J.D. Moyer

sci-fi author, beatmaker

Month: November 2021

Be Stupid Faster

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On November 20

In Metaprogramming, Personal Updates

I’m in a life phase where I’m doing a lot of things for the first time. Kia and I are remodeling our Oakland house. I’m managing projects and coordinating teams of software developers. I’m parenting a teenager. In all these cases, the stakes are high, but my levels of knowledge are low (or at least have significant gaps).

I’m finding some success in a new strategy: admitting my ignorance as quickly as possible. While I’ve never really minded “losing face” because I didn’t know something, I often took pride in trying to figure things out on my own. And sometimes I’m reluctant to bother other people with questions because I don’t want to impose.

But my life circumstances don’t have room for such delicacies. These days I’m asking, and asking aggressively. Of course I’m still going to make mistakes and take wrong turns, but I need to make as few mistakes as possible, and correct the mistakes I make quickly.

That’s my thought for the week! I’ll eventually have time for longer blog posts, but my to-do list is insane at the moment.

Life Update

  • We continue to enjoy life in our San Francisco high rise apartment. I’ve noticed I have an enhanced sense of security here. Some of that has to do with moving to a city with less gun violence, but I think most of it is the environmental psychology effect of my primate brain thinking I’m high in the trees.
  • While dance music has taken a back seat this year to everything else, Loöq Records is spinning up some new releases for December and 2022. We’ve landed a remix from Nosk, some of my favorite breakbeat producers, and I can’t wait to hear what they come up with.
  • I completed a first draft of a new novelette, “Alexandria”, a far-future archeology expedition featuring cuttlefolk, dogkin, and a godling construct of Anubis.
  • All editions of The Last Crucible are officially released. I’m so happy to have a science fiction trilogy in print (and digital, and audio book). If you haven’t yet checked out any of my Reclaimed Earth series, please consider doing so. And if you enjoy the books, you’d do me a huge favor by leaving a rating or brief review.

Vaccine Hesitancy and the Pursuit of Purity

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On November 14

In Culture Rants/Shares, Health/Body-hacking

Recently I unsubscribed from Chris Masterjohn’s YouTube channel. While previously I’d found his perspective on vitamin D and other nutrition research to be interesting and helpful, the fact that he got Covid twice and still won’t take the vaccine was just too much for me. I just don’t have any patience for vaccine hesitancy when there is so much evidence that the vaccine offers protection against severe disease and death from Covid. I don’t disagree with Masterjohn that some supplements (such as vitamin D and zinc) can also offer protection against severe Covid. And of course contracting and surviving Covid offers some natural immunity as well. But as I’ve written about before, continually rolling the dice when the stakes are so high just isn’t a good strategy. There are just too many cases of robustly healthy people who take all the right supplements getting severely sick from Covid.

So what’s behind vaccine hesitancy? Academics who have looked into the issue associate vaccine hesitancy with values such as purity and personal liberty. Many people are willing to accept the larger risk of Covid (or measles, or other serious diseases) to avoid the much smaller risks of adverse side effects from vaccines.

It makes me think of other health areas where priorities get mixed up in the pursuit of purity and optimization. For example:

  • Suffering from dehydration because you don’t want to drink tap water (which is mostly safe — though in some parts of the U.S. it isn’t)
  • Avoiding the sun so much (to prevent skin cancer) that you become deficient in vitamin D, and miss the blood-pressure lowering/nitric-oxide-releasing benefits of direct sunlight
  • Not getting enough calories or nutrients because of strict dietary restrictions (organic-only, veganism, etc.)

Tolerating some levels of impurity (in air, water, food, radiation and chemical exposure) can ultimately improve health outcomes.

Did I Plagiarize Lloyd Alexander?

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On November 4

In Personal Updates, Writing

Recently I started rereading Lloyd Alexander‘s The Book of Three, a fantasy novel I hadn’t cracked open in roughly four decades. My daughter was giving away some books, and this was among several I rescued. As a child, I remember being fascinated and slightly disturbed by the first edition cover art, and enjoying the entire series immensely.

But reading the book again, I was astonished to realize the opening scene is between two arguing blacksmiths — that exact same way The Sky Woman (Book 1 of Reclaimed Earth) opens.

Fortunately the similarities end there — The Sky Woman has no oracular pig, or princes and kings, or epic battle between good and evil.

But I’m sure it’s not a coincidence. The Chronicles of Prydain series was my introduction to high fantasy, well before I read the Lord of the Rings. The Book of Three sat in my subconscious for decades, influencing my thinking and decisions in who-knows-how-many ways.

The stories we hear and read when we’re young shape our lives forever. I wonder what other stories are rummaging around in my subconscious, influencing my decisions.

Personal Updates

  • I’m loving living in San Francisco. It turns out we’re in the East Cut neighborhood, not South Beach. After living in the Oakland/Berkeley flats for most of my life, the vastness and scale of the architecture (the Bay Bridge, the Salesforce tower, the Ferry Building) is refreshing. Walking the Embarcadero at night is stunningly beautiful. Of course the novelty will wear off in time, but I’m enjoying it for now.
  • We’re about to start remodeling our house in Oakland. We’re in a good financial position, and we have a good team, but still the money stress is getting to me. Even modest remodels are crazy expensive. But it’s what we need to do to make the house nice and rent it out at a good price. And if/when we ever move back in, we’ll appreciate the upgrades.
  • I got my Covid booster. So now I’m J&J plus Pfizer. No side effects this time except for a day of mild tiredness and a sore arm.
  • Still taking a break from all alcohol, approaching two months. The main thing I notice is that even though my stress levels are high right now, so is my emotional resilience. Usually high stress, for me, comes with some feelings of despair and hopelessness. But lately I’ve been facing my problems energetically with a non-forced sense of optimism. I would guess at least some of that emotional shift is from not drinking, perhaps related to neuromodulatory microbiome changes. Or it could be unrelated — no way to easily test. But for the moment, I’m happier abstaining from booze entirely.

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