autor de livros e de muitos textos interessantes, publicados em seu site pessoal.
Na semana passada, Derek publicou um texto em que disse que não gostaria de ter que debater com ninguém mas que, se isso acontecer, preferiria perder o debate. Pode parecer uma declaração muito estranha mas, do ponto de vista de alguém como eu, que adota o conceito de lifelong learning, “perder um debate” é uma situação favorável ao aprendizado de algo novo: talvez uma perspectiva, uma forma de pensar que nunca tenha me passado pela cabeça.
Além de livros, filmes, documentários e outras fontes convencionais de aprendizado, conversar com pessoas novas e com pontos de vista diferentes do seu representa uma das melhores maneiras de aprender. Conversar com gente nova nos introduz a mindsets diferentes, a processos de pensamento diferentes do nosso. E como diz Derek, achar que as pessoas são estúpidas (por não terem o mesmo ponto de vista que o seu) não é pensar: pensar é entender pontos de vista diferentes dos nossos e aprender com o processo.
Ao invés de convencer alguém do seu ponto de vista, deixe-se convencer do ponto de vista dos outros. É enriquecedor. E se ao conversar com alguém você não souber como convidar essa pessoa para expor seu jeito de pensar para que você possa aprender, então ative a curiosidade, tal qual uma criança faria. Comece sua conversa com “estou curioso“, ou variações da frase.
Por exemplo:
— Então, o que você está me dizendo é que os celulares que funcionam com o sistema Android estão melhores do que aqueles que funcionam com o sistema da Apple? Agora fiquei curioso pra saber o que pode ter provocado essa melhoria.
Ou então:
— É sério que você investe em criptomoedas? Eu tenho muito receio disso, porque me parece algo relativamente inseguro. Mas, se puder me explicar, estou curioso pra entender o que te levou a fazer isso.
O que acontece quando a gente está em uma conversa e diz “estou curioso” é que preparamos o terreno para que o nosso interlocutor brilhe. Eu não estou interrogando ninguém, não existe resposta certa, nem resposta errada. Ao ser curioso, estou genuinamente só querendo aprender.
Então, ponha a curiosidade a seu serviço. Ao se ver debatendo com alguém, busque aprender, perca uns debates. Vai ser ótimo.
Week 5, 2023
✱ After hearing so many people mentioning it on Mastodon, I decided to try The Last of Us on HBO Max. As I'm not a PlayStation player, although having already heard about the videogame the series originated from, I didn't know the story, which has an apocalyptical air to it the same as The Walking Dead. Three episodes later, I can say I want more. This has been a very surprising finding for me. 📺
✱ After a long season without showing to pay me a visit, sinusitis came back this week. I simply hate it, because it makes my head feel heavy, causing me to sneeze and to have to deal with running nose. As I write this post, it's been with me for 3 days in a row, each more horrible than the last one. I'm already taking medicine for it, so I hope it doesn't take too long to go away. 🤧
✱ Finished my first book in 2023 \o/! As it is expected from me, it was none of the books which are currently in my reading list, but a short, curious title about Galaga, the videogame, written by Michael Kimball. As the game has 255 stages, so does the book have 255 chapters, filled with curiosities and fun facts about the classic Namco shmup from the '80's and also about the author's life as a teenager. If you're into games, then that's a nice quick read. 📚
✱ Although I've written much more already this year, I cannot say I'm satisfied. So many ideas come to mind for blog posts and fiction texts, but many of them, as soon as they start to be written, just don't prove to be worth investing in. Also, this week has been so full of work activities that, when I had the time to write, I just didn't have the needed energy. I hope this is temporary, as I love to write. The upside on all of this, if I may call it this way is that I’m no short of places where to publish my thinking: First, there’s my weblog.lol address, where you’re reading these hebdomadary notes. After giving it a long thought, I believe this will be dedicated to writing in English. Second, there’s my bearblog.dev address, to which I’ve bought a lifetime sub this week in order to support Herman, its developer. This is a place I intend to use to write in Portuguese, my mother language. And last, but not least, there’s Mastodon for my microblogging. So, no shortage of homes for my thinking. Just need to start.
✱ Thanks to Maique's post on Mastodon, mentioning the Atkinson Hyperlegible font this week, I found a new favorite — before that, the position was occupied by Inter, which still has a place in my heart. Atkinson is such a nice, well made font that now I have plans to use it everywhere I can. I noticed Matter offers it as an alternative that I've already activated. Using an iOS app named Fontcase I also installed a profile in iPhone and started using it as a custom font for the Ice Cubes app, one of my two favorite Mastodon clients. And I also asked Bazqux developer, Vladimir Shabanov, to incorporate it to the fonts available in his feed reader. I hope he is able to do it.