Ada Hopper

his sexual desires: i would like you to use ur hands during blowjobs my sexual desires: I imagine myself in a pillory publicly humiliated in a town square (in 1846), naked, bare but a corset, and molested by any gentleman of social standing. the pillory needs to be of sufficient size where I see nothing but the shadows of the gentleman, and experience only fear and anticipation without mental preparations.

I've figured out why SF culture is so fucked. It's not AI, constant schmoozing, or the gender ratio. It's the work itself. I met a journalist the other day that was fascinated about how people try to find humanity in San Francisco, a the city that seems dead-set on trying to remove humanity from our society. She was especially interested by a rule I have at my dinner parties: no AI, no start-ups, no talking about moving to New York. I felt an urge to defend the bay: How is this different from bankers, political staffers, intense military specialties, or professional athletes? All of whom work insane hours and often live in all consuming bubbles filled with non-stop competition, jargon, and monoculture? But I knew she was right somehow. And it has to do with what the process of becoming a "technical person" does to you. On the surface, technical work has the hallmarks of flow. The mythical state of consciousness ascribed to only the best of us: artists, musicians, athletes, monks meditating, and the commuter driving home who has learned to stop worrying and love the ride. Long periods of time pass without conscious awareness. Focus that has its own inertia. Collapsing in of the world to only what matters right now. However, I often find that deep technical problem solving is the junk food of flow states. It maybe feels good in the moment but it leaves you feeling bad about yourself when the spell breaks. Similar to wasting a night away binge watching tv or playing video games until the sunrises. It’s a state where compulsion for what is next matters more than present joy. Not all technical problem solving feels like this, of course. There are moments of pure unadulterated beauty that I cannot experience in any other way. Moments where the struggle to the top of the mountain seems worth it because of the view. Maxwell, Noether, Euler. Giants whose first ascents have carved their names into history and whose paths have shown us the righteous way. Then there are the moments of overwhelming joy, relief, and exuberance that comes all at once. When you finally fix a bug. When the product is launched and the rover lands safely. The feeling that you have built something. Something complex and it works. And for me, those moments are what keeps me coming back. But it’s self-delusion to pretend that all or indeed most technical work is like this. Most of it looks like frustration. confusion. compulsion. suffering. Those that learned to code pre-LLMs remember the pain of debugging. Chasing down stack traces for hours only to find a stupid one letter mistake the cause of all your agony. The panic at 6 am, mere hours before a problem set is due, with 3 more questions still left undone. The utter confusion and hopelessness of concepts not quite clicking together. Or, once it clicks, it becoming so obvious that spelling it out in code or writing becomes an exercise in tedium. It's also not quite like a runner’s high either. There is no beauty found in this suffering. There’s no poetry in finding a bug that shouldn’t have been there in the first place. There’s no value in being confused. Indeed, the ones lauded here seemingly don’t have this problem. The prodigies for whom everything comes naturally. Perhaps this is why many people in deep technical subjects like physics, math, and theoretical computer science develop a hint of arrogance. If you haven’t suffered like we have, who are we to take you seriously? It is natural for the language of your craft to become the language of your life. And there’s a way in which a mathematical framework naturally lends itself to describing life. As has been famously observed, it is unreasonably effective. The physical world becomes reduced to forces. The world of human decisions to utility functions and Nash equilibria. This reductionism can be quite jarring for those that are non-technical. I remember accidentally offending a former partner by using the phrase “signal-to-noise” ratio, forgetting the connotations of the word "noise" in everyday speech. Just as mathematical thinking reduces the world to mechanical logical processes, the act of doing math reduces your brain to a machine. This is the crux of the problem. Unlike other forms of flow like music or sports, doing math inherently forces a type of dissociation. An abstraction of your mind from your body. To simulate an entire reality in your mind, you must remove yourself from this reality. Unlike prose or verse, the reality of mathematics and machine is devoid of texture. Almost poetically, everything here exists solely because someone willed it into existence. But in doing so, every object is perfectly smooth, platonic and pure. A mathematical definition is perfectly transferable without identity. It is the same to me as it is to you. Then, when you are transported back to the physical, embodied reality of the present, the whiplash catches up. All the sensory input, negative feelings you've been avoiding, and real life to be lived appear all at once and become overwhelming. It might be easier to just stay in the fantasy world where everything is simple and makes sense. Moreover, unlike other forms of disassociation which waste time or money (e.g. gambling, doomscrolling), a technical mind is rewarded extremely handsomely by society. For those that grew up in families that were emotionally repressed and valued success, it would seem worth it. Same for those that maybe have found solace in the simplicity of machines compared to the messiness of people. The cost though, is a sense of who you are.

D21

this is actually the future of dating

Stained glass, tile, herringbone wood. All real things that feel human in a room.

Amber Valletta in her Renoir inspired gown and a headpiece for ✨Christian Dior✨ Couture Fall 2007. John really did everything for this look!

Loving Oscar de la renta/Gabriella Hearst which do a ton of 3D embroidery/prints in their designs