sci-fi author, beatmaker

Month: November 2010

Dealing With Cybernetic Discombobulation

Everyone should have a dedicated recombobulation space.

Losing your phone, moving to a new country, breaking your leg, your laptop self-destructing, getting a concussion — all these disruptive events can be described as cybernetic discombobulation.  The systems, body, habits, technologies, and databases we rely on to navigate daily life occasionally break or corrupt or become obsolete (or we break them on purpose in pursuit of growth or change or freedom).

Willpower as a Commodity, Part III (Thought Vaccines)

Keep reading … it will makes sense.

In my earlier posts in this series, I wrote about the idea that willpower is less a muscle we can strengthen, and more a limited resource that we need to spend wisely.  If we spend our day doing taxes (difficult), we’ll have less energy at the end of the day to resist sweet desserts or other temptations.

We all “leak” willpower to some extent, wasting our daily supply of mental fortitude on battles like staying awake when we’re sleepy, resisting food cravings, making ourselves do work we don’t want to do, enduring annoying people, etc.  If we take proactive steps to either change our lives or establish new habits, these “leaks” go away and we’re left with more willpower to work on whatever we really want to work on (making art, earning money, fixing stuff, improving the lives of others — whatever our “life’s work” happens to be).

The Story of "The Dive"

A frame from Kia Simon’s music video of “The Dive”

A couple months ago Spesh and I received an email with a link to a demo.  This isn’t unusual — we get many submissions each week to Loöq Records — but this track in particular was a bootleg remix of a track we had already published.  A bootleg is an unsolicited “illegal” remix — it is made by chopping up bits of the finished track instead of using the individual remix parts or “stems” (supplied by the label or original artist).

What It Feels Like to Regain Your Insulin Sensitivity

The insulin molecule.

Like many men, when I hit my early thirties I started to get a little fat.  At my heaviest I was just a little chunky.  I think that at a certain point I started to become less sensitive to the hormone insulin, which in turn led to a host of other negative health effects.  I’d like to share my experience of reversing this trend.  With changes to my diet and lifestyle, I regained my insulin sensitivity.

The day after Halloween seems like an appropriate day to write this post — for one thing I need to fortify my own willpower so I don’t eat too much of the leftover candy.

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