People know what they do;
frequently they know why they do what they do;
but what they don't know is what what they do does.

– Michel Foucault, a bald nerd on knowledge and power

What will what you do do? When will what you do do what you thought it would do if it does it at all? Who will what you did did affect and will what you did did be positive?

These are fundamentally tongue-twisting questions about the consequences of actions. We can't preach morality, we can't even plead it. If you don't know what what you will do does then how could we suppose to have the answer to that? We do know one thing though –

Whatever what you do will do will be improved if you do it from a place of self-love.

So take care of yourself, homies. And don't forget to give yourself a hug every once in a while

(づ｡◕‿‿◕｡)づ

– yӭ𐦤⚇⍕⍑  ⅋  ƴΐ⍧ի⍲e⌊

Highrise Luxury Apartments

A scathing invective of gentrification and cultural malaise

Highrise luxury apartments are the BMW of living situations. They usually smell like leather, cost too much, and people who don’t lease them think you’re a douche for doing so. When luxury complex dwellers calculate their daily commute time, they have to add an extra couple of minutes to account for the labyrinthine hallway and elevator systems gatekeeping the exit.

The leasing offices are positioned strategically, facing the entrance. They provide a welcome foyer and gentle reminder that big brother landlord is watching. Yuppies from around the globe flock to the warmly decorated office to meet tour guides for little putzes around empty apartments. Look at the appliances and the views of the pool where you can watch all your hot neighbors sunbathe. Only the hottest people live in highrise luxury apartments.

There’s something strangely feral about it. A cross-section of humanity that looks more like a stack of rats in a cage than a convivial human existence. Sniffing the carpeted corners of their domiciles, they carry out their prescribed routines like well-trained farm animals. They know how to use the sink, the stove, and the laundry machine. You too can lease a successful life from a corporation who used psychology literature to design its common areas. Yes, at the cost of taste and personality, you too can live and breathe in modern plastic.

The colors of diverse lives are muted behind pale, heavy doors. Walking the hallways of the sapiodraconian structure, the monotonous passage teems with muffled cries reaching for individuality. Dogs barking, cooking smells, conversations, candles, people are art but these buildings stifle their creative nature and pack it into 600 square-foot boxes. As pressure builds, the prisoners find ways to alleviate their pain.

Wake up then walk to the gym, it's on the fourth floor just a few stories away. Sit up from a strenuous set of bench pressing and lock eyes with your cute neighbor. Everyone is so hot. Run for a bit, put away your equipment, grab a coffee from the machine in the lobby. You catch a glance from Sharon in the front office,

"Looks like the coffee's working today, HAHAHAHA!"

"Haha yep looks like it!!"

You think of 10 reasons not to strangle yourself as you walk back to your apartment door. It's time for work. You work remote which is convenient because the building exit is hard to find and dealing with the stress of orienteering your way out of your house is simply not worth it. Set up your laptop in your favorite corner of your box (you have four to choose from!), maybe you'll get crazy and work from the couch for a little while. Slay, queen.

Highrise luxury apartments are the purest void of culture. If you value art, passion, or emotion, then you must run from these buildings at all costs. Be careful when the city transports a large crane to an empty city block where cacophonous echoes of small businesses fade into confusing memories for old locals. Be careful when an expensive coffee shop opens next to a soul(less) cycle at the steps of your front door. Be careful when a bearded techie with sporty sunglasses and a husky puppy walks curiously around that lot.

Throw molotov cocktails into highrise luxury apartments, spray paint anarchist propaganda on their doors, doxx them on Yelp and promote a hate campaign on Twitter, etc.

Do it biiiiiiiiiitch, and keep it real.

Peptide

Most people live out their lives without ever even saying the word 'peptide', even though their lives would be impossible without it. You can change that right at this moment by saying it out loud and tasting its delicious syllables.

A peptide is a short chain of amino acids. A longer chain is called polypeptide. A bunch of polypeptides creates protein, which is probably the most widely used English word that ends with '-ein'.

As a word, peptide derives from Ancient Greek πεπτόν (peptón, 'cooked, digested') or πέπτω (péptō, 'soften, ripen, boil, cook, bake, digest'). This may seem like an odd name at first, but it's because by the time we discovered peptides in 1902, we already called the digestion process pepsis. We also discovered the primary digestive enzyme in 1836, which we named pepsin. We simply thought peptide as the product of digestion. Of course, we have since discovered that they are much more than that.

Incidentally, this also explains the first half of Pepto-Bismol, the mysterious pink liquid with a suspicious name that people drink without any hesitation, which used to have pepsin in it. For reasons that I couldn't find in 2 minutes, it doesn't anymore. Pepsi, the perennially secondary cola, is also named after this fantastic peppy root. It was initially advertised to relieve dyspepsia (indigestion).

Regardless of its unhelpful name, peptides are vital to our existence. They're not just the building blocks for protein, which make up about 15-20% of our body – Most hormones, our body's signaling system, are peptides. Peptides are what makes us to move and feel.

Because they are hormones, they've been developed as therapeutic drugs, such as Byetta that treats Type 2 Diabetes. In a similar way, they could also be used as markers to detect diseases, such as cancer. Basically, if you're a small building block, you probably belong to a broad category with many variations that are all important to everything, because it's so fundamental.

It is also possible to read peptide as two separate words, 'pep' and 'tides'. Pep means ‘liveliness’ and derives from the word that we all know ‘pepper’. Tide is natural movement of the ocean, rising and falling. Peptide, then, could also be stretched to refer to the tide of pep talks below, which are equally as vital as peptides to our existence.

Pep Tide

Most people live out their lives with countless pep talks from others, even though they have never wondered what pep is. Pep is a short form of 'pepper'. In a modern sense, it means "to spice up your life."

There are many ways to get pepped up.

One way is to conjure a sense of detached equanimity and self-love in our hearts. These are found in popular mantras repeated relentlessly in countless overhyped songs and overpriced posters in every souvenir shop, like when Mother Mary speaks the words of wisdom "let it be" or the cool text overlaid on top of a random nature jpeg, "you are enough". The world is complicated and unfair, people are all just people, and you just need to be kind to yourself.

Another way is to stoke a sense of violence and destruction in your willpower. This approach is personified by insane motherfuckers such as David Goggins and C. T. Fletcher, who will whip your sad little whiny ass into a flaming dragon blinded with the desire to go bring the world on its knees. They were once poor, fat, weak, and almost died several times, but they overcame it and now run 100s of miles and lift 100s of pounds every day. For what? Goggins would say he is 'going to war with his mind' to build the 'callous of the mind' and continue to 'STAY HARD'. C.T. would just tell you to 'shut the fuck up you bitch ass motherfucker'.

The tricky thing with the self-love pep is that it could easily be abused. Frequently, self-care can feel like self-indulgence and self-love can smell like self-importance. A day of relaxation could feel like a day of laziness, just as a little dose of self-confidence could feel like a flood of self-deception or self-aggrandizement.

There is no easy solution. Our emotional sap rises and falls like the tide. All we can do is try to get the right pep for the right tide. Don't 'follow your heart' if you want to beat someone up. Don't 'go to war with your mind' if you haven't slept in 3 days. Don't whip the horse with a carrot if it's stuck in a ditch. Don't bait the horse with a whip if it's sleeping in the stable.

Autopilot

A poem

Autopilot is an easy life
Walking away from your bike
Pressing the lock button on your car keys
Realizing your bike isn’t your car
Wondering why

Autopilot is an easy life
Working on a laptop
Reaching for a mouse and grabbing nothing but thin air
Why did I reach for a mouse that isn’t there
Wondering how come

Autopilot is an easy life
Curiously looking around for your bookmark
Setting your e-reader down to look harder
Remembering e-readers don’t need bookmarks
Wondering for what reason

Autopilot is an easy life
Days line up one behind the other
Like cows organized for the slaughter house
Vultures pick at my neck from the inside out
Thank god for autopilot

quantized_quotes

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

– Buddha

The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.

– Plato

You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.

– Friedrich Nietzsche

Know thyself.
Nothing in excess.
Certainty brings ruin.

– Delphic Maxims

Y: "Are burpees and burps connected?"
Y: "Yes, the body is all connected."

– yӭ𐦤⚇⍕⍑

sound.wav

Mac Miller (1992 - 2018)

Mac Miller was an American rapper and producer who began his career in 2007 at the age of 15, but I had never heard of him until I saw him live in the Spring of 2013, for my college's annual bacchanalia.

"Ladies," I remember him shouting on stage, "show your tits!" Given that most of the students at my school were raised in New England Country Clubs that are usually too cold to expose nipples to, . I appreciated that he tried to bring the Miami festival energy to a football field in Maine.

Sometime later, I guess in September 2018, I heard he died from an overdose, which is usually how rock stars die (famous rappers are more likely to get shot, in terms of anecdotal statistics). I also learned around then that he had dated a supposedly more famous star named Ariana Grande and broke up with her shortly before the overdose, but I can't confirm whether she was more famous or if this breakup had anything to do with it. In a typical fashion of forgotten epilogue to one's life, New York Times reported in 2021 that the man who sold Mac Miller fentanyl plead guilty.

I felt bad for a second for the man I didn't really know, and as one does to commemorate the passing of someone they didn't know, I searched him on YouTube and found one of his best-known songs, Self Care.

Anyone who has formed a close relationship with any kind of substance probably can relate to the second part of the song. I hope he rests in peace, or at least a peaceful oblivion.

unopened_tabs

bonedog

This is a poem that I don't fully understand yet, from a movie I haven't watched yet. But it was beautifully devastating and unexpectedly beautiful. Calmly unmoored, slowly devolving. I don't fully understand the poem yet, but I think I know the feeling when the supposed warmth of home and its cozy seclusion betrays me.

prompts.bib

1. Cookie Pajama Tea Time  self care --v 5.1
2. High-rise from Inside a highrise luxury apartment complex on fire, flames engulf a large apartment complex, chaos, people screaming --v 5.1
3. High-rise from Outside A rat maze race in luxury condo
4. The Ideal High-rise  a gray, dull building in the middle of a very colorful city. A singular building without any color in the middle of an otherwise green, lush, and wonderful city:: a boring building --v 5.1
5. Peptide Hydrolysis protein molecule screaming in boiling water
6. Pepto-Bismol Party Molecules partying in pepto-bismol charlie and the chocolate factory