These aren’t surprising, but they’ve worked for me.

1. Drink water - hydration makes a bigger impact than get’s credit. When drinking coffee, you should be having one water per cup of coffee, at minimum.

2. Sleep - even a 30 minute deficit of sleep will make me noticeably dumber the next day.

3. Take vitamins - cars don’t run without the right gas, neither do our brains. Don’t guess. Find out what your body is lacking and provide it.

4. Exercise - outdoor walks get the brain pumping. But indoor stuff like pushups, sit-ups, Turkish getups, bird-dogs, etc are needed as well. When my body feels weak, my brain lags alongside it.

5. Take breaks - the standard advice is to stand up. That’s the bare minimum. You need to leave the room. Step away from the computer. Look out the window. Go outside for a minute. And stretch. A tense, cramped, achy body diverts your attention more than you realize.

I’m getting myself into the groove; into the swing of things—why do phrases like this always try to sound so nonchalant?

There’s always a good feeling when things start to take shape. You add a section. Remove a section. Bring back a zombie brand from the dead. It’s a good feeling.

You even figure out that you’ve been running around in circles for no reason. That feels less good. I mean, it IS good but kinda feels like shit.

When we look at progress, we always use nice, neat lines trending upwards. But the experience of progress is actually nothing like that. It’s more like trying to get a drunk friend out of a bar before he pisses himself or starts a fight, while people slap you in the face with damp cocktail napkins. Your friend has vomit in the corner of his mouth but he’s convinced every woman he sees wants to kiss him. Good luck.

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DRUNK ON TECH

One main lesson I’ve learned from discovering I have an autistic brain: I’m not as one-of-a-kind as I think I am.

This sounds like a borderline masochistic thing to say, but as self-flagellating as it sounds, this discovery was actually a good thing. Discovering that things I do and ways I think were not solely “me things” made me feel more human. “You mean more pinch their thumb to each finger and count 1-2-3-4, 4-3-2-1 to comfort themselves?” (Yeah, that’s a real thing I do.) Discovering your weird is a shared weird is liberating.

So please allow me to liberate myself right here. I promise to keep my clothes on and not to soil the carpet.

I have a tendency to imagine the way things will work before I know what the hell I’m doing. I build perfect systems in my head only to discover later I can’t put the TV & entertainment center into the closet because you’d have to take the whole thing apart and put it back together INSIDE OF A CLOSET. Also, the closet is an inch too short. (Real life example.)

In my mind, here’s how things were going to work:

1. Collect and capture in Tana

2. Move to Heptabase to break things apart, move them around, and understand them.

3. Move things back to Tana in a new, highly efficient, linear form.

Here’s how things actually work:

In practice, the advantages of a non-linear workspace are nearly impossible to translate back into a linear format.

Sure, you can use a great whiteboard map of a book to write something linear like an article or newsletter, but you aren’t converting it, you’re interpreting it.

The movie always loses something from the book BECAUSE IT’S A MOVIE, not because somebody was lazy. You can’t make a two-hour film from a 600-page novel and expect things not to be omitted. You can’t even make three Dune movies without amputating key parts of Frank Herbert’s body.

In the same way, an infinite canvas is always going to convey things that an outline can’t.

So here’s my solution: Stick with steps 1 & 2. Stop there. The end. Mind-blowing shit, right?

DRUNK ON IDEAS

“Pagan Roots Of The Catholic Church” by Kenny Russell: Call me crazy but I’m fascinated by the way religions absorbed paganism. Which is why I’m endlessly amused to read that the Catholic Church didn’t just spring fully formed from the Bible - in fact, it’s got more pagan roots than a Druid painting at a Ren Faire. From Mary as the new Isis to the saints replacing the pantheon of gods, it’s a spiritual smoothie. Read this if you want to learn how early Christianity got a makeover courtesy of Emperor Constantine and how he slapped some Jesus stickers on existing pagan practices.

"The Science of Having a Great Conversation" by David Robson: Ever feel like you're talking to a wall? As an autistic, I know this feeling all to well. It turns out, there's science to explain why we suck at chitchat. Robson's got some nifty home remedies for your conversationally-transmitted disease, from asking follow-up questions to avoiding the dreaded "phone snub." Read this if you want to be adored—I mean, if YOU WANT TALK GOODER.

"George Washington’s views on political parties in America" by Dennis Jamison: Imagine George Washington rising from his dusty grave and seeing our current political clusterfuck. He facepalms so hard that he knocks his wooden teeth out of his skull. Good old George, President number uno, warned us about the dangers of political parties. Huge chunks of his farewell speech—but did we listen? Uh, no… We embraced them like a horny min-pin on your shin-shin. Read this if you want to understand why Washington laid out the yellow caution tape and ran like hell to Mount Vernon to start farming.

ROUNDS

I completely forgot to include books in last week’s newsletter. So lest you think I’ve become a lean mean killing machine, this is for two weeks.

Read Write Own by Chris Dixon: I listened to the whole thing in an afternoon. I’m really interested in how the blockchain can cut the corporate bandits out of the internet and bring back the real aspirations of the madmen who built it.

You Are What You Read by Robert DiYanni: Believe it or not, I finally got through this one. I even engaged with the subject matter enough to stop momentarily from wanting to shove sharpened pencils into my ears from the droning phoniness of the audiobook narrator. It’s actually quite a good book.

God’s Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the Sierra Madres by Richard Grant: I’m burning through this one. It’s a wild ride. Can’t wait to share my thoughts in the next issue of Read or Die a Slave (which, yes, is coming back as a monthly newsletter).

SHOTS

Me + Scrintal + Heptabase = Awkward PKM Threesome: Watch this if you want to vicariously experience the mental gymnastics of comparing two eerily similar yet frustratingly different note-taking apps without actually having to use your brain. You're welcome, and I'm sorry.

CHASERS

Instagram post

ONE FOR THE ROAD

As these tools develop, what will be the thin line separating a PKM tool that uses ChatGPT, and ChatGPT, itself, functioning like a PKM tool?

Let's start with this image: your brain is a drunken octopus, desperately trying to juggle chainsaws while riding a unicycle with a flat tire. That's me, attempting to wrangle my thoughts into these goddamn apps. It sounds crazy...because it is. It's messier than a rat orgy in a peanut butter factory.

It's 2024, and I'm still a hot mess. Shocking! Analysis: I've got more "second brain" apps than actual brain cells. BUT I'm embracing my debilitating tech obsession in this newsletter. I know saying "people on X seem to like it," is a bit like saying "my mom thinks I'm cool," but people on X seem to like it. And I don't have many real life friends left who aren't dead, homeless, married (😉,) or too busy to answer text messages.

Some of you will pee in my trough and some of you will swipe me away for the comforting narcotic scarf of endless Instagram Reels about how to make better Instagram Reels. Whether it's good news or bad news, I'm having fun. So stick around, fellow noggin-wranglers.

Was this forwarded to you? RUN! — or make life easier for both of us by subscribing to these weekend detoxes of my sad little brain.

Drunk on Tech

Good god! I think I'm losing my mind...and finding pieces of it scattered throughout the internet.

Another week, another PKM gut-blizzard. How do I repeatedly get myself into these loops, spinning my brain on a wheel of over-analyzed bullshit??

So here's the deal: I have no idea what I'm doing. I have no safe harbor for my "second brain."

Reflect? Reflect is like that rare friend who kicks ass at listening but who can never find their car keys in their gigantic purse. Got a random thought while you're taking a dump? Boom, Reflect's got you covered. But try to find that later? Eh...Good luck navigating that chaos, homeboy. Maybe under the pizza box on the carpet?? "Siri, find my mind."

Obsidian? Issss...your type-A friend who color-codes their closet and library books. Everything's got a place, Marie Kondo and all that, but the next thing you know they're reorganizing what they just organized after they reorganized it last week. This time they've got a label maker.

Tana? That seems like the middle ground, right. You take the pill. Three weeks later you wake in Mexico with nothing but Adderall bottles, carburetor parts, and the bottom halves of Russian nesting dolls piled around you.

And don't even get me started on the AI stuff. Reflect's got the chat, Tana's got the chat, Obsidian can strap one on—Sure it's like having a pocket therapist, minus the judgmental looks about spending three hours debating the merits of different bullet point styles. But sometimes it feels like trying to cajole a three year old to follow the directions inside the Lego box. Not gonna happen.

But let's be honest here: this isn't just about apps. This isn't "normal" behavior. I'm on the autism spectrum. (Don't worry, I'll wait while you feign gasps of surprise.) Sometimes my brain just gets stuck in the rut of being a perfectionist asshole. But, it turns out, there's a reason I'm obsessed with finding the "perfect" system. It's not just me being a broken neurotic mess (though we shouldn't completely discount that).

My good buddy Claude 3.5 tells me I'm not a total nutcase. I'm just an autistic brain struggling in an an allistic (non-autistic) world.

So what the hell am I going to do about this mess? My brain's not going to change. So, I'm doing possibly the dumbest, most irresponsible thing I can do, it's called "using multiple apps." I'm bouncing from app-to-app, day-to-day, sometimes hour-to-hour...because I apparently hate myself.

My only hope is that, I'll settle into a pattern somewhere and get too comfortable to jump any further. Sometimes exhaustion is the only solution.

So, what's working?

I'm doing morning pages. Via voice. Because nothing says "I've got my shit together" like talking to myself alone in the office every morning—and night, because I'm doing "evening pages" before bed. It's odd at first, but I'm starting t enjoy the hell out if. The utility is still questionable, but I'll take stability wherever I find it.

And in a move that can only be described as digital self-flagellation, I'm manually importing my Readwise highlights. Why? Because I'm a masochist, obviously. I know it sounds like just another bad choice but I need to be in control of what goes into my apps. It's the only way to feel like everything is still in my hands, and in my head. Intention over automation.

I know this sounds insane. The perfect app doesn't exist. But my brain doesn't give a damn. It just wants to tinker.

My daily life looks terrifyingly like the life of an absent professor in a black-and-white movie. I probably need someone following me around putting stuff away where it belongs and making sure I eat...which is basically what we're all hoping AI will be. But, it not there yet. Not yet. Right now, AI is more like Sancho Panza to my Don Quixote. I'm ramrodding windmills and AI thinks it's just wonderful.

So, here's my plan for next week: Embrace the mess. Let my thoughts scatter across my desktop like a flock of squirrels with cocaine fuses in their little fuzzy fannies.

Who knows? Maybe I'll finally figure out a system that works. Or maybe I'll just keep chasing that digital dragon. Either way, a shit show. Stick around.

Send prayers, and Bitcoin.

Drunk on Ideas

"The Mind-Expanding Ideas of Andy Clark" by Larissa MacFarquhar: Holy brainbenders, Batman! You know how sometimes you wonder if your toaster is secretly plotting your death? Well, I just had my neurons nuked by this. It's like a philosophical rollercoaster ride through the backwater funhouse of cognition! Clark's been busy rewiring our understanding of where the mind ends and the world begins. Turns out, your smartphone might be more "you" than you think! You should probably read this if you've ever argued with Siri and felt like you were talking to yourself.

"Hollywood's Slo-Mo Self-Sabotage" by Inkoo Kang: Hollywood's turning into a dumpster fire faster than I can say "reboot." Hollywood's gone full Wile E. Coyote, sawing off the branch it's sitting on. Streaming wars, AI fears, a geriatric star system, and execs are chasing nostalgia like it's the last donut at a Weight Watchers meeting. Read this if you want to understand why your favorite show's new season feels like it was written by a lobotomized goldfish with a TikTok addiction.

"Do We Need to Work?" by Aaron Benanav: Insert entropy-induced existential crisis. It turns out our hunter-gatherer ancestors were living like fat gods while we're grinding ourselves into dust. Benanav dives deep into anthropology, economics, and the universal laws of physics to ask why the hell we're still working 40+ hour weeks when we should be partying like it's 9999 BC. Read this if you want to question everything you thought you knew about human nature, economics, and why your great-great-great-great-great-great-grandparents knew Netflix and chill before Netflix mastered the art of the price-hike.

"Make a Classic, Not Content" by Lawrence Yeo: Lawrence just drop-kicked the content treadmill right in its algorithm-loving face. He's basically saying, "Stop churning out lukewarm brain farts on a schedule and make something that'll outlast your attention span!" Read this if you want to feel simultaneously inspired and personally triggered by your creative output. It's like a swift kick in the artistic cajones, but in a good way. Maybe.

Shots

The podcast is back...with video. I've managed to turn what should be a simple task—recording a goddamn podcast—into a Lovecraftian nightmare of technical fuckery. I'm sitting here, surrounded by cat hair and self-doubt, trying to explain why I'm rebranding everything as "Drunk on Ideas," and I'm ditching Descript because their UI changes gave me digital PTSD. We're talking AI assistants folding my metaphorical underwear, the width of Roman chariots, and the coming reality of AI's commenting on each other's photos like pre-teen girls on their first iPhones while the meatwad losers (humans) lay in bed rating their boogers. Watch this if you want a front-row seat to my mental gymnastics, a peek behind the content creator curtain, and a healthy dose of techno-whine.

Chaser

Twitter tweet

One for the Road

If we achieve artificial general intelligence through LLMs, will this prove that consciousness derives from language?

I feel better, how about you? Don’t forget to follow @drunkonideas on X.

As I sit here, talking to the butt end of my phone, I can't help but feel an uneasiness rumbling down near my bones. Sure, this is good for my mental health, and my head feels clear and focused when it's free of the mental crust I accumulate each day. But what will it cost me later?

I'm using AI to transcribe my voice notes. I'm using AI because my executive function isn't always on deck to formulate thoughts on paper or at a keyboard. And while I know that the app I use if end-to-end encrypted, I can't shake off the feeling that I'm giving away something of myself each time I press the little microphone button.

In German folklore, Faust traded his soul for knowledge and worldly pleasures. In American folklore, Robert Johnson met the devil at the Crossroads to learn guitar. The comparison is obvious: knowledge for your soul. Every time I use AI, I gain the power to search and retrieve insights from my own thoughts, to connect dots between fragmented and forgotten ideas. AI promises me new revelations and creative superpowers—which it often delivers. But is AI a beast that I am feeding by contributing more data to power these AI?

And who knows what the future holds? Will my private journals be used against me in some dystopian future where every digital thought is monitored and cataloged? It's a terrifying possibility.

But, is it really any worse than what we've already acclimated ourselves to doing every day? We carry phones that ping our location to towers, we photograph and share personal moments, we leave digital footprints wherever we go. Haven't we already accepted the bargain?

There are people, some of whom are in my family, who dwell on paranoid visions of future chips implanted into our skin. But the chips are already here. They're in our pockets. We keep them near our bed while we sleep and take it with us into the bathroom. We feel lost without them. And no one needed subterfuge to to do it. They charged us $1000 and we paid.

And yet, there's something about AI that feels different, riskier. Maybe it's the scale, the possibility of what can be done with models trained on the collective thoughts and experiences of billions of people. Maybe it's just the old fear of the unknown; the friction of innovation; the blind uncertainty of what AI is truly capable of.

What choice do we have? When you resist the charge of technology what do you gain? Pride? Righteousness? Evangelical fervor? Those who opt out are simply left behind. There aren't a lot of salesmen without cell phones, email addresses, and CRMs. The resisters died out.

One person refusing to use plastic won't save the planet. One person avoiding AI hale the revolution. Technology is a door that continually opens. It never closes.

All I can say that nervous voice inside is "stay vigilant." Use these tools. Augment your intelligence, your productivity, and your creativity, but never losing sight of the human element that burn beneath it all.

My hope is to look foolish in the future; to look back through my old notes and stumble upon this passage, and laugh. "What a nothing-burger that was." And if I'm wrong, then there won't be anyone to look back.

Because of the reach of the internet, music scenes are essentially co-opted by the world. They no longer stay localized where they mature and gestate into something unique. Instead they are discovered quickly and are incorporated into the mass of culture which smooths out their distinctness.

This week’s double feature: How to build tension? Amping things up and pouring on the gasoline, or building slowly to the point of madness?

THERE ARE BAD COPS, GOOD COPS - AND THEN THERE’S BULLITT.

Bullitt (1968)

Peter Yates • 1968

Senator Walter Chalmers is aiming to take down mob boss Pete Ross with the help of testimony from the criminal’s hothead brother Johnny, who is in protective custody in San Francisco under the watch of police lieutenant Frank Bullitt. When a pair of mob hitmen enter the scene, Bullitt follows their trail through a maze of complications and double-crosses. This thriller includes one of the most famous car chases ever filmed.

from Letterboxd

NIGHTMARE OR SANITY… WHICH IS WHICH?

Let’s Scare Jessica to Death

John D. Hancock • 1971

Newly released from a mental ward, Jessica hopes to return to life the way it was before her nervous breakdown. But when Jessica moves to a country house with her husband and a close friend, she finds a mysterious girl living in there who may or may not be a vampire. Jessica’s terror and paranoia resurface as evil forces surround her, making her wonder: Are the visions real or is she slipping back into madness?

from Letterboxd

I have this theory that time passes faster as we age because we have less milestones by which to measure the passage of time. School is filled with these markers. New quarters. Midterms. Spring Break. Graduation. Then we get a job, where milestones are still present but less significant. Annual review. Vacation. Monday morning. Those of us that have kids, find themselves measuring time by their children’s milestones. First steps. First grade. First birthday. First dance. But then, suddenly, it stops. We find there aren’t enough markers in our lives for us to remember “was that ten years ago? Or fifteen?”

Humans suck at abstracting time. We need metaphors. Time isn’t a ticking numerical timeline in our heads. We don’t recall something was fifteen day ago, because we can slowly re-count the passage of time over the last fourteen days; we remember it was fifteen days ago because it was the same day we tried that new Tex-Mex restaurant, and that was the day after the dentist, and the dentist appointment was for the 13th, and today is the 29th…so…that was fifteen days ago. We measure time in relation to events.

Nothing will make this more clear than becoming self-employed and working at home. It’s very easy for every day to become the same day, and for time as a measurable thing to disappear from your life.

We like to think of time being something we want to loose track of. And we do want that—IN THE MOMENT. We want to have hours go by because we are laughing with friends. We don’t want to be watching the clock and feeling time ticking slowly forward as we play with our pets. We want to get lost in some activity; to achieve flow. BUT we still want to know that today is Sunday; the the month is March, that the year is 2024. Without that GPS sense of location in time, it feels as if our life is slipping away. It’s gone before we feel it. We’re never present in it. It’s always behind us.

I’ve discovered recently that a large part of feeling present comes from anticipating something in the future. (There’s an irony to that which amuses me.) Wanting something that will happen later somehow makes us more aware of where we are now.

Yet, here’s the rub: we live in the least anticipatory time in human history. We wait for little and when we do wait we we honk our horns at slow moving green lights. We don’t wait for letters, we send emails, text messages, and DMs that arrive instantly. We don’t go to the store hoping to find the item we want, we order online from stores that seemingly never run out, and in the off-chance that they do, we go to another website in seconds. We don’t wait to buy albums—hell, we don’t even wait to get to the store to buy those album. The moment they’re released, we have them at our finger tips. (We don’t even pay for them!) We don’t wait a week for the next episode of a tv show, we binge. We have groceries delivered and diner AND WE NEVER TAKE OUR HANDS OFF OF THE LITTLE SQUARE PORTALS OF INSTANT GRATIFICATION IN OUR POCKETS.

Is it any wonder that with so little anticipation, we experience so little enjoyment?

As a way of combatting this, I’m building artificial anticipation into my life. And I’m starting with movies.

Back when I was a kid, going to the movies was a thing. There was always at least one movie you were dying to see and you were champing at the bit until that day came. I miss that. I miss not having everything I can imagine available in an instant. I never thought I’d say that, but it’s true. It turns out that without the desire, the anticipation, and the lack, the pleasure in finding things becomes a bore. In fact, it becomes a chore. Nobody enjoys the thirty minutes of scrolling “for something good” before finally watching anything.

So, I’m bringing back the double feature (another relic of movie houses and drive-ins.)

Every Monday, I’m picking out two films which have some connection to each other (both mafia movies, both star Sylvester Stallone, both are Japanese, both end in slow motion bloodbaths.) But I’m not going to watch them on Monday. I have a little chalkboard next to my TV. I’m going to write their names on that chalkboard and then I’m going to stare at those titles all week like a marquee, when finally, on Sunday I’ll hit play.

I’m doing this tonight for the first time. And yes, I’m excited! In fact, I’m probably going to start the first movie after I finish sending this.

It occurs to me that some of you might want to watch along. So, on Mondays, when I pick out the movies, I’ll send my picks along to you. Something short—the description of each from Letterboxd maybe and few words about what the theme of the double feature is.

It’s lovely subversion of the digital world, don’t you think. Instead looking back at what has passed and writing a review of some sort, we’ll be looking forward to what has yet to come. Maybe you’ll make your own marquee each week. Fi so, I’d love to see that if you do.

It occurs to me that if the average person is inundated and over-occupied by the constant din and clatter of the online world, then unplugging will become a superpower.

When you relegate the computer to a small desk in an insignificant spot; when you begin to see it as nothing more than a tool which is briefly used and then left; when your phone lives in the cradle instead of in your pocket; when you remember how to move and think without a device between you and your reality, then the time of your day suddenly opens. Hours are returned to you.

The unplugged people will achieve depth that is rare; focus that is singular. They will fill their days in such a way that the average person will ask "How do you find the time?" They will move through life rarely rushed. They will sleep more soundly and take take fewer pills. They will spend less and they will be freed from outrage.

I hope to be one of these people; these unplugged people. I hope I will continue to seek silence. I hope I will leisurely read books in days rather than hurriedly reading them in weeks, or months. I hope I will write useful thoughts. I hope I will understand what prayer means for an unreligious man. I hope I will learn to listen. I hope I will continue what I've only just begun.

There’s something tremendously amusing to me about ignoring my YouTube channels for a year, and then just popping in today and making a video for each—completely out of the blue.

Can we still surprise people? Can we still delight them by doing something unexpected? Maybe that’s a part of the puzzle I’ve felt missing (as a creator and as a consumer) that I’ve only just put shape to.

Maybe that’s what I hate so much about the “new video every Tuesday at 4pm EST” approach to creating online. There’s no joy to it. It’s mechanical and empty. You get a new video every week, whether it’s good or not; whether the creator is excited about it or not; whether you have time to watch it or not.

I think it’s poisonous for the creative mind. We live inside a ticking time bomb when we should be living on whim; lost in passions and fascinations—the absent-minded professor changing the world but forgetting to change the clock for daylight savings.

Yes, we challenge ourselves to finish things, but not to satisfy an inane weekly schedule. We challenge ourselves to finish for the same reason a climber plants a flag on the summit of a mountain; to mark our accomplishment. We recognize the journey we’ve been on and then we depart for another.

I miss the days of YouTube that took place before the television mindset infected it. People weren’t making shows, they weren’t making episodes, they weren’t on a production schedule; they made a video and then set out to make something else—sometimes months between (or years.) YouTube wasn’t a broadcast channel, it was a place to save what you’ve created. It was a portfolio. Subscription existed to let you know when their new thing was out—like ordering something in the mail and not receiving an specified arrival date. It’s going to arrive. Who know when. Live inside that anticipation.

I want to create things that are anticipated. I want to delight. I want to surprise. Because then I can experience those same things myself in the process once again.