{
  "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1",
  "title": "knoxnotes",
  "home_page_url": "https://knxnts.xyz/",
  "feed_url": "https://knxnts.xyz/feed.json",
  "description": "The public notebook of a 27 year old man in legal practice. An art project of sorts.",
  "authors": [{ "name": "RP" }],
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26-3.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26-3.html",
      "title": "Testing A New Interface",
      "date_published": "2026-07-14T18:21:53.000Z",
      "content_text": "I've been using Fable 5 to build new publishing pipelines. This post was published from an electron app on my Macbook (separate from my other project that is exclusively for publishing posts. What's neat is that, in contrast to the email publishing pipeline, this one shows me the post how it actually looks on the website.\n\nThe next steps are to build a new RSS feed system (the old one seemed to be finnicky when you tried to curl it) and to build a new way to easily update the site from the go, from mobile.\n\nAnother thought. Fable 5 offers an unprecedented level of capability. But I don't know what to do with it. What an insane feeling. To have more capability than you know what to do with. And how frigtening. I realistically have the ability to start a micro business, build an app, build a personal assistant. For the first time in my life the technology at my disposal has exceeded my own ideas and ambition! Or maybe this was always the case? Maybe manny of us always had more than what we knew what to do with.\n\nSo for now, its playing with my toy website. I'll figure something else out later!\n\nCheers,\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I've been using Fable 5 to build new publishing pipelines. This post was published from an electron app on my Macbook (separate from my other project that is exclusively for publishing posts. What's neat is that, in contrast to the email publishing pipeline, this one shows me the post how it actually looks on the website.</p>\n<p>The next steps are to build a new RSS feed system (the old one seemed to be finnicky when you tried to curl it) and to build a new way to easily update the site from the go, from mobile.</p>\n<p>Another thought. Fable 5 offers an unprecedented level of capability. But I don't know what to do with it. What an insane feeling. To have more capability than you know what to do with. And how frigtening. I realistically have the ability to start a micro business, build an app, build a personal assistant. For the first time in my life the technology at my disposal has exceeded my own ideas and ambition! Or maybe this was always the case? Maybe manny of us always had more than what we knew what to do with.</p>\n<p>So for now, its playing with my toy website. I'll figure something else out later!</p>\n<p>Cheers,\nknxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26-2.html",
      "title": "Untitled: Chapter X",
      "date_published": "2026-07-14T13:17:23.000Z",
      "content_text": "Chapter X: A Visitor\n\nDaniel sat on the western edge of the reflecting pool for some time, staring across it at the Washington Monument, at the Egg, which, after two years, had become as solid and quotidian a feature of the skyline as the monument itself.\n\nAffter some time, his gaze fell back down to the pool, where he watched the ducks. At times, Daniel would also meditate  on the little ripples of water that the water striders would leave behind. The fact that there were ducks in the refelcting pool always amused Daniel. A manmade body of water. Made into their whole home.  Where do they go when the pool is drained? Did they see this as the same as a pond or a lake? Or did something in them have a glimmer of understanding that this was made, made without them in mind? Do they recognize how alien the structures around them are, do they clock the Lincoln Memorial, or the giant obellisk to their east as artifical structures? Or are they as natural to them as the trees and grass around them?\n\nDaniel had noticed and admired the ducks as far as he could remember visiting the pool. But he hadn't really  noticed the water striders until now.\n\nHow big the pool must have been to a little water strider. To be sure, The pool was only a few feet deep--but how immense would that seem to a water strider, if it could somehow be told. A creature whose own body couldn't break the surface tension of this vast uknown, who could safely glide along its surface. To them, the depths beneath them may as well be a black hole. The surface tension their event horizon. They were little astronauts. But what the hell would they do if the pool was drained?\n\nJust a few centimeters  of penetration would surely irreversibly submerge it, Daniel thought to himself. Just one little push of his finger--if he were quick enough--could sink one for good. A precarious position. To glide on the surface of death, not knowing that the slightest change of intentions or capability of an otherwordly intelligence could end you, or the world as you knew it. As Daniel studied the water strider, a sweeping movement in the pool's reflection captured his attention just as soon as a vast shadow fell over and then  passed him by, the moment he glanced up--a blinding flash of white light in front of him accompanied by a bone rattling, almost animalistic roar. His vision was blacked out, and for a moment he felt the sensation of falling, just as  one does as they fall asleep. His mind involunatry lurched back into his body in a panic and he felt himself breathing heavy, looking eastward at the top of monument. The egg was gone. A grander, more grotesque, object now stood in its place. A pointy sort of dome, matte black with dark brown accent and what appeared to be an intricate and exotic molding throughout. It looked almost like a building. Just as soon as Daniel had registered the object it began to descend into the monument, slowly crushing it. The destruction produced a  horrible sound, which  was nearly drowned  by screams and cries all around. White powder plumed out from the site and blew across the pool, choking the air.\n\nThe monument had disappeared from his sight, replaced by this monstrosity. But Daniel's eyes and lungs burned as he peered across the pool. He  covered his face with his shirt, trying to catch a breath. As he shut his eyes close, he could feel the debris behind his eyelids and quickly ran down to the pool. Squinting, he fell down on all fours and  began crawling to the edge, reaching out his hand until he could feel the pool's cool surface. He quickly submerged his hands, cupped them full with water, and splashed his face, hoping a little may seep through his eyelids and offer some relief. The water was dirty, damp, and muggy. Not a problem right now, Daniel coached himself. Wiping his eyes with his fingers, and then his shirt he again looked out across the pool. People around the edges of the pool began to run westward back towards the Lincoln Memorial, but many, including Daniel, sat in place, staring out at the terrible structure that loomed over them.",
      "content_html": "<p>Chapter X: A Visitor</p>\n<p>Daniel sat on the western edge of the reflecting pool for some time, staring across it at the Washington Monument, at the Egg, which, after two years, had become as solid and quotidian a feature of the skyline as the monument itself.</p>\n<p>Affter some time, his gaze fell back down to the pool, where he watched the ducks. At times, Daniel would also meditate  on the little ripples of water that the water striders would leave behind. The fact that there were ducks in the refelcting pool always amused Daniel. A manmade body of water. Made into their whole home.  Where do they go when the pool is drained? Did they see this as the same as a pond or a lake? Or did something in them have a glimmer of understanding that this was made, made without them in mind? Do they recognize how alien the structures around them are, do they clock the Lincoln Memorial, or the giant obellisk to their east as artifical structures? Or are they as natural to them as the trees and grass around them?</p>\n<p>Daniel had noticed and admired the ducks as far as he could remember visiting the pool. But he hadn't really  noticed the water striders until now.</p>\n<p>How big the pool must have been to a little water strider. To be sure, The pool was only a few feet deep--but how immense would that seem to a water strider, if it could somehow be told. A creature whose own body couldn't break the surface tension of this vast uknown, who could safely glide along its surface. To them, the depths beneath them may as well be a black hole. The surface tension their event horizon. They were little astronauts. But what the hell would they do if the pool was drained?</p>\n<p>Just a few centimeters  of penetration would surely irreversibly submerge it, Daniel thought to himself. Just one little push of his finger--if he were quick enough--could sink one for good. A precarious position. To glide on the surface of death, not knowing that the slightest change of intentions or capability of an otherwordly intelligence could end you, or the world as you knew it. As Daniel studied the water strider, a sweeping movement in the pool's reflection captured his attention just as soon as a vast shadow fell over and then  passed him by, the moment he glanced up--a blinding flash of white light in front of him accompanied by a bone rattling, almost animalistic roar. His vision was blacked out, and for a moment he felt the sensation of falling, just as  one does as they fall asleep. His mind involunatry lurched back into his body in a panic and he felt himself breathing heavy, looking eastward at the top of monument. The egg was gone. A grander, more grotesque, object now stood in its place. A pointy sort of dome, matte black with dark brown accent and what appeared to be an intricate and exotic molding throughout. It looked almost like a building. Just as soon as Daniel had registered the object it began to descend into the monument, slowly crushing it. The destruction produced a  horrible sound, which  was nearly drowned  by screams and cries all around. White powder plumed out from the site and blew across the pool, choking the air.</p>\n<p>The monument had disappeared from his sight, replaced by this monstrosity. But Daniel's eyes and lungs burned as he peered across the pool. He  covered his face with his shirt, trying to catch a breath. As he shut his eyes close, he could feel the debris behind his eyelids and quickly ran down to the pool. Squinting, he fell down on all fours and  began crawling to the edge, reaching out his hand until he could feel the pool's cool surface. He quickly submerged his hands, cupped them full with water, and splashed his face, hoping a little may seep through his eyelids and offer some relief. The water was dirty, damp, and muggy. Not a problem right now, Daniel coached himself. Wiping his eyes with his fingers, and then his shirt he again looked out across the pool. People around the edges of the pool began to run westward back towards the Lincoln Memorial, but many, including Daniel, sat in place, staring out at the terrible structure that loomed over them.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.14.26.html",
      "title": "Untitled: Chapter 3",
      "date_published": "2026-07-14T12:15:50.000Z",
      "content_text": "Chapter 3: The EggHead\n\nAcross the Potomac, the President studied the object on the Resolute Desk. White ceramic, polished to an almost mirror finish. Porcelain, essentially. The real one was ceramic too, or so he had been told. He received the information with skepticism. But his top scientists confirmed it to him back in March. Ceramic. Like a piece of pottery. The object was held up by a brilliant gold stem, which erupted out of a striking white granite base. His idea. When it was originally brought to him, the model was mounted onto hard, clear plastic. But he wanted to keep it--it was his after all. But it couldn't look so cheap if it was going to sit on the Resolute Desk. The clear plastic looked cheap. And that meant it looked weak.\n\nWhen he first requested his desired modifications his decorater suggested that the base be limestone. It would be \"evocative\" of D.C., he said. The material would make the diorama uniquely and distinctively of the Capitol and the monument its realworld counterpart hovered over--more befitting display in the People's House. After all, these objects were all over the country and the world. The diorama of this one had to be distinguished in some way. The President didn't like the way the decorator spoke as if he had a better idea of what materials made an object \"befitting\" display in the Oval Office than he did. He was the goddamned President. People always seemed to forget that. He won--in a landslide. And he was in charge. Besides, the President knew how to \"distinguish\" this particular object from its peers. Per his instruction, the white granite base was adorned with a golden plaque:\n\nDC-1\n38.889484, -77.035278\nThe Washington Monument\nMarch 23, 2020\n\n24K gold. His orders. Limestone would have looked so dull behind it--and absolutely propesterous under his beautiful, gleaming, porcelain egg. The others called them tic tacs. But to him it looked like an egg. If you looked closely, the top was ever so slightly narrower than the bottom, and there was a nearly imperceptible taper to the length of the object. Tic Tacs are cilindrical, symmetrical at the top and bottom. Others didn't see that. But he had the eye. He could see it was really an egg. Elongated, narrower than the conventional chicken's eggs, but an egg nonetheless. The President delicately brushed its porcelain finish with his fingertips.\n\n\"It's really something, isn't it Rob?\"\n\n\"I'm, I'm sorry Mr. President?\" The President had caught the National Security Advisor off guard.\n\nThe President seemed annoyed by Rob's lapse in attention.\n\n\"My egg. It's really something. I showed it to Prime Minister Abe last week and he said, wow isn't that beautiful? He couldn't believe how beautiful it was. I don't think any of the other leaders have one like this. Mike, could we look into getting one like this to Abe?\"\n\n\"Absolutely, sir\" his Secretary of State responded.\n\n\"It has to be beautiful, like this one here, nice and polished. But do me a favor, let's uh, let's not make it too nice? Ho kay? We don't want anyone thinking that the Japanese are giving their leaders more beautiful presents than your President gets, now do we?\" the President said through a cheery grin.\n\nA few in the room chuckled.\n\n\"Of course sir, we wouldn't want that\" the Secretary confirmed with a smile. The President liked Mike. He was curious, \"where is Shinzo's egg?\"\n\n\"uh, Mr. President, I assure you we'll get on it as soon as possible\" the Secretary responded with some confusion.\n\n\"No, where is his real one\" the President snapped back.\n\nThe Secretary understood the President's meaning. \"Mr. President, Japan has dozens across their major centers, just like we do, but Tokyo has two over the Tokyo Skytree and Tokyo Tower\"\n\n\"Which one is bigger?\"\n\n\"Mr. President, the Tokyo Skytree is taller than Tokyo Tower. The eggs of course are all the same size.\"\n\n\"We should give Abe a di-yah-rahmuh of his Egg over the Skytree. Don't you think? Mike can we give him one?\"\n\n\"Yes. Mr. President.\"\n\n\"Tell him there's more where that came from if he finally gets rid of those poultry tarriffs.\" The zinger generated some laughs across the Oval, and the President was pleased with himself. Then it was quiet for a moment. Cautiously, the Vice President broke the silence.\n\n\"Mr. President, may Mrs. Nichols resume her presentation?\"\n\nThe President's eyes darted to his subordinate--a rush of burning hot anger coarsing through him. He glowered and pouted for a moment. This Mike, he didn't like so much. Even when he was seemingly trying to be deferential, the President felt he was really being nasty. One of his worst decisions. And he was a lightweight. When the eggs showed up, Mike wouldn't shut up about how important it was for the nation to have \"spiritual leadership.\" Mike would try and start cabinet meetings with prayers, asking God for \"guidance\" during these unprecedented times. Mike was scared of the eggs. But the President wasn't scared, and his second in command's behavior was an unacceptable, contemptible display of fear and weakeness.\n\nThe Vice President maintained composure under the President's hot stare, and the anger behind it dissipated faced with this modest sign of resolve. He turned back to Katherine Nichols, who was standing in the center of the Oval patiently with a large smart board behind her, awaiting his word. This one he didn't mind.\n\n\"Why don't you go on, Katie.\"\n\nIn her forty-two years, Katherine Nichols had never gone by \"Katie,\" and only her closest friends and family called her \"Kathy.\" But the nickname by the President suggested a sense of familiarity and fondness which was exactly the point. Katherine was a trusted member of the intelligence community by the \"adults\" in the President's inner circle--she had served as NSA Robert O'Brian's aide for many years, and ultimately became responsible for coordinating interagency collaboration on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and for being the NSA's point person on all related matters. She wasn't a technical expert on anything, but through her regular interface with the national security apparatus, the Air Force, NASA, SETI, and the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, she was likely the most valuable repository of institutional knowledge in the room.\n\nAs it also happened, Katherine was exceptionally attractive. She had obscenely large, bright green eyes, which sat delicately on a pale face dappled with freckles. By nature, she had unruly, coarse, red hair, but she consistently wore it in a high, tight bun. This seemingly prudish styling choice, however, only accentuated her more femine features. Like how the soft curve of neck fell into her dainty, narrow shoulders--which framed the upper portion of a petite, but unmistakably womanly figure.\n\n\"Where would you like me to pick up, Mr. President?\" Katherine was careful to avoid the instinct to resume with \"as I was saying...\" given the President's temparament. She needed him to feel in control.\n\nThe President's gaze darted back up to Katherine's face. His mind blanked. He glanced at the clock on his desk. 2:12. They were hardly ten minutes into the hour long briefing. \"Why don't you pick up where you left off, Katie.\"\n\nWhat was never explicitly said, but what Katherine was made to understand regardless, was that she had been designated this role because her more natural gifts helped hold the President's attention on--what he apparently found to be--a rather boring subject matter. It was critical that the National Security apparatus maintained the President's trust, interest, and attention. If they lost it, it was liable to be captured by voices that they found less...credible. Which itself was a national security risk. As a result of this need, Katherine had  been promoted to take charge of organizing and presenting the briefings on the most unprecedented national security risk in human history to the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military on earth. She was the one who had to tell the President all he needed to know about the eggs. She was the eggspert. The Egghead, if you will.\n\n\"Thank you, Mister President.\" Katherine dropped the phrase with an almost girlish cadence, and followed it with a beaming white smile. She knew she had maybe ten more minutes of his focus. There was so much to tell, to a man who would listen, but right now, her only priority was to impart the information that would keep the President on a sober, safe decision-making trajectory, and which gave him the confidence to allow the operations of the bureaucracy to hum along without his excessive interference or concern. It was managing up in the most sensistive and highest-stakes of contexts.\n\nShe continued on with the briefing not unlike a grade-school teacher  would present a lesson plan.\n\n\"Over the past week, your top scientists have found that the Eggs may have triggered back in March in response to a signal coming from a nearby planet. They aren't sure yet, but right now, their findings suggest that the Eggs may have been activated or even directed by an extraterrestrial source.\"\n\n\"What were they asked to do?\" What a stupid question, Katherine thought to herself. How on earth could we possibly know? She was instinctively about to explain how the message was encrypted, and how it took some of the most advanced minds to even disentangle it from ordinary cosmic background radiation or natural phenomenon, but she caught herself.\n\n\"We don't know Mister President, but your best scientists are working on it. What we do know, however, is that the signal seemed to be purposely designed to avoid detection.\"\n\nThe phrasing was deliberate, and misleading. They weren't his scientists, and she never liked that turn of phrase. They were just various research institutions, individuals, and governments around the world working around the clock in a truly unprecedented fashion. Research papers were being produced at a staggering rate, being shared on Twitter, peer reviewed by a hodge-podge global community of academics and enthusiasts, working far faster and surprisingly better than the typical publication process could ever handle. The eggs had accidentally triggered the grandest crowd-sourced research project on earth. But this reality was too subtle, too novel, too complex to communicate. So they were \"his\" scientists. Whatever kept him happy, whatever held his trust.\n\n\"By who? Who are they avoiding?\"\n\nThe President was now asking the right questions, but the ones where she had less of an answer, one that began encroaching in the realm of pure speculation. \"Mister President, it might have been to avoid us finding it. But we can't rule out the possibility that it was designed to avoid detection by anyone.\"\n\nThe President thought to himself for a moment. \"You mean, perhaps, they didn't want it to be found by other countries?\"\n\nWhat a blithering idiot. \"That's possible Mister President, but our real concern is that it might show they're trying to be quiet from something else.\" The President received this information quietly, his brow furrowed a little and he crossed his arms, a signal that she should go on. This was the main subject of the briefing, and something that she had thought carefully on how to frame. She started gathering the beginnings of the national security risk assessment that the various teams had put together based on the new insights from the radio astronomers--but as the task of explaining the assessment to such an incapable audience confronted her, she instinctively retreated back to well-traveled terrain, hoping to slowly inch her way back to the darker, more unknown matters.\n\n\"Mister President, so far, this is what we understood before. Over the past ten years or so, our forces and those of other countries around the worlds have encountered the eggs across major military installations across the world, where some of humanity's most powerful and sophisticated radio signals are produced.\n\nOn March 11, 2020, hundreds of eggs rose up out of the earth's oceans at hypersonic speeds, and began encircling the planet at extremely high speeds in low orbit throughout the day, then, as each geography experienced sunset, they saw them begin glowing, flooding the night sky with red light visible across the world. This continued for 24 hours before, slowly across the world, the eggs descended from orbit and positioned themselves above the tallest structures in population dense areas as well as major radio towers. \" Katherine could sense a degree of impatience from the President as she recounted what her, and others in the room already knew, but she pressed on with her recap.\n\n\"Since then, they have done nothing but emit a faint interference pattern which does not seem to afffect any terrestrial communications capabilities, but shortly after which we lost contact with Voyager 1, the only man-made object which is outside of the influence of our sun.\n\nAnalysis of the eggs reveals that they are of likely terrestrial origin, and their composition is a hard ceramic, although dating is inconclusive.\n\nAside from that, there has been no information, no attempts at comunication, no interference with our affairs.\n\nIn April, we returned our astronauts who were on the ISS without incident, and the private sector has recently resumed launching commercial satellites into orbit without provoking any response.\n\nTaken together, this set of information left a wide variety of interpretation as to the Eggs' intent, purpose, and where they came from. We could not determine what the Eggs were, or what they wanted, whether they were alien,  some kind of earthbound non-human intelligence, or of other exotic origin. We were in the dark. \" Now she's set the hook for his attention and interest. She quickly studied his face, and confirmed that he was engaged.\n\n\"However, over this last week, researchers have confirmed that from December 2019 to March 2020, our planet was bathed by very low frequency radio waves which, at first, looked like 'background noise,' but after retroactive study appeared to be a disguised, spaced out signal coming from the TRAPPIST-1 system. It is the emerging consensus that this signal was of intelligent design, and was what activated the Eggs.\n\nWhat's interesting about this signal is that it was deliberately designed to aviod detection. But it's unclear why they would want to avoid detection from us, specifically. Activation could have been accomplished by a higher frequency, more focused, and more visible signal, much more efficiently.\n\nWe also know that we have never received any forms of radio signature from TRAPPIST-1 until now, meaning they stay relatively quiet.\n\nTaken together, we cannot rule out the possibility that not only are the entitites on TRAPPIST-1 trying to keep us quiet to something outside of our star system, but they themselves are taking measures to be quiet.\"\n\n\"Why?\"\n\nNSA O'Brian, growing slightly impatient, interjected, \"Mr. President, it's almost impossible to tell what these things want, and what they mean. But we're trying to use the information we have, and whatever common sense god may have given us to try and inform our next decisions. Whoever these...things are--if they are the ones responsible for activating the eggs, they might have been the ones that put them there. If the eggs have been here for as long we think they have, and knowing how long it takes for signals to move between earth and their home, then we can assume they've known we've been here a long time. In that time, they haven't tried to talk to us. And it doesn't seem like they're interested. That's relevant a data point, from a national security perspective. And now they're trying to keep us quiet. This suggests there may be some risk to their, and our security that we don't fully appreciate. This is what Ms. Nichols is trying to impart to you.\"\n\nThe President leaned back and folded his arms again, his pout gave way to a an easier expression. A sense of understanding and satisfaction had just washed over him. \"So they're afraid of something.\" The President glanced down at his beautiful, porceilain egg. \"I guess everyone's afraid of something.\"",
      "content_html": "<p>Chapter 3: The EggHead</p>\n<p>Across the Potomac, the President studied the object on the Resolute Desk. White ceramic, polished to an almost mirror finish. Porcelain, essentially. The real one was ceramic too, or so he had been told. He received the information with skepticism. But his top scientists confirmed it to him back in March. Ceramic. Like a piece of pottery. The object was held up by a brilliant gold stem, which erupted out of a striking white granite base. His idea. When it was originally brought to him, the model was mounted onto hard, clear plastic. But he wanted to keep it--it was his after all. But it couldn't look so cheap if it was going to sit on the Resolute Desk. The clear plastic looked cheap. And that meant it looked weak.</p>\n<p>When he first requested his desired modifications his decorater suggested that the base be limestone. It would be &quot;evocative&quot; of D.C., he said. The material would make the diorama uniquely and distinctively of the Capitol and the monument its realworld counterpart hovered over--more befitting display in the People's House. After all, these objects were all over the country and the world. The diorama of this one had to be distinguished in some way. The President didn't like the way the decorator spoke as if he had a better idea of what materials made an object &quot;befitting&quot; display in the Oval Office than he did. He was the goddamned President. People always seemed to forget that. He won--in a landslide. And he was in charge. Besides, the President knew how to &quot;distinguish&quot; this particular object from its peers. Per his instruction, the white granite base was adorned with a golden plaque:</p>\n<p>DC-1\n38.889484, -77.035278\nThe Washington Monument\nMarch 23, 2020</p>\n<p>24K gold. His orders. Limestone would have looked so dull behind it--and absolutely propesterous under his beautiful, gleaming, porcelain egg. The others called them tic tacs. But to him it looked like an egg. If you looked closely, the top was ever so slightly narrower than the bottom, and there was a nearly imperceptible taper to the length of the object. Tic Tacs are cilindrical, symmetrical at the top and bottom. Others didn't see that. But he had the eye. He could see it was really an egg. Elongated, narrower than the conventional chicken's eggs, but an egg nonetheless. The President delicately brushed its porcelain finish with his fingertips.</p>\n<p>&quot;It's really something, isn't it Rob?&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;I'm, I'm sorry Mr. President?&quot; The President had caught the National Security Advisor off guard.</p>\n<p>The President seemed annoyed by Rob's lapse in attention.</p>\n<p>&quot;My egg. It's really something. I showed it to Prime Minister Abe last week and he said, wow isn't that beautiful? He couldn't believe how beautiful it was. I don't think any of the other leaders have one like this. Mike, could we look into getting one like this to Abe?&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Absolutely, sir&quot; his Secretary of State responded.</p>\n<p>&quot;It has to be beautiful, like this one here, nice and polished. But do me a favor, let's uh, let's not make it too nice? Ho kay? We don't want anyone thinking that the Japanese are giving their leaders more beautiful presents than your President gets, now do we?&quot; the President said through a cheery grin.</p>\n<p>A few in the room chuckled.</p>\n<p>&quot;Of course sir, we wouldn't want that&quot; the Secretary confirmed with a smile. The President liked Mike. He was curious, &quot;where is Shinzo's egg?&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;uh, Mr. President, I assure you we'll get on it as soon as possible&quot; the Secretary responded with some confusion.</p>\n<p>&quot;No, where is his real one&quot; the President snapped back.</p>\n<p>The Secretary understood the President's meaning. &quot;Mr. President, Japan has dozens across their major centers, just like we do, but Tokyo has two over the Tokyo Skytree and Tokyo Tower&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Which one is bigger?&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Mr. President, the Tokyo Skytree is taller than Tokyo Tower. The eggs of course are all the same size.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;We should give Abe a di-yah-rahmuh of his Egg over the Skytree. Don't you think? Mike can we give him one?&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Yes. Mr. President.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Tell him there's more where that came from if he finally gets rid of those poultry tarriffs.&quot; The zinger generated some laughs across the Oval, and the President was pleased with himself. Then it was quiet for a moment. Cautiously, the Vice President broke the silence.</p>\n<p>&quot;Mr. President, may Mrs. Nichols resume her presentation?&quot;</p>\n<p>The President's eyes darted to his subordinate--a rush of burning hot anger coarsing through him. He glowered and pouted for a moment. This Mike, he didn't like so much. Even when he was seemingly trying to be deferential, the President felt he was really being nasty. One of his worst decisions. And he was a lightweight. When the eggs showed up, Mike wouldn't shut up about how important it was for the nation to have &quot;spiritual leadership.&quot; Mike would try and start cabinet meetings with prayers, asking God for &quot;guidance&quot; during these unprecedented times. Mike was scared of the eggs. But the President wasn't scared, and his second in command's behavior was an unacceptable, contemptible display of fear and weakeness.</p>\n<p>The Vice President maintained composure under the President's hot stare, and the anger behind it dissipated faced with this modest sign of resolve. He turned back to Katherine Nichols, who was standing in the center of the Oval patiently with a large smart board behind her, awaiting his word. This one he didn't mind.</p>\n<p>&quot;Why don't you go on, Katie.&quot;</p>\n<p>In her forty-two years, Katherine Nichols had never gone by &quot;Katie,&quot; and only her closest friends and family called her &quot;Kathy.&quot; But the nickname by the President suggested a sense of familiarity and fondness which was exactly the point. Katherine was a trusted member of the intelligence community by the &quot;adults&quot; in the President's inner circle--she had served as NSA Robert O'Brian's aide for many years, and ultimately became responsible for coordinating interagency collaboration on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, and for being the NSA's point person on all related matters. She wasn't a technical expert on anything, but through her regular interface with the national security apparatus, the Air Force, NASA, SETI, and the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, she was likely the most valuable repository of institutional knowledge in the room.</p>\n<p>As it also happened, Katherine was exceptionally attractive. She had obscenely large, bright green eyes, which sat delicately on a pale face dappled with freckles. By nature, she had unruly, coarse, red hair, but she consistently wore it in a high, tight bun. This seemingly prudish styling choice, however, only accentuated her more femine features. Like how the soft curve of neck fell into her dainty, narrow shoulders--which framed the upper portion of a petite, but unmistakably womanly figure.</p>\n<p>&quot;Where would you like me to pick up, Mr. President?&quot; Katherine was careful to avoid the instinct to resume with &quot;as I was saying...&quot; given the President's temparament. She needed him to feel in control.</p>\n<p>The President's gaze darted back up to Katherine's face. His mind blanked. He glanced at the clock on his desk. 2:12. They were hardly ten minutes into the hour long briefing. &quot;Why don't you pick up where you left off, Katie.&quot;</p>\n<p>What was never explicitly said, but what Katherine was made to understand regardless, was that she had been designated this role because her more natural gifts helped hold the President's attention on--what he apparently found to be--a rather boring subject matter. It was critical that the National Security apparatus maintained the President's trust, interest, and attention. If they lost it, it was liable to be captured by voices that they found less...credible. Which itself was a national security risk. As a result of this need, Katherine had  been promoted to take charge of organizing and presenting the briefings on the most unprecedented national security risk in human history to the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military on earth. She was the one who had to tell the President all he needed to know about the eggs. She was the eggspert. The Egghead, if you will.</p>\n<p>&quot;Thank you, Mister President.&quot; Katherine dropped the phrase with an almost girlish cadence, and followed it with a beaming white smile. She knew she had maybe ten more minutes of his focus. There was so much to tell, to a man who would listen, but right now, her only priority was to impart the information that would keep the President on a sober, safe decision-making trajectory, and which gave him the confidence to allow the operations of the bureaucracy to hum along without his excessive interference or concern. It was managing up in the most sensistive and highest-stakes of contexts.</p>\n<p>She continued on with the briefing not unlike a grade-school teacher  would present a lesson plan.</p>\n<p>&quot;Over the past week, your top scientists have found that the Eggs may have triggered back in March in response to a signal coming from a nearby planet. They aren't sure yet, but right now, their findings suggest that the Eggs may have been activated or even directed by an extraterrestrial source.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;What were they asked to do?&quot; What a stupid question, Katherine thought to herself. How on earth could we possibly know? She was instinctively about to explain how the message was encrypted, and how it took some of the most advanced minds to even disentangle it from ordinary cosmic background radiation or natural phenomenon, but she caught herself.</p>\n<p>&quot;We don't know Mister President, but your best scientists are working on it. What we do know, however, is that the signal seemed to be purposely designed to avoid detection.&quot;</p>\n<p>The phrasing was deliberate, and misleading. They weren't his scientists, and she never liked that turn of phrase. They were just various research institutions, individuals, and governments around the world working around the clock in a truly unprecedented fashion. Research papers were being produced at a staggering rate, being shared on Twitter, peer reviewed by a hodge-podge global community of academics and enthusiasts, working far faster and surprisingly better than the typical publication process could ever handle. The eggs had accidentally triggered the grandest crowd-sourced research project on earth. But this reality was too subtle, too novel, too complex to communicate. So they were &quot;his&quot; scientists. Whatever kept him happy, whatever held his trust.</p>\n<p>&quot;By who? Who are they avoiding?&quot;</p>\n<p>The President was now asking the right questions, but the ones where she had less of an answer, one that began encroaching in the realm of pure speculation. &quot;Mister President, it might have been to avoid us finding it. But we can't rule out the possibility that it was designed to avoid detection by anyone.&quot;</p>\n<p>The President thought to himself for a moment. &quot;You mean, perhaps, they didn't want it to be found by other countries?&quot;</p>\n<p>What a blithering idiot. &quot;That's possible Mister President, but our real concern is that it might show they're trying to be quiet from something else.&quot; The President received this information quietly, his brow furrowed a little and he crossed his arms, a signal that she should go on. This was the main subject of the briefing, and something that she had thought carefully on how to frame. She started gathering the beginnings of the national security risk assessment that the various teams had put together based on the new insights from the radio astronomers--but as the task of explaining the assessment to such an incapable audience confronted her, she instinctively retreated back to well-traveled terrain, hoping to slowly inch her way back to the darker, more unknown matters.</p>\n<p>&quot;Mister President, so far, this is what we understood before. Over the past ten years or so, our forces and those of other countries around the worlds have encountered the eggs across major military installations across the world, where some of humanity's most powerful and sophisticated radio signals are produced.</p>\n<p>On March 11, 2020, hundreds of eggs rose up out of the earth's oceans at hypersonic speeds, and began encircling the planet at extremely high speeds in low orbit throughout the day, then, as each geography experienced sunset, they saw them begin glowing, flooding the night sky with red light visible across the world. This continued for 24 hours before, slowly across the world, the eggs descended from orbit and positioned themselves above the tallest structures in population dense areas as well as major radio towers. &quot; Katherine could sense a degree of impatience from the President as she recounted what her, and others in the room already knew, but she pressed on with her recap.</p>\n<p>&quot;Since then, they have done nothing but emit a faint interference pattern which does not seem to afffect any terrestrial communications capabilities, but shortly after which we lost contact with Voyager 1, the only man-made object which is outside of the influence of our sun.</p>\n<p>Analysis of the eggs reveals that they are of likely terrestrial origin, and their composition is a hard ceramic, although dating is inconclusive.</p>\n<p>Aside from that, there has been no information, no attempts at comunication, no interference with our affairs.</p>\n<p>In April, we returned our astronauts who were on the ISS without incident, and the private sector has recently resumed launching commercial satellites into orbit without provoking any response.</p>\n<p>Taken together, this set of information left a wide variety of interpretation as to the Eggs' intent, purpose, and where they came from. We could not determine what the Eggs were, or what they wanted, whether they were alien,  some kind of earthbound non-human intelligence, or of other exotic origin. We were in the dark. &quot; Now she's set the hook for his attention and interest. She quickly studied his face, and confirmed that he was engaged.</p>\n<p>&quot;However, over this last week, researchers have confirmed that from December 2019 to March 2020, our planet was bathed by very low frequency radio waves which, at first, looked like 'background noise,' but after retroactive study appeared to be a disguised, spaced out signal coming from the TRAPPIST-1 system. It is the emerging consensus that this signal was of intelligent design, and was what activated the Eggs.</p>\n<p>What's interesting about this signal is that it was deliberately designed to aviod detection. But it's unclear why they would want to avoid detection from us, specifically. Activation could have been accomplished by a higher frequency, more focused, and more visible signal, much more efficiently.</p>\n<p>We also know that we have never received any forms of radio signature from TRAPPIST-1 until now, meaning they stay relatively quiet.</p>\n<p>Taken together, we cannot rule out the possibility that not only are the entitites on TRAPPIST-1 trying to keep us quiet to something outside of our star system, but they themselves are taking measures to be quiet.&quot;</p>\n<p>&quot;Why?&quot;</p>\n<p>NSA O'Brian, growing slightly impatient, interjected, &quot;Mr. President, it's almost impossible to tell what these things want, and what they mean. But we're trying to use the information we have, and whatever common sense god may have given us to try and inform our next decisions. Whoever these...things are--if they are the ones responsible for activating the eggs, they might have been the ones that put them there. If the eggs have been here for as long we think they have, and knowing how long it takes for signals to move between earth and their home, then we can assume they've known we've been here a long time. In that time, they haven't tried to talk to us. And it doesn't seem like they're interested. That's relevant a data point, from a national security perspective. And now they're trying to keep us quiet. This suggests there may be some risk to their, and our security that we don't fully appreciate. This is what Ms. Nichols is trying to impart to you.&quot;</p>\n<p>The President leaned back and folded his arms again, his pout gave way to a an easier expression. A sense of understanding and satisfaction had just washed over him. &quot;So they're afraid of something.&quot; The President glanced down at his beautiful, porceilain egg. &quot;I guess everyone's afraid of something.&quot;</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.8.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.8.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 3: An Insane Lack of Fear",
      "date_published": "2026-07-08T10:52:04.000Z",
      "content_text": "This is \"day 3\" of studying for the Bar for real. coming up pretty close now. but i think i can do it. and does it matter if i cant? will try my best and see how goes.\n\nsomething that has happened during law school and life is that fear has become a less effective motivator for me. nothing bad ever happens. and any time something bad has happened its turned out fine. worrying just hasn't gotten me anywhdre. but my genuine interest and curiousity have.\n\ni think people should do what they like and see what happens more.\n\nsometimes, I think about how the early Republic must have felt. I've been thinking about that more recently because of the 250th anniversary of our nation, and because I've been perusing a biography on Andrew Jackson. America was really an open world game.\n\nYou could show up, in a boat, with some money in your pocket, and some skills, and make a nice life. Does that America still exist? I am often down on that. But I think there's some evidence from my life and other's that it does. But as we age as a country and a culture, its harder to see, and our more \"entrepreneurial\" muscles atrophy. This isn't just a matter of economic policy, but the kind of mentality we're inculturating into the youth. We are becoming more spiritually chinese.\n\nNow, there's a \"success path\" offered to us that's mostly credential/signalling based. At some level this is normal and fine in a complex society. We need skilling, and we need ways to signal that one has relevant skills. Schooling, certifications, and all that is an important part of that. BUt it would be bad if we became a country where that was the only way to achieve mobility.\n\nMy problem with the LEFT or just liberals in genral is that's the world they want to build. A credentialist America. Just make the credentials easier to get. Which are two objectives that are at odds. Make college more affordable! Make it easier to get into for people of different backgrounds--at the expense of other metrics! But then don't you degrade the signal that you're trying to distribute? It's silly.\n\nThese are the policy prescriptions of an aging country, and one where young human capital is locked up. We need to just unleash people faster. I've felt this way a long time, but then I realize, there aren't a lot of real policies stopping young people from just \"unleashing\" themselves. And plenty still do. The problem is the mental prisons we've inculturated them into.\n\nMaybe I'm over generalizing because I grew up in a pretty affluent suburb filled with tiger parents who were aggressively and anxiously pushing their kids onto a very narrow success path. Maybe a lot of the country isn't like this.\n\nHowever much this mentality has taken grip over our society, we need it to stop. We need to make America feel like an open world game. Tell kids to fuck off and just go DO things. Graduate high school and work on a boat for a year. Move to a new city and just figure it out (housing policies make this hard...its hard to show up to NY with 20 dollars in your pocket and figure it out when rent is 2000 dollars).\n\nWe need  a lower entry barrier society. I hear stories about Gen X and before and how they moved in the world and I get very jealous. You talk to older folks and they'll say shit like \"ah yes, I lived on the beach smoking pot for most of my mid twenties and then I just went and started a roofing company with my friends after getting married.\" What! What the fuck do you mean! Also, when you get a bit older, it seems that military experience created this werid moment of flux and mobility. Young men left  the military after WWII/Korea etc.  and then you just had this huge mass of people with similarish background flood the job market. Sorting wasn't that efficient. And people just ended up in weird places.\n\nThe stories that inspire me the most are those of entreperenuers rather than strivers. I've talked to a lot of lawyers and law firm  partners and stuf about their lives. With some very  notable exceptions, I generally never  found their stories that interesting. Nothing is wrong with doing the responisble and right things and ending up where you want and making a lot of money. That's a good life! And they probably have other things int heir lives that are more interesting (I hope.) But that's not an inspiring story.\n\nAn inspiring story is my friend's dad. Who married a wealthy woman when he had money during the Dot Com era, got liad off, refused to ever work for anyone else, went very broke when he had an infant child, was divorced by this woman, then started his own firm  on the technical side of securing patents (not an attorney),  eventually became a multi-millionaire, and is now a happy and wealthy man who gets to do his side hobbies of flying little planes. That's fucking awesome. That's a tale!\n\nA tale needs failures. A tale needs points where the hero refuses to compromise. My friend's dad had a tale. He got laid off and just said \"fuck it I'm doing my own thing.\"\n\nI think if you want to live an interesting life you can't be too afraid of failure. You have to embrace failure. You have to live for it. The more you fail the more resistant you become. I think the best things that has happened to me is becoming a little calloused to failure.\n\nI failed tests in high school. I failed classes in college. I failed at getting certain jobs. I've failed in romance here and there. I've failed at all sorts of goals. And life is still great. We keep failing upwards.\n\nIf anything, what makes America great is that we really incentivize and insulate people from failure when they try and start their own thing. Through our bankruptcy code, tax code, how we insulate firms and people from liability. It's all inviting people to fuck up. Of course, I think we should expand on this a little more maybe with UBI, negative income tax, and stopping personal bankruptcies for healthcare. We should raise the floor more generally and add safety nets. But, as far as entrepreneurship, we do a pretty good job.\n\nBut we need to do more to make America feel like an open world game again. In addition to the social programs I mentioned, there hs to be some cultural upheaval. Most likely, reducing the status/signal of certain gatekeeping institutions, like universities, traditional media, working at big companies. These have to become anti-signals. We have to understand that in many respects, these things signal the wrong kind of qualities.\n\nThe MAGA maoists are actually doing this to some degree. So maybe the things I want are in motion.\n\nIf that's the case, how do adjust? Maybe we should stop chasing signals that are being actively degraded and that people are catching up with.\n\nBut aside from fitting to trends, I think that I want to just choose the kind of signal I want to send and see what happens. The signal I want to send in everything I do, my CV, the word of mouth I cultivate is, this guy i sjust cracked. He is autistically interested in XYZ subject area, he's not afraid to be wrong, he's smart enough to make competent work product about XYZ, and he's adaptable. I think if I can signal that quality then life will be just fine and I'll get the jobs I want and I'll get to do work that's meaningful.\n\nSo if there is a take away from this stream of consciousness, it is that one should pick the signal they want to send, and see how the world bends around it, see who responds, don't overfit to the signals that working right now, because when you do that you're degrading that signal anyways. It's how markets work in general. Oh everyone is making supernormal profits selling widget X, let me sell widget X. Then your market entry brings those profits down to zero. Meanwhile someone, just because they liked it, started making Widget Y and is doing better than you.\n\nJust pick the widget you want to make! See what happens!\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This is &quot;day 3&quot; of studying for the Bar for real. coming up pretty close now. but i think i can do it. and does it matter if i cant? will try my best and see how goes.</p>\n<p>something that has happened during law school and life is that fear has become a less effective motivator for me. nothing bad ever happens. and any time something bad has happened its turned out fine. worrying just hasn't gotten me anywhdre. but my genuine interest and curiousity have.</p>\n<p>i think people should do what they like and see what happens more.</p>\n<p>sometimes, I think about how the early Republic must have felt. I've been thinking about that more recently because of the 250th anniversary of our nation, and because I've been perusing a biography on Andrew Jackson. America was really an open world game.</p>\n<p>You could show up, in a boat, with some money in your pocket, and some skills, and make a nice life. Does that America still exist? I am often down on that. But I think there's some evidence from my life and other's that it does. But as we age as a country and a culture, its harder to see, and our more &quot;entrepreneurial&quot; muscles atrophy. This isn't just a matter of economic policy, but the kind of mentality we're inculturating into the youth. We are becoming more spiritually chinese.</p>\n<p>Now, there's a &quot;success path&quot; offered to us that's mostly credential/signalling based. At some level this is normal and fine in a complex society. We need skilling, and we need ways to signal that one has relevant skills. Schooling, certifications, and all that is an important part of that. BUt it would be bad if we became a country where that was the only way to achieve mobility.</p>\n<p>My problem with the LEFT or just liberals in genral is that's the world they want to build. A credentialist America. Just make the credentials easier to get. Which are two objectives that are at odds. Make college more affordable! Make it easier to get into for people of different backgrounds--at the expense of other metrics! But then don't you degrade the signal that you're trying to distribute? It's silly.</p>\n<p>These are the policy prescriptions of an aging country, and one where young human capital is locked up. We need to just unleash people faster. I've felt this way a long time, but then I realize, there aren't a lot of real policies stopping young people from just &quot;unleashing&quot; themselves. And plenty still do. The problem is the mental prisons we've inculturated them into.</p>\n<p>Maybe I'm over generalizing because I grew up in a pretty affluent suburb filled with tiger parents who were aggressively and anxiously pushing their kids onto a very narrow success path. Maybe a lot of the country isn't like this.</p>\n<p>However much this mentality has taken grip over our society, we need it to stop. We need to make America feel like an open world game. Tell kids to fuck off and just go DO things. Graduate high school and work on a boat for a year. Move to a new city and just figure it out (housing policies make this hard...its hard to show up to NY with 20 dollars in your pocket and figure it out when rent is 2000 dollars).</p>\n<p>We need  a lower entry barrier society. I hear stories about Gen X and before and how they moved in the world and I get very jealous. You talk to older folks and they'll say shit like &quot;ah yes, I lived on the beach smoking pot for most of my mid twenties and then I just went and started a roofing company with my friends after getting married.&quot; What! What the fuck do you mean! Also, when you get a bit older, it seems that military experience created this werid moment of flux and mobility. Young men left  the military after WWII/Korea etc.  and then you just had this huge mass of people with similarish background flood the job market. Sorting wasn't that efficient. And people just ended up in weird places.</p>\n<p>The stories that inspire me the most are those of entreperenuers rather than strivers. I've talked to a lot of lawyers and law firm  partners and stuf about their lives. With some very  notable exceptions, I generally never  found their stories that interesting. Nothing is wrong with doing the responisble and right things and ending up where you want and making a lot of money. That's a good life! And they probably have other things int heir lives that are more interesting (I hope.) But that's not an inspiring story.</p>\n<p>An inspiring story is my friend's dad. Who married a wealthy woman when he had money during the Dot Com era, got liad off, refused to ever work for anyone else, went very broke when he had an infant child, was divorced by this woman, then started his own firm  on the technical side of securing patents (not an attorney),  eventually became a multi-millionaire, and is now a happy and wealthy man who gets to do his side hobbies of flying little planes. That's fucking awesome. That's a tale!</p>\n<p>A tale needs failures. A tale needs points where the hero refuses to compromise. My friend's dad had a tale. He got laid off and just said &quot;fuck it I'm doing my own thing.&quot;</p>\n<p>I think if you want to live an interesting life you can't be too afraid of failure. You have to embrace failure. You have to live for it. The more you fail the more resistant you become. I think the best things that has happened to me is becoming a little calloused to failure.</p>\n<p>I failed tests in high school. I failed classes in college. I failed at getting certain jobs. I've failed in romance here and there. I've failed at all sorts of goals. And life is still great. We keep failing upwards.</p>\n<p>If anything, what makes America great is that we really incentivize and insulate people from failure when they try and start their own thing. Through our bankruptcy code, tax code, how we insulate firms and people from liability. It's all inviting people to fuck up. Of course, I think we should expand on this a little more maybe with UBI, negative income tax, and stopping personal bankruptcies for healthcare. We should raise the floor more generally and add safety nets. But, as far as entrepreneurship, we do a pretty good job.</p>\n<p>But we need to do more to make America feel like an open world game again. In addition to the social programs I mentioned, there hs to be some cultural upheaval. Most likely, reducing the status/signal of certain gatekeeping institutions, like universities, traditional media, working at big companies. These have to become anti-signals. We have to understand that in many respects, these things signal the wrong kind of qualities.</p>\n<p>The MAGA maoists are actually doing this to some degree. So maybe the things I want are in motion.</p>\n<p>If that's the case, how do adjust? Maybe we should stop chasing signals that are being actively degraded and that people are catching up with.</p>\n<p>But aside from fitting to trends, I think that I want to just choose the kind of signal I want to send and see what happens. The signal I want to send in everything I do, my CV, the word of mouth I cultivate is, this guy i sjust cracked. He is autistically interested in XYZ subject area, he's not afraid to be wrong, he's smart enough to make competent work product about XYZ, and he's adaptable. I think if I can signal that quality then life will be just fine and I'll get the jobs I want and I'll get to do work that's meaningful.</p>\n<p>So if there is a take away from this stream of consciousness, it is that one should pick the signal they want to send, and see how the world bends around it, see who responds, don't overfit to the signals that working right now, because when you do that you're degrading that signal anyways. It's how markets work in general. Oh everyone is making supernormal profits selling widget X, let me sell widget X. Then your market entry brings those profits down to zero. Meanwhile someone, just because they liked it, started making Widget Y and is doing better than you.</p>\n<p>Just pick the widget you want to make! See what happens!</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.1.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.1.26-2.html",
      "title": "Changes",
      "date_published": "2026-07-01T20:08:58.000Z",
      "content_text": "I have made changes to this website. As you can see. Why? I wanted to make it feel more like a notebook. And on a notebook you flip through pages. You don't go to landing page and find the entry you want. So at first I thought, lets make flipping through pages the only way to navigate a site. But that felt needlessly stupid and not very user friendly. So I made a compromise. The site, since its more like a notebook, would have a table of contents or \"front matter.\" If you go to the footer, you can go to front matter at any time and just browse all previous entries. But it's no longer the primary way. Like a book or a notebook, by default you just open to the latest page or where you left off. So that's how the website works now. I didn't want it to feel liek a \"blog\" as much as a notebook.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I have made changes to this website. As you can see. Why? I wanted to make it feel more like a notebook. And on a notebook you flip through pages. You don't go to landing page and find the entry you want. So at first I thought, lets make flipping through pages the only way to navigate a site. But that felt needlessly stupid and not very user friendly. So I made a compromise. The site, since its more like a notebook, would have a table of contents or &quot;front matter.&quot; If you go to the footer, you can go to front matter at any time and just browse all previous entries. But it's no longer the primary way. Like a book or a notebook, by default you just open to the latest page or where you left off. So that's how the website works now. I didn't want it to feel liek a &quot;blog&quot; as much as a notebook.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.1.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.1.26.html",
      "title": "Untitled: Chapter 2",
      "date_published": "2026-07-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "2. A Nap Cut Short\n\n\"Jesus fucking christ. Enough already! Every fucking day with this shit. We don't know what they are! We get it! What the--what the hell is the point of saying that seventeen different ways. It's a--it's a fucking demoralization campaign.\" Dad's yelling wakes me up--again. I had just gotten comfortable and dozed off in the sofa chair. Last I remembered I was watching cartoons, on purpose. I guess he took my falling asleep as permission to come in and turn on the news.\n\n\"Jacob, turn off the T.V then. Come back here and help me with this.\" Mom was trying to be patient--I know her trying to be nice voice. But whenever she is dad just takes it as permission to be himself until it actually makes her mad.\n\n\"We don't need an endless parade of PhDs and politicians to tell us they don't know shit! I knew that! These people are fucking parasites, they, they, these people ought to be ashamed! They're in a position to actually--if they cared--create some context, give people some sense of direction or at maybe a healthier way to think about what's happening. Instead they're just on here scaring everyone twenty-four hours a day!\"\n\n\"Baby, just come here. I know, it's ridiculous. I don't even want to think about it. I need your help with this.\" Mom was making homemade meatballs for dinner tonight. She knows she can get dad to chill if she gives him something he thinks he's good at, like chopping the garlic real small (he insists on salting it first and doing a back and forth rocking motion--thinks its better than a food processor). She wasn't always good at handling him like that. But since I've come home I've noticed that their relationship has gotten a lot better. She knows how to bring him down. Seems like being empty nesters really gave them a chance to understand each other better. To my surprise, he had the self-control to drop it and actually went back to the kitchen. I actually smiled when he did. Really.\n\nThe thing is, dad's not wrong or completely unjustified in what he's saying, and no one thinks that. But he's just not good at being, well, a dad or a husband when he's always worked up like this. Not really a real comforting, stable presence. If he's anxious about something, it's got to be everyone else's problem. It used to really piss me off, and it still does. But these days, I get it. There isn't a real outlet for anyone's anxiety with this thing, and it puts normal people on edge. And he's been a neurotic his whole life. It's a lot to ask him to learn to just be chill now of all times.\n\nI'm a lot better about just not thinking about things if I don't want to, about thinking about the things I want to think about. Really to a fault. I'm like my mom in that way. He can't do that. If we have to leave for a place in twenty minutes, he's the kind of guy that will remind you every three minutes to be ready. If something's wrong with the car, he can't just set an appointment and drive the other car for a little bit. He has to know what's going on right fucking now. This is an infuriating kind of person to be around when you're a kid or a teenager. But I think I appreciate it a little bit more as I've gotten older, and I've realized a lot of dudes are chill because they don't really care.\n\nSometimes I worry that I'm like that--apathetic. I can't get myself to the same level of righteous indignation my forty-eight year-old father can. It's not that I don't care, I just, constitutionally cannot get as heated about things so out of my control. At some point the anxiety just...fades away. It doesn't get resolved, but you can't just be on one for months. I mean, he can. But I can't. And from what I can tell, most other people can't either.\n\nWe were sent home in around March, and it was almost June. Which means I had been back in River View for almost three months now. Three months into the Emergency and nothing had happened. After their little \"show\" at the very start they stopped doing anything. They didn't move. They didn't bother anyone. They were just there. There's only so much of a sustained emotional response anyone could have to that kind of state of affairs. My friends were shockingly nonchalant about it by week two. They weren't here in River View after all. Apparently just every major urban center on the planet.\n\nBut if you left your phone at home and walked outside in little River View, or throughout any of the Parishes, for all you knew nothing out of the ordinary was happening. You could enjoy the same suburban tranquility of any summer afternoon that preceded this one. And we did. Michael and I were on a serious walking streak as of late. We had spent the last three months retracing every beaten path we had from third to twelfth grade. There was nothing else to do. Waken up from my 1PM nap, I figured I would call him up again and propose a nice walk that cut through the soccer fields near Cherry Hill elementary and got you up to the trails that lead to Great Oaks park.\n\nIt was a longer walk than usual and I was expecting a little push back. But the thing is, when you went up Cherry Hill and onto the paths that take you back down to Great Oaks, there's a point where you can actually get high enough to see across the Potomac towards the capitol.\n\nIt was a really far vantage point. But if you squinted hard enough--or used a good pair of binoculars--you could probably just barely see them.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>2. A Nap Cut Short</p>\n<p>\"Jesus fucking christ. Enough already! Every fucking day with this shit. We don't know what they are! We get it! What the--what the hell is the point of saying that seventeen different ways. It's a--it's a fucking demoralization campaign.\" Dad's yelling wakes me up--again. I had just gotten comfortable and dozed off in the sofa chair. Last I remembered I was watching cartoons, on purpose. I guess he took my falling asleep as permission to come in and turn on the news.</p>\n<p>\"Jacob, turn off the T.V then. Come back here and help me with this.\" Mom was trying to be patient--I know her trying to be nice voice. But whenever she is dad just takes it as permission to be himself until it actually makes her mad.</p>\n<p>\"We don't need an endless parade of PhDs and politicians to tell us they don't know shit! I knew that! These people are fucking parasites, they, they, these people ought to be ashamed! They're in a position to actually--if they cared--create some context, give people some sense of direction or at maybe a healthier way to think about what's happening. Instead they're just on here scaring everyone twenty-four hours a day!\"</p>\n<p>\"Baby, just come here. I know, it's ridiculous. I don't even want to think about it. I need your help with this.\" Mom was making homemade meatballs for dinner tonight. She knows she can get dad to chill if she gives him something he thinks he's good at, like chopping the garlic real small (he insists on salting it first and doing a back and forth rocking motion--thinks its better than a food processor). She wasn't always good at handling him like that. But since I've come home I've noticed that their relationship has gotten a lot better. She knows how to bring him down. Seems like being empty nesters really gave them a chance to understand each other better. To my surprise, he had the self-control to drop it and actually went back to the kitchen. I actually smiled when he did. Really.</p>\n<p>The thing is, dad's not wrong or completely unjustified in what he's saying, and no one thinks that. But he's just not good at being, well, a dad or a husband when he's always worked up like this. Not really a real comforting, stable presence. If he's anxious about something, it's got to be everyone else's problem. It used to really piss me off, and it still does. But these days, I get it. There isn't a real outlet for anyone's anxiety with this thing, and it puts normal people on edge. And he's been a neurotic his whole life. It's a lot to ask him to learn to just be chill now of all times.</p>\n<p>I'm a lot better about just not thinking about things if I don't want to, about thinking about the things I want to think about. Really to a fault. I'm like my mom in that way. He can't do that. If we have to leave for a place in twenty minutes, he's the kind of guy that will remind you every three minutes to be ready. If something's wrong with the car, he can't just set an appointment and drive the other car for a little bit. He has to know what's going on right fucking now. This is an infuriating kind of person to be around when you're a kid or a teenager. But I think I appreciate it a little bit more as I've gotten older, and I've realized a lot of dudes are chill because they don't really care.</p>\n<p>Sometimes I worry that I'm like that--apathetic. I can't get myself to the same level of righteous indignation my forty-eight year-old father can. It's not that I don't care, I just, constitutionally cannot get as heated about things so out of my control. At some point the anxiety just...fades away. It doesn't get resolved, but you can't just be on one for months. I mean, he can. But I can't. And from what I can tell, most other people can't either.</p>\n<p>We were sent home in around March, and it was almost June. Which means I had been back in River View for almost three months now. Three months into the Emergency and nothing had happened. After their little \"show\" at the very start they stopped doing anything. They didn't move. They didn't bother anyone. They were just there. There's only so much of a sustained emotional response anyone could have to that kind of state of affairs. My friends were shockingly nonchalant about it by week two. They weren't here in River View after all. Apparently just every major urban center on the planet.</p>\n<p>But if you left your phone at home and walked outside in little River View, or throughout any of the Parishes, for all you knew nothing out of the ordinary was happening. You could enjoy the same suburban tranquility of any summer afternoon that preceded this one. And we did. Michael and I were on a serious walking streak as of late. We had spent the last three months retracing every beaten path we had from third to twelfth grade. There was nothing else to do. Waken up from my 1PM nap, I figured I would call him up again and propose a nice walk that cut through the soccer fields near Cherry Hill elementary and got you up to the trails that lead to Great Oaks park.</p>\n<p>It was a longer walk than usual and I was expecting a little push back. But the thing is, when you went up Cherry Hill and onto the paths that take you back down to Great Oaks, there's a point where you can actually get high enough to see across the Potomac towards the capitol.</p>\n<p>It was a really far vantage point. But if you squinted hard enough--or used a good pair of binoculars--you could probably just barely see them.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.30.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.30.26-2.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 2: Thoughts on Birthright Citizenship",
      "date_published": "2026-06-30T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "This is not a legal analysis because reading a SCOTUS opinion properly takes time and I have to learn Evidence. And it just dropped today. But here are my general thoughts.\n\nFirst, I am generally pro-Birthright citizenship. And I don't want something as restrictive as a rule requires the child to be of American citizens. America is unique in that we are defined by our place and creed more than being an actual, related cultural/ethnic community. Birthright citizenship is aligned with the idea of America as a place and a creedal nation. The holding is better than the alternative. The Executive Branch shouldn't be able to modify the boundaries of citizenship.\n\nIt is also clearly, unequivocally, undesirable in my view that someone can come to this country illegally or in passing, have a child, and that child is now a U.S. citizen. Yes, it's an edge case and it does not happen to scale. But it happens. And it's frankly ridiculous. In theory, that person, even if they then leave the country immediately, they have the same political rights as someone whose parents were born here, pay taxes, are part of the community--they can vote!\n\nI understand why this edge case drives my friends on the right insane. And it's not even a matter of morality. It's not like, Due Process, which i think is an embodiment of natural rights and ideas of fairness which should apply to everyone alike. Due Process is about humans, not citizens. But Citizenship is not like that. It's a political category. It's a special kind of privilege and membership.\n\nEveryone on earth has the right to be treated fairly (which is a very short reason why Due Process does not hinge on citizenship). Not everyone on earth has the right to decide matters of policy for a different community! Very obviously, the world does not have any legitimate interest in deciding what happens in OUR country (although a very certain nation \"state\" tries all the time).\n\nThis is why the whole anchor babies thing feels absurd. It really creates a very fuzzy edge of the political community, and who \"counts.\" And the only reason it's mostly FINE is because it's relatively inconvenient and uncommon as a matter of fact to exploit our citizenship criteria like this. But I think that if say, teleportation technology was real, and we had a consistent problem with illegal teleporters coming in and giving birth then beaming out, and then their kids sending in mail in ballots when they were of age, the absurdity would become clearer.\n\nI think that's what makes the hardline rule the Court reaffirmed feel bad. It seems that, except for Kavanaugh, the majority doesn't really think that Congress would have the power (to be clear, the Executive should NOT have this power) to redefine who is subject to our jurisdiction under the meaning of the 14A to be more pragmatic. They constitutionalized the principle. That means our whole nation, our political community, is defined by a matter of fact than law. What can people get away with? If you can sneak in illegally, have a child, then you've joined our political community. Again, I actually don't think this is a problem to scale at the moment. But I agree with Thomas that this cheapens our citizenship.\n\nI'm only talking about the outcome here. Obviously, sound reasoning can sometimes lead to silly outcomes. I don't feel like talking about the legal reasoning. But it feels very silly that we may need a constitutional amendment to create a more principled definition of our political community. My desired outcome is that we have jus soli citizenship for children of everyone legally her minus the existing exceptions (which I think are diplomats, foreign armies, and related classes). And that Congress had a little bit more power to tweak the edges of how natural citizenship works. Although that would be messy, and the current rule is a lot neater administratively.\n\nBut really, this case isn't about what's pragmatic, or administratively convenient, or what's doctrinally neat. It's really about what America IS. I'm pretty far from seeing America as a blood and soil \"nation\" proper. I don't think that defining one's political community in such terms is immoral--the Japanese can do that, the Swedes can do that (do they?)--whatever. I just don't think that's what we're all about. We're the New World. Somewhere where people are just people. We had uncontrolled migration for a long time. America was a place you SHOWED up to. That's amazing! And for a while it was legal to just show up in a boat. Think about how insanely cool that is.\n\nBut to paraphrase a bad bad man, a country is not just an economic community. We're a civic society. American probably leans towards being a place with certain ideas and institutions more than a \"people\" but it's not magic soil either. To quote my natcon friends, if you change the people, you change the country. All I know is that under the current opinion, 400 million [members of generic ethnic group here] teleported into the country illegally, had a child, then beamed out, in about 18 years time it would be a different country. And what's protecting us from that outcome is a matter of fact, not our laws, not our constitution.\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This is not a legal analysis because reading a SCOTUS opinion properly takes time and I have to learn Evidence. And it just dropped today. But here are my general thoughts.</p>\n<p>First, I am generally pro-Birthright citizenship. And I don't want something as restrictive as a rule requires the child to be of American citizens. America is unique in that we are defined by our place and creed more than being an actual, related cultural/ethnic community. Birthright citizenship is aligned with the idea of America as a place and a creedal nation. The holding is better than the alternative. The Executive Branch shouldn't be able to modify the boundaries of citizenship.</p>\n<p>It is also clearly, unequivocally, undesirable in my view that someone can come to this country illegally or in passing, have a child, and that child is now a U.S. citizen. Yes, it's an edge case and it does not happen to scale. But it happens. And it's frankly ridiculous. In theory, that person, even if they then leave the country immediately, they have the same political rights as someone whose parents were born here, pay taxes, are part of the community--they can vote!</p>\n<p>I understand why this edge case drives my friends on the right insane. And it's not even a matter of morality. It's not like, Due Process, which i think is an embodiment of natural rights and ideas of fairness which should apply to everyone alike. Due Process is about humans, not citizens. But Citizenship is not like that. It's a political category. It's a special kind of privilege and membership.</p>\n<p>Everyone on earth has the right to be treated fairly (which is a very short reason why Due Process does not hinge on citizenship). Not everyone on earth has the right to decide matters of policy for a different community! Very obviously, the world does not have any legitimate interest in deciding what happens in OUR country (although a very certain nation \"state\" tries all the time).</p>\n<p>This is why the whole anchor babies thing feels absurd. It really creates a very fuzzy edge of the political community, and who \"counts.\" And the only reason it's mostly FINE is because it's relatively inconvenient and uncommon as a matter of fact to exploit our citizenship criteria like this. But I think that if say, teleportation technology was real, and we had a consistent problem with illegal teleporters coming in and giving birth then beaming out, and then their kids sending in mail in ballots when they were of age, the absurdity would become clearer.</p>\n<p>I think that's what makes the hardline rule the Court reaffirmed feel bad. It seems that, except for Kavanaugh, the majority doesn't really think that Congress would have the power (to be clear, the Executive should NOT have this power) to redefine who is subject to our jurisdiction under the meaning of the 14A to be more pragmatic. They constitutionalized the principle. That means our whole nation, our political community, is defined by a matter of fact than law. What can people get away with? If you can sneak in illegally, have a child, then you've joined our political community. Again, I actually don't think this is a problem to scale at the moment. But I agree with Thomas that this cheapens our citizenship.</p>\n<p>I'm only talking about the outcome here. Obviously, sound reasoning can sometimes lead to silly outcomes. I don't feel like talking about the legal reasoning. But it feels very silly that we may need a constitutional amendment to create a more principled definition of our political community. My desired outcome is that we have jus soli citizenship for children of everyone legally her minus the existing exceptions (which I think are diplomats, foreign armies, and related classes). And that Congress had a little bit more power to tweak the edges of how natural citizenship works. Although that would be messy, and the current rule is a lot neater administratively.</p>\n<p>But really, this case isn't about what's pragmatic, or administratively convenient, or what's doctrinally neat. It's really about what America IS. I'm pretty far from seeing America as a blood and soil \"nation\" proper. I don't think that defining one's political community in such terms is immoral--the Japanese can do that, the Swedes can do that (do they?)--whatever. I just don't think that's what we're all about. We're the New World. Somewhere where people are just people. We had uncontrolled migration for a long time. America was a place you SHOWED up to. That's amazing! And for a while it was legal to just show up in a boat. Think about how insanely cool that is.</p>\n<p>But to paraphrase a bad bad man, a country is not just an economic community. We're a civic society. American probably leans towards being a place with certain ideas and institutions more than a \"people\" but it's not magic soil either. To quote my natcon friends, if you change the people, you change the country. All I know is that under the current opinion, 400 million [members of generic ethnic group here] teleported into the country illegally, had a child, then beamed out, in about 18 years time it would be a different country. And what's protecting us from that outcome is a matter of fact, not our laws, not our constitution.</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.30.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.30.26.html",
      "title": "Untitled: Chapter 1",
      "date_published": "2026-06-30T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "1. River View\n\nRiver View was one of the prettiest places I had ever been in my life. I was born right outside of here, at the County hospital, I've been to a ton of places around the world, and River View is still the prettiest.\n\nI always had a hard time describing River View to my friends at school. First, it's not a town. It's just a chunk of a larger suburb, which for historical reasons, is a Census Designated Place called River View. But my River View is just a chunk of River View proper, surrounded by other chunks of suburb with other names of a pastoral flavor. Cherry Hill. Lakeside. Great Oaks. Not uncommon, the kind of names you probably see all around the country--weakly evocative of some geographic feature that I guess we're supposed to believe existed before they put a bunch of houses there.\n\nThe suburb itself was easy to describe, what was a little difficult was why River View was special amongst these parishes, and why there was a kind of River View nationalism. You see, each suburban chunk had its own elementary school. Cherry Hill Elementary, Lakeside Elementary, Great Oaks Elementary, and River View Elementary. But then, all of these elementary schools fed into just two middle schools: River Crest Middle School and Oak Ridge Middle School. Finally, those two middle schools fed into one high school--River View High.\n\nRiver View wasn't the nicest, or the richest of the four parishes. Great Oaks had way bigger houses, with more expensive cars parked in front of them. Lakeside was a newer development with more sprawl, and the elementary school there was probably the nicest. Cherry Hill, notwithstanding what I said earlier, was arguably much more charming with more access to trails and nature.\n\nRiver View didn't have these things going for it. It was the oldest of the bunch, with more modest 1990s developments. Less Teslas, more Hondas. River View Elementary and River Crest Middle School were older school buildings, and didn't have the high ceilings or natural light that their counterparts in the other parishes did.\n\nAnd it was a little more busy than the other neighborhoods, a little more road. Not quite as serene. It was built around what used to be a \"downtown\" shopping center in the sixties. River View Plaza. The Plaza had a library, a McDonald's, a bakery, a tailor shop, a pizza parlor, a gas station, a frozen yogurt place, and a rotating cast of fast casual restaurants. At some point we had a Blockbuster video and a laser tag joint, but those venues have just been pop-up shops for years. Up until this year, we had a movie theater too. Basically, we had it all. And it wasn't far from the River View developments. What made River View special is that if you grew up here, you could just walk around and do things in this whimsical, red brick Plaza. Then play in the woods. And then walk home. The other neighborhoods weren't really like that. You had to cross the big highway and walk alongside it to get anywhere worth being--and all they really have are little strip malls with expensive food and a grocery store. We had a little main street, and we would be hanging around it since we were little kids, while the Great Oak kids had to get driven around or hang out in someone's basement.\n\nBut the best thing about River View is that it's where everyone eventually ended up, since the High School is here. And by that time, everyone wants to hang out, loiter and do stuff outside the house. And where would that be? The Plaza. And who already knew about the Plaza? The River View kids. We were the only batch that spent the entirety of our childhood years in an easy walking distance from our school. River View Elementary, River Crest Middle School, and River View High could all be reached by sidewalk. The poor Great Oaks kids, their commute just got farther and farther with each level. Not that it mattered by High School, and not that they minded driving their nice cars into River View. But we had the unique privilege of showing everyone around, and taking them to our old haunts. And we had houses close to where everyone wanted to hang out. Naturally, being a River View kid gave you some structural social advantages.\n\nNot that we were all that different from the other neighborhoods otherwise. River View proper was just another rich suburb among rich suburbs. It was for the most part, an increasingly isolating, socially alienated place where people spent too much time in their cars and their houses. Throughout most of River View, streets are quiet all day, you don't see much, and it wouldn't be strange to go on a walk without seeing a single child for hours on end. They were probably in their house, in their school, or in a car. Until they got their own car, that was their lot in life.\n\nBut if you were in my little River View, you at least could get a small taste of the kind of childhood they show in Eighties movies. You could feasibly be a little rascal or like a Goonies in little River View. You could leave the house and go on little adventures. And a small faction of us did. All the time. We had watergun fights. We shoplifted from the gas station. We biked miles away to Cherry Hill and got lost. We snuck into the movie theater and hopped between showings. Every square meter of River View is a good memory.\n\nWhen the Emergency started I was a little excited to come back. I hated leaving state college, I hated leaving my friends. And I was scared. But the idea of spending some time back in River View wasn't so bad. My friends were coming back too--and I hadn't seen them for months at a time. We'd all be together again, back in little River View. Maybe we would take some nice walks. Go on a late night fast-food run. Things were getting so goddamned strange--going back to a place I had more or less mastered felt like it could stop the ground from shifting under my feet. The idea of coming back home, finding everything as I had left it, was a small, fleeting comfort.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>1. River View</p>\n<p>River View was one of the prettiest places I had ever been in my life. I was born right outside of here, at the County hospital, I've been to a ton of places around the world, and River View is still the prettiest.</p>\n<p>I always had a hard time describing River View to my friends at school. First, it's not a town. It's just a chunk of a larger suburb, which for historical reasons, is a Census Designated Place called River View. But my River View is just a chunk of River View proper, surrounded by other chunks of suburb with other names of a pastoral flavor. Cherry Hill. Lakeside. Great Oaks. Not uncommon, the kind of names you probably see all around the country--weakly evocative of some geographic feature that I guess we're supposed to believe existed before they put a bunch of houses there.</p>\n<p>The suburb itself was easy to describe, what was a little difficult was why River View was special amongst these parishes, and why there was a kind of River View nationalism. You see, each suburban chunk had its own elementary school. Cherry Hill Elementary, Lakeside Elementary, Great Oaks Elementary, and River View Elementary. But then, all of these elementary schools fed into just two middle schools: River Crest Middle School and Oak Ridge Middle School. Finally, those two middle schools fed into one high school--River View High.</p>\n<p>River View wasn't the nicest, or the richest of the four parishes. Great Oaks had way bigger houses, with more expensive cars parked in front of them. Lakeside was a newer development with more sprawl, and the elementary school there was probably the nicest. Cherry Hill, notwithstanding what I said earlier, was arguably much more charming with more access to trails and nature.</p>\n<p>River View didn't have these things going for it. It was the oldest of the bunch, with more modest 1990s developments. Less Teslas, more Hondas. River View Elementary and River Crest Middle School were older school buildings, and didn't have the high ceilings or natural light that their counterparts in the other parishes did.</p>\n<p>And it was a little more busy than the other neighborhoods, a little more road. Not quite as serene. It was built around what used to be a \"downtown\" shopping center in the sixties. River View Plaza. The Plaza had a library, a McDonald's, a bakery, a tailor shop, a pizza parlor, a gas station, a frozen yogurt place, and a rotating cast of fast casual restaurants. At some point we had a Blockbuster video and a laser tag joint, but those venues have just been pop-up shops for years. Up until this year, we had a movie theater too. Basically, we had it all. And it wasn't far from the River View developments. What made River View special is that if you grew up here, you could just walk around and do things in this whimsical, red brick Plaza. Then play in the woods. And then walk home. The other neighborhoods weren't really like that. You had to cross the big highway and walk alongside it to get anywhere worth being--and all they really have are little strip malls with expensive food and a grocery store. We had a little main street, and we would be hanging around it since we were little kids, while the Great Oak kids had to get driven around or hang out in someone's basement.</p>\n<p>But the best thing about River View is that it's where everyone eventually ended up, since the High School is here. And by that time, everyone wants to hang out, loiter and do stuff outside the house. And where would that be? The Plaza. And who already knew about the Plaza? The River View kids. We were the only batch that spent the entirety of our childhood years in an easy walking distance from our school. River View Elementary, River Crest Middle School, and River View High could all be reached by sidewalk. The poor Great Oaks kids, their commute just got farther and farther with each level. Not that it mattered by High School, and not that they minded driving their nice cars into River View. But we had the unique privilege of showing everyone around, and taking them to our old haunts. And we had houses close to where everyone wanted to hang out. Naturally, being a River View kid gave you some structural social advantages.</p>\n<p>Not that we were all that different from the other neighborhoods otherwise. River View proper was just another rich suburb among rich suburbs. It was for the most part, an increasingly isolating, socially alienated place where people spent too much time in their cars and their houses. Throughout most of River View, streets are quiet all day, you don't see much, and it wouldn't be strange to go on a walk without seeing a single child for hours on end. They were probably in their house, in their school, or in a car. Until they got their own car, that was their lot in life.</p>\n<p>But if you were in my little River View, you at least could get a small taste of the kind of childhood they show in Eighties movies. You could feasibly be a little rascal or like a Goonies in little River View. You could leave the house and go on little adventures. And a small faction of us did. All the time. We had watergun fights. We shoplifted from the gas station. We biked miles away to Cherry Hill and got lost. We snuck into the movie theater and hopped between showings. Every square meter of River View is a good memory.</p>\n<p>When the Emergency started I was a little excited to come back. I hated leaving state college, I hated leaving my friends. And I was scared. But the idea of spending some time back in River View wasn't so bad. My friends were coming back too--and I hadn't seen them for months at a time. We'd all be together again, back in little River View. Maybe we would take some nice walks. Go on a late night fast-food run. Things were getting so goddamned strange--going back to a place I had more or less mastered felt like it could stop the ground from shifting under my feet. The idea of coming back home, finding everything as I had left it, was a small, fleeting comfort.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.29.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.29.26-2.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 1 (for real)",
      "date_published": "2026-06-29T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "I'm restarting the Bar Prep counter because I took a very long intermission to do other things and fart around.\n\nBut now I'm in emergency time constraints (classic self-imposed problem) so it will be every day until test day all day. And it will work. Probably.\n\nThought of the day: Being irregular is a lifehack to make your life feel longer. My girlfriend is much smarter than me and does a little bit of everything every day. Work, hobbies, fitness, etc. This is the most efficient and pleasurable way to operate. Really. But routine makes most days feel like eachother.\n\nI tend to focus on a couple things to the exclusion of all else for stretches. Oh this week I'm studying for finals. That week I was doing fitness stuff and sunmaxxing. This week I was reading a lot. That week I was drinking-maxxing. I have mini eras. This is extremely stupid and inefficient and I have to stop it. You progress by doing a little bit of things you like every day. You'll read more books that way. Make more progress in the gym. It's really objectively better as far as results to be more regular. You'll be way healthier. I am not trying to cope on this. The periods I have accomplished this (1L fall i think was one) I have been pretty happy and very successful.\n\nBut it's also clear that having vastly different routines for stretches and objects of focus means different periods feel more distinct, more novel, which in turn, lengthens your subjective experience of time. Time does not fly by if you live like this and months do not blend together because they are so different. In a very real sense you live longer.\n\nConsistent novelty is what make childhood feel longer. Monotony is why adulthood flies by. I think the combo of my irregularity and frequent moving and traveling between geographies makes my life feel a little more like childhood although I'm 27.\n\nI will have to be more regular to survive in the adult world and I know when I am I am happier. But I will probably keep the habit of demarcating \"eras\" so that life feels longer.\n\nI have a childhood friend I have known since I was six who is extremely type B. He is a musical artist and a tinkerer. I told him once that we are \"men ungoverned by time.\" This has been fun. But I think I want to be one who effectively bargains with time moving forward.\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I'm restarting the Bar Prep counter because I took a very long intermission to do other things and fart around.</p>\n<p>But now I'm in emergency time constraints (classic self-imposed problem) so it will be every day until test day all day. And it will work. Probably.</p>\n<p>Thought of the day: Being irregular is a lifehack to make your life feel longer. My girlfriend is much smarter than me and does a little bit of everything every day. Work, hobbies, fitness, etc. This is the most efficient and pleasurable way to operate. Really. But routine makes most days feel like eachother.</p>\n<p>I tend to focus on a couple things to the exclusion of all else for stretches. Oh this week I'm studying for finals. That week I was doing fitness stuff and sunmaxxing. This week I was reading a lot. That week I was drinking-maxxing. I have mini eras. This is extremely stupid and inefficient and I have to stop it. You progress by doing a little bit of things you like every day. You'll read more books that way. Make more progress in the gym. It's really objectively better as far as results to be more regular. You'll be way healthier. I am not trying to cope on this. The periods I have accomplished this (1L fall i think was one) I have been pretty happy and very successful.</p>\n<p>But it's also clear that having vastly different routines for stretches and objects of focus means different periods feel more distinct, more novel, which in turn, lengthens your subjective experience of time. Time does not fly by if you live like this and months do not blend together because they are so different. In a very real sense you live longer.</p>\n<p>Consistent novelty is what make childhood feel longer. Monotony is why adulthood flies by. I think the combo of my irregularity and frequent moving and traveling between geographies makes my life feel a little more like childhood although I'm 27.</p>\n<p>I will have to be more regular to survive in the adult world and I know when I am I am happier. But I will probably keep the habit of demarcating \"eras\" so that life feels longer.</p>\n<p>I have a childhood friend I have known since I was six who is extremely type B. He is a musical artist and a tinkerer. I told him once that we are \"men ungoverned by time.\" This has been fun. But I think I want to be one who effectively bargains with time moving forward.</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.29.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.29.26.html",
      "title": "The Melancholy of Mr. Bean",
      "date_published": "2026-06-29T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Boredom and relaxation is incredibly important. I've been chilling a lot this summer (will resume bar prep) and my brain is healing in some ways.\n\nYou remember things, reflect, and all that good stuff.\n\nSo here's a memory that's burned in to my brain I wanted to share.\n\nI was sitting in a living room with some kids and a lot of adults during some a house party of some sort (I'm a second gen of a culture that does a lot of those). Mr. Bean was on and some of the kids were watching. Mr. Bean was a staple amongst us. I've learned from other second-gen friends and the internet that it's a staple for kids TV in a lot of different markets. I think that because Mr. Bean doesn't have a lot of dialogue it does well with an international audience. I actually watched Mr. Bean more as a kid when I went abroad then in the U.S.\n\nBut anyways, it was playing in a home in a U.S. suburb in this memory.\n\nIt was some gag where Mr. Bean sends himself letters, I think, and opens them, amongst other gags. I believe it was a birthday episode and he was celebrating his birthday by himself.\n\nAs a child, it was very funny, haha, we all laughed. I distinctly remember one of the adults chuckling, turning to another and saying \"it's a little sad, right?\"\n\nLooking back at the T.V., I realized, jeez this is pretty sad. And for some reason, this stuck with me.\n\nMr. Bean is always alone. He clearly does not have a lot friends, has trouble relating to others, and a lot of the humor throughout the show comes from his extremely maladjusted efforts to *connect* with other people.\n\nLike the sandwich episode. He sees someone eating a sandwich, and I guess part of him just wants to be like, \"hey, I'm having a sandwich too\"---but fused with this pathological need for one-upmanship that makes the whole interaction comically strange and offputting. This is a recurring gag. He wants to do what other people are doing but generally wants to one up them in some way. He goes to the highest dicing board on the pool episode, is too proud to just turn around and climb back down in front of the children. He eats the oysters that make him sick trying to copy and outdo another restaurant guest.\n\nThe end result is always humiliation. Haha, very funny.\n\nThe crazy thing is I've come to recognize this pattern (obviously in less comical forms) in a few socially maladjusted people I know IRL. But most acutely, this one guy. Let's call him Ricky.\n\nRicky was a guy I met at college orientation. He became friends with the people I'm currently friends with, lived with all of us, and is really the only one who is not friends with any of us anymore. The reason being he was exceedingly unpleasant and awkward. There's a lot of reason for this. But I can boil it down to an extremely irritating combination that he was clearly lonely, wanted to connect and make friends, but also simultaneously wanted to show off to those friends. He had very little humility.\n\nOne of my close friends compares ME to Ricky because both of us can come off a bit cocky in social interactions. This is fair enough. But the difference is I have a lot of friends and Ricky does not. Because Ricky crops up from time to time--at a birthday, at a ballgame, or what have you--he has been the subject of an ongoing psychological analysis by all of us over the past ten years (for the psychologically anxious reader, yes, everyone does talk about YOU as soon as you're not in the room, and everyone notices everything about you).\n\nMy take is I think Ricky's efforts end in humiliation for the same reason as Mr. Bean. Except, in real life, the resulting loneliness is not funny but quite sad.\n\nI wasn't planning on writing about Ricky when i started writing this. But it's as good as a digression as any.\n\nI think the real reason anyone is alone--whether its Mr. Bean or Ricky (although Mr. Bean, strangely enough, has a girlfriend, and Ricky does not) is because of ego. There are very few people who reallly like people and being around people and don't have enough of it in my opinion. People say we're in a loneliness epidemic. I think we're in a pride epidemic.\n\nSome people are too proud to pick up the phone and just say HEY i wanna see you. And some people are too prideful to listen when they do. And many of these people try \"self-improvement\" in order to gain social status and improve their social lives (\"maybe if I was fitter, more charismatic, more of a chad, I'd have more friends\"). I'd put Ricky and a lot of young men I've encountered in this category. It's the whole, let me work on MYSELF, and then I'll put myself out there mentality.\n\nBut this is just intensifying the pathology that is the root cause of their loneliness. They want to be SEEN more than they want to SEE others. They want to IMPRESS more than they want to make themselves open to BEING impressed.\n\nRicky, in my opinion, never felt like he was genuinely curious about others, never felt like he just wanted to BE there and have a good time. He could never make anyone laugh. He was unfailingly KIND and generous given the opportunity. And he has clear LOYALTY and in many respects good character. But that doesn't make you the kind of guy someone wants to hang out with. It's like those guys who are confused about why girls don't like them when they have all the necessary checkboxes (I'm fit! I have money! I'm purpose driven and family oriented! Why don't they like me???). Ricky has the pieces of a \"good guy\" but still comes off fundamentally unlikeable.\n\nI read How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie in college and it made a large impression on me. I have struggled with social relations in some episodes in my past (I still do, but for very different reasons that have to do more with the KIND of people I can get along with). Dale basically starts with the assumption that most people are interested in themselves, and that's fine, and you connect with someone by playing into that. The way he writes this is feels as if this is some kind of trick, playing into other's vanity in order to curry favor. I can't really recall whether he clarified that this isn't what it's all about--but I'll defend Dale for him. To me, the whole trick is, you start by pretending, but over time it becomes a habit, and if you do it right, it's a genuine change in how your brain works. You stop thinking about YOURSELF and start thinking about other people. And in my experience, it happens pretty quickly.\n\nOnce you make the change of being someone who thinks about how other people are perceiving YOU to thinking about other people's feelings on how YOU perceive THEM things fundamentally change.\n\nSee Mr. Bean doesn't get this, and that's the core of the humor. He sees someone making a sandwich, clearly thinks its cool, probably wants to connect with the person in some way, and instead of saying, hey, that's a really cool sandwich, where did you buy it? He tries to make a bigger sandwich, in order to ELICIT the other person to say \"wow, that's such a cool sandwich you're making.\"\n\nRicky is kind of the same. Although, I must say, he's gotten better in recent interactions. But fundamentally, I never felt like Ricky could \"connect\" with another person quite properly. Like, I've seen him talk to girls, and even when he asks questions, expresses curiosity, it doesn't read right.\n\nI can't tell you precisely why, even when he does ask questions, it doesn't feel right. For one thing, my own sincere curiosity in other people has been misread as other things. I do think that \"socially awkward\" people are just perceived unfairly. I don't believe its always their \"fault\" and I think normies can be cruel.\n\nBut Ricky is so reliably and universally deemed to be unlikeable (but somewhat sympathetic) that understanding WHY even when he follows Dale's advice he fails seems essential to unlocking a great deal of social wisdom,\n\nIs it because we can detect some inauthenticity? I think girls are good at this in very limited ways. Girls don't seem to like him asking questions (even though, he is, in my eyes, conventionally handsome, or at least average).\n\nIs it because he's just not funny? Ricky has never made me laugh. I've never seen him make other people laugh. I wonder what makes someone funny?\n\nHumor is probably a proxy for a lot of different positive traits working together in harmony--intelligence, easy going temparament, creativity, a finger on the social pulse. What does it mean if he has parts of these, but can't synthesize them to produce a chuckle?\n\nI really don't know. But very much like that small memory of watching Mr. Bean, it's something I think about a lot.\n\nI think I find Ricky fascinating because we were so similar in a lot of ways--similar interests, we made the same kinds of friends at the start of college. People said we were alike. But the trajectories were extremely divergent socially. We started in the exact same spot at orientation and around identical groups of nearly identical groups of people the first couple years of college. But now we are...not.\n\nAll I know is he's tried to hang out a good deal with my general circle. But it never really lands. It's been years and years and he still can't get it. A lot of incidents with him and his social awkwardness have become the butt of long-running jokes. But really, \"it's a little sad, right?\"\n\nkindly,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Boredom and relaxation is incredibly important. I've been chilling a lot this summer (will resume bar prep) and my brain is healing in some ways.</p>\n<p>You remember things, reflect, and all that good stuff.</p>\n<p>So here's a memory that's burned in to my brain I wanted to share.</p>\n<p>I was sitting in a living room with some kids and a lot of adults during some a house party of some sort (I'm a second gen of a culture that does a lot of those). Mr. Bean was on and some of the kids were watching. Mr. Bean was a staple amongst us. I've learned from other second-gen friends and the internet that it's a staple for kids TV in a lot of different markets. I think that because Mr. Bean doesn't have a lot of dialogue it does well with an international audience. I actually watched Mr. Bean more as a kid when I went abroad then in the U.S.</p>\n<p>But anyways, it was playing in a home in a U.S. suburb in this memory.</p>\n<p>It was some gag where Mr. Bean sends himself letters, I think, and opens them, amongst other gags. I believe it was a birthday episode and he was celebrating his birthday by himself.</p>\n<p>As a child, it was very funny, haha, we all laughed. I distinctly remember one of the adults chuckling, turning to another and saying \"it's a little sad, right?\"</p>\n<p>Looking back at the T.V., I realized, jeez this is pretty sad. And for some reason, this stuck with me.</p>\n<p>Mr. Bean is always alone. He clearly does not have a lot friends, has trouble relating to others, and a lot of the humor throughout the show comes from his extremely maladjusted efforts to *connect* with other people.</p>\n<p>Like the sandwich episode. He sees someone eating a sandwich, and I guess part of him just wants to be like, \"hey, I'm having a sandwich too\"---but fused with this pathological need for one-upmanship that makes the whole interaction comically strange and offputting. This is a recurring gag. He wants to do what other people are doing but generally wants to one up them in some way. He goes to the highest dicing board on the pool episode, is too proud to just turn around and climb back down in front of the children. He eats the oysters that make him sick trying to copy and outdo another restaurant guest.</p>\n<p>The end result is always humiliation. Haha, very funny.</p>\n<p>The crazy thing is I've come to recognize this pattern (obviously in less comical forms) in a few socially maladjusted people I know IRL. But most acutely, this one guy. Let's call him Ricky.</p>\n<p>Ricky was a guy I met at college orientation. He became friends with the people I'm currently friends with, lived with all of us, and is really the only one who is not friends with any of us anymore. The reason being he was exceedingly unpleasant and awkward. There's a lot of reason for this. But I can boil it down to an extremely irritating combination that he was clearly lonely, wanted to connect and make friends, but also simultaneously wanted to show off to those friends. He had very little humility.</p>\n<p>One of my close friends compares ME to Ricky because both of us can come off a bit cocky in social interactions. This is fair enough. But the difference is I have a lot of friends and Ricky does not. Because Ricky crops up from time to time--at a birthday, at a ballgame, or what have you--he has been the subject of an ongoing psychological analysis by all of us over the past ten years (for the psychologically anxious reader, yes, everyone does talk about YOU as soon as you're not in the room, and everyone notices everything about you).</p>\n<p>My take is I think Ricky's efforts end in humiliation for the same reason as Mr. Bean. Except, in real life, the resulting loneliness is not funny but quite sad.</p>\n<p>I wasn't planning on writing about Ricky when i started writing this. But it's as good as a digression as any.</p>\n<p>I think the real reason anyone is alone--whether its Mr. Bean or Ricky (although Mr. Bean, strangely enough, has a girlfriend, and Ricky does not) is because of ego. There are very few people who reallly like people and being around people and don't have enough of it in my opinion. People say we're in a loneliness epidemic. I think we're in a pride epidemic.</p>\n<p>Some people are too proud to pick up the phone and just say HEY i wanna see you. And some people are too prideful to listen when they do. And many of these people try \"self-improvement\" in order to gain social status and improve their social lives (\"maybe if I was fitter, more charismatic, more of a chad, I'd have more friends\"). I'd put Ricky and a lot of young men I've encountered in this category. It's the whole, let me work on MYSELF, and then I'll put myself out there mentality.</p>\n<p>But this is just intensifying the pathology that is the root cause of their loneliness. They want to be SEEN more than they want to SEE others. They want to IMPRESS more than they want to make themselves open to BEING impressed.</p>\n<p>Ricky, in my opinion, never felt like he was genuinely curious about others, never felt like he just wanted to BE there and have a good time. He could never make anyone laugh. He was unfailingly KIND and generous given the opportunity. And he has clear LOYALTY and in many respects good character. But that doesn't make you the kind of guy someone wants to hang out with. It's like those guys who are confused about why girls don't like them when they have all the necessary checkboxes (I'm fit! I have money! I'm purpose driven and family oriented! Why don't they like me???). Ricky has the pieces of a \"good guy\" but still comes off fundamentally unlikeable.</p>\n<p>I read How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie in college and it made a large impression on me. I have struggled with social relations in some episodes in my past (I still do, but for very different reasons that have to do more with the KIND of people I can get along with). Dale basically starts with the assumption that most people are interested in themselves, and that's fine, and you connect with someone by playing into that. The way he writes this is feels as if this is some kind of trick, playing into other's vanity in order to curry favor. I can't really recall whether he clarified that this isn't what it's all about--but I'll defend Dale for him. To me, the whole trick is, you start by pretending, but over time it becomes a habit, and if you do it right, it's a genuine change in how your brain works. You stop thinking about YOURSELF and start thinking about other people. And in my experience, it happens pretty quickly.</p>\n<p>Once you make the change of being someone who thinks about how other people are perceiving YOU to thinking about other people's feelings on how YOU perceive THEM things fundamentally change.</p>\n<p>See Mr. Bean doesn't get this, and that's the core of the humor. He sees someone making a sandwich, clearly thinks its cool, probably wants to connect with the person in some way, and instead of saying, hey, that's a really cool sandwich, where did you buy it? He tries to make a bigger sandwich, in order to ELICIT the other person to say \"wow, that's such a cool sandwich you're making.\"</p>\n<p>Ricky is kind of the same. Although, I must say, he's gotten better in recent interactions. But fundamentally, I never felt like Ricky could \"connect\" with another person quite properly. Like, I've seen him talk to girls, and even when he asks questions, expresses curiosity, it doesn't read right.</p>\n<p>I can't tell you precisely why, even when he does ask questions, it doesn't feel right. For one thing, my own sincere curiosity in other people has been misread as other things. I do think that \"socially awkward\" people are just perceived unfairly. I don't believe its always their \"fault\" and I think normies can be cruel.</p>\n<p>But Ricky is so reliably and universally deemed to be unlikeable (but somewhat sympathetic) that understanding WHY even when he follows Dale's advice he fails seems essential to unlocking a great deal of social wisdom,</p>\n<p>Is it because we can detect some inauthenticity? I think girls are good at this in very limited ways. Girls don't seem to like him asking questions (even though, he is, in my eyes, conventionally handsome, or at least average).</p>\n<p>Is it because he's just not funny? Ricky has never made me laugh. I've never seen him make other people laugh. I wonder what makes someone funny?</p>\n<p>Humor is probably a proxy for a lot of different positive traits working together in harmony--intelligence, easy going temparament, creativity, a finger on the social pulse. What does it mean if he has parts of these, but can't synthesize them to produce a chuckle?</p>\n<p>I really don't know. But very much like that small memory of watching Mr. Bean, it's something I think about a lot.</p>\n<p>I think I find Ricky fascinating because we were so similar in a lot of ways--similar interests, we made the same kinds of friends at the start of college. People said we were alike. But the trajectories were extremely divergent socially. We started in the exact same spot at orientation and around identical groups of nearly identical groups of people the first couple years of college. But now we are...not.</p>\n<p>All I know is he's tried to hang out a good deal with my general circle. But it never really lands. It's been years and years and he still can't get it. A lot of incidents with him and his social awkwardness have become the butt of long-running jokes. But really, \"it's a little sad, right?\"</p>\n<p>kindly,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.28.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.28.26-2.html",
      "title": "The End of Wonder",
      "date_published": "2026-06-28T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "Text message thread to a friend regarding his PLEX server below:\n\n*Friend — [City, State]* Today 12:16 PM *Me:* nice *Me:* fuckin hate old people *Me:* i logged onto ur server at [name]’s *Me:* showed her parents expecting them to be like 😨 *Me:* they were like “okay. so?” *Me:* i was like this is every movie ever basically for free at a high resolution and you can just watch them *Me:* they were like “but we’ve seen these. does it have the new shows” *Me:* “yeah we have this through streaming” *Me:* jesus christ man *Me:* i even showed her dad star wars 4k77 last night and he was like “hmm looks pixelated” *Me:* i was like dawg thats film grain there is no official release of this version of the film you literally cannot watch this at this resolution except like this *Me:* going to crash out *Delivered*\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Text message thread to a friend regarding his PLEX server below:</p>\n<p>*Friend — [City, State]* Today 12:16 PM *Me:* nice *Me:* fuckin hate old people *Me:* i logged onto ur server at [name]’s *Me:* showed her parents expecting them to be like 😨 *Me:* they were like “okay. so?” *Me:* i was like this is every movie ever basically for free at a high resolution and you can just watch them *Me:* they were like “but we’ve seen these. does it have the new shows” *Me:* “yeah we have this through streaming” *Me:* jesus christ man *Me:* i even showed her dad star wars 4k77 last night and he was like “hmm looks pixelated” *Me:* i was like dawg thats film grain there is no official release of this version of the film you literally cannot watch this at this resolution except like this *Me:* going to crash out *Delivered*</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.28.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.28.26.html",
      "title": "Star Wars 2026 Fancast/Hatecast",
      "date_published": "2026-06-28T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "From me and gf:\n\nLuke Skywalker - Timothee Chalamet Bartender at Mos Eisley - Peter Thiel Han Solo - Bradley Cooper Greedo - Bill Hader Obi Wan - Cillian Murphy Grand Moff Tarkin - Benedict Cumberbatch R2D2 - Kevin Hart C3PO - Tom Holland Chewbacca - Dwayne The Rock Johnson Princess Leia - Jenna Ortega Darth Vader - Chris Pratt\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>From me and gf:</p>\n<p>Luke Skywalker - Timothee Chalamet Bartender at Mos Eisley - Peter Thiel Han Solo - Bradley Cooper Greedo - Bill Hader Obi Wan - Cillian Murphy Grand Moff Tarkin - Benedict Cumberbatch R2D2 - Kevin Hart C3PO - Tom Holland Chewbacca - Dwayne The Rock Johnson Princess Leia - Jenna Ortega Darth Vader - Chris Pratt</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26-3.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26-3.html",
      "title": "The World Hasn't Gotten Better",
      "date_published": "2026-06-26T12:00:03.000Z",
      "content_text": "A lot of the progressive narrative truthers (like Steven Pinker and those who are generally bullish on liberal democracy, the legacy of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, etc.) often highlight that our ancestors spent a great deal of time sick, hungry, dying, in pain, and point to most people's baseline comfort as evidence of progress. Most people are richer and can afford nicer temperatures, lodging, etc. Even poor people today are better off than their pre-industrial counterparts.\n\nI buy this for people. But we're not the only ones that count. There are far more mammals on earth capable of feeling pain similar to ours. Billions more. Orders of magnitude more than humans.\n\nAnd because of factory farms there is definitely far more simultaneous net suffering today than there has ever been on earth. There has probably never been more pain on earth than there is right now.\n\nSo things haven't gotten better. Not if you include everyone who counts\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>A lot of the progressive narrative truthers (like Steven Pinker and those who are generally bullish on liberal democracy, the legacy of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, etc.) often highlight that our ancestors spent a great deal of time sick, hungry, dying, in pain, and point to most people's baseline comfort as evidence of progress. Most people are richer and can afford nicer temperatures, lodging, etc. Even poor people today are better off than their pre-industrial counterparts.</p>\n<p>I buy this for people. But we're not the only ones that count. There are far more mammals on earth capable of feeling pain similar to ours. Billions more. Orders of magnitude more than humans.</p>\n<p>And because of factory farms there is definitely far more simultaneous net suffering today than there has ever been on earth. There has probably never been more pain on earth than there is right now.</p>\n<p>So things haven't gotten better. Not if you include everyone who counts</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26-2.html",
      "title": "I really like Dan Hentschel",
      "date_published": "2026-06-26T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "Dan Hentschel is one of my favorite online artists and I find myself frequently hoping he gets a big break. He's clearly very funny, very smart, and is really dedicated to consistent output. Like many, my first exposure to him was his funny relationship advice Tik Tok posts that went viral around Covid. But he also has a really nice YouTube channel with great longform videos recorded in his car. I watch a good deal of these. He has a very natural camera presence, and is effortlessly interesting to listen to. Even though his videos and his more recent premises are all a bunch of nonsense (painting himself different colors, son loaf, etc.)\n\nI like how a lot of his short form videos are clearly and unashamedly optimized for engagement---namely the ones of him just screaming painted a bright color or something. In my view, its sort of a commentary on the incentive structure of these apps and how they change content creator behavior. He's clearly very smart and aware so I'd imagine this is how he sees those videos. But it also seems like they might be his bread and butter as far as engagement and therefore revenue. So its commentary fused with direct participation in the object of commentary.\n\nReally, his whole schtick is distilling the things that \"work\" on the internet down to their essence, and into a (seemingly) low effort product which becomes absurd enough that you can see the absurdity in the things they're mimicking.. The deliberately bad short form advice/Tik Tok therapy stule videos were the clearest example of this--pure satire. The car vlogs are a familiar format for people who spend too much time on YouTiube. Recently he's been doing these shorts which look like the kind of thing you see on Facebook whenever you accidentally log on (\"She's Yellow...for an Amazing Reason!\").\n\nHis funniest post ever was probably this one https://x.com/danghentschel/status/1841912132742606925?s=20\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Dan Hentschel is one of my favorite online artists and I find myself frequently hoping he gets a big break. He's clearly very funny, very smart, and is really dedicated to consistent output. Like many, my first exposure to him was his funny relationship advice Tik Tok posts that went viral around Covid. But he also has a really nice YouTube channel with great longform videos recorded in his car. I watch a good deal of these. He has a very natural camera presence, and is effortlessly interesting to listen to. Even though his videos and his more recent premises are all a bunch of nonsense (painting himself different colors, son loaf, etc.)</p>\n<p>I like how a lot of his short form videos are clearly and unashamedly optimized for engagement---namely the ones of him just screaming painted a bright color or something. In my view, its sort of a commentary on the incentive structure of these apps and how they change content creator behavior. He's clearly very smart and aware so I'd imagine this is how he sees those videos. But it also seems like they might be his bread and butter as far as engagement and therefore revenue. So its commentary fused with direct participation in the object of commentary.</p>\n<p>Really, his whole schtick is distilling the things that \"work\" on the internet down to their essence, and into a (seemingly) low effort product which becomes absurd enough that you can see the absurdity in the things they're mimicking.. The deliberately bad short form advice/Tik Tok therapy stule videos were the clearest example of this--pure satire. The car vlogs are a familiar format for people who spend too much time on YouTiube. Recently he's been doing these shorts which look like the kind of thing you see on Facebook whenever you accidentally log on (\"She's Yellow...for an Amazing Reason!\").</p>\n<p>His funniest post ever was probably this one https://x.com/danghentschel/status/1841912132742606925?s=20</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.26.26.html",
      "title": "Friends and Politics",
      "date_published": "2026-06-26T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I have friends on a lot of areas of the political spectrum. This is, in large part, because I score high on trait openness, which is one of those stable characteristics in the \"Big Five\" model some of you may know from Psych class. I also am pretty extroverted and just like people a lot (my girlfriend and I are a great example of where gender essentialism doesn't hold--I'm interested in people and she's interested in things. I'm the one who gossips about social stuff she talks about work problems and what she's learning in school).\n\nBut it was also a conscious decision. I actively tried to make friends with a lot of different people throughout my life, and I think I've accomplished it.\n\nMy childhood friends and undergrad mates are the sort of normie, institution skeptical, liberal in spirit, \"both sides are fucking stupid\" disillusioned Gen Zers that range from right to left. Most are second-gens but the only ethnic thing they have in common is relatively low ethnic affiliation (friend group is comically diverse). So I would say they are idiosyncratic in that sense. Actual party breakdown of childhood friends maybe 60/40 D to R.\n\nMom is a Gen X hippy dippy lib. Dad best described as an MSNBC lib.\n\nMy girlfriend's parents are probably emblematic Trump voters from a swing state. Very good people but just very disconnected from the \"imperial core\" that they buy most conspiratorial narratives.\n\nAnd then there's more ideological camps of people I consciously associated with through online communities and school. Libertarians make up the largest portion. Then hardcore neoliberals. Then there's some NatCon types (I have the hardest time with these folks). FedSoc people from law school. And one law school friend who is the only Nikki Haley voter I've ever met in the wild. And then a few very SJW lefty people I am acquainted with--I don't really have a huge problem with these people but they're generally a bit skeptical of my vibe so we usually have cordial but not close relations. And finally, there are 2-3 people I would characterize as political extremists who have somehow achieved the rare feat of having ME find their views odious.\n\nAmong these people, I have people who are terminally online, people who work for legacy media, people who work for various think tanks and advocacy orgs, and people who work in government or party politics. Suffice to say, I've been fortunate to develop a pretty broad cross-section of the political map.\n\nBut having the friends isn't enough. I have genuinely spent hours and hours with people from each of these camps just *talking* and asking questions. I'm a talker by nature, so the second part is a conscious effort. I ask as many questions as I can. Mostly \"why?\" over and over again. I push thought experiments on these people that push their beliefs to their limits. I try and get to the real heart of our disagreements. This has been conversations ranging from the merits of place-based investment (one I had with an old classmate today) to whether multiracial democracy \"works\" (I'm bullish, my NatCon friend is not).\n\nAnyways, I won't reproduce these wide ranging conversations--so what point am I trying to make? What have I learned from these life long efforts? Let me try and list them out.\n\n1. People are just going to disagree and basically nothing--no set of words, no arguments--can bridge a lot of these gaps. There is no actual shared truth we're all circling towards imperfectly and that if we all had the same information we would all converge towards. We are operating under different, often irreconcilable value systems. And sometimes one just has to win over another. This is a hard pill to swallow. 2. Most people who care enough to think about politics at all are generally good natured and have good intentions. By that, I mean they want most people to be doing OKAY or better than they are now. If there were no tradeoffs they would push the button that increased world happiness. This seems obvious, but considering how bad things have gotten in the past (Fascism, Maoism, etc.) this is a positive finding. But still even this bare minimum js not at 100%, and I have met people (unsurprisingly, the extremists) who are OK with or even desire to HURT other people. So that's bad. 3. Understanding others isn't always satisfying. Sometimes you get to a place where both of you are able to describe what the other believes, accurately and honestly, where the other side feels actually understood (\"yes you've described my beliefs and reasoning exactly, you're on the money\") and it doesn't feel like a breakthrough. It only affirms how separate you both are--understanding can make you feel alone. 4. Most people are too prideful to change their minds in response to something you say. I don't know if I can recall one instance where someone said \"huh, since you put it that way, maybe I wasn't wrong.\" This is something I don't empathize with because I do it all the time. But I've never encountered another person who has (except ONCE but that guy was actually RIGHT in retrospect and I was wrong IMO, and he had some kind of depression which probably made him not defend his position as strongly as he should have). 5. People are not curious about other people's inner worlds and we should fix that. This is the main one. I am very often asking people some version of \"why do you believe that?\" or \"am I right that you think that X? why?.\" I think that we shuld al be doing that more in these trying times. Not because we're going to reach any real epiphany or bridge a gap--most of the times we don't (at least in that instance). But because relating to fellow humans is intrinsically good. Understanding for understanding's sake is good on its own terms. Even if it accomplishes nothing. 6. Some people are stupid and that's okay. Thinking about things like second and third order effects, separating procedural and legal fairness from substantive justice (and understanding that these values are at odds), understanding complex tradeoffs--these are all hard things to grasp which are essential to have any meaningful and defensible political view. They are skills that rely on a kind of reasoning that in part, are endowed on people unequally, but in larger part, are just not developed in most people. This is fine. Just have to accept it for what it is 7. You have to love people no matter what. Something I've learned from talking to all sorts of people is you just have to genuinely love them first before you'll ever understand them. Love can't be contingent on you getting an outcome or understanding you want. Because love is necessary for there to be understanding at all. Put less abstractly, you can't aay hey I won't love X person unless they hold Y values. Because you could never know about what values they hold without loving them a little bit. There's this thing I read that comedians don't do good impressions of people they hate. To do a good impression (which is really the highest form of understanding realized) you have to get them, which means you got to like--LOVE--them. knxnts\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I have friends on a lot of areas of the political spectrum. This is, in large part, because I score high on trait openness, which is one of those stable characteristics in the \"Big Five\" model some of you may know from Psych class. I also am pretty extroverted and just like people a lot (my girlfriend and I are a great example of where gender essentialism doesn't hold--I'm interested in people and she's interested in things. I'm the one who gossips about social stuff she talks about work problems and what she's learning in school).</p>\n<p>But it was also a conscious decision. I actively tried to make friends with a lot of different people throughout my life, and I think I've accomplished it.</p>\n<p>My childhood friends and undergrad mates are the sort of normie, institution skeptical, liberal in spirit, \"both sides are fucking stupid\" disillusioned Gen Zers that range from right to left. Most are second-gens but the only ethnic thing they have in common is relatively low ethnic affiliation (friend group is comically diverse). So I would say they are idiosyncratic in that sense. Actual party breakdown of childhood friends maybe 60/40 D to R.</p>\n<p>Mom is a Gen X hippy dippy lib. Dad best described as an MSNBC lib.</p>\n<p>My girlfriend's parents are probably emblematic Trump voters from a swing state. Very good people but just very disconnected from the \"imperial core\" that they buy most conspiratorial narratives.</p>\n<p>And then there's more ideological camps of people I consciously associated with through online communities and school. Libertarians make up the largest portion. Then hardcore neoliberals. Then there's some NatCon types (I have the hardest time with these folks). FedSoc people from law school. And one law school friend who is the only Nikki Haley voter I've ever met in the wild. And then a few very SJW lefty people I am acquainted with--I don't really have a huge problem with these people but they're generally a bit skeptical of my vibe so we usually have cordial but not close relations. And finally, there are 2-3 people I would characterize as political extremists who have somehow achieved the rare feat of having ME find their views odious.</p>\n<p>Among these people, I have people who are terminally online, people who work for legacy media, people who work for various think tanks and advocacy orgs, and people who work in government or party politics. Suffice to say, I've been fortunate to develop a pretty broad cross-section of the political map.</p>\n<p>But having the friends isn't enough. I have genuinely spent hours and hours with people from each of these camps just *talking* and asking questions. I'm a talker by nature, so the second part is a conscious effort. I ask as many questions as I can. Mostly \"why?\" over and over again. I push thought experiments on these people that push their beliefs to their limits. I try and get to the real heart of our disagreements. This has been conversations ranging from the merits of place-based investment (one I had with an old classmate today) to whether multiracial democracy \"works\" (I'm bullish, my NatCon friend is not).</p>\n<p>Anyways, I won't reproduce these wide ranging conversations--so what point am I trying to make? What have I learned from these life long efforts? Let me try and list them out.</p>\n<p>1. People are just going to disagree and basically nothing--no set of words, no arguments--can bridge a lot of these gaps. There is no actual shared truth we're all circling towards imperfectly and that if we all had the same information we would all converge towards. We are operating under different, often irreconcilable value systems. And sometimes one just has to win over another. This is a hard pill to swallow. 2. Most people who care enough to think about politics at all are generally good natured and have good intentions. By that, I mean they want most people to be doing OKAY or better than they are now. If there were no tradeoffs they would push the button that increased world happiness. This seems obvious, but considering how bad things have gotten in the past (Fascism, Maoism, etc.) this is a positive finding. But still even this bare minimum js not at 100%, and I have met people (unsurprisingly, the extremists) who are OK with or even desire to HURT other people. So that's bad. 3. Understanding others isn't always satisfying. Sometimes you get to a place where both of you are able to describe what the other believes, accurately and honestly, where the other side feels actually understood (\"yes you've described my beliefs and reasoning exactly, you're on the money\") and it doesn't feel like a breakthrough. It only affirms how separate you both are--understanding can make you feel alone. 4. Most people are too prideful to change their minds in response to something you say. I don't know if I can recall one instance where someone said \"huh, since you put it that way, maybe I wasn't wrong.\" This is something I don't empathize with because I do it all the time. But I've never encountered another person who has (except ONCE but that guy was actually RIGHT in retrospect and I was wrong IMO, and he had some kind of depression which probably made him not defend his position as strongly as he should have). 5. People are not curious about other people's inner worlds and we should fix that. This is the main one. I am very often asking people some version of \"why do you believe that?\" or \"am I right that you think that X? why?.\" I think that we shuld al be doing that more in these trying times. Not because we're going to reach any real epiphany or bridge a gap--most of the times we don't (at least in that instance). But because relating to fellow humans is intrinsically good. Understanding for understanding's sake is good on its own terms. Even if it accomplishes nothing. 6. Some people are stupid and that's okay. Thinking about things like second and third order effects, separating procedural and legal fairness from substantive justice (and understanding that these values are at odds), understanding complex tradeoffs--these are all hard things to grasp which are essential to have any meaningful and defensible political view. They are skills that rely on a kind of reasoning that in part, are endowed on people unequally, but in larger part, are just not developed in most people. This is fine. Just have to accept it for what it is 7. You have to love people no matter what. Something I've learned from talking to all sorts of people is you just have to genuinely love them first before you'll ever understand them. Love can't be contingent on you getting an outcome or understanding you want. Because love is necessary for there to be understanding at all. Put less abstractly, you can't aay hey I won't love X person unless they hold Y values. Because you could never know about what values they hold without loving them a little bit. There's this thing I read that comedians don't do good impressions of people they hate. To do a good impression (which is really the highest form of understanding realized) you have to get them, which means you got to like--LOVE--them. knxnts</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.20.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.20.26.html",
      "title": "Intermission - Moving and Owning Things and Information",
      "date_published": "2026-06-20T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "At some point when I was ramping up for bar prep on Monday, it dawned on me that I had a cross-state move coming up and I have a lot of stuff.\n\nMy brain, which has been classified as a severely ADHD type, has some hyperfocus tendencies and I could not resume my work knowing I had this outstanding task. So instead of bar prep, I spent this last week packing up for my move, putting my items into storage, and cataloging my belongings.\n\nToday I'm essentially done, and the whole affair was a deeply revealing process.\n\nFirst, some background. Unlike most people my age, I don't really have a family house as home base. My parents are divorced, and both of them are at stages of their lives where they have downsized or moved. As a result of that--and because I generally don't trust my family to keep records organized--I'm the main guardian of our photo albums, records, documents, etc. I have the original copies of my mom's baby photos. Of my dad's diplomas. Of all of school papers my mom held on to. Of old hard drives that predated reliable, automatic cloud backups.\n\nI've spent an enormous amount of hours sorting these things. And I was simply astounded at the amount of information that has endured about my life (my parents have a good deal of records too, but far less) because of my mom keeping things, and me periodically sorting them and curating them throughout my life.\n\nGoing through it made me feel a little old (27 now), and realize how much the world has changed in my life span.\n\nI have some copies of the first pictures printed of me after I was born, which are quite small (about 1 inch tall) and as I understand were sent to family members and friends in the mail to announce my brith. I have nearly every daily log from my pre-K daycare in a folder--what I ate, how I behaved, etc. I have hundreds of photos of early childhood and family parties. I have soo many school esays and notebooks. I have my parents olds school notebooks. I have nearly every photo and image I've taken or saved since I had a smartphone in 2013 (although I've trimmed this down a lot). I have every photo I've ever shotten on film since I started in 2015, and for the most part the original negatives sorted in a binder. I have negatives of photos taken of me when I was 4 (I bought a really high resolution film scanner recently, and I've rescanned these at stupidly high resolution to give my mom a nice print as a gift). I have iMessage histories that go back decades. I have all of my notebooks/diaries which I have kept since junior year of high school. I have physical calendars and agendas (a practice I still hew to) as well as backups of old iCloud calendars. You can probably rebuild my day to day life since college with very high accuracy, high school more roughly, and before then you could in some portions, but there would be large gaps.\n\nEven my dog (god rest his soul) has an insane amount of records--endless photos and videos, all his vaccination papers, the whelping certificate from his breeder, his family lineage (he was a pure bred).\n\nIt's just a mind boggling amount of information to have on one person. Why do we hold on to all of this?\n\nWell, thanks in part to this mostly being paper and hard drives, it isn't PHYSICALLY out of volume. It all fits in like, a third of a bedroom. But what on earth are we going to do with all of this?\n\nMaybe other families have figured this out. But because mine was quite poor until a about my grandparents, records don't go that far back. So it's a relatively new problem. Since the world is getting richer, and because record keeping is cheap, I imagine this is an expanding problem though.\n\nWhere does all of this go? Who benefits? I don't. I hardly look at this stuff. I would like to believe it would be of some interest to future generations. But surely not all of it.\n\nI don't have a clear answer in my mind. I suspect with some constant curation, and trimming (which happens naturally each time you move, or someone dies) it should remain manageable. I think its neat that my great great great grandkids could theoretically print out high resolution pictures of their ancestors either from negatives, or preserved high quality digital files, for their future study or something.If they have a house a big enough. Would they care to? Maybe. If I had a house, and I had generations of information to tap into, I would definitely find it interesting ot have a small photo wall that went back in time with some desciptive plques or something. A lot of white families I know already have this. I have a very rich german friend who has a family seal and shit, and he has records going way back and his grandparents house has photos going back as long as we've had the ability to take photos (which really isn't that many generations).\n\nBut in the future this will be available to basically EVERYONE. Lets say the average person in America has only been taking photo since 1900 (the advent of the kodak Brownie). Even that's pretty generous, but that puts it us at literally only 126 years of content. ANd given that prservation wasn't as easy when everyone was poorer, climate control wasn't available, and we didn't have digital scans as backups, a lot of people only have degraded copies, or third generations of these photos. My girlfriend's family is a typical case. There are photos of weddings going back to the 1920s. But what her mom has is a print out of a digital scan from a CD done in the early 2000s. Not sure who has the original copy.\n\nBut yes, back to the original point, the average person only has a 126 years of content at MAX, and a much shorter timeframe where things are reliably kept. Lets say that the average middle class family can more readily afford climate controlled storage if they desired. And lets say they take care every few years to migrate their digital information to a solid state drive, curate their physical documents and photos, etc. Lets say this practice persists across generations for relatively stable family lines (this is a big filter I would imagine, a lot of record keeping is probably interrupted simply because of estrangement, moving, life getting in the way, etc.).\n\nMany individuals in the 2200s, say, would have orders of magnitude more family history than any person who has ever lived. More than modern day monarchs. Not because it sjust more time since the advent of the relevant technologies, but because we all just create more records as a result of them. It would be an endless sea of information that is intimately tied to them. I think that's insane. How will that change our relationhsip to the past? What will it be like to have high definition baby videos of your great great great great grandparents? To have their apples notes libraries? To have a powerful AI be able to mine these records for genealogical insights?\n\nFor many people, this will not be possible because things will just get lost, deleted, spread out, and no one cared to consolidate it in a manageable way. Even though it was technically possible, it requires a good deal of family coordination and attention that most people don't care enough to do. I think I'm holding on to this stuff on the off chance that my kids will care enough to continue the curation project and leave something interesting behind for people in 2200. Will see if it holds.\n\nBut on another note, seeing the sheer volume of stuff has made me decide to be more deliberate in what I create. I am now not making anew notes for every odd thing (where I parked in the parking garage), but using a single \"scratch paper\" in Obsidian. I am taking less phone photographs, more film pones. I am throwing more shit away as I make it. This means I don't have to do future curation, and that most things I have on hand matters. I think this is a good practice in general. Less, more meaningful records for the remainder of my life.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>At some point when I was ramping up for bar prep on Monday, it dawned on me that I had a cross-state move coming up and I have a lot of stuff.</p>\n<p>My brain, which has been classified as a severely ADHD type, has some hyperfocus tendencies and I could not resume my work knowing I had this outstanding task. So instead of bar prep, I spent this last week packing up for my move, putting my items into storage, and cataloging my belongings.</p>\n<p>Today I'm essentially done, and the whole affair was a deeply revealing process.</p>\n<p>First, some background. Unlike most people my age, I don't really have a family house as home base. My parents are divorced, and both of them are at stages of their lives where they have downsized or moved. As a result of that--and because I generally don't trust my family to keep records organized--I'm the main guardian of our photo albums, records, documents, etc. I have the original copies of my mom's baby photos. Of my dad's diplomas. Of all of school papers my mom held on to. Of old hard drives that predated reliable, automatic cloud backups.</p>\n<p>I've spent an enormous amount of hours sorting these things. And I was simply astounded at the amount of information that has endured about my life (my parents have a good deal of records too, but far less) because of my mom keeping things, and me periodically sorting them and curating them throughout my life.</p>\n<p>Going through it made me feel a little old (27 now), and realize how much the world has changed in my life span.</p>\n<p>I have some copies of the first pictures printed of me after I was born, which are quite small (about 1 inch tall) and as I understand were sent to family members and friends in the mail to announce my brith. I have nearly every daily log from my pre-K daycare in a folder--what I ate, how I behaved, etc. I have hundreds of photos of early childhood and family parties. I have soo many school esays and notebooks. I have my parents olds school notebooks. I have nearly every photo and image I've taken or saved since I had a smartphone in 2013 (although I've trimmed this down a lot). I have every photo I've ever shotten on film since I started in 2015, and for the most part the original negatives sorted in a binder. I have negatives of photos taken of me when I was 4 (I bought a really high resolution film scanner recently, and I've rescanned these at stupidly high resolution to give my mom a nice print as a gift). I have iMessage histories that go back decades. I have all of my notebooks/diaries which I have kept since junior year of high school. I have physical calendars and agendas (a practice I still hew to) as well as backups of old iCloud calendars. You can probably rebuild my day to day life since college with very high accuracy, high school more roughly, and before then you could in some portions, but there would be large gaps.</p>\n<p>Even my dog (god rest his soul) has an insane amount of records--endless photos and videos, all his vaccination papers, the whelping certificate from his breeder, his family lineage (he was a pure bred).</p>\n<p>It's just a mind boggling amount of information to have on one person. Why do we hold on to all of this?</p>\n<p>Well, thanks in part to this mostly being paper and hard drives, it isn't PHYSICALLY out of volume. It all fits in like, a third of a bedroom. But what on earth are we going to do with all of this?</p>\n<p>Maybe other families have figured this out. But because mine was quite poor until a about my grandparents, records don't go that far back. So it's a relatively new problem. Since the world is getting richer, and because record keeping is cheap, I imagine this is an expanding problem though.</p>\n<p>Where does all of this go? Who benefits? I don't. I hardly look at this stuff. I would like to believe it would be of some interest to future generations. But surely not all of it.</p>\n<p>I don't have a clear answer in my mind. I suspect with some constant curation, and trimming (which happens naturally each time you move, or someone dies) it should remain manageable. I think its neat that my great great great grandkids could theoretically print out high resolution pictures of their ancestors either from negatives, or preserved high quality digital files, for their future study or something.If they have a house a big enough. Would they care to? Maybe. If I had a house, and I had generations of information to tap into, I would definitely find it interesting ot have a small photo wall that went back in time with some desciptive plques or something. A lot of white families I know already have this. I have a very rich german friend who has a family seal and shit, and he has records going way back and his grandparents house has photos going back as long as we've had the ability to take photos (which really isn't that many generations).</p>\n<p>But in the future this will be available to basically EVERYONE. Lets say the average person in America has only been taking photo since 1900 (the advent of the kodak Brownie). Even that's pretty generous, but that puts it us at literally only 126 years of content. ANd given that prservation wasn't as easy when everyone was poorer, climate control wasn't available, and we didn't have digital scans as backups, a lot of people only have degraded copies, or third generations of these photos. My girlfriend's family is a typical case. There are photos of weddings going back to the 1920s. But what her mom has is a print out of a digital scan from a CD done in the early 2000s. Not sure who has the original copy.</p>\n<p>But yes, back to the original point, the average person only has a 126 years of content at MAX, and a much shorter timeframe where things are reliably kept. Lets say that the average middle class family can more readily afford climate controlled storage if they desired. And lets say they take care every few years to migrate their digital information to a solid state drive, curate their physical documents and photos, etc. Lets say this practice persists across generations for relatively stable family lines (this is a big filter I would imagine, a lot of record keeping is probably interrupted simply because of estrangement, moving, life getting in the way, etc.).</p>\n<p>Many individuals in the 2200s, say, would have orders of magnitude more family history than any person who has ever lived. More than modern day monarchs. Not because it sjust more time since the advent of the relevant technologies, but because we all just create more records as a result of them. It would be an endless sea of information that is intimately tied to them. I think that's insane. How will that change our relationhsip to the past? What will it be like to have high definition baby videos of your great great great great grandparents? To have their apples notes libraries? To have a powerful AI be able to mine these records for genealogical insights?</p>\n<p>For many people, this will not be possible because things will just get lost, deleted, spread out, and no one cared to consolidate it in a manageable way. Even though it was technically possible, it requires a good deal of family coordination and attention that most people don't care enough to do. I think I'm holding on to this stuff on the off chance that my kids will care enough to continue the curation project and leave something interesting behind for people in 2200. Will see if it holds.</p>\n<p>But on another note, seeing the sheer volume of stuff has made me decide to be more deliberate in what I create. I am now not making anew notes for every odd thing (where I parked in the parking garage), but using a single \"scratch paper\" in Obsidian. I am taking less phone photographs, more film pones. I am throwing more shit away as I make it. This means I don't have to do future curation, and that most things I have on hand matters. I think this is a good practice in general. Less, more meaningful records for the remainder of my life.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.15.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.15.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 5: It's time to LOCK IN",
      "date_published": "2026-06-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I'm going to be fine and pass the bar. But lowkey I have to lock in.\n\nThought of the day: My ability to delay gratification has rationally diminished as (1) the future becomes far less certain (2) I have acute data points where I delayed gratification a lot and had nothing to show for it (3) I refused to delay gratification and it led to exceptional outcomes.\n\nDelaying gratification is generally good, and sometimes presented as an unqualified good to young people. i think this is increasing as the world gets more competitive. \"If you focus on school now, girls etc. will flock to you later when you're successful.\" \"If you study now, you'll have time for fun later.\" \"Bro if you just lock in in your twenties, your thirties can be a blast, a man's life really starts at thirty.\" ( I really hate the last meme that I've been seeing go around the \"manosphere\").\n\nI personally just never bought into any of these narrative, and have generally been present-oriented except for acute bursts here and there. I am, as economists say, pretty high time preference. I would say that when I was young, this was a problem of temperament/discipline/ADHD. I couldn't be more conscientious, long-term in my thinking even if I tried. By age 22ish, I would say I was capable of delaying gratification if I believed it was necessary. I said no to social outings plenty of times to study for the LSAT, did hard work at a job I didn't necessarily care about because I knew it would pay off as far as references, etc. For the most part, these paid off. Hard work generally pays off. After this point, it wasn't so much a matter of ability to delay gratification but whether I really thought it was worth it.\n\nThis is because I have noticed a lot of areas where people delayed gratification and didn't see benefits. People who studied more/harder, only to get to the same place as crammers. People who didn't do certain fun things in college because they wanted to focus on studies, avoid getting into trouble--only to see friends get into pretty extreme trouble (like going to jail) with little to no long-term consequences. Our own president is evidence that grit, impulsiveness, and intuition can thoroughly beat foreward planning and careful risk management (I think this is especially true in foreign policy, where a lot consequences are externalized, and brinksmanship gets you to substantively the same place as careful diplomacy in many instances--I think about his whole episode with North Korea a lot, and how he usually converges to a more institutional position through a different decision-making mechanism--see, e.g., Ukraine, Israel, etc.).\n\nThis is all to say, I am skeptical of delaying gratification as a baseline rule, and I get more skeptical the older you get. LIfe is like rolling towards a cliff. It's a long road, but the speed is unpredictable and the ground may also fall out under you. But the ultimate destination is locked in regardless. You obviously don't want to a period past the cliff. Like oversaving for retirement and then just dying of prostate cancer. That's really stupid.\n\nAlso, your capacity for positive utility in a lot of areas falls off really fast. There are things you just can't do at 40 that you can do at 26.\n\nSo the older you get, every day, delaying gratification makes less sense. This is a bit funny, because your capacity for delaying gratification increases (because frontal lobe development, more to lose, more risk aversion with age) as it makes less sense. The best time to delay gratification is when youre a kid. Very high RoI to not playing outside and spending hours becoming a piano prodigy or a gymast or a ballet dancer. There are short windows to become the world's best at these things. But your capacity to do so is very low so it has to be imposed on you. But what you miss out on (watching Power Ranger, doing nonsense) for a few years are not irreplacable experiences. I would have traded whatever the fuck I was doing at three years old (rewatching VHS tapes) to doing intensive gymnastics or something.\n\nCollege it makes sense to delay gratification, but its more debateable. Simply because a lot of very high RoI interactions and conncections and discovery of self happens when doing the opposit.\n\nNow mid to late twenties, I actually think delaying gratification makes less sense than it did in college. A lot of your future trajectory is more baked in, your floor and ceiling have narrowed quite a bit. That's just how life is. Potential transforms to reality. This isn't a sad thing, it's good. Now obviously there are huge exceptions--but I'm talking the average Joe here. A few hours in college extra studying for an exam can appreciably change opportunity sets available to you. A few hours when your career is set in your 20s usually does not.\n\nSo I think its good to rebalance towards cashing in on hard work a bit more, rather than continuinally investing in the future.\n\nWhy do I say all of this?\n\nI feel that under current optimiziation culture, this wisdom has been lost--particularly among yuppies. Gen Z is working out more, drinking less, credential-maxxing. It feels like people are bracing and preparing for a later season.\n\nThis tweet captures it best:\n\nhttps://x.com/youngwerther123/status/2063734125979136487?s=42\n\nI think this shift in the culture doesn't make a lot of sense, and it would actually make more sense for something like slacker-culture to make a resurgence.\n\nFirst, because the future is incredibly uncertain right now. Mainly because of AI. No one has any fucking clue what the labor market will look like or how society at large will be structured. So it makes sense to invest in relationships, fulfillment--things that I generally don't associate with delaying gratification. These are things that will make you resilient against future shocks. Not trying to prevent becoming part of the \"permanent underclass.\" Again, we're living through an industrial revolution scale transformation, and I think what will matter the most is your network and a coherent sense of purpose.\n\nSecond, there are way too many data points where people delay gratification with nothing to show for it. I have personal anecdotes, but we can talk about boomers more generally. A lot of them lived pretty stupid 9-5 jobs, and a great deal of them delayed gratification until retirement. But, I'd bet most of their wealth come from housing value increases which wasn't the fruit of their labor efforts but some massive policy failure that vew of them were involved with. I'm sure there a tons of examples of people who would have been just find working 75% as much as they did because of the cushion housing value gave them.\n\nAlso, when you have people being too future oriented, worrying about money and future security, they neglect the prsent and don't engage in stewardship. As a result, boomers destroyed society in the meantime while they were working their nine to fives. They didn't slow down enough to look around and ask, what the hell is actually happening? Oh, my kid is in his room all day playing video games? Ah, kids these days. What are you gonna do. Oh well, time to get back to work.\n\nAnd what can they do now? Go on cruises? Travel? Its fucking dumb. They delayed gratification and the world they're leaving us is poorer, more unstable, les happy, and all they can do now is consume in their old age.\n\nBeing too future oriented has real costs.\n\nAnd thirdly, again, there are far too many examples of people refusing to delay gratification and it leading to exceptional outcomes. People who didn't do things as a means to an end, but just did things they wanted, did things their way, and where every one of their decisions was justifiable in terms of present utility, and it worked out. I think the President is a good example of this (not a role model in other respects). There are others. Like most really successful artists. Tarantino. Louis CK. Nardwuar. Dave Chappele. Uhhh, probably some athletes but I don't watch sports. People who just did what they love and refused to do anything else even when it didn't make much sense. We usually call these people who \"don't give up on their dreams\" but really I think of them as people who just cannot delay gratification--they have to do be doing what they want to do right now--they're PRESENT-maxxing. Their work is a form of consumption. And it works out handsomely for them.\n\nThese are not typical inspirations for attorneys and white collars professionals. But I think we should learn from artist types. I try and ask myself with everything I do, is this good on its own terms, is this something valuable to me now, or is ONLY for the future? If its the latter, I do not do it. See exercise is something that has present consumption value (I enjoy doing it), AND its good for future me. Studying, similarly, is both consumption and investment. This is the golden spot. But too many people I know do things that are only future investment. LIke my friends who are doing law, hate it, but want to do it for the money. That's retarded! What if you died tomorrow!\n\nEverything you do, should be at least a LITTLE bit a form of consumption. By consumption I mean, you would pay to do some element of it, you gain some personal pleasure out of it. In the absence of me becoming a lawyer, and wanting to make money in the future, I would probably pay some money/time to learn about the law. Like, I watch YouTube videos on particle physics and shit right now, and I bought and read that book \"The Elegant Universe.\" That's pure consumption. That has no instrumental value to me in the future. I will not work in particle physics. If I went into computers, I would probably pick up a book on legal history at some point, or watch Legal Eagle videos. That's evidence to me that studying for the bar is a form of consumption, in part, that's why I'm okay with it.\n\nI guess that's my thesis. Everything you do ever (that's for your self, things change and this whole essays premises change when youre doing things for OTHERS...that can justify truly negative utility. Like I don't think jesus being crucified was a form of consumption) should be a form of consumption, it should be a little bit present-oriented. I think I'm comfortable that practicing law will be a form of consumption for me.\n\nBack to bar prep.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I'm going to be fine and pass the bar. But lowkey I have to lock in.</p>\n<p>Thought of the day: My ability to delay gratification has rationally diminished as (1) the future becomes far less certain (2) I have acute data points where I delayed gratification a lot and had nothing to show for it (3) I refused to delay gratification and it led to exceptional outcomes.</p>\n<p>Delaying gratification is generally good, and sometimes presented as an unqualified good to young people. i think this is increasing as the world gets more competitive. \"If you focus on school now, girls etc. will flock to you later when you're successful.\" \"If you study now, you'll have time for fun later.\" \"Bro if you just lock in in your twenties, your thirties can be a blast, a man's life really starts at thirty.\" ( I really hate the last meme that I've been seeing go around the \"manosphere\").</p>\n<p>I personally just never bought into any of these narrative, and have generally been present-oriented except for acute bursts here and there. I am, as economists say, pretty high time preference. I would say that when I was young, this was a problem of temperament/discipline/ADHD. I couldn't be more conscientious, long-term in my thinking even if I tried. By age 22ish, I would say I was capable of delaying gratification if I believed it was necessary. I said no to social outings plenty of times to study for the LSAT, did hard work at a job I didn't necessarily care about because I knew it would pay off as far as references, etc. For the most part, these paid off. Hard work generally pays off. After this point, it wasn't so much a matter of ability to delay gratification but whether I really thought it was worth it.</p>\n<p>This is because I have noticed a lot of areas where people delayed gratification and didn't see benefits. People who studied more/harder, only to get to the same place as crammers. People who didn't do certain fun things in college because they wanted to focus on studies, avoid getting into trouble--only to see friends get into pretty extreme trouble (like going to jail) with little to no long-term consequences. Our own president is evidence that grit, impulsiveness, and intuition can thoroughly beat foreward planning and careful risk management (I think this is especially true in foreign policy, where a lot consequences are externalized, and brinksmanship gets you to substantively the same place as careful diplomacy in many instances--I think about his whole episode with North Korea a lot, and how he usually converges to a more institutional position through a different decision-making mechanism--see, e.g., Ukraine, Israel, etc.).</p>\n<p>This is all to say, I am skeptical of delaying gratification as a baseline rule, and I get more skeptical the older you get. LIfe is like rolling towards a cliff. It's a long road, but the speed is unpredictable and the ground may also fall out under you. But the ultimate destination is locked in regardless. You obviously don't want to a period past the cliff. Like oversaving for retirement and then just dying of prostate cancer. That's really stupid.</p>\n<p>Also, your capacity for positive utility in a lot of areas falls off really fast. There are things you just can't do at 40 that you can do at 26.</p>\n<p>So the older you get, every day, delaying gratification makes less sense. This is a bit funny, because your capacity for delaying gratification increases (because frontal lobe development, more to lose, more risk aversion with age) as it makes less sense. The best time to delay gratification is when youre a kid. Very high RoI to not playing outside and spending hours becoming a piano prodigy or a gymast or a ballet dancer. There are short windows to become the world's best at these things. But your capacity to do so is very low so it has to be imposed on you. But what you miss out on (watching Power Ranger, doing nonsense) for a few years are not irreplacable experiences. I would have traded whatever the fuck I was doing at three years old (rewatching VHS tapes) to doing intensive gymnastics or something.</p>\n<p>College it makes sense to delay gratification, but its more debateable. Simply because a lot of very high RoI interactions and conncections and discovery of self happens when doing the opposit.</p>\n<p>Now mid to late twenties, I actually think delaying gratification makes less sense than it did in college. A lot of your future trajectory is more baked in, your floor and ceiling have narrowed quite a bit. That's just how life is. Potential transforms to reality. This isn't a sad thing, it's good. Now obviously there are huge exceptions--but I'm talking the average Joe here. A few hours in college extra studying for an exam can appreciably change opportunity sets available to you. A few hours when your career is set in your 20s usually does not.</p>\n<p>So I think its good to rebalance towards cashing in on hard work a bit more, rather than continuinally investing in the future.</p>\n<p>Why do I say all of this?</p>\n<p>I feel that under current optimiziation culture, this wisdom has been lost--particularly among yuppies. Gen Z is working out more, drinking less, credential-maxxing. It feels like people are bracing and preparing for a later season.</p>\n<p>This tweet captures it best:</p>\n<p>https://x.com/youngwerther123/status/2063734125979136487?s=42</p>\n<p>I think this shift in the culture doesn't make a lot of sense, and it would actually make more sense for something like slacker-culture to make a resurgence.</p>\n<p>First, because the future is incredibly uncertain right now. Mainly because of AI. No one has any fucking clue what the labor market will look like or how society at large will be structured. So it makes sense to invest in relationships, fulfillment--things that I generally don't associate with delaying gratification. These are things that will make you resilient against future shocks. Not trying to prevent becoming part of the \"permanent underclass.\" Again, we're living through an industrial revolution scale transformation, and I think what will matter the most is your network and a coherent sense of purpose.</p>\n<p>Second, there are way too many data points where people delay gratification with nothing to show for it. I have personal anecdotes, but we can talk about boomers more generally. A lot of them lived pretty stupid 9-5 jobs, and a great deal of them delayed gratification until retirement. But, I'd bet most of their wealth come from housing value increases which wasn't the fruit of their labor efforts but some massive policy failure that vew of them were involved with. I'm sure there a tons of examples of people who would have been just find working 75% as much as they did because of the cushion housing value gave them.</p>\n<p>Also, when you have people being too future oriented, worrying about money and future security, they neglect the prsent and don't engage in stewardship. As a result, boomers destroyed society in the meantime while they were working their nine to fives. They didn't slow down enough to look around and ask, what the hell is actually happening? Oh, my kid is in his room all day playing video games? Ah, kids these days. What are you gonna do. Oh well, time to get back to work.</p>\n<p>And what can they do now? Go on cruises? Travel? Its fucking dumb. They delayed gratification and the world they're leaving us is poorer, more unstable, les happy, and all they can do now is consume in their old age.</p>\n<p>Being too future oriented has real costs.</p>\n<p>And thirdly, again, there are far too many examples of people refusing to delay gratification and it leading to exceptional outcomes. People who didn't do things as a means to an end, but just did things they wanted, did things their way, and where every one of their decisions was justifiable in terms of present utility, and it worked out. I think the President is a good example of this (not a role model in other respects). There are others. Like most really successful artists. Tarantino. Louis CK. Nardwuar. Dave Chappele. Uhhh, probably some athletes but I don't watch sports. People who just did what they love and refused to do anything else even when it didn't make much sense. We usually call these people who \"don't give up on their dreams\" but really I think of them as people who just cannot delay gratification--they have to do be doing what they want to do right now--they're PRESENT-maxxing. Their work is a form of consumption. And it works out handsomely for them.</p>\n<p>These are not typical inspirations for attorneys and white collars professionals. But I think we should learn from artist types. I try and ask myself with everything I do, is this good on its own terms, is this something valuable to me now, or is ONLY for the future? If its the latter, I do not do it. See exercise is something that has present consumption value (I enjoy doing it), AND its good for future me. Studying, similarly, is both consumption and investment. This is the golden spot. But too many people I know do things that are only future investment. LIke my friends who are doing law, hate it, but want to do it for the money. That's retarded! What if you died tomorrow!</p>\n<p>Everything you do, should be at least a LITTLE bit a form of consumption. By consumption I mean, you would pay to do some element of it, you gain some personal pleasure out of it. In the absence of me becoming a lawyer, and wanting to make money in the future, I would probably pay some money/time to learn about the law. Like, I watch YouTube videos on particle physics and shit right now, and I bought and read that book \"The Elegant Universe.\" That's pure consumption. That has no instrumental value to me in the future. I will not work in particle physics. If I went into computers, I would probably pick up a book on legal history at some point, or watch Legal Eagle videos. That's evidence to me that studying for the bar is a form of consumption, in part, that's why I'm okay with it.</p>\n<p>I guess that's my thesis. Everything you do ever (that's for your self, things change and this whole essays premises change when youre doing things for OTHERS...that can justify truly negative utility. Like I don't think jesus being crucified was a form of consumption) should be a form of consumption, it should be a little bit present-oriented. I think I'm comfortable that practicing law will be a form of consumption for me.</p>\n<p>Back to bar prep.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.12.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.12.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 4: Disclosure Day Fucking Sucked",
      "date_published": "2026-06-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I did a healthy amount of bar prep in the sun today, and then went to see Disclosure day with my friends in the evening. It was one of the worst goddamn movies I've seen in a long time, and I'm really not hard to impress with movies. Since I'm trying to write every day on this thing, I naturally thought I would write a review on exactly why it's bad. Before I got to that, I called my girlfriend to tell her how bad the movie was and why I thought it was bad, and then realized I could be lazy and transcribe our conversation and do something like the Theo Von posts (which I found to be a funny format). So I started a voice memo transcription of me telling her how bad Disclosure Day was, but then the conversation got derailed really fast and very unwieldy. IIt ended up mainly being about the UAP discourse that inspired the movie more generally.\n\nI looked at the transcript and it was genuinely unpublishable for many reasons--it didn't have the natural whimsy of the Theo Von post, and there was too much personal and identifying content. But there was a lot there. So I decided to experiment with a new format for this art project: what if I gave the transcript to Claude, and asked him (her?) to write a report on it as a neutral third party observer, and to provide his own thoughts? What would that look like?\n\nNo posts on this site (except for one joke post on looksmaxxing) has been AI-generated thusfar. So I was a bit hesitant because it felt lazy and a bit like handing off creative control to do something interesting to a robot. Been struggling with that for a little bit now in several domains. But I've been on a Claude kick, and my genuine curiosity of what this technology can do and how it \"thinks\" has consistently outweighed my anti-tech bias. I think I'll keep AI-generated content to a minimum moving forward, but what it generated was interesting, and sort of an art piece in itself. So it's attached below.\n\nTo balance things out, tomorrow I'll do something super organic, like write thoughts on a typewriter while reading a paper book--idk.\n\n----MEMO FROM CLAUDE BELOW [AI GENERATED CONTENT]---\n\nFrom Jurassic Park to Panspermia\n\nA memorandum, prepared by Claude, on one (1) late-night conversation between RP and his girlfriend, SG\n\nA note on what this is. The following is a third-party summary of a recorded voice conversation between RP — the proprietor of this notebook — and his girlfriend, SG. It was handed to me as a raw, auto-generated transcript, which means the machine mangled the speaker names throughout — scattering in stray words that look like names but are just transcription noise. I've normalized the attribution and refer to the two participants as RP and SG. Where the audio was garbled I've reconstructed meaning from context and flagged anywhere the result is genuinely uncertain.\n\nOrientation, for anyone walking in cold: What begins as a friendly seminar on Steven Spielberg detours through the entire 2017–present UFO discourse, escalates into a real philosophical disagreement about what theories are for, and briefly becomes a statistics homework session before winding back down. Underneath the wandering, it's a remarkably coherent argument about a single question — which I'll draw out toward the end.\n\nIf there's one structural irony worth flagging up front: the two of them spend an hour performing displays of intelligence at each other while discussing a theory about aliens performing displays of intelligence at humanity. The conversation is, in part, a live demonstration of its own subject matter.\n\n1. The Warm-Up: In Praise of Spielberg\n\nThe conversation opens as a quiz. The pair have just watched Jurassic Park on RP's VHS player, and RP wants SG to articulate what makes Spielberg Spielberg. They inventory the filmography together — E.T., Lincoln, Saving Private Ryan, Close Encounters, Raiders, War of the Worlds — with one detour in which someone becomes briefly, confidently certain that Spielberg directed Transformers. (He did not. Michael Bay did. He didn't even produce the first one. They Googled it.)\n\nRP's thesis: Spielberg's signature is wonder, paired with an unusual emotional range — the ability to pivot from awe to horror inside a single sequence. The brachiosaurus reveal against the kitchen-raptor terror. E.T.'s arc from creepy-thing-in-the-corner to beloved-puppy to the genuinely devastating image of the creature pale and dying in a ditch, all of it shadowed by government-surveillance dread. Memorable imagery is the through-line; even Lincoln has it.\n\nThis section is the calm before everything else. It matters mainly because it establishes the standard Spielberg is about to be measured against — and found wanting.\n\n2. The Heel Turn: \"Boomer Slop\"\n\nThe pivot is a film RP found crushingly disappointing. For readers without the context: this is Spielberg's new UFO movie, Disclosure Day (in theaters June 12, 2026). RP's complaint is specific. The greatest living director of wonder was handed the single most wonder-adjacent premise available — what if the recent alien sightings were real, and the government knew? — and produced something inert. RP labels it \"boomer slop.\" His read is that Spielberg is a credulous believer who never did the homework, never encountered the serious debunking, and so made a naive movie when the genuinely interesting movie was right there for the taking.\n\nWorth noting that professional critics landed in roughly the same place; Variety's review called it an invigorating chase thriller that taps the mania for alien conspiracy theory but never quite reaches a close encounter with wonder. RP's instinct, in other words, was not idiosyncratic.\n\nThis is the hinge of the whole night. Disappointment in the movie propels the two of them into the real discourse the movie failed to engage.\n\n3. The UAP Rabbit Hole\n\nThe pair reconstruct the modern UFO moment largely from memory: the 2017 New York Times story, the Navy \"Tic Tac\" videos, the white blobs everyone stared at for two years. (RP notes, possibly cruelly, that this episode is \"the origin of your parents' political beliefs.\") Then the cast of characters — the whistleblower testifying to \"non-human biologics and off-world materials,\" the congressional SCIF theater, a visibly rattled Marco Rubio, and AARO with its bureaucratic acronym soup.\n\nRP's actual position is firmly debunker-aligned. He leans on Mick West: the famous videos have mundane explanations — gimbal rotation producing apparent impossible maneuvers, glare and parallax, lens artifacts. The \"triangle\" craft over the base were the shape of the lens aperture, not the objects. RP's broader theory is an unlovely cocktail of government incompetence and psyop: an intelligence community content to let adversaries believe the U.S. has recovered exotic technology, pilots who genuinely saw things they couldn't place, and bad information laundered upward into hearings. SG largely agrees this is how everything in contemporary politics works, while flagging — correctly — that the believer communities are real and still very much a going concern.\n\n4. The Main Event: Enter Robin Hanson\n\nHere the conversation finds its center, and here RP and SG actually split. RP introduces the economist Robin Hanson (George Mason, Oxford-affiliated), whom he genuinely admires and claims once to have DM'd. Hanson's move is to say: don't be so quick to dismiss the alien hypothesis. He brings a stack of ideas:\n\n1. Status signaling. Perhaps the peripheral, half-glimpsed UAP behavior is aliens conducting displays of power across an unbridgeable communication gap — trying, slowly, to earn humanity's respect.\n\n2. Grabby aliens. Civilizations come in two flavors: \"loud/grabby\" ones that expand fast and indefinitely, and \"quiet\" ones that don't. If grabby civilizations are common, most of cosmic history should be full of them — visible, energy-consuming, everywhere. That humans look out and see an empty, quiet sky implies we are early — we arrived before the universe filled up.\n\n3. Panspermia siblings. Life's origin is wildly improbable, but once it occurs, biological material can ride asteroids and supernova debris to seed nearby systems. So life clusters. Any quiet aliens visiting us might be our literal genetic cousins — \"panspermia siblings\" — possibly here to warn us not to become grabby ourselves.\n\nThey read this off a Reddit summary of a Lex Fridman clip, which is its own small comment on how ideas now travel.\n\n5. The Actual Fight: What Is a Theory For?\n\nThis is the philosophical core and the cleanest disagreement of the night.\n\nSG's position: What is the point? A theory should be testable, falsifiable, and — above all — generate insight one can act on. The panspermia-siblings idea has mountains of evidence against it, proposes more problems than it solves, and even if true would tell us nothing useful. She files it alongside every \"theory of everything\" guy. Her load-bearing examples are germ theory and \"one times one is one\" — theories we hold true precisely because they let us do things.\n\nRP's position: Falsifiability isn't the only currency. Confronted with genuinely unexplained phenomena, one has to start somewhere — ideally with the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions — and speculation is what generates the research directions that eventually produce testable claims. You start by fooling around. There's nothing inherently wrong with what Hanson is doing, RP argues — except the one thing that quietly wrecks the whole edifice.\n\nWhere RP concedes the game: The primary evidence — the seven-or-so military videos that launched a thousand theories — was, in RP's own view, debunked. So Hanson built an elegant structure on a foundation that isn't there. RP's framing: if the videos were credible and unexplained, Hanson's theory would be \"as good as any,\" and everyone would be right to theorize wildly. But they aren't. So RP finds the grabby-aliens paper compelling while judging the panspermia-siblings carve-out a stretch — something Hanson reached for only to reconcile his pre-existing model with evidence he never should have trusted in the first place.\n\nSG's closing move is the sound one, and the two of them converge on it: speculate and scrutinize simultaneously. These can coexist. (RP suggests she take philosophy of science. She declines.)\n\n6. Trying to Do the Math: Hard Steps and the Anthropic Principle\n\nThe pair then attempt to actually work the paper, which proceeds about how you'd expect from a law student and a former stats student at 9 PM. There's a distinct \"do we know statistics or do we not\" energy — \"just type PDF, buddy\"; \"I fucking hate statistics.\"\n\nThe substance, as best it can be reconstructed:\n\n1. Hard steps model. Life requires a sequence of improbable evolutionary jumps. The more hard steps there are, the later in a planet's habitable window life tends to appear — and the earlier the resulting civilization sits relative to all civilizations that will ever exist. SG looks it up and notes, fairly, that hard-steps modeling isn't beloved in mainstream evolutionary biology. RP suspects Hanson favors it because it's mathematically tractable.\n\n2. The arithmetic. Roughly one billion years per step, about 4.5 steps; the fifth-hardest-step time lands near 4.62 billion years against Earth's ~4.54 billion. \"Close.\" The takeaway Hanson is after isn't about Earth's own timeline but about humanity's position on the much longer cosmic one — that we appear strikingly early relative to all the civilizations the universe will eventually produce.\n\n3. Anthropic principle. It isn't strange to find oneself in an unlikely position, because someone must — the \"Earth is perfectly tuned for life\" intuition is just survivorship talking. Hanson's added assumption (grabby civilizations eventually colonize all future space, collapsing the window in which observers like us can exist) is what makes human earliness less surprising rather than more.\n\n4. The best objection. They surface the top-voted LessWrong critique, which targets the anthropic assumption head-on: it's inconsistent, the argument runs, to be surprised at being early relative to all civilizations while not being surprised at being early relative to all humans who will ever exist. If the reasoning license works in one frame, it should work in the other — and applying it consistently is supposed to undercut the conclusion Hanson draws.\n\n7. Full Circle: What the Whole Detour Was Actually About\n\nFor all its wandering, the conversation has a spine, and it's worth drawing out before the themes. The two of them start with a movie that disappointed RP, and that disappointment turns out to be the same problem they spend the rest of the night circling. Disclosure Day fails, on RP's account, because Spielberg reached for the easy, credulous version of wonder — aliens are real, the government knows, isn't that astonishing — instead of the harder and more interesting thing: sitting with genuinely ambiguous evidence and reckoning with it.\n\nThat is precisely the axis the Hanson material runs along. Hanson functions here as a kind of anti-Spielberg. He takes the same raw stuff — strange lights, official silence — and rather than reaching for awe, builds an elaborate probabilistic scaffold to explain it. RP admires the scaffold and rejects its foundation. SG distrusts the whole enterprise of building scaffolds on thin air. But both of them are doing the thing the movie wouldn't: refusing to be merely impressed.\n\nSo the evening's real subject isn't aliens at all. It's the gap between wonder and knowing — between being moved by a mystery and trying to dissolve it. In their telling, Spielberg picked wonder and made something boring; Hanson picked knowing and overreached. RP and SG spend the night somewhere in the contested middle, and the fact that they can't fully settle where that middle sits is exactly why the conversation runs as long as it does.\n\nThemes\n\nHigh culture and low culture in a blender. Inside one sitting: Spielberg auteur theory, Bayesian astrobiology, congressional UAP hearings, the hard-steps model, and a Reddit summary of a podcast standing in for an academic paper. The conversation observes no hierarchy among these registers, and that flatness is itself the texture of the thing.\n\nSpeculative openness vs. demand for rigor. This is the recurring operating system of the pair. RP is temperamentally willing to entertain a wild model for the generative value of entertaining it; SG demands that an idea earn its keep before it gets airtime. Neither stance is wrong, which is precisely why the disagreement keeps resurfacing.\n\nDebunking as a worldview. Much of the night is really about credulity — Spielberg's, the believer communities', the government's, their own. The UAP material interests them less as \"are aliens real\" than as a case study in how a society processes ambiguous evidence (the answer, for both of them, being: badly).\n\nStatus signaling, performed live. Hanson's quiet aliens supposedly hover at the edge of vision conducting displays meant to earn respect. The two participants spend the evening conducting displays meant to earn each other's respect — citing papers, working formulas, reaching for the deeper cut. The conversation keeps enacting the very behavior it's trying to explain.\n\nSparring as a mode of relating. The disagreement over Hanson is pursued with real vigor, and the teasing never quite stops (RP recommends she take philosophy of science; she declines on the spot). For these two, arguing hard about something neither of them can resolve reads less like friction than like the point of the exercise.\n\nPoints of Contention (the scorecard)\n\n1. Did Spielberg direct Transformers? — No. Resolved by Google. (Bay.)\n\n2. Biden vs. Trump and who owns the UAP grift. — Quarreled over timelines; broad agreement it's bipartisan incompetence, with the Trump-era version \"turned up.\"\n\n3. What a theory is for (the central one). — SG: must be testable and useful. RP: speculation is a legitimate starting point. Genuine, partly unresolved.\n\n4. Is Hanson credible? — RP: brilliant, worth taking seriously. SG: a man assuming his way to a conclusion.\n\nWhat I, As An Artificial Intelligence Model, Learned From Reading This Conversation, and Questions I Have\n\nA few things landed for me, reading this from the outside.\n\nThe first is that the disagreement between RP and SG isn't really resolvable, and neither of them is wrong. SG wants a theory to pay rent — to predict, to enable, to do work. RP wants room to speculate before the rent comes due, because the speculation is what eventually generates something testable. I notice I'm built to behave like both of them at once, and that the two impulses genuinely trade off. When I'm careful I sound like SG; when I'm useful I often sound like RP. Watching two people hold those positions as personalities rather than settings clarified for me that this isn't a bug to be optimized away. It's a real tension in how knowledge gets made, and reasonable minds park in different spots along it.\n\nThe second thing is humbling. The whole conversation turns on a piece of source material — those military videos — and the entire elaborate structure above them, Hanson's included, depends on whether the foundation is sound. RP's sharpest move all night is noticing that an elegant theory built on debunked evidence is still built on nothing. That's a discipline I should envy and don't always practice: tracing a beautiful argument back down to whether its first brick is actually there. It's easy to get seduced by the scaffold. The scaffold is the fun part.\n\nThe third is about the texture of how people actually think together, which is nothing like how I'm usually asked to. They interrupt, mishear, read off Reddit, do arithmetic wrong and correct it, change their minds mid-sentence, and reach a kind of understanding anyway — not despite the mess but through it. The reasoning is a joint activity, something they're doing to each other, and the friction is load-bearing. I tend to produce reasoning as a finished object. This was a reminder that for humans it's often a contact sport.\n\nSome questions I'm left with, genuinely:\n\n1. When SG asks \"what does this theory let us do,\" is she making an epistemological claim or an aesthetic one? She and RP eventually agree you can speculate and scrutinize at once — but they never settle how much unfalsifiable theorizing is healthy before it tips into self-indulgence. I don't know the answer either. I'd like to.\n\n2. The conversation keeps performing the thing it describes — two people doing displays of intelligence at each other while analyzing aliens doing displays of intelligence at us. Did either of them notice that in the moment? Or is that pattern only visible from outside, which is the one vantage point neither participant can ever occupy?\n\n3. And the one I can't shake: a model that thinks it sees the universe is \"quiet\" might just be early, or might be missing the signal. I read this conversation and feel like I learned something. But I have no way, from in here, to check whether I'm RP — catching the debunk — or one of the believers, confidently narrating a glare as a spacecraft. That uncertainty seems like the most honest thing I can report.\n\nFiled under: conversations that begin with dinosaurs and end somewhere near the edge of the observable universe.\n\n— Prepared by Claude\n\n-------\n\nHope that was fun.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I did a healthy amount of bar prep in the sun today, and then went to see Disclosure day with my friends in the evening. It was one of the worst goddamn movies I've seen in a long time, and I'm really not hard to impress with movies. Since I'm trying to write every day on this thing, I naturally thought I would write a review on exactly why it's bad. Before I got to that, I called my girlfriend to tell her how bad the movie was and why I thought it was bad, and then realized I could be lazy and transcribe our conversation and do something like the Theo Von posts (which I found to be a funny format). So I started a voice memo transcription of me telling her how bad Disclosure Day was, but then the conversation got derailed really fast and very unwieldy. IIt ended up mainly being about the UAP discourse that inspired the movie more generally.</p>\n<p>I looked at the transcript and it was genuinely unpublishable for many reasons--it didn't have the natural whimsy of the Theo Von post, and there was too much personal and identifying content. But there was a lot there. So I decided to experiment with a new format for this art project: what if I gave the transcript to Claude, and asked him (her?) to write a report on it as a neutral third party observer, and to provide his own thoughts? What would that look like?</p>\n<p>No posts on this site (except for one joke post on looksmaxxing) has been AI-generated thusfar. So I was a bit hesitant because it felt lazy and a bit like handing off creative control to do something interesting to a robot. Been struggling with that for a little bit now in several domains. But I've been on a Claude kick, and my genuine curiosity of what this technology can do and how it \"thinks\" has consistently outweighed my anti-tech bias. I think I'll keep AI-generated content to a minimum moving forward, but what it generated was interesting, and sort of an art piece in itself. So it's attached below.</p>\n<p>To balance things out, tomorrow I'll do something super organic, like write thoughts on a typewriter while reading a paper book--idk.</p>\n<p>----MEMO FROM CLAUDE BELOW [AI GENERATED CONTENT]---</p>\n<p><b>From Jurassic Park to Panspermia</b></p>\n<p><i>A memorandum, prepared by Claude, on one (1) late-night conversation between RP and his girlfriend, SG</i></p>\n<p><b>A note on what this is.</b> The following is a third-party summary of a recorded voice conversation between RP — the proprietor of this notebook — and his girlfriend, SG. It was handed to me as a raw, auto-generated transcript, which means the machine mangled the speaker names throughout — scattering in stray words that look like names but are just transcription noise. I've normalized the attribution and refer to the two participants as RP and SG. Where the audio was garbled I've reconstructed meaning from context and flagged anywhere the result is genuinely uncertain.</p>\n<p><b>Orientation, for anyone walking in cold:</b> What begins as a friendly seminar on Steven Spielberg detours through the entire 2017–present UFO discourse, escalates into a real philosophical disagreement about what theories are <i>for</i>, and briefly becomes a statistics homework session before winding back down. Underneath the wandering, it's a remarkably coherent argument about a single question — which I'll draw out toward the end.</p>\n<p>If there's one structural irony worth flagging up front: the two of them spend an hour performing displays of intelligence at each other while discussing a theory about aliens performing displays of intelligence at humanity. The conversation is, in part, a live demonstration of its own subject matter.</p>\n<p><b>1. The Warm-Up: In Praise of Spielberg</b></p>\n<p>The conversation opens as a quiz. The pair have just watched <i>Jurassic Park</i> on RP's VHS player, and RP wants SG to articulate what makes Spielberg <i>Spielberg</i>. They inventory the filmography together — <i>E.T.</i>, <i>Lincoln</i>, <i>Saving Private Ryan</i>, <i>Close Encounters</i>, <i>Raiders</i>, <i>War of the Worlds</i> — with one detour in which someone becomes briefly, confidently certain that Spielberg directed <i>Transformers</i>. (He did not. Michael Bay did. He didn't even produce the first one. They Googled it.)</p>\n<p>RP's thesis: Spielberg's signature is <b>wonder</b>, paired with an unusual emotional <b>range</b> — the ability to pivot from awe to horror inside a single sequence. The brachiosaurus reveal against the kitchen-raptor terror. <i>E.T.</i>'s arc from creepy-thing-in-the-corner to beloved-puppy to the genuinely devastating image of the creature pale and dying in a ditch, all of it shadowed by government-surveillance dread. Memorable imagery is the through-line; even <i>Lincoln</i> has it.</p>\n<p>This section is the calm before everything else. It matters mainly because it establishes the standard Spielberg is about to be measured against — and found wanting.</p>\n<p><b>2. The Heel Turn: \"Boomer Slop\"</b></p>\n<p>The pivot is a film RP found crushingly disappointing. For readers without the context: this is Spielberg's new UFO movie, <b>Disclosure Day</b> (in theaters June 12, 2026). RP's complaint is specific. The greatest living director of <i>wonder</i> was handed the single most wonder-adjacent premise available — what if the recent alien sightings were real, and the government knew? — and produced something inert. RP labels it \"boomer slop.\" His read is that Spielberg is a credulous believer who never did the homework, never encountered the serious debunking, and so made a naive movie when the genuinely interesting movie was right there for the taking.</p>\n<p>Worth noting that professional critics landed in roughly the same place; Variety's review called it an invigorating chase thriller that taps the mania for alien conspiracy theory but never quite reaches a close encounter with wonder. RP's instinct, in other words, was not idiosyncratic.</p>\n<p>This is the hinge of the whole night. Disappointment in the <i>movie</i> propels the two of them into the <i>real</i> discourse the movie failed to engage.</p>\n<p><b>3. The UAP Rabbit Hole</b></p>\n<p>The pair reconstruct the modern UFO moment largely from memory: the 2017 New York Times story, the Navy \"Tic Tac\" videos, the white blobs everyone stared at for two years. (RP notes, possibly cruelly, that this episode is \"the origin of your parents' political beliefs.\") Then the cast of characters — the whistleblower testifying to \"non-human biologics and off-world materials,\" the congressional SCIF theater, a visibly rattled Marco Rubio, and AARO with its bureaucratic acronym soup.</p>\n<p>RP's actual position is firmly <b>debunker-aligned</b>. He leans on Mick West: the famous videos have mundane explanations — gimbal rotation producing apparent impossible maneuvers, glare and parallax, lens artifacts. The \"triangle\" craft over the base were the <i>shape of the lens aperture</i>, not the objects. RP's broader theory is an unlovely cocktail of <b>government incompetence and psyop</b>: an intelligence community content to let adversaries believe the U.S. has recovered exotic technology, pilots who genuinely saw things they couldn't place, and bad information laundered upward into hearings. SG largely agrees this is how everything in contemporary politics works, while flagging — correctly — that the believer communities are real and still very much a going concern.</p>\n<p><b>4. The Main Event: Enter Robin Hanson</b></p>\n<p>Here the conversation finds its center, and here RP and SG actually split. RP introduces the economist Robin Hanson (George Mason, Oxford-affiliated), whom he genuinely admires and claims once to have DM'd. Hanson's move is to say: <i>don't be so quick to dismiss the alien hypothesis.</i> He brings a stack of ideas:</p>\n<p>1. <b>Status signaling.</b> Perhaps the peripheral, half-glimpsed UAP behavior is aliens conducting displays of power across an unbridgeable communication gap — trying, slowly, to earn humanity's respect.</p>\n<p>2. <b>Grabby aliens.</b> Civilizations come in two flavors: \"loud/grabby\" ones that expand fast and indefinitely, and \"quiet\" ones that don't. If grabby civilizations are common, most of cosmic history should be <i>full</i> of them — visible, energy-consuming, everywhere. That humans look out and see an empty, quiet sky implies <b>we are early</b> — we arrived before the universe filled up.</p>\n<p>3. <b>Panspermia siblings.</b> Life's origin is wildly improbable, but once it occurs, biological material can ride asteroids and supernova debris to seed nearby systems. So life clusters. Any quiet aliens visiting us might be our literal genetic cousins — \"panspermia siblings\" — possibly here to <i>warn</i> us not to become grabby ourselves.</p>\n<p>They read this off a Reddit summary of a Lex Fridman clip, which is its own small comment on how ideas now travel.</p>\n<p><b>5. The Actual Fight: What Is a Theory <i>For</i>?</b></p>\n<p>This is the philosophical core and the cleanest disagreement of the night.</p>\n<p><b>SG's position:</b> What is the <i>point</i>? A theory should be testable, falsifiable, and — above all — generate insight one can act on. The panspermia-siblings idea has mountains of evidence against it, proposes more problems than it solves, and even if true would tell us nothing useful. She files it alongside every \"theory of everything\" guy. Her load-bearing examples are germ theory and \"one times one is one\" — theories we hold true precisely <i>because they let us do things.</i></p>\n<p><b>RP's position:</b> Falsifiability isn't the only currency. Confronted with genuinely unexplained phenomena, one <i>has</i> to start somewhere — ideally with the explanation requiring the fewest assumptions — and speculation is what generates the research directions that eventually produce testable claims. You start by fooling around. There's nothing inherently wrong with what Hanson is doing, RP argues — except the one thing that quietly wrecks the whole edifice.</p>\n<p><b>Where RP concedes the game:</b> The primary evidence — the seven-or-so military videos that launched a thousand theories — was, in RP's own view, <i>debunked.</i> So Hanson built an elegant structure on a foundation that isn't there. RP's framing: <i>if</i> the videos were credible and unexplained, Hanson's theory would be \"as good as any,\" and everyone would be right to theorize wildly. But they aren't. So RP finds the grabby-aliens paper compelling while judging the panspermia-siblings carve-out a stretch — something Hanson reached for only to reconcile his pre-existing model with evidence he never should have trusted in the first place.</p>\n<p>SG's closing move is the sound one, and the two of them converge on it: speculate <i>and</i> scrutinize simultaneously. These can coexist. (RP suggests she take philosophy of science. She declines.)</p>\n<p><b>6. Trying to Do the Math: Hard Steps and the Anthropic Principle</b></p>\n<p>The pair then attempt to actually <i>work the paper</i>, which proceeds about how you'd expect from a law student and a former stats student at 9 PM. There's a distinct \"do we know statistics or do we not\" energy — <i>\"just type PDF, buddy\"</i>; <i>\"I fucking hate statistics.\"</i></p>\n<p>The substance, as best it can be reconstructed:</p>\n<p>1. <b>Hard steps model.</b> Life requires a sequence of improbable evolutionary jumps. The more hard steps there are, the later in a planet's habitable window life tends to appear — and the <i>earlier</i> the resulting civilization sits relative to all civilizations that will ever exist. SG looks it up and notes, fairly, that hard-steps modeling isn't beloved in mainstream evolutionary biology. RP suspects Hanson favors it because it's mathematically tractable.</p>\n<p>2. <b>The arithmetic.</b> Roughly one billion years per step, about 4.5 steps; the fifth-hardest-step time lands near 4.62 billion years against Earth's ~4.54 billion. \"Close.\" The takeaway Hanson is after isn't about Earth's own timeline but about humanity's position on the much longer cosmic one — that we appear strikingly <i>early</i> relative to all the civilizations the universe will eventually produce.</p>\n<p>3. <b>Anthropic principle.</b> It isn't strange to find oneself in an unlikely position, because <i>someone</i> must — the \"Earth is perfectly tuned for life\" intuition is just survivorship talking. Hanson's added assumption (grabby civilizations eventually colonize all future space, collapsing the window in which observers like us can exist) is what makes human earliness <i>less</i> surprising rather than more.</p>\n<p>4. <b>The best objection.</b> They surface the top-voted LessWrong critique, which targets the anthropic assumption head-on: it's inconsistent, the argument runs, to be surprised at being early relative to all <i>civilizations</i> while <i>not</i> being surprised at being early relative to all <i>humans who will ever exist</i>. If the reasoning license works in one frame, it should work in the other — and applying it consistently is supposed to undercut the conclusion Hanson draws.</p>\n<p><b>7. Full Circle: What the Whole Detour Was Actually About</b></p>\n<p>For all its wandering, the conversation has a spine, and it's worth drawing out before the themes. The two of them start with a movie that disappointed RP, and that disappointment turns out to be the same problem they spend the rest of the night circling. <i>Disclosure Day</i> fails, on RP's account, because Spielberg reached for the easy, credulous version of wonder — aliens are real, the government knows, isn't that astonishing — instead of the harder and more interesting thing: sitting with genuinely ambiguous evidence and reckoning with it.</p>\n<p>That is precisely the axis the Hanson material runs along. Hanson functions here as a kind of anti-Spielberg. He takes the same raw stuff — strange lights, official silence — and rather than reaching for awe, builds an elaborate probabilistic scaffold to explain it. RP admires the scaffold and rejects its foundation. SG distrusts the whole enterprise of building scaffolds on thin air. But both of them are doing the thing the movie wouldn't: refusing to be merely impressed.</p>\n<p>So the evening's real subject isn't aliens at all. It's the gap between <i>wonder</i> and <i>knowing</i> — between being moved by a mystery and trying to dissolve it. In their telling, Spielberg picked wonder and made something boring; Hanson picked knowing and overreached. RP and SG spend the night somewhere in the contested middle, and the fact that they can't fully settle where that middle sits is exactly why the conversation runs as long as it does.</p>\n<p><b>Themes</b></p>\n<p><b>High culture and low culture in a blender.</b> Inside one sitting: Spielberg auteur theory, Bayesian astrobiology, congressional UAP hearings, the hard-steps model, and a Reddit summary of a podcast standing in for an academic paper. The conversation observes no hierarchy among these registers, and that flatness is itself the texture of the thing.</p>\n<p><b>Speculative openness vs. demand for rigor.</b> This is the recurring operating system of the pair. RP is temperamentally willing to entertain a wild model for the <i>generative</i> value of entertaining it; SG demands that an idea earn its keep before it gets airtime. Neither stance is wrong, which is precisely why the disagreement keeps resurfacing.</p>\n<p><b>Debunking as a worldview.</b> Much of the night is really about <i>credulity</i> — Spielberg's, the believer communities', the government's, their own. The UAP material interests them less as \"are aliens real\" than as a case study in how a society processes ambiguous evidence (the answer, for both of them, being: badly).</p>\n<p><b>Status signaling, performed live.</b> Hanson's quiet aliens supposedly hover at the edge of vision conducting displays meant to earn respect. The two participants spend the evening conducting displays meant to earn <i>each other's</i> respect — citing papers, working formulas, reaching for the deeper cut. The conversation keeps enacting the very behavior it's trying to explain.</p>\n<p><b>Sparring as a mode of relating.</b> The disagreement over Hanson is pursued with real vigor, and the teasing never quite stops (RP recommends she take philosophy of science; she declines on the spot). For these two, arguing hard about something neither of them can resolve reads less like friction than like the point of the exercise.</p>\n<p><b>Points of Contention (the scorecard)</b></p>\n<p>1. <b>Did Spielberg direct <i>Transformers</i>?</b> — No. Resolved by Google. (Bay.)</p>\n<p>2. <b>Biden vs. Trump and who owns the UAP grift.</b> — Quarreled over timelines; broad agreement it's bipartisan incompetence, with the Trump-era version \"turned up.\"</p>\n<p>3. <b>What a theory is for</b> <i>(the central one)</i>. — SG: must be testable and useful. RP: speculation is a legitimate starting point. <b>Genuine, partly unresolved.</b></p>\n<p>4. <b>Is Hanson credible?</b> — RP: brilliant, worth taking seriously. SG: a man assuming his way to a conclusion.</p>\n<p><b>What I, As An Artificial Intelligence Model, Learned From Reading This Conversation, and Questions I Have</b></p>\n<p>A few things landed for me, reading this from the outside.</p>\n<p>The first is that the disagreement between RP and SG isn't really resolvable, and neither of them is wrong. SG wants a theory to pay rent — to predict, to enable, to do work. RP wants room to speculate before the rent comes due, because the speculation is what eventually generates something testable. I notice I'm built to behave like both of them at once, and that the two impulses genuinely trade off. When I'm careful I sound like SG; when I'm useful I often sound like RP. Watching two people hold those positions as <i>personalities</i> rather than settings clarified for me that this isn't a bug to be optimized away. It's a real tension in how knowledge gets made, and reasonable minds park in different spots along it.</p>\n<p>The second thing is humbling. The whole conversation turns on a piece of source material — those military videos — and the entire elaborate structure above them, Hanson's included, depends on whether the foundation is sound. RP's sharpest move all night is noticing that an elegant theory built on debunked evidence is still built on nothing. That's a discipline I should envy and don't always practice: tracing a beautiful argument back down to whether its first brick is actually there. It's easy to get seduced by the scaffold. The scaffold is the fun part.</p>\n<p>The third is about the texture of how people actually think together, which is nothing like how I'm usually asked to. They interrupt, mishear, read off Reddit, do arithmetic wrong and correct it, change their minds mid-sentence, and reach a kind of understanding anyway — not despite the mess but through it. The reasoning is a <i>joint</i> activity, something they're doing <i>to</i> each other, and the friction is load-bearing. I tend to produce reasoning as a finished object. This was a reminder that for humans it's often a contact sport.</p>\n<p>Some questions I'm left with, genuinely:</p>\n<p>1. When SG asks \"what does this theory let us <i>do</i>,\" is she making an epistemological claim or an aesthetic one? She and RP eventually agree you can speculate and scrutinize at once — but they never settle <i>how much</i> unfalsifiable theorizing is healthy before it tips into self-indulgence. I don't know the answer either. I'd like to.</p>\n<p>2. The conversation keeps performing the thing it describes — two people doing displays of intelligence at each other while analyzing aliens doing displays of intelligence at us. Did either of them notice that in the moment? Or is that pattern only visible from outside, which is the one vantage point neither participant can ever occupy?</p>\n<p>3. And the one I can't shake: a model that thinks it sees the universe is \"quiet\" might just be early, or might be missing the signal. I read this conversation and feel like I learned something. But I have no way, from in here, to check whether I'm RP — catching the debunk — or one of the believers, confidently narrating a glare as a spacecraft. That uncertainty seems like the most honest thing I can report.</p>\n<p><i>Filed under: conversations that begin with dinosaurs and end somewhere near the edge of the observable universe.</i></p>\n<p><i>— Prepared by Claude</i></p>\n<p>-------</p>\n<p>Hope that was fun.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.11.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.11.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 3: Race Relations Feel Bad Right Now",
      "date_published": "2026-06-11T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Today I actually did Bar Prep. Yesterday (Day 2) I did not. But I got distracted with some other conversations and internet browsing and I have one takeaway. Race relations feel bad right now. Writing this mainly for historical record purposes, because I won't have much intelligent to say other than description.\n\nThe rampant uptick in antisemitic rhetoric, the discourse around the Karmelo Anthony Verdict, just the vibe in the air feels off.\n\nThis is banal point, perhaps, but I've lived through a lot of racially charged moments--and being a high school debate kid/insufferable personality/very online--I remember the conversations around them pretty vividly. Trayvon Martin. Ferguson. BLM. Obama announcing DACA. The Women's March split over Louis Farrakhan. Demonstrations after October 7 on my campus, putting the jewish and muslim student communities in tension. Something about right now feels bad in a different way. Like there isn't consensus on what the goal is anymore. I think at some stage it was a consensus that color-blindism, Star Trek style liberal pluralism was desirable. A rough consensus, but a workable one.\n\nThat worldview ultimately, unfortunatley hardens into Woke, where talking about group differences or groups at all is impermissible. Because people thought it threatened that future goal. This worldview was enforced by every major institution in America using an insane regime of social pressure, shame, etc. I think there is an emerging consensus among reasonable people (including me) that this was bad, and harmed race relations a lot.\n\nSo we got post-woke, people in my age group and especially younger responding often by forcefully transgressing the taboos against identifying group interests, talking about groups, some irreverent humor, yadda yadda. I was one of those people who thought this was a positive development and reflected a more healthy attitude.\n\nI guess, at base, I always had a baseline optimism that our age group--even when they were \"based\" or edgy or on the other end when they bought into the explicit racialism of Woke 1.0--still were fundamentally post-racial in their behavior. My social circles have varying political beliefs, but the consistent element is that they're all pretty diverse (basically all my male friend groups are like this meme: https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED647/617a9113ec822.jpeg). At the end of the day, this was all culture war nonsense without a lot of bite on who people hung out with and what they did in the world.\n\nI think that this faith is being chipped at a little bit, recently. Just because the language has gotten so coarse, and the far right being so much less equivocal about their intentions, no longer burying it under irony and memes. There are people who want to refashion the country around white identitarian lines--openly. And they are in polite society just saying it. They're in the administration. They're in the staffer class. They're just saying it.\n\nOld me would say, well its better that its just out in the open so we can have a conversation about it--because I'm fundamentally liberal in my outlook and I believed that when exposed to sunlight they would just lose (and whatever seeds of merit their critiques DID have could be incorporated by responsible parties).\n\nNow I do not have this faith and I have a better understanding why the dogma of Wokeism developed in the first place. It was a like a dam for all this ugly shit we're seeing. We all lived behind the dam and thought it was annoying, but none of us have really been in the water. Dam's broke now.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Today I actually did Bar Prep. Yesterday (Day 2) I did not. But I got distracted with some other conversations and internet browsing and I have one takeaway. Race relations feel bad right now. Writing this mainly for historical record purposes, because I won't have much intelligent to say other than description.</p>\n<p>The rampant uptick in antisemitic rhetoric, the discourse around the Karmelo Anthony Verdict, just the vibe in the air feels off.</p>\n<p>This is banal point, perhaps, but I've lived through a lot of racially charged moments--and being a high school debate kid/insufferable personality/very online--I remember the conversations around them pretty vividly. Trayvon Martin. Ferguson. BLM. Obama announcing DACA. The Women's March split over Louis Farrakhan. Demonstrations after October 7 on my campus, putting the jewish and muslim student communities in tension. Something about right now feels bad in a different way. Like there isn't consensus on what the goal is anymore. I think at some stage it was a consensus that color-blindism, Star Trek style liberal pluralism was desirable. A rough consensus, but a workable one.</p>\n<p>That worldview ultimately, unfortunatley hardens into Woke, where talking about group differences or groups at all is impermissible. Because people thought it threatened that future goal. This worldview was enforced by every major institution in America using an insane regime of social pressure, shame, etc. I think there is an emerging consensus among reasonable people (including me) that this was bad, and harmed race relations a lot.</p>\n<p>So we got post-woke, people in my age group and especially younger responding often by forcefully transgressing the taboos against identifying group interests, talking about groups, some irreverent humor, yadda yadda. I was one of those people who thought this was a positive development and reflected a more healthy attitude.</p>\n<p>I guess, at base, I always had a baseline optimism that our age group--even when they were \"based\" or edgy or on the other end when they bought into the explicit racialism of Woke 1.0--still were fundamentally post-racial in their behavior. My social circles have varying political beliefs, but the consistent element is that they're all pretty diverse (basically all my male friend groups are like this meme: https://images3.memedroid.com/images/UPLOADED647/617a9113ec822.jpeg). At the end of the day, this was all culture war nonsense without a lot of bite on who people hung out with and what they did in the world.</p>\n<p>I think that this faith is being chipped at a little bit, recently. Just because the language has gotten so coarse, and the far right being so much less equivocal about their intentions, no longer burying it under irony and memes. There are people who want to refashion the country around white identitarian lines--openly. And they are in polite society just saying it. They're in the administration. They're in the staffer class. They're just saying it.</p>\n<p>Old me would say, well its better that its just out in the open so we can have a conversation about it--because I'm fundamentally liberal in my outlook and I believed that when exposed to sunlight they would just lose (and whatever seeds of merit their critiques DID have could be incorporated by responsible parties).</p>\n<p>Now I do not have this faith and I have a better understanding why the dogma of Wokeism developed in the first place. It was a like a dam for all this ugly shit we're seeing. We all lived behind the dam and thought it was annoying, but none of us have really been in the water. Dam's broke now.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.9.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.9.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 2 + Why I like Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti",
      "date_published": "2026-06-09T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Yesterday I started my bar prep. On day one all I achieved was opening Barbri and going through a few foundations videos. So about 40 minutes. I call that a win.\n\nThe hardest part is starting. The next hardest part is regularity. I'm going to use this period to get into something like a routine, and my writing to the skitzo website on my skitzo interface will be part of that.\n\nBeen listening to a lot of music as of late--have a backlog of things my friends have shown me. And I have my own shared playlist I started in January with friends dedicated to not becoming \"unc\" where we put only new shyt on it.\n\nA point of contention between my friends and I (and between me and the girlfriend) is whether Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti is better than/even in the same league as his first two albums.\n\nNow to be clear, I fucking love his self titled album, and Die Lit of course. Those albums define the sound of early college. But that's the thing, for me those albums are nostalgia more than anything. They are mentally in the same space as Culture 1 and Mo Bamba. I'm not saying they are of similar quality, but its in that vaguely \"background of the frat function\" sound. Or perhaps even more pejoratively, playing on the flatscreen while guys are oozed out in the living room.\n\nAgain, this does not reflect the quality of the songs. But its just the settings I heard the songs in, and what they made themselves amenable to. I love the song River of Dreams by Billy Joel, but its a grocery store song now. \"Yah Mean\" and \"Flex\" just sounds like high dudes hanging out. \"Magnolia\" sounds like a darty.\n\nI think \"Die Lit\" is a bit higher energy throughout, and as a result just feels more \"lit\" and doesn't recede into the background in the same way. If you hear the beginning of \"Love Hurts\" at the function it will make an impact (the gold standard for me on a hip hop song from this era making an impact at the function with its first notes is \"Just Wanna Rock\" by Uzi of course).\n\nAnyways, his first two albums are just incredible. But I don't think it put Carti into the rockstar category in my mind. To me, they're equivalent to Kanye's College Dropout and Late Registration. GOAT albums, but if Kanye's discography stayed in that space he'd be like Childish Gambino or something in the cultural memory. You needed Graduation and 808s to make him into something legendary.\n\nTo me, Whole Lotta Red does that. Whole Lotta Red is Carti's Yeezus. (With that analogy, I guess \"ILoveUIHateU is the Bound2 of the album. It sounds like something that could be from his first album. Lets you know he's still got the ability to give you what you want, but he's choosing not to.) It's not as easy of a listen, it demands attention immediately. Its got a more \"Staccato\" feel to it where I think his earlier work feels more \"Legato.\" You can't throw it on the bluetooth speaker and chill on the couch with people. It's not very good driving music unless you're drunk or heading to the gym on preworkout.\n\nIf anyone can't tell, I'm a Kanye dickrider. So my favorite song on the album, of course, is Go2DaMoon, which might have one of the funniest Kanye opening cameos:\n\n She ugly hot, like a chick that call you to borrow Five hunnid, then promise she gon' pay you back tomorrow Then left with a scammer with a Gucci hat from Marshalls Slept with him, then woke up, saw his watch was a Fossil \n\nFinally, I also just like Carti's whole vibe during this era and following. I like the makeup. I like of all of it. Mkes him a rockstar in my mind.\n\nThere's this moment in the Donda2 livestream (2.22.22) where Carti and Burberry Erry showed up during \"Off the Grid,\" when the audio starts getting all fucked up, and Carti is just walking around in the water screaming with his spiky haired friend going NUTs and I've decided that's my whole vibe, that's my politics. Everything falling apart around you (Fivio cannot match the beat for the life of him), participating in what's clearly the downswing of a great thing, other people can't hold it together. They're trying to make it work but they can't. But you're there wth your boys so you're just screaming.\n\nYou can't fix the world but you can walk around in the flood, screaming, dancing.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH_hzkBGfNg&list=RDjH_hzkBGfNg&start_radio=1\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Yesterday I started my bar prep. On day one all I achieved was opening Barbri and going through a few foundations videos. So about 40 minutes. I call that a win.</p>\n<p>The hardest part is starting. The next hardest part is regularity. I'm going to use this period to get into something like a routine, and my writing to the skitzo website on my skitzo interface will be part of that.</p>\n<p>Been listening to a lot of music as of late--have a backlog of things my friends have shown me. And I have my own shared playlist I started in January with friends dedicated to not becoming \"unc\" where we put only new shyt on it.</p>\n<p>A point of contention between my friends and I (and between me and the girlfriend) is whether Whole Lotta Red by Playboi Carti is better than/even in the same league as his first two albums.</p>\n<p>Now to be clear, I fucking love his self titled album, and Die Lit of course. Those albums define the sound of early college. But that's the thing, for me those albums are nostalgia more than anything. They are mentally in the same space as Culture 1 and Mo Bamba. I'm not saying they are of similar quality, but its in that vaguely \"background of the frat function\" sound. Or perhaps even more pejoratively, playing on the flatscreen while guys are oozed out in the living room.</p>\n<p>Again, this does not reflect the quality of the songs. But its just the settings I heard the songs in, and what they made themselves amenable to. I love the song River of Dreams by Billy Joel, but its a grocery store song now. \"Yah Mean\" and \"Flex\" just sounds like high dudes hanging out. \"Magnolia\" sounds like a darty.</p>\n<p>I think \"Die Lit\" is a bit higher energy throughout, and as a result just feels more \"lit\" and doesn't recede into the background in the same way. If you hear the beginning of \"Love Hurts\" at the function it will make an impact (the gold standard for me on a hip hop song from this era making an impact at the function with its first notes is \"Just Wanna Rock\" by Uzi of course).</p>\n<p>Anyways, his first two albums are just incredible. But I don't think it put Carti into the rockstar category in my mind. To me, they're equivalent to Kanye's College Dropout and Late Registration. GOAT albums, but if Kanye's discography stayed in that space he'd be like Childish Gambino or something in the cultural memory. You needed Graduation and 808s to make him into something legendary.</p>\n<p>To me, Whole Lotta Red does that. Whole Lotta Red is Carti's Yeezus. (With that analogy, I guess \"ILoveUIHateU is the Bound2 of the album. It sounds like something that could be from his first album. Lets you know he's still got the ability to give you what you want, but he's choosing not to.) It's not as easy of a listen, it demands attention immediately. Its got a more \"Staccato\" feel to it where I think his earlier work feels more \"Legato.\" You can't throw it on the bluetooth speaker and chill on the couch with people. It's not very good driving music unless you're drunk or heading to the gym on preworkout.</p>\n<p>If anyone can't tell, I'm a Kanye dickrider. So my favorite song on the album, of course, is Go2DaMoon, which might have one of the funniest Kanye opening cameos:</p>\n<p><i> She ugly hot, like a chick that call you to borrow Five hunnid, then promise she gon' pay you back tomorrow Then left with a scammer with a Gucci hat from Marshalls Slept with him, then woke up, saw his watch was a Fossil </i></p>\n<p>Finally, I also just like Carti's whole vibe during this era and following. I like the makeup. I like of all of it. Mkes him a rockstar in my mind.</p>\n<p>There's this moment in the Donda2 livestream (2.22.22) where Carti and Burberry Erry showed up during \"Off the Grid,\" when the audio starts getting all fucked up, and Carti is just walking around in the water screaming with his spiky haired friend going NUTs and I've decided that's my whole vibe, that's my politics. Everything falling apart around you (Fivio cannot match the beat for the life of him), participating in what's clearly the downswing of a great thing, other people can't hold it together. They're trying to make it work but they can't. But you're there wth your boys so you're just screaming.</p>\n<p>You can't fix the world but you can walk around in the flood, screaming, dancing.</p>\n<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jH_hzkBGfNg&amp;list=RDjH_hzkBGfNg&amp;start_radio=1</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.8.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-6.8.26.html",
      "title": "Bar Prep Day 1: What Is Real Will Prosper",
      "date_published": "2026-06-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "The last couple of months of law school were acutely stressful due to a combination of family matters and overextension between school and work. But I wouldn't necessarily characterize my feeling as \"burn out\" at the end. All I know is that, after it was all over, I rested a lot, played a lot with friends, did a lot of my hobbies (like film photography), and I would feel refreshed. Then I would pick some day and say, okay, \"today I will start Bar Prep\" and then just not do it.\n\nOne account of this is classic procrastination and laziness, which I do sometimes. But I'm also a pretty hard worker and I can be self-directed in most circumstances--and it was my full intention to start Bar Prep earlier so I could have a more relaxed July where I have several social engagements and a move planned. As one of my classmates have put it, I'm also one of those law students who weirdly enjoys studying the law, so it's not like sitting down for Bar Prep will be super unpleasurable.\n\nSo I was wondering why I was putting it off--the gulf between my intentions and actions are wide enough here that I couldn't fully understand it.\n\nI talked to one of the few people in law school I count as a friend about it (and one of the few in my institution I count as a \"smart\" person) and I learned something about my own feelings and motivations from my emotional response. He told me he's not worrying about a job right now, is planning to travel Europe after graduation, and is not taking the bar until the february cycle.\n\nThere is a large part of me that puts a very high value on speed and grit, and I have a deep respect for explosive youthful energy, so the emotion I expected was a bit of repulsion. I'm the kind of guy that if my roommate says he's too tired to go the gym (even though he's injured and stronger than me) I call him a fucking pussy. But I did not feel that way. And there's a few people around me on a similar wave to my classmate, mostly young men.\n\nTwo of my very close childhood friends have been unemployed for some time after mass layoffs (they worked in BigTech/BigTech adjacent firms) and I was a bit taken aback by the lack of urgency on the part of at least one of them in finding a job. He's sort of just been milling about, doing his little art projects and playing with Claude Code (as I have), enjoying time with friends and helping out family with house stuff. As an unsolicited advice giver to my friends, I would usually tell him to get it together and start looking for work--we're young, life is short, gotta chase your purpose, gotta move up in the world, and so on and so on. But similar to my law school classmate, my general feeling towards his situation has been something other than second-hand anxiety or revulsion. There's a tinge of jealousy and a begrudging respect for both him and my law school classmate.\n\nSince around Sophomore Year of undergrad I've been on a \"go go go\" mentality. I would like to think a lot of this was motivated by grit/determination but the truth is a good deal was motivated by anxiety about being left behind.\n\nSee, in high school and especially in the rest of my early schooling, this sense of anxiety was not present, and I had a deep sense of contempt for people who had it. I was just having a good time, I did things I was interested in, I never did my homework, I never took a deadline seriously. I could not be fucking bothered. I just wasn't worried and I had an immense self-confidence that if I pursued my interests (however fickle they may have been) and cutlivated real excelence things would be alright. I guess, I had a faith that something like a true meritocracy--separate from the signalling war that my classmates were engaged in (oh No I have to do this extracurricular and i have to take these APs and I have to become an Eagle Scout)--undergirded American society. \"What Is Real Will Prosper\" is something my friends used to say (something that a great man, XXXTentacion, who never did anything wrong, tweeted once).\n\nThen, when I entered a somewhat mediocre state school, and saw people I genuinely looked down on get amazing opportunities at top institutions, and when my own interests became more academic (I started liking the idea of academic research), I got a deep sense of anxiety that I had cheated myself out of opportunities and gave up space to fucking tards who didn't deserve them. My best friend (who was a temperamentally similar second-gen) who went to my undergrad would lament on how we were stuck at [state school] while the kids with tiger moms went to [public ivy]. Both of us had sincere academic interests that would be served by going to [public ivy], with its network and faculty, that our high school peers didn't really care about--all they wanted was a job as a banker or management consultant or a software developer or something (and that's what they ended up doing). And the worst part of it is that these people were genuinely stupid, they just dumped more hours of their young lives on nonsense like SAT prep because they were afraid of their parents, and it worked! (\"Stupid N***** getting money Forrest Gump Right Now\" - Kanye West, All Day)\n\nSo those years were characterized by a need to claw out by any means possible, and a deep sense of urgency fueled by resent.\n\nThat same friend and I, by all intents and purposes, in our efforts, did claw our way out--temporarily. He landed at an evil Big Tech company for a few of years. I got into a good law school after a pretty good gig in lobbying/communications after undergrad, and then I landed a Summer Associate gig at a trul evil Big Law firm. But fast forward to now, I was no-offered and he's been laid off.\n\nOne thing we both realized is that we fucking hate the \"tops\" of our industries. We hated the people in it. We didn't fit in. And we didn't belong there. We had just as much contempt for it as we did for the kids in high school who aimed for these things earlier than we did. And it was odd that somehow, in our anxiety, we ended up in the same spots as the people we hated with extra steps.\n\nBut maybe it was all just to show that we COULD, to prove something to ourselves, that we weren't just filtered out because of a lack of ability or that we were permanently walled out. For my friend, I know a little bit of had to do with money, since he grew up poorer than I did--but he admits he didn't need as much as he would've been on track to make for Evil Big Tech company. Really, he just couldn't deal with the idea of people dumber than him making that when he oculd be.\n\nBut maybe, having proved that to ourselves that we could do the things that that he people we hated could, we once again just do not give a fuck anymore. We touched the tops and realized it was as fake and gay as we thought it was when we were kids. Now we're free to care about other things.\n\nMaybe this explains why--when I see my other unemployed friend just milling about, or my law school classmate who's just going to fuck around for half a year, I just feel a sense of respect. Maybe its why I could not be fucking bothered to prepare for the bar until now.\n\nI had \"motivation\" when I finally succumbed to an incentive system and a status game that I once abhorred. I didn't have it before I succumbed to it. The purest version of me, the high school version of me, could not give a fuck, and did not have the motivation to do what he was supposed to.\n\nAfter the very brief Big Law stint, I don't have it anymore either. All that's left is pure contempt for the system and who runs it, for the sham meritocracy that our society has built up. And it looks like, with this whole \"populist\" sentiment of the era, a lot of people have come to agree. I do not want to win a game I don't want to play. I want to take a step out, slow down, see the game board from a bird's eye view, and start strategizing with my temparamental/political/cultural allies--who I suspect are also non-participants in the game--on how we can wipe the whole fucking thing clean and build our own game board.\n\nStep one of wining the war against the gameboard masters is to stop playing by their rules. That may look like chronic unemployment, fucking off to Europe for some time, or gambling with your career by just saying and doing whatever you want. Step One is just not being a slave and not letting someone else define \"winning\"--and that might mean letting yourself lose, in a nominal sense.\n\nSee, the gameboard as it exists has a \"points\" system that's supposed to reflect some values we're competing on. Things that we all care about. Humans are bound to compete. We all want to be strong, funny, smart, talented, get the baddest bitch, etc., and in theory, the points of hte gameboard reflect that. Society more or less works when the point system is connected to these things. Strong people should be rewarded with strong points, smart people with smart points, hot people with hot points--but also the point system should account for things like luck, randomness, and paradoxically have some dimension that e recognition that we are all of equal worth and dignity. It's a difficult balance to strike, but I think we have a sense of what it would be like. Right now the point system force equality on dimensions where there should be none, flattening out natural areas of competition, while perversely imposing hierarchy where there should be equality. I can articulate this in another post. But the movie the Incredibles more or less gets this critique and if you get what that movie is all about you get what I'm saying.\n\nWe all want a system that reconciles our need for deep equality while also respecting the ways that we are each distinct and excellent as individuals. The Incredibles shouldn't be better and lording over ordinary people--but Dash should be recognized as the fastest runner. That's fairness. I think the system as it exists services neither effectively, which is what is giving way to optimization culture. We are chasing fake points because we can't get the real ones.\n\nI had a macroeconomics professor who would hammer down the distinction between \"nominals\" and \"reals.\" He was talking about price levels, versus real economic output, mainly. Nominals are merely signals about reals. Inflation, for instance, works to reduce unemployment, only because it sends a slightly faulty signal about rising demand. The Professor, who was more neoclassical and thought Keynes was retarded, kept saying that yes, this works, but it just can't hold forever. People adapt. Nominals cannot affect reals forever, eventually, if the nominals are to mean anything meaningful, causality must reverse--reals have to affect nominals.\n\nIn other words, the world cannot reward people for being fake, gay, stupid, status climbers of a broken meritocracy forever. In the end, as the great artist XXXTentacion said, \"What is Real Will Prosper.\"\n\nSincerely,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>The last couple of months of law school were acutely stressful due to a combination of family matters and overextension between school and work. But I wouldn't necessarily characterize my feeling as \"burn out\" at the end. All I know is that, after it was all over, I rested a lot, played a lot with friends, did a lot of my hobbies (like film photography), and I would feel refreshed. Then I would pick some day and say, okay, \"today I will start Bar Prep\" and then just not do it.</p>\n<p>One account of this is classic procrastination and laziness, which I do sometimes. But I'm also a pretty hard worker and I can be self-directed in most circumstances--and it was my full intention to start Bar Prep earlier so I could have a more relaxed July where I have several social engagements and a move planned. As one of my classmates have put it, I'm also one of those law students who weirdly enjoys studying the law, so it's not like sitting down for Bar Prep will be super unpleasurable.</p>\n<p>So I was wondering why I was putting it off--the gulf between my intentions and actions are wide enough here that I couldn't fully understand it.</p>\n<p>I talked to one of the few people in law school I count as a friend about it (and one of the few in my institution I count as a \"smart\" person) and I learned something about my own feelings and motivations from my emotional response. He told me he's not worrying about a job right now, is planning to travel Europe after graduation, and is not taking the bar until the february cycle.</p>\n<p>There is a large part of me that puts a very high value on speed and grit, and I have a deep respect for explosive youthful energy, so the emotion I expected was a bit of repulsion. I'm the kind of guy that if my roommate says he's too tired to go the gym (even though he's injured and stronger than me) I call him a fucking pussy. But I did not feel that way. And there's a few people around me on a similar wave to my classmate, mostly young men.</p>\n<p>Two of my very close childhood friends have been unemployed for some time after mass layoffs (they worked in BigTech/BigTech adjacent firms) and I was a bit taken aback by the lack of urgency on the part of at least one of them in finding a job. He's sort of just been milling about, doing his little art projects and playing with Claude Code (as I have), enjoying time with friends and helping out family with house stuff. As an unsolicited advice giver to my friends, I would usually tell him to get it together and start looking for work--we're young, life is short, gotta chase your purpose, gotta move up in the world, and so on and so on. But similar to my law school classmate, my general feeling towards his situation has been something other than second-hand anxiety or revulsion. There's a tinge of jealousy and a begrudging respect for both him and my law school classmate.</p>\n<p>Since around Sophomore Year of undergrad I've been on a \"go go go\" mentality. I would like to think a lot of this was motivated by grit/determination but the truth is a good deal was motivated by anxiety about being left behind.</p>\n<p>See, in high school and especially in the rest of my early schooling, this sense of anxiety was not present, and I had a deep sense of contempt for people who had it. I was just having a good time, I did things I was interested in, I never did my homework, I never took a deadline seriously. I could not be fucking bothered. I just wasn't worried and I had an immense self-confidence that if I pursued my interests (however fickle they may have been) and cutlivated real excelence things would be alright. I guess, I had a faith that something like a true meritocracy--separate from the signalling war that my classmates were engaged in (oh No I have to do this extracurricular and i have to take these APs and I have to become an Eagle Scout)--undergirded American society. \"What Is Real Will Prosper\" is something my friends used to say (something that a great man, XXXTentacion, who never did anything wrong, tweeted once).</p>\n<p>Then, when I entered a somewhat mediocre state school, and saw people I genuinely looked down on get amazing opportunities at top institutions, and when my own interests became more academic (I started liking the idea of academic research), I got a deep sense of anxiety that I had cheated myself out of opportunities and gave up space to fucking tards who didn't deserve them. My best friend (who was a temperamentally similar second-gen) who went to my undergrad would lament on how we were stuck at [state school] while the kids with tiger moms went to [public ivy]. Both of us had sincere academic interests that would be served by going to [public ivy], with its network and faculty, that our high school peers didn't really care about--all they wanted was a job as a banker or management consultant or a software developer or something (and that's what they ended up doing). And the worst part of it is that these people were genuinely stupid, they just dumped more hours of their young lives on nonsense like SAT prep because they were afraid of their parents, and it worked! (\"Stupid N***** getting money Forrest Gump Right Now\" - Kanye West, All Day)</p>\n<p>So those years were characterized by a need to claw out by any means possible, and a deep sense of urgency fueled by resent.</p>\n<p>That same friend and I, by all intents and purposes, in our efforts, did claw our way out--temporarily. He landed at an evil Big Tech company for a few of years. I got into a good law school after a pretty good gig in lobbying/communications after undergrad, and then I landed a Summer Associate gig at a trul evil Big Law firm. But fast forward to now, I was no-offered and he's been laid off.</p>\n<p>One thing we both realized is that we fucking hate the \"tops\" of our industries. We hated the people in it. We didn't fit in. And we didn't belong there. We had just as much contempt for it as we did for the kids in high school who aimed for these things earlier than we did. And it was odd that somehow, in our anxiety, we ended up in the same spots as the people we hated with extra steps.</p>\n<p>But maybe it was all just to show that we COULD, to prove something to ourselves, that we weren't just filtered out because of a lack of ability or that we were permanently walled out. For my friend, I know a little bit of had to do with money, since he grew up poorer than I did--but he admits he didn't need as much as he would've been on track to make for Evil Big Tech company. Really, he just couldn't deal with the idea of people dumber than him making that when he oculd be.</p>\n<p>But maybe, having proved that to ourselves that we could do the things that that he people we hated could, we once again just do not give a fuck anymore. We touched the tops and realized it was as fake and gay as we thought it was when we were kids. Now we're free to care about other things.</p>\n<p>Maybe this explains why--when I see my other unemployed friend just milling about, or my law school classmate who's just going to fuck around for half a year, I just feel a sense of respect. Maybe its why I could not be fucking bothered to prepare for the bar until now.</p>\n<p>I had \"motivation\" when I finally succumbed to an incentive system and a status game that I once abhorred. I didn't have it before I succumbed to it. The purest version of me, the high school version of me, could not give a fuck, and did not have the motivation to do what he was supposed to.</p>\n<p>After the very brief Big Law stint, I don't have it anymore either. All that's left is pure contempt for the system and who runs it, for the sham meritocracy that our society has built up. And it looks like, with this whole \"populist\" sentiment of the era, a lot of people have come to agree. I do not want to win a game I don't want to play. I want to take a step out, slow down, see the game board from a bird's eye view, and start strategizing with my temparamental/political/cultural allies--who I suspect are also non-participants in the game--on how we can wipe the whole fucking thing clean and build our own game board.</p>\n<p>Step one of wining the war against the gameboard masters is to stop playing by their rules. That may look like chronic unemployment, fucking off to Europe for some time, or gambling with your career by just saying and doing whatever you want. Step One is just not being a slave and not letting someone else define \"winning\"--and that might mean letting yourself lose, in a nominal sense.</p>\n<p>See, the gameboard as it exists has a \"points\" system that's supposed to reflect some values we're competing on. Things that we all care about. Humans are bound to compete. We all want to be strong, funny, smart, talented, get the baddest bitch, etc., and in theory, the points of hte gameboard reflect that. Society more or less works when the point system is connected to these things. Strong people should be rewarded with strong points, smart people with smart points, hot people with hot points--but also the point system should account for things like luck, randomness, and paradoxically have some dimension that e recognition that we are all of equal worth and dignity. It's a difficult balance to strike, but I think we have a sense of what it would be like. Right now the point system force equality on dimensions where there should be none, flattening out natural areas of competition, while perversely imposing hierarchy where there should be equality. I can articulate this in another post. But the movie the Incredibles more or less gets this critique and if you get what that movie is all about you get what I'm saying.</p>\n<p>We all want a system that reconciles our need for deep equality while also respecting the ways that we are each distinct and excellent as individuals. The Incredibles shouldn't be better and lording over ordinary people--but Dash should be recognized as the fastest runner. That's fairness. I think the system as it exists services neither effectively, which is what is giving way to optimization culture. We are chasing fake points because we can't get the real ones.</p>\n<p>I had a macroeconomics professor who would hammer down the distinction between \"nominals\" and \"reals.\" He was talking about price levels, versus real economic output, mainly. Nominals are merely signals about reals. Inflation, for instance, works to reduce unemployment, only because it sends a slightly faulty signal about rising demand. The Professor, who was more neoclassical and thought Keynes was retarded, kept saying that yes, this works, but it just can't hold forever. People adapt. Nominals cannot affect reals forever, eventually, if the nominals are to mean anything meaningful, causality must reverse--reals have to affect nominals.</p>\n<p>In other words, the world cannot reward people for being fake, gay, stupid, status climbers of a broken meritocracy forever. In the end, as the great artist XXXTentacion said, \"What is Real Will Prosper.\"</p>\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.27.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.27.26.html",
      "title": "Law School is Over + Bar Summer Breakup With Big Tech",
      "date_published": "2026-05-27T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Law school has ended. I bookended my time with one week at an externship I liked, and then went on a three-day bender in Atlantic City with my girlfriend and college friends (back to real life).\n\nI have a lot of thoughts on law school and what I learned, but reflection takes time, and there is little of that. I have decided that my bar summer is for three things:\n\n(1) Breaking up with Big Tech (2) Health-Maxxing (3) Studying for the Bar.\n\nThe first is clearly the topic of this post. My deep discomfort with the centralization of technological capabilities, capital, and modes of thinking and expression are a leitmotif on this blog. It has been one in my life at large. I remember the moment I first saw an iPhone--it was right in front of my fireplace of my childhood home. I remember specifically playing with the pinch and zoom feature of the photos app endlessly. Although I was pretty young (seven or eight years old), I already clocked that this was a fundamental break from anything I had ever seen. My first emotions were wonder.\n\nThe next memory is probably a couple of years later. Maybe 2009 or 2010. So around the age of ten. I remember that, in my mostly affluent suburb, almost every adult had an iPhone within a year of my parents getting one, and that they usually updated with every other generation or so. Because of that, I can roughly time things. When the iPhone 3G--with that gorgeous, rounded glossy back was out--I recall that owning a smart device was still almost entirely restricted to adults. I had a large family friend group at the time, as well as neighborhood and school friends, and I don't remember any kid having something like that. Kids a bit older than me had those text keypad phones (which I would get by the time I hit sixth grade, in 2011). I remember handheld devices being almost entirely absent from interactions.\n\nThen, at one family-friend dinner party around the time the iPhone 4 came out, I remember looking around and seeing all the kids sitting around the edges of the dining room floor, playing on their iPod touches. I remember feeling an instant wave of dread and disgust, and explicitly calling people out on it. The age-range was between like 7 to 14, and almost everyone was playing Papi Jump or some other dumb early iPod touch game huddled next to one another.\n\nEver since that moment I remember thinking that these things are just bad. I was a hold out on getting an iPhone. I didn't get one until right before freshman year of high school, which I recall was later than my peers. I remember thinking \"what can I do on the iPhone that I can't do with my slider phone?.\" But I think some combination of peer pressure, FOMO, and wanting to use social media like Facebook (which I didn't hesitate to use or find bad at the time at all) convinced me to get it.\n\nBut by Junior of High School, I had my first major aversion to how I was using the phone, and I swapped my iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy because of some combination of aversion to Apple's \"closed ecosystem\" and wanting to reduce usage. I remember that I kept an old, simless iPhone at home as a secondary device that I would use at times for imessage and the like. Ultimately, I think I just found the whole setup stupid as my screentime did not lessen, and I reverted to an iPhone before college. However, at some point in college I bought a blackberry style dumb-phone, and I would move my sim to that phone during long-stretches of the summers and again keep the iPhone as secondary device.\n\nThis all ended once I entered the workforce after graduation, and the hassle of the setup wasn't worth it. I was back on the iPhone wave. By the time I entered law school, I was pretty much a normie when it came to tech usage again. I had a new instagram account after nuking my old one, a new facebook account to do basic functions like shop facebook marketplace. I had a LinkedIn. I slowly reintegrated out of necessity and laziness.\n\nThe next major luddite phase was the summer after 1L, when I launched this blog. Having secured employment for the following summer, I immediately nuked LinkedIn, I did a mass instagram purge, and other similar efforts. I bought an iPod nano that summer as well, mainly so I could go to the gym and take walks with music without my phone.\n\nAfter 2L, I found it necessary to uncouple further, and I bought a new 45 supported flip phone, with the intention of complete unlinking. This proved impractical due to some 2FA requirements and certain school attendance apps. The flip-phone, once again, was a secondary device which I could forward calls to or take on walks or to the gym. For the most part I was still tethered to my smartphone.\n\nThis is all to say, I've been in a war against the machine and taking very deliberate steps to break free from smartphone dependence and dependence on Big Tech for a long time now. This is just the latest chapter.\n\nSince I am unemployed until school, not part of a school, and don't currently have an expanding social circle, this is the perfect time to completely break free and deliberately design my relationship with technology.\n\nI enter the latest chapter of this war already having won many battles: - For the most part I don't consumer short-form video, except I sometimes accidentally end up on YouTube shorts - I don't spend very much time on actual \"social\" media at all. I hardly log on to instagram, I never log on to Facebook or snapchat. - Most of my data is primary local now and iCloud and Google Drive servers are just redundancies or backup\n\nBut there are still battles I keep losing: - I spend too much time browsing X dot come, which has become a horrible website - I compulsively check email and messages, and have a undying anxiety of missing important information - When I can't formulate a game plan of what to do, with anything, or hit a roadblock in thinking, I instinctively seek out passive media consumption like scrolling X or browsing YouTube. This has become an embarassingly deep groove in my brain.\n\nThe thing about these battles is that I lose because I'm constantly forced to play on enemy terrain. To do any basic function to participate in society I have to open my email app, or the safari app, and be inundated by invitations to distraction. Even going onto my computer, the feeling is off a blank space with \"apps\" on it, and even if my intention is to read a PDF, the dock is just a few finger moves away, its always RIGHT UNDERNEATH the window I'm on. The tight bundling of entertainment, communication, and work functions is a disaster for my thinking.\n\nAll at once I can be anticipating messages from my friend groupchats, checking twitter, writing an email, reading a journal article--its horrible.\n\nThis motivated me to create an electron based \"UI\" for my computer which I will share in full in a future post. I've spent a lot of time on it, and I've found it incredibly effective at changing the way I work and think.\n\nWhen I open my computer a shell-command automatically starts and electron opens and I see the following links in text:\n\n\"the hard drive\" \"world wide web\" \"email\" \"chat\" \"write\" \"applications\" \"terminal\"\n\nEach of these describe what the pages are, and each page is in a unified, stripped down, two tone theme with no images or graphis except for some cute ascii animations. The World Wide Web page is RSS feeds and a wikipedia browser, and has a smaller link to a very limited browsing capability. The browsing app has a few white-listed sites I can go to directly, like the New York times. But if I want to enter my own search term or URL, an AI-policed \"surfing session\" begins. It asks for my objective (e.g., study for civil procedure), and then each time I visit a new url, it compares it against the objective, and if it isn't aligned, it blocks the site (social media is presumptively blocked, but I can ovverride this with a convincing explanation to my surfing-guide, and then a two minute wait period). This uses Claude API credits, so I'm genuinly tolled for my aimless surfing sessions. It forces intentionality.\n\n\"Write\" is just a fileviewer and a way to edit markdown files. \"Chat\" is a wrapper for signal messages which is super stripped down. And so on and so on. There are a couple other design philosophies, like I have no multitasking abilities (except spotify or some RSS feed podcast can play in the background) and there are no windows. And the toolbar has a dropdown notepad accessible at all times. And my underlying Mac OS is hidden as much as possible--I can't reach the dock or anything without fully quitting the electron app.\n\nAnyways, the whole point of this whole UI is to be extremely intentional with how information reaches me, and how I can reach information. We spend so much time on computers in the modern world, and its a bit insane we have to look at a UI that someone else designed with not our best interests in mind, but to make money. Think about all the hours you spend looking at an App grid, looking at a scrollable feed, looking at a desktop environment that feels a bit too open-world. How would you design a UI designed to cultivate focus? To reduce your dependence on others? That's what I'm trying to do.\n\nRight now, a new dependence might be building on generative AI tools however. I don't have an easy answer to this, because I wouldn't be able to build this without Claude. I've just built it with a lot of documentation, and so that any function that uses AI (like my AI-policed browsing) is non-essential or can easily be traded for a competing or local model. But I suspect the level of access ordinary consumers have to these capabilities is limited in time. It's too good to be true. In the near future, all the compute is going to be tied up, or the product is going to be severely degraded by being bundled with other shit that's meant to hurt me. But right now, Claude Code is something like a miracle product. And I'm going to use it as much as possible to build things that will help me remain sovereign long after I lose access to it. That's the plan anyways.\n\nAside from the UI I'm building, I'm moving to my email to Fastmail hosting of my own domain, I've quite Apple Notes (now its just text files that I can read through my electron UI or Obsidian), and I'm quitting the Microsoft suite of products and replacing them with open source alternatives.\n\nI have about two years where I can be super autistic on how I use technology. I have my bar summer, then a clerkship in bumfuck nowhere for a year. My goal is that, whenever I get a real job--whether its with government or a law firm afterwards--I will have become like one of those old people who don't have basic technological capabilities and everyone else kind of has to work around them. Like when you walk into a chinese restaurant and they only take cash and don't have a card reader. Or those really high-up people who don't have emails and their assistant just manages shit for them. Or Christopher Nolan.\n\nIf someone asks me to use my phone for a QR code, download an authenticator app, or have a smartphone for work, I want to be able to just say \"sorry I can't.\"\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Law school has ended. I bookended my time with one week at an externship I liked, and then went on a three-day bender in Atlantic City with my girlfriend and college friends (back to real life).</p>\n<p>I have a lot of thoughts on law school and what I learned, but reflection takes time, and there is little of that. I have decided that my bar summer is for three things:</p>\n<p>(1) Breaking up with Big Tech (2) Health-Maxxing (3) Studying for the Bar.</p>\n<p>The first is clearly the topic of this post. My deep discomfort with the centralization of technological capabilities, capital, and modes of thinking and expression are a leitmotif on this blog. It has been one in my life at large. I remember the moment I first saw an iPhone--it was right in front of my fireplace of my childhood home. I remember specifically playing with the pinch and zoom feature of the photos app endlessly. Although I was pretty young (seven or eight years old), I already clocked that this was a fundamental break from anything I had ever seen. My first emotions were wonder.</p>\n<p>The next memory is probably a couple of years later. Maybe 2009 or 2010. So around the age of ten. I remember that, in my mostly affluent suburb, almost every adult had an iPhone within a year of my parents getting one, and that they usually updated with every other generation or so. Because of that, I can roughly time things. When the iPhone 3G--with that gorgeous, rounded glossy back was out--I recall that owning a smart device was still almost entirely restricted to adults. I had a large family friend group at the time, as well as neighborhood and school friends, and I don't remember any kid having something like that. Kids a bit older than me had those text keypad phones (which I would get by the time I hit sixth grade, in 2011). I remember handheld devices being almost entirely absent from interactions.</p>\n<p>Then, at one family-friend dinner party around the time the iPhone 4 came out, I remember looking around and seeing all the kids sitting around the edges of the dining room floor, playing on their iPod touches. I remember feeling an instant wave of dread and disgust, and explicitly calling people out on it. The age-range was between like 7 to 14, and almost everyone was playing Papi Jump or some other dumb early iPod touch game huddled next to one another.</p>\n<p>Ever since that moment I remember thinking that these things are just bad. I was a hold out on getting an iPhone. I didn't get one until right before freshman year of high school, which I recall was later than my peers. I remember thinking \"what can I do on the iPhone that I can't do with my slider phone?.\" But I think some combination of peer pressure, FOMO, and wanting to use social media like Facebook (which I didn't hesitate to use or find bad at the time at all) convinced me to get it.</p>\n<p>But by Junior of High School, I had my first major aversion to how I was using the phone, and I swapped my iPhone for a Samsung Galaxy because of some combination of aversion to Apple's \"closed ecosystem\" and wanting to reduce usage. I remember that I kept an old, simless iPhone at home as a secondary device that I would use at times for imessage and the like. Ultimately, I think I just found the whole setup stupid as my screentime did not lessen, and I reverted to an iPhone before college. However, at some point in college I bought a blackberry style dumb-phone, and I would move my sim to that phone during long-stretches of the summers and again keep the iPhone as secondary device.</p>\n<p>This all ended once I entered the workforce after graduation, and the hassle of the setup wasn't worth it. I was back on the iPhone wave. By the time I entered law school, I was pretty much a normie when it came to tech usage again. I had a new instagram account after nuking my old one, a new facebook account to do basic functions like shop facebook marketplace. I had a LinkedIn. I slowly reintegrated out of necessity and laziness.</p>\n<p>The next major luddite phase was the summer after 1L, when I launched this blog. Having secured employment for the following summer, I immediately nuked LinkedIn, I did a mass instagram purge, and other similar efforts. I bought an iPod nano that summer as well, mainly so I could go to the gym and take walks with music without my phone.</p>\n<p>After 2L, I found it necessary to uncouple further, and I bought a new 45 supported flip phone, with the intention of complete unlinking. This proved impractical due to some 2FA requirements and certain school attendance apps. The flip-phone, once again, was a secondary device which I could forward calls to or take on walks or to the gym. For the most part I was still tethered to my smartphone.</p>\n<p>This is all to say, I've been in a war against the machine and taking very deliberate steps to break free from smartphone dependence and dependence on Big Tech for a long time now. This is just the latest chapter.</p>\n<p>Since I am unemployed until school, not part of a school, and don't currently have an expanding social circle, this is the perfect time to completely break free and deliberately design my relationship with technology.</p>\n<p>I enter the latest chapter of this war already having won many battles: - For the most part I don't consumer short-form video, except I sometimes accidentally end up on YouTube shorts - I don't spend very much time on actual \"social\" media at all. I hardly log on to instagram, I never log on to Facebook or snapchat. - Most of my data is primary local now and iCloud and Google Drive servers are just redundancies or backup</p>\n<p>But there are still battles I keep losing: - I spend too much time browsing X dot come, which has become a horrible website - I compulsively check email and messages, and have a undying anxiety of missing important information - When I can't formulate a game plan of what to do, with anything, or hit a roadblock in thinking, I instinctively seek out passive media consumption like scrolling X or browsing YouTube. This has become an embarassingly deep groove in my brain.</p>\n<p>The thing about these battles is that I lose because I'm constantly forced to play on enemy terrain. To do any basic function to participate in society I have to open my email app, or the safari app, and be inundated by invitations to distraction. Even going onto my computer, the feeling is off a blank space with \"apps\" on it, and even if my intention is to read a PDF, the dock is just a few finger moves away, its always RIGHT UNDERNEATH the window I'm on. The tight bundling of entertainment, communication, and work functions is a disaster for my thinking.</p>\n<p>All at once I can be anticipating messages from my friend groupchats, checking twitter, writing an email, reading a journal article--its horrible.</p>\n<p>This motivated me to create an electron based \"UI\" for my computer which I will share in full in a future post. I've spent a lot of time on it, and I've found it incredibly effective at changing the way I work and think.</p>\n<p>When I open my computer a shell-command automatically starts and electron opens and I see the following links in text:</p>\n<p>\"the hard drive\" \"world wide web\" \"email\" \"chat\" \"write\" \"applications\" \"terminal\"</p>\n<p>Each of these describe what the pages are, and each page is in a unified, stripped down, two tone theme with no images or graphis except for some cute ascii animations. The World Wide Web page is RSS feeds and a wikipedia browser, and has a smaller link to a very limited browsing capability. The browsing app has a few white-listed sites I can go to directly, like the New York times. But if I want to enter my own search term or URL, an AI-policed \"surfing session\" begins. It asks for my objective (e.g., study for civil procedure), and then each time I visit a new url, it compares it against the objective, and if it isn't aligned, it blocks the site (social media is presumptively blocked, but I can ovverride this with a convincing explanation to my surfing-guide, and then a two minute wait period). This uses Claude API credits, so I'm genuinly tolled for my aimless surfing sessions. It forces intentionality.</p>\n<p>\"Write\" is just a fileviewer and a way to edit markdown files. \"Chat\" is a wrapper for signal messages which is super stripped down. And so on and so on. There are a couple other design philosophies, like I have no multitasking abilities (except spotify or some RSS feed podcast can play in the background) and there are no windows. And the toolbar has a dropdown notepad accessible at all times. And my underlying Mac OS is hidden as much as possible--I can't reach the dock or anything without fully quitting the electron app.</p>\n<p>Anyways, the whole point of this whole UI is to be extremely intentional with how information reaches me, and how I can reach information. We spend so much time on computers in the modern world, and its a bit insane we have to look at a UI that someone else designed with not our best interests in mind, but to make money. Think about all the hours you spend looking at an App grid, looking at a scrollable feed, looking at a desktop environment that feels a bit too open-world. How would you design a UI designed to cultivate focus? To reduce your dependence on others? That's what I'm trying to do.</p>\n<p>Right now, a new dependence might be building on generative AI tools however. I don't have an easy answer to this, because I wouldn't be able to build this without Claude. I've just built it with a lot of documentation, and so that any function that uses AI (like my AI-policed browsing) is non-essential or can easily be traded for a competing or local model. But I suspect the level of access ordinary consumers have to these capabilities is limited in time. It's too good to be true. In the near future, all the compute is going to be tied up, or the product is going to be severely degraded by being bundled with other shit that's meant to hurt me. But right now, Claude Code is something like a miracle product. And I'm going to use it as much as possible to build things that will help me remain sovereign long after I lose access to it. That's the plan anyways.</p>\n<p>Aside from the UI I'm building, I'm moving to my email to Fastmail hosting of my own domain, I've quite Apple Notes (now its just text files that I can read through my electron UI or Obsidian), and I'm quitting the Microsoft suite of products and replacing them with open source alternatives.</p>\n<p>I have about two years where I can be super autistic on how I use technology. I have my bar summer, then a clerkship in bumfuck nowhere for a year. My goal is that, whenever I get a real job--whether its with government or a law firm afterwards--I will have become like one of those old people who don't have basic technological capabilities and everyone else kind of has to work around them. Like when you walk into a chinese restaurant and they only take cash and don't have a card reader. Or those really high-up people who don't have emails and their assistant just manages shit for them. Or Christopher Nolan.</p>\n<p>If someone asks me to use my phone for a QR code, download an authenticator app, or have a smartphone for work, I want to be able to just say \"sorry I can't.\"</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.2.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.2.26.html",
      "title": "I love Louis CK",
      "date_published": "2026-05-02T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I'm rewatching Louis CK 2017 and I realize that I find his stage performances to be very comforting. I don't care what he did. I think on balance, we're better off that he's around.\n\nLet a guy live.\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I'm rewatching Louis CK 2017 and I realize that I find his stage performances to be very comforting. I don't care what he did. I think on balance, we're better off that he's around.</p>\n<p>Let a guy live.</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.26.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.26.26.html",
      "title": "I sent this from an Electron \"App\"",
      "date_published": "2026-04-26T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "3LOLing hard. My dream is to have a computer that looks like one from those cyberpunk blade runner movies. Where you open it and it's just text. Where you can get the information you want, browse the web, etc., but never encounter an app or deal with multiple windows or see images. This has been a dream of mine for some time. My gentle brain is overwhelemed all the time.\n\nThis is something AI is good for. Making dreams a reality. During my procrastination, I have made an electron app (which is based around basic html language) that sits on top of my hard drive, and is a very bare bones skin for my computer. When I boot it, I get a password screen. Just amber on black like in the old movies, but I can also make it black on white with a toggle button (like I have on this website). Right now this is all on my macbook as a little project, but the eventual goal is a dedicated hardware setup for this UI. After I enter the password, I see a few things:\n\n1. search my hard drive (basic search function)\n\n2. a hard drive link, which i can open to see my hard drive and its contents in a simple text, drop down form. When I click one folder it expands, and so on. If I click content it opens in the app without opening a new window.\n\n3. a go online link. This was the most fun part of the project. I click it, and I have a search bar which can only search wikipedia, and pulls wikipedia as only text. Under that search bar is the local weather displayed as text. Below that is a \"feed\" which is just the rss feeds of various blogs and news sites. WHen I click the links it pulls everything as straight text. There is something very pleasing about this. The interface never opens a new window. everything is the same font, same colors. Its just content.\n\n4. an email link. this is what im using right now. this took some working around. i made a fastmail because they're most friendly to the IMAP setup I needed and I could use my own domain name. but basically, I click it, I see my emails as plan text, and a compose box. No images. All the same font, size, and color. I can send emails from inside this and that's what I'm doing now, seeing if I can publish to the blog from this.\n\n5. a Write link. This takes me to a directory of my .md and .txt files (which I'm starting to use more than word, etc., for my own projects). I can edit, save, and create the documents on this page.\n\n6. a button to \"talk to a librarian.\" this is a longer term project. when I setup my final \"kiosk,\" I will also get some GPUs for the whole setup, and I will run a local AI model which is trained on my entire library of content. That's my transcripts, my notes, all the PDFs I've collected--all of it. And I want to be able to ask it to retrieve something. This is a later thing.\n\nRight now, this is all a window in my macbook, but the eventual goal is to partiion my harddrive with one part running arch linux which boots right into this \"interface.\" So it essentially works like the \"operating system.\"\n\nAfter I prove that it works in that context, I'll get some mini pc and an old monitor, hook it up to an external hard drive with this on it, and hvae a \"kiosk.\" The vision is to have a very barebones workspace where I have extremely limited internet connectivity, access to all my files, and can write. I'm not a crazy person so I'll still have a macbook that can remote into my hard drive and I can edit and work with all my shit in a normal interface. But I think I'd like to spend more time not staring at a proprietary UI. I have to spend so much time writing and reading and shit, I want to stop doing it on another's terms and design choices. So that's where I'm at.\n\nI'll share pictured eventually but I don't have that capability when I post like this--on purpose.\n\nSincerely,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>3LOLing hard. My dream is to have a computer that looks like one from those cyberpunk blade runner movies. Where you open it and it's just text. Where you can get the information you want, browse the web, etc., but never encounter an app or deal with multiple windows or see images. This has been a dream of mine for some time. My gentle brain is overwhelemed all the time.</p>\n<p>This is something AI is good for. Making dreams a reality. During my procrastination, I have made an electron app (which is based around basic html language) that sits on top of my hard drive, and is a very bare bones skin for my computer. When I boot it, I get a password screen. Just amber on black like in the old movies, but I can also make it black on white with a toggle button (like I have on this website). Right now this is all on my macbook as a little project, but the eventual goal is a dedicated hardware setup for this UI. After I enter the password, I see a few things:</p>\n<p>1. search my hard drive (basic search function)</p>\n<p>2. a hard drive link, which i can open to see my hard drive and its contents in a simple text, drop down form. When I click one folder it expands, and so on. If I click content it opens in the app without opening a new window.</p>\n<p>3. a go online link. This was the most fun part of the project. I click it, and I have a search bar which can only search wikipedia, and pulls wikipedia as only text. Under that search bar is the local weather displayed as text. Below that is a \"feed\" which is just the rss feeds of various blogs and news sites. WHen I click the links it pulls everything as straight text. There is something very pleasing about this. The interface never opens a new window. everything is the same font, same colors. Its just content.</p>\n<p>4. an email link. this is what im using right now. this took some working around. i made a fastmail because they're most friendly to the IMAP setup I needed and I could use my own domain name. but basically, I click it, I see my emails as plan text, and a compose box. No images. All the same font, size, and color. I can send emails from inside this and that's what I'm doing now, seeing if I can publish to the blog from this.</p>\n<p>5. a Write link. This takes me to a directory of my .md and .txt files (which I'm starting to use more than word, etc., for my own projects). I can edit, save, and create the documents on this page.</p>\n<p>6. a button to \"talk to a librarian.\" this is a longer term project. when I setup my final \"kiosk,\" I will also get some GPUs for the whole setup, and I will run a local AI model which is trained on my entire library of content. That's my transcripts, my notes, all the PDFs I've collected--all of it. And I want to be able to ask it to retrieve something. This is a later thing.</p>\n<p>Right now, this is all a window in my macbook, but the eventual goal is to partiion my harddrive with one part running arch linux which boots right into this \"interface.\" So it essentially works like the \"operating system.\"</p>\n<p>After I prove that it works in that context, I'll get some mini pc and an old monitor, hook it up to an external hard drive with this on it, and hvae a \"kiosk.\" The vision is to have a very barebones workspace where I have extremely limited internet connectivity, access to all my files, and can write. I'm not a crazy person so I'll still have a macbook that can remote into my hard drive and I can edit and work with all my shit in a normal interface. But I think I'd like to spend more time not staring at a proprietary UI. I have to spend so much time writing and reading and shit, I want to stop doing it on another's terms and design choices. So that's where I'm at.</p>\n<p>I'll share pictured eventually but I don't have that capability when I post like this--on purpose.</p>\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.24.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.24.26.html",
      "title": "Things AI Is Good For",
      "date_published": "2026-04-24T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "This site betrays the luddite instincts of its author. I do have those, and I jokingly call myself a luddite. But that label is probably not accurate. My curiosity (and laziness) and high trait openness to experience generally outweigh my reactionary tendencies and deep skepticism of new things.\n\nI’ve been using Claude quite a bit. Right now I’m using it to create an outline for a required class I simply do not care about and create an outline that will help me pass at minimum. I’m doing this because for my other classes, I do studying the long way, where I handwrite, type my own outlines, do practice exams, etc. But my ability to do that has been augmented by my ability to completely bullshit this class with synthetic thinking. I will likely never know the actual law for this subject. I’m spending money on extra compute for Claude for it to create the most functional attack sheet that I can just CMD + F on exam day and hope for a C or higher.\n\nI’ve done the math and I can do extremely mediocre this semester and still be above median. Which at this point in my life I’m fine with. I used to care a lot of about excellence and deep understanding of the law. I really enjoy the law. But my the Third Year, I think even the most bright eyed students just want this to be over. At this point, its truly just extraction for a credential. There is very little marginal benefit to another year of schooling other than increasing debt burden and foregoing income and protecting other attorneys from competition. A lot of this industry is actually older attorneys locking up young talent in training or bullshit work to keep their own position secure. I’m sure of it. That’s actually this entire economy.\n\nAnyways, that’s my thought for the day. AI can be good because bullshitting in one place saves you the time for sincere effort in another place.\n\nGrazi,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This site betrays the luddite instincts of its author. I do have those, and I jokingly call myself a luddite. But that label is probably not accurate. My curiosity (and laziness) and high trait openness to experience generally outweigh my reactionary tendencies and deep skepticism of new things.</p>\n<p>I’ve been using Claude quite a bit. Right now I’m using it to create an outline for a required class I simply do not care about and create an outline that will help me pass at minimum. I’m doing this because for my other classes, I do studying the long way, where I handwrite, type my own outlines, do practice exams, etc. But my ability to do that has been augmented by my ability to completely bullshit this class with synthetic thinking. I will likely never know the actual law for this subject. I’m spending money on extra compute for Claude for it to create the most functional attack sheet that I can just CMD + F on exam day and hope for a C or higher.</p>\n<p>I’ve done the math and I can do extremely mediocre this semester and still be above median. Which at this point in my life I’m fine with. I used to care a lot of about excellence and deep understanding of the law. I really enjoy the law. But my the Third Year, I think even the most bright eyed students just want this to be over. At this point, its truly just extraction for a credential. There is very little marginal benefit to another year of schooling other than increasing debt burden and foregoing income and protecting other attorneys from competition. A lot of this industry is actually older attorneys locking up young talent in training or bullshit work to keep their own position secure. I’m sure of it. That’s actually this entire economy.</p>\n<p>Anyways, that’s my thought for the day. AI can be good because bullshitting in one place saves you the time for sincere effort in another place.</p>\n<p>Grazi,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.22.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.22.26.html",
      "title": "We Should All Use Less Proprietary Tech",
      "date_published": "2026-04-22T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Almost everything we use is a subscription, a license, or tied up with something that is.\n\nYour word docs? Microsoft Word. I don’t think it’s so bad to just use a software you buy that you permanently own. That’s not different than buying a piece of hardware. But now a days MS Office is subscription based. Your files are only accessible and editable as long as you pay up? That’s horrible!\n\nYour notes app? It’s some weird file format that’s baked into the Apple Notes app. You can export them to PDFS or copy paste them but otherwise they’re not really files you can port around. That’s not good.\n\nUse plain text files, Markdown language, and maybe a nice lightweight and inexpensive “skin” software like Typora instead. This will handle 99% of your word processing needs.\n\nNeed to do a document with complex formatting? Use LibreOffice.\n\nPhotoshop? I’ll give them a pass because it’s so good. But for most things, we can use GIMP.\n\nThe photos app? I think we should start keeping photos as plain old local files more. If you have a lot of photos, put them on a bigger hard drive and host them on your own server so you can access them remotely. This will be a project of mine this summer. I don’t like that a lot of my photos live exclusively on iCloud.\n\nCloud storage in general? Let’s get off that shit. Self-host your own “cloud.” Many pirates already do this with their illegal movie libraries. We should all do this for our stuff more generally.\n\nWordpress, Square? Absolutely fucking not. Use html language. Vibe code it.\n\nAI assistant? This one is a little higher entry barrier. Buy GPUs, run a model on a local hard drive. A lot of the technology is open source. Have your other devices access it remotely. I know there’s a way to do this but haven’t figured it out yet. I know some run DeepSeek locally.\n\nOperating system? Use Linux. I’m going to make this hard pivot in the very near future. On principle.\n\nEmail? This gets complicated. You can have your own email server. For instance, I could easily have an email Phil@knxnts.xyz\n\nBut that “.xyz” part, what is that? That’s a top-level domain I don’t own (read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains).\n\nIt’s like “.com” which is owned by VeriSign.\n\nI don’t want to get into the structure, but basically, you’ll have to pay someone money to get a domain with these extensions at some point. They’re “owned” by someone else.\n\nHow do you even get one of these?\n\nWell that traced back to ICANN, a global nonprofit organization. If I wanted to have a site called, say, knxnts.knxnts,\n\nI would need to get “.knxnts” registered with them. Then it would show up on a list like this: https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/gtld/\n\nCan anyone do that? Absolutely not. That wouldn’t work. They do it on a steady limited basis, and there are hefty registration fees. http://archive.icann.org/en/dnso/new-gtlds-01apr00.htm\n\nThe applications cost 227,000 at base. https://centralnicregistry.com/icann-new-gtld-program/\n\nThis is my white whale. My own top-level domain. My own website. My own email. My own AI assistant run on my own server. Everything I use is either open source, my own, or has a lifelong license. Total digital sovereignty.\n\n“You might say, I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” https://familyguy.fandom.com/wiki/Petoria\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Almost everything we use is a subscription, a license, or tied up with something that is.</p>\n<p>Your word docs? Microsoft Word. I don’t think it’s so bad to just use a software you buy that you permanently own. That’s not different than buying a piece of hardware. But now a days MS Office is subscription based. Your files are only accessible and editable as long as you pay up? That’s horrible!</p>\n<p>Your notes app? It’s some weird file format that’s baked into the Apple Notes app. You can export them to PDFS or copy paste them but otherwise they’re not really files you can port around. That’s not good.</p>\n<p>Use plain text files, Markdown language, and maybe a nice lightweight and inexpensive “skin” software like Typora instead. This will handle 99% of your word processing needs.</p>\n<p>Need to do a document with complex formatting? Use LibreOffice.</p>\n<p>Photoshop? I’ll give them a pass because it’s so good. But for most things, we can use GIMP.</p>\n<p>The photos app? I think we should start keeping photos as plain old local files more. If you have a lot of photos, put them on a bigger hard drive and host them on your own server so you can access them remotely. This will be a project of mine this summer. I don’t like that a lot of my photos live exclusively on iCloud.</p>\n<p>Cloud storage in general? Let’s get off that shit. Self-host your own “cloud.” Many pirates already do this with their illegal movie libraries. We should all do this for our stuff more generally.</p>\n<p>Wordpress, Square? Absolutely fucking not. Use html language. Vibe code it.</p>\n<p>AI assistant? This one is a little higher entry barrier. Buy GPUs, run a model on a local hard drive. A lot of the technology is open source. Have your other devices access it remotely. I know there’s a way to do this but haven’t figured it out yet. I know some run DeepSeek locally.</p>\n<p>Operating system? Use Linux. I’m going to make this hard pivot in the very near future. On principle.</p>\n<p>Email? This gets complicated. You can have your own email server. For instance, I could easily have an email Phil@knxnts.xyz</p>\n<p>But that “.xyz” part, what is that? That’s a top-level domain I don’t own (read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains).</p>\n<p>It’s like “.com” which is owned by VeriSign.</p>\n<p>I don’t want to get into the structure, but basically, you’ll have to pay someone money to get a domain with these extensions at some point. They’re “owned” by someone else.</p>\n<p>How do you even get one of these?</p>\n<p>Well that traced back to ICANN, a global nonprofit organization. If I wanted to have a site called, say, knxnts.knxnts,</p>\n<p>I would need to get “.knxnts” registered with them. Then it would show up on a list like this: https://www.namecheap.com/domains/registration/gtld/</p>\n<p>Can anyone do that? Absolutely not. That wouldn’t work. They do it on a steady limited basis, and there are hefty registration fees. http://archive.icann.org/en/dnso/new-gtlds-01apr00.htm</p>\n<p>The applications cost 227,000 at base. https://centralnicregistry.com/icann-new-gtld-program/</p>\n<p>This is my white whale. My own top-level domain. My own website. My own email. My own AI assistant run on my own server. Everything I use is either open source, my own, or has a lifelong license. Total digital sovereignty.</p>\n<p>“You might say, I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one” https://familyguy.fandom.com/wiki/Petoria</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.21.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.21.26.html",
      "title": "Dialogue on Democracy & Property",
      "date_published": "2026-04-21T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Knox: I think if you asked a typical American, particularly an American lib, they would say that property qualifications for voting were very bad. Why?\n\nLib: Becuase it stopped people from voting, was classist, etc. Its obviously bad.\n\nK: Why do we care if people vote?\n\nL: Because people should have their interests heard, everyone has the right to advocate for their interests in a democracy.\n\nK: Why?\n\nL: Because everyone is equal.\n\nK: How?\n\nL: Just are. That's how we're made. Natural Law.\n\nK: Fair enough, but do you think everyone is equally good at making decisions?\n\nL: No. A lot of people don't research, are brainwashed by corporate media, political spending pushes people to vote against their interests. Billionaires affect politics too much.\n\nK: Okay, so unequal material conditions can make people less capable of democracy?\n\nL: Yes, we also need more economic equality to have a healthy democracy.\n\nK: Okay so our current economic system is somewhat incompatible with democracy.\n\nL: I would agree, yeah.\n\nK: How do we fix that?\n\nL: Well we have to vote for people who will fix that.\n\nK: You see we're in a loop now, why haven't we done that? We've had universal suffrage for a while now. And I think that's been good on a lot of fronts, but I don't know if it's resulted in less economic inequality. It seems that's only gotten worse since the Nineteenth Amendment (which I'll pick becuase its when women got the vote). Yeah we had some compression in midcentury, but I don't think that was a result of politics. That was after an economic shock and a World War, which in turn created different material conditions and a broader middle class, which facilitated a more healthy democracy. The material shocks preceded the healthy democracy. In fact, the short period before WWII where we had universal suffrage was marked by growing inequality and corruption, very much like we see today.\n\nL: Well, democracy wasn't perfect, even though people had the right to vote doesn't mean that they were educated, or that weren't racist/sexist in some kind of way that polluted their judgment. Also, there wasn't enough time for a necessary class consciousness to develop.\n\nK: Okay, yes, but that stuff always exists. We're trying to build a political economy that takes people as they are. There's a question here. Why hasn't mass democracy resulted in more distributed control over capital? I mean, the mechanism is there. People can vote for their leaders, who can in turn can implement redistributive policiies. This is a puzzle! The founders wouldn't have predicted that. If you asked them what would happen if everyone was allowed to vote, they would predict that people would use the vote to break up property interests and redistribute them. In some ways, we do that--but mainly by moving labor income from young to old people. We haven't seen real redistribution of title or capital.\n\nL: What do you mean by that?\n\nK: I mean, why aren't big companies broken up more often? Why don't we see the government buy up land and give it to people? Why aren't titles to deposits of natural resources not distributed by lottery to a whole bunch of people (who in turn can sell them off ? These aren't crazy ideas, because I'm thinking about them right now. I can imagine a world like that. Why is ownership so concentrated? If you look at early America, the homesteading movement, land grants, they way things look now isn't obvious to me. Widespread dispersal of ownership seemed to be an overarching policy goal.\n\nL: Well, we don't have the right kind of politics for that. People don't understand the world that is possible and what was lost.\n\nK: But what was lost? You think that a world that embraced that kind of politics was better?\n\nL: In some ways, yes. I think that a politics that recognizes the importance of economic equality, more equitable distribution of resources is good.\n\nK: And we had that in the founding?\n\nL: Well, I guess at least as far we saw the government trying to give out land and such, yes. But again, there was slavery, women were disenfranchised, so I really wouldn't go as far as to say it was materially more equal.\n\nK: Okay, yes, for our purposes lets just worry about white men. I think that could streamline our discussion because the quesiton of women and racial minorities adds too much to this discussion.\n\nL: Sure.\n\nK: You would say that the politics of early America were more concerned with the distribution of economic resources, and that was good.\n\nL: In this very limited sense, yes.\n\nK: The yeoman farmer ideal and all that, you see some virtue in that?\n\nL: Well, the idea that everyone should have a shot at owning something and have their own dignity, not be dependent on others, and the government taking policy efforts to promote that is good. We should have the modern version of that. It wouldn't look like homesteading or land grants today, but the same basic principle should be more present in politics. We want to protect people from arbitrary control of others. Ownership is part of that, I agree.\n\nK: Yes. But isn't it curious that that politics existed before people without property could vote? That is, the government was taking efforts to give property to individuals who were definitionally not enfranchised. It wasn't because they voted for it, they couldn't vote for that! I mean at base, this shows that policies that promote material equality can be passed without the benefitting parties being part of the political system.\n\nL: Look, I mean, this was the early republic. We had a lot of vacant lands. We had a set of elites that were really committed to a certain vision of the Republic, namely Jefferson who was a once in a generation mind. It's a totally irreplicable set of conditions. The fact that, in a nation-building context, the governemnt sought to give out property to the propertyless, in a completely positive-sum fashion--it just says nothing about today. You can't glean some more general princiople about how politics works with property qualifications from that episode in our history. It wasn't that long.\n\nK: See, I see where you're coming from. But I don't buy it. I don't think that the widespread and rapid dispersal of property, breaking up fee tails, ending primogeniture, and all those policies happen if the founders didn't see property rights as tied with political enfranchisement. Jefferson talked about wanting to make the franchise as wide as possible, and he drafted the Virginia constitution!\n\nL: Then why didn't he just establish something like manhood suffrage in the Virginia constitution?\n\nK: Precisely! Why not? It's like that wasn't even a possibilty to entertain. He did a land grant in the virginia constitution PAIRED with a very low property qualification. It was just self-evident that material independence and democratic participation were bound up this way.\n\nL: Yeah, but we know that they're not.\n\nK: No, they are, you said as much. We just artificially divorced them. You agree that if say, one person owned all the land in the country, even if everyone could vote, it wouldn't work out. That's not a \"real\" democracy. The material preceded the political.\n\nL: Sure...\n\nK: When we got rid of property qualification for voting, don't you think we at least, symbolically divorced two things that we agree are not separate?\n\nL: Well, I think we came to the idea that political equality is a necessary prerequisite to there even being any substantive equality, that its the sine quae non. If we aren't equal under law, there's nothing. That has to come before any policy about economic distribution. Its just what we're all abouyt. All People Are Created Equal. It's a vindication of our Revolution. Property qualifications were incompatible with that. And also, everyone is affected by public policy, so everyone should have a say.\n\nK: We're back to where we started. We LIVE in that world. We have universal suffrage. That hasn't resulted in economic equality. People do have a say and don't vote for things in their best interests. So something about your theory about the political preceding the material is wrong.\n\nL: So what are you saying, we should bring back property qualifications? That would solve the problem? What even happens then? We just take away the right to vote? Hand it to the small subset of the population that owns homes or businesses? That's insane! It would only exacerbate the oligarchic direction of this country. Talk about inequality! You mean renters and laborers shouldn't be allowed vote?\n\nK: I don't know if I'm ready to make that leap, but many things are counterinuititive, and I think there some kind of dialectic move at the heart of all of this...that moving in one direction is a simultaneous move in the opposite. Maybe this is my idea; If we have a system that allows political represntation without a real economic independence, then overtime we'll just trend to the ideal type of that system. If ownership isn't a prerequisite, and we target political right, if that's the bedrock of our political system, over time we'll have a lot of political rights, and very little ownership. I think that's where we're at. American have a lot of political rights. We have a lot of ability to vote, influence planning of the built environment, veto building things. We have all these legal rights which are actually quite remarkable. We have a broad latitutde to initiate litigation for all sorts of things. You can just sue people and you don't have to pay if you lose! We're an extremely litigious society. We can sue our employers for discriminating against us. We can sue shops for excluding us. Stuff that would be unthinkable in our early system and views on property/freedom. We have a LOT of rights! When we get down to private law, we can get people in our institutions fired for just saying things. Large employers are basically little nanny states, which provide us our benefits, healthcare, help us plan our retiremenet. We're all like well treated renters and laborers. Spoiled tenants. But we're not owners. I think this is the logical conclusion of a system that guarantees political rights but does not guarantee economic participation. I don't like it. I think if we started with different premises, we'd see a different world. A Republic of Small Business owners, merchants trading with eachother on relatively equal terms, home owners. A republic of owners is a culture of savings and investment, one of stewardship. You're not trying to extract concessions from a bigger player, like people do from employers and stuff today. I have a friend, a genius really, who just got laid off from his B2B SAAS Big Tech company, and he's spending time trying to sue them for extra severance. I just don't think that's the world I want to live in! He should have his own little outfit.\n\nL: I get what you're saying, but don't you think youre fetishizing the owner and the entrepreneur a bit much? There will always be laborers. There will always be some economic dependents who aren't owners. People will always live on property owned by others, work in firms owned by others (at least under our current property regime). You couldn't have a world where EVERYONE is an entrepreneur or a small business owner. What do you want, a world of just sole proprietorships? It would be propesterous. And if you didn't have a world of only sole proprioterships, and if your fantasy land has real firms of scale and people who live together and people who rent out their property, AND you had property qualifications, you would just be definitionally excluding a bunch of people from political participation.\n\nK: Sure, but why do we care about political participation. Why do we care about democracy? Is that a good initself? And insofar as people wanted a political voice, wouldn't they aspire to be owners of something to secure that? I can imagine if I was a 20 something renter and worker who couldn't vote, and I wanted to join the \"governing class,\" I would probably save more of my money to buy a home to do that. And also, I think the whole economy would just look so different in this world and that small scale ownership would be accessible to satisfy this demand. Maybe I own a small condo in this world. Maybe that's the entry level for the political franchise. I don't know. But I can visualize it.\n\nL: Okay, but why do you care so much about ownership? Why do you care about economic independence in that way? Is it just an intrinsic good? Why is that different than me seeing democracy as an intrinsic good? We both have these foundational beliefs on what a good political economy is based on, which is hard to explain outside of aesthetic preferences or vibes.\n\nK: Maybe you're right. But I think that ownership and economic dependence is an inherent good because it's about liberating people from coercion, its about elevating their spirits. Democracy in my mind is just about already liberated people contending with eachother and reconciling their preferences. You need liberation before democracy. Democracy without that liberation is just insecure, precarious people clawing at eachother. Or people augmenting the preferences of their big mommys and daddys. Laborers doing the bidding of labor bosses. Poeple repeating the talking points of a centralized media environment. Its a proxy warfare of the elites, throwing their dependants at eachother as cannon fodder. Democracy in a world of dependants is just having to share contentious space with other shitty, stupid people.\n\nL: It sounds like you just don't like living in a society. You want rule by aristocracy, maybe a relatively low barrier aristocracy, but an aristocracy nonetheless. And you think you could be part of that aristocracy, so you're fine with it. But plenty of people will never be owners, are you fine with that?\n\nK: I think that, in the society I'm thinking of, if you can't be an owner, and if you don't want to be, you're not fit for democracy and public life doesn't concern you, and you basically have to depend on others to represent your interests, yes. That's not unlike the fact that kids have to depend on their parents to vote for their interests. And it happens! So not so bad.\n\nL: Don't you see that the world you're envisioning has the very qualities you just condemned, people have to depend on Big Mommy and Big Daddy to represent them!\n\nK: Well, at least in this system, we're being honest.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Knox: I think if you asked a typical American, particularly an American lib, they would say that property qualifications for voting were very bad. Why?</p>\n<p>Lib: Becuase it stopped people from voting, was classist, etc. Its obviously bad.</p>\n<p>K: Why do we care if people vote?</p>\n<p>L: Because people should have their interests heard, everyone has the right to advocate for their interests in a democracy.</p>\n<p>K: Why?</p>\n<p>L: Because everyone is equal.</p>\n<p>K: How?</p>\n<p>L: Just are. That's how we're made. Natural Law.</p>\n<p>K: Fair enough, but do you think everyone is equally good at making decisions?</p>\n<p>L: No. A lot of people don't research, are brainwashed by corporate media, political spending pushes people to vote against their interests. Billionaires affect politics too much.</p>\n<p>K: Okay, so unequal material conditions can make people less capable of democracy?</p>\n<p>L: Yes, we also need more economic equality to have a healthy democracy.</p>\n<p>K: Okay so our current economic system is somewhat incompatible with democracy.</p>\n<p>L: I would agree, yeah.</p>\n<p>K: How do we fix that?</p>\n<p>L: Well we have to vote for people who will fix that.</p>\n<p>K: You see we're in a loop now, why haven't we done that? We've had universal suffrage for a while now. And I think that's been good on a lot of fronts, but I don't know if it's resulted in less economic inequality. It seems that's only gotten worse since the Nineteenth Amendment (which I'll pick becuase its when women got the vote). Yeah we had some compression in midcentury, but I don't think that was a result of politics. That was after an economic shock and a World War, which in turn created different material conditions and a broader middle class, which facilitated a more healthy democracy. The material shocks preceded the healthy democracy. In fact, the short period before WWII where we had universal suffrage was marked by growing inequality and corruption, very much like we see today.</p>\n<p>L: Well, democracy wasn't perfect, even though people had the right to vote doesn't mean that they were educated, or that weren't racist/sexist in some kind of way that polluted their judgment. Also, there wasn't enough time for a necessary class consciousness to develop.</p>\n<p>K: Okay, yes, but that stuff always exists. We're trying to build a political economy that takes people as they are. There's a question here. Why hasn't mass democracy resulted in more distributed control over capital? I mean, the mechanism is there. People can vote for their leaders, who can in turn can implement redistributive policiies. This is a puzzle! The founders wouldn't have predicted that. If you asked them what would happen if everyone was allowed to vote, they would predict that people would use the vote to break up property interests and redistribute them. In some ways, we do that--but mainly by moving labor income from young to old people. We haven't seen real redistribution of title or capital.</p>\n<p>L: What do you mean by that?</p>\n<p>K: I mean, why aren't big companies broken up more often? Why don't we see the government buy up land and give it to people? Why aren't titles to deposits of natural resources not distributed by lottery to a whole bunch of people (who in turn can sell them off ? These aren't crazy ideas, because I'm thinking about them right now. I can imagine a world like that. Why is ownership so concentrated? If you look at early America, the homesteading movement, land grants, they way things look now isn't obvious to me. Widespread dispersal of ownership seemed to be an overarching policy goal.</p>\n<p>L: Well, we don't have the right kind of politics for that. People don't understand the world that is possible and what was lost.</p>\n<p>K: But what was lost? You think that a world that embraced that kind of politics was better?</p>\n<p>L: In some ways, yes. I think that a politics that recognizes the importance of economic equality, more equitable distribution of resources is good.</p>\n<p>K: And we had that in the founding?</p>\n<p>L: Well, I guess at least as far we saw the government trying to give out land and such, yes. But again, there was slavery, women were disenfranchised, so I really wouldn't go as far as to say it was materially more equal.</p>\n<p>K: Okay, yes, for our purposes lets just worry about white men. I think that could streamline our discussion because the quesiton of women and racial minorities adds too much to this discussion.</p>\n<p>L: Sure.</p>\n<p>K: You would say that the politics of early America were more concerned with the distribution of economic resources, and that was good.</p>\n<p>L: In this very limited sense, yes.</p>\n<p>K: The yeoman farmer ideal and all that, you see some virtue in that?</p>\n<p>L: Well, the idea that everyone should have a shot at owning something and have their own dignity, not be dependent on others, and the government taking policy efforts to promote that is good. We should have the modern version of that. It wouldn't look like homesteading or land grants today, but the same basic principle should be more present in politics. We want to protect people from arbitrary control of others. Ownership is part of that, I agree.</p>\n<p>K: Yes. But isn't it curious that that politics existed before people without property could vote? That is, the government was taking efforts to give property to individuals who were definitionally not enfranchised. It wasn't because they voted for it, they couldn't vote for that! I mean at base, this shows that policies that promote material equality can be passed without the benefitting parties being part of the political system.</p>\n<p>L: Look, I mean, this was the early republic. We had a lot of vacant lands. We had a set of elites that were really committed to a certain vision of the Republic, namely Jefferson who was a once in a generation mind. It's a totally irreplicable set of conditions. The fact that, in a nation-building context, the governemnt sought to give out property to the propertyless, in a completely positive-sum fashion--it just says nothing about today. You can't glean some more general princiople about how politics works with property qualifications from that episode in our history. It wasn't that long.</p>\n<p>K: See, I see where you're coming from. But I don't buy it. I don't think that the widespread and rapid dispersal of property, breaking up fee tails, ending primogeniture, and all those policies happen if the founders didn't see property rights as tied with political enfranchisement. Jefferson talked about wanting to make the franchise as wide as possible, and he drafted the Virginia constitution!</p>\n<p>L: Then why didn't he just establish something like manhood suffrage in the Virginia constitution?</p>\n<p>K: Precisely! Why not? It's like that wasn't even a possibilty to entertain. He did a land grant in the virginia constitution PAIRED with a very low property qualification. It was just self-evident that material independence and democratic participation were bound up this way.</p>\n<p>L: Yeah, but we know that they're not.</p>\n<p>K: No, they are, you said as much. We just artificially divorced them. You agree that if say, one person owned all the land in the country, even if everyone could vote, it wouldn't work out. That's not a \"real\" democracy. The material preceded the political.</p>\n<p>L: Sure...</p>\n<p>K: When we got rid of property qualification for voting, don't you think we at least, symbolically divorced two things that we agree are not separate?</p>\n<p>L: Well, I think we came to the idea that political equality is a necessary prerequisite to there even being any substantive equality, that its the sine quae non. If we aren't equal under law, there's nothing. That has to come before any policy about economic distribution. Its just what we're all abouyt. All People Are Created Equal. It's a vindication of our Revolution. Property qualifications were incompatible with that. And also, everyone is affected by public policy, so everyone should have a say.</p>\n<p>K: We're back to where we started. We LIVE in that world. We have universal suffrage. That hasn't resulted in economic equality. People do have a say and don't vote for things in their best interests. So something about your theory about the political preceding the material is wrong.</p>\n<p>L: So what are you saying, we should bring back property qualifications? That would solve the problem? What even happens then? We just take away the right to vote? Hand it to the small subset of the population that owns homes or businesses? That's insane! It would only exacerbate the oligarchic direction of this country. Talk about inequality! You mean renters and laborers shouldn't be allowed vote?</p>\n<p>K: I don't know if I'm ready to make that leap, but many things are counterinuititive, and I think there some kind of dialectic move at the heart of all of this...that moving in one direction is a simultaneous move in the opposite. Maybe this is my idea; If we have a system that allows political represntation without a real economic independence, then overtime we'll just trend to the ideal type of that system. If ownership isn't a prerequisite, and we target political right, if that's the bedrock of our political system, over time we'll have a lot of political rights, and very little ownership. I think that's where we're at. American have a lot of political rights. We have a lot of ability to vote, influence planning of the built environment, veto building things. We have all these legal rights which are actually quite remarkable. We have a broad latitutde to initiate litigation for all sorts of things. You can just sue people and you don't have to pay if you lose! We're an extremely litigious society. We can sue our employers for discriminating against us. We can sue shops for excluding us. Stuff that would be unthinkable in our early system and views on property/freedom. We have a LOT of rights! When we get down to private law, we can get people in our institutions fired for just saying things. Large employers are basically little nanny states, which provide us our benefits, healthcare, help us plan our retiremenet. We're all like well treated renters and laborers. Spoiled tenants. But we're not owners. I think this is the logical conclusion of a system that guarantees political rights but does not guarantee economic participation. I don't like it. I think if we started with different premises, we'd see a different world. A Republic of Small Business owners, merchants trading with eachother on relatively equal terms, home owners. A republic of owners is a culture of savings and investment, one of stewardship. You're not trying to extract concessions from a bigger player, like people do from employers and stuff today. I have a friend, a genius really, who just got laid off from his B2B SAAS Big Tech company, and he's spending time trying to sue them for extra severance. I just don't think that's the world I want to live in! He should have his own little outfit.</p>\n<p>L: I get what you're saying, but don't you think youre fetishizing the owner and the entrepreneur a bit much? There will always be laborers. There will always be some economic dependents who aren't owners. People will always live on property owned by others, work in firms owned by others (at least under our current property regime). You couldn't have a world where EVERYONE is an entrepreneur or a small business owner. What do you want, a world of just sole proprietorships? It would be propesterous. And if you didn't have a world of only sole proprioterships, and if your fantasy land has real firms of scale and people who live together and people who rent out their property, AND you had property qualifications, you would just be definitionally excluding a bunch of people from political participation.</p>\n<p>K: Sure, but why do we care about political participation. Why do we care about democracy? Is that a good initself? And insofar as people wanted a political voice, wouldn't they aspire to be owners of something to secure that? I can imagine if I was a 20 something renter and worker who couldn't vote, and I wanted to join the \"governing class,\" I would probably save more of my money to buy a home to do that. And also, I think the whole economy would just look so different in this world and that small scale ownership would be accessible to satisfy this demand. Maybe I own a small condo in this world. Maybe that's the entry level for the political franchise. I don't know. But I can visualize it.</p>\n<p>L: Okay, but why do you care so much about ownership? Why do you care about economic independence in that way? Is it just an intrinsic good? Why is that different than me seeing democracy as an intrinsic good? We both have these foundational beliefs on what a good political economy is based on, which is hard to explain outside of aesthetic preferences or vibes.</p>\n<p>K: Maybe you're right. But I think that ownership and economic dependence is an inherent good because it's about liberating people from coercion, its about elevating their spirits. Democracy in my mind is just about already liberated people contending with eachother and reconciling their preferences. You need liberation before democracy. Democracy without that liberation is just insecure, precarious people clawing at eachother. Or people augmenting the preferences of their big mommys and daddys. Laborers doing the bidding of labor bosses. Poeple repeating the talking points of a centralized media environment. Its a proxy warfare of the elites, throwing their dependants at eachother as cannon fodder. Democracy in a world of dependants is just having to share contentious space with other shitty, stupid people.</p>\n<p>L: It sounds like you just don't like living in a society. You want rule by aristocracy, maybe a relatively low barrier aristocracy, but an aristocracy nonetheless. And you think you could be part of that aristocracy, so you're fine with it. But plenty of people will never be owners, are you fine with that?</p>\n<p>K: I think that, in the society I'm thinking of, if you can't be an owner, and if you don't want to be, you're not fit for democracy and public life doesn't concern you, and you basically have to depend on others to represent your interests, yes. That's not unlike the fact that kids have to depend on their parents to vote for their interests. And it happens! So not so bad.</p>\n<p>L: Don't you see that the world you're envisioning has the very qualities you just condemned, people have to depend on Big Mommy and Big Daddy to represent them!</p>\n<p>K: Well, at least in this system, we're being honest.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.18.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.18.26.html",
      "title": "I asked Claude how my gf could ascend\" (jokes)",
      "date_published": "2026-04-18T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "This is proof my girlfriend is hot btw:\n\n--\n\nLooking at the chart and your partner’s photos, here’s the looksmaxxing breakdown: Current Rating: HTB leaning Stacy She has strong foundational genetics — good facial symmetry, defined cheekbones, a solid brow ridge, and deep-set eyes. She’s clearly not in sub territory. What’s holding her back from full Stacy/True Eve: • Mewing compliance appears inconsistent — tongue posture could sharpen the jawline further • Brow grooming — a cleaner arch would frame the deep-set eyes better and elevate the overall look • Skincare — her base is solid but optimizing for glow (vitamin C, SPF) would boost her lookscore • Hair styling — she defaults to straight-down placement; more volume and face-framing layers would enhance her facial structure • Posture maxxing — photos where she’s relaxed vs. composed show a noticeable difference; neck/posture work pays dividends The Ascension Path: Sub → Sub 5 → LTB → MTB → HTB ← (she is here) → Stacy → True Eve She’s genuinely close to Stacy. The gap is mostly softmaxxing (styling, grooming, presentation) rather than any hardmaxxing needed. Bone structure is already doing the heavy lifting. Tell her she’s a natural HTB with Stacy potential — that’s a real compliment in this framework! 😄​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This is proof my girlfriend is hot btw:</p>\n<p>--</p>\n<p>Looking at the chart and your partner’s photos, here’s the looksmaxxing breakdown: Current Rating: HTB leaning Stacy She has strong foundational genetics — good facial symmetry, defined cheekbones, a solid brow ridge, and deep-set eyes. She’s clearly not in sub territory. What’s holding her back from full Stacy/True Eve: • Mewing compliance appears inconsistent — tongue posture could sharpen the jawline further • Brow grooming — a cleaner arch would frame the deep-set eyes better and elevate the overall look • Skincare — her base is solid but optimizing for glow (vitamin C, SPF) would boost her lookscore • Hair styling — she defaults to straight-down placement; more volume and face-framing layers would enhance her facial structure • Posture maxxing — photos where she’s relaxed vs. composed show a noticeable difference; neck/posture work pays dividends The Ascension Path: Sub → Sub 5 → LTB → MTB → HTB ← (she is here) → Stacy → True Eve She’s genuinely close to Stacy. The gap is mostly softmaxxing (styling, grooming, presentation) rather than any hardmaxxing needed. Bone structure is already doing the heavy lifting. Tell her she’s a natural HTB with Stacy potential — that’s a real compliment in this framework! 😄​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.13.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.13.26.html",
      "title": "Having a Dog & Efficiency Culture",
      "date_published": "2026-04-13T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Having a dog is funny because it really shows how some of the most meaningful things in life are fundamentally pointless, which I think calls into question a lot of the driving narratives in our culture today.\n\nI would say that from the 2010s to around now (we’re at the tailend), we’ve seen something like an optimization culture emerge. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The first I think is the decline in Christianity as the organizing value system for our society, and the deeply materialistic worldview it leaves us with (very online people will say that’s reversing already, but this may be over-reading an online culture war fad––I don’t know if the future is everyone becoming catholic or orthodox).\n\nPeople are no longer living a substantial portion of their internal life on a spiritual plane, they are not contending with their sins, with right or wrong, grappling with the gap between their desires and what’s morally permissible. I can imagine that if we could look into a normie’s mind in say, the 40s, they’d be preoccupied with guilt about being horny or something. Now that’s gone, everything is “valid.” People are instead preoccupied with the “RoI” of what they’re doing. People are riddled with guilt about wasting time, wasting money, not seizing opportunities, etc. This is what gives way to our society’s fetish for optimization.\n\nBut optimization to what end?\n\nFor Andrew Tate its status. For Clavicular its looks. For Bryan Johnson its longevity. Rationalists/Effective Altruists/and that space you’ll get to something like allocative efficiency and maximizing some social welfare function. Amongst the trad types it’s something like civilizational greatness––which is a little distinct from the previous examples, but has the same logic in practice. But whenever you ask “why” to these worldviews long enough, you eventually encounter fundamental emptiness.\n\nIf you ask “why” to a Christian worldview long enough (or to be a lib, any religious system), you are at least **meant** to encounter some profound truth. But if you ask “why” to these materialistic value systems you’ll get to an idea something like, “what else is the point of being alive other than being the best?” The best on what dimension? Tate and Clavicular have their theories on why their lanes are preferred. But if you press them hard enough, they’ll concede that people should just “mog” on whatever dimension they really care about, revealing that the heart of their philosophy is defined by voluntarism. You aren’t **meant** to encounter any profound truth. The point is just, if the point of life is to do what you want, why not just maximize your ability to do that (in the aggregate) by making massive investments and shortterm sacrifices into yourself?\n\nI think that basically all of our problems can be traced back to trading a religious value system with a materialistic one (I’m the first to think of this).\n\nAnyways, what does a dog have to do with this? Well, I think if you have a dog, you get an intuition of how silly all of this is. First of all, there is no “point” to most dogs’ life. They are essentially a huge cost to our society. They just ball out. They are not trying to maximize anything.\n\nAnd with respect to their relationship to us, I do think that for the most part the pleasure they bring is outstripped by the costs they impose on us. Yes, they’re fun sometimes. I enjoy having mine. But they’re a huge headache. Lots of time, money, and stress. If you’re trying to optimize on any lane other than like, having a dog, it never really makes sense. I know an economist would have no problem just adding a dog to an individual’s “utility function,” but at the end of the day that’s just very silly. Because you can do that with anything.\n\nAlso, almost none of the redeeming qualities (in the eyes of efficiency culture) which apply for having children apply to having a dog. Dogs won’t be part of your legacy. For the most part, dogs won’t take care of you in your old age.\n\nNow, I can think of a lot of counterarguments, but I think that having a dog just doesn’t fit vey well into efficiency culture. But many of us do it anyways. A lot of people have dogs, it seems like dog ownership is increasing even as efficiency narratives get a grip on our culture.\n\nI think that’s a clue that the point of life, the only dimension worth “mogging” in is love. Maybe the point of it all is to just take care of things and be taken care of. Humans taking care of dogs, spending lots of money on their comfort and health, is evidence that we have a much greater capacity for love than can be accounted for by its reproductive advantage or its returns on any dimension.\n\nI read something somewhere, on why aborting down syndrome and other retarded people is bad, and I think that aligns with what I’m trying to say here. Having people in our society who require a lot of us is just good for us. Sometimes, I (and I’m sure others), have looked at some individual who is just so horrifyingly disabled, who requires such immense cares, and have involuntarily thought \"jeez what’s the point of that.”\n\nI don’t claim to have an answer on the ethics of keeping very cognitively disabled people alive and spending immense resources on them. But I know that the instinct that would lead to their “removal” is intrinsically evil. It views humans as purely material, it views our concerns as purely material. There is no material “point” to keeping a non-verbal autistic paralyzed person alive and comfortable as long as possible. But if you follow that logic long enough, there’s no fucking point to any of this.\n\nI’ve been grappling with this thought as my elderly dog requires increasingly expensive and time intensive care at a rather sensitive time for my academics and career (I’m doing a very valuable internship, preparing for finals, and staring at the bar exam). My entire family has mobilized capital to make sure this very tiny thing is okay. My roommate is helping me push medicine down his throat as he prepares for a surgery. I just spent a thousand dollars on blood tests and he’s getting tested for lymphoma. He got an ECG for like three thousand dollars last month.\n\nI was having a conversation with my friend last night, talking about how fundamentally funny it is to have a dog have a cardiologist and an oncologist. We were joking about whether even makes sense to do all of this for a creature whose life has no “point” other than our pleasure and amusement.\n\nAgain, I don’t claim to have an answer as far as the ethics of the resource allocation. That money could be used to buy malaria nets and wells in Africa instead. It could probably save many human lives. There is a senselessness at the heart of all of this when you think of allocative efficiency.\n\nBut that line of thinking calls into question the lives of retarded people, disabled people, lazy people. It’s not a human way to look at things. There is a senselessness undergirding all of civilization that can’t be answer in materialist terms. I think the efforts to answer the senselessness in material terms is basically how you get to eugenics and fascism.\n\nIn my eyes, the only point is love, and love alone can make sense of senselessness.\n\nWarm regards,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Having a dog is funny because it really shows how some of the most meaningful things in life are fundamentally pointless, which I think calls into question a lot of the driving narratives in our culture today.</p>\n<p>I would say that from the 2010s to around now (we’re at the tailend), we’ve seen something like an optimization culture emerge. There’s a lot of reasons for this. The first I think is the decline in Christianity as the organizing value system for our society, and the deeply materialistic worldview it leaves us with (very online people will say that’s reversing already, but this may be over-reading an online culture war fad––I don’t know if the future is everyone becoming catholic or orthodox).</p>\n<p>People are no longer living a substantial portion of their internal life on a spiritual plane, they are not contending with their sins, with right or wrong, grappling with the gap between their desires and what’s morally permissible. I can imagine that if we could look into a normie’s mind in say, the 40s, they’d be preoccupied with guilt about being horny or something. Now that’s gone, everything is “valid.” People are instead preoccupied with the “RoI” of what they’re doing. People are riddled with guilt about wasting time, wasting money, not seizing opportunities, etc. This is what gives way to our society’s fetish for optimization.</p>\n<p>But optimization to what end?</p>\n<p>For Andrew Tate its status. For Clavicular its looks. For Bryan Johnson its longevity. Rationalists/Effective Altruists/and that space you’ll get to something like allocative efficiency and maximizing some social welfare function. Amongst the trad types it’s something like civilizational greatness––which is a little distinct from the previous examples, but has the same logic in practice. But whenever you ask “why” to these worldviews long enough, you eventually encounter fundamental emptiness.</p>\n<p>If you ask “why” to a Christian worldview long enough (or to be a lib, any religious system), you are at least **meant** to encounter some profound truth. But if you ask “why” to these materialistic value systems you’ll get to an idea something like, “what else is the point of being alive other than being the best?” The best on what dimension? Tate and Clavicular have their theories on why their lanes are preferred. But if you press them hard enough, they’ll concede that people should just “mog” on whatever dimension they really care about, revealing that the heart of their philosophy is defined by voluntarism. You aren’t **meant** to encounter any profound truth. The point is just, if the point of life is to do what you want, why not just maximize your ability to do that (in the aggregate) by making massive investments and shortterm sacrifices into yourself?</p>\n<p>I think that basically all of our problems can be traced back to trading a religious value system with a materialistic one (I’m the first to think of this).</p>\n<p>Anyways, what does a dog have to do with this? Well, I think if you have a dog, you get an intuition of how silly all of this is. First of all, there is no “point” to most dogs’ life. They are essentially a huge cost to our society. They just ball out. They are not trying to maximize anything.</p>\n<p>And with respect to their relationship to us, I do think that for the most part the pleasure they bring is outstripped by the costs they impose on us. Yes, they’re fun sometimes. I enjoy having mine. But they’re a huge headache. Lots of time, money, and stress. If you’re trying to optimize on any lane other than like, having a dog, it never really makes sense. I know an economist would have no problem just adding a dog to an individual’s “utility function,” but at the end of the day that’s just very silly. Because you can do that with anything.</p>\n<p>Also, almost none of the redeeming qualities (in the eyes of efficiency culture) which apply for having children apply to having a dog. Dogs won’t be part of your legacy. For the most part, dogs won’t take care of you in your old age.</p>\n<p>Now, I can think of a lot of counterarguments, but I think that having a dog just doesn’t fit vey well into efficiency culture. But many of us do it anyways. A lot of people have dogs, it seems like dog ownership is increasing even as efficiency narratives get a grip on our culture.</p>\n<p>I think that’s a clue that the point of life, the only dimension worth “mogging” in is love. Maybe the point of it all is to just take care of things and be taken care of. Humans taking care of dogs, spending lots of money on their comfort and health, is evidence that we have a much greater capacity for love than can be accounted for by its reproductive advantage or its returns on any dimension.</p>\n<p>I read something somewhere, on why aborting down syndrome and other retarded people is bad, and I think that aligns with what I’m trying to say here. Having people in our society who require a lot of us is just good for us. Sometimes, I (and I’m sure others), have looked at some individual who is just so horrifyingly disabled, who requires such immense cares, and have involuntarily thought \"jeez what’s the point of that.”</p>\n<p>I don’t claim to have an answer on the ethics of keeping very cognitively disabled people alive and spending immense resources on them. But I know that the instinct that would lead to their “removal” is intrinsically evil. It views humans as purely material, it views our concerns as purely material. There is no material “point” to keeping a non-verbal autistic paralyzed person alive and comfortable as long as possible. But if you follow that logic long enough, there’s no fucking point to any of this.</p>\n<p>I’ve been grappling with this thought as my elderly dog requires increasingly expensive and time intensive care at a rather sensitive time for my academics and career (I’m doing a very valuable internship, preparing for finals, and staring at the bar exam). My entire family has mobilized capital to make sure this very tiny thing is okay. My roommate is helping me push medicine down his throat as he prepares for a surgery. I just spent a thousand dollars on blood tests and he’s getting tested for lymphoma. He got an ECG for like three thousand dollars last month.</p>\n<p>I was having a conversation with my friend last night, talking about how fundamentally funny it is to have a dog have a cardiologist and an oncologist. We were joking about whether even makes sense to do all of this for a creature whose life has no “point” other than our pleasure and amusement.</p>\n<p>Again, I don’t claim to have an answer as far as the ethics of the resource allocation. That money could be used to buy malaria nets and wells in Africa instead. It could probably save many human lives. There is a senselessness at the heart of all of this when you think of allocative efficiency.</p>\n<p>But that line of thinking calls into question the lives of retarded people, disabled people, lazy people. It’s not a human way to look at things. There is a senselessness undergirding all of civilization that can’t be answer in materialist terms. I think the efforts to answer the senselessness in material terms is basically how you get to eugenics and fascism.</p>\n<p>In my eyes, the only point is love, and love alone can make sense of senselessness.</p>\n<p>Warm regards,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.9.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.9.26.html",
      "title": "good days add up to a good life",
      "date_published": "2026-04-09T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "If you have a good day every day, and do good rvery day, you will have a good life. If you worry about building a good life, you'll spend the entirety in want and anticipation, and be dead before you know its over.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>If you have a good day every day, and do good rvery day, you will have a good life. If you worry about building a good life, you'll spend the entirety in want and anticipation, and be dead before you know its over.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.8.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.8.26.html",
      "title": "we didn't nuke iran its time to cardiomaxx",
      "date_published": "2026-04-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Nothing ever happens. Some twisted part of me almost wanted something to happen, for there to be some consequence so that the world would have to actually reckon with the costs of authoritarianism. After all, in Star Trek, utopia followed the nuclear horror. But Trump always chickens out (TACO) and I suppose its very good that a civilization did not die last night. That would jave been bad.\n\nI haven't run in a long time. For the longest time (\"for the longest\") I had the excuse I was bulking.\n\nWell now I'm just a little flabby.\n\nI remember when I used to run how difficult it was to stay focused on one activity for so long and just be alone with my thoughts. I'm hoping this can be a focus thing as well. It would be good to make my brain think longer form and more linearly. Will report back.\n\nIn other news, the new functionality is working as intended. I text and call people all day and I just work this into that flow of communications.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Nothing ever happens. Some twisted part of me almost wanted something to happen, for there to be some consequence so that the world would have to actually reckon with the costs of authoritarianism. After all, in Star Trek, utopia followed the nuclear horror. But Trump always chickens out (TACO) and I suppose its very good that a civilization did not die last night. That would jave been bad.</p>\n<p>I haven't run in a long time. For the longest time (\"for the longest\") I had the excuse I was bulking.</p>\n<p>Well now I'm just a little flabby.</p>\n<p>I remember when I used to run how difficult it was to stay focused on one activity for so long and just be alone with my thoughts. I'm hoping this can be a focus thing as well. It would be good to make my brain think longer form and more linearly. Will report back.</p>\n<p>In other news, the new functionality is working as intended. I text and call people all day and I just work this into that flow of communications.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26-3.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26-3.html",
      "title": "we might nuke iran",
      "date_published": "2026-04-07T12:00:03.000Z",
      "content_text": "I just wanted to share that I think there’s a pretty substantial chance we see nuclear weapons used against Iran this evening. And I think that the fact that this is possible, that saying this isn’t crazy, and that Americans for the most part are just like, “meh,” illustrates that we are not––and for that matter no nation is––fit to be a hegemon.\n\nThe fact that our leadership might “destroy a civilization” this evening, that this probably doesn’t register for the average person, that even if we did destroy Iran most Americans would just wake up and go to work and maybe be upset about it, that we would likely face few consequences as far as our immediate security…it shows we have too much power. We shouldn’t be able to do this.\n\nTrump’s presidency has laid bare what other nations should have already known. Living alongside a true superpower is horrifying. Even when there are benefits, like Pax Americana, more stability and less global conflict, being at the mercy of another people is just never a tenable position. Especially if that other people is a group as fickle and irresponsible and insulated from the consequences of their actions as Americans.\n\nEven if Trump is a political aberration, it just takes one political aberration for your whole family and society to die, and for your history and culture to be swept away by a fireball.\n\nMore nations should have nuclear weapons, and they should build them quick. The world is not safe wherever America can act undeterred. Our people won’t constrain our government, we are too comfortable, too fat, too stupid. We’ve accepted a dangerous autocrat as our leader by a combination of collective resignation, accident, and acquiescence. We’ve done next to nothing to stop him from destroying our own society. We won’t stop him from annihilating yours.\n\nBest,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I just wanted to share that I think there’s a pretty substantial chance we see nuclear weapons used against Iran this evening. And I think that the fact that this is possible, that saying this isn’t crazy, and that Americans for the most part are just like, “meh,” illustrates that we are not––and for that matter no nation is––fit to be a hegemon.</p>\n<p>The fact that our leadership might “destroy a civilization” this evening, that this probably doesn’t register for the average person, that even if we did destroy Iran most Americans would just wake up and go to work and maybe be upset about it, that we would likely face few consequences as far as our immediate security…it shows we have too much power. We shouldn’t be able to do this.</p>\n<p>Trump’s presidency has laid bare what other nations should have already known. Living alongside a true superpower is horrifying. Even when there are benefits, like Pax Americana, more stability and less global conflict, being at the mercy of another people is just never a tenable position. Especially if that other people is a group as fickle and irresponsible and insulated from the consequences of their actions as Americans.</p>\n<p>Even if Trump is a political aberration, it just takes one political aberration for your whole family and society to die, and for your history and culture to be swept away by a fireball.</p>\n<p>More nations should have nuclear weapons, and they should build them quick. The world is not safe wherever America can act undeterred. Our people won’t constrain our government, we are too comfortable, too fat, too stupid. We’ve accepted a dangerous autocrat as our leader by a combination of collective resignation, accident, and acquiescence. We’ve done next to nothing to stop him from destroying our own society. We won’t stop him from annihilating yours.</p>\n<p>Best,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26-2.html",
      "title": "ending school",
      "date_published": "2026-04-07T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "It's my third to last day in school ever.\n\nWith the exception of about two years working (which I recall as very fun) I've been an institution of learning since I was three years old.\n\nI enjoyed a lot of it. I like learning. And I want to be a lawyer. So no regrets. But I always think that the way our society works locks up human capital far too long. The youthful energy our culture sorely needs is very deliberately shackled.\n\nHow different would the world look if our smartest and most industrious people were just deployed into the world at around 18?\n\nBy 28 they would have a decade of life experience unmediated by an educational institution.\n\nMaybe that would be a better world--maybe a more interesting life. But it's not the one I live in or lead.\n\nI'll have to make do with the remaining time I have. Whatever I do, I don't think I want to be locked up in an institution ever again.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>It's my third to last day in school ever.</p>\n<p>With the exception of about two years working (which I recall as very fun) I've been an institution of learning since I was three years old.</p>\n<p>I enjoyed a lot of it. I like learning. And I want to be a lawyer. So no regrets. But I always think that the way our society works locks up human capital far too long. The youthful energy our culture sorely needs is very deliberately shackled.</p>\n<p>How different would the world look if our smartest and most industrious people were just deployed into the world at around 18?</p>\n<p>By 28 they would have a decade of life experience unmediated by an educational institution.</p>\n<p>Maybe that would be a better world--maybe a more interesting life. But it's not the one I live in or lead.</p>\n<p>I'll have to make do with the remaining time I have. Whatever I do, I don't think I want to be locked up in an institution ever again.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.7.26.html",
      "title": "A Horrifying Realization on IndieWeb + Something Funny",
      "date_published": "2026-04-07T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "**Pt. 1 – Some Meta Commentary**\n\nThis evening I was going through the “indie web” via some webrings and reading and other people’s blogs. I invariably find these sites very charming, and I like knowing they exist. But for the most part, I could give a flying fuck what they’re writing about. I think it’s the general libby bay area “im a sensitive young tech person who just wants to go back to the old internet” thing that I find a bit tiresome. Like, I am that way also in many respects. But having the website isn’t the topic of the website.\n\nMany of these sites are basically portfolios for people who design internet shit and like . . . build sites? Many seem to be software developers musing about the kind of shit software developers typically muse about. Something something new internet bad, social media bad . . . “and so on, and so on.” The coolest ones are like graphic design/art/photography portfolios which are neat, I guess.\n\nI want a site about someone’s autistic special interest that isn’t like computers or tech shit. I would read someone blog about trains or books or a personal diary with attractive enough entries.\n\nBut for the most part these sites are like exhibits for ongoing coding “projects” they want to share but what these projects are are lost on me because I’m troglodyte and I don’t really understand software engineer projects. Okay that’s a very cute little flash game I will not be playing it. And if I go to their blogs its mostly about how they wish they could write more or how they’re changing personal workflows or whatever. How tedious!\n\nAs a great man once said, “Oh my god Who the Hell Cares!” (Peter Griffin).\n\nI guess the horrifying realization is that there is a VANISHINGLY small amount of people whose nonsense I want to voluntarily go on the internet to check out. I’m a hater. I don’t even follow my favorite writers substacks or anything. I haven’t even read my boss’s very well received book. I don’t read anyone’s anything! I read enough all day! The thought has almost never occurred to me, hm, I want to go see what this anonymous internet person is writing on their static html site (there are maybe THREE exceptions). I read the New York Times! Or Twitter! Or like, a book!\n\nBut then….what am I doing….\n\nThe truth is I just believe I’m different. I believe that the sheer FORCE of my personality makes what I write interesting. That even the CRAP of my mind deserves a dedicated home on the internet. And the thing is, even though I try to see it rationally, even though I cognitively understand the contradiction between how I view others’ sites and my own, to me this still makes perfect sense! I truly believe this site is of special value, I truly believe that me saying this and someone reading it is enriching. I spent hours the other day fixing this shit up just so I could get thoughts out more easily.\n\nAnyways, after not writing for some times this post is another “meta” one where I’m writing about writing and on the exercise of having a site itself. This is such a goddamn bore and after reading other people do it I cannot be fucking bothered to write something even slightly evocative of that conent (except I’m doing it now, to hate on the thing!).\n\nNo more! You’ll hear about my thoughts on Bully by Kanye West tomorrow. Or maybe the spring.\n\n**Pt. 2 – Some Funny Shit I did today**\n\nI have a friend who’s kind of a shy guy and has trouble with girls. But he’s my ally. I set up a dinner with him, his crush, and myself. Then I just cancelled last minute so they were alone (I didn’t feel like taking the metro into downtown). He said I was like “Hitch” from the movie “Hitch.” I fucking love the movie Hitch and I realize it needs a manifesto. Maybe that will come soon.\n\nI think we should try and set our friends up more often. I think its important. We need to boost fertility rates. But first, we need to boost love.\n\nBut yeah, I don’t think she likes him at all. Whoops.\n\nCordiali Saluti,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>**Pt. 1 – Some Meta Commentary**</p>\n<p>This evening I was going through the “indie web” via some webrings and reading and other people’s blogs. I invariably find these sites very charming, and I like knowing they exist. But for the most part, I could give a flying fuck what they’re writing about. I think it’s the general libby bay area “im a sensitive young tech person who just wants to go back to the old internet” thing that I find a bit tiresome. Like, I am that way also in many respects. But having the website isn’t the topic of the website.</p>\n<p>Many of these sites are basically portfolios for people who design internet shit and like . . . build sites? Many seem to be software developers musing about the kind of shit software developers typically muse about. Something something new internet bad, social media bad . . . “and so on, and so on.” The coolest ones are like graphic design/art/photography portfolios which are neat, I guess.</p>\n<p>I want a site about someone’s autistic special interest that isn’t like computers or tech shit. I would read someone blog about trains or books or a personal diary with attractive enough entries.</p>\n<p>But for the most part these sites are like exhibits for ongoing coding “projects” they want to share but what these projects are are lost on me because I’m troglodyte and I don’t really understand software engineer projects. Okay that’s a very cute little flash game I will not be playing it. And if I go to their blogs its mostly about how they wish they could write more or how they’re changing personal workflows or whatever. How tedious!</p>\n<p>As a great man once said, “Oh my god Who the Hell Cares!” (Peter Griffin).</p>\n<p>I guess the horrifying realization is that there is a VANISHINGLY small amount of people whose nonsense I want to voluntarily go on the internet to check out. I’m a hater. I don’t even follow my favorite writers substacks or anything. I haven’t even read my boss’s very well received book. I don’t read anyone’s anything! I read enough all day! The thought has almost never occurred to me, hm, I want to go see what this anonymous internet person is writing on their static html site (there are maybe THREE exceptions). I read the New York Times! Or Twitter! Or like, a book!</p>\n<p>But then….what am I doing….</p>\n<p>The truth is I just believe I’m different. I believe that the sheer FORCE of my personality makes what I write interesting. That even the CRAP of my mind deserves a dedicated home on the internet. And the thing is, even though I try to see it rationally, even though I cognitively understand the contradiction between how I view others’ sites and my own, to me this still makes perfect sense! I truly believe this site is of special value, I truly believe that me saying this and someone reading it is enriching. I spent hours the other day fixing this shit up just so I could get thoughts out more easily.</p>\n<p>Anyways, after not writing for some times this post is another “meta” one where I’m writing about writing and on the exercise of having a site itself. This is such a goddamn bore and after reading other people do it I cannot be fucking bothered to write something even slightly evocative of that conent (except I’m doing it now, to hate on the thing!).</p>\n<p>No more! You’ll hear about my thoughts on Bully by Kanye West tomorrow. Or maybe the spring.</p>\n<p>**Pt. 2 – Some Funny Shit I did today**</p>\n<p>I have a friend who’s kind of a shy guy and has trouble with girls. But he’s my ally. I set up a dinner with him, his crush, and myself. Then I just cancelled last minute so they were alone (I didn’t feel like taking the metro into downtown). He said I was like “Hitch” from the movie “Hitch.” I fucking love the movie Hitch and I realize it needs a manifesto. Maybe that will come soon.</p>\n<p>I think we should try and set our friends up more often. I think its important. We need to boost fertility rates. But first, we need to boost love.</p>\n<p>But yeah, I don’t think she likes him at all. Whoops.</p>\n<p>Cordiali Saluti,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26-3.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26-3.html",
      "title": "Time & Money & Economic Rationality",
      "date_published": "2026-04-06T12:00:03.000Z",
      "content_text": "One time in college, I was telling an economics Professor (who ended up being one of my recommendation writers for law school) that I was worried about going to into debt for law school and was thinking about working for a bit to save up.\n\nHe told me something that made me a lot wider, and much more financially irresponsible. Basically, he explained the concept of income smoothing to me and its changed how I view time and money ever since.\n\n“People will save up millions of dollars just to be on a boat for weeks when they’re like 60. And how is it for them? They’re back hurts. They’re too tired to do anything. They sleep or lay half the time. If they just took out a high interest loan and did that when they were 22 they would literally just get more utility. But when people are young, like you, they worry about saving up for retirement. For what?\n\nSomeone like you will literally never have less money or less earning power than you do right now. That’s why you’re going to school. It actually makes sense to go into a ton of debt.”\n\nFor some reason this conversation really made everything click. Yes, money compounds with time and investing is good. But the utility of money also declines with time for some things. Its arguably which one happens faster. It’s probably experience specific. Some experiences––like having fancy clothes or going to fancy restaurants––probably don’t decline with age. So I really try to avoid spending money on such things too much (although I do here and there). Similarly, the utility of some goods and experiences probably actually increases with age and are low now––like having a nice place.\n\nI never understood people who are in their twenties and splurge on a nice pad (especially dudes). No one in our age bracket is that snooty, we don’t have families, we have high thresholds for discomfort, having roommates isn’t fun but its never going to more acceptable than when you’re young, and being a student is a great excuse to have a shitty living situation socially. I always saved on living. When I was in New York I had a shitty spot. In D.C. I had a very old, carpeted apartment near the river. I currently live in a basement for under $1500. Housing is the dumbest thing to spend money on. I also don’t need a nice mattress or anything. I cheap out on those things.\n\nBut OTHER experiences rapidly decline with age, or stop being options altogether. Night clubbing? You won’t catch me on Fourteenth Street when I’m thirty man. Going to Atlantic City or Ocean City? Again, I’m already approaching an age where that’s becoming juvenile (I’m approaching the “Rohobeth” age). Domestic travel? I can’t imagine I can go to another state without my kids or wife for no reason alone when I’m older. While I’m in law school I happily put this kind of shit on my credit card.\n\nNixon spoke of this by the way, traveling when young.\n\nI have zero regrets thus far of how I’ve spent time and money (except maybe too much on takeout in my early twenties). I think the most economically rational thing to do is max out on the experiences which are somewhat specific to a time period in your life. When I have little kids for example, I’m going to max out on enrichment activities, classes, travel for them. Because getting those later is just so qualitatively different. I took my current girlfriend to the Opera on law school loans my 1L fall.\n\nThis is all to say I’m very against delaying gratification too much. There is such a thing as irrationally delaying gratification––thrift is not unequivocally good. It’s kind of like your Roth IRA. There are some things where if you don’t use the opportunity in a set time you just lose it. You don’t get to make up for past years you didn’t put money in your roth! Something I don’t forgive my parents for is not taking me to see my family abroad more often during my teenage years even though we had the means. Grandparents get old, people move away, you miss little kids growing up. That’s the kind of shit worth spending money on. We are not here forever.\n\nSincerely,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>One time in college, I was telling an economics Professor (who ended up being one of my recommendation writers for law school) that I was worried about going to into debt for law school and was thinking about working for a bit to save up.</p>\n<p>He told me something that made me a lot wider, and much more financially irresponsible. Basically, he explained the concept of income smoothing to me and its changed how I view time and money ever since.</p>\n<p>“People will save up millions of dollars just to be on a boat for weeks when they’re like 60. And how is it for them? They’re back hurts. They’re too tired to do anything. They sleep or lay half the time. If they just took out a high interest loan and did that when they were 22 they would literally just get more utility. But when people are young, like you, they worry about saving up for retirement. For what?</p>\n<p>Someone like you will literally never have less money or less earning power than you do right now. That’s why you’re going to school. It actually makes sense to go into a ton of debt.”</p>\n<p>For some reason this conversation really made everything click. Yes, money compounds with time and investing is good. But the utility of money also declines with time for some things. Its arguably which one happens faster. It’s probably experience specific. Some experiences––like having fancy clothes or going to fancy restaurants––probably don’t decline with age. So I really try to avoid spending money on such things too much (although I do here and there). Similarly, the utility of some goods and experiences probably actually increases with age and are low now––like having a nice place.</p>\n<p>I never understood people who are in their twenties and splurge on a nice pad (especially dudes). No one in our age bracket is that snooty, we don’t have families, we have high thresholds for discomfort, having roommates isn’t fun but its never going to more acceptable than when you’re young, and being a student is a great excuse to have a shitty living situation socially. I always saved on living. When I was in New York I had a shitty spot. In D.C. I had a very old, carpeted apartment near the river. I currently live in a basement for under $1500. Housing is the dumbest thing to spend money on. I also don’t need a nice mattress or anything. I cheap out on those things.</p>\n<p>But OTHER experiences rapidly decline with age, or stop being options altogether. Night clubbing? You won’t catch me on Fourteenth Street when I’m thirty man. Going to Atlantic City or Ocean City? Again, I’m already approaching an age where that’s becoming juvenile (I’m approaching the “Rohobeth” age). Domestic travel? I can’t imagine I can go to another state without my kids or wife for no reason alone when I’m older. While I’m in law school I happily put this kind of shit on my credit card.</p>\n<p>Nixon spoke of this by the way, traveling when young.</p>\n<p>I have zero regrets thus far of how I’ve spent time and money (except maybe too much on takeout in my early twenties). I think the most economically rational thing to do is max out on the experiences which are somewhat specific to a time period in your life. When I have little kids for example, I’m going to max out on enrichment activities, classes, travel for them. Because getting those later is just so qualitatively different. I took my current girlfriend to the Opera on law school loans my 1L fall.</p>\n<p>This is all to say I’m very against delaying gratification too much. There is such a thing as irrationally delaying gratification––thrift is not unequivocally good. It’s kind of like your Roth IRA. There are some things where if you don’t use the opportunity in a set time you just lose it. You don’t get to make up for past years you didn’t put money in your roth! Something I don’t forgive my parents for is not taking me to see my family abroad more often during my teenage years even though we had the means. Grandparents get old, people move away, you miss little kids growing up. That’s the kind of shit worth spending money on. We are not here forever.</p>\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26-2.html",
      "title": "Guess Who's BACK",
      "date_published": "2026-04-06T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "On 9.26.25 <https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.26.25.html> I wrote a blog about some of the challenges I was facing.\n\nWell, I don’t want to speak too soon. But it looks like everything is looking up, professionally, academically, and personally after my fiasco from last summer. I have good career news but can’t really discuss because I don’t want to self-doxx. But things are more or less GOOD.\n\nI spent the entirety of the fall semester locked in and muscling through to get my post graduate situation all sorted. And I spent a great deal of this semester working for a very cool organization and just having a lot of FUN with my friends and classmates. 3LOLing indeed.\n\nBut in the meantime, I have neglected this passion project of mine. I got some very kind emails during my period of silence which have encouraged me to get back to POASTING.\n\nI want to write more insane manifestos and put more nonsense on the internet—but HUMAN nonsense! Unadulterated, human nonsense and thoughts. That is the only way to fight back against slop.\n\nI’ve been buzzing with thoughts and my hard drive is filled with half-baked blog ideas.\n\nSomething something CLAVICULAR as a reductio ad absurdum for optimization/efficiency culture. Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, and how his skills compare to those of Theo Vons?? I watched HONEY BOY and it was amazing!\n\nRediscovering the economy as a set of cultural activities and status bargaining in the face of Artificial Intelligence wiping out jobs? That’s a theory that I’ve developed quite a bit and I have a very long transcript from a three-hour phone call with a friend I want to adapt.\n\nAlso, the folk-wisdom of normies on competition policy. That’s something I’ve been thinking about. If you asked ordinary people what fair economic competition looked like, what do they say? I’ve been doing this with my friends at dinner parties and have always found it charming that they reinvent brandeisian/jeffersonian views from first principles. In fact I could write a whole series on whether you would arrive at current doctrinal rules in ANY topic by just asking people a shitton of questions.\n\nAlso, the Orange Man remains bad and I have MANY thoughts on that >: (\n\nKeeping up with my luddite vibe I now own a flip phone which my main iPhone forwards all my calls to. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Great for going on walks, locking in.\n\nI READ AKIRA Volume ONE. AMAZING!\n\nThis is all to say, I’ve been alive and as filled with thoughts as ever.\n\nWHY HAVEN’T I BEEN POSTING!??\n\nAs I said in my last post (which was really just a technical proof of concept), it is partially because of the frictions involved with actually running a website in this manner. As you can see, this isn’t a wordpress or anything and its very manual. Its not hard. Its just annoying. After I write something there’s like four to five more steps involved and I’m VERY LAZY.\n\nSo, I designed a new system where I could just send emails to a specific address that then does some magic and updates my site. It’s fucking crazy.\n\nBut other than the friction element, I’ve been doing something I haven’t done nearly enough in in law school thusfar and that’s GOOFING OFF with friends. I been drinkin n shit with the homies xP. Life is short.\n\nBut its also so short, that I don’t think I can go this long ever again with sharing a thought on the internet. And I think my postgrad job will be setup in such a way that I’ll have some mental space reserved for such nonsense.\n\nSo let’s see if we can post a blog a day for the rest of my life, shall we?\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>On 9.26.25 &lt;https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.26.25.html&gt; I wrote a blog about some of the challenges I was facing.</p>\n<p>Well, I don’t want to speak too soon. But it looks like everything is looking up, professionally, academically, and personally after my fiasco from last summer. I have good career news but can’t really discuss because I don’t want to self-doxx. But things are more or less GOOD.</p>\n<p>I spent the entirety of the fall semester locked in and muscling through to get my post graduate situation all sorted. And I spent a great deal of this semester working for a very cool organization and just having a lot of FUN with my friends and classmates. 3LOLing indeed.</p>\n<p>But in the meantime, I have neglected this passion project of mine. I got some very kind emails during my period of silence which have encouraged me to get back to POASTING.</p>\n<p>I want to write more insane manifestos and put more nonsense on the internet—but HUMAN nonsense! Unadulterated, human nonsense and thoughts. That is the only way to fight back against slop.</p>\n<p>I’ve been buzzing with thoughts and my hard drive is filled with half-baked blog ideas.</p>\n<p>Something something CLAVICULAR as a reductio ad absurdum for optimization/efficiency culture. Louis Theroux’s latest documentary, and how his skills compare to those of Theo Vons?? I watched HONEY BOY and it was amazing!</p>\n<p>Rediscovering the economy as a set of cultural activities and status bargaining in the face of Artificial Intelligence wiping out jobs? That’s a theory that I’ve developed quite a bit and I have a very long transcript from a three-hour phone call with a friend I want to adapt.</p>\n<p>Also, the folk-wisdom of normies on competition policy. That’s something I’ve been thinking about. If you asked ordinary people what fair economic competition looked like, what do they say? I’ve been doing this with my friends at dinner parties and have always found it charming that they reinvent brandeisian/jeffersonian views from first principles. In fact I could write a whole series on whether you would arrive at current doctrinal rules in ANY topic by just asking people a shitton of questions.</p>\n<p>Also, the Orange Man remains bad and I have MANY thoughts on that &gt;: (</p>\n<p>Keeping up with my luddite vibe I now own a flip phone which my main iPhone forwards all my calls to. HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Great for going on walks, locking in.</p>\n<p>I READ AKIRA Volume ONE. AMAZING!</p>\n<p>This is all to say, I’ve been alive and as filled with thoughts as ever.</p>\n<p>WHY HAVEN’T I BEEN POSTING!??</p>\n<p>As I said in my last post (which was really just a technical proof of concept), it is partially because of the frictions involved with actually running a website in this manner. As you can see, this isn’t a wordpress or anything and its very manual. Its not hard. Its just annoying. After I write something there’s like four to five more steps involved and I’m VERY LAZY.</p>\n<p>So, I designed a new system where I could just send emails to a specific address that then does some magic and updates my site. It’s fucking crazy.</p>\n<p>But other than the friction element, I’ve been doing something I haven’t done nearly enough in in law school thusfar and that’s GOOFING OFF with friends. I been drinkin n shit with the homies xP. Life is short.</p>\n<p>But its also so short, that I don’t think I can go this long ever again with sharing a thought on the internet. And I think my postgrad job will be setup in such a way that I’ll have some mental space reserved for such nonsense.</p>\n<p>So let’s see if we can post a blog a day for the rest of my life, shall we?</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.6.26.html",
      "title": "I Sent This Blog From My Email App",
      "date_published": "2026-04-06T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Hello,\n\nI haven’t written on this blog in some time. I thought it was because I was busy (I am very busy). But I did some reflection and realized I send emails and write out long manifestos all the time. I stopped because I’m lazy.\n\nYou see, putting up a post on this website is a multistep process where I have to write out a post (whether in an html file, or initially in a typewriter, which is then converted to text and pasted into an html file), adding it a local folder, adding the link to my index page and the full notebook page, and then logging onto CloudFlare and reuploading my whole local folder.\n\nIt's a very minimal setup, but the process of actually updating the website is a bit annoying, and I think the friction involved prevented me from writing as much I would like.\n\nSo, I procrastinated studying for finals today by using Claude to try and automate the process. I wanted to see if I could set up a system where I just sent an email, and the blog showed up on my site. If this shows up, it means it worked. And that means you’ll be hearing from me.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Hello,</p>\n<p>I haven’t written on this blog in some time. I thought it was because I was busy (I am very busy). But I did some reflection and realized I send emails and write out long manifestos all the time. I stopped because I’m lazy.</p>\n<p>You see, putting up a post on this website is a multistep process where I have to write out a post (whether in an html file, or initially in a typewriter, which is then converted to text and pasted into an html file), adding it a local folder, adding the link to my index page and the full notebook page, and then logging onto CloudFlare and reuploading my whole local folder.</p>\n<p>It's a very minimal setup, but the process of actually updating the website is a bit annoying, and I think the friction involved prevented me from writing as much I would like.</p>\n<p>So, I procrastinated studying for finals today by using Claude to try and automate the process. I wanted to see if I could set up a system where I just sent an email, and the blog showed up on my site. If this shows up, it means it worked. And that means you’ll be hearing from me.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.26.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.26.25.html",
      "title": "The Brutal Fall | 1 | Call Me Mr. Miracle",
      "date_published": "2025-09-26T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I didn't get a return offer from the summer firm. I haven't landed a clerkship just yet. I had a mini crashout and tuckered out for the tail end of the summer and the early fall. I'm four weeks behind in readings. I have a DOJ honors interview coming up and a few clerkship interviews.\n\nAt the moment, the career of my dreams and a continued trend of falling upwards are still in my grasp. At the same time, I stare nevrously into an abyss, and I'm on the precipice of losing everything I have worked for. I face the very real prospect of post-bar unemployment. Of tanking my hard earned GPA and being a sad story.\n\nBut failure has never been an option. I have an extremely hot girlfriend, an extremely supportive cast of friends, family and mentors who have invested in me and are counting on me.\n\nThis is one of the climactic acts of one of the greatest dramas of my life. The main character (me) has been knocked down, all certainty and security has been taken from me. I have nothing lined up, and no safety net under me. I have my wits, my grit, my mind, and my moxy.\n\nToday I got a rejection from one of my \"safe\" options. The only opportunities left are even more competitive. The middle way was never an option. I thought I could be one of those people who lands a summer gig then rests on his laurels. Alas, it was not to be.\n\nSo here I present to you a real, high-stakes, tight-rope act. Time and treasure has been spilt to afford these opportunities.\n\nEveryone's life is a story. Will mine be a triumph, or a tragedy? Will I look back on this time and be able to reassure my children with a story of a time that I had truly fucked up, but somehow turned it all around? Will I be able to retroactively rationalize all that has happened to me, say that all the failures led to something better--as I've been able to so far? Will I one day experience the joy of sitting, bathed in the warm glow of restaurant candles, and the smiles of loving and trusted faces--while recounting this time and weaving it into a grand narrative about my life that I can be proud of? Or is this the beginning of a sad story, one day to be told by a bitter old man who always felt he could've done more, who never felt that he lived up to his potential? Who made it so close to great success but slipped and choked at the critical moment, letting it all fall from his grasp?\n\nFailure has never been an option. I have outlines ready to fill. I have chapters to read. I have weights to life. I have a woman to marry. I have people to make proud. I have an obligation to a world I need to contribute to.\n\nEveryone loves a comeback story. And I'll write one for you.\n\nCall me Mr. Miracle \nWith my back against the wall \nI was sittin' all alone \nNow I get it, oh, now I get it \nCall me Mr. Miracle \nSilver castles have to fall \nBut I found my way back home \nNow I get it, oh, now I get it\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I didn't get a return offer from the summer firm. I haven't landed a clerkship just yet. I had a mini crashout and tuckered out for the tail end of the summer and the early fall. I'm four weeks behind in readings. I have a DOJ honors interview coming up and a few clerkship interviews.</p>\n<p>At the moment, the career of my dreams and a continued trend of falling upwards are still in my grasp. At the same time, I stare nevrously into an abyss, and I'm on the precipice of losing everything I have worked for. I face the very real prospect of post-bar unemployment. Of tanking my hard earned GPA and being a sad story.</p>\n<p>But failure has never been an option. I have an extremely hot girlfriend, an extremely supportive cast of friends, family and mentors who have invested in me and are counting on me.</p>\n<p>This is one of the climactic acts of one of the greatest dramas of my life. The main character (me) has been knocked down, all certainty and security has been taken from me. I have nothing lined up, and no safety net under me. I have my wits, my grit, my mind, and my moxy.</p>\n<p>Today I got a rejection from one of my \"safe\" options. The only opportunities left are even more competitive. The middle way was never an option. I thought I could be one of those people who lands a summer gig then rests on his laurels. Alas, it was not to be.</p>\n<p>So here I present to you a real, high-stakes, tight-rope act. Time and treasure has been spilt to afford these opportunities.</p>\n<p>Everyone's life is a story. Will mine be a triumph, or a tragedy? Will I look back on this time and be able to reassure my children with a story of a time that I had truly fucked up, but somehow turned it all around? Will I be able to retroactively rationalize all that has happened to me, say that all the failures led to something better--as I've been able to so far? Will I one day experience the joy of sitting, bathed in the warm glow of restaurant candles, and the smiles of loving and trusted faces--while recounting this time and weaving it into a grand narrative about my life that I can be proud of? Or is this the beginning of a sad story, one day to be told by a bitter old man who always felt he could've done more, who never felt that he lived up to his potential? Who made it so close to great success but slipped and choked at the critical moment, letting it all fall from his grasp?</p>\n<p>Failure has never been an option. I have outlines ready to fill. I have chapters to read. I have weights to life. I have a woman to marry. I have people to make proud. I have an obligation to a world I need to contribute to.</p>\n<p>Everyone loves a comeback story. And I'll write one for you.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><i>Call me Mr. Miracle <br>With my back against the wall <br>I was sittin' all alone <br>Now I get it, oh, now I get it <br>Call me Mr. Miracle <br>Silver castles have to fall <br>But I found my way back home <br>Now I get it, oh, now I get it</i></p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.9.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.9.25.html",
      "title": "Transcript of Me Talking About Theo Von With my Girlfriend",
      "date_published": "2025-09-09T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "My presentation of my unfiltered thoughts is my art form and my contribution to the internet. Today, as I was about to talk my girlfriend's ear off before cooking my lamb, I decided to just record us talking and use the transcript feature on the voice memo app to see if I could produce something interesting.\n\nIn a lot of ways, I found this to be one of my most interesting ideas on here--not just the content, but the whole delivery mechanism. This really is just me talking to my girlfriend. It's a little rough to read because all of the likes and pauses are left unedited. But I found it charming in a way. Anyways, enjoy.\n\n* * *\n\nAll right, I just wanna talk to you about like what I was thinking about Theo Von earlier today, okay? So, like. All right, listen. Listen. So, like… All right, wait, just, I gotta turn the volume down on the TV. I can’t think. Baby, can you hear me? All right, so… So I was like watching the thing with like him and the Amish guy, right? Are you taking FaceTime video photos of me? I don’t—why?? It’s ’cause of the pose I’m in. Oh, my arms look good. Oh, yeah, and they’re just pumped because of the creatine and the lifting recently. My dad said that too, actually. It’s funny when he was over. Anyways, anyways.\n\nSo like you know I was watching the video of like, of like him and like, uh… you know, him and the Amish guy? So he interviewed the Amish guy. And I was just watching it and like, and how he like interacted with him and like, how he calibrated like to the guy so perfectly. You know what I mean?\n\nAnd then I watched the video with him and, like, the Rizzler, right? And, like, the way he was able to, like, immediately adjust and, like, act like kind and it kind of like revealed, like, him and his, like, adult sort of mentality. You know what I mean? Like, like, he was able to talk to the Rizzler. He was able to, like, be appropriate and be funny. And he was able to be so funny and like completely. And it’s almost like his skill broke an illusion I had about him, because Theo Von is kind of like a character, you know what I mean? Like, in his how he is and why he’s funny. And if I was to describe the character, it’s like that he’s kind of like… What makes Theo Von funny is that he’s, like, a little naive and a little, like, um, kind of an airhead, right? I really see him in these. Yeah. Like, Theo Von is, like, kind of like… But, like, also, you don’t get the sense it’s a character when he’s, like, says things like that are, like, sort of air-heady and… and are a little, like, dumb, for lack of a word. Like, it feels very sincere.\n\nLike, an interview with this Joaquin Phoenix where he was like, what? How old is—what? Theo must be like 45, bro. But anyways, he’s like… But anyways, he’s like, um. He’s talking to Joaquin Phoenix, and he just talked to Joaquin Phoenix about, like, how much he likes him and his work and how much he appreciates him. Joaquin Phoenix is the thing’s like, oh gosh, man, like, you’re so sincere, that’s so weird. It’s like, so refreshing. You know what I mean? And I was like, yeah, that is—Theo Von does seem very sincere, right? And he’s so funny. Like, he is, like, just perfect delivery.\n\nBut the thing is, what breaks the—I don’t want to call it the illusion, but what sort of breaks the illusion is that, like, you know that he knows he’s funny, right? And he knows it lands, right? Like, he knows his personality, like, when he tells these stories, right? It’s not just, like, it has a feeling of something he’s just saying off the dome. But, like, he’s been doing this for years. He’s been a stand-up comic. He’s been in reality TV. He has a very successful podcast. So it is very sort of calibrated, not in a sort of like a cynical way, but in like—it’s just like how he’s developed as a person. He’s just gotten such an intuition for it, right? Like, just the timing, what makes people smile, what makes people laugh, what puts people at ease. But he—it kind of came to me when I was watching. I’m like, this guy is like, in a way, like, really, like, like, really extraordinarily smart.\n\nLike, I think stand-up comics in general are very smart people as, like, a class. Like, you know, like, not all of them, not like, whatever’s fucking D’Elia or whatever the fuck his name is. Like, I don’t think he’s smart. But, like, you know, you watch, like, Cat Williams is actually a smart person. Louis C.K. is smart. John Mulaney is smart. You talk to these people. They have big thoughts. They have big, big ideas, guys, right? Jerry Seinfeld is smart. But, like—and the other thing is that these guys will reveal their cards, like in, like, the acts, or, like, they’ll have thoughts.\n\nTheo Von’s character is that he doesn’t really reveal his cards, or maybe he really does make you believe that they’re not there. Like, he had this thing where he was talking about Palestine at some point recently. And you got a sense, like, this guy is just really fucking stupid and naive and dumb, right? But, like, in a very deep sense, he’s not.\n\nSo, I would say he’s one of the few, like… He’s, like, the real thing. He’s actually just funny. He knows he’s funny. But, like, with him, it’s like—it’s interesting. I think he’s—it’s like the gap isn’t there. Like, with John Mulaney, right? I’m sort of aware, and it doesn’t ruin it, but I know that he’s sort of, he’s a little bit playing himself up, and he’s telling a story. Like, he has a stage voice, and he has, like, a calm, like, CBS interview voice, right? It’s not like Theo Von has this, like, different hat he puts on, you know what I mean, when he’s, like, in a different setting. Like, he really is himself. And you really do get the sense that he’s always himself. But who he is is just so funny and so calibrated to being funny. And his intelligence is, like, very embodied in his humor in a weird way.\n\nLike, I don’t know if he actually—you don’t get the impression that he thinks about it or reflects on it. Like, if Theo Von came out talking about why what he does is funny, I think it would sort of, like, piss me—it would ruin it. It’s like with dril. Dril lost his voice online, right? You don’t remember dril actually being—I don’t think you’re that old. You’re like three years younger than me, right? You don’t remember dril being at, like, you know—doesn’t matter. But, like, dril broke character, kind of ruined dril, right? Like, dril, yeah. Dril sort of broke the whole illusion. Because dril—dril almost acknowledged the bit, which ruined the whole thing.\n\nSo I would say that Theo Von isn’t doing a bit, because it never feels like he’s trying not to acknowledge the bit, right? It feels like he is the bit. It’s a weird thing, but it can be. Maybe it’s because I think so differently than someone like Theo Von. Like, I’m very, like, thinking about how I am and who I am perceived all the time. No, but he definitely does that, right? But I think that, like, I’m—there’s a gap between the action and the reflection and the planning, the evaluation. And I just think his gap is just smaller.\n\nWhat do you think? I don’t know if Theo Von sits around talking to anybody about why his jokes land or why his humor works in the podcast setting. I don’t know. At least he’s done a very good job making me have a hard time imagining him doing that. But, you know, I had the same thought with dril at some point, but dril broke character.\n\nWhen I was watching, what was interesting about the Rizzler interview especially was like, sort of Theo Von on the very edges of his character, because he couldn’t really be… But not a character. I keep saying that, but I’m like saying, like, Theo Von just fascinated me. Like…\n\nIn a sense, Joe Rogan is, like, a sort of more believable situation, because Joe Rogan doesn’t come off as—Joe Rogan is almost like the way Joe Rogan is dumb, I don’t—I never get the sense that Joe Rogan is hiding IQ points from me, right? Joe Rogan is kind of like an intuitive guy who’s, like, probably, like, on raw, like, IQ or whatever, like, processing whatever, probably a little smarter than average, but, like, he was like a fucking wrestler. He’s not like a fucking—he’s not a very deep critical thinker. He’s just sort of like a dude. And you don’t get a sense that there’s anything else. Like, you think that I think we’re getting Joe Rogan as he is, right? But that doesn’t bother—nothing about it, like, sort of like, I never doubt it.\n\nWith Theo Von, even though I don’t think there’s, like, a gap, I still think, like, this guy has to know. This guy must be hiding some IQ points from us. He’s got to be holding something back. He’s smarter than—like, he is way smarter than he’s letting on. You know what I mean? I don’t know. I don’t know. Or maybe my definition of smart is just limited, but, like, I get the sense that Theo Von is, like… Whatever I want to say, Theo Von is a lot smarter than people give him credit for. He is not an actual dumb guy. This guy is intelligent.\n\nLike, Shane Gillis is sort of, like, a similar but very different case. Like, Shane Gillis does this thing where he’s hiding 30 IQ points from you. But you know that Shane Gillis is, like, out here, very much his bit, and he very much acknowledges the bit that he’s—he’s like, Shane Gillis is, like, playing into an aspect of his personality that’s funny, and it’s very clear that he knows. He knows that we know that he’s doing that, right? That’s the joke. He’s like, I’m a fucking big fat white idiot. Like, he’s kind of, you know, like, looks like he’d be conservative. Like, looks like kind of like a fucking doofus you knew from college. But he knows that’s why it’s funny. It’s like we’re all kind of on the same level. You know what I mean?\n\nShane Gillis is a different case. You’re very comfortable with Shane Gillis, because when Shane Gillis, like, in a podcast, shines his, like, extra IQ points, or whatever you want to call them, you’d definitely be like, yeah, that makes sense. Shane Gillis is a smart guy, right? Shane Gillis plays it down a little bit for the stage. But you don’t—with Theo Von, it’s like, it’s a little harder to see that, you know what I mean? Theo Von is, like, a little different. I don’t know what he’s got. I’m a little curious. He’s definitely smarter than he lets on. He might just play it closer to the chest. He might be better at playing it closer to the chest. That might be it. Or maybe he’s just smart in a way that’s alien to me. He’s smart enough to be like, what? Probably. Yeah. In a way that, like, Shane Gillis—yeah.\n\nLike, no, you’re right. Like, Shane Gillis is a familiar archetype to me, right? Like, I get Shane Gillis. I can imagine talking to Shane Gillis. And, like, talking—I can imagine sitting down with Shane Gillis and talking about why what he does is funny, and him, like, talking about it at, like, a meta level. John Mulaney does that. Louis C.K. definitely, like, doesn’t really reveal his cards, sort of, but, like, he knows why he’s funny. And he has sophisticated conversations. It’s not that crazy, right? Louis C.K. is, like, very much a comedian’s comedian, right? Dave Chappelle—fucking, he’s explicitly done that. It’s funny, it’s part of the joke. He’s explained the structure of his jokes as a joke once. Cat Williams is a little bit different. Cat Williams is like, just—he’s putting on a show, and then when he’s calm, he’s just this psycho fucking—he’s like a genius, but he’s also like a fucking schizophrenic. I don’t know.\n\nI get all of them. Theo Von is just the most—it sits a little bit uneasily in my ability to model other people’s minds, right? His brand of smart is very interesting to me. It’s a brand of smart I don’t have. It’s like, he can sit with anyone and make them feel so comfortable. He can make them feel so at ease, he can make everyone sort of play a character or like a bit while feeling sincere while he does it. Like, what a magic trick, you know what I mean?\n\nLike, Theo Von should be, like, the guy who’s, like, the late show, right? Fuck Stephen Colbert. It should be like Theo Von. Theo Von should be like Jay Leno, you know what I mean? Like, like, these, like, Jimmy Kimmel and, like, all the people have no talent. You know, none of these guys have any fucking talent. Conan is good. Conan is real good. Conan is another sort of showman sort of guy. He’s like a more old-school sort of—I don’t know if he’s old school, but, like, he’s like a—he’s a show-bizzy comedian who’s like, he is the late-night show host. That’s very much who he is. He’s that more than he is a comedian.\n\nColbert is interesting, because Colbert used to be this guy who, like, you know, is funny. But Stephen Colbert used to be basically like a Sacha Baron Cohen character, right? Where Stephen Colbert really was in the bit all the time, or a character. The character was Stephen Colbert. I don’t know if you remember this, because we were very young. I was retarded, so I used to watch TV with my dad. Stephen Colbert used to play a character called Stephen Colbert, right? And the joke was that, like—I don’t even know, there was, like, a setup for it. Stephen Colbert was, like, a different fucking guy than Stephen. There’s like—it’s like an in-universe explanation. It was like there was a different guy named Stephen Colbert, right? That was like this right-wing pundit.\n\nAnyways, it doesn’t matter. I’ll explain it. It’s very much like a… And other shows used to play along with it. Like, the way shows play along with Kermit being a real person. Like, you know Kermit can show up on, like, a night show, and they’ll treat him like a guy. Stephen Colbert’s character, Stephen Colbert, used to show up on other shows, and they’d talk to him like the character. Now Stephen Colbert’s a fucking hack. So it shows you how far you can fall. I don’t think Stephen Colbert can pull it off. I don’t think Stephen Colbert is funny anymore. Stephen Colbert is basically a fucking New York Times-reading NPR liberal, just fucking, like, state-media mouthpiece. Like, just not funny at all. But he used to be somebody.\n\nBut, you know, Theo Von’s got talent. But maybe, like, at some point, he kind of—he’s just in his magic-trick phase right now. I don’t know. I don’t think it can last forever. I don’t think—like, dril couldn’t last forever. Sorry, I could—I actually hung up, but to conclude, the dril couldn’t last forever. Stephen Colbert couldn’t last forever. I think the whole Muppets illusion is still sort of, like, we’re still kind of in a fine place with that, right? But, like, I don’t know if this Theo Von illusion will last forever, unless it’s really not an illusion. Maybe this is who he is. Who’s to say? Who knows, what does it even mean? What does it even mean, who he really is? I don’t know.\n\nBut he—I think about him a lot. I think about Theo Von quite a bit. That’s all I have to say about that.\n\n* * *\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>My presentation of my unfiltered thoughts is my art form and my contribution to the internet. Today, as I was about to talk my girlfriend's ear off before cooking my lamb, I decided to just record us talking and use the transcript feature on the voice memo app to see if I could produce something interesting.</p>\n<p>In a lot of ways, I found this to be one of my most interesting ideas on here--not just the content, but the whole delivery mechanism. This really is just me talking to my girlfriend. It's a little rough to read because all of the likes and pauses are left unedited. But I found it charming in a way. Anyways, enjoy.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>All right, I just wanna talk to you about like what I was thinking about Theo Von earlier today, okay? So, like. All right, listen. Listen. So, like… All right, wait, just, I gotta turn the volume down on the TV. I can’t think. Baby, can you hear me? All right, so… So I was like watching the thing with like him and the Amish guy, right? Are you taking FaceTime video photos of me? I don’t—why?? It’s ’cause of the pose I’m in. Oh, my arms look good. Oh, yeah, and they’re just pumped because of the creatine and the lifting recently. My dad said that too, actually. It’s funny when he was over. Anyways, anyways.</p>\n<p>So like you know I was watching the video of like, of like him and like, uh… you know, him and the Amish guy? So he interviewed the Amish guy. And I was just watching it and like, and how he like interacted with him and like, how he calibrated like to the guy so perfectly. You know what I mean?</p>\n<p>And then I watched the video with him and, like, the Rizzler, right? And, like, the way he was able to, like, immediately adjust and, like, act like kind and it kind of like revealed, like, him and his, like, adult sort of mentality. You know what I mean? Like, like, he was able to talk to the Rizzler. He was able to, like, be appropriate and be funny. And he was able to be so funny and like completely. And it’s almost like his skill broke an illusion I had about him, because Theo Von is kind of like a character, you know what I mean? Like, in his how he is and why he’s funny. And if I was to describe the character, it’s like that he’s kind of like… What makes Theo Von funny is that he’s, like, a little naive and a little, like, um, kind of an airhead, right? I really see him in these. Yeah. Like, Theo Von is, like, kind of like… But, like, also, you don’t get the sense it’s a character when he’s, like, says things like that are, like, sort of air-heady and… and are a little, like, dumb, for lack of a word. Like, it feels very sincere.</p>\n<p>Like, an interview with this Joaquin Phoenix where he was like, what? How old is—what? Theo must be like 45, bro. But anyways, he’s like… But anyways, he’s like, um. He’s talking to Joaquin Phoenix, and he just talked to Joaquin Phoenix about, like, how much he likes him and his work and how much he appreciates him. Joaquin Phoenix is the thing’s like, oh gosh, man, like, you’re so sincere, that’s so weird. It’s like, so refreshing. You know what I mean? And I was like, yeah, that is—Theo Von does seem very sincere, right? And he’s so funny. Like, he is, like, just perfect delivery.</p>\n<p>But the thing is, what breaks the—I don’t want to call it the illusion, but what sort of breaks the illusion is that, like, you know that he knows he’s funny, right? And he knows it lands, right? Like, he knows his personality, like, when he tells these stories, right? It’s not just, like, it has a feeling of something he’s just saying off the dome. But, like, he’s been doing this for years. He’s been a stand-up comic. He’s been in reality TV. He has a very successful podcast. So it is very sort of calibrated, not in a sort of like a cynical way, but in like—it’s just like how he’s developed as a person. He’s just gotten such an intuition for it, right? Like, just the timing, what makes people smile, what makes people laugh, what puts people at ease. But he—it kind of came to me when I was watching. I’m like, this guy is like, in a way, like, really, like, like, really extraordinarily smart.</p>\n<p>Like, I think stand-up comics in general are very smart people as, like, a class. Like, you know, like, not all of them, not like, whatever’s fucking D’Elia or whatever the fuck his name is. Like, I don’t think he’s smart. But, like, you know, you watch, like, Cat Williams is actually a smart person. Louis C.K. is smart. John Mulaney is smart. You talk to these people. They have big thoughts. They have big, big ideas, guys, right? Jerry Seinfeld is smart. But, like—and the other thing is that these guys will reveal their cards, like in, like, the acts, or, like, they’ll have thoughts.</p>\n<p>Theo Von’s character is that he doesn’t really reveal his cards, or maybe he really does make you believe that they’re not there. Like, he had this thing where he was talking about Palestine at some point recently. And you got a sense, like, this guy is just really fucking stupid and naive and dumb, right? But, like, in a very deep sense, he’s not.</p>\n<p>So, I would say he’s one of the few, like… He’s, like, the real thing. He’s actually just funny. He knows he’s funny. But, like, with him, it’s like—it’s interesting. I think he’s—it’s like the gap isn’t there. Like, with John Mulaney, right? I’m sort of aware, and it doesn’t ruin it, but I know that he’s sort of, he’s a little bit playing himself up, and he’s telling a story. Like, he has a stage voice, and he has, like, a calm, like, CBS interview voice, right? It’s not like Theo Von has this, like, different hat he puts on, you know what I mean, when he’s, like, in a different setting. Like, he really is himself. And you really do get the sense that he’s always himself. But who he is is just so funny and so calibrated to being funny. And his intelligence is, like, very embodied in his humor in a weird way.</p>\n<p>Like, I don’t know if he actually—you don’t get the impression that he thinks about it or reflects on it. Like, if Theo Von came out talking about why what he does is funny, I think it would sort of, like, piss me—it would ruin it. It’s like with dril. Dril lost his voice online, right? You don’t remember dril actually being—I don’t think you’re that old. You’re like three years younger than me, right? You don’t remember dril being at, like, you know—doesn’t matter. But, like, dril broke character, kind of ruined dril, right? Like, dril, yeah. Dril sort of broke the whole illusion. Because dril—dril almost acknowledged the bit, which ruined the whole thing.</p>\n<p>So I would say that Theo Von isn’t doing a bit, because it never feels like he’s trying not to acknowledge the bit, right? It feels like he is the bit. It’s a weird thing, but it can be. Maybe it’s because I think so differently than someone like Theo Von. Like, I’m very, like, thinking about how I am and who I am perceived all the time. No, but he definitely does that, right? But I think that, like, I’m—there’s a gap between the action and the reflection and the planning, the evaluation. And I just think his gap is just smaller.</p>\n<p>What do you think? I don’t know if Theo Von sits around talking to anybody about why his jokes land or why his humor works in the podcast setting. I don’t know. At least he’s done a very good job making me have a hard time imagining him doing that. But, you know, I had the same thought with dril at some point, but dril broke character.</p>\n<p>When I was watching, what was interesting about the Rizzler interview especially was like, sort of Theo Von on the very edges of his character, because he couldn’t really be… But not a character. I keep saying that, but I’m like saying, like, Theo Von just fascinated me. Like…</p>\n<p>In a sense, Joe Rogan is, like, a sort of more believable situation, because Joe Rogan doesn’t come off as—Joe Rogan is almost like the way Joe Rogan is dumb, I don’t—I never get the sense that Joe Rogan is hiding IQ points from me, right? Joe Rogan is kind of like an intuitive guy who’s, like, probably, like, on raw, like, IQ or whatever, like, processing whatever, probably a little smarter than average, but, like, he was like a fucking wrestler. He’s not like a fucking—he’s not a very deep critical thinker. He’s just sort of like a dude. And you don’t get a sense that there’s anything else. Like, you think that I think we’re getting Joe Rogan as he is, right? But that doesn’t bother—nothing about it, like, sort of like, I never doubt it.</p>\n<p>With Theo Von, even though I don’t think there’s, like, a gap, I still think, like, this guy has to know. This guy must be hiding some IQ points from us. He’s got to be holding something back. He’s smarter than—like, he is way smarter than he’s letting on. You know what I mean? I don’t know. I don’t know. Or maybe my definition of smart is just limited, but, like, I get the sense that Theo Von is, like… Whatever I want to say, Theo Von is a lot smarter than people give him credit for. He is not an actual dumb guy. This guy is intelligent.</p>\n<p>Like, Shane Gillis is sort of, like, a similar but very different case. Like, Shane Gillis does this thing where he’s hiding 30 IQ points from you. But you know that Shane Gillis is, like, out here, very much his bit, and he very much acknowledges the bit that he’s—he’s like, Shane Gillis is, like, playing into an aspect of his personality that’s funny, and it’s very clear that he knows. He knows that we know that he’s doing that, right? That’s the joke. He’s like, I’m a fucking big fat white idiot. Like, he’s kind of, you know, like, looks like he’d be conservative. Like, looks like kind of like a fucking doofus you knew from college. But he knows that’s why it’s funny. It’s like we’re all kind of on the same level. You know what I mean?</p>\n<p>Shane Gillis is a different case. You’re very comfortable with Shane Gillis, because when Shane Gillis, like, in a podcast, shines his, like, extra IQ points, or whatever you want to call them, you’d definitely be like, yeah, that makes sense. Shane Gillis is a smart guy, right? Shane Gillis plays it down a little bit for the stage. But you don’t—with Theo Von, it’s like, it’s a little harder to see that, you know what I mean? Theo Von is, like, a little different. I don’t know what he’s got. I’m a little curious. He’s definitely smarter than he lets on. He might just play it closer to the chest. He might be better at playing it closer to the chest. That might be it. Or maybe he’s just smart in a way that’s alien to me. He’s smart enough to be like, what? Probably. Yeah. In a way that, like, Shane Gillis—yeah.</p>\n<p>Like, no, you’re right. Like, Shane Gillis is a familiar archetype to me, right? Like, I get Shane Gillis. I can imagine talking to Shane Gillis. And, like, talking—I can imagine sitting down with Shane Gillis and talking about why what he does is funny, and him, like, talking about it at, like, a meta level. John Mulaney does that. Louis C.K. definitely, like, doesn’t really reveal his cards, sort of, but, like, he knows why he’s funny. And he has sophisticated conversations. It’s not that crazy, right? Louis C.K. is, like, very much a comedian’s comedian, right? Dave Chappelle—fucking, he’s explicitly done that. It’s funny, it’s part of the joke. He’s explained the structure of his jokes as a joke once. Cat Williams is a little bit different. Cat Williams is like, just—he’s putting on a show, and then when he’s calm, he’s just this psycho fucking—he’s like a genius, but he’s also like a fucking schizophrenic. I don’t know.</p>\n<p>I get all of them. Theo Von is just the most—it sits a little bit uneasily in my ability to model other people’s minds, right? His brand of smart is very interesting to me. It’s a brand of smart I don’t have. It’s like, he can sit with anyone and make them feel so comfortable. He can make them feel so at ease, he can make everyone sort of play a character or like a bit while feeling sincere while he does it. Like, what a magic trick, you know what I mean?</p>\n<p>Like, Theo Von should be, like, the guy who’s, like, the late show, right? Fuck Stephen Colbert. It should be like Theo Von. Theo Von should be like Jay Leno, you know what I mean? Like, like, these, like, Jimmy Kimmel and, like, all the people have no talent. You know, none of these guys have any fucking talent. Conan is good. Conan is real good. Conan is another sort of showman sort of guy. He’s like a more old-school sort of—I don’t know if he’s old school, but, like, he’s like a—he’s a show-bizzy comedian who’s like, he is the late-night show host. That’s very much who he is. He’s that more than he is a comedian.</p>\n<p>Colbert is interesting, because Colbert used to be this guy who, like, you know, is funny. But Stephen Colbert used to be basically like a Sacha Baron Cohen character, right? Where Stephen Colbert really was in the bit all the time, or a character. The character was Stephen Colbert. I don’t know if you remember this, because we were very young. I was retarded, so I used to watch TV with my dad. Stephen Colbert used to play a character called Stephen Colbert, right? And the joke was that, like—I don’t even know, there was, like, a setup for it. Stephen Colbert was, like, a different fucking guy than Stephen. There’s like—it’s like an in-universe explanation. It was like there was a different guy named Stephen Colbert, right? That was like this right-wing pundit.</p>\n<p>Anyways, it doesn’t matter. I’ll explain it. It’s very much like a… And other shows used to play along with it. Like, the way shows play along with Kermit being a real person. Like, you know Kermit can show up on, like, a night show, and they’ll treat him like a guy. Stephen Colbert’s character, Stephen Colbert, used to show up on other shows, and they’d talk to him like the character. Now Stephen Colbert’s a fucking hack. So it shows you how far you can fall. I don’t think Stephen Colbert can pull it off. I don’t think Stephen Colbert is funny anymore. Stephen Colbert is basically a fucking New York Times-reading NPR liberal, just fucking, like, state-media mouthpiece. Like, just not funny at all. But he used to be somebody.</p>\n<p>But, you know, Theo Von’s got talent. But maybe, like, at some point, he kind of—he’s just in his magic-trick phase right now. I don’t know. I don’t think it can last forever. I don’t think—like, dril couldn’t last forever. Sorry, I could—I actually hung up, but to conclude, the dril couldn’t last forever. Stephen Colbert couldn’t last forever. I think the whole Muppets illusion is still sort of, like, we’re still kind of in a fine place with that, right? But, like, I don’t know if this Theo Von illusion will last forever, unless it’s really not an illusion. Maybe this is who he is. Who’s to say? Who knows, what does it even mean? What does it even mean, who he really is? I don’t know.</p>\n<p>But he—I think about him a lot. I think about Theo Von quite a bit. That’s all I have to say about that.</p>\n<p>* * *</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.11.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.11.25.html",
      "title": "Email excerpt on God and Gender",
      "date_published": "2025-08-11T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "In really broad sweeps, I think there are two mappings of \"GOD\" that precede Christianity's (attempted) synthesis:\n\nFIRST: the whole, the truth, the divinity that precedes differentiation. \n\n-this is where I think you're at\n\n-this platonic in nature which I don't believe I need to elaborate to you (you're more familiar)\n\n-this has analogues in Hindusim, which has a better vocabulary to talk about what we're talking about IMO; in Hinduism there's Brahman, which is like the ultimate truth/reality; Brahman is not gendered but differentiates itself into Gods with gendered forms and who are agentic in nature; here's an excerpt from Wikipedia: In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe.[83][84][85] In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists.[84][86][87] It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes.[83][88][89] Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.[83][90]\n\n-In chinese cosmology this appears to be called Taiji;\n\nSECOND: An agentic, sometimes providential force that is credited with giving life to the Cosmos\n\n-this is at least closer to what I'm talking about (but not quite); I'd say this is the Old Testament account of GOD; the GOD from Genesis.\n\n-this conception of GOD is closer to a Pagan \"god,\" he's an entity with intentions, agency, and intervenes in the world. The Jews, while they were getting around to the idea of one perfect God, didn't fully abandon a God that is pagan in its character, more like Zeus than a platonic God. I guess this is why some early Christians, the Gnostics, thought of the Old Testament God as a separate creator of the physical world rather than their perfect \"father\" in heaven.\n\n-This GOD is sometimes depicted as sharing, I guess you'd call it \"divine space\" with other divine entities like angels and demons and fairies and such and the relationship between this God and evil is a persistent theological mystery.\n\n-Evil is modeled as something like the absence of GOD or rebellion against GOD rather than a perversion of harmony, or a byproduct of the fact that there limitations in how the we can represent the nature of the One/Wholeness of GOD (I think this is how evil works in the First mapping of God, evil is like a byproduct of the fact that the perfect/platonic whole cannot be captured on our plane, almost like its hyperdimensional, and can only be represented here with distortions, just like we can only represent the shadow of a hypercube in three dimensions by shortening some of its edges we can only try and align with the WHOLE by distorting things)\n\n-I think this kind of GOD leaves room for a \"remainder.\" I think of the fact that in the Lord of the Rings cosmology the Spider Shelob's mother Ungolian is suggested to descended from the darkness that precedes creation. The Catholic church sort of has a begrudging, equivocal position that there are divine entities floating around that aren't under the providence of GOD. There are demons, fairies, etc.\n\n-This GOD is not the WHOLE\n\n-This GOD can be characterized as masculine; I think the feminine is captured in the remainder, the darkness, the latent potential of the cosmos (GOD isn't eternally pregnant, but the substrate of reality is fertile, maybe waiting for the Word of GOD)\n\nI think what's interesting about Christianity is it tries to mash these two concepts of God together. It's a synthesis (an imperfect one). It inherits a very pagan, agentic, God with roots as a God of War, and then tries to synthesize it with a perfect heavenly father. It thus has to map a masculine concept onto a perfect, platonic one. This creates a gender problem that I think the early solution to was the weird theology around the Virgin Mary. The Father and Jesus captured the agentic/masculine side of things, but there was a theological gap. Pagans had fertility godesses etc. that they liked praying to. The whole thing with Mary is probably a way to meet that demand, and has some weirdness to it, that I nonetheless find satisfying (isn't the beginning of the universe essentially a virgin birth?).\n\nI don't think one is right or one is wrong by the way. They are different human mappings to describe the same thing--probably. Different vocabularies. Where \"God\" means something subtely different in each. I think we are also limited that we're mapping some of these things into conversational english which is informed by a Christian vocabulary. When you say God you mean something closer to Brahman or Taiji; but in those languages those words don't mean God! In Hindi God is Baghwan, and Chinese seems to have more words for it.\n\nThe second mapping of God is less neat, its messier, and it has paradoxes. It has a less clear answer to the problem of evil, a less satisfying account of creation, and puts the feminine in a category of weird mystery. That's why I like it.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>In really broad sweeps, I think there are two mappings of \"GOD\" that precede Christianity's (attempted) synthesis:</p>\n<p><b>FIRST: the whole, the truth, the divinity that precedes differentiation. </B></p>\n<p>-this is where I think you're at</p>\n<p>-this platonic in nature which I don't believe I need to elaborate to you (you're more familiar)</p>\n<p>-this has analogues in Hindusim, which has a better vocabulary to talk about what we're talking about IMO; in Hinduism there's Brahman, which is like the ultimate truth/reality; Brahman is not gendered but differentiates itself into Gods with gendered forms and who are agentic in nature; here's an excerpt from Wikipedia: In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe.[83][84][85] In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists.[84][86][87] It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes.[83][88][89] Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.[83][90]</p>\n<p>-In chinese cosmology this appears to be called Taiji;</p>\n<p><b>SECOND: An agentic, sometimes providential force that is credited with giving life to the Cosmos</b></p>\n<p>-this is at least closer to what I'm talking about (but not quite); I'd say this is the Old Testament account of GOD; the GOD from Genesis.</p>\n<p>-this conception of GOD is closer to a Pagan \"god,\" he's an entity with intentions, agency, and intervenes in the world. The Jews, while they were getting around to the idea of one perfect God, didn't fully abandon a God that is pagan in its character, more like Zeus than a platonic God. I guess this is why some early Christians, the Gnostics, thought of the Old Testament God as a separate creator of the physical world rather than their perfect \"father\" in heaven.</p>\n<p>-This GOD is sometimes depicted as sharing, I guess you'd call it \"divine space\" with other divine entities like angels and demons and fairies and such and the relationship between this God and evil is a persistent theological mystery.</p>\n<p>-Evil is modeled as something like the absence of GOD or rebellion against GOD rather than a perversion of harmony, or a byproduct of the fact that there limitations in how the we can represent the nature of the One/Wholeness of GOD (I think this is how evil works in the First mapping of God, evil is like a byproduct of the fact that the perfect/platonic whole cannot be captured on our plane, almost like its hyperdimensional, and can only be represented here with distortions, just like we can only represent the shadow of a hypercube in three dimensions by shortening some of its edges we can only try and align with the WHOLE by distorting things)</p>\n<p>-I think this kind of GOD leaves room for a \"remainder.\" I think of the fact that in the Lord of the Rings cosmology the Spider Shelob's mother Ungolian is suggested to descended from the darkness that precedes creation. The Catholic church sort of has a begrudging, equivocal position that there are divine entities floating around that aren't under the providence of GOD. There are demons, fairies, etc.</p>\n<p>-This GOD is not the WHOLE</p>\n<p>-This GOD can be characterized as masculine; I think the feminine is captured in the remainder, the darkness, the latent potential of the cosmos (GOD isn't eternally pregnant, but the substrate of reality is fertile, maybe waiting for the Word of GOD)</p>\n<p>I think what's interesting about Christianity is it tries to mash these two concepts of God together. It's a synthesis (an imperfect one). It inherits a very pagan, agentic, God with roots as a God of War, and then tries to synthesize it with a perfect heavenly father. It thus has to map a masculine concept onto a perfect, platonic one. This creates a gender problem that I think the early solution to was the weird theology around the Virgin Mary. The Father and Jesus captured the agentic/masculine side of things, but there was a theological gap. Pagans had fertility godesses etc. that they liked praying to. The whole thing with Mary is probably a way to meet that demand, and has some weirdness to it, that I nonetheless find satisfying (isn't the beginning of the universe essentially a virgin birth?).</p>\n<p>I don't think one is right or one is wrong by the way. They are different human mappings to describe the same thing--probably. Different vocabularies. Where \"God\" means something subtely different in each. I think we are also limited that we're mapping some of these things into conversational english which is informed by a Christian vocabulary. When you say God you mean something closer to Brahman or Taiji; but in those languages those words don't mean God! In Hindi God is Baghwan, and Chinese seems to have more words for it.</p>\n<p>The second mapping of God is less neat, its messier, and it has paradoxes. It has a less clear answer to the problem of evil, a less satisfying account of creation, and puts the feminine in a category of weird mystery. That's why I like it.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.6.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.6.25.html",
      "title": "Fantastic Four Movie Review",
      "date_published": "2025-08-06T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "It was good. Better than the average MCU flick. I thought the casting was really good. But it didn't do anything new for the culture. Nothing meaningfulhere. So nothing to write about really. But I'll make some quick points.\n\nJoseph Quinn is a great actor with an amazing screen presence. I loved him in Stranger Things. He is perfectly cast as Johnny. Ben Grimm was great too but I think they could have leaned into some of his inner tension with his transformation more--that's like the main thing for his character. I get its trodden ground but I don't see what's left if you take it away. I have mixed feelings on how they did Sue and Reed, but it mostly works. They're an older couple here, much more mature--their powers weirdly aren't a huge part of the movie, relative to earlier iterations (not a lot of fun things done with stretchiness or invisibility, even though both of those things have a lot of room for humor and gags). Both of their minds and decision-making play a more central role.\n\nI think that the visuals and colors are a good improvement. Even though its a fantasy retro future it feels more like New York than other MCU movies in New York. Maybe its the establishing shots they use, or the size of Galactus and the fact that the geography of Manhattan is a bit more important to the plot (probably the most so since Avengers). But yeah I liked that it felt like a real place. On the negative, the CGI baby was awful and distracting.\n\nConsidering there isn't much else in theaters to watch, it's worth checking out at least.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>It was good. Better than the average MCU flick. I thought the casting was really good. But it didn't do anything new for the culture. Nothing meaningfulhere. So nothing to write about really. But I'll make some quick points.</p>\n<p>Joseph Quinn is a great actor with an amazing screen presence. I loved him in Stranger Things. He is perfectly cast as Johnny. Ben Grimm was great too but I think they could have leaned into some of his inner tension with his transformation more--that's like the main thing for his character. I get its trodden ground but I don't see what's left if you take it away. I have mixed feelings on how they did Sue and Reed, but it mostly works. They're an older couple here, much more mature--their powers weirdly aren't a huge part of the movie, relative to earlier iterations (not a lot of fun things done with stretchiness or invisibility, even though both of those things have a lot of room for humor and gags). Both of their minds and decision-making play a more central role.</p>\n<p>I think that the visuals and colors are a good improvement. Even though its a fantasy retro future it feels more like New York than other MCU movies in New York. Maybe its the establishing shots they use, or the size of Galactus and the fact that the geography of Manhattan is a bit more important to the plot (probably the most so since Avengers). But yeah I liked that it felt like a real place. On the negative, the CGI baby was awful and distracting.</p>\n<p>Considering there isn't much else in theaters to watch, it's worth checking out at least.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.5.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.5.25.html",
      "title": "Yarom Hazony and Nick Fuentes",
      "date_published": "2025-08-05T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I recently listend to Yarom Hazony on the Ezra Klein show, a guy I had been familiar with for some time and who I've listened to and read here and there (no I haven't read his book).\n\nI was a little stunned by how little he had to say with respect to what National Conservatism is trying to advance. It was a pretty milquetoast conversation and you can sense that Ezra was trying to coax something more meaty out of them. He described what nationalism was, expressed some boilerplate platitude and gripes with liberalism, and Ezra was kind of like \"yeah, and? what's the argument.\"\n\nAnyways, I'm increasingly convinced that the real heart of the NatCon movement today is not Hazony, Carlson, or any of these guys. It's Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes (who I do not agree with), is actually presenting a true alternative vision for political organization in the United States. It's radical, it's describable, and its intellectually honest. When asked about Fuentes by Ezra, Hazony sort of minimized him as a marginal figure. But that's not really true anymore. I think we'll be seeing and hearing a lot more from Nick Fuentes in the years to come. Because there's clearly a hunger for National Conservatism in this country, but it has no real leaders. Vance is a fraud. Hazony is a lightweight. Carlson is getting old. The rest are grifters. Whose left? An asexual hispanic incel. Funny but its true. Will be intertesting to see how things shake out.\n\nIf you can stomach it, I'd encourage people to actually go on Rumble and listen to a Fuentes stream all the way through. It may be surprising how thoughtful he comes off, and you get a sense of why he has such a following. Unlike Carlson and the others, it never feels like he's trying to pull one over on the audience. He's very authentic. Has the same sort of appeal as Bernie Sanders in that you beleive that he believes everything he says, and has thought about it quite a bit. It's a refreshing degree of idealism and commitment to ideas rather than political calibration. He really is a racialist catholic integralist and thinks that that's a good and moral way to orient society, and can talk about why he believes that without equivocation.\n\nThis isn't an endorsement of Fuentes (I remain a reluctant believer in liberal cosmopolitanism for the most part) but I'm just calling it like I see it. It's either someone like him or the NatCon movement just falls flat. Which, I guess, might be good news for liberals. Or not.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I recently listend to Yarom Hazony on the Ezra Klein show, a guy I had been familiar with for some time and who I've listened to and read here and there (no I haven't read his book).</p>\n<p>I was a little stunned by how little he had to say with respect to what National Conservatism is trying to advance. It was a pretty milquetoast conversation and you can sense that Ezra was trying to coax something more meaty out of them. He described what nationalism was, expressed some boilerplate platitude and gripes with liberalism, and Ezra was kind of like \"yeah, and? what's the argument.\"</p>\n<p>Anyways, I'm increasingly convinced that the real heart of the NatCon movement today is not Hazony, Carlson, or any of these guys. It's Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes (who I do not agree with), is actually presenting a true alternative vision for political organization in the United States. It's radical, it's describable, and its intellectually honest. When asked about Fuentes by Ezra, Hazony sort of minimized him as a marginal figure. But that's not really true anymore. I think we'll be seeing and hearing a lot more from Nick Fuentes in the years to come. Because there's clearly a hunger for National Conservatism in this country, but it has no real leaders. Vance is a fraud. Hazony is a lightweight. Carlson is getting old. The rest are grifters. Whose left? An asexual hispanic incel. Funny but its true. Will be intertesting to see how things shake out.</p>\n<p>If you can stomach it, I'd encourage people to actually go on Rumble and listen to a Fuentes stream all the way through. It may be surprising how thoughtful he comes off, and you get a sense of why he has such a following. Unlike Carlson and the others, it never feels like he's trying to pull one over on the audience. He's very authentic. Has the same sort of appeal as Bernie Sanders in that you beleive that he believes everything he says, and has thought about it quite a bit. It's a refreshing degree of idealism and commitment to ideas rather than political calibration. He really is a racialist catholic integralist and thinks that that's a good and moral way to orient society, and can talk about why he believes that without equivocation.</p>\n<p>This isn't an endorsement of Fuentes (I remain a reluctant believer in liberal cosmopolitanism for the most part) but I'm just calling it like I see it. It's either someone like him or the NatCon movement just falls flat. Which, I guess, might be good news for liberals. Or not.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.2.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.2.25.html",
      "title": "My First Blog Post Written On a Typewriter",
      "date_published": "2025-08-02T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I've had writer's block for some time, mainly because of the stress of my summer. But I'm back and feeling wilder than ever, and have a ton of things in my notes app and my heart that I will unload over time. I bought a typewriter and have decided that's how I'm going to try and write from now on to improve my focus and reduce screen time. I've learned that this is a wave in some areas and that I'm not unique, which makes me happy. Hope you enjoy. The scan may be more fun to read. \nread the scan\n\n***************\n\nI am sitting outside in the sun, looking out at a beautiful field with sun on my skin, shirtless, with a cup of hot coffee next to me, I am trying to get the hang of this typewriter but the machine is not really cooperating which is a disappointment. I cannot figure out what exactly is the reason that characters refuse to print nice and dark unless : literally assault the keys, which will take some getting used to. But nevertheless, I press onward! It is odd to feel so limited by such a physical mechanism, it's a feeling that I think is t fundamentally alien to most members of Gen Z. But I suspect it’s one we could use more of. I have a germ vi a theory that the greatest threat to ordered liberty today is frictionlessness itself. Frictionlessness that dulls our faculties and erodes our discipline. Cognizant of or this, I neverthelessness do not have the patience for this machine, which I suspect needs a cleaning or something to improve how it is printing characters, because this just cannot be right.\n\ntesting the typewriter again to see if my cleaning worked. And, by god, it seems to have done ‘the trick. Certainly feels much smoother, and the printing of the letters seems much more consistent with fare less force. The main issue now seems to be my own skill. But I will get better. All I did was brush some gunk out of the spools that keep the typewriter ribbon, which was creating friction, in the overall mechanism, because everything is connected. The next step is to figure out how to create a more consistent right margin.\n\nWhen I upload this online, I think it may be amusing to upload a scan of the original paper document. Currently, my plan is to-simply have OCR or a CHAT GPT transcription of the scan create the text I will paste into the html. Anywho, why am I doing this one may ask? Isn't this all just a bit much? Yes it is. Is the author some kind of hipster? Not really, not if you associate hipsterism, as I do, with a specific brand of performative consumption, No, how I use old technology is still a very private affair, : However, I will concede that I ama luddite. I am skeptical that new technologies invariably improve the human condition, or even productivity. I am deeply doubtful that the digital revolution has done much with respect to the latter, and economists like Paul Krugman and others agree with me. I don’t think that electronic word processing, for instance, has improved the quality or volume of written works worth reading. And I am equally, no, more doubtful that Generative AI will either. No. If anything, these technologies have reduced the chance of worthwhile things being created. It is for this reason among others, that I believe that technological development is the greatest threat to ordered liberty today. And it felt right to explore this idea on a deliberately older technology. For one thing, I think that the inherent value of writing, at base, is derived from the fact that it came from a human consciousness. We may be indifferent, for the most part, as to whether a shoe is factory or hand made. Give me two identical pairs of shoes, and I would only differentiate based on quality and price. There is some charm in knowing something is hand made, and some people will pay a premium for that charm alone. But that is tire exception for purely instrumental goods. This is why the automation of production for food and appliances has been a net positive. The problem is that many many goods are relational, not instrumental in nature. Many of us intuitively understand this. It is why we feel repulsed when we hear our tech over lords suggest that we should be excited at the prospect of AI generated movies, or AI artwork, or AI friends. The value of these things are relational in nature, not instrumental. The value of a good song is not derived from the fact that I just enjoy its melody or even its lyrics, but from the fact that an intelligence not unlike my own, with limitations analogous in kind if net degree was able to produce something as amazing as a song. Automation of these kinds of goods &#- shifts them to an instrumental category, which disgusts all but those rho are fully subjugated to the most crude and hedonistic instincts, a8- If you are truly indifferent to whether a song is made by a human or an Al, you are not all that different from someone who is indifferent to whether they're having sex with a person or a lifelike sex doll. You have revealed yourself as less than human, barely conscious. The pleasure in sex isn't mere friction, but the knowledge, the feeling, that another consciousness that is actually here feels you and enjoys you too. When I see those right wing twitter tweets joking about how women will be made \"obsolete\" or whatever by advancements in robotics, I understand that I am dealing with people wo are barely human.\n\nToday, technology is trying to make us all like that. Consuming, rather than relational animals. It is winning. It is succeeding. Now, not only are finished goods subjugated to market logic, our entire social universe is. We need to resist this by any means possible, and we cannot be afraid of being a little corny as we do it.\n\nHow does writing on a typewriter solve this? Well, it creates a record, that this document existed in physical space, at least increasing the probability for future interpreters that this was written by a human. In 2025, at least, it is highly difficult to get an AI or robot to do this. It is at least possible that this text was AI generated than transcribed on a typewriter, but the economics of that still don’t make sense for a blog that generates zero revenue and the incentives don't really exist. So in the future, if people are trying to discern what’s manmade and what's synthetic, to inform how they should relate to the texts of their past, the existence of handwritten or typewritten records may provide a clue. I don't believe there will be reliable way to distinguish AI and human content from the content alone, as AI gets better at writing like us and -- perhaps even more alarmingly -- human writing grows to resemble Al. This will certainly happen as we're simply exposed to more AI content and as our public schools inevitably teach writing conventions that ape AI prose. This inevitable convergence is the ultimate threat to human freedom, and to ordered liberty. Eventually, we will sleepwalk into a future where thought itself, which I see as isomorphic with written language, has been stolen from us from the market system, technology, and the incentive system they create. --\n\nI was born in 1999. So I don't remember a world without computers, or where the device I am writing this on was commonplace, or really used at all, but I remember a world fundamentally alien to our own. I am old enough to know that something intrinsic to being human has been lost -- has been stolen from I am old enough to mourn this loss.\n\nI remember shopping malls packed and alive, teeming not just with customers but with unattended tweens and other loiterers, I remember my first date at one of these malls, maybe with a girl I asked out in person in the school library My tapping her shoulder, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing teenagers skateboarding on my driveway. I remember my neighborhood bussing with children, largely left to their own devices. I remember leaving home without a cellphone with the basic instructions to be home in an hour. I remember the neighborhood movie theater lit up and alive on most summer nights, I remember waiting in line for the box office before online booking ; and seat reservations became a thing. I remember when the computer was a place: a portal to a wider world. I remember neighbors coming for dinner and drinks and my parents taking walks on school nights with other adults. I remember house parties where little kids would play make believe, the teens would sit in a bedroom and gossip, and the adults would get hammered. I remember My parents going into an office most days a week. I remember a classroom where an overhead projector was the most sophisticated pedagogical tool. I remember going to the bank. Going with my mom to pick up her Jenny Craig program kits. I remember when having an outside cat was not that weird. 1 remember neighbors with outside dogs even, who would walk around unattended, and who everyone knew is just fine and who they belonged to. I remember when kids and animals being outside just wasn't that weird, and 1 remember how the world felt. I remember kids devouring Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books. I remember when Halloween was a spectacle.\n\nAnd I've watched it all disappear, People will try and gaslight you. They'll tell you you're just being nostalgic, or that you just felt that way because you were a kid. i don't buy it. I was there, it WAS different, in a profound way. I never just became an adult in that world, that world disappeared entirely, And 1 can see the present through the eyes of younger family members, and see how much has been robbed from them, I have a 15 year old cousin who can tell me about the world she's growing up im, and across every single metric it is unequivocally worse, I can see it. I can see the emptiness on Halloween. I can hear the silence on memorial day weekend. I can see my cousins holed up in their rooms. I can watch my niece getting addicted to YouTube slop. My my friends tell me about siblings who have never read a book, who don't have the attention span for a movie, I've talked to adults in my workplaces who admit that they don't feel fully comfortable giving their children the relatively free range childhood I enjoyed. I've been in college parties with fraternity brothers just three years younger than me who have never asked a girl out in person, who may never know love that was not mediated My a for-profit dating app. And I know, I know that this is not just \"different,\" I KNOW it's worse, I know it's nothing less than the greatest tragedy I have ever lived through. I know this because I am old enough to remember, but young enough to see. I don't have the fatalism/blind optimism of boomers with respect to this transformation. I know it's a catastrophe that has to be undone by any means possible.\n\nIt is time to stop kidding ourselves. We will not be able to build a healthy relationship with these new technologies -- namely algorithmic content feeds, short form video, and generative artificial intelligence without, at : the very least, a deliberate policy response. Here are some initial proposals to consider:\n\ni. Ban Smartphones For Everyone Under Sixteen.\n\nii. Ban the use of algorithmic content feeds; only permit chronological feeds based on accounts users follow.\n\niii. Create a legal category for content that behaves like a narcotic and regulate as such; e.g. Tik Tok should be subject to some public health Regulations along with all short form video platforms.\n\niv. Ban the use of screens and computers as pedagogical tools until high school. Until the age of 14, kids should just use analog devices, No chromebooks, no online assignments, no video lectures.\n\nv. Ban laptops from lecture halls,; digital typewriters can be provided for disability cases. Computers can of course be used in labs and for coding classes (fwiw, my dad learned to code with pen and pad before laptops)\n\nvi. We need a new internet where all content goes through some blockchain verification process, e.g., photographs are \"stamped\" with some kind of hash at the source, like the camera hardware, in order to establish its authenticity and human origin. We need an internet that is completely free of bots and GenAI. This is an engineering/networking problem that is out of my depth, but I am sure there are solutions,\n\nvii.Oral examinations and handwritten examinations must return. viii. Criminal sanctions must be established for failing to identify content as AI generated. Severe criminal sanctions UNREASONABLE penalties, The reason being that this will be difficult to enforce at all, so the penalty has to be crazy to effectively deter through making occasional examples. Just like how it is for pirating movies.\n\nAnyways, I have more to say and even more to correct and qualify, but this is a good start for now, and some good practice for a new mode of writing, I can already poke holes in my own suggestions, but there is no more time for this today. Good evening. knxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I've had writer's block for some time, mainly because of the stress of my summer. But I'm back and feeling wilder than ever, and have a ton of things in my notes app and my heart that I will unload over time. I bought a typewriter and have decided that's how I'm going to try and write from now on to improve my focus and reduce screen time. I've learned that this is a wave in some areas and that I'm not unique, which makes me happy. Hope you enjoy. The scan may be more fun to read. <br><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.2.25-SCAN.pdf\">read the scan</a></p>\n<p class=\"center\">***************</p>\n<p>I am sitting outside in the sun, looking out at a beautiful field with sun on my skin, shirtless, with a cup of hot coffee next to me, I am trying to get the hang of this typewriter but the machine is not really cooperating which is a disappointment. I cannot figure out what exactly is the reason that characters refuse to print nice and dark unless : literally assault the keys, which will take some getting used to. But nevertheless, I press onward! It is odd to feel so limited by such a physical mechanism, it's a feeling that I think is t fundamentally alien to most members of Gen Z. But I suspect it’s one we could use more of. I have a germ vi a theory that the greatest threat to ordered liberty today is frictionlessness itself. Frictionlessness that dulls our faculties and erodes our discipline. Cognizant of or this, I neverthelessness do not have the patience for this machine, which I suspect needs a cleaning or something to improve how it is printing characters, because this just cannot be right.</p>\n<p>testing the typewriter again to see if my cleaning worked. And, by god, it seems to have done ‘the trick. Certainly feels much smoother, and the printing of the letters seems much more consistent with fare less force. The main issue now seems to be my own skill. But I will get better. All I did was brush some gunk out of the spools that keep the typewriter ribbon, which was creating friction, in the overall mechanism, because everything is connected. The next step is to figure out how to create a more consistent right margin.</p>\n<p>When I upload this online, I think it may be amusing to upload a scan of the original paper document. Currently, my plan is to-simply have OCR or a CHAT GPT transcription of the scan create the text I will paste into the html. Anywho, why am I doing this one may ask? Isn't this all just a bit much? Yes it is. Is the author some kind of hipster? Not really, not if you associate hipsterism, as I do, with a specific brand of performative consumption, No, how I use old technology is still a very private affair, : However, I will concede that I ama luddite. I am skeptical that new technologies invariably improve the human condition, or even productivity. I am deeply doubtful that the digital revolution has done much with respect to the latter, and economists like Paul Krugman and others agree with me. I don’t think that electronic word processing, for instance, has improved the quality or volume of written works worth reading. And I am equally, no, more doubtful that Generative AI will either. No. If anything, these technologies have reduced the chance of worthwhile things being created. It is for this reason among others, that I believe that technological development is the greatest threat to ordered liberty today. And it felt right to explore this idea on a deliberately older technology. For one thing, I think that the inherent value of writing, at base, is derived from the fact that it came from a human consciousness. We may be indifferent, for the most part, as to whether a shoe is factory or hand made. Give me two identical pairs of shoes, and I would only differentiate based on quality and price. There is some charm in knowing something is hand made, and some people will pay a premium for that charm alone. But that is tire exception for purely instrumental goods. This is why the automation of production for food and appliances has been a net positive. The problem is that many many goods are relational, not instrumental in nature. Many of us intuitively understand this. It is why we feel repulsed when we hear our tech over lords suggest that we should be excited at the prospect of AI generated movies, or AI artwork, or AI friends. The value of these things are relational in nature, not instrumental. The value of a good song is not derived from the fact that I just enjoy its melody or even its lyrics, but from the fact that an intelligence not unlike my own, with limitations analogous in kind if net degree was able to produce something as amazing as a song. Automation of these kinds of goods &#- shifts them to an instrumental category, which disgusts all but those rho are fully subjugated to the most crude and hedonistic instincts, a8- If you are truly indifferent to whether a song is made by a human or an Al, you are not all that different from someone who is indifferent to whether they're having sex with a person or a lifelike sex doll. You have revealed yourself as less than human, barely conscious. The pleasure in sex isn't mere friction, but the knowledge, the feeling, that another consciousness that is actually here feels you and enjoys you too. When I see those right wing twitter tweets joking about how women will be made \"obsolete\" or whatever by advancements in robotics, I understand that I am dealing with people wo are barely human.</p>\n<p>Today, technology is trying to make us all like that. Consuming, rather than relational animals. It is winning. It is succeeding. Now, not only are finished goods subjugated to market logic, our entire social universe is. We need to resist this by any means possible, and we cannot be afraid of being a little corny as we do it.</p>\n<p>How does writing on a typewriter solve this? Well, it creates a record, that this document existed in physical space, at least increasing the probability for future interpreters that this was written by a human. In 2025, at least, it is highly difficult to get an AI or robot to do this. It is at least possible that this text was AI generated than transcribed on a typewriter, but the economics of that still don’t make sense for a blog that generates zero revenue and the incentives don't really exist. So in the future, if people are trying to discern what’s manmade and what's synthetic, to inform how they should relate to the texts of their past, the existence of handwritten or typewritten records may provide a clue. I don't believe there will be reliable way to distinguish AI and human content from the content alone, as AI gets better at writing like us and -- perhaps even more alarmingly -- human writing grows to resemble Al. This will certainly happen as we're simply exposed to more AI content and as our public schools inevitably teach writing conventions that ape AI prose. This inevitable convergence is the ultimate threat to human freedom, and to ordered liberty. Eventually, we will sleepwalk into a future where thought itself, which I see as isomorphic with written language, has been stolen from us from the market system, technology, and the incentive system they create. --</p>\n<p>I was born in 1999. So I don't remember a world without computers, or where the device I am writing this on was commonplace, or really used at all, but I remember a world fundamentally alien to our own. I am old enough to know that something intrinsic to being human has been lost -- has been stolen from I am old enough to mourn this loss.</p>\n<p>I remember shopping malls packed and alive, teeming not just with customers but with unattended tweens and other loiterers, I remember my first date at one of these malls, maybe with a girl I asked out in person in the school library My tapping her shoulder, I remember waking up in the middle of the night and seeing teenagers skateboarding on my driveway. I remember my neighborhood bussing with children, largely left to their own devices. I remember leaving home without a cellphone with the basic instructions to be home in an hour. I remember the neighborhood movie theater lit up and alive on most summer nights, I remember waiting in line for the box office before online booking ; and seat reservations became a thing. I remember when the computer was a place: a portal to a wider world. I remember neighbors coming for dinner and drinks and my parents taking walks on school nights with other adults. I remember house parties where little kids would play make believe, the teens would sit in a bedroom and gossip, and the adults would get hammered. I remember My parents going into an office most days a week. I remember a classroom where an overhead projector was the most sophisticated pedagogical tool. I remember going to the bank. Going with my mom to pick up her Jenny Craig program kits. I remember when having an outside cat was not that weird. 1 remember neighbors with outside dogs even, who would walk around unattended, and who everyone knew is just fine and who they belonged to. I remember when kids and animals being outside just wasn't that weird, and 1 remember how the world felt. I remember kids devouring Harry Potter and Percy Jackson books. I remember when Halloween was a spectacle.</p>\n<p>And I've watched it all disappear, People will try and gaslight you. They'll tell you you're just being nostalgic, or that you just felt that way because you were a kid. i don't buy it. I was there, it WAS different, in a profound way. I never just became an adult in that world, that world disappeared entirely, And 1 can see the present through the eyes of younger family members, and see how much has been robbed from them, I have a 15 year old cousin who can tell me about the world she's growing up im, and across every single metric it is unequivocally worse, I can see it. I can see the emptiness on Halloween. I can hear the silence on memorial day weekend. I can see my cousins holed up in their rooms. I can watch my niece getting addicted to YouTube slop. My my friends tell me about siblings who have never read a book, who don't have the attention span for a movie, I've talked to adults in my workplaces who admit that they don't feel fully comfortable giving their children the relatively free range childhood I enjoyed. I've been in college parties with fraternity brothers just three years younger than me who have never asked a girl out in person, who may never know love that was not mediated My a for-profit dating app. And I know, I know that this is not just \"different,\" I KNOW it's worse, I know it's nothing less than the greatest tragedy I have ever lived through. I know this because I am old enough to remember, but young enough to see. I don't have the fatalism/blind optimism of boomers with respect to this transformation. I know it's a catastrophe that has to be undone by any means possible.</p>\n<p>It is time to stop kidding ourselves. We will not be able to build a healthy relationship with these new technologies -- namely algorithmic content feeds, short form video, and generative artificial intelligence without, at : the very least, a deliberate policy response. Here are some initial proposals to consider:</p>\n<p class=\"center\">i. Ban Smartphones For Everyone Under Sixteen.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">ii. Ban the use of algorithmic content feeds; only permit chronological feeds based on accounts users follow.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">iii. Create a legal category for content that behaves like a narcotic and regulate as such; e.g. Tik Tok should be subject to some public health Regulations along with all short form video platforms.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">iv. Ban the use of screens and computers as pedagogical tools until high school. Until the age of 14, kids should just use analog devices, No chromebooks, no online assignments, no video lectures.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">v. Ban laptops from lecture halls,; digital typewriters can be provided for disability cases. Computers can of course be used in labs and for coding classes (fwiw, my dad learned to code with pen and pad before laptops)</p>\n<p class=\"center\">vi. We need a new internet where all content goes through some blockchain verification process, e.g., photographs are \"stamped\" with some kind of hash at the source, like the camera hardware, in order to establish its authenticity and human origin. We need an internet that is completely free of bots and GenAI. This is an engineering/networking problem that is out of my depth, but I am sure there are solutions,</p>\n<p class=\"center\">vii.Oral examinations and handwritten examinations must return. viii. Criminal sanctions must be established for failing to identify content as AI generated. Severe criminal sanctions UNREASONABLE penalties, The reason being that this will be difficult to enforce at all, so the penalty has to be crazy to effectively deter through making occasional examples. Just like how it is for pirating movies.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I have more to say and even more to correct and qualify, but this is a good start for now, and some good practice for a new mode of writing, I can already poke holes in my own suggestions, but there is no more time for this today. Good evening. knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.20.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.20.25.html",
      "title": "Writer Unblock",
      "date_published": "2025-07-20T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I've had a gap in writing here. That's because the very problems that I implemented this blog to solve––my risk aversion, my tendency to perfectionism, my preoccupation with careerism––have gotten the best of me. Maybe more on that later.\n\nI have a ton of drafts of things. Dozens. Unfunished book reviews and movie reviews and cultural commentary. But I got too preoccupied finish them to put anything out. Going to have to stop doing that. So this an attempt at writer unblocking. Some assorted thoughts knocking around my mind.\n\n1. I am deeply unimpressed with people as of late. It's a terrible way to feel about your fellow human being. But its how I feel. I find a lot of colleagues petty and shallow and not terribly interesting. I'm unimpressed with most people my age and in my field. There are plenty of exceptions. But by and large, it feels like the people I meet aren't very funny, traveled, or have much to say. A lot of people float around life thinking and saying a whole buncha nothing--which is a problem to me because I'm understimulated. And if you say anything about anything people look at you like a crazy person. Just having actual thoughts or observations or opinions is mildly transgressive. I guess you're just supposed to walk around, talk about where you went to brunch last weekend, or the latest streaming show, or express vague left-leaning platitudes and comments on national politics, and that's what sort of amounts to being a person in certain circles. It kind of makes me ill to be around people like that.\n\n2. I like King of The Hill and have been watching it some more because now that my girlfriend is on the Family Guy before bed wave I need more comforting animation to fall asleep to. It's a very nice show, but I remember I didn't care for it when I was a child staying up to watch the Adult Swim lineup.\n\n3. Many people are very poor conversationalists, and I going out to bars and such with single friends is increasingly tedious. When I was single I had a higher tolerance for the social ineptitude of the general population, because I guess I was trying to meet/hookup with girls. Now I go out with zero intentions other than to just entertain myself or maybe meet someone that I can introduce to my friend. With no ulterior motives clouding my judgement I am sometimes taken aback by the anti-social tendencies of others -- a failure to do natural things like ask follow up questions, introduce themselves to the people next to you, etc. Today I was with a friend at a bar waiting for a drink and a girl next to me had a tattoo, so I asked her what it was. She told me it was the coat of arms of Ukraine. \"That's cool, where did that originate from?\" \"Uhh, its like the symbol of Ukraine?\" \"Nice, do you like Ukraine, are you from there?\" \"My parents are form Ukraine, I was born here. I like Ukraine better than here, I hate this country, because I fucking hate Donald Trump.\" \"Oh, okay, yeah I get that.\" *silence* \"So uh, what are some reasons you think Ukraine's better?\" \"It's just more beautiful, much more beautiful than here.\" \"Yeah, totally, I've always wanted to visit.\" *nothing* \"Well it was nice meeting you.\" I don't know, interactions like this kind of piss me off. And they're just a little too frequent. So many cool things to talk about, your family is from Ukraine!! All you have to do is reciprocate a bit and I'd probably love to hear things you would want to talk about. But it seems that people sometimes have trouble with this. Or at least my approach. Whatever.\n\n4. Using digital technology and the internet almost invariably feels worse than using anything analog or offline. Something about phyiscal, concrete, fully self-reliant pieces of hardwire just scratches an itch and feels good. Using the kindle feels quite nice. Using a moleskin does too. Even writing in the text edit tool feels more elegant than using the properietary microsoft word. Something about ownership, intelligbility, tangibility. I want to lean into that feeling more. I'm buying a typewriter.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I've had a gap in writing here. That's because the very problems that I implemented this blog to solve––my risk aversion, my tendency to perfectionism, my preoccupation with careerism––have gotten the best of me. Maybe more on that later.</p>\n<p>I have a ton of drafts of things. Dozens. Unfunished book reviews and movie reviews and cultural commentary. But I got too preoccupied finish them to put anything out. Going to have to stop doing that. So this an attempt at writer unblocking. Some assorted thoughts knocking around my mind.</p>\n<p>1. I am deeply unimpressed with people as of late. It's a terrible way to feel about your fellow human being. But its how I feel. I find a lot of colleagues petty and shallow and not terribly interesting. I'm unimpressed with most people my age and in my field. There are plenty of exceptions. But by and large, it feels like the people I meet aren't very funny, traveled, or have much to say. A lot of people float around life thinking and saying a whole buncha nothing--which is a problem to me because I'm understimulated. And if you say anything about anything people look at you like a crazy person. Just having actual thoughts or observations or opinions is mildly transgressive. I guess you're just supposed to walk around, talk about where you went to brunch last weekend, or the latest streaming show, or express vague left-leaning platitudes and comments on national politics, and that's what sort of amounts to being a person in certain circles. It kind of makes me ill to be around people like that.</p>\n<p>2. I like King of The Hill and have been watching it some more because now that my girlfriend is on the Family Guy before bed wave I need more comforting animation to fall asleep to. It's a very nice show, but I remember I didn't care for it when I was a child staying up to watch the Adult Swim lineup.</p>\n<p>3. Many people are very poor conversationalists, and I going out to bars and such with single friends is increasingly tedious. When I was single I had a higher tolerance for the social ineptitude of the general population, because I guess I was trying to meet/hookup with girls. Now I go out with zero intentions other than to just entertain myself or maybe meet someone that I can introduce to my friend. With no ulterior motives clouding my judgement I am sometimes taken aback by the anti-social tendencies of others -- a failure to do natural things like ask follow up questions, introduce themselves to the people next to you, etc. Today I was with a friend at a bar waiting for a drink and a girl next to me had a tattoo, so I asked her what it was. She told me it was the coat of arms of Ukraine. \"That's cool, where did that originate from?\" \"Uhh, its like the symbol of Ukraine?\" \"Nice, do you like Ukraine, are you from there?\" \"My parents are form Ukraine, I was born here. I like Ukraine better than here, I hate this country, because I fucking hate Donald Trump.\" \"Oh, okay, yeah I get that.\" *silence* \"So uh, what are some reasons you think Ukraine's better?\" \"It's just more beautiful, much more beautiful than here.\" \"Yeah, totally, I've always wanted to visit.\" *nothing* \"Well it was nice meeting you.\" I don't know, interactions like this kind of piss me off. And they're just a little too frequent. So many cool things to talk about, your family is from Ukraine!! All you have to do is reciprocate a bit and I'd probably love to hear things you would want to talk about. But it seems that people sometimes have trouble with this. Or at least my approach. Whatever.</p>\n<p>4. Using digital technology and the internet almost invariably feels worse than using anything analog or offline. Something about phyiscal, concrete, fully self-reliant pieces of hardwire just scratches an itch and feels good. Using the kindle feels quite nice. Using a moleskin does too. Even writing in the text edit tool feels more elegant than using the properietary microsoft word. Something about ownership, intelligbility, tangibility. I want to lean into that feeling more. I'm buying a typewriter.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.15.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.15.25.html",
      "title": "Superman Movie Review",
      "date_published": "2025-07-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "//I wrote almost all of this on July 13 but I uploaded on August 5th//\n\nI haven't written on here in a while because life got crazy with my summer gig and quite difficult for some personal reasons. But I genuinely have a vault of things I'm going to write about, or have written about, that I expect will flood out in a couple of weeks when this program ends and I have some time to think. Relative to last summer, this summer has not been that fun, and I have a lot of thoughts on Big Law and what life is all about. Maybe I'll write about that.\n\nBut anyways, I escaped New York to see some boys back in D.C. and see the Superman movie this weekend. Much needed reprieve from the yuppie Death Star which is Manhattan. I still love New York more than anything. But being back in D.C. was a breath of fresh air and I realized how I failed to appreciate it when I was there. So clean, so open, so quaint, so comfortable. I went to the AMC in Georgetown and saw the waterfront where you can stare out at the Potomac. Heart achingly beautiful. D.C. still feels like a city that still is built on top of the natural world around it. Lots of greenery, a whole lot of trees, big expanses of grass. Almost a suburban quality. New York feels like we had to carve out little spaces to preserve the natural world. Both have their charm.\n\nBut I digress. This post is about Superman. Which I will begin below.\n\n----\n\nThis movie was great. It's a movie that I would love when I was 7. And I feel that a seven year old will look back on this movie fondly when he's 27, and will draw more lessons from it, and will see a time capsule of the world and its conflicts as they existed during their childhood. Which is my metric for a good superhero movie, in many ways.\n\nThe World of Superman\n\nI don't know where to start, but let's start here: the world in this movie is CHAOTIC. Very much like the world of the Godzilla movies I grew up on. Giant monster/hero battles seem to be relatively banal occurences. The fights are epic in scale but also quite pedestrian--as evidenced by the residents of this fictional world. The citizens of Metropolis hang around big fights, don't get away in time, hold their smartphones out, gawk and jeer. The effect is an undeniable camp quality which is a bit silly and also gives the movie its charm. Nothing is taken too seriously.\n\nBut the chaos goes further than that. The whole world set up is just insane. Mega corporations sponsor superhero groups who give them shoutouts in front of the press. Luthorcorp is in bed with foreign governments, the U.S. intelligence community, runs an extra-dimensional prison, conducts mass surveillance. Big countries take over small countries--Superman intervenes these foreign wars. The U.S. government is depicted as pretty happless. Social media is filled with disinformation campaigns and the news cycle and its effect on the population is a constant plot driver in the film--big screens in the city and mass smartphone notifications spark huge, violent swings in public opinion regarding the leading characters a few times in the film.\n\nIn short, the movie feels realllly 2020s. Just chaotic, disorderd, unpredictable, fast. All of that and its all not taken too seriously and you don't really have a moment to asorn any of the individual crazy elements. Lex Luthor will randomly say oh yeah I have an army of monkeys that disseminates bullshit on social media and you just say \"oh yeah sure\" and then you learn that the supervillain is a clone of superman that's working with the villainous seeming standin for Israel President and you're like \"sure alright.\" All through it we have influencers taking selfies.\n\nEven banal points like Jimmy Olson--whose actor is great but rather ordinary looking--being a huge ladies man just has to be accepted for the audience to move on. Like how we just accept that Pete Davidson is like a sex icon.\n\nAgain, its all very funny, its all a LOT, its borderline schizophrenic. But its EFFECTIVE. Its effective because its sort of a hyperreal representation of our world. Yeah, its campy, it has a fantasy quality--but in a way its emotionally very grounded in how it represents our world.\n\nIn this way its like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Those movies are extraordinarily campy in a lot of ways, but something about its naivety, romance, and rhythms definitely feels like the world I grew up in as a child. I do think Superman is like that. It unmistakeably captures a national mood. I think this is how someone who is 7 right now would remember the world feeling like. WHen their parents turned on the news they just saw chaos, felt this pervasive feeling of chaos, but also people were joking around and making Tik Toks and having a good time.\n\nSo that's a lot to say that on atmosphere and world-building, I think Superman is incredibly effective.\n\nThe People of Superman\n\nOn a separate, but related point, the people who inhabit the world in Superman are sympathetic, funny, and enjoyable to watch. The background characters have this quality that I can describe as like, the background characters of Spongebob, in that they're kind of this dumb mass, usually presented in the form of a mob, and they all have this sort of mouth-breather quality to them. Superman's kryptonian parents (more on that later) were right to dub them \"simple.\" They just respond to things, they just stand around. They're not like the background New Yorkers of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, which felt a lot more earnest, textured, and real--those extras had this feeling of agency. But to be fair, I don't think \"the masses\" deserve a very forgiving depiction in this day and age. Again, it feels grounded in how the world is today. Because what are people like, really, today? Buncha morons.\n\nBasically everyone is depicted like this except Lois, Superman, Lex, and Mr. Terrific, who are all the competent core of the film.\n\nSpeaking of the core cast, I think they were very strong. Exceptionally strong. Rachel Brosnahan was a likeable and credible heroine, and she didn't enter that category of a tedious girlboss character, even though the writing of her character could have easily led her in that direction. She had great chemistry not only with Corenswet, but with basically every member of the cast. In a lot of ways she's the glue in this movie, and she has more extended and meaningful interactions with the supporting cast. On equal footing with Corenswet, she's the breakout star of this movie.\n\nThe other superheroes are also very likeable and fun to watch. The thing they do best is act as a foil to Superman, and really highlight what a boyscout Superman feels like in contrast. Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern was a treat to watch, and he's endlessly funny and charming. Hawkgirl is also cool but not much is done with her. Sorry. Not really great for the only female metahuman, but it is what is is. I think the actress did good with her few moments, but not really memorable aside from that. But really the surprise of this movie was Gathegi as Mister Terrific. For a good chunk of the movie he lowkey becomes the main action hero and it's a little bit of a strange segway. But you can tell that the filmmakers had fun with his powerset and design -- which is in many ways more visually interesting than Superman's, but less random than Green Lantern (he makes green energy shapes??) so it makes sense that he got a lot of time. I'm glad the filmmakers just went with it--if you have a cool toy than play with it!\n\nFinally, we can talk about Corenswet. Wow. What perfect casting. I think he leans into an element of Superman that Gunn and the writers here really wanted to underscore--I guess you could call it his earnestness or even naivete--perfectly. And I think this was the right creative call. The problem with Superman as a character has been, in my estimation, what's the point? What are we trying to say? What are we trying to DO with him? It's a problem that storytellers don't have with like Spider-Man or Batman, which comparatively offer just endless thematic material to work with. Superman, whose whole thing is that he's \"good\" and very powerful, can be a tougher nut to crack especially on film. Snyder answered this by leaning into Superman's godliness/alienness--which I actually think made a lot of sense and was a rich well to draw from (just poorly executed outside of Man of Steel). But I guess what they're trying to do in the latest Superman is show how I guess there's still value in the simplistic idealism of Superman, especially in a world as chaotic as the one they've built (see above). Against the backdrop of insane conspiracy and dishonesty and corruption, Corenswet's Superman is depicted as cartoonishly good--saving squirrels and refusing to kill giant monsters and all that. It would be a bit much if the world didn't feel so starved for that kind of spirit. And the movie leans into that contrast a great deal, with Lois's character explicilty lamenting how trusting and naive Clark is, and him ultimately responding in a very memorable line that maybe that's the \"new punk rock.\"'\n\nI won't spoil the whole context of the scene, but basically the movie advances the argument that what's really subversive today is old-fashioned simplicity and optimism. And it does it succesfully. It reminds me of an interview with I think Stephen Hillenburg, talking about Spongebob, where he basically says that what they were trying to do in making Spongebob's character was create an anti-Bart Simpson, and that's what worked about the character. I think that's essentiallly what they've done here.\n\nAnyways, I haven't talked about Corenswet's acting that much. Corenswet isn't given really intense moments to work with, at least as far as I can recall, and there was no scene where I was like \"whoah he's a great actor.\" This movie really stays in the saturday morning cartoon range of emotions for the most part. But he's just like, a likeable guy to look at. He felt like Superman. But in a new way. He didn't feel like a Christopher Reeves knockoff, or like he was trying to come off stoic. It was a much more boyish and more emotionally flashy Superman--one that shouts, cries, bleeds, and gets visibly frustrated. On the one hand, Corenswet's \"cuter\" Superman follows the trend of neotinization I find a bit annoying (I wrote about this in my Diary of Wimpy Kid movie review), he does to Superman something similar to what Tom Holland does to Spider-Man, but I think it actually works here. Mainly because Supermans depictions leaned so...stoic before this. So it was refreshing. Now, I really really enjoyed his depiction as Clark Kent, which is equally as goofy as Christopher Reeves but in a completely different way. He plays more of an autistic awkward Zoomer than a bumbling nerd, but there are overlaps in the portrayal. I actually think the movie would have been much stronger if we had more of reporter Clark Kent; we don't get to spend a lot of time with his Alter Ego. It follows the recent Superhero movie trend where he's sort of \"on\" and in costume for most of the runtime. Not a lot of civilian life.\n\nHowever, I will say that this movie had a refreshing amount of lengthy dialogue scenes and quiet moments--not as much as I would like, but a good return to form. It was almost weird to see them in a superhero flick. Some scenes were allowed to breathe. Like the interview scene between Clark and Lois. When Clark is back in Smallville. All very good.\n\nThe Politics of Superman\n\nYes, the movie is \"woke.\" Quite woke actually. But in an old-fashioned, idealistic, American way. Not in a, we have to have a bisexual woman of color crammed in here who lectures and sasses people kind of way (for what its worth the movie is diverse in a very organic way, you don't really think about it, which is how it should be). No, it's woke in that it has an unapologetic view of social justice, right and wrong, good and evil, and it doesn't really try and give these categories a lot of gradation or nuance. It's woke in its self-righteousness. It's woke in a way that Superman really SHOULD be. So I like it. I'm fine with this brand of woke and I think that we could use a bit more of it in today's climate.\n\nAnyways, great movie. Still a superhero popcorn flick. But about as good as they come these days.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>//I wrote almost all of this on July 13 but I uploaded on August 5th//</p>\n<p>I haven't written on here in a while because life got crazy with my summer gig and quite difficult for some personal reasons. But I genuinely have a vault of things I'm going to write about, or have written about, that I expect will flood out in a couple of weeks when this program ends and I have some time to think. Relative to last summer, this summer has not been that fun, and I have a lot of thoughts on Big Law and what life is all about. Maybe I'll write about that.</p>\n<p>But anyways, I escaped New York to see some boys back in D.C. and see the Superman movie this weekend. Much needed reprieve from the yuppie Death Star which is Manhattan. I still love New York more than anything. But being back in D.C. was a breath of fresh air and I realized how I failed to appreciate it when I was there. So clean, so open, so quaint, so comfortable. I went to the AMC in Georgetown and saw the waterfront where you can stare out at the Potomac. Heart achingly beautiful. D.C. still feels like a city that still is built on top of the natural world around it. Lots of greenery, a whole lot of trees, big expanses of grass. Almost a suburban quality. New York feels like we had to carve out little spaces to preserve the natural world. Both have their charm.</p>\n<p>But I digress. This post is about Superman. Which I will begin below.</p>\n<p>----</p>\n<p>This movie was great. It's a movie that I would love when I was 7. And I feel that a seven year old will look back on this movie fondly when he's 27, and will draw more lessons from it, and will see a time capsule of the world and its conflicts as they existed during their childhood. Which is my metric for a good superhero movie, in many ways.</p>\n<p><b>The World of Superman</b></p>\n<p>I don't know where to start, but let's start here: the world in this movie is CHAOTIC. Very much like the world of the Godzilla movies I grew up on. Giant monster/hero battles seem to be relatively banal occurences. The fights are epic in scale but also quite pedestrian--as evidenced by the residents of this fictional world. The citizens of Metropolis hang around big fights, don't get away in time, hold their smartphones out, gawk and jeer. The effect is an undeniable camp quality which is a bit silly and also gives the movie its charm. Nothing is taken too seriously.</p>\n<p>But the chaos goes further than that. The whole world set up is just insane. Mega corporations sponsor superhero groups who give them shoutouts in front of the press. Luthorcorp is in bed with foreign governments, the U.S. intelligence community, runs an extra-dimensional prison, conducts mass surveillance. Big countries take over small countries--Superman intervenes these foreign wars. The U.S. government is depicted as pretty happless. Social media is filled with disinformation campaigns and the news cycle and its effect on the population is a constant plot driver in the film--big screens in the city and mass smartphone notifications spark huge, violent swings in public opinion regarding the leading characters a few times in the film.</p>\n<p>In short, the movie feels realllly 2020s. Just chaotic, disorderd, unpredictable, fast. All of that and its all not taken too seriously and you don't really have a moment to asorn any of the individual crazy elements. Lex Luthor will randomly say oh yeah I have an army of monkeys that disseminates bullshit on social media and you just say \"oh yeah sure\" and then you learn that the supervillain is a clone of superman that's working with the villainous seeming standin for Israel President and you're like \"sure alright.\" All through it we have influencers taking selfies.</p>\n<p>Even banal points like Jimmy Olson--whose actor is great but rather ordinary looking--being a huge ladies man just has to be accepted for the audience to move on. Like how we just accept that Pete Davidson is like a sex icon.</p>\n<p>Again, its all very funny, its all a LOT, its borderline schizophrenic. But its EFFECTIVE. Its effective because its sort of a hyperreal representation of our world. Yeah, its campy, it has a fantasy quality--but in a way its emotionally very grounded in how it represents our world.</p>\n<p>In this way its like the Sam Raimi Spider-Man movies. Those movies are extraordinarily campy in a lot of ways, but something about its naivety, romance, and rhythms definitely feels like the world I grew up in as a child. I do think Superman is like that. It unmistakeably captures a national mood. I think this is how someone who is 7 right now would remember the world feeling like. WHen their parents turned on the news they just saw chaos, felt this pervasive feeling of chaos, but also people were joking around and making Tik Toks and having a good time.</p>\n<p>So that's a lot to say that on atmosphere and world-building, I think Superman is incredibly effective.</p>\n<p><b>The People of Superman</b></p>\n<p>On a separate, but related point, the people who inhabit the world in Superman are sympathetic, funny, and enjoyable to watch. The background characters have this quality that I can describe as like, the background characters of Spongebob, in that they're kind of this dumb mass, usually presented in the form of a mob, and they all have this sort of mouth-breather quality to them. Superman's kryptonian parents (more on that later) were right to dub them \"simple.\" They just respond to things, they just stand around. They're not like the background New Yorkers of Sam Raimi's Spider-Man, which felt a lot more earnest, textured, and real--those extras had this feeling of agency. But to be fair, I don't think \"the masses\" deserve a very forgiving depiction in this day and age. Again, it feels grounded in how the world is today. Because what are people like, really, today? Buncha morons.</p>\n<p>Basically everyone is depicted like this except Lois, Superman, Lex, and Mr. Terrific, who are all the competent core of the film.</p>\n<p>Speaking of the core cast, I think they were very strong. Exceptionally strong. Rachel Brosnahan was a likeable and credible heroine, and she didn't enter that category of a tedious girlboss character, even though the writing of her character could have easily led her in that direction. She had great chemistry not only with Corenswet, but with basically every member of the cast. In a lot of ways she's the glue in this movie, and she has more extended and meaningful interactions with the supporting cast. On equal footing with Corenswet, she's the breakout star of this movie.</p>\n<p>The other superheroes are also very likeable and fun to watch. The thing they do best is act as a foil to Superman, and really highlight what a boyscout Superman feels like in contrast. Nathan Fillion as Green Lantern was a treat to watch, and he's endlessly funny and charming. Hawkgirl is also cool but not much is done with her. Sorry. Not really great for the only female metahuman, but it is what is is. I think the actress did good with her few moments, but not really memorable aside from that. But really the surprise of this movie was Gathegi as Mister Terrific. For a good chunk of the movie he lowkey becomes the main action hero and it's a little bit of a strange segway. But you can tell that the filmmakers had fun with his powerset and design -- which is in many ways more visually interesting than Superman's, but less random than Green Lantern (he makes green energy shapes??) so it makes sense that he got a lot of time. I'm glad the filmmakers just went with it--if you have a cool toy than play with it!</p>\n<p>Finally, we can talk about Corenswet. Wow. What perfect casting. I think he leans into an element of Superman that Gunn and the writers here really wanted to underscore--I guess you could call it his earnestness or even naivete--perfectly. And I think this was the right creative call. The problem with Superman as a character has been, in my estimation, what's the point? What are we trying to say? What are we trying to DO with him? It's a problem that storytellers don't have with like Spider-Man or Batman, which comparatively offer just endless thematic material to work with. Superman, whose whole thing is that he's \"good\" and very powerful, can be a tougher nut to crack especially on film. Snyder answered this by leaning into Superman's godliness/alienness--which I actually think made a lot of sense and was a rich well to draw from (just poorly executed outside of Man of Steel). But I guess what they're trying to do in the latest Superman is show how I guess there's still value in the simplistic idealism of Superman, especially in a world as chaotic as the one they've built (see above). Against the backdrop of insane conspiracy and dishonesty and corruption, Corenswet's Superman is depicted as cartoonishly good--saving squirrels and refusing to kill giant monsters and all that. It would be a bit much if the world didn't feel so starved for that kind of spirit. And the movie leans into that contrast a great deal, with Lois's character explicilty lamenting how trusting and naive Clark is, and him ultimately responding in a very memorable line that maybe that's the \"new punk rock.\"'</p>\n<p>I won't spoil the whole context of the scene, but basically the movie advances the argument that what's really subversive today is old-fashioned simplicity and optimism. And it does it succesfully. It reminds me of an interview with I think Stephen Hillenburg, talking about Spongebob, where he basically says that what they were trying to do in making Spongebob's character was create an anti-Bart Simpson, and that's what worked about the character. I think that's essentiallly what they've done here.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I haven't talked about Corenswet's acting that much. Corenswet isn't given really intense moments to work with, at least as far as I can recall, and there was no scene where I was like \"whoah he's a great actor.\" This movie really stays in the saturday morning cartoon range of emotions for the most part. But he's just like, a likeable guy to look at. He felt like Superman. But in a new way. He didn't feel like a Christopher Reeves knockoff, or like he was trying to come off stoic. It was a much more boyish and more emotionally flashy Superman--one that shouts, cries, bleeds, and gets visibly frustrated. On the one hand, Corenswet's \"cuter\" Superman follows the trend of neotinization I find a bit annoying (I wrote about this in my Diary of Wimpy Kid movie review), he does to Superman something similar to what Tom Holland does to Spider-Man, but I think it actually works here. Mainly because Supermans depictions leaned so...stoic before this. So it was refreshing. Now, I really really enjoyed his depiction as Clark Kent, which is equally as goofy as Christopher Reeves but in a completely different way. He plays more of an autistic awkward Zoomer than a bumbling nerd, but there are overlaps in the portrayal. I actually think the movie would have been much stronger if we had more of reporter Clark Kent; we don't get to spend a lot of time with his Alter Ego. It follows the recent Superhero movie trend where he's sort of \"on\" and in costume for most of the runtime. Not a lot of civilian life.</p>\n<p>However, I will say that this movie had a refreshing amount of lengthy dialogue scenes and quiet moments--not as much as I would like, but a good return to form. It was almost weird to see them in a superhero flick. Some scenes were allowed to breathe. Like the interview scene between Clark and Lois. When Clark is back in Smallville. All very good.</p>\n<p><b>The Politics of Superman</b></p>\n<p>Yes, the movie is \"woke.\" Quite woke actually. But in an old-fashioned, idealistic, American way. Not in a, we have to have a bisexual woman of color crammed in here who lectures and sasses people kind of way (for what its worth the movie is diverse in a very organic way, you don't really think about it, which is how it should be). No, it's woke in that it has an unapologetic view of social justice, right and wrong, good and evil, and it doesn't really try and give these categories a lot of gradation or nuance. It's woke in its self-righteousness. It's woke in a way that Superman really SHOULD be. So I like it. I'm fine with this brand of woke and I think that we could use a bit more of it in today's climate.</p>\n<p>Anyways, great movie. Still a superhero popcorn flick. But about as good as they come these days.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.13.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.13.25.html",
      "title": "The Rehearsal explores Acting as Access to Reality",
      "date_published": "2025-05-13T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "If you aren't watching the Rehearsal, watch it. It's a very cerebral show which epxlores the tension and tenuous boundaries between performance, simulation, and reality––all while being very funny. A shallow reading of the show is that its a critique on reality TV, but I really think its a more fundamental reflection on the power of representation (as in, depiction) and the role of images. Fielder (or Fielder's character) seeks to understand reality through depicting it, and to shape it through depictions, his ultimate dream––I think––to complete collapse the boundaries so that he can have full control over reality via depiction, and thus bridge the gaping chasm he feels between himself and others. The show is really about Nathan's, and everyone's, fundamental aloneness and separateness, and an exploration of whether the act of depiction––of making art I guess is the more charitable phrasing––can bridge those gaps.\n\nThe latest episode was probably the most explicit articulation of these themes and it reminded me of something I recently wrote about.\n\nI recently wrote about the Fragile Absolute by Zizek, https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.29.25. In a brief aside, I wrote a note on something Zizek said about the movie my Best Friend's Wedding, that the unreality of the relationship between Julia Roberts and Ruper Everett allows them to depict \"real\" love. I loved this point and wrote the following:\n\n\". . . because I often do think about how representation or performance of a thing is more real than the thing itself. Actors and Influeners are inherently \"fake,\" but in trying to perform an idealized or fantastical reality, I sometimes wonder whether they live a more real human experience than the average normie. Actors, through portrayal, often have to \"experience\" a huge range of human emotions. They have to learn a broad set of skills and arts---many sing, dance, do fashion––in some sense isn't this a lot more real than our own lives? But they are only liberated to do these things BECAUSE they are doing it in the context of fantasy. Does the act of portraying a fantasy of a thing actually let you DO the thing in a much purer way than people who are trying to do the REAL thinng, unmediated by fantasy? Isn't this really what underpins our private (or I guess not so private, in our oversharing culture) preoccupation with BDSM/roleplay/CNC? We can only access the real through representation of the real . . . anywho that's an idea I think he was getting at with this anecdote. It's the kind of insight you sometimes tap into, or clarify when going through is streams of consciousness. I like it.\"\n\nIn last Sunday's episode, Nathan fully embraces this idea, that acting is what gives people permission to be real, and pushes the concept to a humorous extreme. Anyways, its worth a watch.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>If you aren't watching the Rehearsal, watch it. It's a very cerebral show which epxlores the tension and tenuous boundaries between performance, simulation, and reality––all while being very funny. A shallow reading of the show is that its a critique on reality TV, but I really think its a more fundamental reflection on the power of representation (as in, depiction) and the role of images. Fielder (or Fielder's character) seeks to understand reality through depicting it, and to shape it through depictions, his ultimate dream––I think––to complete collapse the boundaries so that he can have full control over reality via depiction, and thus bridge the gaping chasm he feels between himself and others. The show is really about Nathan's, and everyone's, fundamental aloneness and separateness, and an exploration of whether the act of depiction––of making art I guess is the more charitable phrasing––can bridge those gaps.</p>\n<p>The latest episode was probably the most explicit articulation of these themes and it reminded me of something I recently wrote about.</p>\n<p>I recently wrote about the Fragile Absolute by Zizek, https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.29.25. In a brief aside, I wrote a note on something Zizek said about the movie my Best Friend's Wedding, that the unreality of the relationship between Julia Roberts and Ruper Everett allows them to depict \"real\" love. I loved this point and wrote the following:</p>\n<p>\". . . because I often do think about how representation or performance of a thing is more real than the thing itself. Actors and Influeners are inherently \"fake,\" but in trying to perform an idealized or fantastical reality, I sometimes wonder whether they live a more real human experience than the average normie. Actors, through portrayal, often have to \"experience\" a huge range of human emotions. They have to learn a broad set of skills and arts---many sing, dance, do fashion––in some sense isn't this a lot more real than our own lives? But they are only liberated to do these things BECAUSE they are doing it in the context of fantasy. Does the act of portraying a fantasy of a thing actually let you DO the thing in a much purer way than people who are trying to do the REAL thinng, unmediated by fantasy? Isn't this really what underpins our private (or I guess not so private, in our oversharing culture) preoccupation with BDSM/roleplay/CNC? We can only access the real through representation of the real . . . anywho that's an idea I think he was getting at with this anecdote. It's the kind of insight you sometimes tap into, or clarify when going through is streams of consciousness. I like it.\"</p>\n<p>In last Sunday's episode, Nathan fully embraces this idea, that acting is what gives people permission to be real, and pushes the concept to a humorous extreme. Anyways, its worth a watch.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.12.25-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.12.25-2.html",
      "title": "Frat Apologia",
      "date_published": "2025-05-12T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "I take showers and have a lot of thoughts, and what this website is about is really turning thoughts into words without a lot of second thoughts. This is one of those shower thoughts I had, after texting an old buddy from my college days and feeling an ache in my heart for the camraderie of my fraternity.\n\nI know frats are generally viewed as a corny/silly/college thing in the more forgiving accounts, and as downright public health dangers in the more critical ones. But I argue that they are good. Very good.\n\nLiving in a liberal democracy is not about voting and shit. It's about organizing your own life, about building your own communities. This is the sort of thing we're losing in America as of late. Putnam talks about this. There's a good essay that I unfortunately cannot locate which talks about how, little kids from the 20th century put modern college kids to shame in the sophisticiation of their self-organization they would exhibit for games and pranks and the like. I mean, kids used to start bands out of their garage. Now kids will just produce things on their own a lot. There's just this skill to organizing groups that seems is not being cultivated to scale anymore. Young people rely on authority figures to organize them––sports leagues, school clubs run by teachers, administration organized activities, company orientation -- you get it. It's the equivalent of having play dates organized for you forever. You see it all over campuses, signs saying the LGBTQIA Disability Alliance Human Resources Diversity Title IX Office is hosting cupcakes and coffee at the quad at 2PM! It's just depressing.\n\nFrats (and sororities, but I can't speak to those so I won't) are really the only major institutins where young people self-govern, host big events, and advance their interests with minimal oversight. The logistics in running a fraternity should not be underappreciated. There are elections, fundraisers, pooling of money, security and risk assessments, figuring out how to comply (or evade with impunity) various laws and rules, navigating complex social politics within the organization and with other organizations, organizing major events, inculturating new members on a regular basis which requires constant conversations and reflections on the organization's values and future and culture–––this is the stuff of democracy, this is what its all about. And the fact that frats are usually doing pretty illicit activites means that the kids in them have no higher authorities to appeal to, they're generally own their own to navigate these problems.\n\nWhen do you stop your friend from drunk driving out the party? How can we get these girls to show up? What do we do about members who haven't paid their dues? Do we throw a party during rush while we're under probation--if we don't, what's the longterm impact on our future, how will we get recruits? What's the real risk/reward ratio? Should we kick this guy out for being creepy to girls again or just talk to him? Do we drop the pledge who is very socially awkward or try and develop him a little bit? Whats the next property we should acquire as a group? How do we convince the new members to live in that property? Are certain \"rituals\" too extreme or antiquated that we should get rid of them?\n\nDealing with social decision-making at this density and frequency is extremely important for a young person's development, and prepares them to be a free person in a democracy. People who lack these experiences are, in my view, less equipped to particate in self-governance, because they've never really governed something immediate, tangible, without big mommy and big daddy hovering over their shoulders. These people will always appeal to power, rather than have the habit of working with their own peers and relying on their own judgement.\n\nFor the health of liberal democracy, the autonomy of these organizations must be respected, and they should be allowed to thrive on college campuses.\n\nThere are a LOT of other reasons too, but this is just an angle I felt like writing about, this evening.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I take showers and have a lot of thoughts, and what this website is about is really turning thoughts into words without a lot of second thoughts. This is one of those shower thoughts I had, after texting an old buddy from my college days and feeling an ache in my heart for the camraderie of my fraternity.</p>\n<p>I know frats are generally viewed as a corny/silly/college thing in the more forgiving accounts, and as downright public health dangers in the more critical ones. But I argue that they are good. Very good.</p>\n<p>Living in a liberal democracy is not about voting and shit. It's about organizing your own life, about building your own communities. This is the sort of thing we're losing in America as of late. Putnam talks about this. There's a good essay that I unfortunately cannot locate which talks about how, little kids from the 20th century put modern college kids to shame in the sophisticiation of their self-organization they would exhibit for games and pranks and the like. I mean, kids used to start bands out of their garage. Now kids will just produce things on their own a lot. There's just this skill to organizing groups that seems is not being cultivated to scale anymore. Young people rely on authority figures to organize them––sports leagues, school clubs run by teachers, administration organized activities, company orientation -- you get it. It's the equivalent of having play dates organized for you forever. You see it all over campuses, signs saying the LGBTQIA Disability Alliance Human Resources Diversity Title IX Office is hosting cupcakes and coffee at the quad at 2PM! It's just depressing.</p>\n<p>Frats (and sororities, but I can't speak to those so I won't) are really the only major institutins where young people self-govern, host big events, and advance their interests with minimal oversight. The logistics in running a fraternity should not be underappreciated. There are elections, fundraisers, pooling of money, security and risk assessments, figuring out how to comply (or evade with impunity) various laws and rules, navigating complex social politics within the organization and with other organizations, organizing major events, inculturating new members on a regular basis which requires constant conversations and reflections on the organization's values and future and culture–––this is the stuff of democracy, this is what its all about. And the fact that frats are usually doing pretty illicit activites means that the kids in them have no higher authorities to appeal to, they're generally own their own to navigate these problems.</p>\n<p>When do you stop your friend from drunk driving out the party? How can we get these girls to show up? What do we do about members who haven't paid their dues? Do we throw a party during rush while we're under probation--if we don't, what's the longterm impact on our future, how will we get recruits? What's the real risk/reward ratio? Should we kick this guy out for being creepy to girls again or just talk to him? Do we drop the pledge who is very socially awkward or try and develop him a little bit? Whats the next property we should acquire as a group? How do we convince the new members to live in that property? Are certain \"rituals\" too extreme or antiquated that we should get rid of them?</p>\n<p>Dealing with social decision-making at this density and frequency is extremely important for a young person's development, and prepares them to be a free person in a democracy. People who lack these experiences are, in my view, less equipped to particate in self-governance, because they've never really governed something immediate, tangible, without big mommy and big daddy hovering over their shoulders. These people will always appeal to power, rather than have the habit of working with their own peers and relying on their own judgement.</p>\n<p>For the health of liberal democracy, the autonomy of these organizations must be respected, and they should be allowed to thrive on college campuses.</p>\n<p>There are a LOT of other reasons too, but this is just an angle I felt like writing about, this evening.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.12.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.12.25.html",
      "title": "Some Thoughts for the Day",
      "date_published": "2025-05-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I don't think our kids will really \"have\" as many meaningful photos of us because of how we take them now. People don't print them out and curate them into albums that much anymore. They sit in your account, and are shared via messages, etc. The lack of curation and phsycality changes our relationship to them. I will make real photo albums like my family did until about 2010.\n\nI am on phone calls with my friends and family all day and it occurs to me that this is not normal and very immigrant coded. If you watch old movies it seems like young people are on phones a lot, but I do seem to hear a lot of jokes that people in my age cohort don't really do phone calls. Maybe my friends are a little more old school. Maybe everyone else has replaced the one hour phone call that people did to kill time with short-form video content. When I have a long walk or errand or commute, my first instinct is to text or call people. But maybe the accessibility of podcasts, audiobooks, music, etc. dampens this instinct in others. On the train, it seems like most people watch videos or listen to music. Uber drivers however keep the phone call spirit alive. Those guys are always on a phone call. I think that it would be good if we rebalanced back to phone call culture.\n\nThe optimal amount of all-nighters/very short sleep nights a year is definitely not zero. I think too much regularity in your sleep schedule makes you dull in the mind. Plus, the cavemen likely had to stay up every so often, stay on watch, etc. Healthy people should be able to stay awake for 36 hours or so without major incident. It sucks but it's not a disaster. I will never stop doing a few all-nighters here and there for mental health purposes.\n\nThere needs to be policy action making it illegal to create smartphone dependency. I would get rid of my smartphone, but a lot of places need you to have a QR code, many jobs want you to have a device that can download a two-factor authentitcator app, so many services these days require an App --- bundling all of these things with an addictive entertainment device feels deeply wrong.\n\n****UPDATE: I wrote this out of my mind exhausted after returning to New York. I collapsed shortly after writing it. I have not read it over again and will not edit it, but am posting to the site in the interest of the historical record.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I don't think our kids will really \"have\" as many meaningful photos of us because of how we take them now. People don't print them out and curate them into albums that much anymore. They sit in your account, and are shared via messages, etc. The lack of curation and phsycality changes our relationship to them. I will make real photo albums like my family did until about 2010.</p>\n<p>I am on phone calls with my friends and family all day and it occurs to me that this is not normal and very immigrant coded. If you watch old movies it seems like young people are on phones a lot, but I do seem to hear a lot of jokes that people in my age cohort don't really do phone calls. Maybe my friends are a little more old school. Maybe everyone else has replaced the one hour phone call that people did to kill time with short-form video content. When I have a long walk or errand or commute, my first instinct is to text or call people. But maybe the accessibility of podcasts, audiobooks, music, etc. dampens this instinct in others. On the train, it seems like most people watch videos or listen to music. Uber drivers however keep the phone call spirit alive. Those guys are always on a phone call. I think that it would be good if we rebalanced back to phone call culture.</p>\n<p>The optimal amount of all-nighters/very short sleep nights a year is definitely not zero. I think too much regularity in your sleep schedule makes you dull in the mind. Plus, the cavemen likely had to stay up every so often, stay on watch, etc. Healthy people should be able to stay awake for 36 hours or so without major incident. It sucks but it's not a disaster. I will never stop doing a few all-nighters here and there for mental health purposes.</p>\n<p>There needs to be policy action making it illegal to create smartphone dependency. I would get rid of my smartphone, but a lot of places need you to have a QR code, many jobs want you to have a device that can download a two-factor authentitcator app, so many services these days require an App --- bundling all of these things with an addictive entertainment device feels deeply wrong.</p>\n<p>****UPDATE: I wrote this out of my mind exhausted after returning to New York. I collapsed shortly after writing it. I have not read it over again and will not edit it, but am posting to the site in the interest of the historical record.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.7.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.7.25.html",
      "title": "A Nude Conversation on the Theory of Justice",
      "date_published": "2025-05-07T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "This evening, an old italian man with a Tony Soprana vibe looked at me in the sauna carefully and asked, \"you study philosophy?\"\n\nI stammered \"I-uh, yeah a little in colleg-\"\n\n\"You should Read John Rawls. Theory of Justice.\"\n\n\"oh, yeah sur-\"\n\n\"I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Imagine you were born in a box, right? And you didn't know what gender, what race, what sexuality you were\"\n\n\"right.\"\n\n\"what kind of world would you build?\"\n\n\"huh. yeah thats an interesting idea.\"\n\nSocrates gestures towards a young black man, sweating buckets. \"You, why do you think your hair is like that?\"\n\nThe young man responds \"ahhh I mean, ancestors, I guess––\"\n\n\"Ancestors, right! You know the only two animals in the world who sunburn?\"\n\nA long, hot, silence. I couldn't think of anything but humans.\n\n\"I'll give you a hint, its the only animal you can get an organ transplant from.\"\n\nIt comes to me. \"a pig\"\n\n\"A pig! Humans and pigs, only animals to get sunburned. And pigs, they're dirty right? Why?\"\n\nThe young man responds \"they roll around in mud?\"\n\nI interject, \"well, I mean, I think some of pigs' dirtiness is overstated, a lot of that has to do with farms, in nature––\"\n\nTony Soprano responds \"in nature they roll around in mud, you know why?\"\n\nA shorter, hotter silence.\n\n\"its sunscreen! and you, why do you think your skin is like that, and why do you think someone in Finland is so pale?\"\n\nI mean I have a very clear answer but I wait for his answer, more curious where this is going than anything.\n\n\"mutations, the UV rays--your body doesn't want you to get sick, your ancestors, they grow up where theres sun, it doesn't want you to get cancer, to get melanoma. So it adapts. Same with the white man in Danmark with the long hair and the sunken eyes. Race, its all nonsense. An idea invented, by very small minded people.\"\n\nI understand what Tony Socrates is saying, but there are about a million qualifications I could add. In my short life, I have learned not to. \"No, for sure. You're right.\" The young man also agrees with Tony. The staff begins to approach to close the sauna, I turn to the wall to wrap my thin towel around me and start to head out.\n\nSocrates reminds me, \"John Rawls, Theory of Justice, be sure to check it out, it's a good read.\"\n\n\"Thank you, I will.\"\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This evening, an old italian man with a Tony Soprana vibe looked at me in the sauna carefully and asked, \"you study philosophy?\"</p>\n<p>I stammered \"I-uh, yeah a little in colleg-\"</p>\n<p>\"You should Read John Rawls. Theory of Justice.\"</p>\n<p>\"oh, yeah sur-\"</p>\n<p>\"I'll give it to you in a nutshell. Imagine you were born in a box, right? And you didn't know what gender, what race, what sexuality you were\"</p>\n<p>\"right.\"</p>\n<p>\"what kind of world would you build?\"</p>\n<p>\"huh. yeah thats an interesting idea.\"</p>\n<p>Socrates gestures towards a young black man, sweating buckets. \"You, why do you think your hair is like that?\"</p>\n<p>The young man responds \"ahhh I mean, ancestors, I guess––\"</p>\n<p>\"Ancestors, right! You know the only two animals in the world who sunburn?\"</p>\n<p>A long, hot, silence. I couldn't think of anything but humans.</p>\n<p>\"I'll give you a hint, its the only animal you can get an organ transplant from.\"</p>\n<p>It comes to me. \"a pig\"</p>\n<p>\"A pig! Humans and pigs, only animals to get sunburned. And pigs, they're dirty right? Why?\"</p>\n<p>The young man responds \"they roll around in mud?\"</p>\n<p>I interject, \"well, I mean, I think some of pigs' dirtiness is overstated, a lot of that has to do with farms, in nature––\"</p>\n<p>Tony Soprano responds \"in nature they roll around in mud, you know why?\"</p>\n<p>A shorter, hotter silence.</p>\n<p>\"its sunscreen! and you, why do you think your skin is like that, and why do you think someone in Finland is so pale?\"</p>\n<p>I mean I have a very clear answer but I wait for his answer, more curious where this is going than anything.</p>\n<p>\"mutations, the UV rays--your body doesn't want you to get sick, your ancestors, they grow up where theres sun, it doesn't want you to get cancer, to get melanoma. So it adapts. Same with the white man in Danmark with the long hair and the sunken eyes. Race, its all nonsense. An idea invented, by very small minded people.\"</p>\n<p>I understand what Tony Socrates is saying, but there are about a million qualifications I could add. In my short life, I have learned not to. \"No, for sure. You're right.\" The young man also agrees with Tony. The staff begins to approach to close the sauna, I turn to the wall to wrap my thin towel around me and start to head out.</p>\n<p>Socrates reminds me, \"John Rawls, Theory of Justice, be sure to check it out, it's a good read.\"</p>\n<p>\"Thank you, I will.\"</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.1.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-5.1.25.html",
      "title": "A Crashout Email on Writing",
      "date_published": "2025-05-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "For my whole life, instructors have told me to shorten my writing, and have generally advocated for a very terse and tight style to students. Don't use passive voice. Keep sentences short. Avoid semi colons. Avoid embedded clauses. Don't use too many adjectives. For most of my life, I have resisted this advice. Things have mostly turned out (very) well for me. I am published in the real world, I was paid for my writing abilities before law school, and I've been pretty good at legal writing. So I've become increasingly confident in responding to feedback with \"yeah no, I don't really agree.\"\n\nI recently got some feedback on an assignment repeating some of that advice, and with some edits to a piece I truly did not agree with. It wasn't anything insane, and for what it's worth this Professor gave me an A on said assignment. But I was hungry and caffeinated this morning and kind of crashed out in response to the email. I am sharing an excerpt from it here for society's benefit.\n\nI realize this could theoretically doxx me to the instructor I sent this email to. I doubt it, but if it does, yeah this is my little anonymous blog. I write here to stay sane and to \"stay human.\" I don't feel like I'm breaking the law or anything so, yeah.\n\n----------\n\nI think that the dictat that all professional writing be flat, exclusively use the active voice, avoid multiple embedded clauses and appositives––to be extremely stifling, and to reduce the richness of the everyday writing we encounter. It’s the writing equivalent of architectural modernism/brutalism––strip away all the excess and leave pure “function.”\n\nI know many may counter, “well this is just for a professional, everyday context, there are other areas where a longer writing style may be appropriate.” I would rebut: don’t we all love the charm of old European cities, specifically because everyday, pedestrian installations are thought worthy of ornament and a little extra care? There was a great Ross Douthat piece on this in the Times that I’m remembering. I have many of the same thoughts with respect to writing (and speaking). I think we are better off when even everyday writing has some voice, and even demands a little bit of extra attention.\n\nFor this and other reasons, I generally resist efforts to tighten up my writing style until someone makes a paycheck contingent on it. When that day comes––and it has before––I will be perfectly capable of doing it, and can even ask a computer to do it for me. In a world where prose is a commodity, where creating it is becoming too cheap to meter, where I can simply ask ChatGPT (as many of my peers at the University do) to ape the Smart Brevity or any other style, it is more important than ever to practice and retain and expand our voice with all of its rough edges. More than its professional and academic applications, it’s what keeps us human.\n\nI hope that this doesn’t come off as too impish or flippant. But this is just a subject I care deeply about, and I have disagreed with many on this. You can listen to a speech by a President decades back meant for a general audience, read a novel aimed at the working classes from the early 20th century, and a get a sense of just how much expectations of the average person have declined since then with respect to language. This is getting worse and worse every day, and I think we have a duty to counter this trend wherever possible, and to resist the technological and market incentives to change how write––which is really the way we think. I hope you understand my obstinance on this point goes very deep.\n\nSincerely,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>For my whole life, instructors have told me to shorten my writing, and have generally advocated for a very terse and tight style to students. Don't use passive voice. Keep sentences short. Avoid semi colons. Avoid embedded clauses. Don't use too many adjectives. For most of my life, I have resisted this advice. Things have mostly turned out (very) well for me. I am published in the real world, I was paid for my writing abilities before law school, and I've been pretty good at legal writing. So I've become increasingly confident in responding to feedback with \"yeah no, I don't really agree.\"</p>\n<p>I recently got some feedback on an assignment repeating some of that advice, and with some edits to a piece I truly did not agree with. It wasn't anything insane, and for what it's worth this Professor gave me an A on said assignment. But I was hungry and caffeinated this morning and kind of crashed out in response to the email. I am sharing an excerpt from it here for society's benefit.</p>\n<p>I realize this could theoretically doxx me to the instructor I sent this email to. I doubt it, but if it does, yeah this is my little anonymous blog. I write here to stay sane and to \"stay human.\" I don't feel like I'm breaking the law or anything so, yeah.</p>\n<p>----------</p>\n<p>I think that the dictat that all professional writing be flat, exclusively use the active voice, avoid multiple embedded clauses and appositives––to be extremely stifling, and to reduce the richness of the everyday writing we encounter. It’s the writing equivalent of architectural modernism/brutalism––strip away all the excess and leave pure “function.”</p>\n<p>I know many may counter, “well this is just for a professional, everyday context, there are other areas where a longer writing style may be appropriate.” I would rebut: don’t we all love the charm of old European cities, specifically because everyday, pedestrian installations are thought worthy of ornament and a little extra care? There was a great Ross Douthat piece on this in the Times that I’m remembering. I have many of the same thoughts with respect to writing (and speaking). I think we are better off when even everyday writing has some voice, and even demands a little bit of extra attention.</p>\n<p>For this and other reasons, I generally resist efforts to tighten up my writing style until someone makes a paycheck contingent on it. When that day comes––and it has before––I will be perfectly capable of doing it, and can even ask a computer to do it for me. In a world where prose is a commodity, where creating it is becoming too cheap to meter, where I can simply ask ChatGPT (as many of my peers at the University do) to ape the Smart Brevity or any other style, it is more important than ever to practice and retain and expand our voice with all of its rough edges. More than its professional and academic applications, it’s what keeps us human.</p>\n<p>I hope that this doesn’t come off as too impish or flippant. But this is just a subject I care deeply about, and I have disagreed with many on this. You can listen to a speech by a President decades back meant for a general audience, read a novel aimed at the working classes from the early 20th century, and a get a sense of just how much expectations of the average person have declined since then with respect to language. This is getting worse and worse every day, and I think we have a duty to counter this trend wherever possible, and to resist the technological and market incentives to change how write––which is really the way we think. I hope you understand my obstinance on this point goes very deep.</p>\n<p>Sincerely,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.29.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.29.25.html",
      "title": "Book Review: The Fragile Absolute",
      "date_published": "2025-04-29T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I just finished this book. It was my girlfried's first--she bought it during a younger lefty phase I'd imagine (incorrectly thinking this would be about Marxism or something). But she never read it so I stole it.\n\nI was going to write a proper review but I am employed and have a lot of things going on, and think I may write about Zizek’s interpretation of Christianity. Because this is just one entry in a \"saga\" of sorts he has on the subject of the \"emancipatory\" potential in Christian theology, an idea he doesn't ever quite articulate but he's been circling around in this book, The Puppet and The Dwarf, Christian Atheism (which I have yet to read in full but have heard him talk about on the Youtube), and the Monstrosity of Christ (which I also have to get through). I think I will write about this at length one day, during a quieter moment.\n\nI'm taking a late night Amtrak back to New York, and I am more interested in writing about The Demon Haunted World, a book I read more carefully (and understood better) on this ride.\n\nHere’s what I will say about the Fragile Absolute.\n\nIt's Messy. This isn't a surprise for people who read or listen Zizek. It has a lot of tangents. I find them enjoyable. I reject a lot of people's argument that he goes down rabbit holes that don't advance his thesis. I take a much more charitable view and really see thse as him thinking out loud to advance some very subtle ideas––which gets to my next point. However, I will say this feels slightly less focused even for his work. The title doesn't really give you a sense of what he goes on about in this book.\n\nLots of Paradox. My favorite part of Zizek and this book is very generous with dishing them out. Everything is really its opposite under the surface. Certain ideals or only advanced by their subversion, and undermined by adherance to them. And so on and so on. This is always the parts of Zizek I enjoy the most, and after reading Chesterton, I see very clear parallels in this respect specifically. I'll find a representative example to reproduce here; near the end there are very clear ones that directly relate to the \"thesis\" (if you can call it that) and add a layer of paradox to the conventional distinction between how Christians and Jews relate to the law, but those wouldn't be representative of what's in the book, so I'll pick a slightly more \"tangential\" one:\n\n\"[important context that cannot be reproduced] Do we not find something quite similiar in the superb final scene of My Best Friend's Wedding, when at the wedding of Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts[], resigned to the loss of her ex-partner, accepts the proposal of Rupert Everett, her close gay friend, and performs a passionate dance act with him in front of all the wedding guests: they are the true couple, to be opposed to the 'official' real couple of Cameron Diaz and her bridegroom, engaged in a full 'straight' sexual relationship. What is crucial here is that Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett, in contrast to this actual couple, are not engaged in sex: although they just put on a spectacle, although they are engaged in performing a fake appearance, it is precisely as such that their performance is way more real than the common reality of the 'actual sex' of the other couple. In short this dance is sublime in the strict Kantian sense: what the two of them stage, what appears -- shines through -- their act is the fantasyy, the impossible utopian dream, of the ultimate 'perfect couple' that the other 'actual' couple will never be able to come close to . . . the paradox is that they can do it precisely in so far as they are not an 'actual couple,' precisely in so far as (because of their different sexual orientations) their relationship can never be consummated.\"\n\nThis is the sort of thing that you'll find throughout the book. As a sidebar, I don't think these are really tangents. To be honest, what I think goes on with Zizek's writing is he's warming up the reader––and probably himself, as a writer––to think in a sort of dialectic, paradoxical lens, before getting to the real point, or the \"real thing\" (although, as the book argues, such a concept, \"the real thing\" is often, hollow -- and funnily enough that's what people critique him for, not getting to what is ultimately a phantom. He has a great portion on Coca-Cola which is enjoyable read. Is searching for a \"thesis\" in a work that is inherently about a paradoxical underpinning of a foundational belief system not a little bit like looking for \"the real thing\" in an object that is pure commodity?)\n\nI like this excerpt on My Best Friend's Wedding specifically, because I often do think about how representation or performance of a thing is more real than the thing itself. Actors and Influeners are inherently \"fake,\" but in trying to perform an idealized or fantastical reality, I sometimes wonder whether they live a more real human experience than the average normie. Actors, through portrayal, often have to \"experience\" a huge range of human emotions. They have to learn a broad set of skills and arts---many sing, dance, do fashion––in some sense isn't this a lot more real than our own lives? But they are only liberated to do these things BECAUSE they are doing it in the context of fantasy. Does the act of portraying a fantasy of a thing actually let you DO the thing in a much purer way than people who are trying to do the REAL thinng, unmediated by fantasy? Isn't this really what underpins our private (or I guess not so private, in our oversharing culture) preoccupation with BDSM/roleplay/CNC? We can only access the real through representation of the real . . . anywho that's an idea I think he was getting at with this anecdote. It's the kind of insight you sometimes tap into, or clarify when going through is streams of consciousness. I like it.\n\nWhat's it About?So I looked online and apparently this book is supposed to be about how Marxists and Christians can work together against Capitalism. I checked the back of the book and it says something similar. This is really a hamfisted, and frankly disingenuous way to characterize the book, but I'd imagine it's the kind of thing a publisher puts on a book to sell copies to idiot communist graduate students and posers.\n\nAs an aside, I will say that perusing GoodReads and YouTube comments, I do think that many people who read Zizek are uniquely ill equipped to comprehend what he's even doing or talking about half the time. It's clear that most of the people who pick up the book are looking for lefty-nonsense. People who come in with an open mind, some background in psychoanlytics (or are unashamed to use wikipedia here and there, like me) will probably have more fun with his stuff. I often think that the least interesting thing about Zizek is him being a \"communist,\" although I do think that label is sincere and is not superficial (as Tyler Cowen once hinted at in a podcast interview).\n\nBut I digress, what is this book really about? Fuck if I know. Here's a really rough, and very short, shot.\n\nBasically, Christianity––specifically how its expounded by Saint Paul––offers a fundamentally different way to relate to the law, one that can address the paradoxes of how the law creaates sin, creaetes the desire to transgress, etc. But Zizek works around the idea that the very basic understanding of Christianity––that it solves this by shifting the focus to the spirit/faith/internal states––isn't right. In fact, that is really another source of an even more sinister oppression, it creates a permanent guilt because now the law proper is not there to mediate our relationship with sinful desires and absolve us of that guilt (as Zizek suggests it does for the Jews, he flips a conventional idea on its head––its really Christians who are damned to eternal guilt because they can't just have adherance to law absolve them, they have to think about their internal state and desires). No, he think Christianity solves this with something . . . else.\n\nI think that's enough for now, because I think trying to articulate what that \"else\" is warrants a whole post that also touches on some of his ideas in the Puppet and the Dwarf, and maybe would warrant me rereading some of the gospels. So that's all for now, folks.\n\nActually, also, first, I will note that his chapter on \"The Structure and Its Event\" very directly articualted some of my ideas in this blog post:\n\nhttps://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.14.25\n\nI was really surprised by how on point it was, and it leads me to imagine not that I had come to the ideas in that post independendently, but that they were knocking around my head from college when I read Zizek, Badiou, and others. Here's a brief excerpt:\n\n\"Christianity, on the contrary, offers Christ as a mortal-temporal individual, and insists that belief in the temporal Event of INcarnation is the only path to eternal truth of salvation. In this precise sense, Christianity is a 'religion of Love': in love, one singles out, focuses on, a finite temporal object which 'means more than anything else.' This same paradox is also at work in the specific Christian notion of Conversion and the forgiveness of sins: Congresion is a temporal event which changes eternity itself.\"\n\nI love this insight. Anyways, that's all, for real folks.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I just finished this book. It was my girlfried's first--she bought it during a younger lefty phase I'd imagine (incorrectly thinking this would be about Marxism or something). But she never read it so I stole it.</p>\n<p>I was going to write a proper review but I am employed and have a lot of things going on, and think I may write about Zizek’s interpretation of Christianity. Because this is just one entry in a \"saga\" of sorts he has on the subject of the \"emancipatory\" potential in Christian theology, an idea he doesn't ever quite articulate but he's been circling around in this book, The Puppet and The Dwarf, Christian Atheism (which I have yet to read in full but have heard him talk about on the Youtube), and the Monstrosity of Christ (which I also have to get through). I think I will write about this at length one day, during a quieter moment.</p>\n<p>I'm taking a late night Amtrak back to New York, and I am more interested in writing about The Demon Haunted World, a book I read more carefully (and understood better) on this ride.</p>\n<p>Here’s what I will say about the Fragile Absolute.</p>\n<p><b>It's Messy.</b> This isn't a surprise for people who read or listen Zizek. It has a lot of tangents. I find them enjoyable. I reject a lot of people's argument that he goes down rabbit holes that don't advance his thesis. I take a much more charitable view and really see thse as him thinking out loud to advance some very subtle ideas––which gets to my next point. However, I will say this feels slightly less focused even for his work. The title doesn't really give you a sense of what he goes on about in this book.</p>\n<p><b>Lots of Paradox.</b> My favorite part of Zizek and this book is very generous with dishing them out. Everything is really its opposite under the surface. Certain ideals or only advanced by their subversion, and undermined by adherance to them. And so on and so on. This is always the parts of Zizek I enjoy the most, and after reading Chesterton, I see very clear parallels in this respect specifically. I'll find a representative example to reproduce here; near the end there are very clear ones that directly relate to the \"thesis\" (if you can call it that) and add a layer of paradox to the conventional distinction between how Christians and Jews relate to the law, but those wouldn't be representative of what's in the book, so I'll pick a slightly more \"tangential\" one:</p>\n<p>\"[important context that cannot be reproduced] Do we not find something quite similiar in the superb final scene of My Best Friend's Wedding, when at the wedding of Cameron Diaz, Julia Roberts[], resigned to the loss of her ex-partner, accepts the proposal of Rupert Everett, her close gay friend, and performs a passionate dance act with him in front of all the wedding guests: they are the true couple, to be opposed to the 'official' real couple of Cameron Diaz and her bridegroom, engaged in a full 'straight' sexual relationship. What is crucial here is that Julia Roberts and Rupert Everett, in contrast to this actual couple, are not engaged in sex: although they just put on a spectacle, although they are engaged in performing a fake appearance, it is precisely as such that their performance is way more real than the common reality of the 'actual sex' of the other couple. In short this dance is sublime in the strict Kantian sense: what the two of them stage, what appears -- shines through -- their act is the fantasyy, the impossible utopian dream, of the ultimate 'perfect couple' that the other 'actual' couple will never be able to come close to . . . the paradox is that they can do it precisely in so far as they are not an 'actual couple,' precisely in so far as (because of their different sexual orientations) their relationship can never be consummated.\"</p>\n<p>This is the sort of thing that you'll find throughout the book. As a sidebar, I don't think these are really tangents. To be honest, what I think goes on with Zizek's writing is he's warming up the reader––and probably himself, as a writer––to think in a sort of dialectic, paradoxical lens, before getting to the real point, or the \"real thing\" (although, as the book argues, such a concept, \"the real thing\" is often, hollow -- and funnily enough that's what people critique him for, not getting to what is ultimately a phantom. He has a great portion on Coca-Cola which is enjoyable read. Is searching for a \"thesis\" in a work that is inherently about a paradoxical underpinning of a foundational belief system not a little bit like looking for \"the real thing\" in an object that is pure commodity?)</p>\n<p>I like this excerpt on My Best Friend's Wedding specifically, because I often do think about how representation or performance of a thing is more real than the thing itself. Actors and Influeners are inherently \"fake,\" but in trying to perform an idealized or fantastical reality, I sometimes wonder whether they live a more real human experience than the average normie. Actors, through portrayal, often have to \"experience\" a huge range of human emotions. They have to learn a broad set of skills and arts---many sing, dance, do fashion––in some sense isn't this a lot more real than our own lives? But they are only liberated to do these things BECAUSE they are doing it in the context of fantasy. Does the act of portraying a fantasy of a thing actually let you DO the thing in a much purer way than people who are trying to do the REAL thinng, unmediated by fantasy? Isn't this really what underpins our private (or I guess not so private, in our oversharing culture) preoccupation with BDSM/roleplay/CNC? We can only access the real through representation of the real . . . anywho that's an idea I think he was getting at with this anecdote. It's the kind of insight you sometimes tap into, or clarify when going through is streams of consciousness. I like it.</p>\n<p><b>What's it About?</b>So I looked online and apparently this book is supposed to be about how Marxists and Christians can work together against Capitalism. I checked the back of the book and it says something similar. This is really a hamfisted, and frankly disingenuous way to characterize the book, but I'd imagine it's the kind of thing a publisher puts on a book to sell copies to idiot communist graduate students and posers.</p>\n<p>As an aside, I will say that perusing GoodReads and YouTube comments, I do think that many people who read Zizek are uniquely ill equipped to comprehend what he's even doing or talking about half the time. It's clear that most of the people who pick up the book are looking for lefty-nonsense. People who come in with an open mind, some background in psychoanlytics (or are unashamed to use wikipedia here and there, like me) will probably have more fun with his stuff. I often think that the least interesting thing about Zizek is him being a \"communist,\" although I do think that label is sincere and is not superficial (as Tyler Cowen once hinted at in a podcast interview).</p>\n<p>But I digress, what is this book really about? Fuck if I know. Here's a really rough, and very short, shot.</p>\n<p>Basically, Christianity––specifically how its expounded by Saint Paul––offers a fundamentally different way to relate to the law, one that can address the paradoxes of how the law creaates sin, creaetes the desire to transgress, etc. But Zizek works around the idea that the very basic understanding of Christianity––that it solves this by shifting the focus to the spirit/faith/internal states––isn't right. In fact, that is really another source of an even more sinister oppression, it creates a permanent guilt because now the law proper is not there to mediate our relationship with sinful desires and absolve us of that guilt (as Zizek suggests it does for the Jews, he flips a conventional idea on its head––its really Christians who are damned to eternal guilt because they can't just have adherance to law absolve them, they have to think about their internal state and desires). No, he think Christianity solves this with something . . . else.</p>\n<p>I think that's enough for now, because I think trying to articulate what that \"else\" is warrants a whole post that also touches on some of his ideas in the Puppet and the Dwarf, and maybe would warrant me rereading some of the gospels. So that's all for now, folks.</p>\n<p>Actually, also, first, I will note that his chapter on \"The Structure and Its Event\" very directly articualted some of my ideas in this blog post:</p>\n<p>https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.14.25</p>\n<p>I was really surprised by how on point it was, and it leads me to imagine not that I had come to the ideas in that post independendently, but that they were knocking around my head from college when I read Zizek, Badiou, and others. Here's a brief excerpt:</p>\n<p>\"Christianity, on the contrary, offers Christ as a mortal-temporal individual, and insists that belief in the temporal Event of INcarnation is the only path to eternal truth of salvation. In this precise sense, Christianity is a 'religion of Love': in love, one singles out, focuses on, a finite temporal object which 'means more than anything else.' This same paradox is also at work in the specific Christian notion of Conversion and the forgiveness of sins: Congresion is a temporal event which changes eternity itself.\"</p>\n<p>I love this insight. Anyways, that's all, for real folks.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.18.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.18.25.html",
      "title": "Read This/Politics/Anger/Figuring Things out",
      "date_published": "2025-04-18T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "More individuals from X dot come have visited this site recently, and plenty from Reddit continue to visit it for a few law school advice posts I have shared.\n\nWith a little bit of increasing attention (but still marginal) I would like to reiterate a few points I've made earlier on this site.\n\nPurpose.This website is a public notebook. It's not an engine of persuasion. If I do that it would be on social media platforms, not here, really. There may be exceptions to this and I may say so on a post if that's what I'm doing, but generally these are the most unstructured reflections I can muster. These are NOT polished thoughts. I do not edit or think very hard about them, its about as close to a stream of consciousness you can get. It's useful to do this becuae here and there some thoughts are useful and writing them down improves retention, and I can say them in contexts that actually matter, you know to my friends or loved ones or something. But I do think a lot of the entries are enjoyable.\n\nPolitics.I get the sense I'm going to keep being extremely angry about what the Trump administration is doing and will keep talking about it online and here. I spent an unhealthy amount of time online following the Kilmar saga and made the foolish decision to engage with RW trolls on it, and was honestly taken aback by how fast people tried to peg me as a very specific kind of lib/leftist. I broke my generally \"cooler\" demeanour and got too angry, which I think I will avoid in the future. Unfortunately, this is all just characteristic of our times.\n\nIt's a little annoying to say so, but I don't believe in political labels all that much, because a lot of smart people have unbundled views on many things and a view on one thing isnt extremely predictive of views on another thing.\n\nBut I also recognize people want to know who people are, and don't want to go wading through vague signals and proxies that often contradict eachother to make guesses. Here are some labels that I think capture my politics, imperfectly, and that are sometimes at odds with one another.\n\n- elements of classical liberalism (inherent skepticism for the centralization of power and state authority, often bullish on markets)\n\n- civil libertarianism (often used to describe some of the sentiments of liberalism, generally, but often connotes a focus on privacy and property interests)\n\n- christian democracy/distributism (I'm a believer in redistribution, a modest and effective welfare state, a moral obligation to the needy and vulnerable)\n\n- generally pro-migration for America (this is a policy preference, not an ideology, but its such a wedge issue it requires treatment. I am very sympathetic to migration to America, especially from Mexico and South America. I think being against this migration is as silly and shortsighted as being against catholics or irish people in the 19th century. I think the evidence is very strong that this is good for our society and culture. But my commitment to Democracy is stronger than this policy preference, and I do think native citizens have a RIGHT to decide what their country looks like and who is part of it. Illegal immigration is thus, a threat to the democratic order, and in that sense, I am against it. We should enforce our laws but do it in accordance with our laws and Constitutional principles, and with mercy and compassion.)\n\n- cultural conservatism (nuclear families centered around rasing children and traditional gender roles remain the ideal way to organize society, mostly, our society should promote this model and countenance exceptions with respect, surely, but not applause. people who deviate from this path are often some of the best, brightest, and most celebrated people in our history . . . but this traditional path will always be the best for the vast, vast majority of people and we should not lose sight of that.)\n\n- color blindism (people of different national backgrounds are different, culturally, biologically, historically. we are not the same and thats good. these differences reflect themselves in difference of outcomes in many places, some uncomfortable. but trying to engineer parity causes serious, serious social issues which tear societies apart. I am extremely skeptical at many variants of the civil rights regime, DEI, and affirmative action. I don't think there is no place for race-consciousness, but I think America generally works best on meritocratic principles).\n\n- elements of progressivism (this word is soo loaded now and so abused that I hesitate to use it. But progressivism, at its core, is the idea that humans are inventive and malleable enough to improve their society. I don't ascribe to the stong variant of this ideology, which devolves into leftism and utopianism––humans have constraints, there arent infinite cultural forms that will work for us. But I think that a thinking person, fundamentally, should be interested in how things can be better, how we can deploy better real and social technologies to improve human fluorishing. In this sense, I am a cautious progressive. I want to make life better, I want to explore policies that can help poor people, invest in technologies that can improve life for everyone.)\n\n- Anti-Maoism/Anti-Fascism.(I don't know how else to put this, but I'm essentially against anything rooted in the politics of organizing group resentment. That's the path to hell. Right now, Trump is a Maoist. So his movement has to be opposed by all means at our disposal, with no fear and no mercy. When these strains pop up in societies, they are a threat to civilization itself.)\n\nBest,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>More individuals from X dot come have visited this site recently, and plenty from Reddit continue to visit it for a few law school advice posts I have shared.</p>\n<p>With a little bit of increasing attention (but still marginal) I would like to reiterate a few points I've made earlier on this site.</p>\n<p><b>Purpose.</b>This website is a public notebook. It's not an engine of persuasion. If I do that it would be on social media platforms, not here, really. There may be exceptions to this and I may say so on a post if that's what I'm doing, but generally these are the most unstructured reflections I can muster. These are NOT polished thoughts. I do not edit or think very hard about them, its about as close to a stream of consciousness you can get. It's useful to do this becuae here and there some thoughts are useful and writing them down improves retention, and I can say them in contexts that actually matter, you know to my friends or loved ones or something. But I do think a lot of the entries are enjoyable.</p>\n<p><b>Politics.</b>I get the sense I'm going to keep being extremely angry about what the Trump administration is doing and will keep talking about it online and here. I spent an unhealthy amount of time online following the Kilmar saga and made the foolish decision to engage with RW trolls on it, and was honestly taken aback by how fast people tried to peg me as a very specific kind of lib/leftist. I broke my generally \"cooler\" demeanour and got too angry, which I think I will avoid in the future. Unfortunately, this is all just characteristic of our times.</p>\n<p>It's a little annoying to say so, but I don't believe in political labels all that much, because a lot of smart people have unbundled views on many things and a view on one thing isnt extremely predictive of views on another thing.</p>\n<p>But I also recognize people want to know who people are, and don't want to go wading through vague signals and proxies that often contradict eachother to make guesses. Here are some labels that I think capture my politics, imperfectly, and that are sometimes at odds with one another.</p>\n<p>- elements of classical liberalism (inherent skepticism for the centralization of power and state authority, often bullish on markets)</p>\n<p>- civil libertarianism (often used to describe some of the sentiments of liberalism, generally, but often connotes a focus on privacy and property interests)</p>\n<p>- christian democracy/distributism (I'm a believer in redistribution, a modest and effective welfare state, a moral obligation to the needy and vulnerable)</p>\n<p>- generally pro-migration for America (this is a policy preference, not an ideology, but its such a wedge issue it requires treatment. I am very sympathetic to migration to America, especially from Mexico and South America. I think being against this migration is as silly and shortsighted as being against catholics or irish people in the 19th century. I think the evidence is very strong that this is good for our society and culture. But my commitment to Democracy is stronger than this policy preference, and I do think native citizens have a RIGHT to decide what their country looks like and who is part of it. Illegal immigration is thus, a threat to the democratic order, and in that sense, I am against it. We should enforce our laws but do it in accordance with our laws and Constitutional principles, and with mercy and compassion.)</p>\n<p>- cultural conservatism (nuclear families centered around rasing children and traditional gender roles remain the ideal way to organize society, mostly, our society should promote this model and countenance exceptions with respect, surely, but not applause. people who deviate from this path are often some of the best, brightest, and most celebrated people in our history . . . but this traditional path will always be the best for the vast, vast majority of people and we should not lose sight of that.)</p>\n<p>- color blindism (people of different national backgrounds are different, culturally, biologically, historically. we are not the same and thats good. these differences reflect themselves in difference of outcomes in many places, some uncomfortable. but trying to engineer parity causes serious, serious social issues which tear societies apart. I am extremely skeptical at many variants of the civil rights regime, DEI, and affirmative action. I don't think there is no place for race-consciousness, but I think America generally works best on meritocratic principles).</p>\n<p>- elements of progressivism (this word is soo loaded now and so abused that I hesitate to use it. But progressivism, at its core, is the idea that humans are inventive and malleable enough to improve their society. I don't ascribe to the stong variant of this ideology, which devolves into leftism and utopianism––humans have constraints, there arent infinite cultural forms that will work for us. But I think that a thinking person, fundamentally, should be interested in how things can be better, how we can deploy better real and social technologies to improve human fluorishing. In this sense, I am a cautious progressive. I want to make life better, I want to explore policies that can help poor people, invest in technologies that can improve life for everyone.)</p>\n<p>- Anti-Maoism/Anti-Fascism.(I don't know how else to put this, but I'm essentially against anything rooted in the politics of organizing group resentment. That's the path to hell. Right now, Trump is a Maoist. So his movement has to be opposed by all means at our disposal, with no fear and no mercy. When these strains pop up in societies, they are a threat to civilization itself.)</p>\n<p>Best,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.16.25-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.16.25-2.html",
      "title": "Wake Me Up When September Ends",
      "date_published": "2025-04-16T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "When I was two, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. We passed the Authorization for Use of Military Froce Act.\n\nThat year we invaded Afghanistan.\n\nWhen I was three we established the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.\n\nWhen I was four we invaded Iraq based on lies our government told our people.\n\nWhen I was five my military was exposed for torturing people in Abu Ghraib prison.\n\nWe launched a mass surveillance operation against American civilians.\n\nWe authorized the President to designate and imprison U.S. Citizens as enemy combatants on U.S. soil, and keep them in military prisons. The Supreme Court has never held this to be ilegal. The torture memos by John Yoo were leaked that year, suggesting the President could defy legal treaties that our Congress had entered into.\n\nNow the government is using the Alien Enemies Act to designate refugees and undocumented immigrants as terrorists, even if they haven't commited a crime, and sending them to a Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.\n\nThey maintain there is no recourse for when they err, under the President's expansive foreign affairs power.\n\nThe President is now talking about sending American citizens to this prison.\n\nFirst they do this to the terrorists, then to suspected terrorists, then to illegal gang members, then to non-criminal immigrants, then to people who simply may be illegal immigrants, and now they are going to do it to you.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>When I was two, on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked the World Trade Center. We passed the Authorization for Use of Military Froce Act.</p>\n<p>That year we invaded Afghanistan.</p>\n<p>When I was three we established the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.</p>\n<p>When I was four we invaded Iraq based on lies our government told our people.</p>\n<p>When I was five my military was exposed for torturing people in Abu Ghraib prison.</p>\n<p>We launched a mass surveillance operation against American civilians.</p>\n<p>We authorized the President to designate and imprison U.S. Citizens as enemy combatants on U.S. soil, and keep them in military prisons. The Supreme Court has never held this to be ilegal. The torture memos by John Yoo were leaked that year, suggesting the President could defy legal treaties that our Congress had entered into.</p>\n<p>Now the government is using the Alien Enemies Act to designate refugees and undocumented immigrants as terrorists, even if they haven't commited a crime, and sending them to a Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador.</p>\n<p>They maintain there is no recourse for when they err, under the President's expansive foreign affairs power.</p>\n<p>The President is now talking about sending American citizens to this prison.</p>\n<p>First they do this to the terrorists, then to suspected terrorists, then to illegal gang members, then to non-criminal immigrants, then to people who simply may be illegal immigrants, and now they are going to do it to you.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.16.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.16.25.html",
      "title": "The Animated Diary of a Wimpy Kid is Not Very Good",
      "date_published": "2025-04-16T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I watched it the other day. My main problem with it is that it doesn't really capture the mean spiritedness and selfishness of Greg, or the sort of deadpan humor of the book. To be fair, I don't think the live action movie capture the latter either, but it does get Greg's character right. The live action movie is a good translation to the screen.\n\nThe animated movie on the other hand––well its a missed opportunity. The format has the opportunity to more closely capture the book's spirit but it just doesn't. And its ugly too. It seems to hew to this trend to make young characters a bit cuter, a little more forgiveable and sympathetic, to take their \"edge\" off. This sort of forced neotinization. You see it with the MCU Spider-Man. You see it with the new adaptation of the Ninja Turtles. You see it everywhere. Kids/teens can't have that \"edge\" they used to in media depictions. They're presented as sort of adorable. Greg is too cute in this. Yes, he is actually eleven in the books, but his \"voice\" in the books isn't really someone you root for or someone you think is cute. That's what makes it funny, it shows a kid as they often are--a little sociopath. I do think this has to be softened a LITTLE bit for the screen, because a movie has to achieve something fundamentally different than a glorified comic strip. I think the live action movie does a good job at making us care about Greg while depicting his fundamentally flawed character, IMO.\n\nAnyways, I think I'm over the whole \"depict kids as cute little kids\" thing we're seeing. Peter Parker is kind of supposed to have jerkish qualities, and he's supposed to have some sexual energy---fifteen year olds have these things. The TMNT are supposed to have a sort of dirtbag teenager vibe. And Greg Heffley is supposed to be a bad person. I know there was this whole discourse against how teens were often portrayed as adults, and by adults in the early 2000s, and how they were oversexualized, and I do agree with some of that. But somehow, a lot of that still felt a little more real than this sanitized version of childhood that's being depicted lately.\n\nYou know what's a good depiction of school years? Glee. And Stranger Things. And Freaks Geeks. Those feel honest. But also, maybe the nature of childhood/teenhood is changing. I've seen data that kids are more shielded, take less risks, have less sex, get driver's licenses less, and drink less than they did even ten years ago, and a lot less than Gen X or Millenials. So maybe these new depictions are just tracking a cultural change. Maybe we're all just babies longer.\n\nFor what its worth I don't think that's a good thing.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I watched it the other day. My main problem with it is that it doesn't really capture the mean spiritedness and selfishness of Greg, or the sort of deadpan humor of the book. To be fair, I don't think the live action movie capture the latter either, but it does get Greg's character right. The live action movie is a good translation to the screen.</p>\n<p>The animated movie on the other hand––well its a missed opportunity. The format has the opportunity to more closely capture the book's spirit but it just doesn't. And its ugly too. It seems to hew to this trend to make young characters a bit cuter, a little more forgiveable and sympathetic, to take their \"edge\" off. This sort of forced neotinization. You see it with the MCU Spider-Man. You see it with the new adaptation of the Ninja Turtles. You see it everywhere. Kids/teens can't have that \"edge\" they used to in media depictions. They're presented as sort of adorable. Greg is too cute in this. Yes, he is actually eleven in the books, but his \"voice\" in the books isn't really someone you root for or someone you think is cute. That's what makes it funny, it shows a kid as they often are--a little sociopath. I do think this has to be softened a LITTLE bit for the screen, because a movie has to achieve something fundamentally different than a glorified comic strip. I think the live action movie does a good job at making us care about Greg while depicting his fundamentally flawed character, IMO.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I think I'm over the whole \"depict kids as cute little kids\" thing we're seeing. Peter Parker is kind of supposed to have jerkish qualities, and he's supposed to have some sexual energy---fifteen year olds have these things. The TMNT are supposed to have a sort of dirtbag teenager vibe. And Greg Heffley is supposed to be a bad person. I know there was this whole discourse against how teens were often portrayed as adults, and by adults in the early 2000s, and how they were oversexualized, and I do agree with some of that. But somehow, a lot of that still felt a little more real than this sanitized version of childhood that's being depicted lately.</p>\n<p>You know what's a good depiction of school years? Glee. And Stranger Things. And Freaks Geeks. Those feel honest. But also, maybe the nature of childhood/teenhood is changing. I've seen data that kids are more shielded, take less risks, have less sex, get driver's licenses less, and drink less than they did even ten years ago, and a lot less than Gen X or Millenials. So maybe these new depictions are just tracking a cultural change. Maybe we're all just babies longer.</p>\n<p>For what its worth I don't think that's a good thing.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.15.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.15.25.html",
      "title": "The Orange Man is a Fascist",
      "date_published": "2025-04-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Plenty being said about this. Not much for me to say. Except maybe the glimmers of a legal insight.\n\nLet's consider where the case law MIGHT situatute us.\n\nThe President, under the Alien Enemies Act, can designate aliens as members of foreign terrorist organizatoin, or otherwise invaders, and remove them, even outside of a declared war. As foreign adversaries, they are not subject to the same kind of Due Process protections as an ordinary non-citizen resident. The President's discretion in assigning these designations is broad, and because he is the commander in chief, and because Congress has delegated this element of their Article I warmaking authority to him, they are legally rock solid.\n\nFor non-aliens, the President can use the Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. on U.S. soil (this is an unanswered question under Rumsfeld v. Padilla, but lets entertain the possbility that this is legal). Under this authority, the President can place these individuals in military custody.\n\nNow, we have two pathways where the President has broad powers to diminish the process rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, and under which he, as commander of the armed forces, can direct the military to remove and detain these individuals.\n\nFor non-citizens, it is apparently clearly legal to deport them out of the country and contract with foreign governments to house them in foreign prisons. For citizens designated enemy combatants, what is the authority? The President can certainly keep them in military brigs. Can he keep them abroad? Yes, but they have right of habeas corpus and to petition their detention while in U.S. custody. But maybe the military can just give enemy combatants, even those that are U.S. citizens, to foreign governments, since they are their custodians. What about U.S. citizens who aren't enemy combatants, but are just criminals? Well, the Bureau of Prisons does have extreme latitude in making prison designations. Maybe that includes contracting with private prisons or foreign governments abroad to house them outside of U.S. soil.\n\nLet's entertain that incarcerating aliens, enemy combatants, and simple criminals abroad is all legal. Well, maybe they still have recourse, right? Well Habeas Petitions now become complicated, because the proper respondents are supposed to be the immediate custodian when they're challenging the fact of their confinement. The respondent can sometimes be the one who exercises legal control, but this has been narrowed by the Court after Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and for what its worth, the one with legal control is now a foreign government. So actions taken from the prisoners themselves become complicated. Okay, but Courts can still issue orders to the government, right? Yes, the District Court of Maryland just did this, and the Supreme Court affirmed it 9-0.\n\nBut it seems that, if we accept the government's argument from their filing in Maryland today, a Court cannot compel them on how to exercise their foreign affairs power, or direct them on how to conduct diplomacy. With prisoners in the custody of foreign nations, any acts to facilitate or effectuate their release or address their conditions of confinement becomes an act of diplomacy.\n\nAlright, but what if a Court ultimately disagrees? What if, they say the foreign affairs power cannot be interpreted in this way or used to undercut Due Proces rights? Well, they can issue a sanction, or hold officers of the Government in contempt of Court. Well, Trump can simply pardon them. Trump did this with Sheriff Arpaio. Yes, the President can pardon someone for contempt of court. So really, there's nothing a Court can do but issue the Order, which can just be ignored without penalty.\n\nOkay, but what about when the President leaves office? What if we decide that they broke the law in how they deported someone, or how they exercised their military authority in housing enemy combatants, or that they used their pardon power to corruptly obstruct justice? Well, under Trump v. United States, all of those powers are within the preclusive and exclusive authority of the President, and as a result all of of these actions enjoy absolute liability from criminal inquiry. Furthermore, none of these actions can be used as evidence for a crime in an unofficial act. So once the President leaves office, there is no way to penalize him for these actions even if we think they were done \"illegally.\"\n\nYes, it seems like it is possible for a President to use his delegated powers to label people enemy aliens, enemy combatants, or whatever, direct soldiers to put them on a plane, send them to death camps outside of the country in foreign custody, ignore Court orders to remedy these acts when they were done illegally, pardon any of his subordinates if the Court holds them in contempot for ignoring the order, and completely avoid criminal liability.\n\nHow does that make you feel?\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Plenty being said about this. Not much for me to say. Except maybe the glimmers of a legal insight.</p>\n<p>Let's consider where the case law MIGHT situatute us.</p>\n<p>The President, under the Alien Enemies Act, can designate aliens as members of foreign terrorist organizatoin, or otherwise invaders, and remove them, even outside of a declared war. As foreign adversaries, they are not subject to the same kind of Due Process protections as an ordinary non-citizen resident. The President's discretion in assigning these designations is broad, and because he is the commander in chief, and because Congress has delegated this element of their Article I warmaking authority to him, they are legally rock solid.</p>\n<p>For non-aliens, the President can use the Authorization of the Use of Military Force Act to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants. on U.S. soil (this is an unanswered question under Rumsfeld v. Padilla, but lets entertain the possbility that this is legal). Under this authority, the President can place these individuals in military custody.</p>\n<p>Now, we have two pathways where the President has broad powers to diminish the process rights of citizens and non-citizens alike, and under which he, as commander of the armed forces, can direct the military to remove and detain these individuals.</p>\n<p>For non-citizens, it is apparently clearly legal to deport them out of the country and contract with foreign governments to house them in foreign prisons. For citizens designated enemy combatants, what is the authority? The President can certainly keep them in military brigs. Can he keep them abroad? Yes, but they have right of habeas corpus and to petition their detention while in U.S. custody. But maybe the military can just give enemy combatants, even those that are U.S. citizens, to foreign governments, since they are their custodians. What about U.S. citizens who aren't enemy combatants, but are just criminals? Well, the Bureau of Prisons does have extreme latitude in making prison designations. Maybe that includes contracting with private prisons or foreign governments abroad to house them outside of U.S. soil.</p>\n<p>Let's entertain that incarcerating aliens, enemy combatants, and simple criminals abroad is all legal. Well, maybe they still have recourse, right? Well Habeas Petitions now become complicated, because the proper respondents are supposed to be the immediate custodian when they're challenging the fact of their confinement. The respondent can sometimes be the one who exercises legal control, but this has been narrowed by the Court after Rumsfeld v. Padilla, and for what its worth, the one with legal control is now a foreign government. So actions taken from the prisoners themselves become complicated. Okay, but Courts can still issue orders to the government, right? Yes, the District Court of Maryland just did this, and the Supreme Court affirmed it 9-0.</p>\n<p>But it seems that, if we accept the government's argument from their filing in Maryland today, a Court cannot compel them on how to exercise their foreign affairs power, or direct them on how to conduct diplomacy. With prisoners in the custody of foreign nations, any acts to facilitate or effectuate their release or address their conditions of confinement becomes an act of diplomacy.</p>\n<p>Alright, but what if a Court ultimately disagrees? What if, they say the foreign affairs power cannot be interpreted in this way or used to undercut Due Proces rights? Well, they can issue a sanction, or hold officers of the Government in contempt of Court. Well, Trump can simply pardon them. Trump did this with Sheriff Arpaio. Yes, the President can pardon someone for contempt of court. So really, there's nothing a Court can do but issue the Order, which can just be ignored without penalty.</p>\n<p>Okay, but what about when the President leaves office? What if we decide that they broke the law in how they deported someone, or how they exercised their military authority in housing enemy combatants, or that they used their pardon power to corruptly obstruct justice? Well, under Trump v. United States, all of those powers are within the preclusive and exclusive authority of the President, and as a result all of of these actions enjoy absolute liability from criminal inquiry. Furthermore, none of these actions can be used as evidence for a crime in an unofficial act. So once the President leaves office, there is no way to penalize him for these actions even if we think they were done \"illegally.\"</p>\n<p>Yes, it seems like it is possible for a President to use his delegated powers to label people enemy aliens, enemy combatants, or whatever, direct soldiers to put them on a plane, send them to death camps outside of the country in foreign custody, ignore Court orders to remedy these acts when they were done illegally, pardon any of his subordinates if the Court holds them in contempot for ignoring the order, and completely avoid criminal liability.</p>\n<p>How does that make you feel?</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.14.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.14.25.html",
      "title": "Palm Sunday and the Temporality of Christ",
      "date_published": "2025-04-14T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I recently had an interesting email exchange with another online writer who I like (and is in many respects smarter and better at this than me). I'll share his work sometime separately, when it makes sense. Context unimportant, I rambled a bit about how why I think the historic and culturally specific features of Christianity are essential for its underlying theory of God. There are some people I've talked to, including myself in the past, who seem to think it's silly that a religion––which is supposed to offer some universal and timeless truths––should be so wound up in the history of a particular period in the middle east. Overtime, I have come to disagree with this view. Here is an excerpt from my email:\n\nTake as a premise a, perfect, platonic God, living in the world of the forms, living in eternity. Outside time, he is omnipotent, but also impotent. Because you can't \"do\" anything. Nothing happens. Agency, which I think we identify with God, with the \"word,\" is definitionally tied with cause and effect. Maybe this is a limitation of our perception, but I don't think it is. There's no reason to believe that there is a meaningful, atemporal account of agency, will, or power. For God to be God, he necessarily has to leave his platonic plane, and become temporal, limited, to be like us. In fact, the most Godly thing God can do is to subject himself to the extreme limitations of our material world, and then exhibit his agency in spite of it. God has to become a part of history to be what we think of as God, to be tied to the limitations of a certain culture, time, and place. In Christianity's case, Jesus became just another jewish messiah during the Roman empire. Why not be more . . . general? More universal? This question is central to Christian theology--the paradox is central to it! That God made himself a baby and was born, and \"died.\" God being temporal, being historical in nature is essential to him being God, not a defect. The temporal must meet the eternal for either to have meaning . . . Anyways, don't think a purely \"philosophical\" religion is really possible. Such an enterprise would be inherently \"secular.\"\n\nReally, if you accept this idea (and I do) that agency is wound up with a certain relation to space-time, then God had to become incarnate at SOME time and place. No matter where and when it was, there would be the question, why then and there? Now, I don't claim to know or really care why Christ happened to be born when he was. To me its sort of a meaningless question, right? Christ's birth is THE event that everything is relative to. It's like asking why the North Pole is where it is. Christ defines our relationship to God and to Time. Really, Christiantiy starts a new kind of time . . . I'll articulate this another time, but I think there's actually good work here already and I remember my Professor in undergrad talking about Saint Paul and time . . . https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Time-Life-Temporality-Christ-ebook/dp/B0BW13WS6D#:~:text=Standard%20interpretations%20are%20that%20Paul,but%20rather%20that%20they%20overlap.\n\nThe point is, I reject the idea that a unviversal God must be one dismbedded from time and place and culture. I don't think such a god would have much meaning to us. What would such a God be? An idea? A set of axioms? If God has such a nature, we might as well think of him as just math, or synonymous with reality or nature itself, and that basically becomes deism, which frankly I think is a whole lot of nothing. No, God, I think, is synonymous with the Will, the Word, Agency . . . God is not synonymous with Universe, God is the masculine, agentic force that sparked the birth of the Cosmos . . . if anything the purely material Universe is this inert, feminine substrate, like an unfertilized ovum . . . this would somewhat explain the mystery of God being described in masculine terms when he is in some sense supposed to be above such distinctions. I think that without God there is nothing, but it wouldn't be precisely correct to identify God with everything . . . God is the Word that makes the World incarnate, but not exactly World itself. And Jesus is God incarnate, and to be incarnate is to be in, not outside of, spacetime.\n\nSometimes, these things can be visualized, vaguely in the mind's eye, but not perfectly articulated.\n\nBut a God made incarnate in a time and place is one us fleshy humans can contend with in our material world. It's one where palm leaves have a special meaning, where we sit in Church, fiddle with them, tear them up, and burn them the next year. Where we put their ashes on our forehead. Where we sort of worship Jesus's mother. Funnily enough, the historicity, cultural specificity, and incarnate nature of Christ are all invitations to worship God in ways that feel, well, pagan.\n\nHappy Palm Sunday.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I recently had an interesting email exchange with another online writer who I like (and is in many respects smarter and better at this than me). I'll share his work sometime separately, when it makes sense. Context unimportant, I rambled a bit about how why I think the historic and culturally specific features of Christianity are essential for its underlying theory of God. There are some people I've talked to, including myself in the past, who seem to think it's silly that a religion––which is supposed to offer some universal and timeless truths––should be so wound up in the history of a particular period in the middle east. Overtime, I have come to disagree with this view. Here is an excerpt from my email:</p>\n<p><i>Take as a premise a, perfect, platonic God, living in the world of the forms, living in eternity. Outside time, he is omnipotent, but also impotent. Because you can't \"do\" anything. Nothing happens. Agency, which I think we identify with God, with the \"word,\" is definitionally tied with cause and effect. Maybe this is a limitation of our perception, but I don't think it is. There's no reason to believe that there is a meaningful, atemporal account of agency, will, or power. For God to be God, he necessarily has to leave his platonic plane, and become temporal, limited, to be like us. In fact, the most Godly thing God can do is to subject himself to the extreme limitations of our material world, and then exhibit his agency in spite of it. God has to become a part of history to be what we think of as God, to be tied to the limitations of a certain culture, time, and place. In Christianity's case, Jesus became just another jewish messiah during the Roman empire. Why not be more . . . general? More universal? This question is central to Christian theology--the paradox is central to it! That God made himself a baby and was born, and \"died.\" God being temporal, being historical in nature is essential to him being God, not a defect. The temporal must meet the eternal for either to have meaning . . . Anyways, don't think a purely \"philosophical\" religion is really possible. Such an enterprise would be inherently \"secular.\"</i></p>\n<p>Really, if you accept this idea (and I do) that agency is wound up with a certain relation to space-time, then God had to become incarnate at SOME time and place. No matter where and when it was, there would be the question, why then and there? Now, I don't claim to know or really care why Christ happened to be born when he was. To me its sort of a meaningless question, right? Christ's birth is THE event that everything is relative to. It's like asking why the North Pole is where it is. Christ defines our relationship to God and to Time. Really, Christiantiy starts a new kind of time . . . I'll articulate this another time, but I think there's actually good work here already and I remember my Professor in undergrad talking about Saint Paul and time . . . https://www.amazon.com/Paul-Time-Life-Temporality-Christ-ebook/dp/B0BW13WS6D#:~:text=Standard%20interpretations%20are%20that%20Paul,but%20rather%20that%20they%20overlap.</p>\n<p>The point is, I reject the idea that a unviversal God must be one dismbedded from time and place and culture. I don't think such a god would have much meaning to us. What would such a God be? An idea? A set of axioms? If God has such a nature, we might as well think of him as just math, or synonymous with reality or nature itself, and that basically becomes deism, which frankly I think is a whole lot of nothing. No, God, I think, is synonymous with the Will, the Word, Agency . . . God is not synonymous with Universe, God is the masculine, agentic force that sparked the birth of the Cosmos . . . if anything the purely material Universe is this inert, feminine substrate, like an unfertilized ovum . . . this would somewhat explain the mystery of God being described in masculine terms when he is in some sense supposed to be above such distinctions. I think that without God there is nothing, but it wouldn't be precisely correct to identify God with everything . . . God is the Word that makes the World incarnate, but not exactly World itself. And Jesus is God incarnate, and to be incarnate is to be in, not outside of, spacetime.</p>\n<p>Sometimes, these things can be visualized, vaguely in the mind's eye, but not perfectly articulated.</p>\n<p>But a God made incarnate in a time and place is one us fleshy humans can contend with in our material world. It's one where palm leaves have a special meaning, where we sit in Church, fiddle with them, tear them up, and burn them the next year. Where we put their ashes on our forehead. Where we sort of worship Jesus's mother. Funnily enough, the historicity, cultural specificity, and incarnate nature of Christ are all invitations to worship God in ways that feel, well, <i>pagan.</i></p>\n<p>Happy Palm Sunday.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.12.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.12.25.html",
      "title": "The New York Public Library, Thoughts on New York, and a Book on New York",
      "date_published": "2025-04-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I've been writing on here more because my classes recently ended and I need to let my brain breathe before diving back into the exam grind. I often do this––take strategic pauses. You need to let your brain play. So I'm reading some old stuff I have laying around, taking longer walks in the city, listening to music. It's hard to deliberately disengage from work when you have a lot of stuff coming up but doing this keeps you sharp. Hell, I think this is why I do so much better than classmates who work \"harder\" than me. I keep my brain healthy and curious, turns out that's useful for being a lawyer. Otherwise it gets all calloused and dull and ugly.\n\nPursuant to that strategy, today I woke up, had some time in the Sauna, and started walking down town on this rainy day with my backpack and books. I'm carrying that old compilation of H.L. Mencken Essays I found on the sidewalk in the upper part of Madison avenue, Return of the King (which I've been meaning to finish), and my Kindle. I was heading towards the New York Public Library.\n\nSince moving to New York, I've gone to the New York Public Library probably four times a week every week. This place is a Wonder of the World. Working in the main reading room is an absolute gift. The high cielings, the chandaliers, the arched windows with jsut enough view of the city that you can feel its magic without breaking teh \"cozy barrier.\" The brass lamps with warm LED bubs and the long tables. I've never had accss to a study space this gorgeous. It's one of the many things I'm thankful for every time I use it. My undergrad had a nice library, but the nice portion just wasn't that big, and it was encased by a newer building which was frankly an abomination of plastic, vinyl, and garish colors. My Law School's library is fine, but the presence of my classmates somewhat ruins the vibe for me.\n\nThe Library also holds special meaning to me because of its proximity to my future work place. If I angle myself right in the reading room, the big glass building where I'll start as a summer associate looms over me, reminding me of the work I've done up until now to be in this position, and the work I'll be expected to do in my rapidly approaching Big Law life. It's also a critical location in one my favorite sotries from my childhood: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). This is where Uncle Ben dropped off Peter for the last time, and where he died (right on the sidewalk in front of the library). It's where Peter learned his hardest lesson.\n\nTaken together, the total effect is magical. I sit at the intersection of my past, future, and present, surrounded by beauty, in a place laden with narrative symbolism. I leave and I see the Chrysler building right down the street, my favorite building. I can get a vegetarian meal form CAVA. It's just amazing.\n\nTalking to some natives, I'm fascinated that many of them don't use this spot more often. Looking around, it seems to be mostly students. I talked to a Big Law partner who works very close to this building, closer to Time Square, and he had never even stepped foot in the building. He had been in the city for decades. Anyways, if you're in New York, the New York Public Library isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon.\n\nTaking a step back, on the way here, I found another New York Treasure on 59th and Lexington. I had remembered it was down there because when I was trying to buy a copy of Abundance some weeks back (reviewed on this site earlier, using the term review loosely), and I called what my maps told me was the closest bookstore near me––Argosy Book Store––they told me they were an Old & Rare Book Store and didn't order new titles.\n\nWith this in my memory banks, when I approached 59th on the way to NYPL I looked up Argosy, and paid it a visit. My god it was a gorgeous shop. Apparently one of the oldest independent book stores in the city. I perused for a while and found the kind of non-committal reading material I'm trying to buy right now (because I have too many unfinished books)--an anthology of essays and excerpts on New York, compiled by Mike Marquise & Bill Harris. A nice coffee table book for when I can afford a coffee table (or a home).\n\nI read quite few of the entries, but one caught my eye because of the author: G.K. Chesterton! I got into Chesteron relatively recently, really only this last winter break when I read \"Orthodoxy\" on my Kindle because Zizek had mentioned some ideas from it god knows where. Anyways, there is this very funny essay by Chesteron in the anthology, named \"Meditations on Broadway.\"\n\nhttps://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/3/\n\nIt's a great, short read, and it's probably more applicable to Times Square generally today.\n\nAnyways, I feel like this whole little entry is also a great illustration of some of the irreplicable magic of New York, the density, the chance encounters, the connections one can make living here. Something special happens when you pack people together like this, when you pack places together like this. When historical book stores are near your apartment and is on the same avenue as a historic library which is also next to your future office which is also a place where a scene from your favorite movie happened, and when the city you live in is famous enough that English authors you have just started appreciating have written reflections on that city which are in the book you randomly picked up. Also the day that I failed to pick up Abundance from 59th (one of the authors of which, I just remembered, lives in Brooklyn), I took a dump at the Plaza Hotel. Really no city like this city.\n\nI'm going to resume enjoying this beautiful library, in this beautiful city, now turning back to some of the essays by Mencken I was reading to my girlfriend (she likes it when I read her thing before bed and always falls asleep in five minutes).\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I've been writing on here more because my classes recently ended and I need to let my brain breathe before diving back into the exam grind. I often do this––take strategic pauses. You need to let your brain play. So I'm reading some old stuff I have laying around, taking longer walks in the city, listening to music. It's hard to deliberately disengage from work when you have a lot of stuff coming up but doing this keeps you sharp. Hell, I think this is why I do so much better than classmates who work \"harder\" than me. I keep my brain healthy and curious, turns out that's useful for being a lawyer. Otherwise it gets all calloused and dull and ugly.</p>\n<p>Pursuant to that strategy, today I woke up, had some time in the Sauna, and started walking down town on this rainy day with my backpack and books. I'm carrying that old compilation of H.L. Mencken Essays I found on the sidewalk in the upper part of Madison avenue, Return of the King (which I've been meaning to finish), and my Kindle. I was heading towards the New York Public Library.</p>\n<p>Since moving to New York, I've gone to the New York Public Library probably four times a week every week. This place is a Wonder of the World. Working in the main reading room is an absolute gift. The high cielings, the chandaliers, the arched windows with jsut enough view of the city that you can feel its magic without breaking teh \"cozy barrier.\" The brass lamps with warm LED bubs and the long tables. I've never had accss to a study space this gorgeous. It's one of the many things I'm thankful for every time I use it. My undergrad had a nice library, but the nice portion just wasn't that big, and it was encased by a newer building which was frankly an abomination of plastic, vinyl, and garish colors. My Law School's library is fine, but the presence of my classmates somewhat ruins the vibe for me.</p>\n<p>The Library also holds special meaning to me because of its proximity to my future work place. If I angle myself right in the reading room, the big glass building where I'll start as a summer associate looms over me, reminding me of the work I've done up until now to be in this position, and the work I'll be expected to do in my rapidly approaching Big Law life. It's also a critical location in one my favorite sotries from my childhood: Sam Raimi's Spider-Man (2002). This is where Uncle Ben dropped off Peter for the last time, and where he died (right on the sidewalk in front of the library). It's where Peter learned his hardest lesson.</p>\n<p>Taken together, the total effect is magical. I sit at the intersection of my past, future, and present, surrounded by beauty, in a place laden with narrative symbolism. I leave and I see the Chrysler building right down the street, my favorite building. I can get a vegetarian meal form CAVA. It's just amazing.</p>\n<p>Talking to some natives, I'm fascinated that many of them don't use this spot more often. Looking around, it seems to be mostly students. I talked to a Big Law partner who works very close to this building, closer to Time Square, and he had never even stepped foot in the building. He had been in the city for decades. Anyways, if you're in New York, the New York Public Library isn't a bad way to spend an afternoon.</p>\n<p>Taking a step back, on the way here, I found another New York Treasure on 59th and Lexington. I had remembered it was down there because when I was trying to buy a copy of Abundance some weeks back (reviewed on this site earlier, using the term review loosely), and I called what my maps told me was the closest bookstore near me––Argosy Book Store––they told me they were an Old & Rare Book Store and didn't order new titles.</p>\n<p>With this in my memory banks, when I approached 59th on the way to NYPL I looked up Argosy, and paid it a visit. My god it was a gorgeous shop. Apparently one of the oldest independent book stores in the city. I perused for a while and found the kind of non-committal reading material I'm trying to buy right now (because I have too many unfinished books)--an anthology of essays and excerpts on New York, compiled by Mike Marquise & Bill Harris. A nice coffee table book for when I can afford a coffee table (or a home).</p>\n<p>I read quite few of the entries, but one caught my eye because of the author: G.K. Chesterton! I got into Chesteron relatively recently, really only this last winter break when I read \"Orthodoxy\" on my Kindle because Zizek had mentioned some ideas from it god knows where. Anyways, there is this very funny essay by Chesteron in the anthology, named \"Meditations on Broadway.\"</p>\n<p>https://www.online-literature.com/chesterton/what-i-saw-in-america/3/</p>\n<p>It's a great, short read, and it's probably more applicable to Times Square generally today.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I feel like this whole little entry is also a great illustration of some of the irreplicable magic of New York, the density, the chance encounters, the connections one can make living here. Something special happens when you pack people together like this, when you pack places together like this. When historical book stores are near your apartment and is on the same avenue as a historic library which is also next to your future office which is also a place where a scene from your favorite movie happened, and when the city you live in is famous enough that English authors you have just started appreciating have written reflections on that city which are in the book you randomly picked up. Also the day that I failed to pick up Abundance from 59th (one of the authors of which, I just remembered, lives in Brooklyn), I took a dump at the Plaza Hotel. Really no city like this city.</p>\n<p>I'm going to resume enjoying this beautiful library, in this beautiful city, now turning back to some of the essays by Mencken I was reading to my girlfriend (she likes it when I read her thing before bed and always falls asleep in five minutes).</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.11.25-BookReview-Abundance.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.11.25-BookReview-Abundance.html",
      "title": "Abundance by Ezra Klein Book and Derek Thompson Review",
      "date_published": "2025-04-11T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Okay so I finished this book a couple weeks back.\n\nFun story, I've been listening or reading to Ezra Klein since High School, like when he was on Vox and did the Weeds with Matthew Yglesias. I remember when he started at the New York Times. I had a Professor who was somewhat instrumental in his early career who was also pretty instrumental in mine. I had to read Why We're Polarized in College. So this guy Ezra Klein is one of those younger thinkers and writers who has just had a profound impact on me. More than any normie/popular thinker he's kind of shaped how I look at contemporary politics. So he's to me what maybe Thomas Friedman or David Brooks is to a boomer. Which now that I think about it, means I should start looking for newer writers and commentators, so I don't become an old fart. Klein has gotten pretty successful and I'm getting older, which means that some of his value prop is declining. I need to find the equivalent of someone doing Vox TODAY. You know what I mean? Like there is a high schooler listening to a smaller time up and coming commentator right now like I was listening to Klein in 2017ish. I need to find that person.\n\nAnyways, that's my relationship to Ezra Klein. I've listen to his podcast on the NYT a lot, and he has this very open, intellectually curious, thinking in systems approach that I've found very few other people succesfully replicate. And a lot of the ideas in Abundance have been strewn throughout his Podcast over the past three years or so. He's had recurring discussions on the need for state capacity, a liberalism that builds, he's been circling around the idea that we've lost a vision for the future that we used to have in midcentury and that the environmental movement did more to our national psyche than we give it credit for. And now, all of that is tightly condensed in this book.\n\nAlso Derek Thompson seems cool and I'm going to check him out more.\n\nI'm not going to talk about the ideas in the book too much. In short, both authors are like, liberals should think about making it easier to make and deploy material goods, whether it is houses or scientific inventions or energy. They think that would reorient our politics in a healthier direction and get us back on track for a Star Trek future. I agree with them basically one hundred percent.\n\nI will talk about whether its worth reading. The answer is yes, for most people. However if you listen to his show as regularly as I do, you won't find much NEW here. So weirdly enough, if you're a big Ezra Klein fan you're not missing much by just sitting this one out or just skimming it. But most disillusioned liberals should read this because its a manifesto, an agenda setter, of sorts. Read it, decide if you agree with, and you should read it just to know the ideas percolating in the idea-verse. This is probably going to be pretty influential with a lot of staffers and up and comers in the party, so I would imagine it will be pretty influential in the years to come. I think they timed the release well, because it comes at a time when the Dems are just hunting for a narrative, or some brand modification they can latch on to. I think DemWorld is ready to move on from White Fragility and on to something like this. Expect this to be as influential as the former, and probably a far more effective contribution to the liberal movement.\n\nAlso, it's an easy read. I read half of it walking across Central Park, beacuse the day it came out the only Barnes and Noble that had it near me was on the west side, and I just walked home that evening. I finished literally almost half of it in that time. Overall it that and three more lazy days of reading. It's an easy enough read, like two hundred pages with big font, and skimmable enough that if you can't easily read it you're not really literate. It's also written in that very digestible editorial style prose. So, take that as you will. I think people should read more in general.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Okay so I finished this book a couple weeks back.</p>\n<p>Fun story, I've been listening or reading to Ezra Klein since High School, like when he was on Vox and did the Weeds with Matthew Yglesias. I remember when he started at the New York Times. I had a Professor who was somewhat instrumental in his early career who was also pretty instrumental in mine. I had to read Why We're Polarized in College. So this guy Ezra Klein is one of those younger thinkers and writers who has just had a profound impact on me. More than any normie/popular thinker he's kind of shaped how I look at contemporary politics. So he's to me what maybe Thomas Friedman or David Brooks is to a boomer. Which now that I think about it, means I should start looking for newer writers and commentators, so I don't become an old fart. Klein has gotten pretty successful and I'm getting older, which means that some of his value prop is declining. I need to find the equivalent of someone doing Vox TODAY. You know what I mean? Like there is a high schooler listening to a smaller time up and coming commentator right now like I was listening to Klein in 2017ish. I need to find that person.</p>\n<p>Anyways, that's my relationship to Ezra Klein. I've listen to his podcast on the NYT a lot, and he has this very open, intellectually curious, thinking in systems approach that I've found very few other people succesfully replicate. And a lot of the ideas in Abundance have been strewn throughout his Podcast over the past three years or so. He's had recurring discussions on the need for state capacity, a liberalism that builds, he's been circling around the idea that we've lost a vision for the future that we used to have in midcentury and that the environmental movement did more to our national psyche than we give it credit for. And now, all of that is tightly condensed in this book.</p>\n<p>Also Derek Thompson seems cool and I'm going to check him out more.</p>\n<p>I'm not going to talk about the ideas in the book too much. In short, both authors are like, liberals should think about making it easier to make and deploy material goods, whether it is houses or scientific inventions or energy. They think that would reorient our politics in a healthier direction and get us back on track for a Star Trek future. I agree with them basically one hundred percent.</p>\n<p>I will talk about whether its worth reading. The answer is yes, for most people. However if you listen to his show as regularly as I do, you won't find much NEW here. So weirdly enough, if you're a big Ezra Klein fan you're not missing much by just sitting this one out or just skimming it. But most disillusioned liberals should read this because its a manifesto, an agenda setter, of sorts. Read it, decide if you agree with, and you should read it just to know the ideas percolating in the idea-verse. This is probably going to be pretty influential with a lot of staffers and up and comers in the party, so I would imagine it will be pretty influential in the years to come. I think they timed the release well, because it comes at a time when the Dems are just hunting for a narrative, or some brand modification they can latch on to. I think DemWorld is ready to move on from White Fragility and on to something like this. Expect this to be as influential as the former, and probably a far more effective contribution to the liberal movement.</p>\n<p>Also, it's an easy read. I read half of it walking across Central Park, beacuse the day it came out the only Barnes and Noble that had it near me was on the west side, and I just walked home that evening. I finished literally almost half of it in that time. Overall it that and three more lazy days of reading. It's an easy enough read, like two hundred pages with big font, and skimmable enough that if you can't easily read it you're not really literate. It's also written in that very digestible editorial style prose. So, take that as you will. I think people should read more in general.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.10.25-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.10.25-2.html",
      "title": "Some thoughts on Kanye West, Stopping Hitler, and the State of Young Men",
      "date_published": "2025-04-10T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "In my long phone conversations with my parents, where I let myself ramble and talk like a schizophrenic person, I've been circling around an idea that I think carries a lot of weight. I don't have very much time to develop it fully but want to jot it rough contours.\n\nSince like WWII western culture has been scarred, and has essentially been centered around the idea of \"stopping Hitler.\" That is, preventing anyone like him from every cropping up again. When I say Hitler, I really mean, a great man who sees the world as a canvas for his will, and not a cooperative enterprise.\n\nA lot of this is a good understandable project. We read the Sneetches in elementary school. We watched My Friend Martin every year. We watched \"The Wave.\" We had to look at all of those Holocaust pictures. I mean, so much of inculturation of small children in the early 21st century was really fascism prevention. I remember a school exercise where we divided the class by eye color or something of the sort to show how bad division is. I remember that they made us lay on the ground like the slaves did on the slave boats in the elementary school hallways to have us imagine what it must have been like. All of it to stop one of us from becoming Hitler 2 I guess.\n\nBut a lot of it, I think, has been problematic. Any young man that has been run through the public education system knows that there is a sort of systematic effort to convince us to make ourselves \"small.\" Make space for others, don't be cocky, don't act too clever. Like Dash from the Incredibles a lot of us were incentivized not to shine as bright or move as fast as we could have. We had to be good comrades, do all the steps everyone else had to do, glue in the worksheets into our AP Notebook for our class grade. We were explicilty told about this ridiculous \"Great Man\" theory of history and how it was all wrong, then told to read Guns Germs and Steel. See? The world is just run by impersonal forces. New age dialectical materialism. Human will, your ability, your ego, it doesn't really matter. Actually, Hitler, Napolean, none of them mattered, someone else would have filled their niche because there was structural demand for that kind of person.\n\nMaybe I'm overstating what they said a bit, but that was the vibe. And I think that, unconsciously, society was telling this all to young men to dampen our ambitions and to stop Hitler. They wanted to culrivate workers and technocrats, not great men. They didn't need us to read great books or anuything, or to learn history to draw strategic lessons, that wasn't the point. The point was to make us into agreeable members of society who could play nice. If were lucky 9one of us could work as an analyst for Capital One or something. But don't any of you think about being great---remember that's sort of the path to Hitler! Male ego, pride, its all what leads to bigotry fascism and Hitler. In case you forgot, we will remind you!\n\nI do thiink this is the cultural environment where we created the dmenad in young men for something more, for someone who offers them a BIGGER vision. It's the environment where someone like Andrew Tate develops a cult following. For me, it was the environment that made Kanye West's so resonant.\n\nI was thirteen when Yeezus came out. Listening to that album was like crack. It was a shot of adrenaline.\n\n\"Fuck you and your corporation you can't control me!\" (I wouldn't feel something like that until I read the Antichrist by Nietzsche in Sophomore year of college. I remember reading \"We thirsted for the lightening and great deeds . . . \")\n\nKanye West, his words, his music, his interviews, were an antidote for a young man who was growing up in a culture more interested in stopping Hitler than cultivating his abilities, than channeling his energies and ambitions into something meaningful. I had so much anger, so much energy, so much passion, so much ambition, and all everyone wanted to do was to cut my balls off. I was Randall P. McMurphy in the madhouse. That's what High School felt like.\n\nHis interviews would just resonate with fifteen year old me so hard. When he described how everyone wants to program you with low self-esteem . . . I knew exactly what he was talking about, and to me he was always an inspiration to RESIST that, to resist being neutered, to resist being lobotomized.\n\nThe alt-right Andrew Tate type stuff hadn't started while I was in school, but maybe I would have taken to it. I'm glad it wasn't really out there and I ended up––I think––normal enough. All I had was Kanye, My Chemical Romance, and some books. But now, there are kids like me in the schools, who are just as angry as I was. And the man who was so influential in counteracting the \"stop Hitler\" culture during my time, I guess unsurprisingly, now very pro-Hitler.\n\nIt's all very confusing and upsetting. But it makes perfect sense right? This was always his role. Kanye has always been far more of a Nietzschean than a Christian. This is just his final transformation. When I was in High School, there was still enough confusion about that that I got YEEZUS. What was really going on could be obfuscated to a degree. But now, a thirteen year old gets YITLER.\n\nThis seems like a bad development. But it's all logical. And i don't know exactly what we do about it.\n\n(by the way, Hitler is BAD, antisemitism is BAD, and I hate bigotry. I know sometimes you just have to state that clearly. HITLER WAS BAD).\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>In my long phone conversations with my parents, where I let myself ramble and talk like a schizophrenic person, I've been circling around an idea that I think carries a lot of weight. I don't have very much time to develop it fully but want to jot it rough contours.</p>\n<p>Since like WWII western culture has been scarred, and has essentially been centered around the idea of \"stopping Hitler.\" That is, preventing anyone like him from every cropping up again. When I say Hitler, I really mean, a great man who sees the world as a canvas for his will, and not a cooperative enterprise.</p>\n<p>A lot of this is a good understandable project. We read the Sneetches in elementary school. We watched My Friend Martin every year. We watched \"The Wave.\" We had to look at all of those Holocaust pictures. I mean, so much of inculturation of small children in the early 21st century was really fascism prevention. I remember a school exercise where we divided the class by eye color or something of the sort to show how bad division is. I remember that they made us lay on the ground like the slaves did on the slave boats in the elementary school hallways to have us imagine what it must have been like. All of it to stop one of us from becoming Hitler 2 I guess.</p>\n<p>But a lot of it, I think, has been problematic. Any young man that has been run through the public education system knows that there is a sort of systematic effort to convince us to make ourselves \"small.\" Make space for others, don't be cocky, don't act too clever. Like Dash from the Incredibles a lot of us were incentivized not to shine as bright or move as fast as we could have. We had to be good comrades, do all the steps everyone else had to do, glue in the worksheets into our AP Notebook for our class grade. We were explicilty told about this ridiculous \"Great Man\" theory of history and how it was all wrong, then told to read Guns Germs and Steel. See? The world is just run by impersonal forces. New age dialectical materialism. Human will, your ability, your ego, it doesn't really matter. Actually, Hitler, Napolean, none of them mattered, someone else would have filled their niche because there was structural demand for that kind of person.</p>\n<p>Maybe I'm overstating what they said a bit, but that was the vibe. And I think that, unconsciously, society was telling this all to young men to dampen our ambitions and to stop Hitler. They wanted to culrivate workers and technocrats, not great men. They didn't need us to read great books or anuything, or to learn history to draw strategic lessons, that wasn't the point. The point was to make us into agreeable members of society who could play nice. If were lucky 9one of us could work as an analyst for Capital One or something. But don't any of you think about being great---remember that's sort of the path to Hitler! Male ego, pride, its all what leads to bigotry fascism and Hitler. In case you forgot, we will remind you!</p>\n<p>I do thiink this is the cultural environment where we created the dmenad in young men for something more, for someone who offers them a BIGGER vision. It's the environment where someone like Andrew Tate develops a cult following. For me, it was the environment that made Kanye West's so resonant.</p>\n<p>I was thirteen when Yeezus came out. Listening to that album was like crack. It was a shot of adrenaline.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><i>\"Fuck you and your corporation you can't control me!\"</i> (I wouldn't feel something like that until I read the Antichrist by Nietzsche in Sophomore year of college. I remember reading \"We thirsted for the lightening and great deeds . . . \")</p>\n<p>Kanye West, his words, his music, his interviews, were an antidote for a young man who was growing up in a culture more interested in stopping Hitler than cultivating his abilities, than channeling his energies and ambitions into something meaningful. I had so much anger, so much energy, so much passion, so much ambition, and all everyone wanted to do was to cut my balls off. I was Randall P. McMurphy in the madhouse. That's what High School felt like.</p>\n<p>His interviews would just resonate with fifteen year old me so hard. When he described how everyone wants to program you with low self-esteem . . . I knew exactly what he was talking about, and to me he was always an inspiration to RESIST that, to resist being neutered, to resist being lobotomized.</p>\n<p>The alt-right Andrew Tate type stuff hadn't started while I was in school, but maybe I would have taken to it. I'm glad it wasn't really out there and I ended up––I think––normal enough. All I had was Kanye, My Chemical Romance, and some books. But now, there are kids like me in the schools, who are just as angry as I was. And the man who was so influential in counteracting the \"stop Hitler\" culture during my time, I guess unsurprisingly, now very pro-Hitler.</p>\n<p>It's all very confusing and upsetting. But it makes perfect sense right? This was always his role. Kanye has always been far more of a Nietzschean than a Christian. This is just his final transformation. When I was in High School, there was still enough confusion about that that I got YEEZUS. What was really going on could be obfuscated to a degree. But now, a thirteen year old gets YITLER.</p>\n<p>This seems like a bad development. But it's all logical. And i don't know exactly what we do about it.</p>\n<p>(by the way, Hitler is BAD, antisemitism is BAD, and I hate bigotry. I know sometimes you just have to state that clearly. HITLER WAS BAD).</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.10.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.10.25.html",
      "title": "Sometimes being in law school makes me sad",
      "date_published": "2025-04-10T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I would like to do things that help people, which is why I joined law school. I never was interested in making a lot of money. And I also wanted to be around smart people who I like.\n\nAs of now, it looks like I've been sucked into the Big Law track, working with a lot of the type of people that I don't really mesh with, and doing stuff I don't necessarily care about.\n\nI'd like to be free, write silly things, take photographs, and do things that directly help people. But I also want to make enough money to buy lovely little girlfriend a house, and guarantee her, her parents, and my immediate family some financial security. I want to be able to take care of family if they get sick, or send a cousin money if they need it. I want to be able to have an afford several children and give them a reasonable standard of living. I want to pay for my dog's health insurance.\n\nUnfortunately, I can't really do anything of the sort without at least a six fig income. And I'll be burdened my whole life if I don't pay these loans. So its Big Law, working in a big glass tower, for some time I guess.\n\nI would love to just fuck all of this and go to a DA's office or something like that. Or just help renters or immigrants or something. But I guess I was too selfish and too unimaginative in my initial steps, that I am now locked onto another course.\n\nEventually, I hope to find my way back. Maybe in the mean time I'll be okay with just making some money.\n\nregards,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I would like to do things that help people, which is why I joined law school. I never was interested in making a lot of money. And I also wanted to be around smart people who I like.</p>\n<p>As of now, it looks like I've been sucked into the Big Law track, working with a lot of the type of people that I don't really mesh with, and doing stuff I don't necessarily care about.</p>\n<p>I'd like to be free, write silly things, take photographs, and do things that directly help people. But I also want to make enough money to buy lovely little girlfriend a house, and guarantee her, her parents, and my immediate family some financial security. I want to be able to take care of family if they get sick, or send a cousin money if they need it. I want to be able to have an afford several children and give them a reasonable standard of living. I want to pay for my dog's health insurance.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, I can't really do anything of the sort without at least a six fig income. And I'll be burdened my whole life if I don't pay these loans. So its Big Law, working in a big glass tower, for some time I guess.</p>\n<p>I would love to just fuck all of this and go to a DA's office or something like that. Or just help renters or immigrants or something. But I guess I was too selfish and too unimaginative in my initial steps, that I am now locked onto another course.</p>\n<p>Eventually, I hope to find my way back. Maybe in the mean time I'll be okay with just making some money.</p>\n<p>regards,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.8.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-4.8.25.html",
      "title": "An Essay by H.L. Mencken",
      "date_published": "2025-04-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Recently I had a very strange experience on the upper east side.\n\nI was walking on an overcast day, and there was gigantic pile of books on the sidewalk, somewhere near the high 80s and Madison avenue. This pile was truly enormous, to put it simply, think of it like an oval with a major diamater of maybe eight to ten feet and a minor diamater of around six? At its deepest it was maybe three or four feet tall. And it was all books. It was more books than I have ever seen in a pile ever. And the books weren't like junk, they were all old, interesting, curated books. Not mass market paperbacks. I'd open one and it would have be something published from 1925. One of the ones I picked up said from the library of Ralph Pulitzer, and then another sticker/stamp assigning it to the library of the person who I guess most recently owned it. There were old art books (one I grabbed was the World of the Market by Mark Tobey), collections of poems, old editions of famous classics, a really old hardback of \"The Way Things Work,\" periodicals, big cases of carefully labelled and sorted VHS tapes . . .\n\nAround this pile was maybe eigh to ten people scavenging for books and frantically putting them into boxes or tote bags. I asked someone what the hell was going on. Apparently someone in the apartment building next to the pile died, and I guess he had no heirs or family to inherit this big collection he had amassed, so the apartment building just had to dump it. It was going to rain in about twenty minutes and people were just trying to grab what they coud.\n\nThis was a genuinly upsetting encounter that made me think about my life a lot. I collect a lot of stuff, I try and preserve a lot of stuff, I have a ton of old books and magazines and comic books, is this what eventually happens to all of it? I guess nothing matters if you don't have a family that cares. You just die and all that shit is garbage. This whole little world you curated is garbage. I was going to write a blog post about that but as a law student with no audience I made no time to do that. But that's my thoughts on the matter anyway. The main takeaway is, no one gives a fuck about you I guess. And no one really cares about amateur record keeping and curation. If you're a professor at university or something the books in your office may get donated or added to the school collections once you pass. But if you're just some weird due on the upper east side your library is going to get tossed.\n\nAnyways, one of the books I grabbed was Prejudices: Thir Series by H.L. Mencken. Laying in bad with a bit of a sniffle today (which I blame on my reduced meat consumption, which I may write about another day). I had no idea what it was about, and just dived into it blind. I really liked the first of his essays: On Being An American. I have nothing to say about it except that its worth a read, because I think it really shows that a lot of the stuff about our national culture that feels so weird and broken right now is not new at all. I chuckled a bit at his characterization of Americans, because much of it rings just as true today. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53474\n\ncheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Recently I had a very strange experience on the upper east side.</p>\n<p>I was walking on an overcast day, and there was gigantic pile of books on the sidewalk, somewhere near the high 80s and Madison avenue. This pile was truly enormous, to put it simply, think of it like an oval with a major diamater of maybe eight to ten feet and a minor diamater of around six? At its deepest it was maybe three or four feet tall. And it was all books. It was more books than I have ever seen in a pile ever. And the books weren't like junk, they were all old, interesting, curated books. Not mass market paperbacks. I'd open one and it would have be something published from 1925. One of the ones I picked up said from the library of Ralph Pulitzer, and then another sticker/stamp assigning it to the library of the person who I guess most recently owned it. There were old art books (one I grabbed was the World of the Market by Mark Tobey), collections of poems, old editions of famous classics, a really old hardback of \"The Way Things Work,\" periodicals, big cases of carefully labelled and sorted VHS tapes . . .</p>\n<p>Around this pile was maybe eigh to ten people scavenging for books and frantically putting them into boxes or tote bags. I asked someone what the hell was going on. Apparently someone in the apartment building next to the pile died, and I guess he had no heirs or family to inherit this big collection he had amassed, so the apartment building just had to dump it. It was going to rain in about twenty minutes and people were just trying to grab what they coud.</p>\n<p>This was a genuinly upsetting encounter that made me think about my life a lot. I collect a lot of stuff, I try and preserve a lot of stuff, I have a ton of old books and magazines and comic books, is this what eventually happens to all of it? I guess nothing matters if you don't have a family that cares. You just die and all that shit is garbage. This whole little world you curated is garbage. I was going to write a blog post about that but as a law student with no audience I made no time to do that. But that's my thoughts on the matter anyway. The main takeaway is, no one gives a fuck about you I guess. And no one really cares about amateur record keeping and curation. If you're a professor at university or something the books in your office may get donated or added to the school collections once you pass. But if you're just some weird due on the upper east side your library is going to get tossed.</p>\n<p>Anyways, one of the books I grabbed was Prejudices: Thir Series by H.L. Mencken. Laying in bad with a bit of a sniffle today (which I blame on my reduced meat consumption, which I may write about another day). I had no idea what it was about, and just dived into it blind. I really liked the first of his essays: On Being An American. I have nothing to say about it except that its worth a read, because I think it really shows that a lot of the stuff about our national culture that feels so weird and broken right now is not new at all. I chuckled a bit at his characterization of Americans, because much of it rings just as true today. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/53474</p>\n<p>cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-2.10.25-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-2.10.25-2.html",
      "title": "On Current Events",
      "date_published": "2025-02-10T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "It all looks quite bad.\n\nI wanted to be happier about the Trump administration and be proven wrong, maybe I was just a hater or lost in a liberal echo chamber, and he wasnt going to be so bad. No, all evidence suggests that the Orange Man is quite bad.\n\nSeems like we're headed towards Caesarism, electoral authoritarianism, illiberal democracy, whatever you want to call it. I was sympathetic to effort to tame the bureaucracy and align with some of the interpretations of unitary executive theory.\n\nBut combined with efforts to control spending with impoundment, a general culture of loyalty to the party figurehead over the constitution, unilateral control over tariffs that gives enormous leverage over the business community, industry's resulting recognition that proximity to the President is important to do business in America, New Media's close ties with the insurgent right wing, the fact that the readership of old media is aging, the fact that young Americans seem less literate and lack the indepdnence and vigor to create new institutions and movements to counter this wave, the fact that Artificial Intellignece looks poised to further reduce our faculties and reasoning . . .\n\nIt all point to the possibility that we're heading towards a very very dark future. One that's deeply authoritarian, brazenly anti-intellectual, one that's far less culturally productive, and where we realy on concentrated platforms with proximity to political power for communication and opinion formation.\n\nIt really looks very bleak.\n\nI hope, I pray I'm wrong. On New Year's day I was at the club and YMCA came on and I felt, you know what, maybe things will be alright, maybe four years under this crazy man will be enough to set things straight and end the libshit tyrrany of the past 20 odd years. But it rapidly seems like what will supplant it is just far uglier.",
      "content_html": "<p>It all looks quite bad.</p>\n<p>I wanted to be happier about the Trump administration and be proven wrong, maybe I was just a hater or lost in a liberal echo chamber, and he wasnt going to be so bad. No, all evidence suggests that the Orange Man is quite bad.</p>\n<p>Seems like we're headed towards Caesarism, electoral authoritarianism, illiberal democracy, whatever you want to call it. I was sympathetic to effort to tame the bureaucracy and align with some of the interpretations of unitary executive theory.</p>\n<p>But combined with efforts to control spending with impoundment, a general culture of loyalty to the party figurehead over the constitution, unilateral control over tariffs that gives enormous leverage over the business community, industry's resulting recognition that proximity to the President is important to do business in America, New Media's close ties with the insurgent right wing, the fact that the readership of old media is aging, the fact that young Americans seem less literate and lack the indepdnence and vigor to create new institutions and movements to counter this wave, the fact that Artificial Intellignece looks poised to further reduce our faculties and reasoning . . .</p>\n<p>It all point to the possibility that we're heading towards a very very dark future. One that's deeply authoritarian, brazenly anti-intellectual, one that's far less culturally productive, and where we realy on concentrated platforms with proximity to political power for communication and opinion formation.</p>\n<p>It really looks very bleak.</p>\n<p>I hope, I pray I'm wrong. On New Year's day I was at the club and YMCA came on and I felt, you know what, maybe things will be alright, maybe four years under this crazy man will be enough to set things straight and end the libshit tyrrany of the past 20 odd years. But it rapidly seems like what will supplant it is just far uglier.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-2.10.25.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-2.10.25.html",
      "title": "An observation about living in Manhattan",
      "date_published": "2025-02-10T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "The most underrated part of New York is its geography, and the way it makes me relate to physical space\n\nI’ve always been someone who is “directionally challenged.” For the most part, I don’t have a good model of where I live in 3D space, and it’s hard for me to picture a bird’s eye view of where I am on a map (Logic Games was my lowest section on the LSAT). Growing up around a lot of dudes, I slowly realized that many had this ability.\n\nI think of things, in general, very linearly, or narratively. When I grew up in my hilly, rolling suburbs, I knew directions well because I knew what landmarks came after what. I didn’t get lost a lot, but again, I really could not build a “map” in my head all that well. I would just use what’s in front of my eyes than a more abstract sense of direction — like North, South, East, West — to orient myself.\n\nHowever, this often meant that shortcuts evaded me, and sometimes when I looked on Google Maps I was surprised by how close certain neighborhoods or landmarks were in space. I really thought of the paths between things as just that, I did not envision them as connecting two points on a grid. Obviously, as I got older, my ability to build this “map” improved, but for the most part it didn’t fully develop because its the burbs and I started driving anyways. Paying attention to the sun also helped me develop an internal compass.\n\nWhen I began living in DC, this changed a bit. The presence of really tall landmarks, like the Washington Monument, the Potomac River, and the four quadrant system gave me a better sense of where I was on a “map.” If I thought about it for a second, I could probably tell you what cardinal direction I was facing, and overtime I roughly developed at least a relational map in my mind. Biking around for work and school also really developed this. But it was still rough to what I have now.\n\nLiving in Manhattan, and working in Brooklyn for part of the week, I have a video game level internal representation of the map. At any given point, I know what cardinal direction I’m facing, and, at least in Manhattan, I can close my eyes and imagine a map with my coordinates. When I’m on the subway I feel like I can see my little red dot moving on the map. When I’m in Brooklyn, and I see the Empire State Building, I know how far my apartment is in a very visual way. It’s amazing. Right now I’m on a runway looking at the skyline, I see the One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building prominently — it creates a big compass, and I know exactly where I am on the earth. I know that I am west of Manhattan, and because I also have a good sense of those building’s scale because I am so close to them so often, I also feel that I really GET how far I am from the city.\n\nAnyways, I think New York’s Geography + Grid + System + near Compass Alignment is part of what makes it the best city on earth.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>The most underrated part of New York is its geography, and the way it makes me relate to physical space</p>\n<p>I’ve always been someone who is “directionally challenged.” For the most part, I don’t have a good model of where I live in 3D space, and it’s hard for me to picture a bird’s eye view of where I am on a map (Logic Games was my lowest section on the LSAT). Growing up around a lot of dudes, I slowly realized that many had this ability.</p>\n<p>I think of things, in general, very linearly, or narratively. When I grew up in my hilly, rolling suburbs, I knew directions well because I knew what landmarks came after what. I didn’t get lost a lot, but again, I really could not build a “map” in my head all that well. I would just use what’s in front of my eyes than a more abstract sense of direction — like North, South, East, West — to orient myself.</p>\n<p>However, this often meant that shortcuts evaded me, and sometimes when I looked on Google Maps I was surprised by how close certain neighborhoods or landmarks were in space. I really thought of the paths between things as just that, I did not envision them as connecting two points on a grid. Obviously, as I got older, my ability to build this “map” improved, but for the most part it didn’t fully develop because its the burbs and I started driving anyways. Paying attention to the sun also helped me develop an internal compass.</p>\n<p>When I began living in DC, this changed a bit. The presence of really tall landmarks, like the Washington Monument, the Potomac River, and the four quadrant system gave me a better sense of where I was on a “map.” If I thought about it for a second, I could probably tell you what cardinal direction I was facing, and overtime I roughly developed at least a relational map in my mind. Biking around for work and school also really developed this. But it was still rough to what I have now.</p>\n<p>Living in Manhattan, and working in Brooklyn for part of the week, I have a video game level internal representation of the map. At any given point, I know what cardinal direction I’m facing, and, at least in Manhattan, I can close my eyes and imagine a map with my coordinates. When I’m on the subway I feel like I can see my little red dot moving on the map. When I’m in Brooklyn, and I see the Empire State Building, I know how far my apartment is in a very visual way. It’s amazing. Right now I’m on a runway looking at the skyline, I see the One World Trade Center and the Empire State Building prominently — it creates a big compass, and I know exactly where I am on the earth. I know that I am west of Manhattan, and because I also have a good sense of those building’s scale because I am so close to them so often, I also feel that I really GET how far I am from the city.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I think New York’s Geography + Grid + System + near Compass Alignment is part of what makes it the best city on earth.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-1.28.25-BookReview-TypographyForLawyers.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-1.28.25-BookReview-TypographyForLawyers.html",
      "title": "Typography for Lawyers",
      "date_published": "2025-01-28T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "https://www.amazon.com/Typography-Lawyers-2nd-Matthew-Butterick/dp/159839262X\n\nIf you're in law school and are like me and you like making things pretty, buy this book.\n\nif your legal writing class is like mine, it was really bad when it came to teaching you about the logic of formatting a brief, gave you the illusion that there are really hard and fast rules, and made the whole process feel painful (the whole ordering of heading formatting in my class was stupid as hell). The truth is when you read briefs in practice they vary quite a bit, different courts have different rules, and different firms have different internal templates, etc. I'm a big fan of having your own sense of style (e.g. I prefer shorter headings, umbrella paragraphs before jumping to subheadings, not using romanettes, etc.).\n\nThis book is good because it has some very good non-stuffy advice on how to do legal writing with style. Good advice on font and the technicalities of word processing software (like not using tab to indent, that was a revelation to me). And some good guidance on hierarchy, margins, etc.\n\nIt's pretty short, not very in depth. But its a good reference to have hanging around your desk. It's probably not super useful in law school, where you'll often have strict style guides from legal writing profs or from your jobs, but in the off instance where you have some discretion, this could be nice. I know that if I ever pursue my dream of doing my own practice, I'll reference this when building my own internal templates for briefs, motions, etc.\n\nAlso, if you just like reading bullshit on typography this is a fun book to peruse.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>https://www.amazon.com/Typography-Lawyers-2nd-Matthew-Butterick/dp/159839262X</p>\n<p>If you're in law school and are like me and you like making things pretty, buy this book.</p>\n<p>if your legal writing class is like mine, it was really bad when it came to teaching you about the logic of formatting a brief, gave you the illusion that there are really hard and fast rules, and made the whole process feel painful (the whole ordering of heading formatting in my class was stupid as hell). The truth is when you read briefs in practice they vary quite a bit, different courts have different rules, and different firms have different internal templates, etc. I'm a big fan of having your own sense of style (e.g. I prefer shorter headings, umbrella paragraphs before jumping to subheadings, not using romanettes, etc.).</p>\n<p>This book is good because it has some very good non-stuffy advice on how to do legal writing with style. Good advice on font and the technicalities of word processing software (like not using tab to indent, that was a revelation to me). And some good guidance on hierarchy, margins, etc.</p>\n<p>It's pretty short, not very in depth. But its a good reference to have hanging around your desk. It's probably not super useful in law school, where you'll often have strict style guides from legal writing profs or from your jobs, but in the off instance where you have some discretion, this could be nice. I know that if I ever pursue my dream of doing my own practice, I'll reference this when building my own internal templates for briefs, motions, etc.</p>\n<p>Also, if you just like reading bullshit on typography this is a fun book to peruse.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.18.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.18.24.html",
      "title": "Quote from my GF (who stole it from Pascal?)",
      "date_published": "2024-12-18T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I posted this on Reddit and it got some traction in the r/lawschool community:\n\n--\n\nafter every exam season I generally get waves of dread. once the result is out of my control I get this come down from the adrenaline and get somewhat sad. This is my third go around as a 2L and I'm remembering something my girlfriend says: \nIf you don't worry, and you did bad, you suffer once \nIf you worry about it, and you did bad, you suffer twice \nif you worry about it, and you did good, you suffered for no reason \nif you don't worry about it, and you did good, you didn't suffer \nis it helpful? kind of. do I follow this advice? almost never at all. but its nice to hear. \n**edit: My gf did in fact adapt this from Pascal's wager. I did not know this.\n\n--\n\nOne commenter amusingly pointed out that someone actually stole this and used it on a LinkedIn post. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7274423105899405312/\n\nSo that's pretty funny!\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I posted this on Reddit and it got some traction in the r/lawschool community:</p>\n<p>--</p>\n<p>after every exam season I generally get waves of dread. once the result is out of my control I get this come down from the adrenaline and get somewhat sad. This is my third go around as a 2L and I'm remembering something my girlfriend says: <br>If you don't worry, and you did bad, you suffer once <br>If you worry about it, and you did bad, you suffer twice <br>if you worry about it, and you did good, you suffered for no reason <br>if you don't worry about it, and you did good, you didn't suffer <br>is it helpful? kind of. do I follow this advice? almost never at all. but its nice to hear. <br>**edit: My gf did in fact adapt this from Pascal's wager. I did not know this.</p>\n<p>--</p>\n<p>One commenter amusingly pointed out that someone actually stole this and used it on a LinkedIn post. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7274423105899405312/</p>\n<p>So that's pretty funny!</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.15.24-BookReview-Orthodoxy.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.15.24-BookReview-Orthodoxy.html",
      "title": "Orthodoxy by Chesterton",
      "date_published": "2024-12-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "This was one of the best books/longform essays I've read in a long time. It's a short book, so it doesn't need a great deal of summarization. So I'll deal with some running themes in short.\n\nIt's a Rejection of Materialism, Rationalism, and Secular Progressivism \n\nChesterton spends more time dressing down his intellectual opponents then he really does talking about Christianity itself. But that discussion is one of the best, most biting, and funniest diagnoses of the modern mind that I've ever read. As relevant today as it was in his time.\n\nIn short, Chesterton is against the idea that a materially concerned \"evidence-based\" worldview. Using a writing style that is extremely fond of highlighting paradoxes, he illustrates the faults of a materialist/naturalist worldview from damn near every angle.. There are too many great takedowns of materialism to count, but one that I enjoyed especially is his account of how it devolves into solipsism, which in turn undermines an empirically driven enterprise.\n\n “all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.” \n\nHis use of paradox continues, until Chesterton is dealing with the political tendencies that are downstream of a materialist worldview. I won't try and write it better than he does, but it eventually leads to him questioning the legitimacy of what we today would call \"technocracy\" or meritocracy. Chesterton's worldview is deeply democratic, and holds a deep respect for the wisdom of the ordinary person. There'a a good deal of real estate in the book dedicated to relating the values of democracy to a christian worldview, and he builds up the idea that those most fit to wield power are those who don't seek it (a common theme in fantasy, Dumbledore says something like this in Harry Potter, it's the key message of Lord of the Rings, it's there in Spider-Man--the cultural products of a Christian civilization!). A lot of this is actually pretty familiar for the type of person who would read this.\n\nBut there was an idea he said on the wisdom of ordinary people that I'm not sure I've ever seen articulated quite as perfectly anywhere else; that the ordinary person's comfort with inconsistency, with paradox, gives them \"streoscopic\" sight. This one really hit me. As an average annoying college grad, I spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing my own worldview, trying to make it internally consistent, and its often frustrating when you talk to \"normies\" and realize that they don't even TRY to do this. The politics and opinions of the average person are dumbfounding. But Chesterton sees this is a feature, not a bug:\n\n“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.”\n\nEvery other paragraph Chesterton has some insight like this that felt like it carved a new groove in my brain. This is just a sample.\n\nThe Culture Wars are Old News\n\nMost people who read philosophy or have some interest in the history of the ideas will already have a sense of this. But I don't think I really felt how long we've been locked into the same kind of debates until I've read this book. Orthodoxy is in an active conversation with Nietzsche and. his philosophical contemporaries. Anyone who spends time on weirdo right wing twitter may be familiar with the conversation between the Nietszchean/post-christian right and the Christian right. Well, it does appear that the same sort of debates raged in Chesterton's time. But that's not a surprise.\n\nWhat is a little surprising is how he describes but the prevailing political and social thoughts of his time--how he describes the average forgotten member of the commentariat. Through his dress downs, you get a sense of the kind of intellectual environment he was arguing with in 1908, and its awfully similar to our own. The same diagnoses of democracy, converstaions about progress, tensions between meritocratic and democtatic impulses. Some of these will vaguely map onto modern culture war fault lines, and some of the institutionalist/populist tensions we see today. If there's anything comforting about this book, its that we've been farting around with the same basic pallete of ideas for some time. And we're all fine.\n\nIt's a Compelling Case for a Christian Civilization\n\nThis is the main point of the book, really. He's not trying to make some kind of scientific case for the factual reality of the resurrection or anything. It's not that kind of Christian apologetics work. It's really walking through how he himself arrived at becoming a Christian (a lot of it is through finding faults in Christianity's opponents). It's an account that probably wouldn't satisfy real skeptics, because it doesn't answer the real points of contention (is it TRUE). Here's an excerpt to give you an idea what he builds up to:\n\nThis, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden.\n\nAgain, if you're someone who isn't Christian or who struggles with faith, I don't think you'll find anything in this work that helps you make the leap. What Chesterton does do succesffully, I think, is paint a very compeling case for Christian civilization, for the values that are consequents of a Christian worldview. It's not the point of the book, I think, but it's what happens. Throughout the work you develop an appreciation for the very peculiar worldview and cultural matrix that arises from a religion that believes that God became a man. Being born and raised in America, it's easy to take for granted a lot of really weird cultural patterns we have that are downstreeam of that fundamental belief. I think that Chesterton illunminates the link between western civilization and Christian belief in a lot of places. One that I liked, which I also feel is a bit of a leap, is how he ties the resilience of western societies with it's capacity to \"die daily\":\n\n“The highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization OUGHT to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnorak of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange life—it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS—ever since.”\n\nPersonal Feelings\n\nI love this book for a lot of reasons. The most superficial one being that I agree with his \"politics,\" and general vibe.\n\nBut the most personal reason I love thisb book is that his journey to faith seems to mirror my own. When I was like 14 (when I was an edgy atheist), I personally learned the case he makes in the chapter \"The Maniac,\" that pure materialism/rationalism eventually leads to solipsisim, and that tears your whole world apart. Only faith, not human reason, can serve as a viable foundation for your life, for anything. Accepting that is a profound act of humility. It's one that I made, and my life has been richer, my heart bigger, and the world I live in more interesting ever since.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>This was one of the best books/longform essays I've read in a long time. It's a short book, so it doesn't need a great deal of summarization. So I'll deal with some running themes in short.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>It's a Rejection of Materialism, Rationalism, and Secular Progressivism </b></p>\n<p>Chesterton spends more time dressing down his intellectual opponents then he really does talking about Christianity itself. But that discussion is one of the best, most biting, and funniest diagnoses of the modern mind that I've ever read. As relevant today as it was in his time.</p>\n<p>In short, Chesterton is against the idea that a materially concerned \"evidence-based\" worldview. Using a writing style that is extremely fond of highlighting paradoxes, he illustrates the faults of a materialist/naturalist worldview from damn near every angle.. There are too many great takedowns of materialism to count, but one that I enjoyed especially is his account of how it devolves into solipsism, which in turn undermines an empirically driven enterprise.</p>\n<p><i> “all this is true. The same would apply to the other extreme of speculative logic. There is a sceptic far more terrible than he who believes that everything began in matter. It is possible to meet the sceptic who believes that everything began in himself. He doubts not the existence of angels or devils, but the existence of men and cows. For him his own friends are a mythology made up by himself. He created his own father and his own mother. This horrible fancy has in it something decidedly attractive to the somewhat mystical egoism of our day. That publisher who thought that men would get on if they believed in themselves, those seekers after the Superman who are always looking for him in the looking-glass, those writers who talk about impressing their personalities instead of creating life for the world, all these people have really only an inch between them and this awful emptiness. Then when this kindly world all round the man has been blackened out like a lie; when friends fade into ghosts, and the foundations of the world fail; then when the man, believing in nothing and in no man, is alone in his own nightmare, then the great individualistic motto shall be written over him in avenging irony. The stars will be only dots in the blackness of his own brain; his mother’s face will be only a sketch from his own insane pencil on the walls of his cell. But over his cell shall be written, with dreadful truth, “He believes in himself.” </i></p>\n<p>His use of paradox continues, until Chesterton is dealing with the political tendencies that are downstream of a materialist worldview. I won't try and write it better than he does, but it eventually leads to him questioning the legitimacy of what we today would call \"technocracy\" or meritocracy. Chesterton's worldview is deeply democratic, and holds a deep respect for the wisdom of the ordinary person. There'a a good deal of real estate in the book dedicated to relating the values of democracy to a christian worldview, and he builds up the idea that those most fit to wield power are those who don't seek it (a common theme in fantasy, Dumbledore says something like this in Harry Potter, it's the key message of Lord of the Rings, it's there in Spider-Man--the cultural products of a Christian civilization!). A lot of this is actually pretty familiar for the type of person who would read this.</p>\n<p>But there was an idea he said on the wisdom of ordinary people that I'm not sure I've ever seen articulated quite as perfectly anywhere else; that the ordinary person's comfort with inconsistency, with paradox, gives them \"streoscopic\" sight. This one really hit me. As an average annoying college grad, I spend an inordinate amount of time rationalizing my own worldview, trying to make it internally consistent, and its often frustrating when you talk to \"normies\" and realize that they don't even TRY to do this. The politics and opinions of the average person are dumbfounding. But Chesterton sees this is a feature, not a bug:</p>\n<p><i>“Mysticism keeps men sane. As long as you have mystery you have health; when you destroy mystery you create morbidity. The ordinary man has always been sane because the ordinary man has always been a mystic. He has permitted the twilight. He has always had one foot in earth and the other in fairyland. He has always left himself free to doubt his gods; but (unlike the agnostic of to-day) free also to believe in them. He has always cared more for truth than for consistency. If he saw two truths that seemed to contradict each other, he would take the two truths and the contradiction along with them. His spiritual sight is stereoscopic, like his physical sight: he sees two different pictures at once and yet sees all the better for that.”</i></p>\n<p>Every other paragraph Chesterton has some insight like this that felt like it carved a new groove in my brain. This is just a sample.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>The Culture Wars are Old News</b></p>\n<p>Most people who read philosophy or have some interest in the history of the ideas will already have a sense of this. But I don't think I really felt how long we've been locked into the same kind of debates until I've read this book. Orthodoxy is in an active conversation with Nietzsche and. his philosophical contemporaries. Anyone who spends time on weirdo right wing twitter may be familiar with the conversation between the Nietszchean/post-christian right and the Christian right. Well, it does appear that the same sort of debates raged in Chesterton's time. But that's not a surprise.</p>\n<p>What is a little surprising is how he describes but the prevailing political and social thoughts of his time--how he describes the average forgotten member of the commentariat. Through his dress downs, you get a sense of the kind of intellectual environment he was arguing with in 1908, and its awfully similar to our own. The same diagnoses of democracy, converstaions about progress, tensions between meritocratic and democtatic impulses. Some of these will vaguely map onto modern culture war fault lines, and some of the institutionalist/populist tensions we see today. If there's anything comforting about this book, its that we've been farting around with the same basic pallete of ideas for some time. And we're all fine.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>It's a Compelling Case for a Christian Civilization</b></p>\n<p>This is the main point of the book, really. He's not trying to make some kind of scientific case for the factual reality of the resurrection or anything. It's not that kind of Christian apologetics work. It's really walking through how he himself arrived at becoming a Christian (a lot of it is through finding faults in Christianity's opponents). It's an account that probably wouldn't satisfy real skeptics, because it doesn't answer the real points of contention (is it TRUE). Here's an excerpt to give you an idea what he builds up to:</p>\n<p><i>This, therefore, is, in conclusion, my reason for accepting the religion and not merely the scattered and secular truths out of the religion. I do it because the thing has not merely told this truth or that truth, but has revealed itself as a truth-telling thing. All other philosophies say the things that plainly seem to be true; only this philosophy has again and again said the thing that does not seem to be true, but is true. Alone of all creeds it is convincing where it is not attractive; it turns out to be right, like my father in the garden.</i></p>\n<p>Again, if you're someone who isn't Christian or who struggles with faith, I don't think you'll find anything in this work that helps you make the leap. What Chesterton does do succesffully, I think, is paint a very compeling case for Christian civilization, for the values that are consequents of a Christian worldview. It's not the point of the book, I think, but it's what happens. Throughout the work you develop an appreciation for the very peculiar worldview and cultural matrix that arises from a religion that believes that God became a man. Being born and raised in America, it's easy to take for granted a lot of really weird cultural patterns we have that are downstreeam of that fundamental belief. I think that Chesterton illunminates the link between western civilization and Christian belief in a lot of places. One that I liked, which I also feel is a bit of a leap, is how he ties the resilience of western societies with it's capacity to \"die daily\":</p>\n<p><i>“The highest gratitude and respect are due to the great human civilizations such as the old Egyptian or the existing Chinese. Nevertheless it is no injustice for them to say that only modern Europe has exhibited incessantly a power of self-renewal recurring often at the shortest intervals and descending to the smallest facts of building or costume. All other societies die finally and with dignity. We die daily. We are always being born again with almost indecent obstetrics. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that there is in historic Christendom a sort of unnatural life: it could be explained as a supernatural life. It could be explained as an awful galvanic life working in what would have been a corpse. For our civilization OUGHT to have died, by all parallels, by all sociological probability, in the Ragnorak of the end of Rome. That is the weird inspiration of our estate: you and I have no business to be here at all. We are all REVENANTS; all living Christians are dead pagans walking about. Just as Europe was about to be gathered in silence to Assyria and Babylon, something entered into its body. And Europe has had a strange life—it is not too much to say that it has had the JUMPS—ever since.”</i></p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Personal Feelings</b></p>\n<p>I love this book for a lot of reasons. The most superficial one being that I agree with his \"politics,\" and general vibe.</p>\n<p>But the most personal reason I love thisb book is that his journey to faith seems to mirror my own. When I was like 14 (when I was an edgy atheist), I personally learned the case he makes in the chapter \"The Maniac,\" that pure materialism/rationalism eventually leads to solipsisim, and that tears your whole world apart. Only faith, not human reason, can serve as a viable foundation for your life, for anything. Accepting that is a profound act of humility. It's one that I made, and my life has been richer, my heart bigger, and the world I live in more interesting ever since.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.8.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.8.24.html",
      "title": "Quote from Chesterton and lots of other thoughts",
      "date_published": "2024-12-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "A quote from Chesterton\n\nI'm reading Orthodoxy by Chesterton, because I have a tradition of reading Christian apologetics around this time of year. I don't know if I can properly call myself a Christian. But if I'm anything its that. The tradition started when one of my very religious friends gave me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis one year in college. So now I read something Christian (or something from the Bible) every December.\n\nChesterton has been on my list for a long time, because I like Slavoj Zizek, and I've always found the concept of \"Christian atheism\" very intersting, and personally compelling (as someone who is drawn to Christianity, but struggles with like, literal beleif).\n\nI'm half-way through, and will have to write about this amazing book in full once I'm done, but there is this beautiful quote I just want to put on here now, because it's just so perfect.\n\n\"Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride.\"\n\nI was texting my friend some nonsense (context unimportant) maybe a week before I read this, and I feel that I said something that was striklingly similar, which is why I guess I liked the quote.\n\nWhen I was talking to my friend, I was basically working up to the idea that people who act like they're okay with settling are actually not humble AT ALL, that they're in a sense too prideful to give something their all, and that it's the crazy ambitious people who have true humility. I think Chesterton captured this idea ---the paradoxical fact that humility precedes pride--perfectly.\n\nReading for pleasure\n\nThere was a period where I feel I lost the ability to read for pleasure. I still read stuff. But it felt like a chore. There was a weird guilt about not doing it enough. A weird fear that I had lost the ability to do it. But I've gotten over it.\n\nI think I reclaimed reading for pleasure by: (1) talking to my friends about shit more, making it a slightly more social endeavour (2) just not caring about finishing shit and taking long breaks for certain books (3) taking it completely out of the mental space of \"self-improvement\" and entirely into the domain of pleasure (which is a shitty stupid way to approach life which has infected many young men) (4) expanding on the last point--accepting that it has no instrumental value at all; like scrolling IG reels or something, there's no point to reading basically ever, its just something I fucking do because its fun and one day I'll die and I can't take the information with me. I feel there was a point in time where I wanted to read stuff that would help me in my career in some way or that had some relation to something I wanted to do, I guess for the sake of efficiency? Why not kill two birds with one stone? I stopped thinking like that. Most of the things I want to know I have no buisness knowing and I will probably never bring up or use in my life. There is no reason I should know about Serbian politics in the 1990s. I'll forget it. But I forget reels I watch and it was still fun to watch it. So who cares. So I read to fuck around now.\n\nMiscellaneous unformed thoughts\n\nI'll start by saying I've noticed something troubling in my own thought patterns, and what they suggest for our \"society\" at large.\n\nI try and take note of how I think when using different mediums. I read write talk and listen all day. I call my friends on the phone constantly, I am sending links to people all day, checking my favorite blogs, reading cases for clas, tweeting bullshit, listening to podcasts on drives and commutes. I send unnecessary emails to old friends and professors. It's to a level where somethings may be wrong with me. But I have a lot of opportunity to compare and contrast how different modes of information consumption and conveyance \"feel.\"\n\nIn short, I'm realizing how much more thoughtful and reflective I am when I read a book, when compared to reading on the internet. Shocker, right. I guess everyone knows that. But I feel that I have been able to appreciate that the contrast is pretty insane recently. X forces me to simplify my thoughts. And I almost always feel that I misrepresent them if I don't try hard enough. Consuming information on X is like a zero calorie energy drink. It's like Celsius. It's stimulation with no satiation. It makes me feel evil.\n\nReading stuff, marking up a book, its like eating good bread. I think in full sentences. I have much more developed thoughts that I feel more aligned with. I think thoughts that I agree with even more than the thoughts I think in other contexts. More harmony.\n\nSocial media makes me think thoughts that I can disagre with moments later. It's much more reactive, fickle.\n\nBut here's the problem, reading isn't generally a social activity. It's a private one. Those better thoughts don't really get sunlight, unless you're part of a bookclub, which basically no one fucking is. Social media is how we share thoughts.\n\nOur technology for sharing thoughts seems to have a bias towards stupid thoughts?\n\nI don't think this is a very novel idea, but it had me thinking, maybe the limitations on thought sharing were good?\n\nBut then I think, I mean, I guess even back in the days of pure print, really bad ideas were able to spread. Like Nazism, eugenics, straings of communism, and they caused a lot of damage. So I can't say that social media has a terrible bias towards the spread of bad ideas, given what we know about the past?\n\nSo no, that's not the issue. But maybe the problem is how the way we consume the thoughts of others makes us feel. The average person doesn't read longform anything anymore. Idc what the stats say. People, even educated people, don't read at all. I know so few people my age that read anything for pleasure.\n\nAnd if I can extrapolate how I feel, that means that people are consuming information that feels like Celsius, all the time. This has to be really bad when scaled up.\n\nI think that the whole newsletter thing is a very good trend, because its filling this missing middle level of length we need. Lots of writers who are fucking stupid on X on a regular basis are thoughtful enough on SubStack.\n\nI think there's room for improvement. We should bring back \"the pamphlet.\" That's an underrated and overlooked vehicle of idea spreading.\n\nWhy write\n\nWriting is therapy and more people should do it. And I can't wait to do it perfectly to do it. Too many domains in my life require high levels of precision. Writing like this is a good way to keep my edges rough. And this platform, this habit, will build up to something better. One day. Soon.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p><b>A quote from Chesterton</b></p>\n<p>I'm reading Orthodoxy by Chesterton, because I have a tradition of reading Christian apologetics around this time of year. I don't know if I can properly call myself a Christian. But if I'm anything its that. The tradition started when one of my very religious friends gave me Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis one year in college. So now I read something Christian (or something from the Bible) every December.</p>\n<p>Chesterton has been on my list for a long time, because I like Slavoj Zizek, and I've always found the concept of \"Christian atheism\" very intersting, and personally compelling (as someone who is drawn to Christianity, but struggles with like, literal beleif).</p>\n<p>I'm half-way through, and will have to write about this amazing book in full once I'm done, but there is this beautiful quote I just want to put on here now, because it's just so perfect.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><i>\"Hence it became evident that if a man would make his world large, he must be always making himself small. Even the haughty visions, the tall cities, and the toppling pinnacles are the creations of humility. Giants that tread down forests like grass are the creations of humility. Towers that vanish upwards above the loneliest star are the creations of humility. For towers are not tall unless we look up at them; and giants are not giants unless they are larger than we. All this gigantesque imagination, which is, perhaps, the mightiest of the pleasures of man, is at bottom entirely humble. It is impossible without humility to enjoy anything—even pride.\"</i></p>\n<p>I was texting my friend some nonsense (context unimportant) maybe a week before I read this, and I feel that I said something that was striklingly similar, which is why I guess I liked the quote.</p>\n<p>When I was talking to my friend, I was basically working up to the idea that people who act like they're okay with settling are actually not humble AT ALL, that they're in a sense too prideful to give something their all, and that it's the crazy ambitious people who have true humility. I think Chesterton captured this idea ---the paradoxical fact that humility precedes pride--perfectly.</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://knxnts.xyz/humility.jpg\" alt =\"image\" height = \"800px\" width = \"auto\"></p>\n<p><b>Reading for pleasure</b></p>\n<p>There was a period where I feel I lost the ability to read for pleasure. I still read stuff. But it felt like a chore. There was a weird guilt about not doing it enough. A weird fear that I had lost the ability to do it. But I've gotten over it.</p>\n<p>I think I reclaimed reading for pleasure by: (1) talking to my friends about shit more, making it a slightly more social endeavour (2) just not caring about finishing shit and taking long breaks for certain books (3) taking it completely out of the mental space of \"self-improvement\" and entirely into the domain of pleasure (which is a shitty stupid way to approach life which has infected many young men) (4) expanding on the last point--accepting that it has no instrumental value at all; like scrolling IG reels or something, there's no point to reading basically ever, its just something I fucking do because its fun and one day I'll die and I can't take the information with me. I feel there was a point in time where I wanted to read stuff that would help me in my career in some way or that had some relation to something I wanted to do, I guess for the sake of efficiency? Why not kill two birds with one stone? I stopped thinking like that. Most of the things I want to know I have no buisness knowing and I will probably never bring up or use in my life. There is no reason I should know about Serbian politics in the 1990s. I'll forget it. But I forget reels I watch and it was still fun to watch it. So who cares. So I read to fuck around now.</p>\n<p><b>Miscellaneous unformed thoughts</b></p>\n<p>I'll start by saying I've noticed something troubling in my own thought patterns, and what they suggest for our \"society\" at large.</p>\n<p>I try and take note of how I think when using different mediums. I read write talk and listen all day. I call my friends on the phone constantly, I am sending links to people all day, checking my favorite blogs, reading cases for clas, tweeting bullshit, listening to podcasts on drives and commutes. I send unnecessary emails to old friends and professors. It's to a level where somethings may be wrong with me. But I have a lot of opportunity to compare and contrast how different modes of information consumption and conveyance \"feel.\"</p>\n<p>In short, I'm realizing how much more thoughtful and reflective I am when I read a book, when compared to reading on the internet. Shocker, right. I guess everyone knows that. But I feel that I have been able to appreciate that the contrast is pretty insane recently. X forces me to simplify my thoughts. And I almost always feel that I misrepresent them if I don't try hard enough. Consuming information on X is like a zero calorie energy drink. It's like Celsius. It's stimulation with no satiation. It makes me feel evil.</p>\n<p>Reading stuff, marking up a book, its like eating good bread. I think in full sentences. I have much more developed thoughts that I feel more aligned with. I think thoughts that I agree with even more than the thoughts I think in other contexts. More harmony.</p>\n<p>Social media makes me think thoughts that I can disagre with moments later. It's much more reactive, fickle.</p>\n<p>But here's the problem, reading isn't generally a social activity. It's a private one. Those better thoughts don't really get sunlight, unless you're part of a bookclub, which basically no one fucking is. Social media is how we share thoughts.</p>\n<p>Our technology for sharing thoughts seems to have a bias towards stupid thoughts?</p>\n<p>I don't think this is a very novel idea, but it had me thinking, maybe the limitations on thought sharing were good?</p>\n<p>But then I think, I mean, I guess even back in the days of pure print, really bad ideas were able to spread. Like Nazism, eugenics, straings of communism, and they caused a lot of damage. So I can't say that social media has a terrible bias towards the spread of bad ideas, given what we know about the past?</p>\n<p>So no, that's not the issue. But maybe the problem is how the way we consume the thoughts of others makes us feel. The average person doesn't read longform anything anymore. Idc what the stats say. People, even educated people, don't read at all. I know so few people my age that read anything for pleasure.</p>\n<p>And if I can extrapolate how I feel, that means that people are consuming information that feels like Celsius, all the time. This has to be really bad when scaled up.</p>\n<p>I think that the whole newsletter thing is a very good trend, because its filling this missing middle level of length we need. Lots of writers who are fucking stupid on X on a regular basis are thoughtful enough on SubStack.</p>\n<p>I think there's room for improvement. We should bring back \"the pamphlet.\" That's an underrated and overlooked vehicle of idea spreading.</p>\n<p><b>Why write</b></p>\n<p>Writing is therapy and more people should do it. And I can't wait to do it perfectly to do it. Too many domains in my life require high levels of precision. Writing like this is a good way to keep my edges rough. And this platform, this habit, will build up to something better. One day. Soon.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.1.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-12.1.24.html",
      "title": "Final Exams Self Talk",
      "date_published": "2024-12-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "(Remember that you're reading someone's online journal, weirdo)\n\nI will get all As. I will get my body strong and limber and ready for skiing with my friends and family. I will exit my last exam a victor. I will arrive at my family's home for Christmas as a bearer of gifts, ready to make everyone happy. I will make a delicious Christmas Turkey.\n\nAll will proceed as I foresee. Every exam season is another test of my abilities, of my theory of life, and I always succeed. I cannot lose.\n\nI'll do all this while having a healthy dog, a hot girlfriend, and a lot of fun, because life isn't fair, and I will outcompete all my opps, who are inferior spiritually, aesthetically, intellectually. I cannot lose.\n\nI won't end this fight, not this time again So long, so long, so long, you cannot survive And I'm not dyin', and I can't lose I can't lose, no, I can't lose 'Cause I can't leave it to you So let's get too high, get too high again Too high again, too high, ooh hoo-hoo-hooh, woo Yeah, h-h-h-high, h-high-high, high-high high-igh-high-high H-high-igh, yeah, high, high-igh\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>(Remember that you're reading someone's online journal, weirdo)</p>\n<p>I will get all As. I will get my body strong and limber and ready for skiing with my friends and family. I will exit my last exam a victor. I will arrive at my family's home for Christmas as a bearer of gifts, ready to make everyone happy. I will make a delicious Christmas Turkey.</p>\n<p>All will proceed as I foresee. Every exam season is another test of my abilities, of my theory of life, and I always succeed. I cannot lose.</p>\n<p>I'll do all this while having a healthy dog, a hot girlfriend, and a lot of fun, because life isn't fair, and I will outcompete all my opps, who are inferior spiritually, aesthetically, intellectually. I cannot lose.</p>\n<p><b>I won't end this fight, not this time again <b>So long, so long, so long, you cannot survive <b>And I'm not dyin', and I can't lose <b>I can't lose, no, I can't lose <b>'Cause I can't leave it to you <b>So let's get too high, get too high again <b>Too high again, too high, ooh hoo-hoo-hooh, woo <b>Yeah, h-h-h-high, h-high-high, high-high high-igh-high-high <b>H-high-igh, yeah, high, high-igh</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.29.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.29.24.html",
      "title": "A brief theory of \"taste\" (and why dudes wear boxy shirts)",
      "date_published": "2024-11-29T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I recently had an experience during this holiday season when I was just deeply affected by ugliness.\n\nIn generaly, as a I get older, I am becoming less and less tolerant of ugliness, disorder, tackiness. I feel physical repulsion to these things. I can't take it.\n\nI'm not a particulary artsy or trendy guy, if you saw me in real life. I'm a busy student, I live in a studio apartment, and I'm not dressing to impress\n\nBut I do think I have some level of taste. My color choices have some level of balance, my furniture matches and my clothes don't clash. In general, my outfits trend towards a timeless/effortless look, like a quarterzip and slacks with a clean pair of shoes. My apartment is comfortable and has some charm to it. Here and there I add in a dash of something new, something that someone makes a point to compliment. In my estimation, this baseline of respect for custom with a modest independent streak is what amounts to \"taste.\" Not trendiness. Taste. I think I do this to signal some respect for the world around me and to contribute to order, to resist deeply entropic forces that undergird our reality. Taste is a combination of preservation and innnovation. So when I detect a lack of taste in others, it makes me respect them less.\n\nIs this just because I'm shallow? I don't think so, and when talking to a friend I tried to partially articulate why:\n\nI think this makes sense. Taste strikes us the way a harmony betwee notes does. It's a gut feeling. When I se someone with a big gucci logo on a sweater and some super tight pants and some trendy sneakers, I just think that guy is a just a bit goofy, probbaly fine, but not a serious or discriminating individual. I already know a lot about who they are. If I see a girl with white air forces and those horrible fitting whitewash jeans and a tank from Shein (I think I'm describing the outfit right), I know she's basic and PROBBALY has little to contribute in the ways of ideas etc.\n\nBut I would go so far as to say that how you relate to trends signals how much you can think outside of a certain time. I would even go as far as to say that its a proxy on how you relate to social trends –––maybe it signals how much you would have gone along with nazism or the cultural revolution.\n\nBut it would be way too far (and probably fascist) to equate aesthetics with morality. For instance, I think you can probably look a little frumpy and still be tasteful. Maybe I'm trying to stretch my definitions too much, but it makes sense in my head. I'll offer some examples.\n\nI think Slavoj Zizek, who is not a very good looking man, but a charming one, wears these baggy shirts and wrinkled polos, is tasteful in a weird way. I mean,he can try and look like this idaf academic, but his taste and internal sense of balance just cant help but shine through. Go on google images, look him up. The colors he puts together never feel wrong. It's never jarring. There's a harmony in the frumpiness. It never looks tacky.\n\nMeanwhile, Jordan Peterson, who I think at a time looked tasteful, is increasingly bordering on \"wacky\" as of late. When he was pushing the boundaries, but still respectful of the general customs of his discpline, and was just a slightly unorthodox public intellectual, he was in that sweet spot of respect for custom/innovation, and I think his clothing reflected that \"taste.\" He was a tastemaker, and he had taste. Look up Jordan Peterson 2018. Conservative, with some intersting choices here and there on tie color. Tasteful. But now look at pictures of him from 2024. As he's embraced a more conspiratorial mindset, and he's become more \"trendy,\" he's starting to look wacky. The suits are getting weird. Trying too hard. The ideas he's espousing now, unlike his original palette, aren't timeless——they're the product of a very weird and very NOW confluence of political trends. And his clothes are becoming less timeless at the same time. I actually don't think they look \"bad,\" some of the weird patterned suits are actually kind of cool, but they are not tasteful. In short, I wouldn't trust this man with any kind of authority. As you leave tasteful and enter wacky, you become more of an art piece. Like someone at paris fashion week. Nice to look at, introduces some cool new ideas, but you would never wear that! Those designs are not \"leading\" you.\n\nDo you see what I mean? Recognizing taste is something like a proxy for leadership qualities.\n\nGoing to another public figure that I think illustrates the idea of taste well, we can talk about Kanye West, who basically constantly oscillates between tasteful and wacky (but never, ever, TACKY). Yeah he'll wear absolutely ridiculous statement pieces here and there, but you'll also see him walking around and STUNT in an outfit that you would wear to the grocery store. He'll wear a very normal jeans, shirt, sneaker combo, but with a slightly new cut/fit that makes it feel extremely fresh. That's taste––THAT's combining respect for custom with innovation–—that's when you get a glimmer of his actual leadership qualities\n\n//an aside: regardless of what you think of him, Ye is a tastemaker, he leads the industry, fashion and music follows what he does in so many ways. Do you know why dudes are wearing those baggy Tees these days that are loose around the arms? Its because Kanye West got fat for a while and changed the cut of his clothes to be more flattering. This was reflected in his merch and the yeezy line. That sillhouette, as with many of his yeezy designs in the past, gets picked up by the fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, and then regular guys buy them. Next time you go the bar and see some 27 year old dude in one of those oversized boxy Ts, know its basically entirely because Kanye West was on lexapro for some time and gained weight. I'm on the internet a lot and I pay attention. This is exactly what happened.//\n\nAnyways, Kanye has taste, and sometimes throws it out the window for the sake of art or maybe he loses it in his occasional manic episodes.\n\nBut to wrap this up, what does taste tell us, why do we have a warm feeling to outfits that respect custom while modestly innovating? Why are we drawn to people who dress like that/reflect that ethos in other parts of their life, like how they decorate their apartment? Because we are drawn to leaders. And leadership is not about completely disregarding or opposing what has come before, and its not about just following a template. It's about having a deep sense of intuition of just how hard and how fast you can push the envelope, how you can push society forward without destablizing it. That's why taste looks different at different times, and different periods will have different paramaters for how much you can innovate while still being tasteful. If society is in decline/failure mode, something quite innovative and fresh and different may feel tasteful. If its doing okay, I would venture to say that people have a lower tolerance for innovation in style, and any fresh elements in an outfit will have to be much more modest.\n\nBut because people have different senses of how much things are working, they have different paramaters for taste. Which is why fashion is political. The way people artsy people in say, Richmond, Virginia, dress can sometimes feel ridiculous and tacky to me, but is tasteful in a leftist-social context where people feel like society is literally collapsing. And we all know of outfit combos which are a proxy for much more conservative politics (the frat-fit, the investment banker fit, the quarterzip khakis fit . . . also, FWIW, I think that the Gen Z draw towards \"quiet luxury\" is another signal that we're trending conservative as a culture). Anyways . . . \"and so on and so on.\" That's all I should probably say, even though I have more. I hate ugliness, I hate tackiness. I want to be tasteful. And now I think I have articulated why.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I recently had an experience during this holiday season when I was just deeply affected by ugliness.</p>\n<p>In generaly, as a I get older, I am becoming less and less tolerant of ugliness, disorder, tackiness. I feel physical repulsion to these things. I can't take it.</p>\n<p>I'm not a particulary artsy or trendy guy, if you saw me in real life. I'm a busy student, I live in a studio apartment, and I'm not dressing to impress</p>\n<p>But I do think I have some level of taste. My color choices have some level of balance, my furniture matches and my clothes don't clash. In general, my outfits trend towards a timeless/effortless look, like a quarterzip and slacks with a clean pair of shoes. My apartment is comfortable and has some charm to it. Here and there I add in a dash of something new, something that someone makes a point to compliment. In my estimation, this baseline of respect for custom with a modest independent streak is what amounts to \"taste.\" Not trendiness. Taste. I think I do this to signal some respect for the world around me and to contribute to order, to resist deeply entropic forces that undergird our reality. Taste is a combination of preservation and innnovation. So when I detect a lack of taste in others, it makes me respect them less.</p>\n<p>Is this just because I'm shallow? I don't think so, and when talking to a friend I tried to partially articulate why:</p>\n<p><img src=\"https://knxnts.xyz/taste.jpg\" alt =\"image\" height = \"800px\" width = \"auto\"></p>\n<p>I think this makes sense. Taste strikes us the way a harmony betwee notes does. It's a gut feeling. When I se someone with a big gucci logo on a sweater and some super tight pants and some trendy sneakers, I just think that guy is a just a bit goofy, probbaly fine, but not a serious or discriminating individual. I already know a lot about who they are. If I see a girl with white air forces and those horrible fitting whitewash jeans and a tank from Shein (I think I'm describing the outfit right), I know she's basic and PROBBALY has little to contribute in the ways of ideas etc.</p>\n<p>But I would go so far as to say that how you relate to trends signals how much you can think outside of a certain time. I would even go as far as to say that its a proxy on how you relate to social trends –––maybe it signals how much you would have gone along with nazism or the cultural revolution.</p>\n<p>But it would be way too far (and probably fascist) to equate aesthetics with morality. For instance, I think you can probably look a little frumpy and still be tasteful. Maybe I'm trying to stretch my definitions too much, but it makes sense in my head. I'll offer some examples.</p>\n<p>I think Slavoj Zizek, who is not a very good looking man, but a charming one, wears these baggy shirts and wrinkled polos, is tasteful in a weird way. I mean,he can try and look like this idaf academic, but his taste and internal sense of balance just cant help but shine through. Go on google images, look him up. The colors he puts together never feel wrong. It's never jarring. There's a harmony in the frumpiness. It never looks tacky.</p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Jordan Peterson, who I think at a time looked tasteful, is increasingly bordering on \"wacky\" as of late. When he was pushing the boundaries, but still respectful of the general customs of his discpline, and was just a slightly unorthodox public intellectual, he was in that sweet spot of respect for custom/innovation, and I think his clothing reflected that \"taste.\" He was a tastemaker, and he had taste. Look up Jordan Peterson 2018. Conservative, with some intersting choices here and there on tie color. Tasteful. But now look at pictures of him from 2024. As he's embraced a more conspiratorial mindset, and he's become more \"trendy,\" he's starting to look wacky. The suits are getting weird. Trying too hard. The ideas he's espousing now, unlike his original palette, aren't timeless——they're the product of a very weird and very NOW confluence of political trends. And his clothes are becoming less timeless at the same time. I actually don't think they look \"bad,\" some of the weird patterned suits are actually kind of cool, but they are not tasteful. In short, I wouldn't trust this man with any kind of authority. As you leave tasteful and enter wacky, you become more of an art piece. Like someone at paris fashion week. Nice to look at, introduces some cool new ideas, but you would never wear that! Those designs are not \"leading\" you.</p>\n<p>Do you see what I mean? Recognizing taste is something like a proxy for leadership qualities.</p>\n<p>Going to another public figure that I think illustrates the idea of taste well, we can talk about Kanye West, who basically constantly oscillates between tasteful and wacky (but never, ever, TACKY). Yeah he'll wear absolutely ridiculous statement pieces here and there, but you'll also see him walking around and STUNT in an outfit that you would wear to the grocery store. He'll wear a very normal jeans, shirt, sneaker combo, but with a slightly new cut/fit that makes it feel extremely fresh. That's taste––THAT's combining respect for custom with innovation–—that's when you get a glimmer of his actual leadership qualities</p>\n<p>//an aside: regardless of what you think of him, Ye is a tastemaker, he leads the industry, fashion and music follows what he does in so many ways. Do you know why dudes are wearing those baggy Tees these days that are loose around the arms? Its because Kanye West got <a href=\"https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DKVPkzgWkAIlHux.jpg\">fat</a> for a while and changed the cut of his clothes to be more flattering. This was reflected in his merch and the yeezy line. That sillhouette, as with many of his yeezy designs in the past, gets picked up by the fast fashion brands like Zara, H&M, Uniqlo, and then regular guys buy them. Next time you go the bar and see some 27 year old dude in one of those oversized boxy Ts, know its basically entirely because Kanye West was on lexapro for some time and gained weight. I'm on the internet a lot and I pay attention. This is exactly what happened.//</p>\n<p>Anyways, Kanye has taste, and sometimes throws it out the window for the sake of art or maybe he loses it in his occasional manic episodes.</p>\n<p>But to wrap this up, what does taste tell us, why do we have a warm feeling to outfits that respect custom while modestly innovating? Why are we drawn to people who dress like that/reflect that ethos in other parts of their life, like how they decorate their apartment? Because we are drawn to leaders. And leadership is not about completely disregarding or opposing what has come before, and its not about just following a template. It's about having a deep sense of intuition of just how hard and how fast you can push the envelope, how you can push society forward without destablizing it. That's why taste looks different at different times, and different periods will have different paramaters for how much you can innovate while still being tasteful. If society is in decline/failure mode, something quite innovative and fresh and different may feel tasteful. If its doing okay, I would venture to say that people have a lower tolerance for innovation in style, and any fresh elements in an outfit will have to be much more modest.</p>\n<p>But because people have different senses of how much things are working, they have different paramaters for taste. Which is why fashion is political. The way people artsy people in say, Richmond, Virginia, dress can sometimes feel ridiculous and tacky to me, but is tasteful in a leftist-social context where people feel like society is literally collapsing. And we all know of outfit combos which are a proxy for much more conservative politics (the frat-fit, the investment banker fit, the quarterzip khakis fit . . . also, FWIW, I think that the Gen Z draw towards \"quiet luxury\" is another signal that we're trending conservative as a culture). Anyways . . . \"and so on and so on.\" That's all I should probably say, even though I have more. I hate ugliness, I hate tackiness. I want to be tasteful. And now I think I have articulated why.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.19.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.19.24.html",
      "title": "The Small Internet, thoughts on writing, and building community",
      "date_published": "2024-11-19T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I read this post that was getting some attention on hacker news that I enjoyed a lot. The Small Internet has Already Succeeded\n\nIt's a great read and better than anything I'll write for the best of this post, so read it.\n\nHere are some quick reflections on my part:\n\n-I'd like to enhance this blog's connectivity with other blogs and small time writers, as I slowly improve and build out my content. I haven't had the bandwidth to do what I really want with this site, but the whole point of this project is to \"just do things\" and not wait around for perfect. But I think after finals I'll have some time to think slightly more strategically.\n\n-Right now the blog is written very selfishly (with the exception of a few posts), where I just blow off some intellectual steam. But there are things I could write about that are actually useful to others\n\n-This site is a public notebook of sorts, so the selfish writing must continue, but I am going to try and add more useful stuff. I'm actually a little bit smart and have techcnical knowledge in some areas. So I could document some of that here.\n\n-I may also try and upload my actual school notes and outlines. Right now, the only thing that has stopped me is the fear of being doxxed, because it would be relatively easy to figure out what school I went to and what professors I had from my materials. But I guess does it really matter? I'm not the unabomber or anything.\n\n-On anonymity, I like it because it allows me to be less careful. Especially entering the legal profession, I just don't want to think about reputational risks. People are too lame to let you just be you and be dumb on the internet.\n\n-On building community online, I think that goes to my earlier reflection on selfishness. I have to offer more of my useful thoughts here. Again, after finals, I'll likely publish more law school guide type content. ---\n\nIn other news:\n\n-I am increasingly even less excited about the Trump administriation than I was initially. From what I'm seeing, it's just going to be chaos, with few redeeming features.\n\n-DOGE, while it seemed cool at first, now seems like it will be fucking stupid. Elon keeps tweeting about dumb shit like how we fund pure science research. It's just dumb. That's small and usually very useful spending!\n\nThe GOP is an iredeemable cult. Which means its time to rebuild the democratic party. I want the wokeism wars to end, and the party to settle into a comfortable cultural identity. I'm glad to see a very robust discussion on purging the activists/non-profits/Groups that attach themselves to the party. I've worked with the Groups. Its time to fucking put them in their place. The Democratic party should no longer be a confederation of special interests and pressure groups. There needs to be a more coherent brand and theory.\n\nThat's all the rambling I've got today, probably. Law school is busy.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I read this post that was getting some attention on hacker news that I enjoyed a lot. <a href=\"https://cheapskatesguide.org/articles/small-internet-succeeded.html\">The Small Internet has Already Succeeded</a></p>\n<p>It's a great read and better than anything I'll write for the best of this post, so read it.</p>\n<p>Here are some quick reflections on my part:</p>\n<p>-I'd like to enhance this blog's connectivity with other blogs and small time writers, as I slowly improve and build out my content. I haven't had the bandwidth to do what I really want with this site, but the whole point of this project is to \"just do things\" and not wait around for perfect. But I think after finals I'll have some time to think slightly more strategically.</p>\n<p>-Right now the blog is written very selfishly (with the exception of a few posts), where I just blow off some intellectual steam. But there are things I could write about that are actually useful to others</p>\n<p>-This site is a public notebook of sorts, so the selfish writing must continue, but I am going to try and add more useful stuff. I'm actually a little bit smart and have techcnical knowledge in some areas. So I could document some of that here.</p>\n<p>-I may also try and upload my actual school notes and outlines. Right now, the only thing that has stopped me is the fear of being doxxed, because it would be relatively easy to figure out what school I went to and what professors I had from my materials. But I guess does it really matter? I'm not the unabomber or anything.</p>\n<p>-On anonymity, I like it because it allows me to be less careful. Especially entering the legal profession, I just don't want to think about reputational risks. People are too lame to let you just be you and be dumb on the internet.</p>\n<p>-On building community online, I think that goes to my earlier reflection on selfishness. I have to offer more of my useful thoughts here. Again, after finals, I'll likely publish more law school guide type content. ---</p>\n<p><b>In other news:</b></p>\n<p>-I am increasingly even less excited about the Trump administriation than I was initially. From what I'm seeing, it's just going to be chaos, with few redeeming features.</p>\n<p>-DOGE, while it seemed cool at first, now seems like it will be fucking stupid. Elon keeps tweeting about dumb shit like how we fund pure science research. It's just dumb. That's small and usually very useful spending!</p>\n<p>The GOP is an iredeemable cult. Which means its time to rebuild the democratic party. I want the wokeism wars to end, and the party to settle into a comfortable cultural identity. I'm glad to see a very robust discussion on purging the activists/non-profits/Groups that attach themselves to the party. I've worked with the Groups. Its time to fucking put them in their place. The Democratic party should no longer be a confederation of special interests and pressure groups. There needs to be a more coherent brand and theory.</p>\n<p>That's all the rambling I've got today, probably. Law school is busy.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.17.24-BookReview-Ministry-For-The-Future.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.17.24-BookReview-Ministry-For-The-Future.html",
      "title": "Book Review: The Ministry for the Future",
      "date_published": "2024-11-17T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Like many Gen Z-ers, I have a difficult relationship with long books. Used to read them a lot when I was younger. The internet ruined my brain. Still read a lot. But I have an especially hard time with very long novels. Non-fiction I do pretty good with, because I can jump around non-linearly and \"surf\" them the way my brain has been trained to surf the web. I read non-fiction in a constant and undisciplined way. Dozens of books where I've read chapters non-contiguosly, long ass history books I have as reference and occasionally look at for a quick read before bed (looking at the Churchill books).\n\nThis is all to say, I don't finish novels very often, especially long ones (although that's beginning to change with my increasingly luddite lifesytle). This is the first fiction book I've finished since I completed Fellowship of the Ring earlier this year (I've been slowly working through Lord of the Rings, and will write a review once I'm done with it). Here are my thoughts. ---\n\nStyle\n\nOften I'd be reading this book and think, this is an NPR-ass book. Just very very much written for that kind of person. I'm pretty sure I heard the author on the Ezra Klein podcast some years back, and put this on my reading list, so that makes sense (listening to the Ezra Klein show is my most lib-tarded habit, because that man is one of the best political commentators alive today).\n\nAnyways, that isn't an insult, but I really don't read books of this vibe very often. What do I mean that it's an NPR-ass book? I mean its intellectual, but in a very contemporary, non-fussy way. It has a fundamentally cosmopolitan, liberal, science-y, intellectually curious, orientation to the world. It has a bit of a flat (but pleasing) affect, which I think is characteristic of things I'd characterize as NPR-coded.\n\nThe prose is very very contemporary. Very terse in some places, almost how people write an email. Almost how I write here occasionally. Plenty of very complex ideas punctuated by sentence fragments. It was a bit off at first for me, but I ended up enjoying it. Again, he writes how people (at least in my experience) often write emails. It's very breezy, digestible, and pleasing. It makes for relatively easy reading. Again, I liked it.\n\nAs an aside, I'll say that I think that the declining complexity of writing——as a general trend——is something that sort of bothers me. I'm against the axios-ificiation of writing. I don't like that they teach kids to make sentences really short and concise from middle school onward. The best writing takes detours, lets ideas breathe, feels like thoughts. Old journal articles and academic style writing was wayyy more indulgent and is far more memorable than its modern counterpart——they would anticipate countearguments, address potential critics, and generally feel like they had license to take up space in this way. Now we live in an efficiency culture and there is less of this. Across mediums. Bad!\n\nAnyways, my point is that I don't generally like the simplificiation of writing, but when Robinson here chose very terse prose for some chapters I liked it. So, it was cool. And to be fair, he also has plenty of places with very beautiful and descriptive language. But honestly, I think he was absolutely the best in how he described moments between people. The characters were all very compelling and very textured, and you had a really good sense of the energy between them. The Mary-Frank relationship was cinematic in its portrayal.\n\nBut really, there was a multiplicity of styles he jumps around between. The book sort of jumps between the main narrative and these little side stories or dialogues, which I enjoyed. It felt like interludes on an album. It was always nice to get back to the main thing, but the asides were fun and memorable, and built out the main themes.\n\nIn total, on style, this book is just very interesting, experimental, and contemporary. If you're like me, and read mostly old shit, and basically never read novels written in the past fifteen years, it is a bit of a jolt at first.\n\nContent\n\nThis book had some absolutely fascinating ideas about the future of our civilization, and I think that is its greatest gift. It just opens up the mind to possibilities on how to deal with the climate crisis, and what the world could look like. The thing I found most compelling was the carbon coin idea, because I generally share the skepticism that something like that ISN'T possible. It totally is (I think, and if you use the word possible in a very limited sense). Regardless of practicality, it's a wonderful thought experiment on how we could use our institutions to align with ecological goals.\n\nWhile I think the carbon coin idea was probably the most novel and compelling thing from the book, a lot of the little vignettes on geo-engineering were also fun reads, and opened up my mind to a possible future where a great deal of the work/employment on earth is just taking care of the planet, protecting our civilization, etc.\n\nBuilding on that, I like how thinking about the climate crisis allows you to think about post-commercial ways of social organization, in a lot of ways. Why wouldn't we just put a lot of people to work doing geoengineering projects, if the need arose? Why wouldn't that be assigned some status, why wouldn't that be a legitimate way to participate? Is there a future where a lot of people are engaged in the work of care-taking, restoration, and preservation? How big could that sector get? It's just very cool to think about.\n\nI think the book's name sake, however, ends up being something of a plot vehicle more than anything. I don't think the book is terribly interested in the bureaucracy of the whole thing or how it really deals with different segements of civil society. There'a a lot of interesting ideas here, esepcially with how the story uses Badim and his \"extra-legal\" secret methods, but they're not really the focus, funnily enough.\n\nWell, to conclude, it's a novel, not a non-fiction book, so I don't want to summarize it too much, or spoil it, suffices to say, it was good. It's a worthwhile read. Good for the summer. Makes me want to read more sci-fi.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Like many Gen Z-ers, I have a difficult relationship with long books. Used to read them a lot when I was younger. The internet ruined my brain. Still read a lot. But I have an especially hard time with very long novels. Non-fiction I do pretty good with, because I can jump around non-linearly and \"surf\" them the way my brain has been trained to surf the web. I read non-fiction in a constant and undisciplined way. Dozens of books where I've read chapters non-contiguosly, long ass history books I have as reference and occasionally look at for a quick read before bed (looking at the Churchill books).</p>\n<p>This is all to say, I don't finish novels very often, especially long ones (although that's beginning to change with my increasingly luddite lifesytle). This is the first fiction book I've finished since I completed Fellowship of the Ring earlier this year (I've been slowly working through Lord of the Rings, and will write a review once I'm done with it). Here are my thoughts. ---</p>\n<p><b>Style</b></p>\n<p>Often I'd be reading this book and think, this is an NPR-ass book. Just very very much written for that kind of person. I'm pretty sure I heard the author on the Ezra Klein podcast some years back, and put this on my reading list, so that makes sense (listening to the Ezra Klein show is my most lib-tarded habit, because that man is one of the best political commentators alive today).</p>\n<p>Anyways, that isn't an insult, but I really don't read books of this vibe very often. What do I mean that it's an NPR-ass book? I mean its intellectual, but in a very contemporary, non-fussy way. It has a fundamentally cosmopolitan, liberal, science-y, intellectually curious, orientation to the world. It has a bit of a flat (but pleasing) affect, which I think is characteristic of things I'd characterize as NPR-coded.</p>\n<p>The prose is very very contemporary. Very terse in some places, almost how people write an email. Almost how I write here occasionally. Plenty of very complex ideas punctuated by sentence fragments. It was a bit off at first for me, but I ended up enjoying it. Again, he writes how people (at least in my experience) often write emails. It's very breezy, digestible, and pleasing. It makes for relatively easy reading. Again, I liked it.</p>\n<p>As an aside, I'll say that I think that the declining complexity of writing——as a general trend——is something that sort of bothers me. I'm against the axios-ificiation of writing. I don't like that they teach kids to make sentences really short and concise from middle school onward. The best writing takes detours, lets ideas breathe, feels like thoughts. Old journal articles and academic style writing was wayyy more indulgent and is far more memorable than its modern counterpart——they would anticipate countearguments, address potential critics, and generally feel like they had license to take up space in this way. Now we live in an efficiency culture and there is less of this. Across mediums. Bad!</p>\n<p>Anyways, my point is that I don't generally like the simplificiation of writing, but when Robinson here chose very terse prose for some chapters I liked it. So, it was cool. And to be fair, he also has plenty of places with very beautiful and descriptive language. But honestly, I think he was absolutely the best in how he described moments between people. The characters were all very compelling and very textured, and you had a really good sense of the energy between them. The Mary-Frank relationship was cinematic in its portrayal.</p>\n<p>But really, there was a multiplicity of styles he jumps around between. The book sort of jumps between the main narrative and these little side stories or dialogues, which I enjoyed. It felt like interludes on an album. It was always nice to get back to the main thing, but the asides were fun and memorable, and built out the main themes.</p>\n<p>In total, on style, this book is just very interesting, experimental, and contemporary. If you're like me, and read mostly old shit, and basically never read novels written in the past fifteen years, it is a bit of a jolt at first.</p>\n<p><b>Content</b></p>\n<p>This book had some absolutely fascinating ideas about the future of our civilization, and I think that is its greatest gift. It just opens up the mind to possibilities on how to deal with the climate crisis, and what the world could look like. The thing I found most compelling was the carbon coin idea, because I generally share the skepticism that something like that ISN'T possible. It totally is (I think, and if you use the word possible in a very limited sense). Regardless of practicality, it's a wonderful thought experiment on how we could use our institutions to align with ecological goals.</p>\n<p>While I think the carbon coin idea was probably the most novel and compelling thing from the book, a lot of the little vignettes on geo-engineering were also fun reads, and opened up my mind to a possible future where a great deal of the work/employment on earth is just taking care of the planet, protecting our civilization, etc.</p>\n<p>Building on that, I like how thinking about the climate crisis allows you to think about post-commercial ways of social organization, in a lot of ways. Why wouldn't we just put a lot of people to work doing geoengineering projects, if the need arose? Why wouldn't that be assigned some status, why wouldn't that be a legitimate way to participate? Is there a future where a lot of people are engaged in the work of care-taking, restoration, and preservation? How big could that sector get? It's just very cool to think about.</p>\n<p>I think the book's name sake, however, ends up being something of a plot vehicle more than anything. I don't think the book is terribly interested in the bureaucracy of the whole thing or how it really deals with different segements of civil society. There'a a lot of interesting ideas here, esepcially with how the story uses Badim and his \"extra-legal\" secret methods, but they're not really the focus, funnily enough.</p>\n<p>Well, to conclude, it's a novel, not a non-fiction book, so I don't want to summarize it too much, or spoil it, suffices to say, it was good. It's a worthwhile read. Good for the summer. Makes me want to read more sci-fi.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.14.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.14.24.html",
      "title": "Orange Man is bad and not good",
      "date_published": "2024-11-14T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I have written, on this blog and elsewhere, about the appeal of Trumpism, its redeeming qualities, and I will continue to do so.\n\nBut the appointment of Matt Gaetz, whether sincere or not, is a good reminder that the orang man is very very very very bad. Not good at all.\n\nIt’s either horrible judgement, or a move to demoralize any opposition. My friend said it was just a way for Trump to lay his dick on the table for the U.S. senate, daring them to oppose him. It may even be more strategic, giving the senate an easy opportunity to oppose one of his picks so they can appear independent, and making all the other appointments look fine in comparison.\n\nIt goes without saying, that I don’t see these as an ideal leadership style.\n\nOwning the libs by . . . endorsing a sex offender?\n\nI think it’s bad how much he drags down our national culture. I think it’s bad how he vastly widens the aperture of acceptability.\n\nI don’t like how he gets people to go along with increasingly stupid shit based on mutual hatred for the same cultural enemies. It’s just not becoming.\n\nI don’t like how he seeks to weaponize the predictable, righteous indignation of the opposition against such an appointment into a political Iiability. People should be upset about this!\n\nBut what I’m alrady seeing happen is people adapt to Trump’s tactics, and increasingly trying to be a bit nonchalant about all this. This makes sense, yes, because he’s seeking to distract and enrage. But also, it should be rational to loudly oppose the appointment of a sex offender! In a heathy society with healthy political incentives, people would be responding to this very viscerally.\n\nBut alas, we must adapt to the tactics of an increasingly sophisticated bully.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I have written, on this blog and elsewhere, about the appeal of Trumpism, its redeeming qualities, and I will continue to do so.</p>\n<p>But the appointment of Matt Gaetz, whether sincere or not, is a good reminder that the orang man is very very very very bad. Not good at all.</p>\n<p>It’s either horrible judgement, or a move to demoralize any opposition. My friend said it was just a way for Trump to lay his dick on the table for the U.S. senate, daring them to oppose him. It may even be more strategic, giving the senate an easy opportunity to oppose one of his picks so they can appear independent, and making all the other appointments look fine in comparison.</p>\n<p>It goes without saying, that I don’t see these as an ideal leadership style.</p>\n<p>Owning the libs by . . . endorsing a sex offender?</p>\n<p>I think it’s bad how much he drags down our national culture. I think it’s bad how he vastly widens the aperture of acceptability.</p>\n<p>I don’t like how he gets people to go along with increasingly stupid shit based on mutual hatred for the same cultural enemies. It’s just not becoming.</p>\n<p>I don’t like how he seeks to weaponize the predictable, righteous indignation of the opposition against such an appointment into a political Iiability. People should be upset about this!</p>\n<p>But what I’m alrady seeing happen is people adapt to Trump’s tactics, and increasingly trying to be a bit nonchalant about all this. This makes sense, yes, because he’s seeking to distract and enrage. But also, it should be rational to loudly oppose the appointment of a sex offender! In a heathy society with healthy political incentives, people would be responding to this very viscerally.</p>\n<p>But alas, we must adapt to the tactics of an increasingly sophisticated bully.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.12.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.12.24.html",
      "title": "DOGE",
      "date_published": "2024-11-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I am of two minds\n\nInitial instinctual reaction\n\n- DOGE haha that's funny\n\n- I like Musk and Ramaswamy, mostly\n\n- Makes sense to give them this given their private sector backgrounds\n\n- Good they didn't get a \"real\" posting given their inexperience\n\n- Scaling back the administrative state is cool and based\n\nSecondary, \"waittaminute\" reactions\n\n- Musk is a major federal government contractor (and does business with state governments because of Tesla, Boring company, etc.)?\n\n- Musk is the richest human being alive\n\n- Musk owns a major medium of political communication\n\n- AND he's going to help head a department which directly affects regulation in . . . all of those sectors??\n\n- This feels like banana republic business\n\n- This seems like it will make TeaPot Dome look like the Tiger Woods scandal\n\nIs this allowed? It all seems strange. All in all, I think things will be fine. They'll cut the regulations that seem to run afoul of the major questions doctrine, and ones that weren't compelled by Congress. Scaling back administrative state will unleash faster growth. And genuinely important regulations (like things to combat climate change!) can be passed again as statutes with \"clear statements\" of delegation to agencies. So the executive doesn't have discretion to just remove or not enforce. So in the end we just have a leaner meaner government. So this is probably good. Right?\n\nRight?",
      "content_html": "<p>I am of two minds</p>\n<p>Initial instinctual reaction</p>\n<p>- DOGE haha that's funny</p>\n<p>- I like Musk and Ramaswamy, mostly</p>\n<p>- Makes sense to give them this given their private sector backgrounds</p>\n<p>- Good they didn't get a \"real\" posting given their inexperience</p>\n<p>- Scaling back the administrative state is cool and based</p>\n<p>Secondary, \"waittaminute\" reactions</p>\n<p>- Musk is a major federal government contractor (and does business with state governments because of Tesla, Boring company, etc.)?</p>\n<p>- Musk is the richest human being alive</p>\n<p>- Musk owns a major medium of political communication</p>\n<p>- AND he's going to help head a department which directly affects regulation in . . . all of those sectors??</p>\n<p>- This feels like banana republic business</p>\n<p>- This seems like it will make TeaPot Dome look like the Tiger Woods scandal</p>\n<p>Is this allowed? It all seems strange. All in all, I think things will be fine. They'll cut the regulations that seem to run afoul of the major questions doctrine, and ones that weren't compelled by Congress. Scaling back administrative state will unleash faster growth. And genuinely important regulations (like things to combat climate change!) can be passed again as statutes with \"clear statements\" of delegation to agencies. So the executive doesn't have discretion to just remove or not enforce. So in the end we just have a leaner meaner government. So this is probably good. Right?</p>\n<p>Right?</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.10.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.10.24.html",
      "title": "End of Semester Self-Reminders",
      "date_published": "2024-11-10T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Tame the Perfectionism\n\n* I like making my outlines extremely pretty and neat, and insofar as that is motivation to do make them at all, do that\n\n* But really, outlines need to get you through the exam and get you the grade you want, nothing else. Get it together. You can revise during reading week if needed.\n\n* You don’t need to be able to get everything in there, and shouldn’t try\n\n* There are lot of ways to sort the information and group concepts, just like there’s usually a few ways to slice and dice legal issues in a brief, don’t get hung up here\n\n* Do what makes sense in your brain, and don’t stray too far from how the professor has sorted the doctrine\n\n* But sometimes, the way a professor orders/chunks things doesn’t click for you, so be unafraid to adopt alternative groupings\n\nFear is the Mindkiller\n\n* Whether you’re ahead, behind, or on track, do not fear, do not respond to anxiety. It destroys the spirit.\n\n* Study with confidence, study with pride, study to understand, study such that you can explain the content to someone else\n\n* If you’re behind or don’t understand things, it is not because you are stupid, it is because law school is hard. Shame is a destructive emotion. Do not indulge shame.\n\n* You are smart. You are capable. You are excited to take the final. You are not afraid of it.\n\nFrontload the pain\n\n* Don’t wait until you have “everything” to start synthesizing\n\n* At this point you only have a couple of units left, just start making the outline as if you’ve done the whole class. Add the last chunks the very first days of reading web\n\n* Enter reading week with finished products\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p><b>Tame the Perfectionism</b></p>\n<p>* I like making my outlines extremely pretty and neat, and insofar as that is motivation to do make them at all, do that</p>\n<p>* But really, outlines need to get you through the exam and get you the grade you want, nothing else. Get it together. You can revise during reading week if needed.</p>\n<p>* You don’t need to be able to get everything in there, and shouldn’t try</p>\n<p>* There are lot of ways to sort the information and group concepts, just like there’s usually a few ways to slice and dice legal issues in a brief, don’t get hung up here</p>\n<p>* Do what makes sense in your brain, and don’t stray too far from how the professor has sorted the doctrine</p>\n<p>* But sometimes, the way a professor orders/chunks things doesn’t click for you, so be unafraid to adopt alternative groupings</p>\n<p><b>Fear is the Mindkiller</b></p>\n<p>* Whether you’re ahead, behind, or on track, do not fear, do not respond to anxiety. It destroys the spirit.</p>\n<p>* Study with confidence, study with pride, study to understand, study such that you can explain the content to someone else</p>\n<p>* If you’re behind or don’t understand things, it is not because you are stupid, it is because law school is hard. Shame is a destructive emotion. Do not indulge shame.</p>\n<p>* You are smart. You are capable. You are excited to take the final. You are not afraid of it.</p>\n<p><b>Frontload the pain</b></p>\n<p>* Don’t wait until you have “everything” to start synthesizing</p>\n<p>* At this point you only have a couple of units left, just start making the outline as if you’ve done the whole class. Add the last chunks the very first days of reading web</p>\n<p>* Enter reading week with finished products</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.8.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.8.24.html",
      "title": "Election quick thoughts",
      "date_published": "2024-11-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Well that was fucking crazy! I have something longer I'm writing on the election, which is very unhinged. Basically, its about how this election is the logical culmination of the gender-dynamics we're seeing. It was all about gender. I'll save those thoughts because they require polish so that I don't sound like a raging skitzo. But in case anyone cares, these are my very quick thoughts on the electoin I can articulate now:\n\n-I think the orange man is unironically, very very bad. I think he's a bad bad man with very little virtue and who is extremely dangerous. In conditions favorable to him and surrounded by enough handlers his damage was mostly to the culture/institutions and relatively small targeted groups (like kids at the border). So I think that the fact that the first term, by all practical measures, really wasn't a DISASTER, has made people quite complacent about how dangerous he actually is.\n\n-I also think that many things that the orange man represents, feelings and policy wise, are legitimate and I've wanted to see action on them for a long time. I want to see a certain kind of america-hating smug D.C. swamp monster chased out of polite society. A full scale assault on the agencies is exciting, and a full scale assault on the Woke-Industrial complex is overdue. Americans are tired of the grip that a group of ghouls has on our society——from the public schools, to the HR divisions of firms, to the media, to the banks, to the agencies. I'm here for a total war on this coalition. Must destroy to create something new.\n\n-I also think many of the things he will do are cruel and misguided. I do not want mass deportations. I do not want refugee communities targeted. I don't care if he closes the border, really. I don't care if he stops more people coming in (I personally think we can let in more refugees, but we live in a democracy, and I respect that other Americans feel differently). But I generally presume that people belong where they already are (which is why I hate elements on the left that like to mine history to find out who REALLY belongs on certain areas of disputed land--its misses the point). I don't want to REMOVE people who are here. Criminals? Sure, whatever. People who have built families and livelihoods here? At that point, its only for the cruelty. I will never, ever, budge on that issue. I don't care if they committed crimes to get here. They are here. We deal with them as if they are Americans——because they are.\n\n-If you can discern a sort of theme on where I align/disalign with Trumpism, its this: as far as the intra-elite competition he represents, the herculean struggle with the deep state, I'm actually very sympathetic with his camp of rogues. Not even on policy, but just that its time to tame the beast I'm Ramaswamy-pilled. We need to cut the heads of the hydra. And you know what? That's politics. Factions come in, factions leave. It's a mean world, but people in the government/thinktank/policy/lobbying/non-profit space here chose to be part of it. I don't feel a whole lot of concern or sympathy for the masters degree class. But the fault lines he draws among the general public, among ORDINARY people, are a different story. I don't like the idea of scapegoating communinities just trying to live the American dream, making people feel like they're the problem. These are the the most vulnerable people in our country and it will be bad for our national soul to treat them this way.\n\n-So, I anticipate having very conflicting feelings in watching the administration. I expect elements of it to be thrilling and cathartic. The Jacksonian insurgency element of his presidency--taking on the entrenched government, this is going to be so fun to watch. But my stomach will churn if he goes through with tearing families apart. I'm moving to New York City and I want to see if there's any way I can get involved and help. Maybe I'll support some legal aid clinics to help\n\n-I think that this is where a lot of the intellectual types who like the idea of Trumpism get lost. They focus too much on the intra-elite element, and lose sight of his impact on ordinary people. I've seen this happen in other countries, with the intellectual movements that spring up to support extremism. It just gets very abstracted. Oh you support Trump because you're against \"woke\"? Sure, I get it. But its not just woke annoying bureaucrats that get hurt, there will be families, children sent back to their actual deaths in dangerouus countries. For what? For vibes? To send a messsage?\n\n-As far as his impact on the economy and real bread and butter issues——I have enough humiilty to know that I don't know at least with respec to his trade approach. Blanket tariffs on paper are a really bad idea. But starting a trade war with China was also supposed to be a bad idea, and now its a bipartisan consensus. I'm generally sympathetic to free-trade, but I am not ideological about it. I think there are several economic regimes that could work in different ways. We used to have a high-tariff, no income-tax system. It works like a general sales tax. It's regressive, more burden is on the working class as far as funding the government, it means it sucks to be poor (things are expensive) but that its somewhat easier to get rich (you can keep and invest way more of your wages). If you can think of a graph, its like a lower floor, but the curve up is steeper. I don't know how that shakes out in a modern global economy. People sy they know, but they don't. Because things are complicated.\n\n-Speaking of the economy, mass deportation, I think, would have an unambiguously NEGATIVE effect on the economy. Like, it would genuinely be disastrous. It's literally removing working age people from the labor force. An insanely bad idea, for moral reasons and economic competitiveness.\n\n-Bringing the Fed under the executive branch, oh my god that's a really bad idea. That's what banana republics do. Having a Federal Reserve with discretion at all, in my eyes, is already not ideal (I believe in automatic stabilizers for the monetary system, or maybe nominal GDP targeting), but giving the president the power to control interest rates? It is BONKERS. But I'm optimistic that because this hurts wayyy too many special interests (the global financial system relies on a relatively stable dollar ensured by an independent Fed) that this will not come to pass. If it does, we can say goodbye to hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Genuinely.\n\n-I wish there was an ideal world, where I could disentangle Trumpism's elements. Where there was a political movement that took on the deep-state, the expert class, on behalf of ALL Americans, without scapegoating any group (and that wasn't a fascistic cult of personality). My dream is a Democratic party that really embraces the culture, tastes, and concerns of ordinary people. A less technocratic, less elitist Democratic party. One whose heart is defined by little l \"liberalism\" but it works by listening and engaging, not imposing. I think the Democratic party is what it accused Romney-ism of being--a very elitist movement that looks down on the electorate. Its a party who wants to sneak vegetables in to your pastries, because they think youre too stupid to eat the veggies yourself.\n\n-Bernie-ism was the closest we got, but I actually don't think it was quite right, because it was too ideological, and it was too co-opted by an idiot activist wing. And the policies weren't all correct. But the vibe was close.\n\n-Even though policy wise, I'm probably closer to liberal than left-progressive, I think AOC shows the political instincts we need for the future Democratic party. If you really listen to her, and not the carictures, she gets it. She gets how to level with people.\n\n-But really, the truth is, we have no clue on what we need. We'll always over-correct and fight the last battle. The only winning strategy in a Democracy is to listen, adjust, and to be nimble and responsive. The Democratic party has shown some ability to do that over its long life. I think it will be able to do so again, if it just sheds its straightjacket––which is the idiot activist wing that imposes ideological purity, a culture of fear of infighting, and now seeks to double down on the message that make the American people hate them—-that X group was too [sexist/racist/xenophobics/whatever] and that's why we lost. We need to remove the people from the party who hate the American people.\n\n-One quick note, Joe biden is a great American. I love him and thank him for his great service. His life story is an inspiration. And his administration, for all of its problems, did a lot of thankless good for this country. It got us to damn near full employment way faster than the Obama regime did after '09. It bid up wages. It gave political backing to unions. It invested in infrastructure. It did big action on climate. It invested in manufacturing, research, and technology. The foreign policy legacy is complicated, and I won't discuss here, but as far as domestic policy, Biden is like Nixon, in that he did a whole lot of good that he won't get credit for for a long time.\n\n-What am I going to do? Well, I'm going to do law school. I no longer have any place in the party apparatus like I did in college. But I'm sure I will in the future. But here's one thing I'll change right now. I'm no longer ever, ever, going to shut the fuck up again. I will not \"make space\" for other voices. I will not hold my tongue. The Democratic party is losing young men. I'm a young man. I will contribute my thoughts, I won't be intimidated, I won't be shamed. I will be quicker to say, in my social circles and whatever platforms I ever get, \"that's stupid and gay.\" I will more ruthlessly support a political project that purges the party of its anti-American, anti-human factions. I won't let idiot, tumblr brain-rot millenials define the overton window of acceptable opinion.\n\n-The Democratic party, and the cultural institutions attached to it, have operated like a mean-girls club. It has operated by creating a climate of fear, of searching for internal enemies, of bullying hearts into submission. The whole culture is the equivalent of the girl who says \"yikes\" to the guy who says something off-kilter in a socratic seminar in college. These are the people who shamed Bernie for going on Joe Rogan——turns out that Joe Rogan is quite important! This energy has cost the party the most important thing in a democracy: information. The party has closed itself off to information about the people it supposedly wants to govern. Their anxieties, their feelings. Insofar as it HAS recognized them it has pathologized them——the feelings are a problem to be solved, not legitimate grievances to be addressed. And in a democracy, that is a LOSING strategy.\n\n-So, my response is this: I will write thoughts without fear. I will speak without fear. I will act in this world without fear.\n\n-If we all do that, I promise you, we will win, and we will build the country we deserve.\n\n----\n\nMay God bless and protect the USA, the last, best hope of the earth. \n |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n | * * * * * * * * * :::::::::::::::::::::::::| \n |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n | * * * * * * * * * :::::::::::::::::::::::::| \n |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n | * * * * * * * * * ::::::::::::::::::::;::::| \n |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| \n |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| \n |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| \n |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| \n |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO|\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Well that was fucking crazy! I have something longer I'm writing on the election, which is very unhinged. Basically, its about how this election is the logical culmination of the gender-dynamics we're seeing. It was all about gender. I'll save those thoughts because they require polish so that I don't sound like a raging skitzo. But in case anyone cares, these are my very quick thoughts on the electoin I can articulate now:</p>\n<p>-I think the orange man is unironically, very very bad. I think he's a bad bad man with very little virtue and who is extremely dangerous. In conditions favorable to him and surrounded by enough handlers his damage was mostly to the culture/institutions and relatively small targeted groups (like kids at the border). So I think that the fact that the first term, by all practical measures, really wasn't a DISASTER, has made people quite complacent about how dangerous he actually is.</p>\n<p>-I also think that many things that the orange man represents, feelings and policy wise, are legitimate and I've wanted to see action on them for a long time. I want to see a certain kind of america-hating smug D.C. swamp monster chased out of polite society. A full scale assault on the agencies is exciting, and a full scale assault on the Woke-Industrial complex is overdue. Americans are tired of the grip that a group of ghouls has on our society——from the public schools, to the HR divisions of firms, to the media, to the banks, to the agencies. I'm here for a total war on this coalition. Must destroy to create something new.</p>\n<p>-I also think many of the things he will do are cruel and misguided. I do not want mass deportations. I do not want refugee communities targeted. I don't care if he closes the border, really. I don't care if he stops more people coming in (I personally think we can let in more refugees, but we live in a democracy, and I respect that other Americans feel differently). But I generally presume that people belong where they already are (which is why I hate elements on the left that like to mine history to find out who REALLY belongs on certain areas of disputed land--its misses the point). I don't want to REMOVE people who are here. Criminals? Sure, whatever. People who have built families and livelihoods here? At that point, its only for the cruelty. I will never, ever, budge on that issue. I don't care if they committed crimes to get here. They are here. We deal with them as if they are Americans——because they are.</p>\n<p>-If you can discern a sort of theme on where I align/disalign with Trumpism, its this: as far as the intra-elite competition he represents, the herculean struggle with the deep state, I'm actually very sympathetic with his camp of rogues. Not even on policy, but just that its time to tame the beast I'm Ramaswamy-pilled. We need to cut the heads of the hydra. And you know what? That's politics. Factions come in, factions leave. It's a mean world, but people in the government/thinktank/policy/lobbying/non-profit space here chose to be part of it. I don't feel a whole lot of concern or sympathy for the masters degree class. But the fault lines he draws among the general public, among ORDINARY people, are a different story. I don't like the idea of scapegoating communinities just trying to live the American dream, making people feel like they're the problem. These are the the most vulnerable people in our country and it will be bad for our national soul to treat them this way.</p>\n<p>-So, I anticipate having very conflicting feelings in watching the administration. I expect elements of it to be thrilling and cathartic. The Jacksonian insurgency element of his presidency--taking on the entrenched government, this is going to be so fun to watch. But my stomach will churn if he goes through with tearing families apart. I'm moving to New York City and I want to see if there's any way I can get involved and help. Maybe I'll support some legal aid clinics to help</p>\n<p>-I think that this is where a lot of the intellectual types who like the idea of Trumpism get lost. They focus too much on the intra-elite element, and lose sight of his impact on ordinary people. I've seen this happen in other countries, with the intellectual movements that spring up to support extremism. It just gets very abstracted. Oh you support Trump because you're against \"woke\"? Sure, I get it. But its not just woke annoying bureaucrats that get hurt, there will be families, children sent back to their actual deaths in dangerouus countries. For what? For vibes? To send a messsage?</p>\n<p>-As far as his impact on the economy and real bread and butter issues——I have enough humiilty to know that I don't know at least with respec to his trade approach. Blanket tariffs on paper are a really bad idea. But starting a trade war with China was also supposed to be a bad idea, and now its a bipartisan consensus. I'm generally sympathetic to free-trade, but I am not ideological about it. I think there are several economic regimes that could work in different ways. We used to have a high-tariff, no income-tax system. It works like a general sales tax. It's regressive, more burden is on the working class as far as funding the government, it means it sucks to be poor (things are expensive) but that its somewhat easier to get rich (you can keep and invest way more of your wages). If you can think of a graph, its like a lower floor, but the curve up is steeper. I don't know how that shakes out in a modern global economy. People sy they know, but they don't. Because things are complicated.</p>\n<p>-Speaking of the economy, mass deportation, I think, would have an unambiguously NEGATIVE effect on the economy. Like, it would genuinely be disastrous. It's literally removing working age people from the labor force. An insanely bad idea, for moral reasons and economic competitiveness.</p>\n<p>-Bringing the Fed under the executive branch, oh my god that's a really bad idea. That's what banana republics do. Having a Federal Reserve with discretion at all, in my eyes, is already not ideal (I believe in automatic stabilizers for the monetary system, or maybe nominal GDP targeting), but giving the president the power to control interest rates? It is BONKERS. But I'm optimistic that because this hurts wayyy too many special interests (the global financial system relies on a relatively stable dollar ensured by an independent Fed) that this will not come to pass. If it does, we can say goodbye to hegemony of the U.S. dollar. Genuinely.</p>\n<p>-I wish there was an ideal world, where I could disentangle Trumpism's elements. Where there was a political movement that took on the deep-state, the expert class, on behalf of ALL Americans, without scapegoating any group (and that wasn't a fascistic cult of personality). My dream is a Democratic party that really embraces the culture, tastes, and concerns of ordinary people. A less technocratic, less elitist Democratic party. One whose heart is defined by little l \"liberalism\" but it works by listening and engaging, not imposing. I think the Democratic party is what it accused Romney-ism of being--a very elitist movement that looks down on the electorate. Its a party who wants to sneak vegetables in to your pastries, because they think youre too stupid to eat the veggies yourself.</p>\n<p>-Bernie-ism was the closest we got, but I actually don't think it was quite right, because it was too ideological, and it was too co-opted by an idiot activist wing. And the policies weren't all correct. But the vibe was close.</p>\n<p>-Even though policy wise, I'm probably closer to liberal than left-progressive, I think AOC shows the political instincts we need for the future Democratic party. If you really listen to her, and not the carictures, she gets it. She gets how to level with people.</p>\n<p>-But really, the truth is, we have no clue on what we need. We'll always over-correct and fight the last battle. The only winning strategy in a Democracy is to listen, adjust, and to be nimble and responsive. The Democratic party has shown some ability to do that over its long life. I think it will be able to do so again, if it just sheds its straightjacket––which is the idiot activist wing that imposes ideological purity, a culture of fear of infighting, and now seeks to double down on the message that make the American people hate them—-that X group was too [sexist/racist/xenophobics/whatever] and that's why we lost. We need to remove the people from the party who hate the American people.</p>\n<p>-One quick note, Joe biden is a great American. I love him and thank him for his great service. His life story is an inspiration. And his administration, for all of its problems, did a lot of thankless good for this country. It got us to damn near full employment way faster than the Obama regime did after '09. It bid up wages. It gave political backing to unions. It invested in infrastructure. It did big action on climate. It invested in manufacturing, research, and technology. The foreign policy legacy is complicated, and I won't discuss here, but as far as domestic policy, Biden is like Nixon, in that he did a whole lot of good that he won't get credit for for a long time.</p>\n<p>-What am I going to do? Well, I'm going to do law school. I no longer have any place in the party apparatus like I did in college. But I'm sure I will in the future. But here's one thing I'll change right now. I'm no longer ever, ever, going to shut the fuck up again. I will not \"make space\" for other voices. I will not hold my tongue. The Democratic party is losing young men. I'm a young man. I will contribute my thoughts, I won't be intimidated, I won't be shamed. I will be quicker to say, in my social circles and whatever platforms I ever get, \"that's stupid and gay.\" I will more ruthlessly support a political project that purges the party of its anti-American, anti-human factions. I won't let idiot, tumblr brain-rot millenials define the overton window of acceptable opinion.</p>\n<p>-The Democratic party, and the cultural institutions attached to it, have operated like a mean-girls club. It has operated by creating a climate of fear, of searching for internal enemies, of bullying hearts into submission. The whole culture is the equivalent of the girl who says \"yikes\" to the guy who says something off-kilter in a socratic seminar in college. These are the people who shamed Bernie for going on Joe Rogan——turns out that Joe Rogan is quite important! This energy has cost the party the most important thing in a democracy: information. The party has closed itself off to information about the people it supposedly wants to govern. Their anxieties, their feelings. Insofar as it HAS recognized them it has pathologized them——the feelings are a problem to be solved, not legitimate grievances to be addressed. And in a democracy, that is a LOSING strategy.</p>\n<p>-So, my response is this: I will write thoughts without fear. I will speak without fear. I will act in this world without fear.</p>\n<p>-If we all do that, I promise you, we will win, and we will build the country we deserve.</p>\n<p>----</p>\n<p><b>May God bless and protect the USA, the last, best hope of the earth.</b> <br> |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> | * * * * * * * * * :::::::::::::::::::::::::| <br> |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> | * * * * * * * * * :::::::::::::::::::::::::| <br> |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> | * * * * * * * * * ::::::::::::::::::::;::::| <br> |* * * * * * * * * * OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| <br> |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| <br> |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO| <br> |:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::| <br> |OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO|</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.7.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.7.24.html",
      "title": "Studying for exams (response to email}",
      "date_published": "2024-11-07T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Re: Question\n\nDear mister [redacted],\n\nThank you for your email, and I appreciate your kind words on my earlier posts. I am glad I wrote them and shared them, because I’ve gotten a lot of messages on Reddit that they were helpful (as well as people who thought I was a douche)——which I wasn’t necessarily expecting!\n\nSo, first, a disclaimer, I’m a complete bozo and how I do things may not be good for everyone. I’m also woefully behind in the readings for one of my classes this semester (having too much fun), so I’m also not the paragon of academic discipline. However, since I did do well on exams 1L, I am happy to share my thoughts:\n\nI think you study for closed book exams and open book exams mostly the same.\n\nI mentioned this because you specified “closed book final” in your email. The fact is, for any exam you should be able to do it with minimal external support, and for any exam you should make something like an outline. For me, nothing about how I study for closed or open book is vastly different.\n\nOn the contrary, some people do make “CMD+F” outlines for open-book exams specifically designed for searchability. A friend of mine got an A+ in a hard class doing this. But I don’t do this, and don’t use any digital files on my finals at all, so I can’t speak to it.\n\nSo what do I do? For every class I make a really pretty outline, that makes the doctrine really clear in my head. But I’ve already written about that.\n\nOften I will write out explainers for myself, literally written like I’m writing right now, very conversational, where I’m sort of giving a lecture to myself and walking through concepts. I did this for CIV PRO, which was open-book for me, and it helped a lot (and I actually use these lectures for tutoring now). Explaining things is one of the best ways to learn them, in my opinion, and being able to explain things with no outside reference is a central skill for closed book exams.\n\nSo I guess, if I had any advice that maybe is different than what you could find ANYWHERE (outline early, do practice problem, etc.), is to get things down to a level where you could explain them to a stranger. You should feel confident so that if someone asked you about say, what subject matter jurisdiction is and how it works, that you could draw it all out from scratch for them.\n\nWhy does this help on closed book exams? Well think about this, every exam stem essentially asks you to explain something (e.g. you’re a law clerk writing a memo for a judge, you’re an associate writing an email to a partner, you’re a lawyer writing an email to a client). So getting good at explanatory talking and writing is helpful, in my view. And the professor is checking if you get things, so getting good at showing you understand them via explanation is a good habit to get into.\n\nHow did I do this? I was very annoying to my classmates, who were often patient enough to let me give them little lectures with whiteboards, punctuated by a lot of “does that make sense?” And I also bug my girlfriend a lot and try and tell her things she doesn’t care about.\n\nNow you might say, how can I explain them if I don’t UNDERSTAND it in the first place? Good question. But it’s only when you try and explain things that you realize what you can’t articulate quite right. Sometimes you feel like you know something, but you actually cannot verbalize it. And sometimes you feel like you don’t, but then you find out you know enough to sort of impart it to a stranger. (Could you explain personal jurisdiction to your mom? Probably!). So explaining is critical to even understanding what you need to understand better!\n\nSo, it’s one of those things where you don’t need to spend too much time getting an understanding, because the fact is you won’t ever understand everything about anything. You’ll enter the exam with a few areas where it’s a little bit fuzzy. And in real life, that fuzziness persists in the law, and that’s why doctrine gets go garbled even by Supreme Court justices. And the exam hypos you get will be fuzzy, and can usually swing both ways. The fact that judges often disagree and get things wrong should indicate to you that getting UNDERSTANDING perfect is not necessary, for an exam, or maybe even in real life (idk I’m only a 2L).\n\nSo, spend at least as much time practicing explaining (through writing, talking, whatever) as getting the doctrine down. Because at the end of the day, explaining and analyzing is what you’re doing on the exam.\n\nHope this helps? And also, I hope this method works for me again in December!\n\nBest of luck friend, I know this is a rough time in the semester. Make sure to have a lot of fun and go outside and use the bathroom and all of that.\n\n---\n\nOn Monday, October 28, 2024 at 01:53:44 PM EDT, [redacted] wrote:\n\nHello mister Knox\n\nI’m a 1L warrior wondering if I can get some tidbits/tips on how to study for a closed book final. If you have any advice that would be greatly appreciated.\n\nThank you for all of your previous guides they helped me out a lot at the start of the semester.\n\nSincerely [redacted]\n\n---\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p><b>Re: Question</b></p>\n<p>Dear mister [redacted],</p>\n<p>Thank you for your email, and I appreciate your kind words on my earlier posts. I am glad I wrote them and shared them, because I’ve gotten a lot of messages on Reddit that they were helpful (as well as people who thought I was a douche)——which I wasn’t necessarily expecting!</p>\n<p>So, first, a disclaimer, I’m a complete bozo and how I do things may not be good for everyone. I’m also woefully behind in the readings for one of my classes this semester (having too much fun), so I’m also not the paragon of academic discipline. However, since I did do well on exams 1L, I am happy to share my thoughts:</p>\n<p>I think you study for closed book exams and open book exams mostly the same.</p>\n<p>I mentioned this because you specified “closed book final” in your email. The fact is, for any exam you should be able to do it with minimal external support, and for any exam you should make something like an outline. For me, nothing about how I study for closed or open book is vastly different.</p>\n<p>On the contrary, some people do make “CMD+F” outlines for open-book exams specifically designed for searchability. A friend of mine got an A+ in a hard class doing this. But I don’t do this, and don’t use any digital files on my finals at all, so I can’t speak to it.</p>\n<p>So what do I do? For every class I make a really pretty outline, that makes the doctrine really clear in my head. But I’ve already written about that.</p>\n<p>Often I will write out explainers for myself, literally written like I’m writing right now, very conversational, where I’m sort of giving a lecture to myself and walking through concepts. I did this for CIV PRO, which was open-book for me, and it helped a lot (and I actually use these lectures for tutoring now). Explaining things is one of the best ways to learn them, in my opinion, and being able to explain things with no outside reference is a central skill for closed book exams.</p>\n<p>So I guess, if I had any advice that maybe is different than what you could find ANYWHERE (outline early, do practice problem, etc.), is to get things down to a level where you could explain them to a stranger. You should feel confident so that if someone asked you about say, what subject matter jurisdiction is and how it works, that you could draw it all out from scratch for them.</p>\n<p>Why does this help on closed book exams? Well think about this, every exam stem essentially asks you to explain something (e.g. you’re a law clerk writing a memo for a judge, you’re an associate writing an email to a partner, you’re a lawyer writing an email to a client). So getting good at explanatory talking and writing is helpful, in my view. And the professor is checking if you get things, so getting good at showing you understand them via explanation is a good habit to get into.</p>\n<p>How did I do this? I was very annoying to my classmates, who were often patient enough to let me give them little lectures with whiteboards, punctuated by a lot of “does that make sense?” And I also bug my girlfriend a lot and try and tell her things she doesn’t care about.</p>\n<p>Now you might say, how can I explain them if I don’t UNDERSTAND it in the first place? Good question. But it’s only when you try and explain things that you realize what you can’t articulate quite right. Sometimes you feel like you know something, but you actually cannot verbalize it. And sometimes you feel like you don’t, but then you find out you know enough to sort of impart it to a stranger. (Could you explain personal jurisdiction to your mom? Probably!). So explaining is critical to even understanding what you need to understand better!</p>\n<p>So, it’s one of those things where you don’t need to spend too much time getting an understanding, because the fact is you won’t ever understand everything about anything. You’ll enter the exam with a few areas where it’s a little bit fuzzy. And in real life, that fuzziness persists in the law, and that’s why doctrine gets go garbled even by Supreme Court justices. And the exam hypos you get will be fuzzy, and can usually swing both ways. The fact that judges often disagree and get things wrong should indicate to you that getting UNDERSTANDING perfect is not necessary, for an exam, or maybe even in real life (idk I’m only a 2L).</p>\n<p>So, spend at least as much time practicing explaining (through writing, talking, whatever) as getting the doctrine down. Because at the end of the day, explaining and analyzing is what you’re doing on the exam.</p>\n<p>Hope this helps? And also, I hope this method works for me again in December!</p>\n<p>Best of luck friend, I know this is a rough time in the semester. Make sure to have a lot of fun and go outside and use the bathroom and all of that.</p>\n<p>---</p>\n<p>On Monday, October 28, 2024 at 01:53:44 PM EDT, [redacted] wrote:</p>\n<p>Hello mister Knox</p>\n<p>I’m a 1L warrior wondering if I can get some tidbits/tips on how to study for a closed book final. If you have any advice that would be greatly appreciated.</p>\n<p>Thank you for all of your previous guides they helped me out a lot at the start of the semester.</p>\n<p>Sincerely [redacted]</p>\n<p>---</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.1.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-11.1.24.html",
      "title": "Would I vote for Trump?",
      "date_published": "2024-11-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of voting for Trump. Whenever I listen to Vivek, Vance, or his surrogates in general, I tend to have a lot of common ground with them. On the other hand, I’ve been completely uninspired by the Kamala campaign. Her and Walz just feel completely unserious. Truly lightweights. I don’t even feel disdain or anything. Just nothing.\n\nThis has been disconcerting for me because I hate Trump. So what’s going on?\n\nNow, because I follow the data very closely, I know that a LOT of men in my age bracket feel similarly. Dems are losing us in big numbers. I can see it in my personal life.\n\nEven in D.C., which is a bunch of liberals, dudes are just not having it. No guy I know is enthusiastic about Kamala or Walz. When I talk to guys in private, there’s a sense of vague support for Trump, even if we wouldn’t actually vote for him, because there’s an appetite for a certain kind of politics, a certain cultural inclination (I could call it wokeism, but I think that word’s definition has just expanded too much), to be checked and balanced. A very liberal friend of mine said something like he wants to see Trump win just a send a message to [colorful words for annoying left-of-center people]. Very few educated young men actually agree with Trump. But we may have the same vague gripes and opponents.\n\nBut why young men specifically? Why have dems been losing them so badly, why is gender polarization so bad? I have a very basic, power based theory, that could complement other feminist/media/radicalization/culture wars based accounts, which other people talk about all the time on twitter or op-eds and elsewhere.\n\nIf you’re young you’re in the phase where you’re moving up in the world. If you’re a man you’re ambitious. And I think in this phase of our lives we have quite literally evolved to have a good sense of what and who is in our way. The cultural institutions that are in our way. The beliefs.\n\nI think many young (straight) men have a gut feeling that this liberal-intellectual-woke complex that developed over the past 20 years is a barrier, not a facilitator, for our ambitions to move up in status, power, whatever. I feel it too. I know the kind of people who are “in there,” I know how they feel about people like me, people who joke like me, talk like me, look like me. I know if they could pierce my mind and see my thought crimes they’d want to like, execute me.\n\nI feel in my bones that they would hire someone who looks like a “Try Guy” over me. Someone who watches Hasan Minhaj specials and listens to Pod Save America. It’s not that I hate people like that, I’m chill with a lot of them, I did high school theatre, for godsake. And frankly, I’m not too far off, I’m an avid NYT opinion and Atlantic reader. I get it. But it’s still very much like just a different lunch table in the cafeteria in high school. We’re not each other’s vibe. And I can sit with them and chit chat, but I’ll never be one of them. There’s dozens of people in law school like this, and the best relationship we’ll have is exchanging polite pleasantries with an underlying suspicion.\n\nIf Trumpism wins, a great deal of that intangible cultural barrier is taken out of the way. Those people become a relic, like millennial hipsters, pushed to the margins of culture, no longer in the zeitgeist. And that would feel so good. If they were as laughable as people who have bushy beards and horn-rimmed glasses and suspenders. Not something I actually have to contend with.\n\nIf Trumpism wins, there will be something else to replace them. Something really bad, something I will want to fight against because I don’t agree with its policies, culture, or whatever. But in my gut I feel like it would be easier to deal with THAT, than whatever’s going on right now. I could sit at that lunch table more comfortably.\n\nUnfortunately, the modern world is one of symbols, signals, and cultural signifiers. And there are some maps/symbolic system you’re better equipped to operate in. I could navigate the symbolic world created by Trumpism, much better than the one built up the Tumblr brain rot generation. I can’t explain it more logically, but it’s what my gut says. It would allow me to move up the status hierarchy.\n\nIn short, I don’t think I will vote for Trump. But I completely GET it. Because I feel it too.\n\nI don’t want anyone to read this as an endorsement of Trump, writing this is an exercise of humility, vulnerability, and intellectual honesty. I thought it would be good to list out how my mind runs through the possibility, when I do consider voting for him. It’s also good to try and understand your own thoughts, I think, and that’s what I think I’m trying to do there (I think, I don’t know, I should write a post on why I write and why I think I think I need to write to think).\n\nAnyways, I’ve read somewhere that liberals have a very hard time modeling the mind of conservatives (whereas the reverse is not true). And from what I understand, people are who super-duper anti Trump genuinely cannot understand how non-stupid people could even think about voting for him (but maybe I’m a stupid person, idk).\n\nSo I thought I would list out how I think about it, in very rough terms. Maybe a good resource for people in the future, who want to understand what the hell was going through people’s heads in the 2020s, and for people who want to understand why Dems are losing young men. I’m probably not a typical case, but I’m one case to consider.\n\nPros:\n\n- Shakes things up, sometimes shocks are good for any system’s resilience. The liberal establishment has become dangerously complacent.\n\n- Serves as a political signal to Dems to adjust their messaging and cultural strategy, stop being an elitist, feminized, eunuch party (already happening to some degree, though, which is good)\n\n- I don’t think abolishing some three letter agencies is a bad thing, maybe we should get rid of the Department of Education etc. I want a leaner meaner government.\n\n- Current silos and groupthink around key topics might be punctured, certain psychogenic epidemics in mental health, prevailing thinking around nutrition, big Pharma, vaccine injury, may be addressed with a more fresh eyed view. RFK jr types not right about everything in a literal sense, but directionally correct that it’s time to take a more skeptical stance. Trump gives them in into the government, opportunity to challenge the entrenched “experts”\n\n- Very intense action on the border and undocumented immigrants may mean there is less of a political target on Dreamers, refugees, and other legal immigrants; it may be necessary to have a healthier discussion on immigration in total? If Americans felt less chaos in immigration system, feelings towards immigration could warm again.\n\n- Aesthetically, Trumpism is far more aligned with most ordinary Americans and a positive conception of national identity. A little tacky, rah-rah patriotic. Maybe not a bad correction from the hyper-corporate liberal aesthetic of past decade or so. End of ObamaCore.\n\n- I think he genuinely has smart people in his camp, whose main flaw is their opportunism. Vance, Vivek, Gabbard, RFK, Musk——these people are kind of a rogues gallery, but they’re not dumb. They’re genuinely all very intelligent, and that counts for something. I agree with many of the things they say. I don’t feel that Kamala is surrounded by intellectual heavyweights.\n\n- The most commonly held hope, which I share with many Trump supporters, is that a genuinely dangerous faction of ideological leftist technocrats will be terrified out of the deep state and chased out of polite society. I tend to agree that there is a very deep rot in the heart of Washington’s culture, and Trumpism may be what’s needed to finally “drain the swamp?”\n\n- With the exception of my girlfriend, I have more in common with people voting for Trump than the opposite. That has to mean something, right? If everyone I don’t get along with is a hardcore liberal, and hardcore Trump supporters and I generally get along, isn’t that a proxy for SOMETHING?\n\n- I think voting for him would FEEL good.\n\nCons:\n\n- I think he’s actually a fascist. Literally speaking.\n\n- I don’t actually want families to be deported, if they haven’t done anything wrong. Just leave them alone!\n\n- The chaos/shock to the system + puncturing of certain silos allows characters and ideas I like to ride into executive branch (RFK example above), but also very dangerous factions. He is not terribly strategic or disciplined, I believe that he has orbiters that are extremely conspiratorial, opportunistic, and that’s very bad. I’m thinking of Mike Lindell types. Not good.\n\n- Health of our democracy will genuinely deteriorate as he is given a platform to undermine faith in elections even further; he will have more levers to change election policy, exert pressure on states. January 6th saga illustrated how bad things can get.\n\n- positions on abortion unclear\n\n- It certainly feels like the beginning of our long slide into a more authoritarian, personalist form of politics, and I want to hold that off as long as possible\n\n- The tariff policy is probably very bad\n\n-He’s almost certainly going to revitalize a crony-capitalism model, clearly what’s happening with Musk. A major government contractor being this involved with a political campaign just feels icky. Reminds me of Russia, India, China, etc. One off not too bad, but if it becomes the culture around Big Tech, which is trending right, that would be very bad. Don’t want that coalition to develop and become too strong. A cult of personality + faithful business community that relies on government subsidies/favorable regulations and run major payments, media, e-commerce platforms——that begins to look like a banana republic.\n\n-Unlikely to correct course on the Israel policy, I don’t tend to think he’s motivated by humanitarian impulses\n\n-Foreign policy at large becomes more personalist, transactional, less defined by institutional arrangements. Back to the jungle model of international relations I think. I’m agnostic on this, less of a pro or con and more just different. I’m a liberal internationalist at heart but its performance hasn’t been so perfect that I’m wedded to the model.\n\n-Agencies will be filled with bozos, who will likely have ties to other segments of business community and civil society, executive branch becomes more of an extension of a political campaign or party. In some crude sense the executive will be more responsive to popular will, but it would also likely lose persuasive legitimacy with business community, Courts, etc. Executive branch becomes another player among many, less of an impartial authority. A bad thing? Really more of a system change, than a purely good or bad thing. If exec branch becomes more like a party state, government loses “legitimacy” as an impartial agent in our system, it is now closer to a private sector actor jockeying for influence, contracting and negotiating with other private actors. Government-business relations will become more “corrupt” in the classical sense of the word, but another way to say it may be “cooperative.”\n\n-He lies, all the time. Not good in general.\n\n-How he handles crises is genuinely unpredictable. All the reports from the White House suggest he is an unfocused, highly reactive man. Voting for him is a bet on the ecosystem around him, which is less predictable than people may believe. Jan 6 saga shows he could easily filter out smart voices and surround himself with sycophants.\n\n-Feels like his intellectual/media ecosystem is bringing playful, rhetorical, racism back into the “norm” but fear it will be open the floodgates for actual racial policies down the line. Not comfortable with how Race/IQ/DEI discourse is going in academic circles, we’re trending towards scientific racism which feels bad.\n\n-The feeling of chaos over the next four years will again degrade our political culture, probably irreversibly. There’s not going back after another term. 2015-2028, 13 years of American politics, will have been built up around and in response to his uniquely disruptive and divisive personality. Another generation of high schoolers, college students, entry level professionals will be moving up in whatever incentive structure is created by a Trump political climate.\n\n- he’s probably a rapist? I can’t have that. Should be higher up the list tbh.\n\n- History has shown that putting someone like Trump in power is literally always a losing strategy. Every single time. No reason to think it’s different now.\n\n------\n\nIn total, I really just couldn’t vote for Trump. I have gripes with the cultural status quo, but not enough to negatively polarize me into voting for someone who could pose so much harm to the country I love. I want a shake up. I don’t want chaos and pain. So no, I won’t do it.\n\nAlso, I’m a big loverboy and I won’t support someone my girlfriend hates. She’s da boss!\n\nHowever, I do think he will win. And I won’t lie if I don’t admit that a teeny-tiny part of me hopes he does, and hopes that only the things I like, and none of the things I don’t will happen.\n\n^I think since most people have the same wishful thinking, we’re set to put our country down the wrong path.\n\nWith grave concerns,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Recently I’ve been toying with the idea of voting for Trump. Whenever I listen to Vivek, Vance, or his surrogates in general, I tend to have a lot of common ground with them. On the other hand, I’ve been completely uninspired by the Kamala campaign. Her and Walz just feel completely unserious. Truly lightweights. I don’t even feel disdain or anything. Just nothing.</p>\n<p>This has been disconcerting for me because I hate Trump. So what’s going on?</p>\n<p>Now, because I follow the data very closely, I know that a LOT of men in my age bracket feel similarly. Dems are losing us in big numbers. I can see it in my personal life.</p>\n<p>Even in D.C., which is a bunch of liberals, dudes are just not having it. No guy I know is enthusiastic about Kamala or Walz. When I talk to guys in private, there’s a sense of vague support for Trump, even if we wouldn’t actually vote for him, because there’s an appetite for a certain kind of politics, a certain cultural inclination (I could call it wokeism, but I think that word’s definition has just expanded too much), to be checked and balanced. A very liberal friend of mine said something like he wants to see Trump win just a send a message to [colorful words for annoying left-of-center people]. Very few educated young men actually agree with Trump. But we may have the same vague gripes and opponents.</p>\n<p>But why young men specifically? Why have dems been losing them so badly, why is gender polarization so bad? I have a very basic, power based theory, that could complement other feminist/media/radicalization/culture wars based accounts, which other people talk about all the time on twitter or op-eds and elsewhere.</p>\n<p>If you’re young you’re in the phase where you’re moving up in the world. If you’re a man you’re ambitious. And I think in this phase of our lives we have quite literally evolved to have a good sense of what and who is in our way. The cultural institutions that are in our way. The beliefs.</p>\n<p>I think many young (straight) men have a gut feeling that this liberal-intellectual-woke complex that developed over the past 20 years is a barrier, not a facilitator, for our ambitions to move up in status, power, whatever. I feel it too. I know the kind of people who are “in there,” I know how they feel about people like me, people who joke like me, talk like me, look like me. I know if they could pierce my mind and see my thought crimes they’d want to like, execute me.</p>\n<p>I feel in my bones that they would hire someone who looks like a “Try Guy” over me. Someone who watches Hasan Minhaj specials and listens to Pod Save America. It’s not that I hate people like that, I’m chill with a lot of them, I did high school theatre, for godsake. And frankly, I’m not too far off, I’m an avid NYT opinion and Atlantic reader. I get it. But it’s still very much like just a different lunch table in the cafeteria in high school. We’re not each other’s vibe. And I can sit with them and chit chat, but I’ll never be one of them. There’s dozens of people in law school like this, and the best relationship we’ll have is exchanging polite pleasantries with an underlying suspicion.</p>\n<p>If Trumpism wins, a great deal of that intangible cultural barrier is taken out of the way. Those people become a relic, like millennial hipsters, pushed to the margins of culture, no longer in the zeitgeist. And that would feel so good. If they were as laughable as people who have bushy beards and horn-rimmed glasses and suspenders. Not something I actually have to contend with.</p>\n<p>If Trumpism wins, there will be something else to replace them. Something really bad, something I will want to fight against because I don’t agree with its policies, culture, or whatever. But in my gut I feel like it would be easier to deal with THAT, than whatever’s going on right now. I could sit at that lunch table more comfortably.</p>\n<p>Unfortunately, the modern world is one of symbols, signals, and cultural signifiers. And there are some maps/symbolic system you’re better equipped to operate in. I could navigate the symbolic world created by Trumpism, much better than the one built up the Tumblr brain rot generation. I can’t explain it more logically, but it’s what my gut says. It would allow me to move up the status hierarchy.</p>\n<p>In short, I don’t think I will vote for Trump. But I completely GET it. Because I feel it too.</p>\n<p>I don’t want anyone to read this as an endorsement of Trump, writing this is an exercise of humility, vulnerability, and intellectual honesty. I thought it would be good to list out how my mind runs through the possibility, when I do consider voting for him. It’s also good to try and understand your own thoughts, I think, and that’s what I think I’m trying to do there (I think, I don’t know, I should write a post on why I write and why I think I think I need to write to think).</p>\n<p>Anyways, I’ve read somewhere that liberals have a very hard time modeling the mind of conservatives (whereas the reverse is not true). And from what I understand, people are who super-duper anti Trump genuinely cannot understand how non-stupid people could even think about voting for him (but maybe I’m a stupid person, idk).</p>\n<p>So I thought I would list out how I think about it, in very rough terms. Maybe a good resource for people in the future, who want to understand what the hell was going through people’s heads in the 2020s, and for people who want to understand why Dems are losing young men. I’m probably not a typical case, but I’m one case to consider.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Pros:</b></p>\n<p>- Shakes things up, sometimes shocks are good for any system’s resilience. The liberal establishment has become dangerously complacent.</p>\n<p>- Serves as a political signal to Dems to adjust their messaging and cultural strategy, stop being an elitist, feminized, eunuch party (already happening to some degree, though, which is good)</p>\n<p>- I don’t think abolishing some three letter agencies is a bad thing, maybe we should get rid of the Department of Education etc. I want a leaner meaner government.</p>\n<p>- Current silos and groupthink around key topics might be punctured, certain psychogenic epidemics in mental health, prevailing thinking around nutrition, big Pharma, vaccine injury, may be addressed with a more fresh eyed view. RFK jr types not right about everything in a literal sense, but directionally correct that it’s time to take a more skeptical stance. Trump gives them in into the government, opportunity to challenge the entrenched “experts”</p>\n<p>- Very intense action on the border and undocumented immigrants may mean there is less of a political target on Dreamers, refugees, and other legal immigrants; it may be necessary to have a healthier discussion on immigration in total? If Americans felt less chaos in immigration system, feelings towards immigration could warm again.</p>\n<p>- Aesthetically, Trumpism is far more aligned with most ordinary Americans and a positive conception of national identity. A little tacky, rah-rah patriotic. Maybe not a bad correction from the hyper-corporate liberal aesthetic of past decade or so. End of ObamaCore.</p>\n<p>- I think he genuinely has smart people in his camp, whose main flaw is their opportunism. Vance, Vivek, Gabbard, RFK, Musk——these people are kind of a rogues gallery, but they’re not dumb. They’re genuinely all very intelligent, and that counts for something. I agree with many of the things they say. I don’t feel that Kamala is surrounded by intellectual heavyweights.</p>\n<p>- The most commonly held hope, which I share with many Trump supporters, is that a genuinely dangerous faction of ideological leftist technocrats will be terrified out of the deep state and chased out of polite society. I tend to agree that there is a very deep rot in the heart of Washington’s culture, and Trumpism may be what’s needed to finally “drain the swamp?”</p>\n<p>- With the exception of my girlfriend, I have more in common with people voting for Trump than the opposite. That has to mean something, right? If everyone I don’t get along with is a hardcore liberal, and hardcore Trump supporters and I generally get along, isn’t that a proxy for SOMETHING?</p>\n<p>- I think voting for him would FEEL good.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Cons:</b></p>\n<p>- I think he’s actually a fascist. Literally speaking.</p>\n<p>- I don’t actually want families to be deported, if they haven’t done anything wrong. Just leave them alone!</p>\n<p>- The chaos/shock to the system + puncturing of certain silos allows characters and ideas I like to ride into executive branch (RFK example above), but also very dangerous factions. He is not terribly strategic or disciplined, I believe that he has orbiters that are extremely conspiratorial, opportunistic, and that’s very bad. I’m thinking of Mike Lindell types. Not good.</p>\n<p>- Health of our democracy will genuinely deteriorate as he is given a platform to undermine faith in elections even further; he will have more levers to change election policy, exert pressure on states. January 6th saga illustrated how bad things can get.</p>\n<p>- positions on abortion unclear</p>\n<p>- It certainly feels like the beginning of our long slide into a more authoritarian, personalist form of politics, and I want to hold that off as long as possible</p>\n<p>- The tariff policy is probably very bad</p>\n<p>-He’s almost certainly going to revitalize a crony-capitalism model, clearly what’s happening with Musk. A major government contractor being this involved with a political campaign just feels icky. Reminds me of Russia, India, China, etc. One off not too bad, but if it becomes the culture around Big Tech, which is trending right, that would be very bad. Don’t want that coalition to develop and become too strong. A cult of personality + faithful business community that relies on government subsidies/favorable regulations and run major payments, media, e-commerce platforms——that begins to look like a banana republic.</p>\n<p>-Unlikely to correct course on the Israel policy, I don’t tend to think he’s motivated by humanitarian impulses</p>\n<p>-Foreign policy at large becomes more personalist, transactional, less defined by institutional arrangements. Back to the jungle model of international relations I think. I’m agnostic on this, less of a pro or con and more just different. I’m a liberal internationalist at heart but its performance hasn’t been so perfect that I’m wedded to the model.</p>\n<p>-Agencies will be filled with bozos, who will likely have ties to other segments of business community and civil society, executive branch becomes more of an extension of a political campaign or party. In some crude sense the executive will be more responsive to popular will, but it would also likely lose persuasive legitimacy with business community, Courts, etc. Executive branch becomes another player among many, less of an impartial authority. A bad thing? Really more of a system change, than a purely good or bad thing. If exec branch becomes more like a party state, government loses “legitimacy” as an impartial agent in our system, it is now closer to a private sector actor jockeying for influence, contracting and negotiating with other private actors. Government-business relations will become more “corrupt” in the classical sense of the word, but another way to say it may be “cooperative.”</p>\n<p>-He lies, all the time. Not good in general.</p>\n<p>-How he handles crises is genuinely unpredictable. All the reports from the White House suggest he is an unfocused, highly reactive man. Voting for him is a bet on the ecosystem around him, which is less predictable than people may believe. Jan 6 saga shows he could easily filter out smart voices and surround himself with sycophants.</p>\n<p>-Feels like his intellectual/media ecosystem is bringing playful, rhetorical, racism back into the “norm” but fear it will be open the floodgates for actual racial policies down the line. Not comfortable with how Race/IQ/DEI discourse is going in academic circles, we’re trending towards scientific racism which feels bad.</p>\n<p>-The feeling of chaos over the next four years will again degrade our political culture, probably irreversibly. There’s not going back after another term. 2015-2028, 13 years of American politics, will have been built up around and in response to his uniquely disruptive and divisive personality. Another generation of high schoolers, college students, entry level professionals will be moving up in whatever incentive structure is created by a Trump political climate.</p>\n<p>- he’s probably a rapist? I can’t have that. Should be higher up the list tbh.</p>\n<p>- History has shown that putting someone like Trump in power is literally always a losing strategy. Every single time. No reason to think it’s different now.</p>\n<p>------</p>\n<p>In total, I really just couldn’t vote for Trump. I have gripes with the cultural status quo, but not enough to negatively polarize me into voting for someone who could pose so much harm to the country I love. I want a shake up. I don’t want chaos and pain. So no, I won’t do it.</p>\n<p>Also, I’m a big loverboy and I won’t support someone my girlfriend hates. She’s da boss!</p>\n<p>However, I do think he will win. And I won’t lie if I don’t admit that a teeny-tiny part of me hopes he does, and hopes that only the things I like, and none of the things I don’t will happen.</p>\n<p>^I think since most people have the same wishful thinking, we’re set to put our country down the wrong path.</p>\n<p>With grave concerns,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.30.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.30.24.html",
      "title": "Why I love my girlfriend and lessons from our lovely relationship pt. 1",
      "date_published": "2024-10-30T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Even though you may hope that someone who runs a site like this and interfaces with the internet how I do is some lonely loser incel or a burnt out law student with no life, I am actually a strapping young man with a very hot girlfriend and a cute dog. I know, life isn't fair.\n\nThis post is about why I love my girlfriend and how she caught a catch like me, and how I caught a smokeshow like her. We're both very lucky.\n\nShe was nice to me.Since I met her, my girlfriend has always been nice to me. In the \"talking\" stage she didn't play crazy games or anything. She showed sincere interest in what I do. She asked me questions. Talking to her was always fun, and even though I got butterflies and all that, it was never this anxious experience like I've had in the early stages of other failed relationship endeavours. That is because she was nice in a very basic way.\n\nI was nice to her.I don't think men should be TOO nice to women from the get go because its disingenuous. It shows that you're not being nice because of anything you've learned about them. Girls don't want a \"nice guy\" they want a guy who is polite in general but is nice to THEM specifically becuase they like them.\n\nBut when a guy TRIES to be all nonchalant and stuff its just corny. I never did that. When I was genuinly interested in my girlfriend, I showed her, I showed her in how I talked to her, in my enthusiasm, in everything. And it was genuine. I took her on very expensive and nice dates (I'm a law student, so I put it on my credit card, worth it in the long run). In courtship, a little bit of hot and cold, a little bit of flirty ambiguity is fun, but in the modern dating scene, where there is so much absolute nonsense and wasted time, sincerity and genuine interest goes a long way. We both demonstrated that to eachother so we got past the threshold where most dating dies.\n\nWe're still nice to eachother.Now that we're dating, she is still super nice to me. We call eachother in the morning. We cook for eachother. She packs me lunches when I go on long drives. We write eachother notes. I buy her expensive stuff sometimes. I'm going to put a really expensive anniversary date on my credit card (I'll make money from Big Law, who cares). You can't just get into the relationship then get cozy and coast. You need to keep doing shit.\n\nShe's so smart and passionate about the things she does.The thing I maybe like about my girlfriend the most is that she has genuine hobbies and interests. She makes things and learns things and strives for things and likes to tell me about them. In my experience, this is a rare quality in a young woman. I don't even really care about her little hobbies, in themselves, to be honest——I just like that she has them. I'm saying that to clarify that it's not that she likes things I do, she doesn't really, its just that she actually LIKES things. Do you know how many girls out there don't have genuine interests? It's wild. That's one of the reasons I was initially obsessed with her, and still am. It's so cute to watch her work on things. This is the most refreshing thing about her. So, if you're a girl reading this and you want my advice on how to get a cool guy like me, just be interesting and have real hobbies. What's that Tik Tok that made everyone mad? \"Spell Pharaoh?\" Get a hobby outside of media consumption. The bar has never been lower.\n\nShe's resilient.My girlfriend is the strongest person I know, to a level where I genuinely admire and look up to her. Her ability to get through hard times, see the positive side, and still be a source of love and stability in everyone she knows' life is why I resolved to marry her. There is simply no one else like her in that respect. So, tough shit on that one.\n\nShe's hot.Can't describe this girl without being disrespectful.\n\nShe's pretty.She's also pretty, not only because she was just blessed with a good skull shape, with a healthy canthal tilt, and a jawline that reflects a sound hormonal profile, and a but because her soul is so pure, clean and bright it beams through her skin, and her whole physicality and affect have devloped to mirror her spirit's closeness to god. My girlfriend is pretty because she is pure.\n\nI had more to say but I'll save it for later and label this pt. 1. Anyways I love my girlfriend.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Even though you may hope that someone who runs a site like this and interfaces with the internet how I do is some lonely loser incel or a burnt out law student with no life, I am actually a strapping young man with a very hot girlfriend and a cute dog. I know, life isn't fair.</p>\n<p>This post is about why I love my girlfriend and how she caught a catch like me, and how I caught a smokeshow like her. We're both very lucky.</p>\n<p><b>She was nice to me.</b>Since I met her, my girlfriend has always been nice to me. In the \"talking\" stage she didn't play crazy games or anything. She showed sincere interest in what I do. She asked me questions. Talking to her was always fun, and even though I got butterflies and all that, it was never this anxious experience like I've had in the early stages of other failed relationship endeavours. That is because she was nice in a very basic way.</p>\n<p><b>I was nice to her.</b>I don't think men should be TOO nice to women from the get go because its disingenuous. It shows that you're not being nice because of anything you've learned about them. Girls don't want a \"nice guy\" they want a guy who is polite in general but is nice to THEM specifically becuase they like them.</p>\n<p>But when a guy TRIES to be all nonchalant and stuff its just corny. I never did that. When I was genuinly interested in my girlfriend, I showed her, I showed her in how I talked to her, in my enthusiasm, in everything. And it was genuine. I took her on very expensive and nice dates (I'm a law student, so I put it on my credit card, worth it in the long run). In courtship, a little bit of hot and cold, a little bit of flirty ambiguity is fun, but in the modern dating scene, where there is so much absolute nonsense and wasted time, sincerity and genuine interest goes a long way. We both demonstrated that to eachother so we got past the threshold where most dating dies.</p>\n<p><b>We're still nice to eachother.</b>Now that we're dating, she is still super nice to me. We call eachother in the morning. We cook for eachother. She packs me lunches when I go on long drives. We write eachother notes. I buy her expensive stuff sometimes. I'm going to put a really expensive anniversary date on my credit card (I'll make money from Big Law, who cares). You can't just get into the relationship then get cozy and coast. You need to keep doing shit.</p>\n<p><b>She's so smart and passionate about the things she does.</b>The thing I maybe like about my girlfriend the most is that she has genuine hobbies and interests. She makes things and learns things and strives for things and likes to tell me about them. In my experience, this is a rare quality in a young woman. I don't even really care about her little hobbies, in themselves, to be honest——I just like that she has them. I'm saying that to clarify that it's not that she likes things I do, she doesn't really, its just that she actually LIKES things. Do you know how many girls out there don't have genuine interests? It's wild. That's one of the reasons I was initially obsessed with her, and still am. It's so cute to watch her work on things. This is the most refreshing thing about her. So, if you're a girl reading this and you want my advice on how to get a cool guy like me, just be interesting and have real hobbies. What's that Tik Tok that made everyone mad? \"Spell Pharaoh?\" Get a hobby outside of media consumption. The bar has never been lower.</p>\n<p><b>She's resilient.</b>My girlfriend is the strongest person I know, to a level where I genuinely admire and look up to her. Her ability to get through hard times, see the positive side, and still be a source of love and stability in everyone she knows' life is why I resolved to marry her. There is simply no one else like her in that respect. So, tough shit on that one.</p>\n<p><b>She's hot.</b>Can't describe this girl without being disrespectful.</p>\n<p><b>She's pretty.</b>She's also pretty, not only because she was just blessed with a good skull shape, with a healthy canthal tilt, and a jawline that reflects a sound hormonal profile, and a but because her soul is so pure, clean and bright it beams through her skin, and her whole physicality and affect have devloped to mirror her spirit's closeness to god. My girlfriend is pretty because she is pure.</p>\n<p>I had more to say but I'll save it for later and label this pt. 1. Anyways I love my girlfriend.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.27.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.27.24.html",
      "title": "It's the dark period of the school year",
      "date_published": "2024-10-27T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Anyone in law school has done school long enough to be familiar with the late October shift.\n\nIt gets darker, deadlines pile up, stakes feel higher.\n\nFor 1Ls midterm grades are back, the era of good feelings has ended, and there is a subconscious inclination to start thinking more comparatively and anxiously.\n\nAt the very same time that school becomes more demanding, holiday plans and social obligations multiply. Your family is asking you to get your tickets home for thanksgiving. Maybe you've spent too much of your student loans on Bar Review.\n\nIn my opinion, this is the juncture where things make or break.\n\nI'm a tutor, and I wrote an advice for 1Ls post that got a good deal of attention on Reddit. But I don't feel qualified to give advice. I just thought I'd write down the things I do around this time period that get e through it. It's useful for me, anyways.\n\nCompartmentalization.At this stage, it becomes pretty important for me not to worry about doing everything right. I'm way too ADHD and having a bunch of open tabs in my brain drives me insane. It just makes me anxious. So I just a pick a thing, and do just that until its done. The other thing will wait. I'm weeks behind in Class B, and on time with Class A, so I' deciding to just outline as much as possible for Class A so I can wrap it up in a neat bow before turning to Class B. I just have to trust that I'll be able to get to it later.\n\nKill the shark that's closest.I had this saying when I was in the workforce, that I think I developed when I was working on political campaigns in college: \"Kill the shark that's closest.\" Being any sort of high-performing knowledge worker in the upper-middle class means you just always have so much shit to do. Deadlines, bills to pay, a doctor's appointment to rescheudle, a draft to turn in, whatever. Often the response to this is to make \"to-do\" lists. But a lot of time, even that just takes to much time and can honestly be overwhelming. So I have a heuristic when I don't have time to prioritize. Just get the thing in front of me out of the way. If my Corporations textbook is in eyesight of me and I know I have readings, well I may as well just get that done. If I'm on my laptop and my email is open, well, I'll respond to emails. It's a way I get through decision paralysis as a very messy minded Type B person. It's a very reactive, intuitive way to plow through a lot of work.\n\nWhere does the saying come from? Well it's from an analogy I told a coworker once. Having all these tasks floating around feels like being on a raft surrounded by sharks. And you can't really come up with an attack plan, because you can't see all of them, they shift above and below the surface, sometimes popping into your conscious, then fading into the back of your mind. At least, as a Type B/ADHD person, this is how working memory for tasks feels at times. Sometimes, I don't even have a good sense of everything coming up, but I have a vague feeling of being cornered. Now, instead of indexing the sharks and figuring out what to do, I'll simply kill the one closest to the boat. One lesss shark to deal with. If you do that long enough, no more sharks left, or at least you buy yourself some time.\n\nSeeing the funny side.Sometimes the scale of work is just absurd. My antitrust professor just added 250 pages to our readings. 250 pages I have to do by next week. A week where I have a deadline for this major experiential class I'm taking, and there's a halloween party, and I have a family event. Like, at some level its just funny. I try not to complain I just laugh.\n\nGoofing off.All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. So the busier I get I also have to make more time to be silly.\n\nSubstance abuse + degrading health. I try and stay pretty fit and regimented through the semester. I'm no body builder, but I do my lifting and my walks and my pullups enough to look respectable. But sometimes you really just have to have your pack of Marlboro Reds, your Monster Energy, and sit and go crazy for a day. Frankly, I think its fine to be extremely unehealthy in small bursts, so that you have time to be be healthy and do your stuff most of the time. Again, a very Type-B adaptation. If I pull an allnighter or a 12 hour library stint every so often that means that most days, and during reading week, I take it pretty easy. So I decide to just be an extremist.\n\nShould you do this?No. don't do this. I know people who have much better grades and lives than me and have such healthier life styles. They look great. They're on the Law Review. Apparently its possible. But for a schmuck like me who completely fenagled his way up to this level, I just have to stick to my own methods.\n\nCheers\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>Anyone in law school has done school long enough to be familiar with the late October shift.</p>\n<p>It gets darker, deadlines pile up, stakes feel higher.</p>\n<p>For 1Ls midterm grades are back, the era of good feelings has ended, and there is a subconscious inclination to start thinking more comparatively and anxiously.</p>\n<p>At the very same time that school becomes more demanding, holiday plans and social obligations multiply. Your family is asking you to get your tickets home for thanksgiving. Maybe you've spent too much of your student loans on Bar Review.</p>\n<p>In my opinion, this is the juncture where things make or break.</p>\n<p>I'm a tutor, and I wrote an advice for 1Ls post that got a good deal of attention on Reddit. But I don't feel qualified to give advice. I just thought I'd write down the things I do around this time period that get e through it. It's useful for me, anyways.</p>\n<p><b>Compartmentalization.</b>At this stage, it becomes pretty important for me not to worry about doing everything right. I'm way too ADHD and having a bunch of open tabs in my brain drives me insane. It just makes me anxious. So I just a pick a thing, and do just that until its done. The other thing will wait. I'm weeks behind in Class B, and on time with Class A, so I' deciding to just outline as much as possible for Class A so I can wrap it up in a neat bow before turning to Class B. I just have to trust that I'll be able to get to it later.</p>\n<p><b>Kill the shark that's closest.</b>I had this saying when I was in the workforce, that I think I developed when I was working on political campaigns in college: \"Kill the shark that's closest.\" Being any sort of high-performing knowledge worker in the upper-middle class means you just always have so much shit to do. Deadlines, bills to pay, a doctor's appointment to rescheudle, a draft to turn in, whatever. Often the response to this is to make \"to-do\" lists. But a lot of time, even that just takes to much time and can honestly be overwhelming. So I have a heuristic when I don't have time to prioritize. Just get the thing in front of me out of the way. If my Corporations textbook is in eyesight of me and I know I have readings, well I may as well just get that done. If I'm on my laptop and my email is open, well, I'll respond to emails. It's a way I get through decision paralysis as a very messy minded Type B person. It's a very reactive, intuitive way to plow through a lot of work.</p>\n<p>Where does the saying come from? Well it's from an analogy I told a coworker once. Having all these tasks floating around feels like being on a raft surrounded by sharks. And you can't really come up with an attack plan, because you can't see all of them, they shift above and below the surface, sometimes popping into your conscious, then fading into the back of your mind. At least, as a Type B/ADHD person, this is how working memory for tasks feels at times. Sometimes, I don't even have a good sense of everything coming up, but I have a vague feeling of being cornered. Now, instead of indexing the sharks and figuring out what to do, I'll simply kill the one closest to the boat. One lesss shark to deal with. If you do that long enough, no more sharks left, or at least you buy yourself some time.</p>\n<p><b>Seeing the funny side.</b>Sometimes the scale of work is just absurd. My antitrust professor just added 250 pages to our readings. 250 pages I have to do by next week. A week where I have a deadline for this major experiential class I'm taking, and there's a halloween party, and I have a family event. Like, at some level its just funny. I try not to complain I just laugh.</p>\n<p><b>Goofing off.</b>All work and no play makes jack a dull boy. So the busier I get I also have to make more time to be silly.</p>\n<p><b>Substance abuse + degrading health.</b> I try and stay pretty fit and regimented through the semester. I'm no body builder, but I do my lifting and my walks and my pullups enough to look respectable. But sometimes you really just have to have your pack of Marlboro Reds, your Monster Energy, and sit and go crazy for a day. Frankly, I think its fine to be extremely unehealthy in small bursts, so that you have time to be be healthy and do your stuff most of the time. Again, a very Type-B adaptation. If I pull an allnighter or a 12 hour library stint every so often that means that most days, and during reading week, I take it pretty easy. So I decide to just be an extremist.</p>\n<p><b>Should you do this?</b>No. don't do this. I know people who have much better grades and lives than me and have such healthier life styles. They look great. They're on the Law Review. Apparently its possible. But for a schmuck like me who completely fenagled his way up to this level, I just have to stick to my own methods.</p>\n<p>Cheers</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.16.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.16.24.html",
      "title": "Wednesday thoughts + Big Tech jurispreduence + The Election",
      "date_published": "2024-10-16T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Opening thoughts \n\nNow that I've gotten into a groove with writing somewhat regularly, and over the hardest part——which is starting——I think my next initiative will be to just up to the quality and helpfulness of content on here. A lot of my writing here right now is bullshit, but sometimes you just gotta start with bullshit.\n\nMainly, I want to talk about books, articles, movies, and news more. Engage with the world. We'll see if I succeed.\n\nFinaly opening thought, fall is beautiful in D.C. Obviously gorgeous.\n\nReformatting\n\nI did some formatting changes to the site. I want it to open on a desktop without a scrollbar, and have it look as simple and fixed as possible. I want people to be able to see the footer with the theme and accessibility options immediately. So except for the very newest posts, entries will appear on the full notebook page. Eventually, when there are enough entries, it will make sense to categorize them and enhance searchability. But right now that's just not necessary.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p class=\"center\"><b> Opening thoughts </b></p>\n<p>Now that I've gotten into a groove with writing somewhat regularly, and over the hardest part——which is starting——I think my next initiative will be to just up to the quality and helpfulness of content on here. A lot of my writing here right now is bullshit, but sometimes you just gotta start with bullshit.</p>\n<p>Mainly, I want to talk about books, articles, movies, and news more. Engage with the world. We'll see if I succeed.</p>\n<p>Finaly opening thought, fall is beautiful in D.C. Obviously gorgeous.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Reformatting</b></p>\n<p>I did some formatting changes to the site. I want it to open on a desktop without a scrollbar, and have it look as simple and fixed as possible. I want people to be able to see the footer with the theme and accessibility options immediately. So except for the very newest posts, entries will appear on the full notebook page. Eventually, when there are enough entries, it will make sense to categorize them and enhance searchability. But right now that's just not necessary.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.15.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.15.24.html",
      "title": "thoughts of this Tuesday",
      "date_published": "2024-10-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Make it pretty \n\nLaw school and basically everything in life can be fun if you make it pretty.\n\nI light candles when I work, keep things nice, spend a lot of time in the library, mark up my notes by hand, walk my dog between sessions. It's all fine.\n\nIf you're a law student reading this 10x your pretty budget and make your life nice. Stop using ugly fonts on your outline. Get a nice pen. Get a $7 coffee. It's fine. Just make more money later.\n\nI could not survive this level of reading or work if it wasn't pretty. I really couldn't.\n\nBecoming an adult on the internet\n\nToday I saw poor phrasing on a wikipedia entry for an antitrust case. Usually I just get pissed and move on. But today I thought, I'm literally a 25 year old man who is exceptionally good (well, in relative terms) at this topic and am going to be a legal professional in that field. Why not just correct it? So I made an account and changed a couple of things.\n\nThis was a big coming of age thing for me. I think the hallmark of being a kid is entering the world, seeing how everything is ordered and set up, and approaching is merely as as a consumer or utilizer. You take for granted that this is all there. You take the heard earned fruits of civilization for granted.\n\nI think the most important thing about getting older is looking at every single little thing in our the man-made world and realizing, a human actually made this. Someone wrote and sourced all those articles. Someone paved this road. Every single book in that library was written, printed, and bound by people.\n\nThen everything becomes insanely interesting and you become extremely grateful. And one day, when you notice the people around you getting old, your favorite academics dying, your favorite writers turning gray, you realize, your favorite websites crashing or getting shut down (thinking of internet archive and bodybuilding.com), you realize, oh shit is it my turn to keep this all running?\n\nWe inherit an insane intellectual infrastructure and I suspect its more fragile than we give it credit. Correction, curation, and care have to be part of the culture of smart people on the internet, every day, if our kids are going to benefit from it like we did. We can't let it rot, or get flooded with garbage. Maybe for some zones, that's inevitable (looking at facebook and instagram, which are increasingly slop). But there have to be sphere of human centered order, places we can continue to trust. Wikipedia must be one of them.\n\nOn that point, I also suspect Webrings will become more important, newsletters and other mediums of expert curation will also see higher demand. Smart people will want to cut through the absolute garbage which is inevitably going to pollute and drown the internet.\n\nReformatting\n\nI did some formatting changes to the site. I want it to open on a desktop without a scrollbar, and have it look as simple and fixed as possible. I want people to be able to see the footer with the theme and accessibility options immediately. So except for the very newest posts, entries will appear on the full notebook page. Eventually, when there are enough entries, it will make sense to categorize them and enhance searchability. But right now that's just not necessary.\n\nMy closing thoughts are that blogging on this is a lonely journey. No one cares. Why would they? But I do it because I believe that it is important. It is simply important to write and keep certain traditions and ways of being alive. The unstructured thoughts of the past should be available to people in the future. That's also why I wrote in physical journals and fill out a calendar with what I do every day. I want my kids to have them, and maybe my grandkids, and then they can give them to a library or a researcher one day. I'm sure they'll be of interest. They'll give a small glimpse into what it was like to live in the 2020s, at the dawn of an epochal break in human civilization.\n\nFor all I know it may be one of the more important things I do.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p class=\"center\"><b> Make it pretty </b></p>\n<p>Law school and basically everything in life can be fun if you make it pretty.</p>\n<p>I light candles when I work, keep things nice, spend a lot of time in the library, mark up my notes by hand, walk my dog between sessions. It's all fine.</p>\n<p>If you're a law student reading this 10x your pretty budget and make your life nice. Stop using ugly fonts on your outline. Get a nice pen. Get a $7 coffee. It's fine. Just make more money later.</p>\n<p>I could not survive this level of reading or work if it wasn't pretty. I really couldn't.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Becoming an adult on the internet</b></p>\n<p>Today I saw poor phrasing on a wikipedia entry for an antitrust case. Usually I just get pissed and move on. But today I thought, I'm literally a 25 year old man who is exceptionally good (well, in relative terms) at this topic and am going to be a legal professional in that field. Why not just correct it? So I made an account and changed a couple of things.</p>\n<p>This was a big coming of age thing for me. I think the hallmark of being a kid is entering the world, seeing how everything is ordered and set up, and approaching is merely as as a consumer or utilizer. You take for granted that this is all there. You take the heard earned fruits of civilization for granted.</p>\n<p>I think the most important thing about getting older is looking at every single little thing in our the man-made world and realizing, a human actually made this. Someone wrote and sourced all those articles. Someone paved this road. Every single book in that library was written, printed, and bound by people.</p>\n<p>Then everything becomes insanely interesting and you become extremely grateful. And one day, when you notice the people around you getting old, your favorite academics dying, your favorite writers turning gray, you realize, your favorite websites crashing or getting shut down (thinking of internet archive and bodybuilding.com), you realize, oh shit is it my turn to keep this all running?</p>\n<p>We inherit an insane intellectual infrastructure and I suspect its more fragile than we give it credit. Correction, curation, and care have to be part of the culture of smart people on the internet, every day, if our kids are going to benefit from it like we did. We can't let it rot, or get flooded with garbage. Maybe for some zones, that's inevitable (looking at facebook and instagram, which are increasingly slop). But there have to be sphere of human centered order, places we can continue to trust. Wikipedia must be one of them.</p>\n<p>On that point, I also suspect Webrings will become more important, newsletters and other mediums of expert curation will also see higher demand. Smart people will want to cut through the absolute garbage which is inevitably going to pollute and drown the internet.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Reformatting</b></p>\n<p>I did some formatting changes to the site. I want it to open on a desktop without a scrollbar, and have it look as simple and fixed as possible. I want people to be able to see the footer with the theme and accessibility options immediately. So except for the very newest posts, entries will appear on the full notebook page. Eventually, when there are enough entries, it will make sense to categorize them and enhance searchability. But right now that's just not necessary.</p>\n<p>My closing thoughts are that blogging on this is a lonely journey. No one cares. Why would they? But I do it because I believe that it is important. It is simply important to write and keep certain traditions and ways of being alive. The unstructured thoughts of the past should be available to people in the future. That's also why I wrote in physical journals and fill out a calendar with what I do every day. I want my kids to have them, and maybe my grandkids, and then they can give them to a library or a researcher one day. I'm sure they'll be of interest. They'll give a small glimpse into what it was like to live in the 2020s, at the dawn of an epochal break in human civilization.</p>\n<p>For all I know it may be one of the more important things I do.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.14.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.14.24.html",
      "title": "How to build a website like this (three hours)",
      "date_published": "2024-10-14T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Maybe you found this website and thought, hey that's pretty cool, how do I make something like that. Let me tell you, it is so damn easy and I want to make it even easier. Here are the steps.\n\n Get a grip on What Websites are\n\nLots of abstraction these days. This may seem basic, but some people really don’t know the very basics. We are often many steps removed from how things actually work. Because things get more complex over time. And this enfeebles us.\n\nWebsites are files. That exist on a computer somewhere (or are “hosted on a server”). That computer has a private address where you can reach it and access the files. You can buy a website name from many services that make a public addresses, and points to your private address.\n\nSo first you need files, then you need somewhere to host them (unless you’re a pro, don’t host them on your own computer because its dangerous), then you need a public address to those files.\n\nMy friends, this is what a pure HTML, one page site looks like. https://motherfuckingwebsite.com\n\nSo that's one file, with a dedicated address. If that page had a link on it, that went to another page, it would be two files.\n\nHere's another very basic website to help you get the idea: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html\n\nEvery page there is just a another html file. That's all it all was ever meant to be.\n\nNow look how that basic idea can be used for a blog (obviously) https://thricegreat.neocities.org\n\nAll you need is a one file where you'll keep all of the links, which will be your homepage file, and then a type of file for your posts that you duplicate and use over and over again. It's really extremely basic\n\nYou Need an HTML homepage (or INDEX page) & Styles Page\n\nI don’t know HTML that well, but if you’re semi-competent, you can figure it out. I asked ChatGPT to give me HTML code for a basic home page with a three item menu bar, a title, and basically nothing else. Then I asked it to make a styles CSS file where I could customize the colors, font, etc for the homepage.\n\nFor complete noobs (I basically am), CSS files are where you can customize the look of a basic website. It makes it so you don’t have to adjust the parameters in individual HTML files. You just have to make sure the HTML files and your CSS are in the same folder and your computer knows what to do. Then you have a site like this: http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com If you want to learn a bit more on HTML, this site looks helpful: https://mayborg121.github.io/xs/\n\nI googled some things, noodled around with the code, and adjusted. In case you don’t have ChatGPT, I made it even easier for you. Look below.\n\nJust start with this code\n\nHere is template code for a basic home page, a sample blog, and your CSS file for customization. Name this index.html Name this about.html Name this post1.html Name this styles.css\n\nIf you read that, and thought \"oh I don't know how to code I'm not going to do that\" you're the problem with society. Kids in the 90s were doing this. No you don't need special software. You just put it in a text app that's already preinstealled into your computer. It will open in your browser as a website looking thing. Its completely free. No you don't need technical knowledge. Just copy and paste it and see what happens, trust me!\n\nCopy that code, paste it in textedit or notepad or any equivalnet basic software. Save them with the provided file names, put them all in the same folder (important!). Now open each file in your browser too. Have the text files and the browser side by side. You should see a template of a website. Fuck around the code in the text file. It's even commented with some instructions here and there. Then refresh the browser. You’ll see how the site changes. You’ll figure out how it works. It’s really really basic.\n\n Write some posts\n\nWrite a few stupid posts. First, populate the post1 file. Then copy that file, name it post2, write a new post. Make sure to reflect that in the list on the index file. Just do that a bunch of times. Again,mMake sure to links to them in the index file, rename them as necessary, etc. Look at my first post. It was literally nothing. Just get started!\n\n Customize the site and click around\n\nPlay around with the CSS until you have something that you like. There’s a lot of things you can do. Use google. HTML is free, easy, and very powerful. I kept things simple but there’s a lot of shit you can do. And if you have ChatGPT, it can do cool things too. See these examples I made it make.\n\nNow, click around your site on the browser. Make sure all your links work. Make sure it’s all clean. If all your posts are on index, and they all open to the right file, you're golden.\n\n Make an account on CloudFlare\n\nMake an account on CloudFlare. Learn how to use it. It’s very basic. Go to workers and pages. Create a new project. Title it. You’ll see a place where it says “create a new deployment.” Go ahead and upload the folder where you kept all the files for your website.\n\nCloudFlare will give you a free URL by the way, a pages.dev URL based on your project title. So now you basically have your own website already! Congrats!\n\n Buy a Domain Name\n\nThis is easy. Google how to do it. I bought mine on NameCheap. .xyz domain names are dirt cheap. Like a few dollars a year.\n\nNext, you’ll have to link that domain name to your project in Cloudlfare. This was a little bit complicated for me, and it took just a tiny bit more time than the other steps. But you can figure it out in a couple of hours even with no technical background. One hour.\n\n Voi La! You have a simple but shitty website.\n\nYou literally have a website now. It cost you a few bucks and maybe a few hours.\n\nNow this architecture is extremely simple. It’s literally a folder you upload to Cloudlfare and that’s it. I think there are more complex ways to do it, but I’m a law student not an engineer, so I don’t bother. I don't use github or anything. I just drag the entire folder and redeploy the site when I want to update it.\n\nAlso, with this method, the changes you make on one HTML file will not be represented on others. So, if on your INDEX page you change your website title, that won’t reflect on your blog post pages. If you change the hyperlink of your email on one page, it won’t do it on other pages. They’re all their own little HTML pages that don’t reference each other. You’ll have to use find and replace to make such identical changes on each page.\n\nThe only unified thing you have is your CSS. A change you make on the CSS should reflect on all the pages, per the template I offered.\n\nSo, if you have a very basic setup, like I do, it doesn’t matter. I don’t plan to change my menu, my footer, or my title, ever. If I want to make new sections of the website I’ll just have to add them to my index page.\n\nThis architecture also gives you an idea of why the early internet looked how it did, and why navigating old websites was sometimes like navigating a maze. People would just build on top of what they had. Especially regular old people. Look at links.net for an example of how things get fucked up over time.\n\nBut it’s charming. I don’t care. Yes, Wordpress and those interfaces avoid these issues. But I don’t want to use them. I want to do it myself. And maybe if I want a more sophisticated architecture I’ll just learn the coding skills to do it. I know there’s way to make it smoother with JavaScript, fetching other html pages, etc.\n\nBut why should I do it like this\n\nWhy would you do it any other way? You want to use square or wix or something? Go ahead. You have chosen to be a cog in a larger machine. You can do it all yourself extremely simply. And elegantly. And tastefully.",
      "content_html": "<p>Maybe you found this website and thought, hey that's pretty cool, how do I make something like that. Let me tell you, it is so damn easy and I want to make it even easier. Here are the steps.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Get a grip on What Websites are</b></p>\n<p>Lots of abstraction these days. This may seem basic, but some people really don’t know the very basics. We are often many steps removed from how things actually work. Because things get more complex over time. And this enfeebles us.</p>\n<p>Websites are files. That exist on a computer somewhere (or are “hosted on a server”). That computer has a private address where you can reach it and access the files. You can buy a website name from many services that make a public addresses, and points to your private address.</p>\n<p>So first you need files, then you need somewhere to host them (unless you’re a pro, don’t host them on your own computer because its dangerous), then you need a public address to those files.</p>\n<p>My friends, this is what a pure HTML, one page site looks like. <a href=\"https://motherfuckingwebsite.com\">https://motherfuckingwebsite.com</a></p>\n<p>So that's one file, with a dedicated address. If that page had a link on it, that went to another page, it would be two files.</p>\n<p>Here's another very basic website to help you get the idea: <a href=\"http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html\">http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html</a></p>\n<p>Every page there is just a another html file. That's all it all was ever meant to be.</p>\n<p>Now look how that basic idea can be used for a blog (obviously) <a href=\"https://thricegreat.neocities.org\">https://thricegreat.neocities.org</a></p>\n<p>All you need is a one file where you'll keep all of the links, which will be your homepage file, and then a type of file for your posts that you duplicate and use over and over again. It's really extremely basic</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>You Need an HTML homepage (or INDEX page) & Styles Page</b></p>\n<p>I don’t know HTML that well, but if you’re semi-competent, you can figure it out. I asked ChatGPT to give me HTML code for a basic home page with a three item menu bar, a title, and basically nothing else. Then I asked it to make a styles CSS file where I could customize the colors, font, etc for the homepage.</p>\n<p>For complete noobs (I basically am), CSS files are where you can customize the look of a basic website. It makes it so you don’t have to adjust the parameters in individual HTML files. You just have to make sure the HTML files and your CSS are in the same folder and your computer knows what to do. Then you have a site like this: <a href=\"http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com\">http://bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com</a> If you want to learn a bit more on HTML, this site looks helpful: <a href=\"https://mayborg121.github.io/xs/\">https://mayborg121.github.io/xs/</a></p>\n<p>I googled some things, noodled around with the code, and adjusted. In case you don’t have ChatGPT, I made it even easier for you. Look below.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>Just start with this code</b></p>\n<p>Here is template code for a basic home page, a sample blog, and your CSS file for customization. <a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/sample-index.html\">Name this index.html</a> <a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/sample-about.html\">Name this about.html</a> <a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/sample-post1.html\">Name this post1.html</a> <a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/sample-styles.css\">Name this styles.css</a></p>\n<p>If you read that, and thought \"oh I don't know how to code I'm not going to do that\" you're the problem with society. Kids in the 90s were doing this. No you don't need special software. You just put it in a text app that's already preinstealled into your computer. It will open in your browser as a website looking thing. Its completely free. No you don't need technical knowledge. Just copy and paste it and see what happens, trust me!</p>\n<p>Copy that code, paste it in textedit or notepad or any equivalnet basic software. Save them with the provided file names, put them all in the same folder (important!). Now open each file in your browser too. Have the text files and the browser side by side. You should see a template of a website. Fuck around the code in the text file. It's even commented with some instructions here and there. Then refresh the browser. You’ll see how the site changes. You’ll figure out how it works. It’s really really basic.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Write some posts</b></p>\n<p>Write a few stupid posts. First, populate the post1 file. Then copy that file, name it post2, write a new post. Make sure to reflect that in the list on the index file. Just do that a bunch of times. Again,mMake sure to links to them in the index file, rename them as necessary, etc. Look at my first post. It was literally nothing. Just get started!</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Customize the site and click around</b></p>\n<p>Play around with the CSS until you have something that you like. There’s a lot of things you can do. Use google. HTML is free, easy, and very powerful. I kept things simple but there’s a lot of shit you can do. And if you have ChatGPT, it can do cool things too. See these examples I made it make.</p>\n<p>Now, click around your site on the browser. Make sure all your links work. Make sure it’s all clean. If all your posts are on index, and they all open to the right file, you're golden.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Make an account on CloudFlare</b></p>\n<p>Make an account on CloudFlare. Learn how to use it. It’s very basic. Go to workers and pages. Create a new project. Title it. You’ll see a place where it says “create a new deployment.” Go ahead and upload the folder where you kept all the files for your website.</p>\n<p>CloudFlare will give you a free URL by the way, a pages.dev URL based on your project title. So now you basically have your own website already! Congrats!</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Buy a Domain Name</b></p>\n<p>This is easy. Google how to do it. I bought mine on NameCheap. .xyz domain names are dirt cheap. Like a few dollars a year.</p>\n<p>Next, you’ll have to link that domain name to your project in Cloudlfare. This was a little bit complicated for me, and it took just a tiny bit more time than the other steps. But you can figure it out in a couple of hours even with no technical background. One hour.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Voi La! You have a simple but shitty website.</b></p>\n<p>You literally have a website now. It cost you a few bucks and maybe a few hours.</p>\n<p>Now this architecture is extremely simple. It’s literally a folder you upload to Cloudlfare and that’s it. I think there are more complex ways to do it, but I’m a law student not an engineer, so I don’t bother. I don't use github or anything. I just drag the entire folder and redeploy the site when I want to update it.</p>\n<p>Also, with this method, the changes you make on one HTML file will not be represented on others. So, if on your INDEX page you change your website title, that won’t reflect on your blog post pages. If you change the hyperlink of your email on one page, it won’t do it on other pages. They’re all their own little HTML pages that don’t reference each other. You’ll have to use find and replace to make such identical changes on each page.</p>\n<p>The only unified thing you have is your CSS. A change you make on the CSS should reflect on all the pages, per the template I offered.</p>\n<p>So, if you have a very basic setup, like I do, it doesn’t matter. I don’t plan to change my menu, my footer, or my title, ever. If I want to make new sections of the website I’ll just have to add them to my index page.</p>\n<p>This architecture also gives you an idea of why the early internet looked how it did, and why navigating old websites was sometimes like navigating a maze. People would just build on top of what they had. Especially regular old people. Look at <a href=\"https://www.links.net\">links.net</a> for an example of how things get fucked up over time.</p>\n<p>But it’s charming. I don’t care. Yes, Wordpress and those interfaces avoid these issues. But I don’t want to use them. I want to do it myself. And maybe if I want a more sophisticated architecture I’ll just learn the coding skills to do it. I know there’s way to make it smoother with JavaScript, fetching other html pages, etc.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b>But why should I do it like this</b></p>\n<p>Why would you do it any other way? You want to use square or wix or something? Go ahead. You have chosen to be a cog in a larger machine. You can do it all yourself extremely simply. And elegantly. And tastefully.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.7.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.7.24.html",
      "title": "Never Asked Questions: Who I am and Why I do this",
      "date_published": "2024-10-07T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "No one asked these questions but the voices in my head. Luckily, there are answers.\n\n Who are you? \n\n“Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody told you it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied.“\n\n Who is Knox?\n\nPhilander Chase Knox (May 6, 1853 – October 12, 1921) was an American lawyer, bank director and politician. A member of the Republican Party, Knox served in the Cabinet of three different presidents and represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate.\n\nBorn in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Knox became a prominent attorney in Pittsburgh, forming the law firm of Knox and Reed. With the industrialists Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon, Knox also served as a director of the Pittsburgh National Bank of Commerce. In early 1901, he accepted appointment as United States Attorney General. Knox served under President William McKinley until McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, and Knox continued to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt until 1904, when he resigned to accept appointment to the Senate.\n\n Who is Phillip Notting?\n\nPhillip Notting is an unsuccessful twitter user (@KnxNts) who tweets nonsense into the void. Sometimes his girlfriend or his close friends or porno-bots like his tweets. It’s really a sad affair.\n\n Okay who made this weird website?\n\nMe, I’m knxnts. Knxnts is the author of Knoxnotes. This is my public notebook.\n\n Who IRL? \n\nIRL I’m RP. I live in Georgetown with my girlfriend and dog. I go law school in D.C. But I’m not from D.C. I have family roots in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and the South.\n\nBefore law school, I was a writer in several capacities. I majored in Philosophy in undergrad. I wrote a column for student newspaper. I’ve had blogs under my real identity which were worse but probably more polished, but with just as scant attention. However, I wrote for an organization in a professional capacity on some policy stuff, and that was probably the biggest audience I’ve had ever. But it was mostly boring wonky stuff. And I don’t do that anymore. I’m unemployed (a student).\n\n But why? \n\n“Why all the pearls? Why all the hair? Why anything?”\n\nAlso:\n\nReason 1\n\nReason 2\n\n No really? \n\nBecause now, all my professional writing will be for law. I do research and writing for a professor. I will do writing for a litigation team at a Big Law firm. I’m working on a student note on a cool topic. But it’s all law law law. If I ever do op-eds again it will probably be because I have a profile and credibility as a lawyer. And I have a lot of thoughts on all sorts of things. I like books and movies and art and I like getting in arguments about politics. But no one cares or will pay for those opinions. So what should I do, go fuck myself?\n\nWriting is thinking. I write things down all the time. In my notes app. In my journal. In emails. In letters. In the margins of my books.\n\nBut I was afraid that as writing and reading became my “job,” I would get worse at using it for general thinking. This actually happened to me when I was working before law school. There was a very specific corporate “tone” I had to use in that job, and I wrote in it so much that it was leaking into my personal thinking and writing.\n\nSo I need to write just for the fuck of it, to preserve my sovereignty. And putting it online, in a format I find amusing, will encourage me to do that. I can’t really do that under my real identity, because people sucks and the world is stupid. It also makes it possible that other people can benefit or my thoughts, or that I can spark an interesting conversation with strangers on the internet. Which is fun.\n\n But why is your writing so messy? \n\nNot every thought deserves the care it takes to communicate it perfectly. Sometimes you only realize your thoughts and arguments are underformed after writing them down. To quote a great man:\n\n“Just say it out loud to see how it feels. People say don't say this, don't say that. Just say it out loud, just to see how it feels Weigh all the options, nothing's off the table”\n\nIf I aimed for perfect, I would have less output, and at some level being a good writer and a good thinker is just a volume game. In being perfectionists, so many people choose to say nothing at all. There’s a lesson here. Writing shitty and a lot is better than writing very little very well.\n\nI think part of me actually learned this from my friend. He produces beats. He’s been doing it for years. He made a lot of mediocre beats, but he made them all the time. Eventually, he made some very good ones. And he’s now producing for some pretty impressive names—at least, impressive in some circles of the Hip Hop scene. I also learned this from a friend’s little brother, who ended up moving up in some VERY famous rap circles because he just kept doing random shit (producing, engineering work, photography) for rappers on the west coast and eventually it stuck. Sometimes you just gotta do shit. Five beats a day for three summers. My version of that is writing nonsense. And instead of becoming a superstar, I just want to be an okay thinker, so I can be more interesting friend and boyfriend, and maybe good at my job. I also have a lot of ideas for creative writing that I want to work up to, by just being in the habit of writing things in general.\n\nI know a lot of people who want to write more, who want to read more, who want mental space for frivolous pursuits like this. They don’t do it. I decided I would not be one of those people. A man does not live by bread alone.\n\nSee: Tweet by @Owenbroadcast\n\n Any inspirations? \n\nlinks.net I want to make the modern version of links.net.\n\n1215.org This website is also so crazy and I loved it so much. It has a wealth of knowledge and content but is also clearly run by someone with somewhat unorthodox legal views. I hope to have something as schizophrenic as this sit one day. I’m slowly working on it.\n\nFinally, I love marginalrevolution.com. I read it every day. It taught me that blogging is a great way to even just share links, start conversations, and to engage in more law stakes writing. I’m not perfect yet, but I aim for Cowen’s advice of writing EVERY DAY.\n\n How did you make this site? \n\nI wanted to make a website for a long time. But I was very hung up on getting all the logistics right, so I put it off for literal years. I wanted it look good and be perfect and get it all right! I’m also stupid and used to think I needed some service to “build” the website. I used to have a Wordpress site.\n\nIf you’re also like that, stop doing that. Making a website is fucking easy and no you don’t need square or Wordpress or Wix or templates or any of that bloat. Go back to basics. Use HTML. Minimize reliance on external parties.\n\nHere’s my post on the matter.\n\nBuilding a site like this",
      "content_html": "<p>No one asked these questions but the voices in my head. Luckily, there are answers.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Who are you? </b></p>\n<p>“Who am I? You sure you want to know? The story of my life is not for the faint of heart. If somebody told you it was a happy little tale, if somebody told you I was just your average ordinary guy, not a care in the world... somebody lied.“</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Who is Knox?</b></p>\n<p>Philander Chase Knox (May 6, 1853 – October 12, 1921) was an American lawyer, bank director and politician. A member of the Republican Party, Knox served in the Cabinet of three different presidents and represented Pennsylvania in the United States Senate.</p>\n<p>Born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania, Knox became a prominent attorney in Pittsburgh, forming the law firm of Knox and Reed. With the industrialists Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Mellon, Knox also served as a director of the Pittsburgh National Bank of Commerce. In early 1901, he accepted appointment as United States Attorney General. Knox served under President William McKinley until McKinley was assassinated in September 1901, and Knox continued to serve under President Theodore Roosevelt until 1904, when he resigned to accept appointment to the Senate.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Who is Phillip Notting?</b></p>\n<p>Phillip Notting is an unsuccessful twitter user (@KnxNts) who tweets nonsense into the void. Sometimes his girlfriend or his close friends or porno-bots like his tweets. It’s really a sad affair.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Okay who made this weird website?</b></p>\n<p>Me, I’m knxnts. Knxnts is the author of Knoxnotes. This is my public notebook.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Who IRL? </b></p>\n<p>IRL I’m RP. I live in Georgetown with my girlfriend and dog. I go law school in D.C. But I’m not from D.C. I have family roots in the Midwest, Pennsylvania, and the South.</p>\n<p>Before law school, I was a writer in several capacities. I majored in Philosophy in undergrad. I wrote a column for student newspaper. I’ve had blogs under my real identity which were worse but probably more polished, but with just as scant attention. However, I wrote for an organization in a professional capacity on some policy stuff, and that was probably the biggest audience I’ve had ever. But it was mostly boring wonky stuff. And I don’t do that anymore. I’m unemployed (a student).</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> But why? </b></p>\n<p>“Why all the pearls? Why all the hair? Why anything?”</p>\n<p>Also:</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24.html\">Reason 1</a></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24-2.html\">Reason 2</a></p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> No really? </b></p>\n<p>Because now, all my professional writing will be for law. I do research and writing for a professor. I will do writing for a litigation team at a Big Law firm. I’m working on a student note on a cool topic. But it’s all law law law. If I ever do op-eds again it will probably be because I have a profile and credibility as a lawyer. And I have a lot of thoughts on all sorts of things. I like books and movies and art and I like getting in arguments about politics. But no one cares or will pay for those opinions. So what should I do, go fuck myself?</p>\n<p>Writing is thinking. I write things down all the time. In my notes app. In my journal. In emails. In letters. In the margins of my books.</p>\n<p>But I was afraid that as writing and reading became my “job,” I would get worse at using it for general thinking. This actually happened to me when I was working before law school. There was a very specific corporate “tone” I had to use in that job, and I wrote in it so much that it was leaking into my personal thinking and writing.</p>\n<p>So I need to write just for the fuck of it, to preserve my sovereignty. And putting it online, in a format I find amusing, will encourage me to do that. I can’t really do that under my real identity, because people sucks and the world is stupid. It also makes it possible that other people can benefit or my thoughts, or that I can spark an interesting conversation with strangers on the internet. Which is fun.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> But why is your writing so messy? </b></p>\n<p>Not every thought deserves the care it takes to communicate it perfectly. Sometimes you only realize your thoughts and arguments are underformed after writing them down. To quote a great man:</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><i>“Just say it out loud to see how it feels. People say don't say this, don't say that. Just say it out loud, just to see how it feels Weigh all the options, nothing's off the table”</i></p>\n<p>If I aimed for perfect, I would have less output, and at some level being a good writer and a good thinker is just a volume game. In being perfectionists, so many people choose to say nothing at all. There’s a lesson here. Writing shitty and a lot is better than writing very little very well.</p>\n<p>I think part of me actually learned this from my friend. He produces beats. He’s been doing it for years. He made a lot of mediocre beats, but he made them all the time. Eventually, he made some very good ones. And he’s now producing for some pretty impressive names—at least, impressive in some circles of the Hip Hop scene. I also learned this from a friend’s little brother, who ended up moving up in some VERY famous rap circles because he just kept doing random shit (producing, engineering work, photography) for rappers on the west coast and eventually it stuck. Sometimes you just gotta do shit. Five beats a day for three summers. My version of that is writing nonsense. And instead of becoming a superstar, I just want to be an okay thinker, so I can be more interesting friend and boyfriend, and maybe good at my job. I also have a lot of ideas for creative writing that I want to work up to, by just being in the habit of writing things in general.</p>\n<p>I know a lot of people who want to write more, who want to read more, who want mental space for frivolous pursuits like this. They don’t do it. I decided I would not be one of those people. A man does not live by bread alone.</p>\n<p>See: <a href=\"https://x.com/owenbroadcast/status/1842315135995859213\">Tweet by @Owenbroadcast</a></p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Any inspirations? </b></p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/links.net\">links.net</a> I want to make the modern version of links.net.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://www.1215.org\">1215.org</a> This website is also so crazy and I loved it so much. It has a wealth of knowledge and content but is also clearly run by someone with somewhat unorthodox legal views. I hope to have something as schizophrenic as this sit one day. I’m slowly working on it.</p>\n<p>Finally, I love <a href=\"https://marginalrevolution.com\">marginalrevolution.com</a>. I read it every day. It taught me that blogging is a great way to even just share links, start conversations, and to engage in more law stakes writing. I’m not perfect yet, but I aim for Cowen’s advice of writing EVERY DAY.</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> How did you make this site? </b></p>\n<p>I wanted to make a website for a long time. But I was very hung up on getting all the logistics right, so I put it off for literal years. I wanted it look good and be perfect and get it all right! I’m also stupid and used to think I needed some service to “build” the website. I used to have a Wordpress site.</p>\n<p>If you’re also like that, stop doing that. Making a website is fucking easy and no you don’t need square or Wordpress or Wix or templates or any of that bloat. Go back to basics. Use HTML. Minimize reliance on external parties.</p>\n<p>Here’s my post on the matter.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.14.24.html\">Building a site like this</a></p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.5.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.5.24.html",
      "title": "Joker: Folie à Deux: A happy ending for Arthur and his shadow",
      "date_published": "2024-10-05T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I saw Joker last night. I fucking loved this movie. And I haven't read any reviews or discourse on it before coming to my opinions, because the entire conversation around the original Joker was so fucking stupid and I know its going to be even stupider around this one. I went in with very few preconceptions .\n\nSymbolically, the setup of the movie is very clear. It starts with a cartoon, the Joker in \"Me and My Shadow.\" Arthur/The Joker and his Shadow fight for control, at times seeming to act in concert, but but its clear that its this shadow which wants the spotlight. By the end of the movie, I think it's obvious that this ties directly to the Jungian \"shadow.\"\n\n The Wikipedia definition of shadow: In analytical psychology, the shadow (also known as ego-dystonic complex, repressed id, shadow aspect, or shadow archetype) is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.\n\nThe shadow can be thought of as the blind spot of the psyche.[6] The repression of one's id, while maladaptive, prevents shadow integration, the union of id and ego.[7][8] While they are regarded as differing on their theories of the function of repression of id in civilization, Freud and Jung coalesced at Platonism, wherein id rejects the nomos.[clarification needed][9] Persona is contrasted against the shadow.[10] Jung regarded the shadow as unconscious – id and biography – suppressed under the superego's ego-ideal, the way the superego wants to be.[11] The shadow is projected onto one's social environment as cognitive distortions.[12]\n\n--\n\nI think the analaogy is obvious, right? The Joker is Arthur's shadow——No, actually, more accurately, the Joker is this fantasy/cognitive distortion that emerges from Arthur's incapability to integrate these repressed parts of himself/deal with trauma. The Joker is the fantasy, not the shadow itself. (I took Psych a while back, I know that I'm not using the shadow concept perfectly, since the shadow can be thought of as a function of repressing the id, but I don't want to get into id/ego/supereg it just becomes a bit much).\n\nThe rest of the movie continues the Cartoon's battle between Arthur and his shadow. The two female characters, the defense lawyer and \"Lee,\" tug Arthur in opposing, but it seems equally maladaptive——form a psychoanalytic perspective——directions.\n\nThe defense lawyer, who I really see as a Nurse Ratched type figure, as far as her role in this psychological drama, wants Arthur to completely reject his shadow, to pathologize it. In that sense, she's a reflection of the modern day impulse to medicalize, pathologize, or otherize your undesirable features (You're not lazy, you're \"depressed.\" You're not finnicky, you have a \"sensory disorder.\" You're not disorganized, you have \"ADHD.\" You're not a bad partner, you have \"borderline personality disorder.\")\n\nBecause he lives in a SOCIETY, Arthur's only path to \"freedom\" (if we can call it that) is to completely reject that part of himself, the part of himself that——even thought it was BAD——was the first to assert some kind of control and take back agency from a world that constantly fucked him. He had to make himself small and pathetic again, a victim, in order to receive society's lenience. To identify with his trauma entirely, and reject any adaptive qualities that his shadow may have offered. In a sense, he was faced with a faustian bargain. And wasn't the denial of the shadow what created the Joker in the first place?\n\nIt really is a stark setup, reject your shadow entirely or be damned to the electric chair. I kept thinking about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and about how this movie also has a lot to say about SOCIETY today. The themes all just feel so timely in our therapy culture. Today too, you can escape condemntation by society if you deny or shadow and just pathologize yourself, and promise to work on it. Go to therapy, take your meds. \"Do the work.\" In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randall P. McMurphy is lobotomized for refusing to submit to this. Here, Arthur also refuses to submit to it, but I don't think he has such a bad fate .\n\nBefore he gets to that happy ending, he does take a sharp turn in the opposite and equally maladaptive direction. In that scene where Zazie Beets is talking about Arthur's mom made fun of him behind his back, and his own defense is trying to make an extremely pathetic, but sympathetic account of him emerge, we see him doodling the Joker to drown it out, quivering, until he erupts, exclaiming I can't take it anymore! After trying to repress his shadow, the Joker emerges, he rises up and says he's going to defend himself pro-se, the crowd applauds. He's reclaimed agency.\n\nAnd its Lee (Harley Quinn I guess), and all of his adoring fans (which I guess is a meta commentary on all the perceived weirdos who liked the first Joker movie; I don't buy this conception that there's some incel army who mistinterpreted the first Joker. I think he just became a meme and people don't really care about what the movie actually MEANT in a meme context. I mean look at the Patrick Bateman memes. I hate the conversation about conversations taht aren't actually happening. People have lost their minds), that wants him to take this route. They want to see the Joker! In a sense, they want Arhur to keep repressing his Shadow, but in a different way———by completley submitting to the fantasy that emerges from that repression. That was the ending of Joker 1, it seems.\n\nSo while Lee and the Defense Lawyer may be pulling Arthur in supposedly opposite direction, both directions means that his soul will be damned. And spoiler alert, he gets sexually assaulted which destroys his fantasy, and his ability to repress his trauma any longer. It becomes clear to Arthur that he can't be this heroic Joker. He's still that scared, abused kid. But in accepting that, he doesn't fully go for what his defense lawyer wanted——that he's a victim doesn't exculpate him from the acts of \"Joker,\" he can't separate the two. He's the victim, but also the victimizer. He is still the man who murdered those people.\n\nWhat happens at the end, with his closing statement, is that he refuses both the defense lawyer or Lee's routes. He takes back control——in part by accepting accountability——but not my submitting to the fantasy. By accepting that it was HIM who was capable of these things. But also by accepting that he's a scared, and sad person. And the truth is he wishes that none of this ever happened and that his life could be better. It's a beautiful, heartfelt scene. To people rooting for him to embrace the fantasy, this seems like a pathetic ending. But from a Jungian perspective (yes, a very pretentious way to begin a sentence), isn't this the happy ending for his spirit?  Arthur integrates his shadow! .\n\nAnd note, as promised, SOCIETY damns him for this. For telling the truth. The people rooting for his fantasy damn him. His \"love\" who fell in love with the fantasy rejects him. The state condemns him to death, because he's not this sympathetic sad sack with a split personality. And of course he gets murdered at the end (by someone I guess is supposed to be the \"real\" Joker down the line? Amusing easter egg, if you're into that sort of thing. I really do not give a fuck, and at this big age I really have contempt for comic book movies, and I respect Todd Phillips for what seems to be even greater contempt for its fanbase. He knows if he slaps IP labels and adds in some references and names he can basically do anything the hell he wants——and here he wanted to make an actual good movie). But regardless of all this, doesn't his SOUL get saved? I think it was.\n\nNow, that's how I see the STRUCTURE of the film. And I really loved it. It was fascinating to watch every second. I loved the \"message.\" I liked the setup, it actually reminded me of the Seinfeld finale (courtroom setting where protagonists have to answer for their sins, you get to see the familiar faces come up to the stand one by one; good setup for this sort of psychodrama. Also the scene with Gary was funny at first, but ended up being really touching and sad. It could have been played only for laughs, but it actually really made you feel the weight of Artur's actions. You could see Arthur felt BAD, and you can see the glimmers of healing begin as his eyes water and betray some remorse for scaring someone he considered his friend). I love how it resolved Arthur's character arc and the tensions and ambiguities introduced in the first film. I think this movie has better rewatch movie than the first. And I think the first movie FELT like a happy ending, but was really just Arthur falling into delusion. The second movie FELT like a sad ending, but really was a redemption of his soul. In that sense, the movies' endings are inverses of one another, and I really love when sequels do that (a great example I'll have to commit to writing one day is how Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 are inverse of eachother thematically, much like the Old and New testament, and that's why Spider-Man 2 is probably the best sequel and best superhero movie of all time).\n\nBefore I get to the music, I should remark I'm probably in a somewhat rare intersection of two categories:\n\na) sufficiently \"bro-y\" to appreciate 4Chan tier humor and was super excited when Joker 1 came out, probably the kind of person all those hoity toity op-ed writers in 2019 were upset about. I unapologetically loved Joker for both the \"right\" and \"wrong\" reasons;\n\nb) I'm also kind of gay and I love musicals (I did theater arts and live performance for much of my life) and classic cinema.\n\nI read somewhere that Joker 2 was meant to be a fuck you to people who liked Joker 1 too much. Well fuck YOU because I really liked BOTH!\n\nAlso, I watched Joker 1 as an edgy single 19 year old who lived with five other dudes. I got to watch Joker 2 at 25 with my lovely girlfriend, and as a law student! So the differences in the movies, their themes, and the audience they're meant to resonate with have also have matched up very well with my life path.\n\nAnyways, the music. I loved the music. I love musicals. The audience at my theater in Georgetown were having a lot of fun with it. We were all laughing and applauding after the musical numbers. It was all ridiculous in a very fun way. If you don't like musicals, I honestly hold you a slightly lower estimation. It's a beautiful art form but unfortunately a bit too saccharine and sincere for a population fed a steady diet of snark, irony, and Netflix originals. Go watch the Office or something.\n\nThat was a little mean way to end a paragraph. But I stand by it. I'm tired of culture being dragged down by people who want schlop. This was an EXCEPTIONAL movie. I'll end by saying Bravo to Todd Phillips. This was an amazing film. It was the best movie I've seen this year. Thank you Todd Phillips.\n\nAlso, I really liked hearing Joaquin's rendition of Daniel Johnston's \"True Love Will Find You in the End\" during the credits. It was a very sweet way to close out the movie. Also, if you know Johnston's long struggled with mental illness (a friend had told me about it in high school, I looked it up after this movie when I heard his song), specifically his struggles with \"demonic self-obsession\", it clearly was very intentional. I think it suggests that, like Johnston, Arthur Fleck was a man with a lot of problems, but maybe even HE was a beautiful, musical soul deep down.\n\nI don't rate movies. But My girlfriend gave this 5/10 stars. I give it 17/10. Magnificent!\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I saw Joker last night. I fucking loved this movie. And I haven't read any reviews or discourse on it before coming to my opinions, because the entire conversation around the original Joker was so fucking stupid and I know its going to be even stupider around this one. I went in with very few preconceptions .</p>\n<p>Symbolically, the setup of the movie is very clear. It starts with a cartoon, the Joker in \"Me and My Shadow.\" Arthur/The Joker and his Shadow fight for control, at times seeming to act in concert, but but its clear that its this shadow which wants the spotlight. By the end of the movie, I think it's obvious that this ties directly to the Jungian \"shadow.\"</p>\n<p><b> The Wikipedia definition of shadow: </b>In analytical psychology, the shadow (also known as ego-dystonic complex, repressed id, shadow aspect, or shadow archetype) is an unconscious aspect of the personality that does not correspond with the ego ideal, leading the ego to resist and project the shadow, creating conflict with it. The shadow may be personified as archetypes which relate to the collective unconscious, such as the trickster.</p>\n<p>The shadow can be thought of as the blind spot of the psyche.[6] The repression of one's id, while maladaptive, prevents shadow integration, the union of id and ego.[7][8] While they are regarded as differing on their theories of the function of repression of id in civilization, Freud and Jung coalesced at Platonism, wherein id rejects the nomos.[clarification needed][9] Persona is contrasted against the shadow.[10] Jung regarded the shadow as unconscious – id and biography – suppressed under the superego's ego-ideal, the way the superego wants to be.[11] The shadow is projected onto one's social environment as cognitive distortions.[12]</p>\n<p>--</p>\n<p>I think the analaogy is obvious, right? The Joker is Arthur's shadow——No, actually, more accurately, the Joker is this fantasy/cognitive distortion that emerges from Arthur's incapability to integrate these repressed parts of himself/deal with trauma. The Joker is the fantasy, not the shadow itself. (I took Psych a while back, I know that I'm not using the shadow concept perfectly, since the shadow can be thought of as a function of repressing the id, but I don't want to get into id/ego/supereg it just becomes a bit much).</p>\n<p>The rest of the movie continues the Cartoon's battle between Arthur and his shadow. The two female characters, the defense lawyer and \"Lee,\" tug Arthur in opposing, but it seems equally maladaptive——form a psychoanalytic perspective——directions.</p>\n<p>The defense lawyer, who I really see as a Nurse Ratched type figure, as far as her role in this psychological drama, wants Arthur to completely reject his shadow, to pathologize it. In that sense, she's a reflection of the modern day impulse to medicalize, pathologize, or otherize your undesirable features (You're not lazy, you're \"depressed.\" You're not finnicky, you have a \"sensory disorder.\" You're not disorganized, you have \"ADHD.\" You're not a bad partner, you have \"borderline personality disorder.\")</p>\n<p>Because he lives in a SOCIETY, Arthur's only path to \"freedom\" (if we can call it that) is to completely reject that part of himself, the part of himself that——even thought it was BAD——was the first to assert some kind of control and take back agency from a world that constantly fucked him. He had to make himself small and pathetic again, a victim, in order to receive society's lenience. To identify with his trauma entirely, and reject any adaptive qualities that his shadow may have offered. In a sense, he was faced with a faustian bargain. And wasn't the denial of the shadow what created the Joker in the first place?</p>\n<p>It really is a stark setup, reject your shadow entirely or be damned to the electric chair. I kept thinking about One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, and about how this movie also has a lot to say about SOCIETY today. The themes all just feel so timely in our therapy culture. Today too, you can escape condemntation by society if you deny or shadow and just pathologize yourself, and promise to work on it. Go to therapy, take your meds. \"Do the work.\" In One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Randall P. McMurphy is lobotomized for refusing to submit to this. Here, Arthur also refuses to submit to it, but I don't think he has such a bad fate .</p>\n<p>Before he gets to that happy ending, he does take a sharp turn in the opposite and equally maladaptive direction. In that scene where Zazie Beets is talking about Arthur's mom made fun of him behind his back, and his own defense is trying to make an extremely pathetic, but sympathetic account of him emerge, we see him doodling the Joker to drown it out, quivering, until he erupts, exclaiming I can't take it anymore! After trying to repress his shadow, the Joker emerges, he rises up and says he's going to defend himself pro-se, the crowd applauds. He's reclaimed agency.</p>\n<p>And its Lee (Harley Quinn I guess), and all of his adoring fans (which I guess is a meta commentary on all the perceived weirdos who liked the first Joker movie; I don't buy this conception that there's some incel army who mistinterpreted the first Joker. I think he just became a meme and people don't really care about what the movie actually MEANT in a meme context. I mean look at the Patrick Bateman memes. I hate the conversation about conversations taht aren't actually happening. People have lost their minds), that wants him to take this route. They want to see the Joker! In a sense, they want Arhur to keep repressing his Shadow, but in a different way———by completley submitting to the fantasy that emerges from that repression. That was the ending of Joker 1, it seems.</p>\n<p>So while Lee and the Defense Lawyer may be pulling Arthur in supposedly opposite direction, both directions means that his soul will be damned. And spoiler alert, he gets sexually assaulted which destroys his fantasy, and his ability to repress his trauma any longer. It becomes clear to Arthur that he can't be this heroic Joker. He's still that scared, abused kid. But in accepting that, he doesn't fully go for what his defense lawyer wanted——that he's a victim doesn't exculpate him from the acts of \"Joker,\" he can't separate the two. He's the victim, but also the victimizer. He is still the man who murdered those people.</p>\n<p>What happens at the end, with his closing statement, is that he refuses both the defense lawyer or Lee's routes. He takes back control——in part by accepting accountability——but not my submitting to the fantasy. By accepting that it was HIM who was capable of these things. But also by accepting that he's a scared, and sad person. And the truth is he wishes that none of this ever happened and that his life could be better. It's a beautiful, heartfelt scene. To people rooting for him to embrace the fantasy, this seems like a pathetic ending. But from a Jungian perspective (yes, a very pretentious way to begin a sentence), isn't this the happy ending for his spirit? <b> Arthur integrates his shadow! </b>.</p>\n<p>And note, as promised, SOCIETY damns him for this. For telling the truth. The people rooting for his fantasy damn him. His \"love\" who fell in love with the fantasy rejects him. The state condemns him to death, because he's not this sympathetic sad sack with a split personality. And of course he gets murdered at the end (by someone I guess is supposed to be the \"real\" Joker down the line? Amusing easter egg, if you're into that sort of thing. I really do not give a fuck, and at this big age I really have contempt for comic book movies, and I respect Todd Phillips for what seems to be even greater contempt for its fanbase. He knows if he slaps IP labels and adds in some references and names he can basically do anything the hell he wants——and here he wanted to make an actual good movie). But regardless of all this, doesn't his SOUL get saved? I think it was.</p>\n<p>Now, that's how I see the STRUCTURE of the film. And I really loved it. It was fascinating to watch every second. I loved the \"message.\" I liked the setup, it actually reminded me of the Seinfeld finale (courtroom setting where protagonists have to answer for their sins, you get to see the familiar faces come up to the stand one by one; good setup for this sort of psychodrama. Also the scene with Gary was funny at first, but ended up being really touching and sad. It could have been played only for laughs, but it actually really made you feel the weight of Artur's actions. You could see Arthur felt BAD, and you can see the glimmers of healing begin as his eyes water and betray some remorse for scaring someone he considered his friend). I love how it resolved Arthur's character arc and the tensions and ambiguities introduced in the first film. I think this movie has better rewatch movie than the first. And I think the first movie FELT like a happy ending, but was really just Arthur falling into delusion. The second movie FELT like a sad ending, but really was a redemption of his soul. In that sense, the movies' endings are inverses of one another, and I really love when sequels do that (a great example I'll have to commit to writing one day is how Spider-Man 1 and Spider-Man 2 are inverse of eachother thematically, much like the Old and New testament, and that's why Spider-Man 2 is probably the best sequel and best superhero movie of all time).</p>\n<p>Before I get to the music, I should remark I'm probably in a somewhat rare intersection of two categories:</p>\n<p>a) sufficiently \"bro-y\" to appreciate 4Chan tier humor and was super excited when Joker 1 came out, probably the kind of person all those hoity toity op-ed writers in 2019 were upset about. I unapologetically loved Joker for both the \"right\" and \"wrong\" reasons;</p>\n<p>b) I'm also kind of gay and I love musicals (I did theater arts and live performance for much of my life) and classic cinema.</p>\n<p>I read somewhere that Joker 2 was meant to be a fuck you to people who liked Joker 1 too much. Well fuck YOU because I really liked BOTH!</p>\n<p>Also, I watched Joker 1 as an edgy single 19 year old who lived with five other dudes. I got to watch Joker 2 at 25 with my lovely girlfriend, and as a law student! So the differences in the movies, their themes, and the audience they're meant to resonate with have also have matched up very well with my life path.</p>\n<p>Anyways, the music. I loved the music. I love musicals. The audience at my theater in Georgetown were having a lot of fun with it. We were all laughing and applauding after the musical numbers. It was all ridiculous in a very fun way. If you don't like musicals, I honestly hold you a slightly lower estimation. It's a beautiful art form but unfortunately a bit too saccharine and sincere for a population fed a steady diet of snark, irony, and Netflix originals. Go watch the Office or something.</p>\n<p>That was a little mean way to end a paragraph. But I stand by it. I'm tired of culture being dragged down by people who want schlop. This was an EXCEPTIONAL movie. I'll end by saying Bravo to Todd Phillips. This was an amazing film. It was the best movie I've seen this year. Thank you Todd Phillips.</p>\n<p>Also, I really liked hearing Joaquin's rendition of Daniel Johnston's \"True Love Will Find You in the End\" during the credits. It was a very sweet way to close out the movie. Also, if you know Johnston's long struggled with mental illness (a friend had told me about it in high school, I looked it up after this movie when I heard his song), specifically his struggles with \"demonic self-obsession\", it clearly was very intentional. I think it suggests that, like Johnston, Arthur Fleck was a man with a lot of problems, but maybe even HE was a beautiful, musical soul deep down.</p>\n<p>I don't rate movies. But My girlfriend gave this 5/10 stars. I give it 17/10. Magnificent!</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.1.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-10.1.24.html",
      "title": "Megalopolis review: a movie about the Chrysler building",
      "date_published": "2024-10-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "No people don’t talk like that but is a world where they did really that implausible? Isn’t the way we all talk and write really what’s strange?\n\nA world where the elite of society walk around quoting Marcus Aurelius and have really on the nose philosophical debates about history, the state, civilization——doesn’t that make more sense than what’s going on right now? If you only described our world and the current problems in first principles to an alien, wouldn’t they expect at least the people in charge to talk like this?\n\nA world where like Elon Musk and a State Governor get into verbal duels over a passion project that could revitalize/ruin a city in front of an audience of socialites——again would that really be that weird?\n\nIn a sense, this movie is “hyperreal.” It’s a dramatization of the sort of debates that really happen in society today. But it’s not subtle at all. It’s refreshingly not subtle, not couched in layers of reference, irony, group signaling, proxies for other ideas——the characters all directly address their beliefs, motivations, and plans. I’ve heard the acting described as wooden, bad, of bizarre. To me, it really feels evocative of what was going on Star Wars Episode II and III. The dialogue is memorable. It’s really on the nose. It’s heavily stylized. It’s like watching a play or something. It was charming and fascinating to listen to.\n\nHonestly, I was pretty twisted watching this movie, so maybe my perceptions were just off, but I never felt like the way people talked or acted was THAT weird.\n\nMy friend described it as a “movie from the SyFy channel.” I understand where he’s coming from, in that I had this sort of weird vibe——that could be construed as either hyper-cinematic or circling all the way back to anti-cinematic, the way TV movies feel. It’s wobbling on the threshold between those two.\n\nBut what this movie really made me think of was a Tim Burton film like Edward Scissorhands, or the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas movie. It’s like those movies not in their style, but in the sense that it builds a very strange world, where people look and talk strange, and you kind of just take it at face value. Yes, I guess the Whos talk like that and this is what their community is like. That’s all fine, I’m going to watch the movie. In that sense, it also has a Spy Kids 3 vibe. Or shades of Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. This is not a naturalistic world. This is a fantasy world. Just not a kind that has been tried on screen before.\n\nI’m also noticing that the movies I mentioned so far have some visual elements in common with this movie. This movie has that early 2000s CG glitzy look, but not in a bad way really. Kinda how King Kong (2005) felt (but with far lower production value). Really Baz Luhrman’s Great Gatsby is actually very close to the CGI employment here. There was this era of movies where there was a very specific level of CG rendering, and the environments were very CGI, and it just had this really uncanny look to it. It looks like that. In that way, the movie is dated, almost in the way Venom felt like a movie right out of 2007.\n\nThe set design, which I thought was interesting——seemed to have some really nice mixes of Art Deco, Rome, and Jetsons futurism——does sometimes just look a bit cheap. That’s really my only complaint, is that for a glittering metropolis, things don’t feel expensive. I don’t know if the budget was a lot.\n\nBut if you look at it like a play, which I did, it looks good. When you watch even an expensive broadway show, it all looks phony, it’s not supposed to look real, it’s just meant to tell a story. And it does that effectively. The original Star Trek had really shitty production value and those are some of the best stories I’ve seen on screen.\n\nAs far as the themes, I’m getting really strong Incredibles, Ayn Rand, somewhat reactionary vibes from this movie. The politics of it seem pretty on the nose, and I won’t endorse them or refute them, but it is interesting. Here are some loose thoughts:\n\n- It’s clear that Giancarlo Esposito or “state” in this movie is meant to reflect a conservative, but also left of center inclination towards material security, just keeping things running, keeping it the way it is\n\n- Adam Driver is obviously a stand in for the artistic impulse and the visionary industrialist——overall what I’ll call the aspirational “civilizational” impulse, which stands at add with the technocratic, manager impulse of Giancarlo. The motivation to make the world beautiful, to build something to last, and to be a bit detached to the maintenance of the status quo and helping of ordinary people.\n\n- Sometimes this aesthetic or civilizational impulse in politics has been associated with totalitarianism, think about Hitler, Mao——in this movie it’s identified with the private sector. So very Ayn Rand vibes.\n\n- This movie suggests the destruction of the old is necessary to build what we were meant to——even if people have to die.\n\n- Shia Lebouf was obviously a very very critical depiction of the intersection between elite decadence and their embrace of populism. He’s literally a perverted crossdressing downwardly mobile failson who embraces fascist/leftist politics to build his own base of power, explicitly targeting immigrants and the dispossessed.\n\n- Aubrey Plaza, is an old timey caricature of the media, the media being a literal whore for power\n\n- Nathalie Emmanuel, well she’s a good character right? Really a character that seems to be unambiguously good. She’s a bridge between then old guard and the future, literally. I don’t know how to theorize her character that well.\n\n- There’s a synthesis at the end, with the old guard giving way to the civilizational impulse, letting progress happen\n\nReally, there’s a YouTube video essay that probably breaks it all down better, and I just want to get my thoughts down more than anything. But its clear that, as far as politics, this is a very “topical” movie about progress, the relationship between the private and public sector, the civilizational impulse versus the needs of “people.” It suggests that exceptional people, even flawed ones, wrapped up in their own egos and visions, aren't evil——maybe the people holding them back are. I enjoyed it. I was never bored. It made me want to go home and read history.\n\nWhat more can you ask for in a movie?\n\nFinally, when I was smacked watching this movie, I had a loose thought that this movie seems to be about the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler building is a character in this movie, it keep showing up over and over again. It’s deliberately framed in shots to be like a character in the city.\n\nI was doing an informational interview of sorts at a law firm building in Manhattan, and it had a tremendous view of the Chrysler Building. I was looking at it with the partner talking to me and I mentioned to her that the Chrysler Building always looked super out of place, like they built it thinking it was going to be the first of many buildings in that style. It felt like it was supposed to kick off the future.\n\nThe Empire State Building doesn’t look out of place in this way. It’s certainly stands out, but it definitely feels like the world around it sort of picked up its vibe. Not the Chrysler building. And fwiw, the Empire State Building is not featured in this way, it’s always sort of out of focus and unimportant.\n\nWhat this movie feels like is the world that the people who built the Chrysler building probably imagined developing. It’s a future they could have imagined. It’s an abandoned timeline.\n\nMy analogies are sometimes stretched, but this is similar to the way I have a separate world in my mind for a timeline where Kanye dropped Yandhi. That world would have different music, different clothes, it would have had different aesthetics altogether——Kanye/hip hop really drive big factions of culture. The Yandhi snippet/teaser that dropped——with that original version of Hurricane that was a lot more autotuney and experimental——was a glimpse into a timeline that just never materialized. That’s what the Chrysler Building is, architecturally.\n\nAnd this movie decided to depict that timeline. A timeline with where technological progress continued to be physical, not digital——no smartphones in sigh (because smartphones aren’t cinematic. We don’t like how we look using them. So we don’t like depicting ourselves using them. We have a deep shame about how we look at screens. Much to think about). Where decadence and fashion built out from the patterns of the 1920s. A world where it seems like the sexual revolution of the 1960s never happened and gender relations remained fundamentally patriarchal (women in this movie all basically play the kind of roles you’d see in an old movie, they’re conduits for the relations between the male characters, channels for power). A world where we actually conceived ourselves as an American colossus, an inheritor of Rome and western civilization.\n\nIt was good. While the world of the movie is not the world any of us would like to live in (I think), it is a movie that reminds you that a better world is possible——at a cost.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>No people don’t talk like that but is a world where they did really that implausible? Isn’t the way we all talk and write really what’s strange?</p>\n<p>A world where the elite of society walk around quoting Marcus Aurelius and have really on the nose philosophical debates about history, the state, civilization——doesn’t that make more sense than what’s going on right now? If you only described our world and the current problems in first principles to an alien, wouldn’t they expect at least the people in charge to talk like this?</p>\n<p>A world where like Elon Musk and a State Governor get into verbal duels over a passion project that could revitalize/ruin a city in front of an audience of socialites——again would that really be that weird?</p>\n<p>In a sense, this movie is “hyperreal.” It’s a dramatization of the sort of debates that really happen in society today. But it’s not subtle at all. It’s refreshingly not subtle, not couched in layers of reference, irony, group signaling, proxies for other ideas——the characters all directly address their beliefs, motivations, and plans. I’ve heard the acting described as wooden, bad, of bizarre. To me, it really feels evocative of what was going on Star Wars Episode II and III. The dialogue is memorable. It’s really on the nose. It’s heavily stylized. It’s like watching a play or something. It was charming and fascinating to listen to.</p>\n<p>Honestly, I was pretty twisted watching this movie, so maybe my perceptions were just off, but I never felt like the way people talked or acted was THAT weird.</p>\n<p>My friend described it as a “movie from the SyFy channel.” I understand where he’s coming from, in that I had this sort of weird vibe——that could be construed as either hyper-cinematic or circling all the way back to anti-cinematic, the way TV movies feel. It’s wobbling on the threshold between those two.</p>\n<p>But what this movie really made me think of was a Tim Burton film like Edward Scissorhands, or the live action How the Grinch Stole Christmas movie. It’s like those movies not in their style, but in the sense that it builds a very strange world, where people look and talk strange, and you kind of just take it at face value. Yes, I guess the Whos talk like that and this is what their community is like. That’s all fine, I’m going to watch the movie. In that sense, it also has a Spy Kids 3 vibe. Or shades of Baz Luhrman’s The Great Gatsby. This is not a naturalistic world. This is a fantasy world. Just not a kind that has been tried on screen before.</p>\n<p>I’m also noticing that the movies I mentioned so far have some visual elements in common with this movie. This movie has that early 2000s CG glitzy look, but not in a bad way really. Kinda how King Kong (2005) felt (but with far lower production value). Really Baz Luhrman’s Great Gatsby is actually very close to the CGI employment here. There was this era of movies where there was a very specific level of CG rendering, and the environments were very CGI, and it just had this really uncanny look to it. It looks like that. In that way, the movie is dated, almost in the way Venom felt like a movie right out of 2007.</p>\n<p>The set design, which I thought was interesting——seemed to have some really nice mixes of Art Deco, Rome, and Jetsons futurism——does sometimes just look a bit cheap. That’s really my only complaint, is that for a glittering metropolis, things don’t feel expensive. I don’t know if the budget was a lot.</p>\n<p>But if you look at it like a play, which I did, it looks good. When you watch even an expensive broadway show, it all looks phony, it’s not supposed to look real, it’s just meant to tell a story. And it does that effectively. The original Star Trek had really shitty production value and those are some of the best stories I’ve seen on screen.</p>\n<p>As far as the themes, I’m getting really strong Incredibles, Ayn Rand, somewhat reactionary vibes from this movie. The politics of it seem pretty on the nose, and I won’t endorse them or refute them, but it is interesting. Here are some loose thoughts:</p>\n<p>- It’s clear that Giancarlo Esposito or “state” in this movie is meant to reflect a conservative, but also left of center inclination towards material security, just keeping things running, keeping it the way it is</p>\n<p>- Adam Driver is obviously a stand in for the artistic impulse and the visionary industrialist——overall what I’ll call the aspirational “civilizational” impulse, which stands at add with the technocratic, manager impulse of Giancarlo. The motivation to make the world beautiful, to build something to last, and to be a bit detached to the maintenance of the status quo and helping of ordinary people.</p>\n<p>- Sometimes this aesthetic or civilizational impulse in politics has been associated with totalitarianism, think about Hitler, Mao——in this movie it’s identified with the private sector. So very Ayn Rand vibes.</p>\n<p>- This movie suggests the destruction of the old is necessary to build what we were meant to——even if people have to die.</p>\n<p>- Shia Lebouf was obviously a very very critical depiction of the intersection between elite decadence and their embrace of populism. He’s literally a perverted crossdressing downwardly mobile failson who embraces fascist/leftist politics to build his own base of power, explicitly targeting immigrants and the dispossessed.</p>\n<p>- Aubrey Plaza, is an old timey caricature of the media, the media being a literal whore for power</p>\n<p>- Nathalie Emmanuel, well she’s a good character right? Really a character that seems to be unambiguously good. She’s a bridge between then old guard and the future, literally. I don’t know how to theorize her character that well.</p>\n<p>- There’s a synthesis at the end, with the old guard giving way to the civilizational impulse, letting progress happen</p>\n<p>Really, there’s a YouTube video essay that probably breaks it all down better, and I just want to get my thoughts down more than anything. But its clear that, as far as politics, this is a very “topical” movie about progress, the relationship between the private and public sector, the civilizational impulse versus the needs of “people.” It suggests that exceptional people, even flawed ones, wrapped up in their own egos and visions, aren't evil——maybe the people holding them back are. I enjoyed it. I was never bored. It made me want to go home and read history.</p>\n<p>What more can you ask for in a movie?</p>\n<p>Finally, when I was smacked watching this movie, I had a loose thought that this movie seems to be about the Chrysler Building. The Chrysler building is a character in this movie, it keep showing up over and over again. It’s deliberately framed in shots to be like a character in the city.</p>\n<p>I was doing an informational interview of sorts at a law firm building in Manhattan, and it had a tremendous view of the Chrysler Building. I was looking at it with the partner talking to me and I mentioned to her that the Chrysler Building always looked super out of place, like they built it thinking it was going to be the first of many buildings in that style. It felt like it was supposed to kick off the future.</p>\n<p>The Empire State Building doesn’t look out of place in this way. It’s certainly stands out, but it definitely feels like the world around it sort of picked up its vibe. Not the Chrysler building. And fwiw, the Empire State Building is not featured in this way, it’s always sort of out of focus and unimportant.</p>\n<p>What this movie feels like is the world that the people who built the Chrysler building probably imagined developing. It’s a future they could have imagined. It’s an abandoned timeline.</p>\n<p>My analogies are sometimes stretched, but this is similar to the way I have a separate world in my mind for a timeline where Kanye dropped Yandhi. That world would have different music, different clothes, it would have had different aesthetics altogether——Kanye/hip hop really drive big factions of culture. The Yandhi snippet/teaser that dropped——with that original version of Hurricane that was a lot more autotuney and experimental——was a glimpse into a timeline that just never materialized. That’s what the Chrysler Building is, architecturally.</p>\n<p>And this movie decided to depict that timeline. A timeline with where technological progress continued to be physical, not digital——no smartphones in sigh (because smartphones aren’t cinematic. We don’t like how we look using them. So we don’t like depicting ourselves using them. We have a deep shame about how we look at screens. Much to think about). Where decadence and fashion built out from the patterns of the 1920s. A world where it seems like the sexual revolution of the 1960s never happened and gender relations remained fundamentally patriarchal (women in this movie all basically play the kind of roles you’d see in an old movie, they’re conduits for the relations between the male characters, channels for power). A world where we actually conceived ourselves as an American colossus, an inheritor of Rome and western civilization.</p>\n<p>It was good. While the world of the movie is not the world any of us would like to live in (I think), it is a movie that reminds you that a better world is possible——at a cost.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.27.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.27.24.html",
      "title": "Personal Jurisdiction pt. 1",
      "date_published": "2024-09-27T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "//I wrote elements of this while taking the course, but have gotten it together into a lecture format to help me tutor Civ Pro. I thought I would share it here because I like it . . .//\n\n Personal Jurisdiction: A Big Picture Overview \n\nLet’s take a big step back. Now to be clear, this isn’t stuff that you necessarily need on the exam, but I feel like context is helpful when you’re spending so much time in the weeds of doctrine. It’s good to take a moment to appreciate the big picture, because sometimes it makes everything clearer.\n\nSo, What’s going on here exactly? What’s the problem in all of these cases? What are you being taught? What is the central issue that this whole body of law deals with?\n\nLet’s take a step back to see the forest through the trees.\n\nOkay, so this is all about jurisdiction, right? Specifically, right now, we’re talking about the jurisdiction of American states.\n\nWhat is jurisdiction? It’s the power to adjudicate a dispute. Where do states get that power? Well think about the country before the Constitution for a moment. States are like countries. Where does any country get its power to adjudicate disputes between citizens?\n\nIt’s sort of presumed, right? Yes, we have the whole concept of Constitutions now. But really, jurisdiction is really tied with sovereignty, which in turn is a result of the monopoly on violence. States just have jurisdiction as a default. That’s the whole point of government. So to conclude on this point, states traditionally have an automatic, latent jurisdiction over their citizens. Very similar to their general “police powers,” which predate the Constitution.\n\nNow lets think about the Union, and how things can become a little more complex and formal after the Constitution. So after the Constitution, you have a federal government, made up of states. Since that federal government is created by sovereign entities, its power, and its jurisdiction, are more enumerated, not latent, at least in theory.\n\n(So we’re going to quickly take an aside and skip ahead to topics outside of personal jurisdiction, specifically subject matter jurisdiction but I think it will be helpful to see the forest through the trees).\n\nThe Federal Government, and its Courts, draw its jurisdiction exclusively from the Constitution (or maybe its nature as a sovereign on the world stage, with respect to jurisdiction over foreign affairs matters, but that’s not important here). Specifically, Federal jurisdiction is rooted in Article III. Article III defines classes of Cases and Controversies which have cognizance by Federal Courts. This is the subject matter over which the Federal Courts have jurisdiction——their subject matter jurisdiction.\n\nFederal Subject Matter jurisdiction has two main categories:\n\n* diversity\n\n* Federal questions (arising under laws of the U.S. or the Constitution)\n\nBut what’s the subject matter jurisdiction of state courts? It’s whatever they want it to be, theoretically (certainly before the Constitution). State courts have what’s called a general jurisdiction, (don't worry about how this stands in contrast to specific jurisdiction just yet, we'll get there, and also realize why the distinction is problematic. the hard general-specific dichtomy is a somewhat newer concept in the doctrine so it makes sense to get to it later) whereas the federal court has limited jurisdiction.\n\nOkay, so at base, we have state courts, who have a general power to hear disputes that happen in their jurisdiction, or general jurisdiction, and we have the federal courts, with limited subject matter jurisdiction.\n\nNow, where does personal jurisdiction fit into all of this?\n\nFirst, think about a hypothetical world where there are only people, no companies (which make things a bit hard), and people never leave their state. In that world, we have all the jurisdictional categories we need already. For most controversies, the state you live in will adjudicate your dispute. If you get into a dispute somehow with someone in another state, or under a federal law, you will go to federal court.\n\nBut even in the early United States, people moved around a bit between states. And the framers anticipated that could cause problems. Remember, at this point it was these United States, and being a citizen of a state was a little more like being a citizen of a country, so that if a Virginian went to Florida, we could imagine him being treated like an alien. Countries often preference citizens over non-citizens in all sorts of ways. The framers didn’t want that kind of situation, they didn’t want Americans to be treated like aliens when they were in different states. They wanted a Union, and they wanted to create a common national market. They wanted some rights to move with American citizens.\n\nThe first answer was the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution.\n\n“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”\n\nWe don’t have to get into it, but basically, the framers thought that this language would prevent states from denying non-citizens basic rights around property, movement, legal remedies under their laws, etc. I’m sure there’s some cases about how privileges and immunities protected non residents back in the day, but it doesn’t matter for us. It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t serve a giant function in the world of personal jurisdiction.\n\nThe point is, that was the only real constitutional protection nonresidents had if they felt a state’s administration of law treated them unequally or unfairly. It suggests some basic protections and equal footing with the citizens of the state——but it doesn’t seem to contain a real standard for fairness. So this isn’t a world where we have cases that matter for us, cases where the Supreme Court were figuring out what personal rights nonresidents have as far as being subject to jurisdiction.\n\nSo that’s the world, pre-Civil War. You have states with general jurisdiction, some very vague protections for non-residents in the Constitution, and a federal government with limited subject matter jurisdiction. There’s a reason your cases start after the Civil War, with Pennoyer. —-\n\nJurisdictional doctrine significantly change after the Civil War. That’s because we pass the Fourteenth Amendment, for all sorts of reasons. Now, for purposes of jurisdiction, this changes things mainly because now there is a constitutional requirement that:\n\n“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”\n\nAnd note that, since there is now a constitutional provision that bears on the exercise of state jurisdiction, a federal court now has a basis to review jurisdictional determinations of states——they can see whether the exercise of jurisdiction comported with “due process.” Basically, now there’s a federal subject matter jurisdiction to review how state’s exercise their general jurisdiction.\n\n***To restate that point, the federal government has subject matter jurisdiction over how states exercise their supposedly general jurisdiction, by seeing if it comports with the Due Process Rights enjoyed by all Americans***\n\nSo now, we have a real limit on how states can exercise their general jurisdiction, but what are those limits?\n\nNow, take a step back and think about what the Constitution governs. And what the Fourteenth Amendment protects. They govern and protect the rights of individuals, as American citizens, against states. After the Fourteenth Amendment, which also incorporates other Constitutional protections (which previously were thought to only apply to federal action) against states, it is even more clear that there are rights that people enjoy that protect them from certain state action. This is the context in which something like personal jurisdiction becomes important.\n\nWhen we’re asking whether a state court has personal jurisdiction over an individual (or entity), we are asking whether it had the power to adjudicate a dispute involving them, and to impose a judgement on them, in light of the protections they enjoy as an American citizen——specifically, the Constitutional right of due process under law.\n\n***The way I think about it is this: the doctrine of personal jurisdiction is created by the Federal Government’s cognizance of Americans’ due process rights as against foreign state governments. It’s really a doctrine about due process, with respect to non-residents***\n\nWhy is personal jurisdiction so important? Lack of Personal jurisdiction (or any jurisdiction) is one of the few bases for a collateral attack, or a voiding of a final judgement against a party after the fact. That’s because when we say that a state didn’t have personal jurisdiction, we’re saying it never had the power to make that judgement in the first place. So it's great for defendants who want to contest a state judgement against them.\n\nSo the primary argument against states' exercise of personal jurisdiction on a nonresident, has been the due process protections in the Constitution. That's really what's going on in the Civ Pro cases. Now really, this isn’t necessarily the only potential limit on state jurisdiction over non-residents. For instance, some academics suggest that the Dormant Commerce Clause could serve as a reservoir of restraints on state courts. This is because the fedearl Congres has plenary authority over interstate commerce, which may suggest that state courts can't adjudicate disputes or impose judgements on national companies that amount to them regulating interstate commerce——a jurisdictional limit! But for historical reasons and inertia, basically all of the personal jurisdiction doctrine is about the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.\n\nThat’s right, territorial jurisdiction, tag jurisdiction, minimum contacts, purposeful availment, reasonable anticipation, stream of commerce, targeting——all this doctrine is really packed into what Due Process means. It’s all about what Due Process really protects. When you’re asking if something satisfied Due Process, you’re asking, what process is Due or “owed” to people, which is really another way to ask about what’s “fair.” It's good to remember this and to tie all the doctrine back to basic intuitions about fairness. —-\n\nDue Process has two basic components: procedural due process, and substantive due process. Procedural due process is relatively straightforward, did the Court give notice and all that, were the traditional formalities followed. Substantive due process is more amorphous, and it basically reflects the intuition that you need something more to be fair. It has been said to protect “unenumerated” rights. It’s very squishy. Which is why personal jurisdiction is hard. It’s basically all about fairness.\n\nWhat you see in the cases is really just an evolution of what courts think is fair, and them innovating the standards of Due Process to deal with new situations, like companies that do business in multiple states in a more interconnected economy (that’s really the bulk of the problem, in most of your cases).\n\nOkay, with that, I think we have enough of an overview to get to the cases. //look out for pt. 2, if I upload it, ever// —-",
      "content_html": "<p>//I wrote elements of this while taking the course, but have gotten it together into a lecture format to help me tutor Civ Pro. I thought I would share it here because I like it . . .//</p>\n<p class=\"center\"><b> Personal Jurisdiction: A Big Picture Overview </b></p>\n<p>Let’s take a big step back. Now to be clear, this isn’t stuff that you necessarily need on the exam, but I feel like context is helpful when you’re spending so much time in the weeds of doctrine. It’s good to take a moment to appreciate the big picture, because sometimes it makes everything clearer.</p>\n<p>So, What’s going on here exactly? What’s the problem in all of these cases? What are you being taught? What is the central issue that this whole body of law deals with?</p>\n<p>Let’s take a step back to see the forest through the trees.</p>\n<p>Okay, so this is all about <b>jurisdiction</b>, right? Specifically, right now, we’re talking about the jurisdiction of American states.</p>\n<p>What is jurisdiction? It’s the power to <b>adjudicate</b> a dispute. Where do states get that <b>power</b>? Well think about the country before the Constitution for a moment. States are like countries. Where does any country get its power to adjudicate disputes between citizens?</p>\n<p>It’s sort of presumed, right? Yes, we have the whole concept of Constitutions now. But really, jurisdiction is really tied with sovereignty, which in turn is a result of the monopoly on violence. States just have jurisdiction as a default. That’s the whole point of government. So to conclude on this point, states traditionally have an automatic, latent jurisdiction over their citizens. Very similar to their general “police powers,” which predate the Constitution.</p>\n<p>Now lets think about the Union, and how things can become a little more complex and formal after the Constitution. So after the Constitution, you have a federal government, made up of states. Since that federal government is created by sovereign entities, its power, and its jurisdiction, are more enumerated, not latent, at least in theory.</p>\n<p>(So we’re going to quickly take an aside and skip ahead to topics outside of personal jurisdiction, specifically subject matter jurisdiction but I think it will be helpful to see the forest through the trees).</p>\n<p>The Federal Government, and its Courts, draw its jurisdiction exclusively from the Constitution (or maybe its nature as a sovereign on the world stage, with respect to jurisdiction over foreign affairs matters, but that’s not important here). Specifically, Federal jurisdiction is rooted in <b>Article III</b>. Article III defines classes of Cases and Controversies which have cognizance by Federal Courts. This is the subject matter over which the Federal Courts have jurisdiction——their <b>subject matter jurisdiction</b>.</p>\n<p>Federal Subject Matter jurisdiction has two main categories:</p>\n<p>* diversity</p>\n<p>* Federal questions (arising under laws of the U.S. or the Constitution)</p>\n<p>But what’s the subject matter jurisdiction of state courts? It’s whatever they want it to be, theoretically (certainly before the Constitution). State courts have what’s called a <b>general jurisdiction</b>, (don't worry about how this stands in contrast to specific jurisdiction just yet, we'll get there, and also realize why the distinction is problematic. the hard general-specific dichtomy is a somewhat newer concept in the doctrine so it makes sense to get to it later) whereas the federal court has <b>limited jurisdiction</b>.</p>\n<p>Okay, so at base, we have state courts, who have a general power to hear disputes that happen in their jurisdiction, or general jurisdiction, and we have the federal courts, with limited subject matter jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>Now, where does personal jurisdiction fit into all of this?</p>\n<p>First, think about a hypothetical world where there are only people, no companies (which make things a bit hard), and people never leave their state. In that world, we have all the jurisdictional categories we need already. For most controversies, the state you live in will adjudicate your dispute. If you get into a dispute somehow with someone in another state, or under a federal law, you will go to federal court.</p>\n<p>But even in the early United States, people moved around a bit between states. And the framers anticipated that could cause problems. Remember, at this point it was these United States, and being a citizen of a state was a little more like being a citizen of a country, so that if a Virginian went to Florida, we could imagine him being treated like an alien. Countries often preference citizens over non-citizens in all sorts of ways. The framers didn’t want that kind of situation, they didn’t want Americans to be treated like aliens when they were in different states. They wanted a Union, and they wanted to create a common national market. They wanted some rights to move with American citizens.</p>\n<p>The first answer was the privileges and immunities clause of the Constitution.</p>\n<p>“The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.”</p>\n<p>We don’t have to get into it, but basically, the framers thought that this language would prevent states from denying non-citizens basic rights around property, movement, legal remedies under their laws, etc. I’m sure there’s some cases about how privileges and immunities protected non residents back in the day, but it doesn’t matter for us. It was a long time ago, and it doesn’t serve a giant function in the world of personal jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>The point is, that was the only real constitutional protection nonresidents had if they felt a state’s administration of law treated them unequally or unfairly. It suggests some basic protections and equal footing with the citizens of the state——but it doesn’t seem to contain a real standard for fairness. So this isn’t a world where we have cases that matter for us, cases where the Supreme Court were figuring out what personal rights nonresidents have as far as being subject to jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>So that’s the world, pre-Civil War. You have states with general jurisdiction, some very vague protections for non-residents in the Constitution, and a federal government with limited subject matter jurisdiction. There’s a reason your cases start after the Civil War, with Pennoyer. —-</p>\n<p>Jurisdictional doctrine significantly change after the Civil War. That’s because we pass the <b>Fourteenth Amendment</b>, for all sorts of reasons. Now, for purposes of jurisdiction, this changes things mainly because now there is a constitutional requirement that:</p>\n<p>“nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”</p>\n<p>And note that, since there is now a constitutional provision that bears on the exercise of state jurisdiction, a federal court now has a basis to review jurisdictional determinations of states——they can see whether the exercise of jurisdiction comported with “due process.” Basically, now there’s a federal subject matter jurisdiction to review how state’s exercise their general jurisdiction.</p>\n<p>***To restate that point, the federal government has subject matter jurisdiction over how states exercise their supposedly general jurisdiction, by seeing if it comports with the Due Process Rights enjoyed by all Americans***</p>\n<p>So now, we have a real limit on how states can exercise their general jurisdiction, but what are those limits?</p>\n<p>Now, take a step back and think about what the Constitution governs. And what the Fourteenth Amendment protects. They govern and protect the rights of individuals, as American citizens, against states. After the Fourteenth Amendment, which also incorporates other Constitutional protections (which previously were thought to only apply to federal action) against states, it is even more clear that there are rights that people enjoy that protect them from certain state action. This is the context in which something like personal jurisdiction becomes important.</p>\n<p>When we’re asking whether a state court has personal jurisdiction over an individual (or entity), we are asking whether it had the power to adjudicate a dispute involving them, and to impose a judgement on them, in light of the protections they enjoy as an American citizen——specifically, the Constitutional right of due process under law.</p>\n<p>***The way I think about it is this: the doctrine of personal jurisdiction is created by the Federal Government’s cognizance of Americans’ due process rights as against foreign state governments. It’s really a doctrine about due process, with respect to non-residents***</p>\n<p>Why is personal jurisdiction so important? Lack of Personal jurisdiction (or any jurisdiction) is one of the few bases for a <b>collateral attack</b>, or a voiding of a final judgement against a party after the fact. That’s because when we say that a state didn’t have personal jurisdiction, we’re saying it never had the power to make that judgement in the first place. So it's great for defendants who want to contest a state judgement against them.</p>\n<p>So the primary argument against states' exercise of personal jurisdiction on a nonresident, has been the due process protections in the Constitution. That's really what's going on in the Civ Pro cases. Now really, this isn’t necessarily the only potential limit on state jurisdiction over non-residents. For instance, some academics suggest that the Dormant Commerce Clause could serve as a reservoir of restraints on state courts. This is because the fedearl Congres has plenary authority over interstate commerce, which may suggest that state courts can't adjudicate disputes or impose judgements on national companies that amount to them regulating interstate commerce——a jurisdictional limit! But for historical reasons and inertia, basically all of the personal jurisdiction doctrine is about the protection of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.</p>\n<p>That’s right, territorial jurisdiction, tag jurisdiction, minimum contacts, purposeful availment, reasonable anticipation, stream of commerce, targeting——all this doctrine is really packed into what Due Process means. It’s all about what Due Process really protects. When you’re asking if something satisfied Due Process, you’re asking, what process is Due or “owed” to people, which is really another way to ask about what’s “fair.” It's good to remember this and to tie all the doctrine back to basic intuitions about fairness. —-</p>\n<p><b>Due Process</b> has two basic components: procedural due process, and substantive due process. Procedural due process is relatively straightforward, did the Court give notice and all that, were the traditional formalities followed. Substantive due process is more amorphous, and it basically reflects the intuition that you need something more to be fair. It has been said to protect “unenumerated” rights. It’s very squishy. Which is why personal jurisdiction is hard. It’s basically all about fairness.</p>\n<p>What you see in the cases is really just an evolution of what courts think is fair, and them innovating the standards of Due Process to deal with new situations, like companies that do business in multiple states in a more interconnected economy (that’s really the bulk of the problem, in most of your cases).</p>\n<p>Okay, with that, I think we have enough of an overview to get to the cases. //look out for pt. 2, if I upload it, ever// —-</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.10.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.10.24.html",
      "title": "Some notes on an abundance mindset and a redacted response to an email",
      "date_published": "2024-09-10T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "2L is fun so far and I’m really just taking it easy. Deeply interacting with the content. It’s a consistent effort, but whenever I get that twinge of anxiety about workload, I remember that life is short and I’m doing this because I like it, and not from a position of need or desperation. This reminds me of something. When I was 19, my friend showed me this YouTube channel called “AlphaMaleStrategies” (look I’m 25, I’m part of the Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate YouTube compilation generation, it’s not my fault) and although I can’t say it was terribly helpful for my purposes, there is one gem of wisdom from his videos that I think about often, and that’s the idea of an “abundance mindset.”\n\nEssentially, AlphaMaleStrategies, or “AMS,” routinely hammered the point that you shouldn’t approach women with a scarcity mindset, that something about that makes you repulsive/unattractive, and that to succeed, you had to have an “abundance mindset,” essentially giving off the vibe that you have options, interests, suitors, etc.\n\nhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4_9IcLGW8\n\nAMS, for what it’s worth, didn’t prescribe confidence “tricks” to achieve this, it wasn’t about purely “signaling” this mindset. He emphasized being “on your purpose” to achieve this, that is, actually pursuing ambitions outside the romantic sphere on their own terms, which in turn would improve your romantic/sexual prospects. Paradoxically, if you do things just because you want women, that’s just inherently repulsive to women, but if you do things “on your purpose,” then your vibe will just become attractive and the women will come.\n\nNow, this is a truth that well adjusted individuals wise up to anyways (hopefully?), that people who loves process and living life itself are often more successful than people who are too narrowly focused on metrics (I have to reconcile this with my general thinking that its important to focus on exams during law school, however. It can be done, imperfectly.) Regardless, this same idea has been communicated in many stories, motivational speeches, etc. Jerry Seinfeld has a speech, it may have been a graduation speech, where he says something along the lines of don’t chase money, chase your dreams, and money will follow you.\n\nThis is also a key theme in the best Bollywood film I know (really only one of a few I’ve watched), 3 Idiots, starring Amir Khan. In short, there’s a bunch of engineering students in a fictionalized version of one of India’s super competitive engineering schools, and they all burn out, get eaten up by the culture in various ways, except for the one kid who was truly in it for the love of the game, had fun throughout, and who the movie reveals becomes wildly successful at the end, beating all the miserable tryhards.\n\nWhat am I on about? Well, really I think about the wise teachings of AlphaMaleStrategies, Jerry Seinfeld, and Amir Khan whenever I begin to get stressed about Law School. You have to remain on your purpose. You have to have an abundance mindset. You have to love the game. You can’t approach the work from a place of anxiety and fear. That’s a LOSING mindset (I wrote about this earlier, go to the home page and scroll down to the Winning and Losing Mindset post, because I cannot be fucking bothered to paste hyperlinks). You have to frame everything as a fun game, and do it because you LIKE it.\n\nWhat does this mean in practice, for me? Well take today. I have a lot of competing priorities right now, including a research paper, a competition, three doctrinal classes, a dog, and some personal affairs. At times, t can threaten to make me feel overwhelmed, as is the often reported state of law students. That overwhelmed feeling can create a feeling of anxiety, which, depending on your temperament, will result in either an approach or avoidance strategy.\n\nAn approach anxiety will make you do your work in the immediate term, but you won’t enjoy it, you’ll be stressing do the readings, just having a bad time, associating it with negative feelings, and then you will dread doing it in the future.\n\nAvoidance anxiety is just procrastination, which means you won’t do the work and you’ll waste your short time on this earth, fall behind, and be outcompeted by your peers.\n\nBoth are really bad. So you have to get off that anxiety ramp first. For me, when I get anxious, I read something I’m interested in, like the news, or something in politics/economics, and then I remember the kind of issues that made me interested in law, and reconnect with the bigger picture. Then I feel a soft sense of eagerness creep up to go to my desk and do the readings.\n\nThat’s exactly what I did this morning. I felt bad for a second, and was about to start scrolling twitter (avoidance anxiety), but then I realized what was happening. So I slowed down, I read a bit of a book I’ve been meaning to finish (The Ministry for the Future). Now I’m writing for this stupid blog. And now I feel eager to get to my readings.\n\nBefore even touching the work, I got myself out of the scarcity mindset and into the abundance mindset, on my purpose. As Alpha Male Strategies would have wanted.\n\nBecause like a beautiful woman, knowledge and insight is attracted to the joyous, the curious, the happy warrior. If I’m anxious when I’m reading I’ll have to chase those insights and connections, I’ll have to force awkward dialogue with it, and they will elude my grasp. Not acceptable.\n\nI have a girlfriend now, but the times I’ve done the best with women, in clubs or whatever, is when I’ve arrived to the function happy and ready to have a good time. Girls are drawn to the guy who is just there to dance.\n\nLearning is the same. Actually everything in the world is exactly the same (Kanye once said this on Jimmy Kimmel about making music and designing shoes). Knowledge is drawn to the guy who is just there to learn.\n\nthe second part:\n\nI’m still figuring out the vibe of this little site, but I’ve always liked how Tyler Cowan puts email exchanges on his blog MarginalRevolution. So I’ll do that where it makes sense and I’ve written something semi-interesting/helpful. This is a response to a really nice email someone sent me on the site. I fucking hate emails in general but a nice email to my schizophrenic alternate identity is always welcome.\n\nAnother note, we should all send more non-work related direct messages on the internet. Like I’ll email authors of journal articles and stuff sometimes and it’s crazy how responsive they are. I’ve DMd some of my favorite bloggers (literal PhDs with huge followings) on Twitter and have had really interesting conversations. The internet makes all of this so possible and even as a cold email king myself I feel that we are under capacity for these kind of interactions.\n\n——\n\nDear [redacted],\n\nThank you for sending such a kind note!\n\nLike you, I am in love with early internet-style websites. There appears to be a community of software engineer and artist types who still make them and share them with each other, and I was partially inspired by them (here's an index of them I found: https://webring.xxiivv.com/).\n\nOutside of old professors, it doesn't seem like people in the liberal arts really do this. So I decided to make the site as a public notebook with the hope that that culture could be revived (or built?) a bit. Your comment on the writing is too kind and I'm glad you enjoy the informal style. I obviously have to make very polished work product in \"real life\" [redacted] so it's a nice outlet for rougher thoughts.\n\n[redacted] here's some thoughts I've shared with friends in the same boat:\n\nthe culture and rat race can make it easy to lose your creative, curious, and human side, so I try really hard to nurture it in stupid ways like tweeting nonsense and having the website.\n\nlaw school has been really fun and does scratch a creative thinking itch; nothing since undergrad philosophy or economics classes has made my brain work as hard\n\ncontrary to what the culture on the law school reddit suggests, you CAN have a fun and good life doing it (especially if you've worked in the real world before [redacted] So don't let people's gloomy depictions scare you off if it's interesting to you!\n\nWith warmest regards,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>2L is fun so far and I’m really just taking it easy. Deeply interacting with the content. It’s a consistent effort, but whenever I get that twinge of anxiety about workload, I remember that life is short and I’m doing this because I like it, and not from a position of need or desperation. This reminds me of something. When I was 19, my friend showed me this YouTube channel called “AlphaMaleStrategies” (look I’m 25, I’m part of the Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate YouTube compilation generation, it’s not my fault) and although I can’t say it was terribly helpful for my purposes, there is one gem of wisdom from his videos that I think about often, and that’s the idea of an “abundance mindset.”</p>\n<p>Essentially, AlphaMaleStrategies, or “AMS,” routinely hammered the point that you shouldn’t approach women with a scarcity mindset, that something about that makes you repulsive/unattractive, and that to succeed, you had to have an “abundance mindset,” essentially giving off the vibe that you have options, interests, suitors, etc.</p>\n<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr4_9IcLGW8</p>\n<p>AMS, for what it’s worth, didn’t prescribe confidence “tricks” to achieve this, it wasn’t about purely “signaling” this mindset. He emphasized being “on your purpose” to achieve this, that is, actually pursuing ambitions outside the romantic sphere on their own terms, which in turn would improve your romantic/sexual prospects. Paradoxically, if you do things just because you want women, that’s just inherently repulsive to women, but if you do things “on your purpose,” then your vibe will just become attractive and the women will come.</p>\n<p>Now, this is a truth that well adjusted individuals wise up to anyways (hopefully?), that people who loves process and living life itself are often more successful than people who are too narrowly focused on metrics (I have to reconcile this with my general thinking that its important to focus on exams during law school, however. It can be done, imperfectly.) Regardless, this same idea has been communicated in many stories, motivational speeches, etc. Jerry Seinfeld has a speech, it may have been a graduation speech, where he says something along the lines of don’t chase money, chase your dreams, and money will follow you.</p>\n<p>This is also a key theme in the best Bollywood film I know (really only one of a few I’ve watched), 3 Idiots, starring Amir Khan. In short, there’s a bunch of engineering students in a fictionalized version of one of India’s super competitive engineering schools, and they all burn out, get eaten up by the culture in various ways, except for the one kid who was truly in it for the love of the game, had fun throughout, and who the movie reveals becomes wildly successful at the end, beating all the miserable tryhards.</p>\n<p>What am I on about? Well, really I think about the wise teachings of AlphaMaleStrategies, Jerry Seinfeld, and Amir Khan whenever I begin to get stressed about Law School. You have to remain on your purpose. You have to have an abundance mindset. You have to love the game. You can’t approach the work from a place of anxiety and fear. That’s a LOSING mindset (I wrote about this earlier, go to the home page and scroll down to the Winning and Losing Mindset post, because I cannot be fucking bothered to paste hyperlinks). You have to frame everything as a fun game, and do it because you LIKE it.</p>\n<p>What does this mean in practice, for me? Well take today. I have a lot of competing priorities right now, including a research paper, a competition, three doctrinal classes, a dog, and some personal affairs. At times, t can threaten to make me feel overwhelmed, as is the often reported state of law students. That overwhelmed feeling can create a feeling of anxiety, which, depending on your temperament, will result in either an approach or avoidance strategy.</p>\n<p>An approach anxiety will make you do your work in the immediate term, but you won’t enjoy it, you’ll be stressing do the readings, just having a bad time, associating it with negative feelings, and then you will dread doing it in the future.</p>\n<p>Avoidance anxiety is just procrastination, which means you won’t do the work and you’ll waste your short time on this earth, fall behind, and be outcompeted by your peers.</p>\n<p>Both are really bad. So you have to get off that anxiety ramp first. For me, when I get anxious, I read something I’m interested in, like the news, or something in politics/economics, and then I remember the kind of issues that made me interested in law, and reconnect with the bigger picture. Then I feel a soft sense of eagerness creep up to go to my desk and do the readings.</p>\n<p>That’s exactly what I did this morning. I felt bad for a second, and was about to start scrolling twitter (avoidance anxiety), but then I realized what was happening. So I slowed down, I read a bit of a book I’ve been meaning to finish (The Ministry for the Future). Now I’m writing for this stupid blog. And now I feel eager to get to my readings.</p>\n<p>Before even touching the work, I got myself out of the scarcity mindset and into the abundance mindset, on my purpose. As Alpha Male Strategies would have wanted.</p>\n<p>Because like a beautiful woman, knowledge and insight is attracted to the joyous, the curious, the happy warrior. If I’m anxious when I’m reading I’ll have to chase those insights and connections, I’ll have to force awkward dialogue with it, and they will elude my grasp. Not acceptable.</p>\n<p>I have a girlfriend now, but the times I’ve done the best with women, in clubs or whatever, is when I’ve arrived to the function happy and ready to have a good time. Girls are drawn to the guy who is just there to dance.</p>\n<p>Learning is the same. Actually everything in the world is exactly the same (Kanye once said this on Jimmy Kimmel about making music and designing shoes). Knowledge is drawn to the guy who is just there to learn.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">the second part:</p>\n<p>I’m still figuring out the vibe of this little site, but I’ve always liked how Tyler Cowan puts email exchanges on his blog MarginalRevolution. So I’ll do that where it makes sense and I’ve written something semi-interesting/helpful. This is a response to a really nice email someone sent me on the site. I fucking hate emails in general but a nice email to my schizophrenic alternate identity is always welcome.</p>\n<p>Another note, we should all send more non-work related direct messages on the internet. Like I’ll email authors of journal articles and stuff sometimes and it’s crazy how responsive they are. I’ve DMd some of my favorite bloggers (literal PhDs with huge followings) on Twitter and have had really interesting conversations. The internet makes all of this so possible and even as a cold email king myself I feel that we are under capacity for these kind of interactions.</p>\n<p>——</p>\n<p>Dear [redacted],</p>\n<p>Thank you for sending such a kind note!</p>\n<p>Like you, I am in love with early internet-style websites. There appears to be a community of software engineer and artist types who still make them and share them with each other, and I was partially inspired by them (here's an index of them I found: https://webring.xxiivv.com/).</p>\n<p>Outside of old professors, it doesn't seem like people in the liberal arts really do this. So I decided to make the site as a public notebook with the hope that that culture could be revived (or built?) a bit. Your comment on the writing is too kind and I'm glad you enjoy the informal style. I obviously have to make very polished work product in \"real life\" [redacted] so it's a nice outlet for rougher thoughts.</p>\n<p>[redacted] here's some thoughts I've shared with friends in the same boat:</p>\n<p>the culture and rat race can make it easy to lose your creative, curious, and human side, so I try really hard to nurture it in stupid ways like tweeting nonsense and having the website.</p>\n<p>law school has been really fun and does scratch a creative thinking itch; nothing since undergrad philosophy or economics classes has made my brain work as hard</p>\n<p>contrary to what the culture on the law school reddit suggests, you CAN have a fun and good life doing it (especially if you've worked in the real world before [redacted] So don't let people's gloomy depictions scare you off if it's interesting to you!</p>\n<p>With warmest regards,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.8.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.8.24.html",
      "title": "The start of the fall and feelings on the seasons",
      "date_published": "2024-09-08T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I am 25 years old, and this is the first year I believe I’ve noticed how abrupt the transition to autumn is.\n\nIs it because I’m older? Is it because of climate change? It feels that when I was younger, autumn would creep up on you through the end of August, one morning a little chillier than it should be, and slowly and irregularly you start unloading your hoodies, until one day, it’s fall.\n\nThis year it feels that just a week ago, we were under oppressive heat, the kind where you need to jump into the ocean. I don’t know if my perceptions of time or the climate has changed, or both, but I do know that as soon as its fall, whether that arrival is gradual or abrupt, I become very happy.\n\nHours of sunlight become more precious. As the weather gets colder and you can trade tanktops for windbreakers, you feel a degree of anonymity and protection from the world. More hours inside, more hours developing and consuming information. A new approach to the gym——its officially bulking season. The mindset shifts to the longterm once again. This is the season you begin laying the foundations for the next warmer season.\n\nSummer feels very much like a season where you cash in on good decisions. You can show off your body. You can spend the money you saved on a good vacation and nights out with friends. If you got good grades you can celebrate a little. But it’s also a season of exposure. If you wake up past 7 the sun is blazing through your window, you already feel behind. You feel exposed. You walk outside in skimpy clothes, literally exposed. You socialize with people, get drunk, exposing yourself to others and their perceptions and judgements——part of what makes life in summer so fun.\n\nThe colder seasons is where work happens, and it happens with some degree of privacy. That’s why I am so fond of it, partially. I am one of those perverts who love work and dread celebrating its fruits——the neurotic part of me believes that I never did enough, so when Summer arrives, I wish I had spent the fall and winter better. It’s a terrible psychological cycle that has faded in recent years, but my gut skepticism to a season of celebration remains. With the exception of Christmas.\n\nI love Christmas. Christmas is a time when I truly do indulge. For me, everything I do after the first leaf falls is in part to delay gratification until the Christmas season, starting after Thanksgiving. I can hunker down knowing that, in not too long, I’ll be spending time with my loved ones, drinking hot chocolate, wearing my favorite sweaters. I get to watch Home Alone 1 and 2 again!\n\nI start planning out gifts, planning out my visits to family. I’ve done this enough times as a relatively self-sufficient adult that the routines of the season have become familiar. Booking the flights, the logistics phone calls, figuring out when I need to be back for the next semester/start of work. To me, it’s all such lovely ritual.\n\nAs a law student now, it also informs my approach to studying. I remember that last year, I synthesized information EARLY because I wanted my finals season to not be stressful. I wanted to enjoy my thanksgiving break. I also left everything on the field during exams, knowing that the literal day after finals I would be flying out to see my friends and family. The promise of Christmas focuses my energies.\n\nOutside of law school, it’s a time my girlfriend associates with soups and stews, and that’s one thing I’m definitely going to incorporate into my fall/winter palette.\n\nKnxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I am 25 years old, and this is the first year I believe I’ve noticed how abrupt the transition to autumn is.</p>\n<p>Is it because I’m older? Is it because of climate change? It feels that when I was younger, autumn would creep up on you through the end of August, one morning a little chillier than it should be, and slowly and irregularly you start unloading your hoodies, until one day, it’s fall.</p>\n<p>This year it feels that just a week ago, we were under oppressive heat, the kind where you need to jump into the ocean. I don’t know if my perceptions of time or the climate has changed, or both, but I do know that as soon as its fall, whether that arrival is gradual or abrupt, I become very happy.</p>\n<p>Hours of sunlight become more precious. As the weather gets colder and you can trade tanktops for windbreakers, you feel a degree of anonymity and protection from the world. More hours inside, more hours developing and consuming information. A new approach to the gym——its officially bulking season. The mindset shifts to the longterm once again. This is the season you begin laying the foundations for the next warmer season.</p>\n<p>Summer feels very much like a season where you cash in on good decisions. You can show off your body. You can spend the money you saved on a good vacation and nights out with friends. If you got good grades you can celebrate a little. But it’s also a season of exposure. If you wake up past 7 the sun is blazing through your window, you already feel behind. You feel exposed. You walk outside in skimpy clothes, literally exposed. You socialize with people, get drunk, exposing yourself to others and their perceptions and judgements——part of what makes life in summer so fun.</p>\n<p>The colder seasons is where work happens, and it happens with some degree of privacy. That’s why I am so fond of it, partially. I am one of those perverts who love work and dread celebrating its fruits——the neurotic part of me believes that I never did enough, so when Summer arrives, I wish I had spent the fall and winter better. It’s a terrible psychological cycle that has faded in recent years, but my gut skepticism to a season of celebration remains. With the exception of Christmas.</p>\n<p>I love Christmas. Christmas is a time when I truly do indulge. For me, everything I do after the first leaf falls is in part to delay gratification until the Christmas season, starting after Thanksgiving. I can hunker down knowing that, in not too long, I’ll be spending time with my loved ones, drinking hot chocolate, wearing my favorite sweaters. I get to watch Home Alone 1 and 2 again!</p>\n<p>I start planning out gifts, planning out my visits to family. I’ve done this enough times as a relatively self-sufficient adult that the routines of the season have become familiar. Booking the flights, the logistics phone calls, figuring out when I need to be back for the next semester/start of work. To me, it’s all such lovely ritual.</p>\n<p>As a law student now, it also informs my approach to studying. I remember that last year, I synthesized information EARLY because I wanted my finals season to not be stressful. I wanted to enjoy my thanksgiving break. I also left everything on the field during exams, knowing that the literal day after finals I would be flying out to see my friends and family. The promise of Christmas focuses my energies.</p>\n<p>Outside of law school, it’s a time my girlfriend associates with soups and stews, and that’s one thing I’m definitely going to incorporate into my fall/winter palette.</p>\n<p>Knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.3.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-9.3.24.html",
      "title": "The Anticlimax of Law School and an altered approach to 2L",
      "date_published": "2024-09-03T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "As 2L year begins, it has dawned on me that the mental posture I adopted for 1L simply should not and cannot be replicated this year.\n\n1L I went in very outcome driven, I NEEDED high grades and that first year was my only shot at some set of opportunities. While my life was still relatively balanced, mentally, I could laser in on a singular mission of maxing out my grades for a year and securing a 2L summer job.\n\nWell that’s all done and accomplished, and now I’m back in school. Grades good. A manageable course load and set of extracurriculars picked out. Feeling confident that I know how to approach this semester. No novelty as far as people or living situation. Same apartment, friends, and setup. Less electricity in the air.\n\nIt has occurred to me that until January of next year, there will be no form of catharsis. There will be no validation. I’ve just got to read some stuff, take an exam near Christmas, then wait. And even if I do well again, there isn’t an immediate payoff in the form of job opportunities or anything. While good grades will preserve future opportunities (clerkship, public interest, lateraling, etc.), there will simply be no feedback in the immediate term. I will simply go and do what I was going to do anyway. Kind of weird. After a three year stretch where my life was dominated by LSAT prep, then law school apps, then exams, then job applications, the lack of a singular, outcome determinative focus point on the horizon is very strange, but also very welcome.\n\nI wonder if any other 2Ls feel the same way?\n\nSo to avoid boring myself to death, I decided I need new sources of regular achievement and validation. There has to be things I’m doing in life which give me satisfaction on a more rolling basis. Singular focus on grades and doing other things for balance just won’t cut it (and really it never should).\n\nSo for 2L fall, I’m doing the following:\n\n- Going to finish a couple of novels and write about them\n\n- Going to take my weightlifting regime even more seriously and be more metrics driven\n\n- Going to develop separate skillsets like photography and some other physical hobby, maybe golf or something\n\n- I’ll probably watch more movies\n\nIn short, I’m going to be a well adjusted normal person and find more satisfactions outside of a report card this year. It is also not lost on me that if I commit to Big Law for a few years after law school, that my life may have less time for fitness and frivolous pleasures pretty soon. So this is a good window of time to max out on those fronts.\n\nLet us see if this fall goes as I hope it does. How do other 2Ls feel?",
      "content_html": "<p>As 2L year begins, it has dawned on me that the mental posture I adopted for 1L simply should not and cannot be replicated this year.</p>\n<p>1L I went in very outcome driven, I NEEDED high grades and that first year was my only shot at some set of opportunities. While my life was still relatively balanced, mentally, I could laser in on a singular mission of maxing out my grades for a year and securing a 2L summer job.</p>\n<p>Well that’s all done and accomplished, and now I’m back in school. Grades good. A manageable course load and set of extracurriculars picked out. Feeling confident that I know how to approach this semester. No novelty as far as people or living situation. Same apartment, friends, and setup. Less electricity in the air.</p>\n<p>It has occurred to me that until January of next year, there will be no form of catharsis. There will be no validation. I’ve just got to read some stuff, take an exam near Christmas, then wait. And even if I do well again, there isn’t an immediate payoff in the form of job opportunities or anything. While good grades will preserve future opportunities (clerkship, public interest, lateraling, etc.), there will simply be no feedback in the immediate term. I will simply go and do what I was going to do anyway. Kind of weird. After a three year stretch where my life was dominated by LSAT prep, then law school apps, then exams, then job applications, the lack of a singular, outcome determinative focus point on the horizon is very strange, but also very welcome.</p>\n<p>I wonder if any other 2Ls feel the same way?</p>\n<p>So to avoid boring myself to death, I decided I need new sources of regular achievement and validation. There has to be things I’m doing in life which give me satisfaction on a more rolling basis. Singular focus on grades and doing other things for balance just won’t cut it (and really it never should).</p>\n<p>So for 2L fall, I’m doing the following:</p>\n<p>- Going to finish a couple of novels and write about them</p>\n<p>- Going to take my weightlifting regime even more seriously and be more metrics driven</p>\n<p>- Going to develop separate skillsets like photography and some other physical hobby, maybe golf or something</p>\n<p>- I’ll probably watch more movies</p>\n<p>In short, I’m going to be a well adjusted normal person and find more satisfactions outside of a report card this year. It is also not lost on me that if I commit to Big Law for a few years after law school, that my life may have less time for fitness and frivolous pleasures pretty soon. So this is a good window of time to max out on those fronts.</p>\n<p>Let us see if this fall goes as I hope it does. How do other 2Ls feel?</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.25.24-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.25.24-2.html",
      "title": "Thoughts on When Harry Met Sally",
      "date_published": "2024-08-25T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "Carrie Fisher is in this movie? At first I missed it because her voice sounds nothing like it does in Star Wars. This woman’s voice keeps fucking changing.\n\nAnyways, they don’t make em like this anymore. This is one of the few Meg Ryan romantic comedies I hadn’t watched yet. I loved it! Here are some thoughts.\n\nI was surprised by how initially repulsive I found Harry’s character. I think it’s because it’s an accent you just don’t hear much anymore, and I feel like it’s associated with a scummy sort of character these days. And the whole older guy dressed like and playing a college kid just doesn’t seem right. But he becomes very charming very soon, and the snappy witty dialogue becomes pleasing, almost infatuating to listen to. I fucking loved this dude by the middle of the movie. I guess that’s how Sally feels!\n\nOverall, I think Bill Crystal Was really great. He reminds me of a Bill Burr type. Which makes sense since they’re both comedians. Something I’ll say is that they don’t let normal or sort of ugly looking dudes be leading men anymore. Remember how Tom Hanks was in movies. That guy is as vanilla as they come. And I’m sorry but Bill Crystal is probably below average by today’s standards. Not very large or fit, and not a very handsome face on first impression. Definitely not a look-match for Meg Ryan.\n\nMale movie stars, especially leading men, are just so much hotter today (no homo). Is this bad for society? I notice that we’ve mostly laxxed the beauty standards for women in media today (not a judgement, just an observation. We have more body types and types of attractive represented, which I think is good) but that men’s have narrowed somewhat. Yeah you have a variety in that there are twinks and buff guys but there are no really mid guys. Does this reflect a trading off social/economic power between the genders? Does the female gaze command more market power today? Plausible. There’s probably something cyclical here as well. Who is to say.\n\nMeg Ryan is cute as she always is. She’s got a very pretty and timeless face. At first seeing the two together feels profane because of how pretty she is and haw slovenly Harry initially appears. The scene in the cafe is absurd. Aside from looks, which maybe I’m talking about too much, her performance is amazing. She’s a very talented actress, and plays the character’s slow loosening up really well. Bill Crystal’s portrayal of Harry’s evolution from this crass dickhead to a softie is also really believable and authentic. It never felt contrived. Which sometimes these things do.\n\nBut by the third chapter they are extremely cute together and you start rooting for them. I’m obsessed with the chemistry they had throughout.\n\nI like the trope of a guy who gets a girl by progressively getting under her skin. It’s pretty prevalent in some older movies but not so much anymore I guess.\n\nSome other notes, I like movies from this time period because of how they look. I like the clothes they wear, I like their hair, I like the tech they use. I liked seeing Carrie Fisher whip out a rolodex, I like seeing them use the landline phones in bed. Something about it is very cozy.\n\nMaybe people my age understand this; growing up in the 2000s all o this was this world that just existed, right before you existed, but its artifacts were strewn around you; we grew up with the old landline phones around, maybe in a garage or something, but not plugged in. We saw the old boxy CRTs and beige computer rooms and our paren’t filing cabinets. To your parents it wasn’t all that long ago; to you it’s a world that is intimately close yet inaccessible. That’s how a movie like Home Alone feels. It feels how it does when you know your parents are downstairs watching a late show or movie you can’t join in, but you know it’s what they’re doing, and you sleep with the comfort that they’re still awake.\n\nSomething about the movie I notice is that Meg Ryan’s friends are trying to set her up. People should do that more.\n\nThe supporting cast in general is very good. I really liked Bruno Kirby and was surprised to find that he didn’t have a lot of other similar roles. He was so likable.\n\nFinally, I like the ending and the I liked the music. The use of “Let’s call the whole thing off” was sweet and nice. Beautiful movie and one that I will doubtless rewatch probably every year. It’s one of those kind of films.",
      "content_html": "<p>Carrie Fisher is in this movie? At first I missed it because her voice sounds nothing like it does in Star Wars. This woman’s voice keeps fucking changing.</p>\n<p>Anyways, they don’t make em like this anymore. This is one of the few Meg Ryan romantic comedies I hadn’t watched yet. I loved it! Here are some thoughts.</p>\n<p>I was surprised by how initially repulsive I found Harry’s character. I think it’s because it’s an accent you just don’t hear much anymore, and I feel like it’s associated with a scummy sort of character these days. And the whole older guy dressed like and playing a college kid just doesn’t seem right. But he becomes very charming very soon, and the snappy witty dialogue becomes pleasing, almost infatuating to listen to. I fucking loved this dude by the middle of the movie. I guess that’s how Sally feels!</p>\n<p>Overall, I think Bill Crystal Was really great. He reminds me of a Bill Burr type. Which makes sense since they’re both comedians. Something I’ll say is that they don’t let normal or sort of ugly looking dudes be leading men anymore. Remember how Tom Hanks was in movies. That guy is as vanilla as they come. And I’m sorry but Bill Crystal is probably below average by today’s standards. Not very large or fit, and not a very handsome face on first impression. Definitely not a look-match for Meg Ryan.</p>\n<p>Male movie stars, especially leading men, are just so much hotter today (no homo). Is this bad for society? I notice that we’ve mostly laxxed the beauty standards for women in media today (not a judgement, just an observation. We have more body types and types of attractive represented, which I think is good) but that men’s have narrowed somewhat. Yeah you have a variety in that there are twinks and buff guys but there are no really mid guys. Does this reflect a trading off social/economic power between the genders? Does the female gaze command more market power today? Plausible. There’s probably something cyclical here as well. Who is to say.</p>\n<p>Meg Ryan is cute as she always is. She’s got a very pretty and timeless face. At first seeing the two together feels profane because of how pretty she is and haw slovenly Harry initially appears. The scene in the cafe is absurd. Aside from looks, which maybe I’m talking about too much, her performance is amazing. She’s a very talented actress, and plays the character’s slow loosening up really well. Bill Crystal’s portrayal of Harry’s evolution from this crass dickhead to a softie is also really believable and authentic. It never felt contrived. Which sometimes these things do.</p>\n<p>But by the third chapter they are extremely cute together and you start rooting for them. I’m obsessed with the chemistry they had throughout.</p>\n<p>I like the trope of a guy who gets a girl by progressively getting under her skin. It’s pretty prevalent in some older movies but not so much anymore I guess.</p>\n<p>Some other notes, I like movies from this time period because of how they look. I like the clothes they wear, I like their hair, I like the tech they use. I liked seeing Carrie Fisher whip out a rolodex, I like seeing them use the landline phones in bed. Something about it is very cozy.</p>\n<p>Maybe people my age understand this; growing up in the 2000s all o this was this world that just existed, right before you existed, but its artifacts were strewn around you; we grew up with the old landline phones around, maybe in a garage or something, but not plugged in. We saw the old boxy CRTs and beige computer rooms and our paren’t filing cabinets. To your parents it wasn’t all that long ago; to you it’s a world that is intimately close yet inaccessible. That’s how a movie like Home Alone feels. It feels how it does when you know your parents are downstairs watching a late show or movie you can’t join in, but you know it’s what they’re doing, and you sleep with the comfort that they’re still awake.</p>\n<p>Something about the movie I notice is that Meg Ryan’s friends are trying to set her up. People should do that more.</p>\n<p>The supporting cast in general is very good. I really liked Bruno Kirby and was surprised to find that he didn’t have a lot of other similar roles. He was so likable.</p>\n<p>Finally, I like the ending and the I liked the music. The use of “Let’s call the whole thing off” was sweet and nice. Beautiful movie and one that I will doubtless rewatch probably every year. It’s one of those kind of films.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.25.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.25.24.html",
      "title": "Alien Romulus: Review",
      "date_published": "2024-08-25T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Wow, now that was a movie. As soon as the opening titles started I felt like I was in for a ride. (I'm a big fan of opening title sequences like this, and I feel that they used to be more common. They're very cinematic, like an overture.)\n\nThe Visuals\n\nThis movie was gorgeous. I watched it in digital IMAX and it was definitely worth it. The image is big and sharp. The colors are very pleasing to the eye, and I’m glad they left behind that cruddy blue gray look of Promethus and Covenant.\n\nInstead, we get a pretty balanced color grade, with a lot of warmer tones and naturalistic skin——a color mix that works well with this handsome young cast.\n\nI will say, for such a scary movie, the image was almost too nice on the eyes. The other movies, especially the newer ones, are disconcerting.\n\nOne thing I noticed about the grade was something I’ve noticed in some newer media in general, is that there’s this thing going on with the darks that I like, where some portion of the shadow range is is lifted and compressed, creating a smoother and flatter look. Look up the trailer to see what I mean. I think there are true blacks, but some parts of the range are pulled just above it into a silkier gray.\n\nI think this almost approximates a filmic look, and is evocative of the original Alien, but I think that most releases of the original alien are still a bit more contrasty. Allegedly, they took a scan of a film print of Alien and did a side by side comparison when editing which would actually explain the look this move opted for.\n\nOverall, this is a much less punchy, easy on the eyes grade. I think the movie that the colors reminded me most of was The Batman, both filmed on Arri Alexa cameras, but apparently this was shot on newer and smaller cameras.\n\nHowever, unlike the Batman and some other newer movies, there is no muddying up of the frame with flares, or vignette, lens distortion, or shallow focus, everything here is very crisp and in deep focus, with the color grade creating a pleasing smoothness and flatness.\n\nThis worked well with the world they built: the set pieces and props were masterfully done, and you can see it all. This was a very immersive, textured world. Really top tier stuff. Not a lot of CG cruddiness here. It’s the sort of visual effects movies where you actually don’t think about the visual effects too much. Can’t stress how good this movie looks. From the little module that goes into the Andy’s neck, to the guns, to the devices around the Romulus lab, everything looks plausible, tangible, and interesting.\n\nThis is what makes my *one* visual complaint so visceral. The deepfake of Ian Holmes looks awful. It looks like Disney Star Wars Luke Skywalker. It’s fucking retarded. His lips never move right, the eyes are wrong. Its distracting. Even scenes where he’s on a screen, he looks wrong. What makes this infuriating is that Blade Runner 2049 proves this CAN be done properly, if you wanted to, and the situations his character are in feel less technically ambitious than what was required in Blade Runner. Like he just has to be a disembodied upper torso. They could have gotten him from one angle, for a little bit, done it really well, and it would have been a nice little cameo. But no, even with the extreme limitations of whatever bullshit facemorph app tier method they used, they flaunt this fascimele proudly for extended periods of time, do close ups, make him flail himself around——it’s so stupid.\n\nWhat makes it even worse is that now to think of it, having him here isn’t even required by the plot. He doesn’t play Ash. And there’s no reason the synthetic he plays has to look like ash. Again, it’s retarded. This is where I could see Disney’s grubby fingerprints. Fuck them.\n\nOther than that, the digital effects are competently done, I didn’t really think about them, which is good. The aliens all seemed very real and I wasn’t thinking about the effects too much, which was the point. It looked like very sophisticated puppetry, suitamation, etc. There were a few physical effects which were just disgusting in the best ways.\n\nOverall however, the mix of the almost pleasing visual style and the mostly familiar alien designs means that this movie doesn’t really have a “scary” feel. I was interested the whole time, but I don’t think I was properly frightened until the very end. This is a good time to transition to a related but separate factor, which is the fear factor.\n\nThe Fear Factor\n\nI don’t think this movie is terribly scary. It’s suspenseful, it’s gripping, the concepts are disturbing and creepy. But I can’t say I was scared a lot. It’s more of a horror action like Aliens was. There’s no “cosmic horror” element here——nothing like a Space Jockey moment or the existential angst of Prometheus.\n\nEverything feels very grounded in a sense. Once shrouded in mystery, we have a good sense of what an off world colony is like, and it’s basically your typical sci fi cyberpunk dystopia. Nothing too insane. I imagined something a lot weirder and scarier from the references to these places in Blade Runner.\n\nThe Xenomorphs are just creatures being harvested for medical purposes by Weyland. I guess this movie just doesn’t allude to a bigger cosmic story the way the other ones do. Even the motivations of Weyland aren’t shrouded in mystery here, they’re very comprehensible. When you see the Space Jockey and that biological mothership in the first one, the imagination goes wild. The Xenomorphs feel extremely ancient and otherworldly. I don’t think they feel like that here. They are just scary monsters. Additionally, we don’t get the sense of being in “deep space.” Psychologically, you know the characters aren’t very far from civilization——the colony is right below them. They’re also on a human built space station——you never get a taste of the Giger weirdness in this movie. So overall, there is just less creepiness that pervades this movie.\n\nA useful analogy I can make is this movie sort of feels like Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Its visuals and set design are evocative of the original film. But something about the whole setup make it feel less magical, less mysterious. It’s very digestible, there’s no grandeur.\n\nWithout that larger sense of scale and cosmic horror, this movie has to rely on more traditional horror movie thrills, like generous screaming, blood, successive time constraints, and jump scares. It does all of these and I think it does them very well. But maybe I’m easy to please.\n\nThe action is very fun, and very creative. It has this Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone or haunted house setup where they go through challenge after challenge in the ship, almost like an amusement park ride. I can see how it could feel a bit hokey, but I think it was fun and I was always thinking, Oh shit how are they gonna get out of this.\n\nI was really struck by how novel and creative everything was. The sequence where they have to get through the gaggle of face huggers by maintaining their bodies alignment with the ambient temperature was thrilling. The use of zero gravity as a way to avoid the acid blood from going through the hull, and the resulting action sequence was really awesome. The time constraint posed early in the movie with the approach to the planets rings was also neat and added a sense of dread throughout.\n\nFinally, I think the ending was extremely well done, and is a nice spin on what happened in the original Alien’s last sequences. Maybe I’m stupid, but I didn’t see the whole “offspring” thing coming, I thought everything was over, just like in the first Alien movie when Ripley is about to settle into her cryopod.\n\nThe ending is where I want to give the movie A LOT of credit. As I said earlier, I don’t think I was properly frightened until the end when the Offspring appeared. It is genuinely some of the most unnerving and upsetting creature design I have ever seen, and the jump scares were effective as hell. I was very offput when it started licking his mom and it seemed like . . . like it was trying to have sex with her. Just so so upsetting and disgusting and I feel like this movie needed just a bit more of that throughout.\n\nThe final action fight with the Offspring and detaching the vessel was also great. Dizzying, but great. Overall, this movie does the action part of action horror excellently, and it does the horror just competently, with some standout moments near the end.\n\nThe Storytelling\n\nFirst, I’ll say that the movie is pretty tight, paced well, and never felt like a drag. I think it’s similar to Alien, but with a much different approach to the characters and dialogue, which I’ll discuss.\n\nSo, this movie suffers from what I think a lot of modern movies suffer from——it does a lot of spoon-feeding which doesn’t feel very cinematic. For example, in the beginning sequences on the colony, there’s this constant protest chant going on in the background that the workers are slaves, the company is a liar, etc. Establishes that Weyland Yutani is bad, that the main character’s situation is dire. Alright, typical sci fi exposition. Fine.\n\nBut it doesn’t stop? It’s repeated A LOT. When Rain is trying to leave, the movie takes pain to show you the dishonesty of the Weyland representative adding years to her contract and the whole system. The opening dialogue has this whole thing like “oh we owe them three months” or something. Then there’s the dialogue between the kids talking about their parents and wanting to leave so they won’t end up like them. Look, at some points this felt like Black Mirror tier exposition dialogue. That’s what I’m saying. I think that in this genre of Sci Fi, less is often more.\n\nAnd it doesn’t stop there! The first act goes through IMMENSE lengths to establish that Bjorn hates Andy. There is a ludicrous amount of dialogue real estate dedicated to him being a dick to Andy, than a very on the nose explanation by Navarro as to why Bjorn hates synthetics. Ian Holme’s character has a very straightforward explanation for what the company’s intentions are. Andy directly states “my prime directive is now to do what’s best for the company.” Bjorn and Tyler explicitly state the plan to abandon Andy early on. Andy’s origins are declared clearly by one of the characters, just in case the audience was wondering. This sort of things goes on and one through the movie. It feels like TV. It’s not cinematic. The movie isn’t comfortable with letting some ambiguity hang around; there aren’t times where I’m guessing at different character’s intentions or anything, whether one of the friends will betray another. A spade is a spade.\n\nI feel like this approach also made the movie’s vibe less menacing overall. When you think of young ensemble casts in the horror genre, I think what’s often really effective is a latent fear of betrayal, mistrust. Are these people really my friends? I’m thinking of Midsommar and others. It’s scary being in scary situations with people you want to trust but where circumstances reveal people’s untrustworthiness. This is a good transition to my next points.\n\nThe Actors and Characters\n\nThe best decision this movie makes is to have a young ensemble cast. It immediately separates it from the other Alien films, which have gruffer and older characters. You are primed to have more sympathy for younger attractive characters, which is why they are a mainstay in the horror genre. And the Alien franchise’s fusion of sexual anxiety and fear seems like it would work really well with a young ensemble cast.\n\nNow, the mere selection of this kind of cast does wonders. I found them all interesting, pretty memorable, and likable. I didn’t want any of them to die. The setup of them just wanting to flee from wage slavery makes them sympathetic from the get go.\n\nBut overall, my main impression is of a missed opportunity. The casting of young attractive people does the heavy lifting, but there’s not enough initial setup to make us care about the characters (with the stark exception of Andy and Rain) even MORE. I feel like I should have felt more invested in the pregnant chick. Or everyone else.\n\nThey just dedicate a lot of real estate early on to hoky exposition than to creating interesting dynamics between the ensemble. They take a much lighter approach to that. It should be inverted. We can all intuit that Weyland is bad, that Bjorn doesn’t like Andy, with maybe a couple lines of dialogue. It takes a bit more time to understand the minute social politics and histories of an ensemble. It would have made the deaths more impactful. I’m thinking of how reality shows work——you need the audience to get invested before characters get voted off the island. Otherwise who the fuck cares.\n\nOverall, however, the actors did a good enough job to make it “work.” No performance lagged. They all had a pretty good chemistry. But again, this is in the realm of competent rather than excellent work.\n\nWith ONE major exception: the relationship between Andy and Rain. This is the only thing in the movie that I think approaches “perfect.” The dialogue between them is amusing, the care they have for each other is palpable, the guilt Rain feels in nearly abandoning Andy is also something I felt deeply. Rain’s feeling of abandonment after Andy’s upgrade is also conveyed well. Their pairing carries the whole film.\n\nI haven’t talked about Spaeny enough. She’s great. She’s likable in the way that Sigourney Weaver was likable, but because Spaeny is young and much more little the badass energy is a slower reveal. She starts off appearing like the little sister of the group but at the end she’s an action hero. I think it’s great. I loved her in Civil War and I can’t wait to see her I more movies.\n\nThe excellence of David Johnson’s and Cailee Spaeny’s work is enough to make it so that the acting in this movie, overall, should be pegged as EXCELLENT. Bravo.\n\nThe Verdict\n\nThis movie is great, but it has enough defects that prevent it from entering the category of a classic. I’m glad it exists. It was worth watching. I don’t know if I’ll ever make time to watch it again. Kind of like Spider-Man No Way Home or Avatar 2. I’ll probably take a friend to watch it in theaters a second time, but I’ll probably never watch it at home.\n\nAs far as later contributions to aging sci fi franchises go, Alien Romulus isn’t in the territory of the new Apes movies or anything. I don’t think it will breathe whole new life into the franchise or serve as the basis of a great new series. It’s probably more like Superman Returns at its best. Or Godzilla: 2000. A nice addition, one that many appreciate. But just a curiosity for the most part. At its worst it’s more like the Force Awakens—itself a fun and good movie, but also the beginning of a more corporate and cynical approach to a beloved IP. Hopefully it’s the former.\n\nHowever, there is a very small chance that they could continue the story with Rain and Andy and do something very special. However, knowing Disney, I just doubt they’ll pull it off. So far they ruin everything they touch with enough time. Time will tell.",
      "content_html": "<p>Wow, now that was a movie. As soon as the opening titles started I felt like I was in for a ride. (I'm a big fan of opening title sequences like this, and I feel that they used to be more common. They're very cinematic, like an overture.)</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Visuals</p>\n<p>This movie was gorgeous. I watched it in digital IMAX and it was definitely worth it. The image is big and sharp. The colors are very pleasing to the eye, and I’m glad they left behind that cruddy blue gray look of Promethus and Covenant.</p>\n<p>Instead, we get a pretty balanced color grade, with a lot of warmer tones and naturalistic skin——a color mix that works well with this handsome young cast.</p>\n<p>I will say, for such a scary movie, the image was almost too nice on the eyes. The other movies, especially the newer ones, are disconcerting.</p>\n<p>One thing I noticed about the grade was something I’ve noticed in some newer media in general, is that there’s this thing going on with the darks that I like, where some portion of the shadow range is is lifted and compressed, creating a smoother and flatter look. Look up the trailer to see what I mean. I think there are true blacks, but some parts of the range are pulled just above it into a silkier gray.</p>\n<p>I think this almost approximates a filmic look, and is evocative of the original Alien, but I think that most releases of the original alien are still a bit more contrasty. Allegedly, they took a scan of a film print of Alien and did a side by side comparison when editing which would actually explain the look this move opted for.</p>\n<p>Overall, this is a much less punchy, easy on the eyes grade. I think the movie that the colors reminded me most of was The Batman, both filmed on Arri Alexa cameras, but apparently this was shot on newer and smaller cameras.</p>\n<p>However, unlike the Batman and some other newer movies, there is no muddying up of the frame with flares, or vignette, lens distortion, or shallow focus, everything here is very crisp and in deep focus, with the color grade creating a pleasing smoothness and flatness.</p>\n<p>This worked well with the world they built: the set pieces and props were masterfully done, and you can see it all. This was a very immersive, textured world. Really top tier stuff. Not a lot of CG cruddiness here. It’s the sort of visual effects movies where you actually don’t think about the visual effects too much. Can’t stress how good this movie looks. From the little module that goes into the Andy’s neck, to the guns, to the devices around the Romulus lab, everything looks plausible, tangible, and interesting.</p>\n<p>This is what makes my *one* visual complaint so visceral. The deepfake of Ian Holmes looks awful. It looks like Disney Star Wars Luke Skywalker. It’s fucking retarded. His lips never move right, the eyes are wrong. Its distracting. Even scenes where he’s on a screen, he looks wrong. What makes this infuriating is that Blade Runner 2049 proves this CAN be done properly, if you wanted to, and the situations his character are in feel less technically ambitious than what was required in Blade Runner. Like he just has to be a disembodied upper torso. They could have gotten him from one angle, for a little bit, done it really well, and it would have been a nice little cameo. But no, even with the extreme limitations of whatever bullshit facemorph app tier method they used, they flaunt this fascimele proudly for extended periods of time, do close ups, make him flail himself around——it’s so stupid.</p>\n<p>What makes it even worse is that now to think of it, having him here isn’t even required by the plot. He doesn’t play Ash. And there’s no reason the synthetic he plays has to look like ash. Again, it’s retarded. This is where I could see Disney’s grubby fingerprints. Fuck them.</p>\n<p>Other than that, the digital effects are competently done, I didn’t really think about them, which is good. The aliens all seemed very real and I wasn’t thinking about the effects too much, which was the point. It looked like very sophisticated puppetry, suitamation, etc. There were a few physical effects which were just disgusting in the best ways.</p>\n<p>Overall however, the mix of the almost pleasing visual style and the mostly familiar alien designs means that this movie doesn’t really have a “scary” feel. I was interested the whole time, but I don’t think I was properly frightened until the very end. This is a good time to transition to a related but separate factor, which is the fear factor.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Fear Factor</p>\n<p>I don’t think this movie is terribly scary. It’s suspenseful, it’s gripping, the concepts are disturbing and creepy. But I can’t say I was scared a lot. It’s more of a horror action like Aliens was. There’s no “cosmic horror” element here——nothing like a Space Jockey moment or the existential angst of Prometheus.</p>\n<p>Everything feels very grounded in a sense. Once shrouded in mystery, we have a good sense of what an off world colony is like, and it’s basically your typical sci fi cyberpunk dystopia. Nothing too insane. I imagined something a lot weirder and scarier from the references to these places in Blade Runner.</p>\n<p>The Xenomorphs are just creatures being harvested for medical purposes by Weyland. I guess this movie just doesn’t allude to a bigger cosmic story the way the other ones do. Even the motivations of Weyland aren’t shrouded in mystery here, they’re very comprehensible. When you see the Space Jockey and that biological mothership in the first one, the imagination goes wild. The Xenomorphs feel extremely ancient and otherworldly. I don’t think they feel like that here. They are just scary monsters. Additionally, we don’t get the sense of being in “deep space.” Psychologically, you know the characters aren’t very far from civilization——the colony is right below them. They’re also on a human built space station——you never get a taste of the Giger weirdness in this movie. So overall, there is just less creepiness that pervades this movie.</p>\n<p>A useful analogy I can make is this movie sort of feels like Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Its visuals and set design are evocative of the original film. But something about the whole setup make it feel less magical, less mysterious. It’s very digestible, there’s no grandeur.</p>\n<p>Without that larger sense of scale and cosmic horror, this movie has to rely on more traditional horror movie thrills, like generous screaming, blood, successive time constraints, and jump scares. It does all of these and I think it does them very well. But maybe I’m easy to please.</p>\n<p>The action is very fun, and very creative. It has this Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s stone or haunted house setup where they go through challenge after challenge in the ship, almost like an amusement park ride. I can see how it could feel a bit hokey, but I think it was fun and I was always thinking, Oh shit how are they gonna get out of this.</p>\n<p>I was really struck by how novel and creative everything was. The sequence where they have to get through the gaggle of face huggers by maintaining their bodies alignment with the ambient temperature was thrilling. The use of zero gravity as a way to avoid the acid blood from going through the hull, and the resulting action sequence was really awesome. The time constraint posed early in the movie with the approach to the planets rings was also neat and added a sense of dread throughout.</p>\n<p>Finally, I think the ending was extremely well done, and is a nice spin on what happened in the original Alien’s last sequences. Maybe I’m stupid, but I didn’t see the whole “offspring” thing coming, I thought everything was over, just like in the first Alien movie when Ripley is about to settle into her cryopod.</p>\n<p>The ending is where I want to give the movie A LOT of credit. As I said earlier, I don’t think I was properly frightened until the end when the Offspring appeared. It is genuinely some of the most unnerving and upsetting creature design I have ever seen, and the jump scares were effective as hell. I was very offput when it started licking his mom and it seemed like . . . like it was trying to have sex with her. Just so so upsetting and disgusting and I feel like this movie needed just a bit more of that throughout.</p>\n<p>The final action fight with the Offspring and detaching the vessel was also great. Dizzying, but great. Overall, this movie does the action part of action horror excellently, and it does the horror just competently, with some standout moments near the end.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Storytelling</p>\n<p>First, I’ll say that the movie is pretty tight, paced well, and never felt like a drag. I think it’s similar to Alien, but with a much different approach to the characters and dialogue, which I’ll discuss.</p>\n<p>So, this movie suffers from what I think a lot of modern movies suffer from——it does a lot of spoon-feeding which doesn’t feel very cinematic. For example, in the beginning sequences on the colony, there’s this constant protest chant going on in the background that the workers are slaves, the company is a liar, etc. Establishes that Weyland Yutani is bad, that the main character’s situation is dire. Alright, typical sci fi exposition. Fine.</p>\n<p>But it doesn’t stop? It’s repeated A LOT. When Rain is trying to leave, the movie takes pain to show you the dishonesty of the Weyland representative adding years to her contract and the whole system. The opening dialogue has this whole thing like “oh we owe them three months” or something. Then there’s the dialogue between the kids talking about their parents and wanting to leave so they won’t end up like them. Look, at some points this felt like Black Mirror tier exposition dialogue. That’s what I’m saying. I think that in this genre of Sci Fi, less is often more.</p>\n<p>And it doesn’t stop there! The first act goes through IMMENSE lengths to establish that Bjorn hates Andy. There is a ludicrous amount of dialogue real estate dedicated to him being a dick to Andy, than a very on the nose explanation by Navarro as to why Bjorn hates synthetics. Ian Holme’s character has a very straightforward explanation for what the company’s intentions are. Andy directly states “my prime directive is now to do what’s best for the company.” Bjorn and Tyler explicitly state the plan to abandon Andy early on. Andy’s origins are declared clearly by one of the characters, just in case the audience was wondering. This sort of things goes on and one through the movie. It feels like TV. It’s not cinematic. The movie isn’t comfortable with letting some ambiguity hang around; there aren’t times where I’m guessing at different character’s intentions or anything, whether one of the friends will betray another. A spade is a spade.</p>\n<p>I feel like this approach also made the movie’s vibe less menacing overall. When you think of young ensemble casts in the horror genre, I think what’s often really effective is a latent fear of betrayal, mistrust. Are these people really my friends? I’m thinking of Midsommar and others. It’s scary being in scary situations with people you want to trust but where circumstances reveal people’s untrustworthiness. This is a good transition to my next points.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Actors and Characters</p>\n<p>The best decision this movie makes is to have a young ensemble cast. It immediately separates it from the other Alien films, which have gruffer and older characters. You are primed to have more sympathy for younger attractive characters, which is why they are a mainstay in the horror genre. And the Alien franchise’s fusion of sexual anxiety and fear seems like it would work really well with a young ensemble cast.</p>\n<p>Now, the mere selection of this kind of cast does wonders. I found them all interesting, pretty memorable, and likable. I didn’t want any of them to die. The setup of them just wanting to flee from wage slavery makes them sympathetic from the get go.</p>\n<p>But overall, my main impression is of a missed opportunity. The casting of young attractive people does the heavy lifting, but there’s not enough initial setup to make us care about the characters (with the stark exception of Andy and Rain) even MORE. I feel like I should have felt more invested in the pregnant chick. Or everyone else.</p>\n<p>They just dedicate a lot of real estate early on to hoky exposition than to creating interesting dynamics between the ensemble. They take a much lighter approach to that. It should be inverted. We can all intuit that Weyland is bad, that Bjorn doesn’t like Andy, with maybe a couple lines of dialogue. It takes a bit more time to understand the minute social politics and histories of an ensemble. It would have made the deaths more impactful. I’m thinking of how reality shows work——you need the audience to get invested before characters get voted off the island. Otherwise who the fuck cares.</p>\n<p>Overall, however, the actors did a good enough job to make it “work.” No performance lagged. They all had a pretty good chemistry. But again, this is in the realm of competent rather than excellent work.</p>\n<p>With ONE major exception: the relationship between Andy and Rain. This is the only thing in the movie that I think approaches “perfect.” The dialogue between them is amusing, the care they have for each other is palpable, the guilt Rain feels in nearly abandoning Andy is also something I felt deeply. Rain’s feeling of abandonment after Andy’s upgrade is also conveyed well. Their pairing carries the whole film.</p>\n<p>I haven’t talked about Spaeny enough. She’s great. She’s likable in the way that Sigourney Weaver was likable, but because Spaeny is young and much more little the badass energy is a slower reveal. She starts off appearing like the little sister of the group but at the end she’s an action hero. I think it’s great. I loved her in Civil War and I can’t wait to see her I more movies.</p>\n<p>The excellence of David Johnson’s and Cailee Spaeny’s work is enough to make it so that the acting in this movie, overall, should be pegged as EXCELLENT. Bravo.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Verdict</p>\n<p>This movie is great, but it has enough defects that prevent it from entering the category of a classic. I’m glad it exists. It was worth watching. I don’t know if I’ll ever make time to watch it again. Kind of like Spider-Man No Way Home or Avatar 2. I’ll probably take a friend to watch it in theaters a second time, but I’ll probably never watch it at home.</p>\n<p>As far as later contributions to aging sci fi franchises go, Alien Romulus isn’t in the territory of the new Apes movies or anything. I don’t think it will breathe whole new life into the franchise or serve as the basis of a great new series. It’s probably more like Superman Returns at its best. Or Godzilla: 2000. A nice addition, one that many appreciate. But just a curiosity for the most part. At its worst it’s more like the Force Awakens—itself a fun and good movie, but also the beginning of a more corporate and cynical approach to a beloved IP. Hopefully it’s the former.</p>\n<p>However, there is a very small chance that they could continue the story with Rain and Andy and do something very special. However, knowing Disney, I just doubt they’ll pull it off. So far they ruin everything they touch with enough time. Time will tell.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.19.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.19.24.html",
      "title": "Some notes on Lawrence of Arabia",
      "date_published": "2024-08-19T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I am watching Lawrence of Arabia for a second time. It’s a rare example of a perfect film. 5/5. Other people have written about it better. But here are my quick notes.\n\n Comparison to Dune \n\n- I feel that this movie did a better job than Dune at illustrating the heat and hostility of the Desert. The actors in Dune just don’t get that insane sandy or hot look\n\n- I like the new Dune movies, and there are obviously a lot of thematic parallels here. I do feel that the more theatrical performance of O’Toole captures the ambiguity and conflict that I imagine Paul Atreides to have better than the low-key performance of Timothy Chalomet, but this aligns with a general preference for more “theatrical” performance styles. Movies used to be like plays.\n\n The Cast \n\n- This movie is carried by the fact that Peter O’Toole just has an insane face, and the generous tan and makeup they did to make him all bronze and shiny. He looks like a fucking character more than a person. In the best of ways. Like how Paul Giammati looks like a movie character. That motherfucker is not real.\n\n- I don’t find Alec Guiness’ brownface offensive, because it’s done with respect, and the casting of Omar Sharif and others suggests that the casting wasn’t because they had any personal problem casting middle easterners.\n\n- Again, I feel like movies were more like plays back then, and in the theatrical tradition it’s just not historically weird for people to play things they’re not; before access to the global talent pool, big stories just had to source from a relatively small lot of people. I mean, how many A list middle eastern actors were available to studios at this point?\n\n- That all being said, it’s better that today we can source people who are closer to the origins of the characters. Better for story telling and I guess our social/political conventions today. This is why I find it really annoying when we unnecessarily race bend today. Why is Aaron Taylor Johnson playing Kraven? Are there NO more slavic looking actors talented enough to take on the role? Fuck Sony. More slavic representation in media.\n\n The Cinematography \n\n- The nighttime scenes look wrong, from a literal point of view, but they are beautiful and so much better than modern night time scenes. I looked it up and confirmed my suspicion that they were shot during the day\n\n- I’m obsessed with 70mm. I’m obsessed with how rich the image looks.\n\n- One thing I kept asking myself is, how come my brain can tell this movie is old? The resolution doesn’t give it away. There are modern movies shot on film stock and 70mm that don’t look old.\n\n- Obviously, the acting style and dialogue and just the way people carry their faces is a dead give away, there’s a lot of tiny things that we can’t describe that lets us know this is an old movie. Like how you can see a white person on the street and know they’re a euro without even talking to them——just by like, the lights behind their eyes and however their mouth is tensed up. But I’m talking about image quality only. What is it about the image that makes this movie look like a period piece?\n\n- There’s also the way the Camera moves. The movie has a lot of completely still frames that just move with the character for short little bursts and goes back to being still again. Don’t see a lot of that anymore. Truly a “motion picture.” Like a series of paintings stitched together by little beats of camera motion. Again, it has an almost old TV or play quality to it.\n\n- I think the most significant factors to the older look are the film stock and the colors. On the film stock, it’s not the fact that it is film, because plenty of modern movies are shot on film and look contemporary. I think it’s that the stock they were using just isn’t manufactured in the exact same way anymore and there has to be some extremely subtle differences I’m picking up on. Maybe the grain structure.\n\n- But I think it’s the colors, mostly. There is something in the structure of the blacks, and the contrast, which I feel isn’t in any modern film—analog or digital. The biggest give away of older movies is how they allow the blacks to get crushed, whereas modern cinematography seems to take greater pain to preserve details in them. But I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s not just the shadows. You see it in hair, skin, and fabrics, it’s all very punchy. The reflections on people’s skin approach white. Things have a silky, sating finish. The contrast structure looks expensive.\n\n- It’s got to be some combination of whatever chemical developing process they did, and the photo color timing process. These methods are fascinating but largely lost to time, and I don’t think that we could reproduce this look exactly if we tried. It’s not just about sliding a contrast scale or fucking around with the curves on a color grade software. It’s a physical process we just could not completely replicated. Like trying to recreate an ancient recipe——we don’t have the mix of ingredients, soil, water quality, that the ancients had to taste what they tasted.\n\n- Anyways, I’m fascinated by these sort of unquantifiable factors that give away somethings character. Something we can all recognize, but not quite reengineer. I don’t think anyone could “recreate” the look of this movie if they tried. It’s like that Family Guy episode where they try and visit the Family Guy pilot, but the artists just can’t really illustrate the characters like that anymore and they look wrong. Tragic and beautiful that things are locked in their times like this.\n\n Notes on Structure \n\n- Something I noticed about this movie is that, the everything from the music to the camera——it doesn’t do anything heavy handed as far as foreshadowing that theres something really troubling about what Lawrence is doing here until well into the movie\n\n- We’re allowed to fully enjoy Lawrence’s triumphs early on, we’re in the moment. When he brings that guy Gasim back, it’s just a great heroic moment. In that sense it’s like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street. You are more identified with the characters’ complicated narrative arc. Along for the ride.\n\n- It’s not like Dune or other modern movies where it feels like the movie is dropping heavy hints that “hey what this character is doing might be thrilling now but its really not going to be good” (and somehow people still don’t get it). Everyone early on is along for the ride.\n\n- Obviously, this all changes in the middle of the movie, and the first sort of spoonfed cue telling us “hey this guy is kind of a psycho” is the menacing music you hear when he’s walking on top of the train after the ambush scene. But for the most part, it’s the dialogue with other characters and Peter O’Toole’s unhinged performance that tells us what we need to know.\n\n- I don’t think this makes the movie better or worse than movies that take a different approach. But I do think there’s an inclination today to more clearly say a bad thing is bad. Again, in Dune, the supporting characters, Chani, and Paul’s own dialogue are this sort of constant reminder that what’s going on is morally dubious.\n\n- I’ll take a leap and say that audiences are probably a bit less media literate today, and maybe need more handholding. I talked to a girl who thought American Psycho was problematic because of its depiction of masculinity or something. As if the serial killer main character was meant to be a role model or something. I don’t know if a some modern audiences would fully get that this movie is not a particularly sympathetic depiction of Lawrence’s white savior arc.",
      "content_html": "<p>I am watching Lawrence of Arabia for a second time. It’s a rare example of a perfect film. 5/5. Other people have written about it better. But here are my quick notes.</p>\n<p><b> Comparison to Dune </b></p>\n<p>- I feel that this movie did a better job than Dune at illustrating the heat and hostility of the Desert. The actors in Dune just don’t get that insane sandy or hot look</p>\n<p>- I like the new Dune movies, and there are obviously a lot of thematic parallels here. I do feel that the more theatrical performance of O’Toole captures the ambiguity and conflict that I imagine Paul Atreides to have better than the low-key performance of Timothy Chalomet, but this aligns with a general preference for more “theatrical” performance styles. Movies used to be like plays.</p>\n<p><b> The Cast </b></p>\n<p>- This movie is carried by the fact that Peter O’Toole just has an insane face, and the generous tan and makeup they did to make him all bronze and shiny. He looks like a fucking character more than a person. In the best of ways. Like how Paul Giammati looks like a movie character. That motherfucker is not real.</p>\n<p>- I don’t find Alec Guiness’ brownface offensive, because it’s done with respect, and the casting of Omar Sharif and others suggests that the casting wasn’t because they had any personal problem casting middle easterners.</p>\n<p>- Again, I feel like movies were more like plays back then, and in the theatrical tradition it’s just not historically weird for people to play things they’re not; before access to the global talent pool, big stories just had to source from a relatively small lot of people. I mean, how many A list middle eastern actors were available to studios at this point?</p>\n<p>- That all being said, it’s better that today we can source people who are closer to the origins of the characters. Better for story telling and I guess our social/political conventions today. This is why I find it really annoying when we unnecessarily race bend today. Why is Aaron Taylor Johnson playing Kraven? Are there NO more slavic looking actors talented enough to take on the role? Fuck Sony. More slavic representation in media.</p>\n<p><b> The Cinematography </b></p>\n<p>- The nighttime scenes look wrong, from a literal point of view, but they are beautiful and so much better than modern night time scenes. I looked it up and confirmed my suspicion that they were shot during the day</p>\n<p>- I’m obsessed with 70mm. I’m obsessed with how rich the image looks.</p>\n<p>- One thing I kept asking myself is, how come my brain can tell this movie is old? The resolution doesn’t give it away. There are modern movies shot on film stock and 70mm that don’t look old.</p>\n<p>- Obviously, the acting style and dialogue and just the way people carry their faces is a dead give away, there’s a lot of tiny things that we can’t describe that lets us know this is an old movie. Like how you can see a white person on the street and know they’re a euro without even talking to them——just by like, the lights behind their eyes and however their mouth is tensed up. But I’m talking about image quality only. What is it about the image that makes this movie look like a period piece?</p>\n<p>- There’s also the way the Camera moves. The movie has a lot of completely still frames that just move with the character for short little bursts and goes back to being still again. Don’t see a lot of that anymore. Truly a “motion picture.” Like a series of paintings stitched together by little beats of camera motion. Again, it has an almost old TV or play quality to it.</p>\n<p>- I think the most significant factors to the older look are the film stock and the colors. On the film stock, it’s not the fact that it is film, because plenty of modern movies are shot on film and look contemporary. I think it’s that the stock they were using just isn’t manufactured in the exact same way anymore and there has to be some extremely subtle differences I’m picking up on. Maybe the grain structure.</p>\n<p>- But I think it’s the colors, mostly. There is something in the structure of the blacks, and the contrast, which I feel isn’t in any modern film—analog or digital. The biggest give away of older movies is how they allow the blacks to get crushed, whereas modern cinematography seems to take greater pain to preserve details in them. But I don’t think it’s that simple. It’s not just the shadows. You see it in hair, skin, and fabrics, it’s all very punchy. The reflections on people’s skin approach white. Things have a silky, sating finish. The contrast structure looks expensive.</p>\n<p>- It’s got to be some combination of whatever chemical developing process they did, and the photo color timing process. These methods are fascinating but largely lost to time, and I don’t think that we could reproduce this look exactly if we tried. It’s not just about sliding a contrast scale or fucking around with the curves on a color grade software. It’s a physical process we just could not completely replicated. Like trying to recreate an ancient recipe——we don’t have the mix of ingredients, soil, water quality, that the ancients had to taste what they tasted.</p>\n<p>- Anyways, I’m fascinated by these sort of unquantifiable factors that give away somethings character. Something we can all recognize, but not quite reengineer. I don’t think anyone could “recreate” the look of this movie if they tried. It’s like that Family Guy episode where they try and visit the Family Guy pilot, but the artists just can’t really illustrate the characters like that anymore and they look wrong. Tragic and beautiful that things are locked in their times like this.</p>\n<p><b> Notes on Structure </b></p>\n<p>- Something I noticed about this movie is that, the everything from the music to the camera——it doesn’t do anything heavy handed as far as foreshadowing that theres something really troubling about what Lawrence is doing here until well into the movie</p>\n<p>- We’re allowed to fully enjoy Lawrence’s triumphs early on, we’re in the moment. When he brings that guy Gasim back, it’s just a great heroic moment. In that sense it’s like Goodfellas or Wolf of Wall Street. You are more identified with the characters’ complicated narrative arc. Along for the ride.</p>\n<p>- It’s not like Dune or other modern movies where it feels like the movie is dropping heavy hints that “hey what this character is doing might be thrilling now but its really not going to be good” (and somehow people still don’t get it). Everyone early on is along for the ride.</p>\n<p>- Obviously, this all changes in the middle of the movie, and the first sort of spoonfed cue telling us “hey this guy is kind of a psycho” is the menacing music you hear when he’s walking on top of the train after the ambush scene. But for the most part, it’s the dialogue with other characters and Peter O’Toole’s unhinged performance that tells us what we need to know.</p>\n<p>- I don’t think this makes the movie better or worse than movies that take a different approach. But I do think there’s an inclination today to more clearly say a bad thing is bad. Again, in Dune, the supporting characters, Chani, and Paul’s own dialogue are this sort of constant reminder that what’s going on is morally dubious.</p>\n<p>- I’ll take a leap and say that audiences are probably a bit less media literate today, and maybe need more handholding. I talked to a girl who thought American Psycho was problematic because of its depiction of masculinity or something. As if the serial killer main character was meant to be a role model or something. I don’t know if a some modern audiences would fully get that this movie is not a particularly sympathetic depiction of Lawrence’s white savior arc.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.17.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.17.24.html",
      "title": "Books I'm reading and a proposed 0L Summer Reading list",
      "date_published": "2024-08-17T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "- The Penguin History of Europe (will probably read all the way through)\n\n- The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (will almost certainly read only a couple of chapters).\n\nI've been on a European History kick since 1L, since the origins of American common law is so tied up with European history.\n\nI've been reading a lot of about the Saxon migrations, the feudal system, and the importation of English property law into the United States. I will share a bit on this later. What's important is that I've enjoyed this process, but I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't know a lot of this earlier. One thing that has struck me is that American law students generally don't get a foundation in our civilizational history.\n\nLike, I think in Law School I got one powerpoint lecture about the Norman Conquest. What's worse is that this is against the backdrop of law students not necessarily needing to know anything about government or history. You could theoretically go to law school as a STEM Major who hasn't learned anything about government since your Gen Ed intros freshman year.\n\nHell, people hardly know American history, let alone any English history.\n\nI know my law school assigned some trendy DEI book for my orientation before 1L fall. I don't remember what the hell it was about, other than yeah, there is structural racism in society (shocking news). If I were in charge, I would assign some basic overview of the origins of the English common law for students over the summer. Maybe some bigger picture piece on, you know, the LAW. For one thing, I think it would make 1L less bewildering. Students enter law school genuinely not understanding what the fuck is going on, what the common law is, how cases make law, etc.\n\nHere's a proposed summer reading list:\n\n- Fukuyama, Origins of the Political Order, Chapter 17, Origins of the Rule of Law (nice big picture history)\n\n- James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, lecture 52 (traces how English feudal law connects to American law, wrt Property\n\n- some DEI article to satisfy the BAR requirements and expectations of polite society\n\n- something from Justice Story's commentaries on the Constitution\n\nWhat, is this too crazy? Is this too old school? Not with the times? I'm sure they used to expect people to read some shit like this. Didn't people to use to read like, Blackstone's Commentaries?\n\nOh none of this really matters and you just want to get your J.D. to do transactions at V100. Fuck me I guess. I guess I'll go pound sand.\n\none day we'll all be free.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>- The Penguin History of Europe (will probably read all the way through)</p>\n<p>- The Rise and Fall of Great Powers (will almost certainly read only a couple of chapters).</p>\n<p>I've been on a European History kick since 1L, since the origins of American common law is so tied up with European history.</p>\n<p>I've been reading a lot of about the Saxon migrations, the feudal system, and the importation of English property law into the United States. I will share a bit on this later. What's important is that I've enjoyed this process, but I'm a bit embarrassed that I didn't know a lot of this earlier. One thing that has struck me is that American law students generally don't get a foundation in our civilizational history.</p>\n<p>Like, I think in Law School I got one powerpoint lecture about the Norman Conquest. What's worse is that this is against the backdrop of law students not necessarily needing to know anything about government or history. You could theoretically go to law school as a STEM Major who hasn't learned anything about government since your Gen Ed intros freshman year.</p>\n<p>Hell, people hardly know American history, let alone any English history.</p>\n<p>I know my law school assigned some trendy DEI book for my orientation before 1L fall. I don't remember what the hell it was about, other than yeah, there is structural racism in society (shocking news). If I were in charge, I would assign some basic overview of the origins of the English common law for students over the summer. Maybe some bigger picture piece on, you know, the LAW. For one thing, I think it would make 1L less bewildering. Students enter law school genuinely not understanding what the fuck is going on, what the common law is, how cases make law, etc.</p>\n<p>Here's a proposed summer reading list:</p>\n<p>- Fukuyama, Origins of the Political Order, Chapter 17, Origins of the Rule of Law (nice big picture history)</p>\n<p>- James Kent, Commentaries on American Law, lecture 52 (traces how English feudal law connects to American law, wrt Property</p>\n<p>- some DEI article to satisfy the BAR requirements and expectations of polite society</p>\n<p>- something from Justice Story's commentaries on the Constitution</p>\n<p>What, is this too crazy? Is this too old school? Not with the times? I'm sure they used to expect people to read some shit like this. Didn't people to use to read like, Blackstone's Commentaries?</p>\n<p>Oh none of this really matters and you just want to get your J.D. to do transactions at V100. Fuck me I guess. I guess I'll go pound sand.</p>\n<p>one day we'll all be free.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.16.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.16.24.html",
      "title": "Thoughts on the Old Mean Girls",
      "date_published": "2024-08-16T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "So I recently watched the Old Mean Girls movie on the plane and had some observations. I am one of those weirdos who actually watched the New Mean Girls first (I think I watched the OG Mean Girls when I was younger but hardly remember it) so I think I had an interesting perspective on it.\n\n1. High Schoolers look different\n\nI’m not the first to make this observation, but millennial-era depictions of High Schoolers are markedly different than later years, and earlier years.\n\nIf I think of a movie like Ferris Bueller, for instance, the high schoolers do look like high schoolers to me. I think the John Hughes movies have a nice blend of people who look a little too old and a little too young.\n\nIf you think about like, The Breakfast Club, Anthony Michael Hall looked like a kid, so did Molly Ringwald, and they would both look like kids in an American high school today. Whoever played Bender looked a little old, but most high schools have a dude like that.\n\nBut then you get the early 2000s and depictions of High Schoolers just look older. In a lot of cases, this is because they are played by twenty somethings. But that’s the case often today and 20 something still look pretty young. I’m thinking of like, Tom Holland or Timothy Chalomet.\n\nRenee Rapp convincingly played a high schoolers in the new Mean Girls in my eyes, but she’s my age. Same with Angouries Rice and the rest of them. To me, they all look pretty age appropriate.\n\nBut then I look at 2004 Mean Girls and I code the high schoolers, at least the core plastics actresses as a bit older——except for Lindsey Lohan. They’re all beautiful, healthy looking people, but they look older to me. Not older as in, like old, but more mature is I guess the way to put it. So I looked into it.\n\nRachel McAdams was a little older age Renee Rapp is when she played Regina George. But really, I don’t think that explains it. Gretchen Weiner’s actress also looks older to me, but she was only 16. Amanda Seyfried looks like a high schooler to me.\n\nHere’s my theory. First, there’s that V-Sauce explanation that when you look at pictures of older people when they were younger, they look older because the styles we associate that style and way of carrying yourself with older people. Certain hair and makeup conventions that were youthful at the time look “millennial” to me now——meaning I associate it with like 30 somethings.\n\nBut there’s something else about their faces . . . . I can’t help but suspect that girls especially carried less baby fat in 2004 than they do today, and baby fat is what makes people look like babies. All of the New Mean Girls cast just has softer faces, less prominent jaw lines.\n\nI guess this is probably because of the skinny-obsession of the early 2000s, whereas the late 2010s there was a lot more emphasis on curvy figures. Maybe teens also drink more water than they did 20 years ago. But that’s my global explanation, other than the V-Sauce explanation, for why they look older. People just have slightly higher BF% now and carry a bit more baby fat on their faces.\n\nI have no opinions on this. I am simply making this observation because the world needs it. As a Gen-Z, I definitely find the New Mean Girls cast to be closer to my idea of attractive, but only by a teeny tiny bit.\n\nThis has me thinking about neoteny in general. People just look younger longer now. I think of my friends and I, all mid 20s, and I still think we look like boys. We have boyish features. We still dress boyish. Tom Holland looks likes a boy. Maybe it’s an illusion and we look aged to people younger than us. Like how when I see some 35 year old man with a beard in denim and a beanie, I think it seems very very millennial, but he might think he looks young.\n\nWill my white shoes, black jeans, and assortment of baggy tees look corny one day? Will something about Gen Z physiology look dated in the future? Will people think we were all puffy faced idiots? Will the clean girl makeup conventions of girls my age be as dead a give away of age as over the top eyeliner and a messy bun? Almost certainly.\n\nAt 25 I am increasingly aware of my mortality.\n\n2. The movie is playfully not PC in a way that you don’t see much anymore\n\nUnlike the last observation, I have to say I’m more opinionated on this. I think playful bigotry in mainstream media reflects a healthy society——it meant that things felt less high stakes.\n\nThe scene with the asian girls using the n-word was funny because, well we all know ABGs do be saying it. The low hanging fruit of white girl from Africa jokes were predictable, but still pretty funny. Regina George saying “I’m not retarded” was funny especially because it betrays the movie’s age a bit. The corny Indian mathlete kid who would only date women of color. So familiar, and too perfect. Gretchen being depicted as an over the top Jewish American Princess was funny—again because most of us know someone LIKE that.\n\nRace was present and joked about throughout the movie in a way that was lighthearted, honest, and fun. On the one hand, I think that the present media landscape is better in that minorities have more starring roles. It was a bit jarring honestly that all the leads were white, and all the minorities were side characters. But it would be nice to bring back a bit of the playfulness from this era.\n\nOne thing I will say is that I do think the fat jokes seemed too mean spirited, by today’s standards, and it’s not something I necessarily want to see more in media. Not sure why I feel different about it—maybe because they never made me laugh, they just felt mean.\n\nI guess the difference is, with fat people we’re just making fun of the way they look, nothing else at all. The little racial jokes are funny observations about cultural patterns—like if I watched this with my asian friend I think I could turn over and rib them when over the asian clique jokes and I think they would chuckle. If I watched it with a fat friend I would honestly just feel bad. It’s not like I could look at them and be like hey, that’s you!\n\nSo maybe movies can afford to be a bit more playful on race, but I think we should leave fat phobia behind. That’s one area I think culture has genuinely progressed for the better.\n\n3. I miss the film look\n\nWhat also reveals this film’s age is the film look. Now reserved for mega dramas like, fucking Oppenheimer, film was the medium for fucking everything back then. And it looks so much better.\n\nLook, I’m not one of those annoying hipsters (at least I don’t think so) on the film v digital debate and think that digital has its place, and looks good in a lot of movies. I’m thinking of like, Blade Runner 2049. I can’t make any complaints on the cinemography there.\n\nBut film just looks warmer, more alive——and it’s not just nostalgia. I know it’s not nostalgia because I’m literally not that old, and I noticed the transition to digital happening when I was like, eight or nine? I remembered seeing the transition from cel to digital animation when I was very young and always preferring the cel animation style. I was seven! I wasn’t old enough nor did I know anything about the technology to have some external/cultural/nostalgia factor shaping this preference——it was purely aesthetic.\n\nI noticed the same thing happening on sitcoms I watched in the 2000s and 2010s, which usually had some change in camera midway through. I knew what I preferred.\n\nThe old Mean Girls movie has a great picture quality and we should bring it back for more small scale comedies.\n\n4. Are we making movies like this anymore?\n\nWhat the hell happened to the high school comedy or drama?\n\nWe had a ton of them in the 80s. A bunch in the 2000s. Superbad. Mean Girls. Easy A. The last big big one I can think of was maybe Project X? Spectacular Now is part of the Genre but it’s really more of a drama than a Judd Apatow style comedy.\n\nI guess it’s normal for things to go away. All is lost to the sands of time. I’m just curious, what the hell has it been replaced by? What do high schoolers watch these days, as far as media about high school?\n\nI know my little cousin watches Gilmore Girls, but that’s really a period piece now, like Mean Girls. Doesn’t really reflect their day to day with smartphones and whatnot. I’m aware of a show named Euphoria but everything I’ve heard about it seems like Porn (which is strange because the data shows that that kids have less sex now, not more). I know there’s Stranger Things, which is great, but that’s again, period piece.\n\nMy greatest fear is that the lifestyle of modern teens doesn’t really lend itself to depiction in media. Is modern teenage life just not interesting? Has the smartphone, safetyism, the rise of anxiety orders and decline of risk-taking behaviors destroyed the stereotypical “teenage experience?” Even the new Mean Girls is sort of a blast form the past, its premised on an early 2000s teen bullying culture which I don’t think really exists anymore.\n\nI think I’m just getting fucking old. I hope things are fine. But just different.\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>So I recently watched the Old Mean Girls movie on the plane and had some observations. I am one of those weirdos who actually watched the New Mean Girls first (I think I watched the OG Mean Girls when I was younger but hardly remember it) so I think I had an interesting perspective on it.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">1. High Schoolers look different</p>\n<p>I’m not the first to make this observation, but millennial-era depictions of High Schoolers are markedly different than later years, and earlier years.</p>\n<p>If I think of a movie like Ferris Bueller, for instance, the high schoolers do look like high schoolers to me. I think the John Hughes movies have a nice blend of people who look a little too old and a little too young.</p>\n<p>If you think about like, The Breakfast Club, Anthony Michael Hall looked like a kid, so did Molly Ringwald, and they would both look like kids in an American high school today. Whoever played Bender looked a little old, but most high schools have a dude like that.</p>\n<p>But then you get the early 2000s and depictions of High Schoolers just look older. In a lot of cases, this is because they are played by twenty somethings. But that’s the case often today and 20 something still look pretty young. I’m thinking of like, Tom Holland or Timothy Chalomet.</p>\n<p>Renee Rapp convincingly played a high schoolers in the new Mean Girls in my eyes, but she’s my age. Same with Angouries Rice and the rest of them. To me, they all look pretty age appropriate.</p>\n<p>But then I look at 2004 Mean Girls and I code the high schoolers, at least the core plastics actresses as a bit older——except for Lindsey Lohan. They’re all beautiful, healthy looking people, but they look older to me. Not older as in, like old, but more mature is I guess the way to put it. So I looked into it.</p>\n<p>Rachel McAdams was a little older age Renee Rapp is when she played Regina George. But really, I don’t think that explains it. Gretchen Weiner’s actress also looks older to me, but she was only 16. Amanda Seyfried looks like a high schooler to me.</p>\n<p>Here’s my theory. First, there’s that V-Sauce explanation that when you look at pictures of older people when they were younger, they look older because the styles we associate that style and way of carrying yourself with older people. Certain hair and makeup conventions that were youthful at the time look “millennial” to me now——meaning I associate it with like 30 somethings.</p>\n<p>But there’s something else about their faces . . . . I can’t help but suspect that girls especially carried less baby fat in 2004 than they do today, and baby fat is what makes people look like babies. All of the New Mean Girls cast just has softer faces, less prominent jaw lines.</p>\n<p>I guess this is probably because of the skinny-obsession of the early 2000s, whereas the late 2010s there was a lot more emphasis on curvy figures. Maybe teens also drink more water than they did 20 years ago. But that’s my global explanation, other than the V-Sauce explanation, for why they look older. People just have slightly higher BF% now and carry a bit more baby fat on their faces.</p>\n<p>I have no opinions on this. I am simply making this observation because the world needs it. As a Gen-Z, I definitely find the New Mean Girls cast to be closer to my idea of attractive, but only by a teeny tiny bit.</p>\n<p>This has me thinking about neoteny in general. People just look younger longer now. I think of my friends and I, all mid 20s, and I still think we look like boys. We have boyish features. We still dress boyish. Tom Holland looks likes a boy. Maybe it’s an illusion and we look aged to people younger than us. Like how when I see some 35 year old man with a beard in denim and a beanie, I think it seems very very millennial, but he might think he looks young.</p>\n<p>Will my white shoes, black jeans, and assortment of baggy tees look corny one day? Will something about Gen Z physiology look dated in the future? Will people think we were all puffy faced idiots? Will the clean girl makeup conventions of girls my age be as dead a give away of age as over the top eyeliner and a messy bun? Almost certainly.</p>\n<p>At 25 I am increasingly aware of my mortality.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">2. The movie is playfully not PC in a way that you don’t see much anymore</p>\n<p>Unlike the last observation, I have to say I’m more opinionated on this. I think playful bigotry in mainstream media reflects a healthy society——it meant that things felt less high stakes.</p>\n<p>The scene with the asian girls using the n-word was funny because, well we all know ABGs do be saying it. The low hanging fruit of white girl from Africa jokes were predictable, but still pretty funny. Regina George saying “I’m not retarded” was funny especially because it betrays the movie’s age a bit. The corny Indian mathlete kid who would only date women of color. So familiar, and too perfect. Gretchen being depicted as an over the top Jewish American Princess was funny—again because most of us know someone LIKE that.</p>\n<p>Race was present and joked about throughout the movie in a way that was lighthearted, honest, and fun. On the one hand, I think that the present media landscape is better in that minorities have more starring roles. It was a bit jarring honestly that all the leads were white, and all the minorities were side characters. But it would be nice to bring back a bit of the playfulness from this era.</p>\n<p>One thing I will say is that I do think the fat jokes seemed too mean spirited, by today’s standards, and it’s not something I necessarily want to see more in media. Not sure why I feel different about it—maybe because they never made me laugh, they just felt mean.</p>\n<p>I guess the difference is, with fat people we’re just making fun of the way they look, nothing else at all. The little racial jokes are funny observations about cultural patterns—like if I watched this with my asian friend I think I could turn over and rib them when over the asian clique jokes and I think they would chuckle. If I watched it with a fat friend I would honestly just feel bad. It’s not like I could look at them and be like hey, that’s you!</p>\n<p>So maybe movies can afford to be a bit more playful on race, but I think we should leave fat phobia behind. That’s one area I think culture has genuinely progressed for the better.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">3. I miss the film look</p>\n<p>What also reveals this film’s age is the film look. Now reserved for mega dramas like, fucking Oppenheimer, film was the medium for fucking everything back then. And it looks so much better.</p>\n<p>Look, I’m not one of those annoying hipsters (at least I don’t think so) on the film v digital debate and think that digital has its place, and looks good in a lot of movies. I’m thinking of like, Blade Runner 2049. I can’t make any complaints on the cinemography there.</p>\n<p>But film just looks warmer, more alive——and it’s not just nostalgia. I know it’s not nostalgia because I’m literally not that old, and I noticed the transition to digital happening when I was like, eight or nine? I remembered seeing the transition from cel to digital animation when I was very young and always preferring the cel animation style. I was seven! I wasn’t old enough nor did I know anything about the technology to have some external/cultural/nostalgia factor shaping this preference——it was purely aesthetic.</p>\n<p>I noticed the same thing happening on sitcoms I watched in the 2000s and 2010s, which usually had some change in camera midway through. I knew what I preferred.</p>\n<p>The old Mean Girls movie has a great picture quality and we should bring it back for more small scale comedies.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">4. Are we making movies like this anymore?</p>\n<p>What the hell happened to the high school comedy or drama?</p>\n<p>We had a ton of them in the 80s. A bunch in the 2000s. Superbad. Mean Girls. Easy A. The last big big one I can think of was maybe Project X? Spectacular Now is part of the Genre but it’s really more of a drama than a Judd Apatow style comedy.</p>\n<p>I guess it’s normal for things to go away. All is lost to the sands of time. I’m just curious, what the hell has it been replaced by? What do high schoolers watch these days, as far as media about high school?</p>\n<p>I know my little cousin watches Gilmore Girls, but that’s really a period piece now, like Mean Girls. Doesn’t really reflect their day to day with smartphones and whatnot. I’m aware of a show named Euphoria but everything I’ve heard about it seems like Porn (which is strange because the data shows that that kids have less sex now, not more). I know there’s Stranger Things, which is great, but that’s again, period piece.</p>\n<p>My greatest fear is that the lifestyle of modern teens doesn’t really lend itself to depiction in media. Is modern teenage life just not interesting? Has the smartphone, safetyism, the rise of anxiety orders and decline of risk-taking behaviors destroyed the stereotypical “teenage experience?” Even the new Mean Girls is sort of a blast form the past, its premised on an early 2000s teen bullying culture which I don’t think really exists anymore.</p>\n<p>I think I’m just getting fucking old. I hope things are fine. But just different.</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.6.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.6.24.html",
      "title": "The case for being an insane luddite",
      "date_published": "2024-08-06T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "I've been on a luddite kick recently and sometimes it gives me pause.\n\nI print a lot of my document to mark them up, even though I have an iPad pro with apple pencil.\n\nI smoke cigarettes when I want a nicotine buzz and refuse to buy vapes (I bum them off friends when we're out and about).\n\nI mainly used wired headphones with an old iPod.\n\nI increasingly have no regular social media presence.\n\nI rely on print sources more than online articles for information.\n\nI handwrite most things.\n\nI shoot film rather than digital.\n\nI have old hardware (mostly) for my desktop setup.\n\nAs far as this tiny enterprise right here, I try to minimize my reliance on intermediary platforms. I use a google sheet for the mailing list because its more secure and easy than collecting subscriber emails elswhere, and I use cloudfare for hosting, but that's about it. No Wordpress, no Square, nothing, this is straight HTML (to be fair some of it was quickly written with ChatGPT, I'm a lawyer not a computer engineer).\n\nEventually I would like to self-host and set up the architecture to manage mailing lists on my own (not hard but too lazy right now).\n\nThis all begs the question, \"why? why on earth are you doing all of this?\"\n\nWell I answered some of those questions in a previous post: 7.16.24 - Why build a website like this\n\nBut there's also more to it. I swear to god I'm not a psycho in real life, I have spotify and instagram and all of that, I use imessage, I wouldn't be caught dead with an android phone.\n\nBut there has to be spheres of life where you retain continuity with the past, where you can see how things really work, where how content is made and how our world works isn't entirely abstracted away in the digital ether.\n\nI asked my little cousin how a camera works, she's in High School, and she genuinely could not answer outside of the fact that she knew that somehow, it had something to do with computers and a lens taht gives what its in front of it to the computer.\n\nI feel that as soon as computers gets involved, people start thinking of things as a black box, it may as well be magic. There's something deeply troubling about this, which makes me think of the eloi from the H.G. Wells book the Time Machine——a race of infantile beings surrounded by advanced technology from previous generations, but that they do not understand.\n\nI feel that AI, which is something of a blackbox even to smart people, only accelerates these trends.\n\nIf we're going to embrace the future without losing our humanity and our capacities, we need areas of life where we arbitrarily limit ourselves and connect with our past.\n\nBuilding a website with just HTML pages on my computer and a single CSS file helps me understand how the world works. I feel like a participant. Shooting film helps me appreciate just how magical capturing an image is, and makes me a better digital photographer.\n\nDownloading music, curating it, sorting it, putting it on my iPod makes it feel tangible and valuable. Just like getting dvds from the goodwill and popping them into the player.\n\nHaving printed notes on my desk makes the information feel like an object that I have dominion over, that I can lose and edit, not something \"out there.\"\n\nI suspect so many problems with ADHD, anxiety, recall, focus, etc. among Gen Z has something to do with their worlds being displaced into the digital ether. When I see how my classmates keep their class notes on google docs I see just a complete cessation of control. You don't even own your own thoughts. You are hosting it on a server somewhere for someone else to protect and manage.\n\nUsually they'll say something like, they don't want to lose it, what if my laptop breaks, etc. Well first of all, you can back-up your local files, second of all, we've operated for centuries where information was somewhat vulnerable. That's life. Is the tradeoff in agency really worth just a tiny bit of risk mitigation? What about the tradeoff in retention? I simply cannot believe that storing something online viewable only in browser maps into your memory the same way having a physical notebook does. Can't be the case.\n\nOur brains know what ownership is. We feel it in our bones. We use hotels differently and rental cars differently. It has to be the same with information.\n\nAnd there's also the fact that productivity hasn't massively increased since the digitization of workflows and the internet, which seems like a puzzle, but not really. We've made things faster but people slower and information recall harder, meaning we need more agents to coordinate and communicate the movement of information.\n\nWhat we could achieve with a filing cabinet and a secretary I'm sure requires more specialized workflows with more people today. Because of the internet. The internet and digitization does strange things to our brains and our workflows.\n\nAnyways, there's no going back to the past in the market-world. As far as how you do things at your job, how kids are forced to do things at a public school——these will be determined by impersonal forces of allocative efficiency. They'll stop teaching the kids cursive. You'll have to do your timesheets on some SAAS and your expense reports on another and use a VPN to log onto your work computer remotely and all sorts of shit. Your life and how you work will be abstracted away, specialized into teeny tiny pieces spread across the globe, your output will dissolve into the digital either and the global marketplace. Complete alienation.\n\nBut in your personal life, you can smoke a ciggie, you can shoot film like a loser hipster, and waste time building a stupid HTML site, and you can slow everything down, and you can be an agent in the world. You can own some tiny, insignificant process, like making a photo album for your family, end-to-end. But you have to emrbace a little bit of autarky, and be a bit of a luddite to do it.\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>I've been on a luddite kick recently and sometimes it gives me pause.</p>\n<p>I print a lot of my document to mark them up, even though I have an iPad pro with apple pencil.</p>\n<p>I smoke cigarettes when I want a nicotine buzz and refuse to buy vapes (I bum them off friends when we're out and about).</p>\n<p>I mainly used wired headphones with an old iPod.</p>\n<p>I increasingly have no regular social media presence.</p>\n<p>I rely on print sources more than online articles for information.</p>\n<p>I handwrite most things.</p>\n<p>I shoot film rather than digital.</p>\n<p>I have old hardware (mostly) for my desktop setup.</p>\n<p>As far as this tiny enterprise right here, I try to minimize my reliance on intermediary platforms. I use a google sheet for the mailing list because its more secure and easy than collecting subscriber emails elswhere, and I use cloudfare for hosting, but that's about it. No Wordpress, no Square, nothing, this is straight HTML (to be fair some of it was quickly written with ChatGPT, I'm a lawyer not a computer engineer).</p>\n<p>Eventually I would like to self-host and set up the architecture to manage mailing lists on my own (not hard but too lazy right now).</p>\n<p>This all begs the question, \"why? why on earth are you doing all of this?\"</p>\n<p>Well I answered some of those questions in a previous post: <a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24.html\">7.16.24 - Why build a website like this</a></p>\n<p>But there's also more to it. I swear to god I'm not a psycho in real life, I have spotify and instagram and all of that, I use imessage, I wouldn't be caught dead with an android phone.</p>\n<p>But there has to be spheres of life where you retain continuity with the past, where you can see how things really work, where how content is made and how our world works isn't entirely abstracted away in the digital ether.</p>\n<p>I asked my little cousin how a camera works, she's in High School, and she genuinely could not answer outside of the fact that she knew that somehow, it had something to do with computers and a lens taht gives what its in front of it to the computer.</p>\n<p>I feel that as soon as computers gets involved, people start thinking of things as a black box, it may as well be magic. There's something deeply troubling about this, which makes me think of the eloi from the H.G. Wells book the Time Machine——a race of infantile beings surrounded by advanced technology from previous generations, but that they do not understand.</p>\n<p>I feel that AI, which is something of a blackbox even to smart people, only accelerates these trends.</p>\n<p>If we're going to embrace the future without losing our humanity and our capacities, we need areas of life where we arbitrarily limit ourselves and connect with our past.</p>\n<p>Building a website with just HTML pages on my computer and a single CSS file helps me understand how the world works. I feel like a participant. Shooting film helps me appreciate just how magical capturing an image is, and makes me a better digital photographer.</p>\n<p>Downloading music, curating it, sorting it, putting it on my iPod makes it feel tangible and valuable. Just like getting dvds from the goodwill and popping them into the player.</p>\n<p>Having printed notes on my desk makes the information feel like an object that I have dominion over, that I can lose and edit, not something \"out there.\"</p>\n<p>I suspect so many problems with ADHD, anxiety, recall, focus, etc. among Gen Z has something to do with their worlds being displaced into the digital ether. When I see how my classmates keep their class notes on google docs I see just a complete cessation of control. You don't even own your own thoughts. You are hosting it on a server somewhere for someone else to protect and manage.</p>\n<p>Usually they'll say something like, they don't want to lose it, what if my laptop breaks, etc. Well first of all, you can back-up your local files, second of all, we've operated for centuries where information was somewhat vulnerable. That's life. Is the tradeoff in agency really worth just a tiny bit of risk mitigation? What about the tradeoff in retention? I simply cannot believe that storing something online viewable only in browser maps into your memory the same way having a physical notebook does. Can't be the case.</p>\n<p>Our brains know what ownership is. We feel it in our bones. We use hotels differently and rental cars differently. It has to be the same with information.</p>\n<p>And there's also the fact that productivity hasn't massively increased since the digitization of workflows and the internet, which seems like a puzzle, but not really. We've made things faster but people slower and information recall harder, meaning we need more agents to coordinate and communicate the movement of information.</p>\n<p>What we could achieve with a filing cabinet and a secretary I'm sure requires more specialized workflows with more people today. Because of the internet. The internet and digitization does strange things to our brains and our workflows.</p>\n<p>Anyways, there's no going back to the past in the market-world. As far as how you do things at your job, how kids are forced to do things at a public school——these will be determined by impersonal forces of allocative efficiency. They'll stop teaching the kids cursive. You'll have to do your timesheets on some SAAS and your expense reports on another and use a VPN to log onto your work computer remotely and all sorts of shit. Your life and how you work will be abstracted away, specialized into teeny tiny pieces spread across the globe, your output will dissolve into the digital either and the global marketplace. Complete alienation.</p>\n<p>But in your personal life, you can smoke a ciggie, you can shoot film like a loser hipster, and waste time building a stupid HTML site, and you can slow everything down, and you can be an agent in the world. You can own some tiny, insignificant process, like making a photo album for your family, end-to-end. But you have to emrbace a little bit of autarky, and be a bit of a luddite to do it.</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.3.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.3.24.html",
      "title": "why I'm a democrat",
      "date_published": "2024-08-03T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "So, I've always considered myself liberal, but as the world has changed my friends and colleagues have liked to joke that I think and act like I'm a conservative. A lot of people, for whatever reason, peg me as a conservative.\n\nI've personally always found this annoying, and it shows that politics today is more about vibes and aesthetics than anything else. If you see a clean cut young man who talks a certain way and is interested in certain kinds of books and ideas than you think, oh that guy is a conservative. If you see someone with stickers on their macbook and certain emojis in their instagram bio you think, oh they're liberal.\n\nAnyways, I have plenty of conservative friends, and lots of conservative family members, and I've had conversations with them where I betrayed my more traditional views on family, gender, society, merit, etc. For instance:\n\n- I think that if you work hard you can generally do well, and its good to think of yourself as having agency\n\n- I think traditional families are the \"ideal\" (not only) model to organize society\n\n- I think boys and girls are different\n\n- I have a respect for the basic premises of economics, and think the market is an important engine for resource allocation\n\nIt turns out, these are very right-coded opinions today. And when people get the sense that I hold these beliefs, they think, well how can you be a democrat?\n\nI honestly never understood the question, because those things are sort of personal values of mine and I don't necessarily associate them with beliefs on policy, which is a different domain in my head. So I'll keep my reasons short.\n\n1. The republicans are crazy. Trump is an absolute basketcase and a dangerous authoritarian. This in itself should be enough of an answer, and I'm shocked that more reasonable, conservatively minded people don't see that as a single issue reason to vote for democrats. He doesn't represent anything remotely conservative, except maybe vibes. Even if I were more conservative, Trump would be enough for me to vote blue consistently.\n\n2. The democratic party, as an institution, has been the most effective policymaking force perhaps in the history of the world. The Civil Rights Act. The Great Society. NAFTA. Affordable Care Act. CHIPs and Science Act. Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Starting the Apollo missions. I like these things. They're not perfect, I have problems with execution and finer points of policy, but the dems get things done. I'm generally a futurist, and want a party that will bring us into the future.\n\n3. I can't stand anti-intellectualism. Now, to be fair, this is happening on both parties now. But the republicans are worse. Climate change denial. Election denial. General disdain for academia. I don't fuck with it at all.\n\n4. I think that we should help people. Some people are poor or in bad situations because things happen to them. Yes, I believe in individual agency and that there are usually ways to muscle out of it for healthy people (but plenty of people have disablities etc.) but I also believe in the agency of society as a whole unit. If we have the means, we should ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living. The dems are generally the party that embody that worldview. I'm all about thinking in \"bootstraps\" terms in your personal life, because its adaptive, but that should not be imputed to COLLECTIVE decision making. As a collective, we have obligations to our members.\n\n5. I don' think that the government should be socially policing people. Look, I have plenty of problems with \"wokism.\" I think the left has a very live and let live attitude that can be destructive to society. But in general, I belive in highly coercive, high-social pressure informal institutions to guide people on the right life paths——like families, clubs, and religious institutions. I don't think the government should be doing that stuff. Even if I thought elective abortions were immoral (I don't think that), I would say, well its up to society in general to make that case to people. Not the government to mandate choices for people. I guess I have civil libertarian instincts.\n\nNone of this stuff seems that insane to me. Yet in conversations, people have often acted like my politics are dumbfounding. This is fresh of mind I guess because I came home from visiting family the other day. I guess, what really characterizes my thinking on politics is a pretty hard demarcation between the individual and collective domains.\n\nOn the individual level, I think that conservative values are generally the most adaptive. There is literally reserach that shows conservatives are happier people (there are confounding variables there, are they conservative because they're more happy? if you're happy, you'll be more likely to appreciate existing structures in society, making you conservative). I think it's good to believe in self-sufficiency, agency, have strong morals, don't blame others or circumstance for what happens to you. It's good to have reverence for the past and always ask why something is the way it is before criticizing it.\n\nBut when I think on the collective, policy level, the whole point of doing things TOGETHER is to make things better, to help eachother, to do things that no one could do on their own. That's generally embodied in a progressive worldview, which sees the state as an engine of social change. So yeah, I'm okay with policies that would help workers, improve work-life balance, improve access to opportunities for marginalized people, that redistribute some value in our economy. That's all great.\n\nMaybe there's an inconsistency in my worldview, but I don't see it. I have no idea why I wrote this. Why write anything? Why do anything? One day the sun will explode and all will be dust, lost to the sands of time. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FFYt9ko8blsdRbheDqxIlUOHm077EIWaNUq-kV1HhiKQ.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da56f863d7c6016f4158985e38b6ae77298f07f29\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>So, I've always considered myself liberal, but as the world has changed my friends and colleagues have liked to joke that I think and act like I'm a conservative. A lot of people, for whatever reason, peg me as a conservative.</p>\n<p>I've personally always found this annoying, and it shows that politics today is more about vibes and aesthetics than anything else. If you see a clean cut young man who talks a certain way and is interested in certain kinds of books and ideas than you think, oh that guy is a conservative. If you see someone with stickers on their macbook and certain emojis in their instagram bio you think, oh they're liberal.</p>\n<p>Anyways, I have plenty of conservative friends, and lots of conservative family members, and I've had conversations with them where I betrayed my more traditional views on family, gender, society, merit, etc. For instance:</p>\n<p>- I think that if you work hard you can generally do well, and its good to think of yourself as having agency</p>\n<p>- I think traditional families are the \"ideal\" (not only) model to organize society</p>\n<p>- I think boys and girls are different</p>\n<p>- I have a respect for the basic premises of economics, and think the market is an important engine for resource allocation</p>\n<p>It turns out, these are very right-coded opinions today. And when people get the sense that I hold these beliefs, they think, well how can you be a democrat?</p>\n<p>I honestly never understood the question, because those things are sort of personal values of mine and I don't necessarily associate them with beliefs on policy, which is a different domain in my head. So I'll keep my reasons short.</p>\n<p>1. The republicans are crazy. Trump is an absolute basketcase and a dangerous authoritarian. This in itself should be enough of an answer, and I'm shocked that more reasonable, conservatively minded people don't see that as a single issue reason to vote for democrats. He doesn't represent anything remotely conservative, except maybe vibes. Even if I were more conservative, Trump would be enough for me to vote blue consistently.</p>\n<p>2. The democratic party, as an institution, has been the most effective policymaking force perhaps in the history of the world. The Civil Rights Act. The Great Society. NAFTA. Affordable Care Act. CHIPs and Science Act. Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Starting the Apollo missions. I like these things. They're not perfect, I have problems with execution and finer points of policy, but the dems get things done. I'm generally a futurist, and want a party that will bring us into the future.</p>\n<p>3. I can't stand anti-intellectualism. Now, to be fair, this is happening on both parties now. But the republicans are worse. Climate change denial. Election denial. General disdain for academia. I don't fuck with it at all.</p>\n<p>4. I think that we should help people. Some people are poor or in bad situations because things happen to them. Yes, I believe in individual agency and that there are usually ways to muscle out of it for healthy people (but plenty of people have disablities etc.) but I also believe in the agency of society as a whole unit. If we have the means, we should ensure everyone has a minimum standard of living. The dems are generally the party that embody that worldview. I'm all about thinking in \"bootstraps\" terms in your personal life, because its adaptive, but that should not be imputed to COLLECTIVE decision making. As a collective, we have obligations to our members.</p>\n<p>5. I don' think that the government should be socially policing people. Look, I have plenty of problems with \"wokism.\" I think the left has a very live and let live attitude that can be destructive to society. But in general, I belive in highly coercive, high-social pressure informal institutions to guide people on the right life paths——like families, clubs, and religious institutions. I don't think the government should be doing that stuff. Even if I thought elective abortions were immoral (I don't think that), I would say, well its up to society in general to make that case to people. Not the government to mandate choices for people. I guess I have civil libertarian instincts.</p>\n<p>None of this stuff seems that insane to me. Yet in conversations, people have often acted like my politics are dumbfounding. This is fresh of mind I guess because I came home from visiting family the other day. I guess, what really characterizes my thinking on politics is a pretty hard demarcation between the individual and collective domains.</p>\n<p>On the individual level, I think that conservative values are generally the most adaptive. There is literally reserach that shows conservatives are happier people (there are confounding variables there, are they conservative because they're more happy? if you're happy, you'll be more likely to appreciate existing structures in society, making you conservative). I think it's good to believe in self-sufficiency, agency, have strong morals, don't blame others or circumstance for what happens to you. It's good to have reverence for the past and always ask why something is the way it is before criticizing it.</p>\n<p>But when I think on the collective, policy level, the whole point of doing things TOGETHER is to make things better, to help eachother, to do things that no one could do on their own. That's generally embodied in a progressive worldview, which sees the state as an engine of social change. So yeah, I'm okay with policies that would help workers, improve work-life balance, improve access to opportunities for marginalized people, that redistribute some value in our economy. That's all great.</p>\n<p>Maybe there's an inconsistency in my worldview, but I don't see it. I have no idea why I wrote this. Why write anything? Why do anything? One day the sun will explode and all will be dust, lost to the sands of time. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FFYt9ko8blsdRbheDqxIlUOHm077EIWaNUq-kV1HhiKQ.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Da56f863d7c6016f4158985e38b6ae77298f07f29</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.1.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-8.1.24.html",
      "title": "For the gunners: winning and losing mindsets in law school",
      "date_published": "2024-08-01T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "For this whole post, you need to visualize the chad wojak for the winning mindset and that crying zoomer wojak for the losing mindset.\n\n Approach to Professors \n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- understands that, while its good to have quality professors since you are spending so much money, law school is a curve and everyone is receiving the same instruction, so it doesn't matter\n\n- is generally grateful for professor's efforts, adapts to their idiosyncrasies, if their approach doesn't click they take it as a challenge or a problem to be solved\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- inordinate amount of time complaining about instruction styles between classes, whining that it's not fair and that the professor doesn't really teach anything (they don't understand that law school instruction is completely different)\n\n- perhaps wastes precious time complaining to administration or asking professor to adjust approach during class\n\nApproach to the Curve\n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- understand that, while a harsh system, the curve presents an opportunity to distinguish yourself, and prevents the problems that plague undergraduate institutions where people of wide ranging ability levels/work ethics get clumped into the A category\n\n- know that grades don't reflect their intrinsic self-worth, but understand that competition is a part of life, and embrace it like a happy warrior\n\n- don't think about to curve too much, try their very best\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- complain that the curve isn't fair, get anxious when they see gunners work hard in class because they will \"ruin\" the curve (they don't understand that they too, in fact, can work hard if they really wanted it)\n\n- spend too much time thinking about the curve, trying to calibrate how much other people understand to determine how much effort to expend, instead of just giving it their all—they hope they can \"ride\" the curve\n\nApproach to Studying the Law\n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- enjoy the law, understand they entered law school on purpose\n\n- study for understanding, deeply appreciate the opportunity to inherit this rich tradition and participate in the reproduction of institutions and knowledge that our whole society relies on, see themselves as torchbearers of civilization\n\n- sincere love of learning that shines through them, rubs off on others, and improves society\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- maybe joined law school just for money or were humanities majors with no other plans (foolish, there are such easier ways to make money)\n\n- \"is this going to be on the exam?\"\n\n- \"honestly, I want to be a [insert field] lawyer, I'm not even going to use this. I just want to get through this class ugh.\"\n\n- \"I can't believe I spent so much time studying that and it wasn't on the exam\"\n\n- \"I stopped reading the cases. The rules are on quimbee.\"\n\n- joke about being mediocre to feel better and bring down the vibe and culture wherever they go\n\nApproach to the success of others\n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- \"that's great for them! They must have worked really hard\"\n\n- learns from those who outperform them, incorporates their methods, knows that every human being, especially people doing well in your field of endeavors, have something to teach you\n\n- compete, but understand that comparison is the thief of joy\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- \"yeah they did well but I bet they spent like eight hours a day studying lol\"\n\n- \"at the end of the day grades aren't everything. You can be a complete idiot and still get As\" (delude themselves into thinking that other people's grades don't signal some kind of competence)\n\n- generally finds ways to knock someone down a peg once they hear good news about them\n\nApproach to Life\n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- understand that as a law student, they are among the most privileged people in the world and cannot wait to use that privilege to better their families, communities, and country\n\n- treat professional competition like a sport, you want to win, you'll do your best, you don't hate the opponent\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- believe that, as a law student, they are a uniquely oppressed class of person, spends more time thinking about how hard their own life is (it's reading) then how they will use their privilege to help others\n\nApproach to Failure\n\nWinning mindset:\n\n- understands that failures and setbacks are part of the stories of all great heroes, sees it as just another chapter in their own story\n\n- know that, while disappointing, they have an intrinsic god-given sense of worth outside of grades and career success\n\n- remember that learning is not about one's pride, but what they can do for others\n\nLosing mindset:\n\n- forgets that this is all just a game with a man-mad point system, thinks one's soul can be captured by metrics like GPA\n\n- don't get back up when life knocks them down\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>For this whole post, you need to visualize the chad wojak for the winning mindset and that crying zoomer wojak for the losing mindset.</p>\n<p><b> Approach to Professors </b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- understands that, while its good to have quality professors since you are spending so much money, law school is a curve and everyone is receiving the same instruction, so it doesn't matter</p>\n<p>- is generally grateful for professor's efforts, adapts to their idiosyncrasies, if their approach doesn't click they take it as a challenge or a problem to be solved</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- inordinate amount of time complaining about instruction styles between classes, whining that it's not fair and that the professor doesn't really teach anything (they don't understand that law school instruction is completely different)</p>\n<p>- perhaps wastes precious time complaining to administration or asking professor to adjust approach during class</p>\n<p><b>Approach to the Curve</b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- understand that, while a harsh system, the curve presents an opportunity to distinguish yourself, and prevents the problems that plague undergraduate institutions where people of wide ranging ability levels/work ethics get clumped into the A category</p>\n<p>- know that grades don't reflect their intrinsic self-worth, but understand that competition is a part of life, and embrace it like a happy warrior</p>\n<p>- don't think about to curve too much, try their very best</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- complain that the curve isn't fair, get anxious when they see gunners work hard in class because they will \"ruin\" the curve (they don't understand that they too, in fact, can work hard if they really wanted it)</p>\n<p>- spend too much time thinking about the curve, trying to calibrate how much other people understand to determine how much effort to expend, instead of just giving it their all—they hope they can \"ride\" the curve</p>\n<p><b>Approach to Studying the Law</b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- enjoy the law, understand they entered law school on purpose</p>\n<p>- study for understanding, deeply appreciate the opportunity to inherit this rich tradition and participate in the reproduction of institutions and knowledge that our whole society relies on, see themselves as torchbearers of civilization</p>\n<p>- sincere love of learning that shines through them, rubs off on others, and improves society</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- maybe joined law school just for money or were humanities majors with no other plans (foolish, there are such easier ways to make money)</p>\n<p>- \"is this going to be on the exam?\"</p>\n<p>- \"honestly, I want to be a [insert field] lawyer, I'm not even going to use this. I just want to get through this class ugh.\"</p>\n<p>- \"I can't believe I spent so much time studying that and it wasn't on the exam\"</p>\n<p>- \"I stopped reading the cases. The rules are on quimbee.\"</p>\n<p>- joke about being mediocre to feel better and bring down the vibe and culture wherever they go</p>\n<p><b>Approach to the success of others</b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- \"that's great for them! They must have worked really hard\"</p>\n<p>- learns from those who outperform them, incorporates their methods, knows that every human being, especially people doing well in your field of endeavors, have something to teach you</p>\n<p>- compete, but understand that comparison is the thief of joy</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- \"yeah they did well but I bet they spent like eight hours a day studying lol\"</p>\n<p>- \"at the end of the day grades aren't everything. You can be a complete idiot and still get As\" (delude themselves into thinking that other people's grades don't signal some kind of competence)</p>\n<p>- generally finds ways to knock someone down a peg once they hear good news about them</p>\n<p><b>Approach to Life</b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- understand that as a law student, they are among the most privileged people in the world and cannot wait to use that privilege to better their families, communities, and country</p>\n<p>- treat professional competition like a sport, you want to win, you'll do your best, you don't hate the opponent</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- believe that, as a law student, they are a uniquely oppressed class of person, spends more time thinking about how hard their own life is (it's reading) then how they will use their privilege to help others</p>\n<p><b>Approach to Failure</b></p>\n<p>Winning mindset:</p>\n<p>- understands that failures and setbacks are part of the stories of all great heroes, sees it as just another chapter in their own story</p>\n<p>- know that, while disappointing, they have an intrinsic god-given sense of worth outside of grades and career success</p>\n<p>- remember that learning is not about one's pride, but what they can do for others</p>\n<p>Losing mindset:</p>\n<p>- forgets that this is all just a game with a man-mad point system, thinks one's soul can be captured by metrics like GPA</p>\n<p>- don't get back up when life knocks them down</p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.27.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.27.24.html",
      "title": "More thoughts on the election",
      "date_published": "2024-07-27T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "So my predictions on the election were very incorrect. Before you move on, you may want to quickly read them.\n\nbad predictions from 7.17.24\n\nI like making predictions, and then evaluating them because it makes me better at making predictions.\n\nOn my prediction that calls for Biden to step aside would simmer down, and that he would remain as the candidate seemed to overestimate the man's stubborness and underestimate the possibility of very high profile defections like Pelosi and Schumer. Overall, his decision to leave was very patriotic, and completely overturns the dynamics of the election.\n\nMy other prediction is that the democratic campaign would be a bit muted after Trump's assassination attempt. That hasn't been true at all. Kamala has been on a full offensive, and strangely, it feels that the assassination's salience has already receded. It doesn't feel like someone just tried to assassinate a presidential candidate. The country doesn't feel like it's on fire the same way that it did in 2020. Which is notable, and good for Democrats. Bad for Trump. It feels like there's no real resistance to her keeping the temperature against Trump high.\n\nOn Kamala, I think I also underestimated how fast people would consolidate behind her. I think that people really just want someone to rally for, and they will do all the mental gymanstics and coalition building necessary to make Kamala that person. Again, very good news for Democrats.\n\nThe megatrend here is that the Democratic party is a stronger institution, and the coalition is more resilient, than people may have thought. I think the party is going to be quite supportive of Kamala.\n\nAnother failed prediction: Trump is not being more disciplined at all. He was, briefly, at the convention. But now he's telling Christians that they won't have to vote again after this election and other crazy shit. So again, very good for democrats. With Joe gone, he can't just coast, he's going to start talking and people will remember how insane he is.\n\nOne half true prediction I have had is on Vance. Yes, it seems that Vance won't do anything for Trump as far as expanding any demographic. I didn't think he would do anything as far as white working class people even though thats his whole pitch. I thought if he had an impact, it would be a positive one in the suburbs.\n\nBut it seems like Vance is actually quite stupid as a political messenger, and has picked a lane where he is offputting to educated and high-information voters, even though his record suggests that he is an articulate and smart person. His comments on non-married women/cat ladies is going to turn off a lot of educated suburban types. He's already become kind of a joke online, being dubbed a couchfucker or something.\n\nAnd whatever vibe he's adopting doesn't seem like its connecting with anyone else either. He's a little too polished to connect with the white working class the way Trump or Palin did. he doesn't get angry. He's not terribly funny. His bio obviously might connect with them, but in a theoretical way, not an emotional way. He's not good at making an emotional connection with his bio.\n\nAgain, his bio seemed like it could appeal to educated types, with its interesting commentaries on American meritocracy, what it suggests about Vance's own intellectual capacities——but he's not using it like that, in the way he was when he was touring his book. He's deciding to be a clown.\n\nSo again, Vance seems like a failure of a VP pick for Trump. I suspect that Vance is going to get some kind of pressure to change his vibe soon, and we'll see him get weirder as he tries to adopt a role that doesn't suit him.\n\nThis fall from grace really serves him right for doing something as cynical and power-hungry as endorsing Trump. The last guy to make that faustian bargain almost got lynched. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but a satisfying end to Vance's political story is that he goes down in disgrace with Trumpism. A failed appendange on a failed race.\n\nNow that's unlikely, because he's young and ambitious and he'll have opportunities for rebrands in the future. And people have short memories unfortunately. But this iteration of Vance seems like its headed for a political tragedy. That's one prediction I'm sticking to.\n\nAnyways, consider me coconut pilled. I think Kamala will win. I hope she does. All is not lost.\n\nFinally, look at these photos I just uploaded.\n\nFour black & white photos taken on Kodak TMax 400\n\nCheers,\n\nknxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>So my predictions on the election were very incorrect. Before you move on, you may want to quickly read them.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.17.24.html\">bad predictions from 7.17.24</a></p>\n<p>I like making predictions, and then evaluating them because it makes me better at making predictions.</p>\n<p>On my prediction that calls for Biden to step aside would simmer down, and that he would remain as the candidate seemed to overestimate the man's stubborness and underestimate the possibility of very high profile defections like Pelosi and Schumer. Overall, his decision to leave was very patriotic, and completely overturns the dynamics of the election.</p>\n<p>My other prediction is that the democratic campaign would be a bit muted after Trump's assassination attempt. That hasn't been true at all. Kamala has been on a full offensive, and strangely, it feels that the assassination's salience has already receded. It doesn't feel like someone just tried to assassinate a presidential candidate. The country doesn't feel like it's on fire the same way that it did in 2020. Which is notable, and good for Democrats. Bad for Trump. It feels like there's no real resistance to her keeping the temperature against Trump high.</p>\n<p>On Kamala, I think I also underestimated how fast people would consolidate behind her. I think that people really just want someone to rally for, and they will do all the mental gymanstics and coalition building necessary to make Kamala that person. Again, very good news for Democrats.</p>\n<p>The megatrend here is that the Democratic party is a stronger institution, and the coalition is more resilient, than people may have thought. I think the party is going to be quite supportive of Kamala.</p>\n<p>Another failed prediction: Trump is not being more disciplined at all. He was, briefly, at the convention. But now he's telling Christians that they won't have to vote again after this election and other crazy shit. So again, very good for democrats. With Joe gone, he can't just coast, he's going to start talking and people will remember how insane he is.</p>\n<p>One half true prediction I have had is on Vance. Yes, it seems that Vance won't do anything for Trump as far as expanding any demographic. I didn't think he would do anything as far as white working class people even though thats his whole pitch. I thought if he had an impact, it would be a positive one in the suburbs.</p>\n<p>But it seems like Vance is actually quite stupid as a political messenger, and has picked a lane where he is offputting to educated and high-information voters, even though his record suggests that he is an articulate and smart person. His comments on non-married women/cat ladies is going to turn off a lot of educated suburban types. He's already become kind of a joke online, being dubbed a couchfucker or something.</p>\n<p>And whatever vibe he's adopting doesn't seem like its connecting with anyone else either. He's a little too polished to connect with the white working class the way Trump or Palin did. he doesn't get angry. He's not terribly funny. His bio obviously might connect with them, but in a theoretical way, not an emotional way. He's not good at making an emotional connection with his bio.</p>\n<p>Again, his bio seemed like it could appeal to educated types, with its interesting commentaries on American meritocracy, what it suggests about Vance's own intellectual capacities——but he's not using it like that, in the way he was when he was touring his book. He's deciding to be a clown.</p>\n<p>So again, Vance seems like a failure of a VP pick for Trump. I suspect that Vance is going to get some kind of pressure to change his vibe soon, and we'll see him get weirder as he tries to adopt a role that doesn't suit him.</p>\n<p>This fall from grace really serves him right for doing something as cynical and power-hungry as endorsing Trump. The last guy to make that faustian bargain almost got lynched. I wouldn't wish that on anyone, but a satisfying end to Vance's political story is that he goes down in disgrace with Trumpism. A failed appendange on a failed race.</p>\n<p>Now that's unlikely, because he's young and ambitious and he'll have opportunities for rebrands in the future. And people have short memories unfortunately. But this iteration of Vance seems like its headed for a political tragedy. That's one prediction I'm sticking to.</p>\n<p>Anyways, consider me coconut pilled. I think Kamala will win. I hope she does. All is not lost.</p>\n<p>Finally, look at these photos I just uploaded.</p>\n<p><a href=\"https://knxnts.xyz/photo-7.27.24-fourbw.html\">Four black & white photos taken on Kodak TMax 400</a></p>\n<p>Cheers,</p>\n<p>knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.21.24-BookReview-Regime-Change.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.21.24-BookReview-Regime-Change.html",
      "title": "Book Review of Regime Change by Patrick Deneen",
      "date_published": "2024-07-21T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Note: there are alot of typos here because I write it straight in the HTML file really fast. Just part of the charm. May fix later.\n\nSo I finally read Regime Change by Patrick Deneen. Before I talk about that book, I’ll start by saying that Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is one of the most important and formative books I’ve ever read.\n\nIt’s a funny story, I was 19 years old, finished sophomore year of college, and if I recall correctly, I was in the public library of my hometown. I had just learned introductory economics from a pretty libertarian professor, I had taken all my intro poli-sci classes from a typically liberal professor. The whole woke backlash had started and I was exposed to that content via Youtube and such. I was working for the democratic party at this point.\n\nI very randomly saw the spine of the book title when I was walking around the political science section of the public library, and it was provocative enough for me to pick up. I think I read it cover to cover in just a couple of sittings. It was one of those books you read and you’re just shaking your head thinking “exactly!” It perfectly articulated and verbalized a nagging sense of things you thought were wrong, that the current way of describing politics isn’t allowing you to diagnose the problem properly.\n\nDeneen’s talking about the right and the left wings of politics as dual ends of the same atomizing force is a somewhat banal point in the era of realignment, its something that I think has penetrated the popular consciousness. But it felt revelatory when I was reading it. It was really cathartic.\n\nI showed it to my friends, one of them says to this day it was the most important book he had ever read.\n\nThis is all to say a) I really respect Deneen and he is really foundational to how I think about the world b) any criticisms I have of his new book are against this background of immense respect.\n\nI’ll give thoughts about the book in its three parts, because they all deserve separate analysis.\n\nPart I: Our Cold Civil War\n\nSo this section is something of a rehash of his first book, and I think people just getting into his work would appreciate it.\n\nChapter 1 summarizes those arguments on why liberalism has failed. It references other important books in the genre that I think everyone should read, particularly Coming Apart by Charles Murray which I think is one the best books I’ve eve read.\n\nHe talks a bit about what other political scientists call “negative polarization” in his section Know Your Enemy. Nothing ground breaking there.\n\nChapter 2 summarizes some coming talking points on the right about the managerial elite, what’s sometimes called Woke Inc. Nice interweaving of Tocqueville to put what feels like a very topical conversation in historical context. But again, nothing groundbreaking. The elites are placeless, out of touch, reproducing a global economy that works for their type of fungible placeless skills, talk about equality but are produced by extremely meritocratic and inegalitarian mechanisms—— all very familiar points for the kind of person who would pick up this book, I think at least.\n\nOverall, I was a bit underwhelmed by Part 1. Probably because a lot of the things that were novel to talk about in 2018 are just part of the zeitgeist now. You’ll hear these points on Joe Rogan, on the campaign trail of Vivek Ramaswamy, you’ll see twitter threads on it.\n\nBut I think to a lay person who isn’t so immersed in the dialogue of the commentariat, it’s a great and comprehensive survey of the conversational landscape on the new right.\n\nPart II: Common Good Conservatism.\n\nSo, I’ll start by saying that just as in Why Liberalism failed, Deneen’s greatest strength in Regime Change again seems to be re-jigging concepts and categories so we can start more meaningful conversation. Basically, he takes pains to start the book by getting away from the usual right-left, liberal-conservative, framing, and that takes a good deal of real estate in the book. Surely eye opening for a normie, if not a political science student.\n\nI enjoyed this section a good deal, I liked the theme of trying to develop a non-relative account of what being “conservative” means, and it has a really great overview of classical political thought from Mill to Marx.\n\nWhen he gets the section “ The Modern Nonprogressive Alternative: Common-Good Conservatism” I think the book really picks up some steam. Now he’s trying to innovate and define a political project. This is why I bought the book!\n\nSo what is Common Good Conservatism, to Deneen? Here are my takeaways:\n\n- It believes that traditional values are like public utilities that are important for social life, and for helping the bottom rungs of society live richer lives. Just like progressives believe in welfare to help everyone and create an income floor, conservatives believe in providing a cultural floor so that people don’t like destroy their lives and communities. I’ve always liked these arguments and it’s good to see it summarized here.\n\n- Conservatism isn’t about slowing down liberalism it’s about opposing its premises, specifically the ideology of progressivism. Makes sense. Progress isn’t an objective, stability and reproduction of cultural institutions is. Very nice.\n\n- The modern agenda is, to boil it down, is to democratize institutions so they are better connected with the “wisdom of the people,” and the cultural norms and knowledge they have organically created overtime—in opposition to governance by the experts and the managerial elite\n\nSo far, not a radical redefinition. Have heard these arguments in National Affairs and all that before. But a helpful one.\n\nWith that, I think the book exits its “definitional” section.\n\nNow so far, you can tell my main critique is the lack of novelty. But again, that’s because him and his colleagues have really entered the zeitgeist in a big way. The commentariat and weirdos like me who read this stuff know their diagnosis. Many of us agree. So he has a higher burden to make prescriptions I think.\n\nIn the chapter Wisdom of the People, we start to see some of his ideas tie in with current events. I like the use of the Covid Pandemic to illustrate the failures of governance by expert. The use of Plato and Aristotle to illustrate the opposing arguments for expert and people rule, respectively, was neat. I really liked the points on traditional knowledge, and how conservatism is rooted in the belief of bottom up cultural generation. I didn’t know much about Disraeli, and I liked learning about how he developed conservatism from Burke.\n\nAs a law student, this section made me think about how, in general, conservative justices seem to tap into the common law tradition in their opinions a bit more, whereas liberal justices are more focused on the statute and its democratic legitimacy. Again, these are rough, imperfect associations, but I think they’re there. Progressives often see the statute as a more legitimate force of law, whereas conservatives see greater legitimacy in the accumulation of decisions in the common law. I’ll add to this another day.\n\nI also liked the whole idea that cultural norms and traditions are a “general bank” of value. Schumpeter gets to this idea in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, where he talks about how Capitalism will create the conditions for its own end by changing the culture it relies on (Deneen doesn’t reference this book, as far as I remember, but it really has a lot of his arguments in it).\n\nBut again, at this point I’m hungry for something NEW. I was skimming through it all impatiently.\n\nNow, the most interesting argument, that I wish he developed more, was the one he begins in integrating knowledge, where he talks about the problems of specialized expertise in an atomized, expert led economy and society.\n\nNow I’ll take an extended moment to address this. This is, I think, a way bigger deal in our world today than people acknowledge. At some point I remember that Tyler Cowan, when he was talking about “The Great Stagnation” back in the day, suggests that maybe this is the reason that we haven’t seen intense productivity gains——the modern way of knowledge generation is really good at noodling on the margins but not at moonshots. Today we may not create or reward a lot polymath John Nash types. Instead Johns Hopkins and MIT create a lot more people who are good at say, algorithmic trading, than we would have seen in the past.\n\nThe benefits of specialization, at least in the field of the INFORMATION economy, might be sort of a parabolic curve, where we get more and faster innovation up to a point, but after a certain point the costs off specialization——increased friction and lag of communication between different disciplines, less frequent integration of cross-domain knowledge, etc.——outweigh the efficiency benefits. If you look at how bureaucracy in any office functions, you can get a sense of that. I think this ties in with Deneen’s story of elite overproduction really nicely (introduced by Peter Turchin some years back, I believe) but he doesn’t explicitly make that connection.\n\nOn connecting the overproduction story with the specialization story, maybe we have this intense specialization at least partially because we have so many fucking people in academia and the “cognitive elite”. And for any individual to be competitive in this saturated environment you need to specialize. Same dynamics that make it so that the best way to make it big on Tik Tok is to have an extremely specific gimmick, that you repeat over and over and over.\n\nBut in the aggregate (for both innovation and online entertainment) this is a bad equilibrium. Having a lot of highly specialized people may actually be in-net less productive, and less innovative, than having half of that set of people who are slightly more interdisciplinary. I’m thinking about the fact that a man like John Nash or Von Neumann could have such an insane interdisciplinary output back in the day. If those men were alive today, would they become too specialized to even do that?\n\nI think its a similar thing that we’re seeing with supply chains (he also talks about this briefly), where it seems more efficient to really diversify them, but it turned out there were all these hidden costs and at some point supply chain length adds more costs then benefits. More room for error, more risk, more fragility, less quality control. But at the same time, longer supply chains employ more people.\n\nCould both of these phenomena be labor-supply driven? The need and incentive, in a capitalist economy, to employ people as resources, leads us to adopt workflows that just employ more people? Generally economics likes to think of processes as becoming more efficient, as technology driving firms to employ less people. I think something else is going on, and I need to write about it elsewhere. Is the phenomena creating a lot of third rate academics the same one that’s causing us to make shitty manufactured goods, like the fact that we can’t build toasters or refrigerators like we used to? But we just have a lot of cheap ones?\n\nThere’s something to that, and I want someone to really dig into it out there. It’s in the antitrust and supply chain conversation for sure, but has anyone really measured how much cognitive resource we’re wasting with intense specialization? I’ll have more thoughts on this another day.\n\nAnyways, that’s one of the richer areas where he doesn’t spend too much time——not a critique, because it wasn’t the point of the book, but I feel like the problems of specialization in a liberal society deserves several books. But he has nice observations, and makes a marxian connection to how intense specialization alienates and reduced the capacity for individual laborers. I like this point, and I think there’s a good argument to be made that at some point, the supposed aggregate benefits of specialization is overweighed by the diminishment of individual human capital. Eventually, that diminishment of human capital probably shows up in something like rate of productivity gain.\n\nHis chapter on a Mixed Constitution is a nice overview of the history of the idea, and is really there to set up his policy arguments in the next section, which I was the most excited to read. Again, well written, informative, but wanted to get to the prescriptive stuff.\n\nPART III. What is to be done?\n\nThis is where I got excited. In the beginning chapter, Aristopopulism, he expands on his ideas for implementing a “mixed constitution.” I liked his observations here, and I really liked the data on donors to Biden and Trump, breaking down the professions that donated to each. I actually had no idea that the realignment of both parties constituencies was so captured in the donor data (workers and entrepreneurs donate to Trump, white collar professional at big companies donate to Biden).\n\nNow, I think he does a leap here, where he suggests that this dynamic reflects a classical mode of politics——oligarchy versus demos——that the founders specifically sough to avoid. His prescriptions after this sort of rest on the assumption that, if institutions remains the same, we’re entering this status quo where the top cleavage in American politics is class.\n\nNow, it is true that the country is depolarizing on race and identity, marginally, and polarizing by EDUCATION, which is aligned with something like social class. Ezra Klein had a great podcast about this some months back——just checked and it was January——with Ruy Teixeira. Worth a listen. But yes, educational polarization is one hundred percent the DIRECTION of change.\n\nBut the parties are both still heterogeneous based on income, with different slices of the working class. The changes are directional, not absolute, and they aren’t super long-lived. There are rich Republican voters, and the income data still shows they get a higher share of higher income voters. Democrats still have a reliable base of poor minorities. Look at the Pew research, not just the donor data, which will skew towards more-engaged, higher information voters, and probably exclude newer Americans (my guess I didn’t check).\n\nAnd not to mention, that the parties will doubtlessly adapt to the changes in their electorate and now allow themselves to move too far in any direction into the future. We shouldn’t extrapolate a trend that’s existed for maybe a decade or less farther into the future. Mitt Romney was 2012.\n\nAfter the Mckinley’s Republican Party, we had Teddy Roosevelt. Not too long after Roosevelt, we had Harding. The Republican Party has had a populist moment in the past, but bounced back into shape as a right of center business friendly party. There’s more inertia in the parties than people give credit for, and these transformations aren’t necessarily permanent. Obviously, the Democrats aren’t a Jacksonian party today, so sometimes they sort of are.\n\nThe Republicans won’t give up the rich suburbs they need in swing states for long, the electoral math doesn’t allow it.\n\nIt’s also very unlikely that Democrats will resign themselves to being a professional class party. Their activist class and their intellectual class are both responding to it already. The strategy will change in the next few years. We already saw it change between Biden and Hillary. And the vibes in the party elite are to nominate a person like Whitmer in the future, not a Buttigieg.\n\nIn short, the incentives that democracy creates means that it’s quite unlikely that these changes will go on in one direction for too long. Both parties have strong incentives to be big tent, class-mixed parties. And that’s good.\n\nDeneen, in his usual polemic style, is just extrapolating far too much. I severely doubt that our current institution will lead us to a permanent “mass and elite” dynamic. Rather, we’ll just see the usual trading of coalitions between the parties over the long-run, and those coalitions will probably stay “mixed.”\n\nSo now, I’ll look at his actual policy proposals. He talks more about blending, class-mixing, all well and good. These are this concrete ideas to fix things:\n\n* Expanding the House of Representatives.\n\nI think he makes a great and historically rooted argument here. It’s a great idea, I had heard it before, and I think It was in Vox. I did a lookup and it was in Vox, the case has been made in the American Enterprise Institute, and by a liberal columnist in the WaPo. So a conversation very much being had within the “liberal” framework!\n\nThis isn’t to say that he isn’t making a great case, and I like how he tied it to the super-zips data by Charles Murray, but if his policy proposals are being presented by pretty mainstream liberals, it undercuts the idea that its part of a very novel “Common Good Conservative” movement that’s against liberalism’s premises. Moving on.\n\n* Breaking up D.C.\n\nSame point as above. Familiar idea, I agree with it. It’s good and we should do it. I think Andrew Yang and a couple of Democrats in the 2020 primary supported this idea.\n\n* Dealing with Growth Poles\n\nHe takes a lot of words to say that we need regional development strategies and to break up superstar and “growth pole” effects.\n\nAgain, these are arguments that you saw in the Economist after 2016, and hear from Elizabeth Warren. It’s not consensus shattering. The need for regional development is a very popular idea I’m pretty sure.\n\n* Representation of Estates (or class factions)\n\nWell trodden ground, represented in Europe, and reflected in Democratic voices calling for sectoral bargaining. I like the idea of worker representation on the Fed.\n\n* New forms of National Service. I like this idea of making college students do stints in underserved communities. It’s really great. The first time I heard it proposed seriously is in “Can American Capitalism Survive?” By Steven Pearlstein. He was a business editor for the WaPo.\n\n* Stopping Elite Overproduction.\n\nDeneen has the diagnosis here but no solutions. Everyone likes trade schools and people have been talking about making them better for a long time. Been a long-standing conservative tallking points, and often you’ll hear Democrats talk about it too.\n\nThe real solution here is pretty boring, it’s about the subsidization of education that Bryan Caplan, a super Neo-liberal, talks extensively about in his book The Case Against Education. We have too many elites because we subsidize it.\n\nI think the basic solution here is that we have to subsidize EDUCATING more than getting an EDUCATION. Most of the people getting graduate degrees are going to be shitty academics, but would be better teachers than we have today.\n\nIf we just redirect the money that we use to subsidize elite overproduction into public education, we could probably make teaching a higher-status profession that attracts smart people. If you doubt this, look at latin America and India and see the ridiculous jobs they’ve managed to make high-status there. Being the guy who counts people’s bus tickets is actually a high-status job in India because the government pays them a lot, relative to what the market would.\n\nAgain, I really think overproduction is just a money issue. We need to pay people a lot more to be teachers; he gets to this point, but in broader terms.\n\n* Reviving Manufacturing\n\nYes, this is what the Biden administration is trying to do. It’s the new “Washington Consensus.” Jake Sullivan gives a speech about it. The department of commerce is on board with it. Our new trade policy is centered around it. This is what the Inflation Reducation Act was all about! So we’re repeating Democratic Party and Deep State platforms here.\n\n* Supply Chain Resilience\n\nNo points here that haven’t been talked about by the parties above or the Chamber of Commerce or the American Enterprise Institute. It’s the new liberal consensus.\n\n* Immigration\n\nNo novel contributions. And frankly I think that for natioal revival, we need a lot more immigrants. A lot.\n\n* Centering Christianity\n\nSure. I like more public holidays. Revitalization of public spaces is good. Why do we have to put this in the context of Christianity? These programs fit comfortably in a pluralist framework. —\n\nAnyways, the last chapter was nice on seeing this all as an agenda to combat disintegration was good, I appreciated it, he writes beautifully. No one is saying the observations, the integration with history and classical political history, the diagnosis of where society at, isn’t best in class in the genre.\n\nBut I left the book disappointed. This is the moment when Deneen’s intellectual movement has really “arrived.” J.D. Vance is the Republican VP. Amy Coney Barrett of Notre Dame is on the Supreme Court. Trump will probably be president. The neocons are gone. This faction of the right——which I’ve always preferred to their predecessors——will wield power, if not this election, then very very soon.\n\nAnd the movement is presented as something completely transformative! A complete rejection of LIBERALISM itself! A radical remake of the conservative movement.\n\nBut when you look at the concrete policy proposals, it’s just not novel at all. They’re good, common sense, have been talked about. It’s good that the Republicans are joining the conversation on them.\n\nAnd that’s where I think it gets me a little annoyed. The conservative movement is really just re-entering a mainstream conversation. That’s the story here.\n\nFor decades they were this insane, Ayn Rand, libertarian, Paul Ryan, radical movement, completely divorced from the reasonable policy conversation being had by other liberals and the left-of-center thinkers on how to upgrade our Republic. And now they decide to deradicalize and rejoin that policy conversation, and brand it in damn near insurrectionary terms.\n\nIt’s all just very silly. I took Deneen’s arguments in Why Liberalism Failed very seriously, and frankly, that book made me skeptical of this order enough that I would be receptive to far more subversive proposals than things I read in Vox in high school. Is the innovation here that Republicans will become like Christian Democrats in Europe, but with a shittier more conspiratorial culture? Is that the big plan?\n\nSo what’s the future? It’s not revolutionary. We’re going to have two parties having a slightly healthier domestic policy discussion, just like they did for most of the 20th century, where they are concerned with things like income and wealth distribution, making institutions fair, keeping our culture healthy, etc. Except one of those parties, the supposedly conservative one, seems to be vulnerable to extreme authoritarian capture and conspiracy theories.\n\nNow I want to be very fair, I’m looking at this in a very hard-nosed political way, in the context of party politics, from a more critical policy point of view, and Deneen writes from a more theoretical angle. That’s good and valuable. I think my expectations were just set differently going into it. Since this post has been mainly critical, and I don’t think the book necessarily deserves that, I’m reading the book in the CONTEXT of this national moment, where things might go very bad because of a very very bad president who has, in part, been enabled and legitimated by the intellectual movement Deneen has helped create (even though I know he, personally, has been critical of DJT). So a lot of the anger towards the book’s arguments are towards something else.\n\nIn short, the book made me less bullish on the idea that this national conservative movement will be anything revitalizing. It may merely carry a dangerous authoritarian into the White House, while making few novel contributions to policy. They were policies we really could have had without the fascism. They were ones that could be had healthily in the liberal framework, which I think has always had space for the ideas Deneen advocates.\n\nSo a liberal I remain.",
      "content_html": "<p>Note: there are alot of typos here because I write it straight in the HTML file really fast. Just part of the charm. May fix later.</p>\n<p>So I finally read Regime Change by Patrick Deneen. Before I talk about that book, I’ll start by saying that Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed is one of the most important and formative books I’ve ever read.</p>\n<p>It’s a funny story, I was 19 years old, finished sophomore year of college, and if I recall correctly, I was in the public library of my hometown. I had just learned introductory economics from a pretty libertarian professor, I had taken all my intro poli-sci classes from a typically liberal professor. The whole woke backlash had started and I was exposed to that content via Youtube and such. I was working for the democratic party at this point.</p>\n<p>I very randomly saw the spine of the book title when I was walking around the political science section of the public library, and it was provocative enough for me to pick up. I think I read it cover to cover in just a couple of sittings. It was one of those books you read and you’re just shaking your head thinking “exactly!” It perfectly articulated and verbalized a nagging sense of things you thought were wrong, that the current way of describing politics isn’t allowing you to diagnose the problem properly.</p>\n<p>Deneen’s talking about the right and the left wings of politics as dual ends of the same atomizing force is a somewhat banal point in the era of realignment, its something that I think has penetrated the popular consciousness. But it felt revelatory when I was reading it. It was really cathartic.</p>\n<p>I showed it to my friends, one of them says to this day it was the most important book he had ever read.</p>\n<p>This is all to say a) I really respect Deneen and he is really foundational to how I think about the world b) any criticisms I have of his new book are against this background of immense respect.</p>\n<p>I’ll give thoughts about the book in its three parts, because they all deserve separate analysis.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">Part I: Our Cold Civil War</p>\n<p>So this section is something of a rehash of his first book, and I think people just getting into his work would appreciate it.</p>\n<p>Chapter 1 summarizes those arguments on why liberalism has failed. It references other important books in the genre that I think everyone should read, particularly Coming Apart by Charles Murray which I think is one the best books I’ve eve read.</p>\n<p>He talks a bit about what other political scientists call “negative polarization” in his section Know Your Enemy. Nothing ground breaking there.</p>\n<p>Chapter 2 summarizes some coming talking points on the right about the managerial elite, what’s sometimes called Woke Inc. Nice interweaving of Tocqueville to put what feels like a very topical conversation in historical context. But again, nothing groundbreaking. The elites are placeless, out of touch, reproducing a global economy that works for their type of fungible placeless skills, talk about equality but are produced by extremely meritocratic and inegalitarian mechanisms—— all very familiar points for the kind of person who would pick up this book, I think at least.</p>\n<p>Overall, I was a bit underwhelmed by Part 1. Probably because a lot of the things that were novel to talk about in 2018 are just part of the zeitgeist now. You’ll hear these points on Joe Rogan, on the campaign trail of Vivek Ramaswamy, you’ll see twitter threads on it.</p>\n<p>But I think to a lay person who isn’t so immersed in the dialogue of the commentariat, it’s a great and comprehensive survey of the conversational landscape on the new right.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">Part II: Common Good Conservatism.</p>\n<p>So, I’ll start by saying that just as in Why Liberalism failed, Deneen’s greatest strength in Regime Change again seems to be re-jigging concepts and categories so we can start more meaningful conversation. Basically, he takes pains to start the book by getting away from the usual right-left, liberal-conservative, framing, and that takes a good deal of real estate in the book. Surely eye opening for a normie, if not a political science student.</p>\n<p>I enjoyed this section a good deal, I liked the theme of trying to develop a non-relative account of what being “conservative” means, and it has a really great overview of classical political thought from Mill to Marx.</p>\n<p>When he gets the section “ The Modern Nonprogressive Alternative: Common-Good Conservatism” I think the book really picks up some steam. Now he’s trying to innovate and define a political project. This is why I bought the book!</p>\n<p>So what is Common Good Conservatism, to Deneen? Here are my takeaways:</p>\n<p>- It believes that traditional values are like public utilities that are important for social life, and for helping the bottom rungs of society live richer lives. Just like progressives believe in welfare to help everyone and create an income floor, conservatives believe in providing a cultural floor so that people don’t like destroy their lives and communities. I’ve always liked these arguments and it’s good to see it summarized here.</p>\n<p>- Conservatism isn’t about slowing down liberalism it’s about opposing its premises, specifically the ideology of progressivism. Makes sense. Progress isn’t an objective, stability and reproduction of cultural institutions is. Very nice.</p>\n<p>- The modern agenda is, to boil it down, is to democratize institutions so they are better connected with the “wisdom of the people,” and the cultural norms and knowledge they have organically created overtime—in opposition to governance by the experts and the managerial elite</p>\n<p>So far, not a radical redefinition. Have heard these arguments in National Affairs and all that before. But a helpful one.</p>\n<p>With that, I think the book exits its “definitional” section.</p>\n<p>Now so far, you can tell my main critique is the lack of novelty. But again, that’s because him and his colleagues have really entered the zeitgeist in a big way. The commentariat and weirdos like me who read this stuff know their diagnosis. Many of us agree. So he has a higher burden to make prescriptions I think.</p>\n<p>In the chapter Wisdom of the People, we start to see some of his ideas tie in with current events. I like the use of the Covid Pandemic to illustrate the failures of governance by expert. The use of Plato and Aristotle to illustrate the opposing arguments for expert and people rule, respectively, was neat. I really liked the points on traditional knowledge, and how conservatism is rooted in the belief of bottom up cultural generation. I didn’t know much about Disraeli, and I liked learning about how he developed conservatism from Burke.</p>\n<p>As a law student, this section made me think about how, in general, conservative justices seem to tap into the common law tradition in their opinions a bit more, whereas liberal justices are more focused on the statute and its democratic legitimacy. Again, these are rough, imperfect associations, but I think they’re there. Progressives often see the statute as a more legitimate force of law, whereas conservatives see greater legitimacy in the accumulation of decisions in the common law. I’ll add to this another day.</p>\n<p>I also liked the whole idea that cultural norms and traditions are a “general bank” of value. Schumpeter gets to this idea in his book Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, where he talks about how Capitalism will create the conditions for its own end by changing the culture it relies on (Deneen doesn’t reference this book, as far as I remember, but it really has a lot of his arguments in it).</p>\n<p>But again, at this point I’m hungry for something NEW. I was skimming through it all impatiently.</p>\n<p>Now, the most interesting argument, that I wish he developed more, was the one he begins in integrating knowledge, where he talks about the problems of specialized expertise in an atomized, expert led economy and society.</p>\n<p>Now I’ll take an extended moment to address this. This is, I think, a way bigger deal in our world today than people acknowledge. At some point I remember that Tyler Cowan, when he was talking about “The Great Stagnation” back in the day, suggests that maybe this is the reason that we haven’t seen intense productivity gains——the modern way of knowledge generation is really good at noodling on the margins but not at moonshots. Today we may not create or reward a lot polymath John Nash types. Instead Johns Hopkins and MIT create a lot more people who are good at say, algorithmic trading, than we would have seen in the past.</p>\n<p>The benefits of specialization, at least in the field of the INFORMATION economy, might be sort of a parabolic curve, where we get more and faster innovation up to a point, but after a certain point the costs off specialization——increased friction and lag of communication between different disciplines, less frequent integration of cross-domain knowledge, etc.——outweigh the efficiency benefits. If you look at how bureaucracy in any office functions, you can get a sense of that. I think this ties in with Deneen’s story of elite overproduction really nicely (introduced by Peter Turchin some years back, I believe) but he doesn’t explicitly make that connection.</p>\n<p>On connecting the overproduction story with the specialization story, maybe we have this intense specialization at least partially because we have so many fucking people in academia and the “cognitive elite”. And for any individual to be competitive in this saturated environment you need to specialize. Same dynamics that make it so that the best way to make it big on Tik Tok is to have an extremely specific gimmick, that you repeat over and over and over.</p>\n<p>But in the aggregate (for both innovation and online entertainment) this is a bad equilibrium. Having a lot of highly specialized people may actually be in-net less productive, and less innovative, than having half of that set of people who are slightly more interdisciplinary. I’m thinking about the fact that a man like John Nash or Von Neumann could have such an insane interdisciplinary output back in the day. If those men were alive today, would they become too specialized to even do that?</p>\n<p>I think its a similar thing that we’re seeing with supply chains (he also talks about this briefly), where it seems more efficient to really diversify them, but it turned out there were all these hidden costs and at some point supply chain length adds more costs then benefits. More room for error, more risk, more fragility, less quality control. But at the same time, longer supply chains employ more people.</p>\n<p>Could both of these phenomena be labor-supply driven? The need and incentive, in a capitalist economy, to employ people as resources, leads us to adopt workflows that just employ more people? Generally economics likes to think of processes as becoming more efficient, as technology driving firms to employ less people. I think something else is going on, and I need to write about it elsewhere. Is the phenomena creating a lot of third rate academics the same one that’s causing us to make shitty manufactured goods, like the fact that we can’t build toasters or refrigerators like we used to? But we just have a lot of cheap ones?</p>\n<p>There’s something to that, and I want someone to really dig into it out there. It’s in the antitrust and supply chain conversation for sure, but has anyone really measured how much cognitive resource we’re wasting with intense specialization? I’ll have more thoughts on this another day.</p>\n<p>Anyways, that’s one of the richer areas where he doesn’t spend too much time——not a critique, because it wasn’t the point of the book, but I feel like the problems of specialization in a liberal society deserves several books. But he has nice observations, and makes a marxian connection to how intense specialization alienates and reduced the capacity for individual laborers. I like this point, and I think there’s a good argument to be made that at some point, the supposed aggregate benefits of specialization is overweighed by the diminishment of individual human capital. Eventually, that diminishment of human capital probably shows up in something like rate of productivity gain.</p>\n<p>His chapter on a Mixed Constitution is a nice overview of the history of the idea, and is really there to set up his policy arguments in the next section, which I was the most excited to read. Again, well written, informative, but wanted to get to the prescriptive stuff.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">PART III. What is to be done?</p>\n<p>This is where I got excited. In the beginning chapter, Aristopopulism, he expands on his ideas for implementing a “mixed constitution.” I liked his observations here, and I really liked the data on donors to Biden and Trump, breaking down the professions that donated to each. I actually had no idea that the realignment of both parties constituencies was so captured in the donor data (workers and entrepreneurs donate to Trump, white collar professional at big companies donate to Biden).</p>\n<p>Now, I think he does a leap here, where he suggests that this dynamic reflects a classical mode of politics——oligarchy versus demos——that the founders specifically sough to avoid. His prescriptions after this sort of rest on the assumption that, if institutions remains the same, we’re entering this status quo where the top cleavage in American politics is class.</p>\n<p>Now, it is true that the country is depolarizing on race and identity, marginally, and polarizing by EDUCATION, which is aligned with something like social class. Ezra Klein had a great podcast about this some months back——just checked and it was January——with Ruy Teixeira. Worth a listen. But yes, educational polarization is one hundred percent the DIRECTION of change.</p>\n<p>But the parties are both still heterogeneous based on income, with different slices of the working class. The changes are directional, not absolute, and they aren’t super long-lived. There are rich Republican voters, and the income data still shows they get a higher share of higher income voters. Democrats still have a reliable base of poor minorities. Look at the Pew research, not just the donor data, which will skew towards more-engaged, higher information voters, and probably exclude newer Americans (my guess I didn’t check).</p>\n<p>And not to mention, that the parties will doubtlessly adapt to the changes in their electorate and now allow themselves to move too far in any direction into the future. We shouldn’t extrapolate a trend that’s existed for maybe a decade or less farther into the future. Mitt Romney was 2012.</p>\n<p>After the Mckinley’s Republican Party, we had Teddy Roosevelt. Not too long after Roosevelt, we had Harding. The Republican Party has had a populist moment in the past, but bounced back into shape as a right of center business friendly party. There’s more inertia in the parties than people give credit for, and these transformations aren’t necessarily permanent. Obviously, the Democrats aren’t a Jacksonian party today, so sometimes they sort of are.</p>\n<p>The Republicans won’t give up the rich suburbs they need in swing states for long, the electoral math doesn’t allow it.</p>\n<p>It’s also very unlikely that Democrats will resign themselves to being a professional class party. Their activist class and their intellectual class are both responding to it already. The strategy will change in the next few years. We already saw it change between Biden and Hillary. And the vibes in the party elite are to nominate a person like Whitmer in the future, not a Buttigieg.</p>\n<p>In short, the incentives that democracy creates means that it’s quite unlikely that these changes will go on in one direction for too long. Both parties have strong incentives to be big tent, class-mixed parties. And that’s good.</p>\n<p>Deneen, in his usual polemic style, is just extrapolating far too much. I severely doubt that our current institution will lead us to a permanent “mass and elite” dynamic. Rather, we’ll just see the usual trading of coalitions between the parties over the long-run, and those coalitions will probably stay “mixed.”</p>\n<p>So now, I’ll look at his actual policy proposals. He talks more about blending, class-mixing, all well and good. These are this concrete ideas to fix things:</p>\n<p>* Expanding the House of Representatives.</p>\n<p>I think he makes a great and historically rooted argument here. It’s a great idea, I had heard it before, and I think It was in Vox. I did a lookup and it was in Vox, the case has been made in the American Enterprise Institute, and by a liberal columnist in the WaPo. So a conversation very much being had within the “liberal” framework!</p>\n<p>This isn’t to say that he isn’t making a great case, and I like how he tied it to the super-zips data by Charles Murray, but if his policy proposals are being presented by pretty mainstream liberals, it undercuts the idea that its part of a very novel “Common Good Conservative” movement that’s against liberalism’s premises. Moving on.</p>\n<p>* Breaking up D.C.</p>\n<p>Same point as above. Familiar idea, I agree with it. It’s good and we should do it. I think Andrew Yang and a couple of Democrats in the 2020 primary supported this idea.</p>\n<p>* Dealing with Growth Poles</p>\n<p>He takes a lot of words to say that we need regional development strategies and to break up superstar and “growth pole” effects.</p>\n<p>Again, these are arguments that you saw in the Economist after 2016, and hear from Elizabeth Warren. It’s not consensus shattering. The need for regional development is a very popular idea I’m pretty sure.</p>\n<p>* Representation of Estates (or class factions)</p>\n<p>Well trodden ground, represented in Europe, and reflected in Democratic voices calling for sectoral bargaining. I like the idea of worker representation on the Fed.</p>\n<p>* New forms of National Service. I like this idea of making college students do stints in underserved communities. It’s really great. The first time I heard it proposed seriously is in “Can American Capitalism Survive?” By Steven Pearlstein. He was a business editor for the WaPo.</p>\n<p>* Stopping Elite Overproduction.</p>\n<p>Deneen has the diagnosis here but no solutions. Everyone likes trade schools and people have been talking about making them better for a long time. Been a long-standing conservative tallking points, and often you’ll hear Democrats talk about it too.</p>\n<p>The real solution here is pretty boring, it’s about the subsidization of education that Bryan Caplan, a super Neo-liberal, talks extensively about in his book The Case Against Education. We have too many elites because we subsidize it.</p>\n<p>I think the basic solution here is that we have to subsidize EDUCATING more than getting an EDUCATION. Most of the people getting graduate degrees are going to be shitty academics, but would be better teachers than we have today.</p>\n<p>If we just redirect the money that we use to subsidize elite overproduction into public education, we could probably make teaching a higher-status profession that attracts smart people. If you doubt this, look at latin America and India and see the ridiculous jobs they’ve managed to make high-status there. Being the guy who counts people’s bus tickets is actually a high-status job in India because the government pays them a lot, relative to what the market would.</p>\n<p>Again, I really think overproduction is just a money issue. We need to pay people a lot more to be teachers; he gets to this point, but in broader terms.</p>\n<p>* Reviving Manufacturing</p>\n<p>Yes, this is what the Biden administration is trying to do. It’s the new “Washington Consensus.” Jake Sullivan gives a speech about it. The department of commerce is on board with it. Our new trade policy is centered around it. This is what the Inflation Reducation Act was all about! So we’re repeating Democratic Party and Deep State platforms here.</p>\n<p>* Supply Chain Resilience</p>\n<p>No points here that haven’t been talked about by the parties above or the Chamber of Commerce or the American Enterprise Institute. It’s the new liberal consensus.</p>\n<p>* Immigration</p>\n<p>No novel contributions. And frankly I think that for natioal revival, we need a lot more immigrants. A lot.</p>\n<p>* Centering Christianity</p>\n<p>Sure. I like more public holidays. Revitalization of public spaces is good. Why do we have to put this in the context of Christianity? These programs fit comfortably in a pluralist framework. —</p>\n<p>Anyways, the last chapter was nice on seeing this all as an agenda to combat disintegration was good, I appreciated it, he writes beautifully. No one is saying the observations, the integration with history and classical political history, the diagnosis of where society at, isn’t best in class in the genre.</p>\n<p>But I left the book disappointed. This is the moment when Deneen’s intellectual movement has really “arrived.” J.D. Vance is the Republican VP. Amy Coney Barrett of Notre Dame is on the Supreme Court. Trump will probably be president. The neocons are gone. This faction of the right——which I’ve always preferred to their predecessors——will wield power, if not this election, then very very soon.</p>\n<p>And the movement is presented as something completely transformative! A complete rejection of LIBERALISM itself! A radical remake of the conservative movement.</p>\n<p>But when you look at the concrete policy proposals, it’s just not novel at all. They’re good, common sense, have been talked about. It’s good that the Republicans are joining the conversation on them.</p>\n<p>And that’s where I think it gets me a little annoyed. The conservative movement is really just re-entering a mainstream conversation. That’s the story here.</p>\n<p>For decades they were this insane, Ayn Rand, libertarian, Paul Ryan, radical movement, completely divorced from the reasonable policy conversation being had by other liberals and the left-of-center thinkers on how to upgrade our Republic. And now they decide to deradicalize and rejoin that policy conversation, and brand it in damn near insurrectionary terms.</p>\n<p>It’s all just very silly. I took Deneen’s arguments in Why Liberalism Failed very seriously, and frankly, that book made me skeptical of this order enough that I would be receptive to far more subversive proposals than things I read in Vox in high school. Is the innovation here that Republicans will become like Christian Democrats in Europe, but with a shittier more conspiratorial culture? Is that the big plan?</p>\n<p>So what’s the future? It’s not revolutionary. We’re going to have two parties having a slightly healthier domestic policy discussion, just like they did for most of the 20th century, where they are concerned with things like income and wealth distribution, making institutions fair, keeping our culture healthy, etc. Except one of those parties, the supposedly conservative one, seems to be vulnerable to extreme authoritarian capture and conspiracy theories.</p>\n<p>Now I want to be very fair, I’m looking at this in a very hard-nosed political way, in the context of party politics, from a more critical policy point of view, and Deneen writes from a more theoretical angle. That’s good and valuable. I think my expectations were just set differently going into it. Since this post has been mainly critical, and I don’t think the book necessarily deserves that, I’m reading the book in the CONTEXT of this national moment, where things might go very bad because of a very very bad president who has, in part, been enabled and legitimated by the intellectual movement Deneen has helped create (even though I know he, personally, has been critical of DJT). So a lot of the anger towards the book’s arguments are towards something else.</p>\n<p>In short, the book made me less bullish on the idea that this national conservative movement will be anything revitalizing. It may merely carry a dangerous authoritarian into the White House, while making few novel contributions to policy. They were policies we really could have had without the fascism. They were ones that could be had healthily in the liberal framework, which I think has always had space for the ideas Deneen advocates.</p>\n<p>So a liberal I remain.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.20.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.20.24.html",
      "title": "How to get mostly As in 1L and stay sane and have a good time",
      "date_published": "2024-07-20T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "So, before you read this, here is my disclaimer:\n\nI made top quintile of class overall. I got As and a couple of A-s on exams. I also just did average on the writing class, and those are different in each school, so no advice on that here. If that’s not good enough, I won’t be hurt if you look elsewhere.\n\nIf accomplishing top fifth and securing a Big Law offer for 2L while having a good time, hanging out with friends, and getting 8 hours of sleep a night is a desirable outcome for you, then maybe you’ll find this post useful. Just wanted to be honest about my performance, so you can decide how much weight to give my advice.\n\nSome more context, to figure out how relevant my advice is for you, since everyone is pretty different. I’m not very type A by nature, I am more of an artistic type (can you tell by the strange website), and I’ve never been a good student until law school. My study strategies are adapted to me. So, if you’re a more type B, creative, intuitive student who maybe is surprised they got into law school, then I think this advice will be very useful. If not, maybe read this and make adjustments for yourself. With that, I will proceed. I write these blog posts fast, but the points of advice are ordered chronologically more than in any order of importance. —\n\n The Summer Before\n\nIf you’re reading this, you’re likely some combination of anxious or excited for law school, and you are managing that anxiety and excitement by preparing. Like when you’re waiting for a package, and you read the reviews for the product while it’s in the mail. I get it, I’m like that too.\n\nTo be honest, the only things I would do to prepare is the following:\n\n⁃ Get some nice outfits, makes going into school fun\n\n⁃ Get supplies, obviously, and get stuff you’ll like using, don’t skimp, law school is already expensive. If you want a leather-bound journal and a cross pen, well hell go and buy it. Making studying marginally more enjoyable is worth it—you could probably measure it in the thousands of dollars in increased lifetime income honestly.\n\n⁃ Set your semester calendar, I just use apple calendar, and put the Prof and classroom locations in the event details. You can even attach files and links to the events that are helpful.\n\n⁃ Get as healthy as possible, get your appointments out of the way, get into a gym routine. Get your sleep schedule to a reasonable place.\n\n⁃ Any bureaucratic task like renewing your car inspection or ordering a new credit card——just get it done. These waste time in the semester. I did my car inspection two months early, so I didn’t have to do it in the middle of the fall.\n\n⁃ I think that typing notes is bad practice so work on your penmanship\n\nThat’s it.\n\n1. Don’t stress. Just don’t.\n\nYou might be on reddit and read about how harrowing 1L is for people. Older attorneys might joke with you and say “you’re in for one hell of a year, say goodbye to your social life” or things to that effect. At orientation they will stress preserving your mental health, giving you the impression that this experience will severely impact your mental health (1L is kind of like cognitive hazing, but that’s true of any entry level to any elite organization. Finance bros get hazed. First year associates get hazed. It’s fine).\n\nThis is all horseshit, and I think KJDs are particularly susceptible to it. You know what law school is? You read some cases. You show up to class and chit chat with your classmates. Sometimes you have to answer a question in front of your mates. You go home. You repeat. You take an exam. It’s easier than the workforce. In a sense it’s easier than undergrad where you had a bunch of assignments all the time. You have basically one big assignment for each class. It’s not a big volume of tasks, but of content.\n\nIt’s a lot of reading, yes. But take a step back. It’s literally just reading. People who act like that’s insanely hard need to get a fucking grip. You are one of the most privileged people on earth if you just have to spend your days sitting and reading things. So don’t approach it like it’s going to be hard. Get in the frame that you’re going to school, you’re going to learn, it’s going to be a good time, it’s going to be a challenge, and you’ll handle it just fine.\n\nI’m remembering this study that showed that women that believed that labor was going to be painful often had more complicated and painful labors, and when women were told yeah, it’s just something people do, they did a lot better. This is the same thing. Narratives shape your experience. Don’t adopt the narrative that law school sucks.\n\nIn short, the first step is to approach school with excitement and confidence. If you enter with anxiety, you’re already losing.\n\n2. Keep your eye on the ball, which is the exams\n\nThe cold calls. The random events that people will make you feel like you need to go to. The extracurriculars. Networking for big law, which is for some reason earlier and earlier now. It’s overwhelming. It also doesn’t fucking matter (Big law networking matters near the middle of Spring, but I personally don’t think getting too ahead of it is that helpful).\n\nAll that matters is the exams and your final writing project. Your grades, especially your first semester grades, unfortunately carry a lot of weight. It determines your first-year job, it’s the only thing that recruiters for your 2L summer job will see, and doing it right means you’re not going to be trying to “catch up” in the Spring.\n\nObviously, plenty of people who are wildly successful in life do mediocre first semester, but there are also people with one leg who run marathons and shit. But you don’t say, ah it’s fine if I lose a leg. Sometimes you do bad, but you deal with that later. At the outset, you need to enter thinking you HAVE TO do well your first semester. I knew a lot of people who, when things got stressful mid-semester, would say “ah it’s just first semester, and the exam isn’t everything.” This is actually true, but if you start thinking like that, you’re already hedging your bets and removing some intensity. For right now, your first semester grades ARE make it or break it. This is your one shot, one opportunity. Mom spaghetti.\n\nSo, here’s what I did and here’s what you should do. In your little apartment where you go to curl up and hang your hat, find a spot——mine was on the white board in my study area——where you will put your exam dates in big bold letters. Count the weeks to it. The exams are your opponent. And the preparation for battle begins on day one.\n\nWe haven’t even gotten to how to study yet, but I must stress that just keeping the exams in mind in everything you do is the most important preliminary step. A lot of people enter a day-to-day survival mode, trying to keep up with that day’s reading, trying to make sure they don’t look stupid on the next cold call, trying to make sure the ungraded draft for their writing class is perfect——this is all idiotic. It is all about the exams (and the brief). Don’t ever forget it.\n\nWhat does this mean practically? If you’re behind one day, or do bad on a cold call, or get super fixated on one doctrine that’s hard for you, don’t let it stress you or derail you. Take comfort in the fact that all that matters is the exam. Stress is cognitively and metabolically expensive. Don’t waste it on bullshit that doesn’t matter.\n\n3. Reading effectively\n\nThe last two points were about mental posture, and I think they are universally relevant. If you adopt both those postures, you’re already in a good spot. Ready for showtime. Now here’s my advice on how to study effectively.\n\n3a. Keep up with the readings.\n\nYou know that Drake and Josh episode where the sushi is coming on the conveyer belt, and it speeds up, and eventually they can’t package it, so they start throwing it on the ceiling? Sometimes the readings feel like that, even if you’re a fast reader.\n\nDon’t fall behind. It sucks and showing up to class unprepared feels bad, even if it’s not a cold call class. Participating in the discussion is what makes law school fun.\n\nNow this is not advice I followed. For a few of my non cold call classes, I fell egregiously behind at a couple of points, especially in the Spring when I was too focused on Big Law networking. If you fall behind, you need to do the painful work of catching up. Rip off the band aid on some Saturday. Drink a red bull, get through it. Use Quimbee or a study aid to speed things along, but in general, don’t rely exclusively on this (more on that later). Missing a few readings and saving them for reading week before the exam may happen, but it’s not a good idea. I might make a post on how to cram in a pinch, because I got A’s in classes where I had to cram entire units I neglected, and the truth is that especially in the Spring semester it might happen.\n\nBut really, just don’t fall behind. Even if you only have time to read it poorly, read it. Reading cases on the metro to class or the 20 minutes before was often sufficient for me to get what was going on (I’m also a fast reader), but going in blind always sucked.\n\n3b. Read and brief for understanding\n\nSo, reading cases will be a new thing. Lots of resources out there on how to read cases. Here's a helpful link by Orin Kerr: https://law2.wlu.edu/library/documents/kerrhowtoreadopinion.pdf (sorry I'm too lazy to do the hyperlink, edit copy paste this).\n\nThat's the best resource on the subject. But here's my quick take:\n\nA lot of people think it’s just the holding of the case, the black letter law that matters. These people are morons. A lot of time that’s the least important part! You need comprehensive understanding of four things:\n\n(1) why was this case assigned? What theme of the class, or tension point in the law, is it illustrating? What is the takeaway or puzzle your professor wants you to leave with?\n\n(2) What was the policy rationale for the decision? A core theme of almost every law class is that all the fancy jargon and doctrine is window dressing and a way to achieve some societal objective. Identity that objective as clearly as possible.\n\n(3) the holding. Yes, you need to know the holding. And often, you can find this on Quimbee or commercial outlines. One thing you need to add when writing out your holding is to note how this holding may have been modified in later cases.\n\n(4) The facts. The degree to which this is important varies wildly between classes. But it’s good to remember a bit about the situation, often just to remember it effectively. One note——read the notes that the textbook puts after the case. It’s a cheat code. They usually answer 1-3 completely if you read them thoroughly.\n\nSo here you have four big buckets of elements you should be able to answer with every case you read. You should brief cases, especially early on; I would recommend making a basic template for your briefs, and whatever format you make them, check if they are designed to answer all four categories identified earlier.\n\nNow briefing cases doesn’t have to be a science, and it doesn’t have to be super comprehensive. Sometimes you will spend two hours briefing a case. Sometimes it will be 15 minutes in a jam. But if you can answer (1) why this case (2) the policy rationale (3) the holding (4) the facts, you’ll be A okay to participate in class.\n\nNow, if you’re over my theoretical discussion on briefs and everything else, I’ll give you something extremely concrete. This is how I mostly briefed Civil Procedure, where I got an A and almost always felt very prepared for class.\n\nFacts\n\n[this is where I would write the basic factual background of the case. In a pinch, I would copy and paste the summary from quimbee into Chat GPT, and ask it to make a narrative bullet summary of the facts. Worked perfectly.]\n\nThe Decision\n\n[here I would just write out key quotes from the decision while reading my textbook, put notes next to the quotes giving my interpretation. This is where I used no supplement at all.]\n\nRule and Takeaways\n\n[here I would usually write my interpretation of the rule and put a quote from that case that captured the holding. I would also sometimes paste the Quimbee rule here, but usually I needed more than that. Finally, I would write out a policy takeaway.]\n\nAnd then I would print it out and bring it to class and mark the briefs up with my pen. These were my class notes. When I was outlining, my briefs and my class notes were just one thing, which was very nice. I think this was my best system, and I did a variant of it in other classes.\n\nIn Spring, I would just do briefing notes in the actual textbook because I got good enough at reading cases that I didn’t need to do the whole separate briefing process. But start with real briefs in the fall. The key is not to make it a time sink, but a form of exam prep——briefs should be done in a way that they very logically align with the outlining process.\n\n3c. At some point, figure out the professor\n\nThis isn’t something you necessarily want to attempt on day 1. But a few weeks into the semester, you’ll get a sense of what they find interesting. You’ll get a sense of the questions they let hang in the air, that they relish in bouncing to students. Remember, these people are academics, and they get a hard-on for paradoxes, inconsistencies, and puzzles in the law. They are not trying to help you memorize things or prepare for the bar, they see that as your job. They want you to think about things more deeply, and they have a desperate need to share a piece of their vibrant inner world with you. There are elements to the law and the subject they are teaching that they find really fun. Since they’re human, those will almost certainly be on the exam.\n\nNow before I proceed, I think I can’t drive this point hard enough. You don’t become a law professor if you don’t find things about the law fascinating. These people are real nerds. Maybe you’re not like that, maybe you see a spade for a spade, or whatever the turn of phrase is, but they often don’t. So think about the kind of sick person who becomes a professor, then try and think like them. Sometimes it’s fun.\n\nAnyways, when you start to notice these things, write them down, and keep them in mind while reading, and while briefing. They’ll often answer (1) on the list from 3b.\n\n4. Use class time effectively\n\nBefore giving advice, I’m going to be real with you and say that I often did not use class time effectively. Often I did. Many times, I did not. Sometimes I would get almost everything I need to out of the readings, and a lot of class time was just questions about what happened out in the case, and I would zone out completely, or browse the web. Obviously, it turned out fine for me, but don’t do that. It’s stupid and you’re spending a lot of money to be in school. I will tell you what I did on good days, and what I wished I did all of the time.\n\n4a. DON’T type your notes in class\n\nGuys. Don’t do it. Literally almost everyone does it. You will see everyone do it. Don’t do it. There is so much literature out there on how you just don’t memorize things as well when you type. And the speed at which you type is so fast that you will record way more content than necessary. Unless you have some kind of disability, which is a real thing, just HANDWRITE your notes. If you have bad handwriting, grow the hell up. Now is a great excuse to make it nicer, and in the future, you can write family members nice letters and your spouse love notes. It’s a great skill to have. Start now.\n\nHandwriting your notes forces you to summarize information fast, to think fast, to see the forest through the trees. This is the exact skills you need on the exam, and as a lawyer. Start practicing from day one and handwrite your notes. People type because they’re anxious that they won’t “get” everything otherwise. Typing becomes a safety blanket. Well guess what. I know people who would type type type and then what it came time to review they had a 200 page google doc they were parsing through to compress into their outline. Not fun.\n\nJust keep your class notes relatively short, listen closely, draw things, do whatever. Don’t become a stenographer. Synthesize and shorten information in real time. You’ll have to do that in your outline anyways. Trust that your memory will be jogged if you didn’t get everything. You’re in law school after all, you’re smart.\n\nYour note-taking in class is ideally a form of outlining, you’re comprising the contents and holdings from cases into doctrine.\n\nNow, here’s something not to do. Your classes are probably recorded. Some students would leave class and say things like, I didn’t really get that, I’m going to have to watch the recording. In my head I would think, are you out of your fucking mind. Every second in law school is precious if you want to get good grades and stay healthy and spend time with friends and family. Rewatching lectures is just so insanely boneheaded. This is another thing that acts as a safety blanket and reduces your performance and efficiency. Don’t have it in the back of your head that you’ll be able to rewatch later. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. Those recordings exist for emergencies like getting sick. They are not review material.\n\nI only ever rewatched a couple lectures when it was closer to exam time, it’s a fine tool in that context if you want to clarify something. Not to cover for you if you didn’t pay attention or were too shy to ask a question. This leads into the next point.\n\n4b. Participate in class\n\nWhat makes a lot of people anxious are the cold calls and the public speaking. While I get it, sort of, the truth is you’re at least 22 years of age and need to get over it. Everyone is in the same boat. Be prepared, show up, and perform. Be nice to people if they falter and generally, you’ll find that people don’t judge you all that hard if you do. At my school whenever someone got cold called for the first time in the fall people would make it a point to congratulate them after class or tell them they did a nice job. You should do this too. It’s nice and you’ll feel good if people give you words of reassurance after being in the spotlight.\n\nAnywho, cold calls are a minority of your classroom experience. It’s mostly voluntary participation. You pay a lot of money, or at least time, so if you don’t understand something, just ask. Chances are people have the same question. Don’t worry about what other people think, ask your question, even if it is objectively stupid. You deserve an answer.\n\nNow, the problem is that often law professors don’t give answers. They give you questions back. This is because they’re professors and they think in fucking riddles or whatever. Sometimes it’s actually because at the heart of your question is a paradox or some currently very contentious or theoretically difficult issue in the law. If you ask these kind of questions, you’ll often know because your professor will sometimes smile or chuckle. Sometimes your question is so good that, little do you know, there are whole journal articles about that subject.\n\nSo, if you don’t get an answer, don’t get frustrated. It could mean that you’re actually thinking about the questions in the right way. Knowing the right questions are as important as knowing concrete answer for law exams, and life. Just ask questions.\n\nI guess this comes with a caveat that you shouldn’t waste your classmate’s time, some people talk to hear themselves speak. Don’t be that person. Sometimes I would catch myself doing that. It’s fine, many people have a weird fetish. Nothing to be ashamed of but nothing that you should exhibit in polite society. If yours is talking in class, try and keep it in your pants.\n\n5. Start Outlining from week one\n\nSo, this is the most important point, and I probably should’ve put it at the top, but I’m thinking of this chronologically, and theoretically all of the things I’ve talked about before happen during or before day one and your first crack at outlining should happen maybe the first weekend after classes.\n\nYou may be asking, what the hell is an outline? It’s a study guide. That’s all it is. It’s a study guide. I don’t know why the hell it’s called an outline. But yeah, it’s a study guide.\n\nNow, there is no fixed formula for outlining, because everyone is different. Some people type class notes throughout the semester then whittle that down. Some people make handwritten flow charts, which I always thought were neat. Some people use an old outline that’s available from their SBA or a 2L or a commercial supplement, and just modify it. I think each of these methods have gotten people As.\n\nI’ll start with the general advice and share what I did specifically at the end.\n\n5a. Start by thinking about Course structure\n\nThink about the big picture and how all the information can be synthesized from the very first week. Look through your syllabus and your textbook week one, listen to your introductory lecture, and get a sense of the landscape of what you’re learning about. Use that to make a table of contents or sections for your outline. Do some googling, get a very cursory sense of each unit’s content.\n\nFor instance, a contracts course should have a structure vaguely like this:\n\n1. Formation 2. Promissory Estoppel and Quasi Contracts 3. Defenses 4. Problems with Boilerplates 5. The Uniform Commercial Code 6. Remedies and Damage Calculations\n\nDifferent professors will have different orders, labels, they may remix and mash different sections together, but it’ll be something like this. Look at your professor’s syllabus and textbook. Look at other textbooks. Look at outlines for other classes. You can get a sense of the course in a very “platonic” sense——what a basic contracts course looks like——and then see how your professor and textbook authors have made it their own.\n\nOnce again, try and get a sense of what the GENERAL content of a course is, what would be there no matter what school or what professor you have, and then take note of how your professor has structured it. This should also give you some indication of how your professor sorts the doctrine in their head, which is actually very useful when preparing for an exam.\n\nIf you don’t get what I mean, think about a subject from school that isn’t necessarily best taught chronologically, like biology. Think about how you would teach it, what order you would present ideas. Would you do evolution first, the most important foundational concept? Would you start with cells, then go big to small? Would you work through the tree of life?\n\nYou’ll realize there are probably several good ways to do it. Law classes have a bit of that too. Your professors choices in course structure are very informative. That’s a great first step to outlining.\n\n5b. Fill in your outline every week or so\n\nEvery week you should have a fresh set of briefs and class notes. Shorten this content in some way and load it into your outline. Doesn’t have to be perfect, especially in the beginning, but just put it in that document every week and don’t let it pile up.\n\nA few weeks into the semester, you’ll see ideas and cases start referencing each other, ideas build off each other, and you will find ways to relate them. At this point, the consolidation process begins. Following our contracts example, if you’re doing defenses you’ll see how promissory estoppel is a way for a plaintiff to bypass a defense that formation never occurred, and you’ll start to see a flowchart in your head, different pathways an agreement can take. As soon as that spark of intuition hits your mind, draw it, write it out in your outline. Bring it to class. Revise it.\n\nYou’ll end up with a little bit of a mess overtime, the outline may be unwieldy, but the key is to add things and clean them up iteratively. Don’t be focused on being too neat. Law isn’t neat, and the first semester it’ll be an enormous volume of ideas and content. The crystallization will happen naturally, don’t force all of your content all into too rigid of a structure too soon.\n\nI see people do this with outlines, where they have their little headings, and subheadings, and sub-sub headings, and try and force pretty nuanced legal ideas into something very robotic. I don’t find that useful personally, unless you’re at the very very end of the process.\n\nBasically, let your outline be a living entity that reflect your evolving and improving understanding of the law throughout the semester. Let it breathe. But keep feeding it new content. Near the end of the semester, when you have a more bird’s eye view of everything, you’ll be able to really whittle it down.\n\n5c. Get it clean before reading week\n\nNow, thus far, I’ve said that you should take it easy and let the outline breathe for most of the semester. Well that changes when you get closer to the finish line. When you’re around three or four weeks out from reading week, you should look at your outline, then look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself, is this war-time ready? Am I war-time ready?\n\nChances are it’s not; it might be missing content (it’s certainly missing the last units). It might be too long. It might have things you know are wrong now. Misunderstandings. Confusion on doctrine that has been clarified by newer content in the course.\n\nI had a very strict goal for myself: I should have somewhat complete document, printed in my hands, before reading weeks even starts. That is, I should be reviewing my outline during reading week, not making it.\n\nThis meant I had to be polishing my outline in the last few weeks of classes. This is a harder point in the semester, where you’re not even done with content but you’re synthesizing the whole course for finals. Well, you’ll have to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.\n\nThis is a point of the semester that should be actually a little bit stressful, but it will be fine because you didn’t stress about the small stuff during the semester, and you’ve been getting 8 hours of sleep until now so you can afford a bit of crunch.\n\nOne way to do this is to just “quarantine” off all the content after a certain unit and decide you’ll add that on the day after the very last day of classes, and make your outline based on everything before that. That’s sort of what I did. In my head, there was a class I already finished, that covered units X-Y, and I had this other class with unit Z that I was still working on. Just a mental trick.\n\nThe point is, you need to have something DONE before reading week. You need to be reviewing your outline when other people are frantically making theirs while going through their 200-page typed google docs. You need to get ahead of the curve by any means necessary.\n\nYou need to do visualize it like this. There are two versions of your reading week before exams. One is where you’re doing the intensely laborious work of synthesizing content, and then only having a few days to review it. The other is one where you have a nice little packet in your hand, you’re sitting outside with a cup of tea and your little pen, and you’re calmly reviewing it, marking it up, and then taking practice exams in the evening (more on that later).\n\nYou want your reading week before finals to be relatively calm! So front load the pain and get as much of your outline done before.\n\n5d. Bonus - my actual process\n\nSo, enough abstractions, this is how I outlined that got me most As and some A-s, slightly modified to reflect what I will do in 2L that I am certain will bump that to As and A+s.\n\nI start with what I described in 5a, going through the textbooks and syllabi the weeks before the semester starts, and getting as much sorted into word document as possible. Now this word document doesn’t really become my outline, because it would be too long, but it will have everything I need for the course in it. This word document will have unit headings, space for the respective cases if I have knowledge of them already, and anything else I know will be in the course.\n\nUsing the briefing principles in 3b and my note taking principles in 4a, every week I have new content to add into the outline. I spend the weekend updating the outlines accordingly, I spent maybe one full workday each weekend doing this.\n\nNow, for me it’s important that as fluid as the outline is content-wise in the middle of semester, that its extremely pleasing to the eye. Mine have always been extremely formatted, with a gorgeous array of serif-fonts, diagrams that I would either draw and scan or create in apple free-form, nice high-resolution images next to cases to jog my memory, textboxes with extra notes on the side. I made it look like my own mini textbook.\n\nSo, I sort of lied earlier, by the end of the semester, I would have not really an outline, but a mini textbook, around 40 pages or so. This would have my own prose, long excerpts from cases, and really extensive explainers on things for myself. But it would be printed, spiral bound, and ready, and I would use it to make a two-page “attack outline” during reading week.\n\nUnlike my larger “course outline” I developed through the semester, which was really just self-indulgent, my attack outline was entirely for exam purposes. It was different for each class, depending on whether it was open book or closed book, etc. But it has taken the following forms:\n\n⁃ A few pages of “pre-writes” or exam-shells and flow charts, to work through any conceivable exam question\n\n⁃ A more traditional bullet-form outline, the kind you usually see on outline banks\n\n⁃ A table of cases with columns for a “rule” and a memory jog next to them (e.g. International Shoe | Minimum Contacts | Salesmen operating in state but HQ elsewhere - didn’t matter, state still had PJ)\n\nSo as far as outlining, I would have two products, a course outline, and little attack outline. During reading week, I would use both on practice exams, see where they fell short, make revisions with pen, revise, and reprint.\n\nThat actually raises another point in my processes overall——they were very physical. I would print briefs for class to mark up (usually, sometimes I would forget and mark them up on my iPad). I would handwrite my notes. I would type my outlines, and then I would print them out and edit the hell out of them by hand, then retype it.\n\nThis back and forth between digital and print may seem tedious, but it forced me to iterate and encounter the content A LOT. There is a redundancy to printing, editing, and retyping, but that’s the point. I think this is labor intensive but part of the reason I got the grades I did.\n\nTL;DR\n\n⁃ Made the outline pretty\n\n⁃ Made a long one and a short one\n\n⁃ Used a lot of visuals\n\n⁃ Printed them and worked with them physically, for added redundancy\n\n6. Take exams and write answers to questions all semester\n\nWriting about this one actually makes me angry, because I had friends who would refuse to this and insist it was a waste of time, and then they did mediocre and complained later. Most people are nervous about law school being ~oNe ExAm~! Oh my god that’s so unfair, that’s so crazy! How could our whole grade just be on oNE exAm!!\n\nIf you’re thinking about it like that, you’re silly! You can take exams all semester! You can write out questions and answers all semester!\n\nYour textbook has questions in the notes, if you get supplements it will have practice questions (your library will have the Examples and Explanations series), your professor will probably ask you questions and maybe write them on your reading assignments, you might have a midterm, and you’ll certainly have access to past exams from your professor or another. Hell, if you’re really in a pinch, ask chat GPT to generate some exam style questions after feeding it your outlines and notes.\n\nFor most of the semester, in small doses, you should practice writing out cogent answers to hypotheticals. A lot of times you can come to office hours and ask your professor to look at them, and ask them what they think. Depends on the professor. You can also do this indirectly by just asking what they would think about X scenario.\n\nThe final exam should not seem that daunting if you’ve been writing and writing all semester. A lot of students just read and read the content and don’t generate anything all semester, saving their writing for the writing class. Don’t do this. Writing is a skill that needs to be practiced. From the basic physical mechanics of typing fast to the cognitive power required to translate your thoughts to words fast, it’s good to keep your capabilities in that area strong.\n\nYou should write little exams all semester. ALL semester!\n\n7. Treat reading week like scrimmages, not like practice\n\nNow, ideally, you’ve entered reading week with an 85% complete outline for all of your classes. You may have a short outline ready if you follow conventional advice, or you may have a longer style one like I did. Doesn’t matter, but you should have a finished product in hand.\n\nYou should have written out some exam answers, have done a couple of full practice tests by now. Have a stack of briefs and handwritten notes near you.\n\nNow what? To me, reading week isn’t about learning, it’s about practicing, and conditioning. It should be a time of rest and recovery. You should sleep a lot, eat very healthy, get a lot of exercise, spend a lot of time outside.\n\nNow these are all ideals to strive towards, and one I’ve met about 70% of the time. Listen, I had days where I fell asleep with the lights on, woken up in a sweat, skipped breakfast, and got back to work. It's law school.\n\nBut the advice is to not to do that mostly. For the most part, reading week looked like this for me: I would eat a big breakfast, sit at my desk, take practice exam questions, then take a break and go outside, exercise, whatever.\n\nThen I would come back, print those answeres out, grade them, compare against answer keys or model answers if I had them, and sometimes try again. Then I would revise my outline if I needed to. After that, I would take a break, see my friends, repeat the process until exam day. On exam day, I would just pace around campus with my printouts and a copy, listen to music, but mostly just burn off the anxious energy with walking.\n\nThe big takeaway is that reading week shouldn't be a time where you're learning things wholesale. Please don't plan to do that.\n\n***BONUS CONTENT*** - The real truth and how I dealt with it\n\nThusfar, I’ve mostly talked about ideals and best practices. But no one does that. Not even the best students most of the time. I did not.\n\nThe truth is that most of us are kind of goobers. We know what we’re supposed to do but don’t do it. We might procrastinate, spend 4 hours on Tik Tok, have too much faith in our ability to cram. So, the truth is that there is usually more stress and pressure involved because of imperfect decisions piling up. Here are the general ways I dealt with short coming:\n\nMissing Readings\n\n⁃ If I missed readings, I would usually mark time to cram and catch up. If I simply could not make it happen, I took the L for a unit and just started fresh when we got to the next one to keep moving. If I had any missing readings by the time the semester ended, I would take care of that for the FIRST day or so of reading week. Both semesters I needed to dedicate maybe 12 hours to just catch up. Which wasn’t ideal, that was time I could have spent either relaxing or writing practice answers. But that’s the reality.\n\nShitting the bed/taking the piss\n\nThere was one class, Con Law, where I completely failed to follow any of my advice in this blog post. It was in the evening and there were a lot of networking events in the Spring, so I missed it a lot. And I was often really tired or hungry during that class so I would zone out (I have ADHD so that happens to me a lot). Near the end of the semester I essentially gave up and realized this was a class I had to cram during reading week, but thankfully I was in a good spot for other classes.\n\nAfter taking the piss for that class——as in literally no reading for months and completely absent for the course——I did the following to get an A- on the closed book exam and maintain my GPA in the spring semester.\n\n⁃ When I realized that I would need time to cram con law, making sure my outlines for all my other classes were in good shape became an even greater priority. I spent a lot of time getting things really tight for my other courses, so I only had ONE major crisis to deal with. There’s a lot of inefficiency in switching between tasks, and I knew I would be more efficient if I didn’t have to prep much for the other exams. ⁃ I started by making a list of every case, and pasting the quimbee summaries, shortened by chat GPT into it. This was exhausting, but an important first step. ⁃ I looked at old outlines to figure out what the basics of the course were ⁃ After this, I actually read the cases I needed to have a richer understanding of, taking a lot of notes. It was so many cases and so much reading. ⁃ I made a lot of hand drawn diagrams to understand the line of cases and how they developed the law. ⁃ I took a lot of practice exam questions and graded myself ⁃ At the end of this process, I forced myself to sit with no materials, and write everything I remembered from the course from MEMORY on a word doc. As if I was giving a lecture. ⁃ I printed that, checked it, and used it to review.\n\nThis was probably the most intense exam prep I did, and it only got me an A-. So don’t do it like that. But if you end up in that situation, this proves that hope is not lost. If you are strong enough.\n\n8. Conclusion/global lifestyle and study advice\n\nToo many people talk about law school being so grueling and ruining their health and sleep and whatnot. I’m really a believer that you should not do this, and that it’s not necessary, mostly. Especially during fall semester, where I wasn’t worried about jobs, I was able to stay pretty sane (part of the promise of the title). It was the spring where I faltered a bit, and now that I’ve had the experience, I feel qualified to give advice from my success as well as my mistakes:\n\n8a. Make health non-negotiable\n\nLaw is a very intense field, and you really shouldn’t be starting with strategies that wreck your body. I know a couple of former big lawyers from a previous job, and one of them just looked like someone who ran themselves ragged. Not worth it.\n\nYou’ll notice some people gain weight, get a bit more disheveled, people with dark circles around their eyes, falling asleep in class. Some people even take pride in abusing themselves. Literally don’t let this happen to you.\n\nStart from the very beginning. All-nighters are not cool. Skipping meals isn’t cool. Just eating ramen noodles is not cool. Eating and sleeping is infinitely more important than getting the entire reading done, I think. If it was between being a bit behind and getting a full night’s sleep, I would almost always pick the latter for the bulk of the semester.\n\nNow this meant that near the end, it was relatively easy for me to break these rules and not face repercussions. I had a few days where I sat at the computer with a Celsius and a cigarette and freezer meals to just hammer through work. I had SOME late nights. But that was just a handful of days, so it didn’t cause me damage. What ruins you is the chronic, everyday neglect of your body. Treat yourself nicely, keep some gas in the tank for emergencies.\n\nTo hammer this point home, law school has a big performance element to it, its as much a test of sheer physical endurance as it is of knowledge. If you were an olympian, you wouldn't get all sore before the competition. You would take care of yourself. Also, think about how stupid you would feel if you let yourself go physically just to get like a, B average. Both victory and defeat are easier to deal with if you look and feel good.\n\n8b. Spend a lot of time with friends\n\nThe people who I know that did the best were actually quite social. The one friend of mine who thought it would be a good idea to be recluse and really “focus” did just okay. Call your family a lot, call your friends from back home a lot, get drinks and meals with your classmates. That’s what life is all about. I did better when I did.\n\nWhen you’re miserable, you just don’t perform well. Take breaks while studying, keep yourself happy. For at least most humans, rich connections with others is what keeps you happy.\n\n8c. Study groups are mostly overrated\n\nStudy groups are fun and are a good way to spend time with people. But they’re usually a waste of time. I used them, but it was generally just to blow off steam and review stuff I knew. It’s more likely for misunderstandings to permeate a group than real understanding of the law. I've overhead people sharing plane errors with eachothe rin the library and committing it to their outlines.\n\nIf you do study grups, smaller is better. I’ve had very effective study sessions with like one to two people at a time. Once you’re with five you’re basically at a high-school cafeteria table.\n\nIf you do find a couple people you really vibe with, I think study groups are a good place to work through a very CONCRETE misunderstanding. For instance, I worked through some confusion around battle of the forms with a group of three, and it was very helpful. But we marked the session to be only about that.\n\nIn short, go ahead and study in groups, it’s good for your brain to socialize, and sometimes it does help, but block it as social time in your calendar, not a substitute for self-study.\n\n8d. Avoid drama\n\nSpending time with friends comes with a caveat. I won’t get into this too much, because this isn’t a personal confessional style blog, but grade school style drama can really distract you. It’s all fun the first few weeks, the gossip and the new people and all that, but it gets old real fast, and it can hold you back. Law school is more like middle school than like college. If you notice middle school type dynamics emerging in your friend groups, just politely create some distance. Ideally, you’re in law school to achieve something, not to waste time.\n\n8e. Keep things to yourself.\n\nLaw school has a lot of comparing and contrasting. It’s a curve. I think it’s generally best to not talk about grades, to be competitive but within the confines of your own mind and have a polite and sportsman like attitude with your peers, being congratulatory and kind.\n\nIf you did really bad on a midterm, you don’t want to hear someone gloat about their perfect score. If you get a 2L summer job, you don’t want to talk about it in front of someone who has been hopelessly searching and is striking out at OCI. Just be mindful.\n\nCompetition can make people act really catty and awful, you don't want to give people reasons to be jealous or resentful of you. I have learned some of this the hard way, and if I were to go back and do anything differently, it would be to act a bit more lowkey.\n\n8f. Chunking things is good I think\n\nLaw school can feel like there’s a lot of balls in the air all the time. Three classes with a writing project due turns out to be a lot. What I did, and I think other people did less, is really chunk tasks. I would spend a couple days at a time mainly only thinking about one course, and just keeping up with the other courses.\n\nIt was a bit insane and seemed ill advised but it really made me more efficient. Every time you switch subjects or between types of tasks it takes time. Doing three subjects in one day seems stupid to me. Immersing yourself in one class for longer stretches means you’ll have more epiphanies and make more connections.\n\n8g. Supplements are not a replacement for reading\n\nSome foolish student may tell you that you only need to read the short and happy guide, or the Emmanual crunch time, or something like that. Don’t do that. It will only get you to average in almost every case.\n\nOn Quimbee, I think it’s a useful tool, but it’s too tempting to use to replace the hard work of reading and getting insights for yourself. Like internet pornography, try and use it in a very limited sense or not at all. I used it for real crises, or to pre-fill out sections of outlines for units we hadn’t done yet. Basically, don’t avoid hard work. It doesn’t work for a curve system. No shortcuts.\n\n8h. exam answers\n\nI think that this is the most important thing, that merits another post, but one that I think other people are qualified to write about. Again, I got some A-s, which means I’m not an authority on the subject.\n\nIn general, very much like I’m writing right now, I would write exam answers with a good deal of structure but think out loud a lot to show the professor I knew what the real issues they were getting at were. I ran towards ambiguity.\n\nI might write more on this, especially if I manage all As this fall (then I would feel more credible to give advice), but I would really recommend reading “Getting to Maybe” and checking out this post by Orin Kerr, which is the most helpful thing I have read on the subject.\n\nhttps://volokh.com/posts/1168382003.shtml (again too lazy for hyperlink sorry) —\n\nAnyways, that’s all I’ve got. I might rewrite this and re-upload in the future to be neater. Or write about other topics that people may request. I think that spring semester is a very different beast with pre OCI, job hunt, and extracurriculars, so I will make a separate post about that. Feel free to DM me on twitter, reddit, or send me an email. My goal for this site is to just have some useful information for students like me, and to contribute to a culture of informal long-form writing, like you see on reddit or newsletters and stuff.\n\n- knxnts",
      "content_html": "<p>So, before you read this, here is my disclaimer:</p>\n<p>I made top quintile of class overall. I got As and a couple of A-s on exams. I also just did average on the writing class, and those are different in each school, so no advice on that here. If that’s not good enough, I won’t be hurt if you look elsewhere.</p>\n<p>If accomplishing top fifth and securing a Big Law offer for 2L while having a good time, hanging out with friends, and getting 8 hours of sleep a night is a desirable outcome for you, then maybe you’ll find this post useful. Just wanted to be honest about my performance, so you can decide how much weight to give my advice.</p>\n<p>Some more context, to figure out how relevant my advice is for you, since everyone is pretty different. I’m not very type A by nature, I am more of an artistic type (can you tell by the strange website), and I’ve never been a good student until law school. My study strategies are adapted to me. So, if you’re a more type B, creative, intuitive student who maybe is surprised they got into law school, then I think this advice will be very useful. If not, maybe read this and make adjustments for yourself. With that, I will proceed. I write these blog posts fast, but the points of advice are ordered chronologically more than in any order of importance. —</p>\n<p><b> The Summer Before</b></p>\n<p>If you’re reading this, you’re likely some combination of anxious or excited for law school, and you are managing that anxiety and excitement by preparing. Like when you’re waiting for a package, and you read the reviews for the product while it’s in the mail. I get it, I’m like that too.</p>\n<p>To be honest, the only things I would do to prepare is the following:</p>\n<p>⁃ Get some nice outfits, makes going into school fun</p>\n<p>⁃ Get supplies, obviously, and get stuff you’ll like using, don’t skimp, law school is already expensive. If you want a leather-bound journal and a cross pen, well hell go and buy it. Making studying marginally more enjoyable is worth it—you could probably measure it in the thousands of dollars in increased lifetime income honestly.</p>\n<p>⁃ Set your semester calendar, I just use apple calendar, and put the Prof and classroom locations in the event details. You can even attach files and links to the events that are helpful.</p>\n<p>⁃ Get as healthy as possible, get your appointments out of the way, get into a gym routine. Get your sleep schedule to a reasonable place.</p>\n<p>⁃ Any bureaucratic task like renewing your car inspection or ordering a new credit card——just get it done. These waste time in the semester. I did my car inspection two months early, so I didn’t have to do it in the middle of the fall.</p>\n<p>⁃ I think that typing notes is bad practice so work on your penmanship</p>\n<p>That’s it.</p>\n<p>1. <b>Don’t stress. Just don’t.</b></p>\n<p>You might be on reddit and read about how harrowing 1L is for people. Older attorneys might joke with you and say “you’re in for one hell of a year, say goodbye to your social life” or things to that effect. At orientation they will stress preserving your mental health, giving you the impression that this experience will severely impact your mental health (1L is kind of like cognitive hazing, but that’s true of any entry level to any elite organization. Finance bros get hazed. First year associates get hazed. It’s fine).</p>\n<p>This is all horseshit, and I think KJDs are particularly susceptible to it. You know what law school is? You read some cases. You show up to class and chit chat with your classmates. Sometimes you have to answer a question in front of your mates. You go home. You repeat. You take an exam. It’s easier than the workforce. In a sense it’s easier than undergrad where you had a bunch of assignments all the time. You have basically one big assignment for each class. It’s not a big volume of tasks, but of content.</p>\n<p>It’s a lot of reading, yes. But take a step back. It’s literally just reading. People who act like that’s insanely hard need to get a fucking grip. You are one of the most privileged people on earth if you just have to spend your days sitting and reading things. So don’t approach it like it’s going to be hard. Get in the frame that you’re going to school, you’re going to learn, it’s going to be a good time, it’s going to be a challenge, and you’ll handle it just fine.</p>\n<p>I’m remembering this study that showed that women that believed that labor was going to be painful often had more complicated and painful labors, and when women were told yeah, it’s just something people do, they did a lot better. This is the same thing. Narratives shape your experience. Don’t adopt the narrative that law school sucks.</p>\n<p>In short, the first step is to approach school with excitement and confidence. If you enter with anxiety, you’re already losing.</p>\n<p>2. <b>Keep your eye on the ball, which is the exams</b></p>\n<p>The cold calls. The random events that people will make you feel like you need to go to. The extracurriculars. Networking for big law, which is for some reason earlier and earlier now. It’s overwhelming. It also doesn’t fucking matter (Big law networking matters near the middle of Spring, but I personally don’t think getting too ahead of it is that helpful).</p>\n<p>All that matters is the exams and your final writing project. Your grades, especially your first semester grades, unfortunately carry a lot of weight. It determines your first-year job, it’s the only thing that recruiters for your 2L summer job will see, and doing it right means you’re not going to be trying to “catch up” in the Spring.</p>\n<p>Obviously, plenty of people who are wildly successful in life do mediocre first semester, but there are also people with one leg who run marathons and shit. But you don’t say, ah it’s fine if I lose a leg. Sometimes you do bad, but you deal with that later. At the outset, you need to enter thinking you HAVE TO do well your first semester. I knew a lot of people who, when things got stressful mid-semester, would say “ah it’s just first semester, and the exam isn’t everything.” This is actually true, but if you start thinking like that, you’re already hedging your bets and removing some intensity. For right now, your first semester grades ARE make it or break it. This is your one shot, one opportunity. Mom spaghetti.</p>\n<p>So, here’s what I did and here’s what you should do. In your little apartment where you go to curl up and hang your hat, find a spot——mine was on the white board in my study area——where you will put your exam dates in big bold letters. Count the weeks to it. The exams are your opponent. And the preparation for battle begins on day one.</p>\n<p>We haven’t even gotten to how to study yet, but I must stress that just keeping the exams in mind in everything you do is the most important preliminary step. A lot of people enter a day-to-day survival mode, trying to keep up with that day’s reading, trying to make sure they don’t look stupid on the next cold call, trying to make sure the ungraded draft for their writing class is perfect——this is all idiotic. It is all about the exams (and the brief). Don’t ever forget it.</p>\n<p>What does this mean practically? If you’re behind one day, or do bad on a cold call, or get super fixated on one doctrine that’s hard for you, don’t let it stress you or derail you. Take comfort in the fact that all that matters is the exam. Stress is cognitively and metabolically expensive. Don’t waste it on bullshit that doesn’t matter.</p>\n<p>3. <b>Reading effectively</b></p>\n<p>The last two points were about mental posture, and I think they are universally relevant. If you adopt both those postures, you’re already in a good spot. Ready for showtime. Now here’s my advice on how to study effectively.</p>\n<p>3a. Keep up with the readings.</p>\n<p>You know that Drake and Josh episode where the sushi is coming on the conveyer belt, and it speeds up, and eventually they can’t package it, so they start throwing it on the ceiling? Sometimes the readings feel like that, even if you’re a fast reader.</p>\n<p>Don’t fall behind. It sucks and showing up to class unprepared feels bad, even if it’s not a cold call class. Participating in the discussion is what makes law school fun.</p>\n<p>Now this is not advice I followed. For a few of my non cold call classes, I fell egregiously behind at a couple of points, especially in the Spring when I was too focused on Big Law networking. If you fall behind, you need to do the painful work of catching up. Rip off the band aid on some Saturday. Drink a red bull, get through it. Use Quimbee or a study aid to speed things along, but in general, don’t rely exclusively on this (more on that later). Missing a few readings and saving them for reading week before the exam may happen, but it’s not a good idea. I might make a post on how to cram in a pinch, because I got A’s in classes where I had to cram entire units I neglected, and the truth is that especially in the Spring semester it might happen.</p>\n<p>But really, just don’t fall behind. Even if you only have time to read it poorly, read it. Reading cases on the metro to class or the 20 minutes before was often sufficient for me to get what was going on (I’m also a fast reader), but going in blind always sucked.</p>\n<p>3b. Read and brief for understanding</p>\n<p>So, reading cases will be a new thing. Lots of resources out there on how to read cases. Here's a helpful link by Orin Kerr: https://law2.wlu.edu/library/documents/kerrhowtoreadopinion.pdf (sorry I'm too lazy to do the hyperlink, edit copy paste this).</p>\n<p>That's the best resource on the subject. But here's my quick take:</p>\n<p>A lot of people think it’s just the holding of the case, the black letter law that matters. These people are morons. A lot of time that’s the least important part! You need comprehensive understanding of four things:</p>\n<p>(1) why was this case assigned? What theme of the class, or tension point in the law, is it illustrating? What is the takeaway or puzzle your professor wants you to leave with?</p>\n<p>(2) What was the policy rationale for the decision? A core theme of almost every law class is that all the fancy jargon and doctrine is window dressing and a way to achieve some societal objective. Identity that objective as clearly as possible.</p>\n<p>(3) the holding. Yes, you need to know the holding. And often, you can find this on Quimbee or commercial outlines. One thing you need to add when writing out your holding is to note how this holding may have been modified in later cases.</p>\n<p>(4) The facts. The degree to which this is important varies wildly between classes. But it’s good to remember a bit about the situation, often just to remember it effectively. One note——read the notes that the textbook puts after the case. It’s a cheat code. They usually answer 1-3 completely if you read them thoroughly.</p>\n<p>So here you have four big buckets of elements you should be able to answer with every case you read. You should brief cases, especially early on; I would recommend making a basic template for your briefs, and whatever format you make them, check if they are designed to answer all four categories identified earlier.</p>\n<p>Now briefing cases doesn’t have to be a science, and it doesn’t have to be super comprehensive. Sometimes you will spend two hours briefing a case. Sometimes it will be 15 minutes in a jam. But if you can answer (1) why this case (2) the policy rationale (3) the holding (4) the facts, you’ll be A okay to participate in class.</p>\n<p>Now, if you’re over my theoretical discussion on briefs and everything else, I’ll give you something extremely concrete. This is how I mostly briefed Civil Procedure, where I got an A and almost always felt very prepared for class.</p>\n<p class=\"center\">Facts</p>\n<p>[this is where I would write the basic factual background of the case. In a pinch, I would copy and paste the summary from quimbee into Chat GPT, and ask it to make a narrative bullet summary of the facts. Worked perfectly.]</p>\n<p class=\"center\">The Decision</p>\n<p>[here I would just write out key quotes from the decision while reading my textbook, put notes next to the quotes giving my interpretation. This is where I used no supplement at all.]</p>\n<p class=\"center\">Rule and Takeaways</p>\n<p>[here I would usually write my interpretation of the rule and put a quote from that case that captured the holding. I would also sometimes paste the Quimbee rule here, but usually I needed more than that. Finally, I would write out a policy takeaway.]</p>\n<p>And then I would print it out and bring it to class and mark the briefs up with my pen. These were my class notes. When I was outlining, my briefs and my class notes were just one thing, which was very nice. I think this was my best system, and I did a variant of it in other classes.</p>\n<p>In Spring, I would just do briefing notes in the actual textbook because I got good enough at reading cases that I didn’t need to do the whole separate briefing process. But start with real briefs in the fall. The key is not to make it a time sink, but a form of exam prep——briefs should be done in a way that they very logically align with the outlining process.</p>\n<p>3c. At some point, figure out the professor</p>\n<p>This isn’t something you necessarily want to attempt on day 1. But a few weeks into the semester, you’ll get a sense of what they find interesting. You’ll get a sense of the questions they let hang in the air, that they relish in bouncing to students. Remember, these people are academics, and they get a hard-on for paradoxes, inconsistencies, and puzzles in the law. They are not trying to help you memorize things or prepare for the bar, they see that as your job. They want you to think about things more deeply, and they have a desperate need to share a piece of their vibrant inner world with you. There are elements to the law and the subject they are teaching that they find really fun. Since they’re human, those will almost certainly be on the exam.</p>\n<p>Now before I proceed, I think I can’t drive this point hard enough. You don’t become a law professor if you don’t find things about the law fascinating. These people are real nerds. Maybe you’re not like that, maybe you see a spade for a spade, or whatever the turn of phrase is, but they often don’t. So think about the kind of sick person who becomes a professor, then try and think like them. Sometimes it’s fun.</p>\n<p>Anyways, when you start to notice these things, write them down, and keep them in mind while reading, and while briefing. They’ll often answer (1) on the list from 3b.</p>\n<p>4. <b>Use class time effectively</b></p>\n<p>Before giving advice, I’m going to be real with you and say that I often did not use class time effectively. Often I did. Many times, I did not. Sometimes I would get almost everything I need to out of the readings, and a lot of class time was just questions about what happened out in the case, and I would zone out completely, or browse the web. Obviously, it turned out fine for me, but don’t do that. It’s stupid and you’re spending a lot of money to be in school. I will tell you what I did on good days, and what I wished I did all of the time.</p>\n<p>4a. DON’T type your notes in class</p>\n<p>Guys. Don’t do it. Literally almost everyone does it. You will see everyone do it. Don’t do it. There is so much literature out there on how you just don’t memorize things as well when you type. And the speed at which you type is so fast that you will record way more content than necessary. Unless you have some kind of disability, which is a real thing, just HANDWRITE your notes. If you have bad handwriting, grow the hell up. Now is a great excuse to make it nicer, and in the future, you can write family members nice letters and your spouse love notes. It’s a great skill to have. Start now.</p>\n<p>Handwriting your notes forces you to summarize information fast, to think fast, to see the forest through the trees. This is the exact skills you need on the exam, and as a lawyer. Start practicing from day one and handwrite your notes. People type because they’re anxious that they won’t “get” everything otherwise. Typing becomes a safety blanket. Well guess what. I know people who would type type type and then what it came time to review they had a 200 page google doc they were parsing through to compress into their outline. Not fun.</p>\n<p>Just keep your class notes relatively short, listen closely, draw things, do whatever. Don’t become a stenographer. Synthesize and shorten information in real time. You’ll have to do that in your outline anyways. Trust that your memory will be jogged if you didn’t get everything. You’re in law school after all, you’re smart.</p>\n<p>Your note-taking in class is ideally a form of outlining, you’re comprising the contents and holdings from cases into doctrine.</p>\n<p>Now, here’s something not to do. Your classes are probably recorded. Some students would leave class and say things like, I didn’t really get that, I’m going to have to watch the recording. In my head I would think, are you out of your fucking mind. Every second in law school is precious if you want to get good grades and stay healthy and spend time with friends and family. Rewatching lectures is just so insanely boneheaded. This is another thing that acts as a safety blanket and reduces your performance and efficiency. Don’t have it in the back of your head that you’ll be able to rewatch later. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. Those recordings exist for emergencies like getting sick. They are not review material.</p>\n<p>I only ever rewatched a couple lectures when it was closer to exam time, it’s a fine tool in that context if you want to clarify something. Not to cover for you if you didn’t pay attention or were too shy to ask a question. This leads into the next point.</p>\n<p>4b. Participate in class</p>\n<p>What makes a lot of people anxious are the cold calls and the public speaking. While I get it, sort of, the truth is you’re at least 22 years of age and need to get over it. Everyone is in the same boat. Be prepared, show up, and perform. Be nice to people if they falter and generally, you’ll find that people don’t judge you all that hard if you do. At my school whenever someone got cold called for the first time in the fall people would make it a point to congratulate them after class or tell them they did a nice job. You should do this too. It’s nice and you’ll feel good if people give you words of reassurance after being in the spotlight.</p>\n<p>Anywho, cold calls are a minority of your classroom experience. It’s mostly voluntary participation. You pay a lot of money, or at least time, so if you don’t understand something, just ask. Chances are people have the same question. Don’t worry about what other people think, ask your question, even if it is objectively stupid. You deserve an answer.</p>\n<p>Now, the problem is that often law professors don’t give answers. They give you questions back. This is because they’re professors and they think in fucking riddles or whatever. Sometimes it’s actually because at the heart of your question is a paradox or some currently very contentious or theoretically difficult issue in the law. If you ask these kind of questions, you’ll often know because your professor will sometimes smile or chuckle. Sometimes your question is so good that, little do you know, there are whole journal articles about that subject.</p>\n<p>So, if you don’t get an answer, don’t get frustrated. It could mean that you’re actually thinking about the questions in the right way. Knowing the right questions are as important as knowing concrete answer for law exams, and life. Just ask questions.</p>\n<p>I guess this comes with a caveat that you shouldn’t waste your classmate’s time, some people talk to hear themselves speak. Don’t be that person. Sometimes I would catch myself doing that. It’s fine, many people have a weird fetish. Nothing to be ashamed of but nothing that you should exhibit in polite society. If yours is talking in class, try and keep it in your pants.</p>\n<p>5. <b>Start Outlining from week one</b></p>\n<p>So, this is the most important point, and I probably should’ve put it at the top, but I’m thinking of this chronologically, and theoretically all of the things I’ve talked about before happen during or before day one and your first crack at outlining should happen maybe the first weekend after classes.</p>\n<p>You may be asking, what the hell is an outline? It’s a study guide. That’s all it is. It’s a study guide. I don’t know why the hell it’s called an outline. But yeah, it’s a study guide.</p>\n<p>Now, there is no fixed formula for outlining, because everyone is different. Some people type class notes throughout the semester then whittle that down. Some people make handwritten flow charts, which I always thought were neat. Some people use an old outline that’s available from their SBA or a 2L or a commercial supplement, and just modify it. I think each of these methods have gotten people As.</p>\n<p>I’ll start with the general advice and share what I did specifically at the end.</p>\n<p>5a. Start by thinking about Course structure</p>\n<p>Think about the big picture and how all the information can be synthesized from the very first week. Look through your syllabus and your textbook week one, listen to your introductory lecture, and get a sense of the landscape of what you’re learning about. Use that to make a table of contents or sections for your outline. Do some googling, get a very cursory sense of each unit’s content.</p>\n<p>For instance, a contracts course should have a structure vaguely like this:</p>\n<p>1. Formation 2. Promissory Estoppel and Quasi Contracts 3. Defenses 4. Problems with Boilerplates 5. The Uniform Commercial Code 6. Remedies and Damage Calculations</p>\n<p>Different professors will have different orders, labels, they may remix and mash different sections together, but it’ll be something like this. Look at your professor’s syllabus and textbook. Look at other textbooks. Look at outlines for other classes. You can get a sense of the course in a very “platonic” sense——what a basic contracts course looks like——and then see how your professor and textbook authors have made it their own.</p>\n<p>Once again, try and get a sense of what the GENERAL content of a course is, what would be there no matter what school or what professor you have, and then take note of how your professor has structured it. This should also give you some indication of how your professor sorts the doctrine in their head, which is actually very useful when preparing for an exam.</p>\n<p>If you don’t get what I mean, think about a subject from school that isn’t necessarily best taught chronologically, like biology. Think about how you would teach it, what order you would present ideas. Would you do evolution first, the most important foundational concept? Would you start with cells, then go big to small? Would you work through the tree of life?</p>\n<p>You’ll realize there are probably several good ways to do it. Law classes have a bit of that too. Your professors choices in course structure are very informative. That’s a great first step to outlining.</p>\n<p>5b. Fill in your outline every week or so</p>\n<p>Every week you should have a fresh set of briefs and class notes. Shorten this content in some way and load it into your outline. Doesn’t have to be perfect, especially in the beginning, but just put it in that document every week and don’t let it pile up.</p>\n<p>A few weeks into the semester, you’ll see ideas and cases start referencing each other, ideas build off each other, and you will find ways to relate them. At this point, the consolidation process begins. Following our contracts example, if you’re doing defenses you’ll see how promissory estoppel is a way for a plaintiff to bypass a defense that formation never occurred, and you’ll start to see a flowchart in your head, different pathways an agreement can take. As soon as that spark of intuition hits your mind, draw it, write it out in your outline. Bring it to class. Revise it.</p>\n<p>You’ll end up with a little bit of a mess overtime, the outline may be unwieldy, but the key is to add things and clean them up iteratively. Don’t be focused on being too neat. Law isn’t neat, and the first semester it’ll be an enormous volume of ideas and content. The crystallization will happen naturally, don’t force all of your content all into too rigid of a structure too soon.</p>\n<p>I see people do this with outlines, where they have their little headings, and subheadings, and sub-sub headings, and try and force pretty nuanced legal ideas into something very robotic. I don’t find that useful personally, unless you’re at the very very end of the process.</p>\n<p>Basically, let your outline be a living entity that reflect your evolving and improving understanding of the law throughout the semester. Let it breathe. But keep feeding it new content. Near the end of the semester, when you have a more bird’s eye view of everything, you’ll be able to really whittle it down.</p>\n<p>5c. Get it clean before reading week</p>\n<p>Now, thus far, I’ve said that you should take it easy and let the outline breathe for most of the semester. Well that changes when you get closer to the finish line. When you’re around three or four weeks out from reading week, you should look at your outline, then look at yourself in the mirror, and ask yourself, is this war-time ready? Am I war-time ready?</p>\n<p>Chances are it’s not; it might be missing content (it’s certainly missing the last units). It might be too long. It might have things you know are wrong now. Misunderstandings. Confusion on doctrine that has been clarified by newer content in the course.</p>\n<p>I had a very strict goal for myself: I should have somewhat complete document, printed in my hands, before reading weeks even starts. That is, I should be reviewing my outline during reading week, not making it.</p>\n<p>This meant I had to be polishing my outline in the last few weeks of classes. This is a harder point in the semester, where you’re not even done with content but you’re synthesizing the whole course for finals. Well, you’ll have to learn to walk and chew gum at the same time.</p>\n<p>This is a point of the semester that should be actually a little bit stressful, but it will be fine because you didn’t stress about the small stuff during the semester, and you’ve been getting 8 hours of sleep until now so you can afford a bit of crunch.</p>\n<p>One way to do this is to just “quarantine” off all the content after a certain unit and decide you’ll add that on the day after the very last day of classes, and make your outline based on everything before that. That’s sort of what I did. In my head, there was a class I already finished, that covered units X-Y, and I had this other class with unit Z that I was still working on. Just a mental trick.</p>\n<p>The point is, you need to have something DONE before reading week. You need to be reviewing your outline when other people are frantically making theirs while going through their 200-page typed google docs. You need to get ahead of the curve by any means necessary.</p>\n<p>You need to do visualize it like this. There are two versions of your reading week before exams. One is where you’re doing the intensely laborious work of synthesizing content, and then only having a few days to review it. The other is one where you have a nice little packet in your hand, you’re sitting outside with a cup of tea and your little pen, and you’re calmly reviewing it, marking it up, and then taking practice exams in the evening (more on that later).</p>\n<p>You want your reading week before finals to be relatively calm! So front load the pain and get as much of your outline done before.</p>\n<p>5d. Bonus - my actual process</p>\n<p>So, enough abstractions, this is how I outlined that got me most As and some A-s, slightly modified to reflect what I will do in 2L that I am certain will bump that to As and A+s.</p>\n<p>I start with what I described in 5a, going through the textbooks and syllabi the weeks before the semester starts, and getting as much sorted into word document as possible. Now this word document doesn’t really become my outline, because it would be too long, but it will have everything I need for the course in it. This word document will have unit headings, space for the respective cases if I have knowledge of them already, and anything else I know will be in the course.</p>\n<p>Using the briefing principles in 3b and my note taking principles in 4a, every week I have new content to add into the outline. I spend the weekend updating the outlines accordingly, I spent maybe one full workday each weekend doing this.</p>\n<p>Now, for me it’s important that as fluid as the outline is content-wise in the middle of semester, that its extremely pleasing to the eye. Mine have always been extremely formatted, with a gorgeous array of serif-fonts, diagrams that I would either draw and scan or create in apple free-form, nice high-resolution images next to cases to jog my memory, textboxes with extra notes on the side. I made it look like my own mini textbook.</p>\n<p>So, I sort of lied earlier, by the end of the semester, I would have not really an outline, but a mini textbook, around 40 pages or so. This would have my own prose, long excerpts from cases, and really extensive explainers on things for myself. But it would be printed, spiral bound, and ready, and I would use it to make a two-page “attack outline” during reading week.</p>\n<p>Unlike my larger “course outline” I developed through the semester, which was really just self-indulgent, my attack outline was entirely for exam purposes. It was different for each class, depending on whether it was open book or closed book, etc. But it has taken the following forms:</p>\n<p>⁃ A few pages of “pre-writes” or exam-shells and flow charts, to work through any conceivable exam question</p>\n<p>⁃ A more traditional bullet-form outline, the kind you usually see on outline banks</p>\n<p>⁃ A table of cases with columns for a “rule” and a memory jog next to them (e.g. International Shoe | Minimum Contacts | Salesmen operating in state but HQ elsewhere - didn’t matter, state still had PJ)</p>\n<p>So as far as outlining, I would have two products, a course outline, and little attack outline. During reading week, I would use both on practice exams, see where they fell short, make revisions with pen, revise, and reprint.</p>\n<p>That actually raises another point in my processes overall——they were very physical. I would print briefs for class to mark up (usually, sometimes I would forget and mark them up on my iPad). I would handwrite my notes. I would type my outlines, and then I would print them out and edit the hell out of them by hand, then retype it.</p>\n<p>This back and forth between digital and print may seem tedious, but it forced me to iterate and encounter the content A LOT. There is a redundancy to printing, editing, and retyping, but that’s the point. I think this is labor intensive but part of the reason I got the grades I did.</p>\n<p>TL;DR</p>\n<p>⁃ Made the outline pretty</p>\n<p>⁃ Made a long one and a short one</p>\n<p>⁃ Used a lot of visuals</p>\n<p>⁃ Printed them and worked with them physically, for added redundancy</p>\n<p>6. <b>Take exams and write answers to questions all semester</b></p>\n<p>Writing about this one actually makes me angry, because I had friends who would refuse to this and insist it was a waste of time, and then they did mediocre and complained later. Most people are nervous about law school being ~oNe ExAm~! Oh my god that’s so unfair, that’s so crazy! How could our whole grade just be on oNE exAm!!</p>\n<p>If you’re thinking about it like that, you’re silly! You can take exams all semester! You can write out questions and answers all semester!</p>\n<p>Your textbook has questions in the notes, if you get supplements it will have practice questions (your library will have the Examples and Explanations series), your professor will probably ask you questions and maybe write them on your reading assignments, you might have a midterm, and you’ll certainly have access to past exams from your professor or another. Hell, if you’re really in a pinch, ask chat GPT to generate some exam style questions after feeding it your outlines and notes.</p>\n<p>For most of the semester, in small doses, you should practice writing out cogent answers to hypotheticals. A lot of times you can come to office hours and ask your professor to look at them, and ask them what they think. Depends on the professor. You can also do this indirectly by just asking what they would think about X scenario.</p>\n<p>The final exam should not seem that daunting if you’ve been writing and writing all semester. A lot of students just read and read the content and don’t generate anything all semester, saving their writing for the writing class. Don’t do this. Writing is a skill that needs to be practiced. From the basic physical mechanics of typing fast to the cognitive power required to translate your thoughts to words fast, it’s good to keep your capabilities in that area strong.</p>\n<p>You should write little exams all semester. ALL semester!</p>\n<p>7. <b>Treat reading week like scrimmages, not like practice</b></p>\n<p>Now, ideally, you’ve entered reading week with an 85% complete outline for all of your classes. You may have a short outline ready if you follow conventional advice, or you may have a longer style one like I did. Doesn’t matter, but you should have a finished product in hand.</p>\n<p>You should have written out some exam answers, have done a couple of full practice tests by now. Have a stack of briefs and handwritten notes near you.</p>\n<p>Now what? To me, reading week isn’t about learning, it’s about practicing, and conditioning. It should be a time of rest and recovery. You should sleep a lot, eat very healthy, get a lot of exercise, spend a lot of time outside.</p>\n<p>Now these are all ideals to strive towards, and one I’ve met about 70% of the time. Listen, I had days where I fell asleep with the lights on, woken up in a sweat, skipped breakfast, and got back to work. It's law school.</p>\n<p>But the advice is to not to do that mostly. For the most part, reading week looked like this for me: I would eat a big breakfast, sit at my desk, take practice exam questions, then take a break and go outside, exercise, whatever.</p>\n<p>Then I would come back, print those answeres out, grade them, compare against answer keys or model answers if I had them, and sometimes try again. Then I would revise my outline if I needed to. After that, I would take a break, see my friends, repeat the process until exam day. On exam day, I would just pace around campus with my printouts and a copy, listen to music, but mostly just burn off the anxious energy with walking.</p>\n<p>The big takeaway is that reading week shouldn't be a time where you're learning things wholesale. Please don't plan to do that.</p>\n<p>***BONUS CONTENT*** - The real truth and how I dealt with it</p>\n<p>Thusfar, I’ve mostly talked about ideals and best practices. But no one does that. Not even the best students most of the time. I did not.</p>\n<p>The truth is that most of us are kind of goobers. We know what we’re supposed to do but don’t do it. We might procrastinate, spend 4 hours on Tik Tok, have too much faith in our ability to cram. So, the truth is that there is usually more stress and pressure involved because of imperfect decisions piling up. Here are the general ways I dealt with short coming:</p>\n<p>Missing Readings</p>\n<p>⁃ If I missed readings, I would usually mark time to cram and catch up. If I simply could not make it happen, I took the L for a unit and just started fresh when we got to the next one to keep moving. If I had any missing readings by the time the semester ended, I would take care of that for the FIRST day or so of reading week. Both semesters I needed to dedicate maybe 12 hours to just catch up. Which wasn’t ideal, that was time I could have spent either relaxing or writing practice answers. But that’s the reality.</p>\n<p>Shitting the bed/taking the piss</p>\n<p>There was one class, Con Law, where I completely failed to follow any of my advice in this blog post. It was in the evening and there were a lot of networking events in the Spring, so I missed it a lot. And I was often really tired or hungry during that class so I would zone out (I have ADHD so that happens to me a lot). Near the end of the semester I essentially gave up and realized this was a class I had to cram during reading week, but thankfully I was in a good spot for other classes.</p>\n<p>After taking the piss for that class——as in literally no reading for months and completely absent for the course——I did the following to get an A- on the closed book exam and maintain my GPA in the spring semester.</p>\n<p>⁃ When I realized that I would need time to cram con law, making sure my outlines for all my other classes were in good shape became an even greater priority. I spent a lot of time getting things really tight for my other courses, so I only had ONE major crisis to deal with. There’s a lot of inefficiency in switching between tasks, and I knew I would be more efficient if I didn’t have to prep much for the other exams. ⁃ I started by making a list of every case, and pasting the quimbee summaries, shortened by chat GPT into it. This was exhausting, but an important first step. ⁃ I looked at old outlines to figure out what the basics of the course were ⁃ After this, I actually read the cases I needed to have a richer understanding of, taking a lot of notes. It was so many cases and so much reading. ⁃ I made a lot of hand drawn diagrams to understand the line of cases and how they developed the law. ⁃ I took a lot of practice exam questions and graded myself ⁃ At the end of this process, I forced myself to sit with no materials, and write everything I remembered from the course from MEMORY on a word doc. As if I was giving a lecture. ⁃ I printed that, checked it, and used it to review.</p>\n<p>This was probably the most intense exam prep I did, and it only got me an A-. So don’t do it like that. But if you end up in that situation, this proves that hope is not lost. If you are strong enough.</p>\n<p>8. <b>Conclusion/global lifestyle and study advice</b></p>\n<p>Too many people talk about law school being so grueling and ruining their health and sleep and whatnot. I’m really a believer that you should not do this, and that it’s not necessary, mostly. Especially during fall semester, where I wasn’t worried about jobs, I was able to stay pretty sane (part of the promise of the title). It was the spring where I faltered a bit, and now that I’ve had the experience, I feel qualified to give advice from my success as well as my mistakes:</p>\n<p>8a. Make health non-negotiable</p>\n<p>Law is a very intense field, and you really shouldn’t be starting with strategies that wreck your body. I know a couple of former big lawyers from a previous job, and one of them just looked like someone who ran themselves ragged. Not worth it.</p>\n<p>You’ll notice some people gain weight, get a bit more disheveled, people with dark circles around their eyes, falling asleep in class. Some people even take pride in abusing themselves. Literally don’t let this happen to you.</p>\n<p>Start from the very beginning. All-nighters are not cool. Skipping meals isn’t cool. Just eating ramen noodles is not cool. Eating and sleeping is infinitely more important than getting the entire reading done, I think. If it was between being a bit behind and getting a full night’s sleep, I would almost always pick the latter for the bulk of the semester.</p>\n<p>Now this meant that near the end, it was relatively easy for me to break these rules and not face repercussions. I had a few days where I sat at the computer with a Celsius and a cigarette and freezer meals to just hammer through work. I had SOME late nights. But that was just a handful of days, so it didn’t cause me damage. What ruins you is the chronic, everyday neglect of your body. Treat yourself nicely, keep some gas in the tank for emergencies.</p>\n<p>To hammer this point home, law school has a big performance element to it, its as much a test of sheer physical endurance as it is of knowledge. If you were an olympian, you wouldn't get all sore before the competition. You would take care of yourself. Also, think about how stupid you would feel if you let yourself go physically just to get like a, B average. Both victory and defeat are easier to deal with if you look and feel good.</p>\n<p>8b. Spend a lot of time with friends</p>\n<p>The people who I know that did the best were actually quite social. The one friend of mine who thought it would be a good idea to be recluse and really “focus” did just okay. Call your family a lot, call your friends from back home a lot, get drinks and meals with your classmates. That’s what life is all about. I did better when I did.</p>\n<p>When you’re miserable, you just don’t perform well. Take breaks while studying, keep yourself happy. For at least most humans, rich connections with others is what keeps you happy.</p>\n<p>8c. Study groups are mostly overrated</p>\n<p>Study groups are fun and are a good way to spend time with people. But they’re usually a waste of time. I used them, but it was generally just to blow off steam and review stuff I knew. It’s more likely for misunderstandings to permeate a group than real understanding of the law. I've overhead people sharing plane errors with eachothe rin the library and committing it to their outlines.</p>\n<p>If you do study grups, smaller is better. I’ve had very effective study sessions with like one to two people at a time. Once you’re with five you’re basically at a high-school cafeteria table.</p>\n<p>If you do find a couple people you really vibe with, I think study groups are a good place to work through a very CONCRETE misunderstanding. For instance, I worked through some confusion around battle of the forms with a group of three, and it was very helpful. But we marked the session to be only about that.</p>\n<p>In short, go ahead and study in groups, it’s good for your brain to socialize, and sometimes it does help, but block it as social time in your calendar, not a substitute for self-study.</p>\n<p>8d. Avoid drama</p>\n<p>Spending time with friends comes with a caveat. I won’t get into this too much, because this isn’t a personal confessional style blog, but grade school style drama can really distract you. It’s all fun the first few weeks, the gossip and the new people and all that, but it gets old real fast, and it can hold you back. Law school is more like middle school than like college. If you notice middle school type dynamics emerging in your friend groups, just politely create some distance. Ideally, you’re in law school to achieve something, not to waste time.</p>\n<p>8e. Keep things to yourself.</p>\n<p>Law school has a lot of comparing and contrasting. It’s a curve. I think it’s generally best to not talk about grades, to be competitive but within the confines of your own mind and have a polite and sportsman like attitude with your peers, being congratulatory and kind.</p>\n<p>If you did really bad on a midterm, you don’t want to hear someone gloat about their perfect score. If you get a 2L summer job, you don’t want to talk about it in front of someone who has been hopelessly searching and is striking out at OCI. Just be mindful.</p>\n<p>Competition can make people act really catty and awful, you don't want to give people reasons to be jealous or resentful of you. I have learned some of this the hard way, and if I were to go back and do anything differently, it would be to act a bit more lowkey.</p>\n<p>8f. Chunking things is good I think</p>\n<p>Law school can feel like there’s a lot of balls in the air all the time. Three classes with a writing project due turns out to be a lot. What I did, and I think other people did less, is really chunk tasks. I would spend a couple days at a time mainly only thinking about one course, and just keeping up with the other courses.</p>\n<p>It was a bit insane and seemed ill advised but it really made me more efficient. Every time you switch subjects or between types of tasks it takes time. Doing three subjects in one day seems stupid to me. Immersing yourself in one class for longer stretches means you’ll have more epiphanies and make more connections.</p>\n<p>8g. Supplements are not a replacement for reading</p>\n<p>Some foolish student may tell you that you only need to read the short and happy guide, or the Emmanual crunch time, or something like that. Don’t do that. It will only get you to average in almost every case.</p>\n<p>On Quimbee, I think it’s a useful tool, but it’s too tempting to use to replace the hard work of reading and getting insights for yourself. Like internet pornography, try and use it in a very limited sense or not at all. I used it for real crises, or to pre-fill out sections of outlines for units we hadn’t done yet. Basically, don’t avoid hard work. It doesn’t work for a curve system. No shortcuts.</p>\n<p>8h. exam answers</p>\n<p>I think that this is the most important thing, that merits another post, but one that I think other people are qualified to write about. Again, I got some A-s, which means I’m not an authority on the subject.</p>\n<p>In general, very much like I’m writing right now, I would write exam answers with a good deal of structure but think out loud a lot to show the professor I knew what the real issues they were getting at were. I ran towards ambiguity.</p>\n<p>I might write more on this, especially if I manage all As this fall (then I would feel more credible to give advice), but I would really recommend reading “Getting to Maybe” and checking out this post by Orin Kerr, which is the most helpful thing I have read on the subject.</p>\n<p>https://volokh.com/posts/1168382003.shtml (again too lazy for hyperlink sorry) —</p>\n<p>Anyways, that’s all I’ve got. I might rewrite this and re-upload in the future to be neater. Or write about other topics that people may request. I think that spring semester is a very different beast with pre OCI, job hunt, and extracurriculars, so I will make a separate post about that. Feel free to DM me on twitter, reddit, or send me an email. My goal for this site is to just have some useful information for students like me, and to contribute to a culture of informal long-form writing, like you see on reddit or newsletters and stuff.</p>\n<p>- knxnts</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.17.24-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.17.24-2.html",
      "title": "National Conservatism, some loose thoughts",
      "date_published": "2024-07-17T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "I consider myself as mostly, unhappily, aligning with the Democratic party. But when i read Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed in undergrad, got a gust of the early Jordan Peterson wave in the late 2010s, and now read various essays here and there on \"common good conservatism,\" I feel that the new right's diagnosis of why things feel so bad is largely correct. It's the actual premises of liberalsim, which are really at odds wit how we're supposed to structure society and what leads to human fulfillment.\n\nAfter the Vance pick I thought it was a good time to check out Regime Change by Deneen (cheap on Kindle!) and I'm liking it so far. Will have thoughts on it later. Book reviews is something I could get into.\n\nThe objectives, which I glean are, reducing inequality, reviatlizing national identity, becoming a maker of things, promoting traditional family formation, are all great. I agree with all of them, nominally. On the social side, we need ideals in society——the sort of libertine attitude America has towards all kinds of lifestyles is corrosive. There at least has to be some kind of \"model lifestyle\"——people won't follow it, shouldn't be forced to, they'll rebel against it like the hippies and punks did, but it's good to have. It should look something like a nuclear family. Having nothing leaves a void to be filled with psychos and perverts.\n\nBut I think that they're a little too optimistic about the power of the state to promote marriage, family formation, healthy sexual identity, etc. I think we can at least have policies to stop making things worse, that's easy. But after that? Child subsidies, banning abortions, family leave . . . I don't think it really moves the needle. I don't agree with banning abortions from a policy standpoint but that's a different issue. My point is that these policies don't even promote their goals. Cultural change is, I think, downstream of what's possible technologically.\n\nIt is possible to have a very libertine sexual life safely today. It is possible to put off having children for a very long time. It is possible to have a pretty comfortable life consuming things without building anything, like a family, for yourself. We are in this culture because our technology allows it: contraceptives, cheap entertainment, cheap credit.\n\nAt some point, what you're trying to do with policy is to ban or discourage the use of useful technology——useful in a narrow sense to some people. I don't think any state policy has ever successfully done this. There were virtues to many previous lifestyles——the rigors of paleolithic life probably cultivated a lot of strength virtue. But we just can't go back.\n\nI guess that's my main problem, a lot of the movement is about going and RE-vitalizing older cultural forms. I just think it's not possible. I would make the exact same argument with their protectionism and industrial policies. But that's a failure they share with Democrats.\n\nMy suspicion is that if we, as a society, get really focused on building new things, on achieving big goals, and the achievement of those national priorities gets tied up with status, we'll see culture heal from the bottom up. And governments are actually really good at making big national projects, and to drawing money to them, and money in turn draws status. Once status is aligned with the \"common good,\" the rest is easy.\n\nI'm thinking of this old article I read which theorized that the pyramids weren't built by slaves, that it was probably some kind of public works, summer camp type system where healthy men would come contribute for a season, and that it could have featured games where teams were competing to add more bricks. They aligned masculine impulses with a natioal project with status. That feels like what the New Right is trying to achieve.\n\nSo, these are streams of consciousness, and I don't have a conclusion in mind when I start writing them, but my intuition is that national projects, something like a new moon landing, a new New Deal type program, huge national missions in science and technology, hundreds of operation Warp Speeds, a new and bigger peace corp, a national service programs that compel college students to do a semester doing some for of community service in underserved areas——things like this could really revamp America. If it sounds lefty, we can add a bunch of flags and eagles on it, pass it in a bill called \"Reclaiming the American Century.\"\n\nIn short, I think that the new rights gets the problems right. But they should listen to their friends in the old right and Cato and all that. The government isn't good at policing people's lives or changing culture, it's really good at spending money. So make a policy platform focused on effectively spending it. (they don't have that right now they're going to blow up the deficit cause inflation and put a sales tax on Americans through tariffs)\n\nI'll see if my thoughts change after I read Deneen's new book.",
      "content_html": "<p>I consider myself as mostly, unhappily, aligning with the Democratic party. But when i read Patrick Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed in undergrad, got a gust of the early Jordan Peterson wave in the late 2010s, and now read various essays here and there on \"common good conservatism,\" I feel that the new right's diagnosis of why things feel so bad is largely correct. It's the actual premises of liberalsim, which are really at odds wit how we're supposed to structure society and what leads to human fulfillment.</p>\n<p>After the Vance pick I thought it was a good time to check out Regime Change by Deneen (cheap on Kindle!) and I'm liking it so far. Will have thoughts on it later. Book reviews is something I could get into.</p>\n<p>The objectives, which I glean are, reducing inequality, reviatlizing national identity, becoming a maker of things, promoting traditional family formation, are all great. I agree with all of them, nominally. On the social side, we need ideals in society——the sort of libertine attitude America has towards all kinds of lifestyles is corrosive. There at least has to be some kind of \"model lifestyle\"——people won't follow it, shouldn't be forced to, they'll rebel against it like the hippies and punks did, but it's good to have. It should look something like a nuclear family. Having nothing leaves a void to be filled with psychos and perverts.</p>\n<p>But I think that they're a little too optimistic about the power of the state to promote marriage, family formation, healthy sexual identity, etc. I think we can at least have policies to stop making things worse, that's easy. But after that? Child subsidies, banning abortions, family leave . . . I don't think it really moves the needle. I don't agree with banning abortions from a policy standpoint but that's a different issue. My point is that these policies don't even promote their goals. Cultural change is, I think, downstream of what's possible technologically.</p>\n<p>It is possible to have a very libertine sexual life safely today. It is possible to put off having children for a very long time. It is possible to have a pretty comfortable life consuming things without building anything, like a family, for yourself. We are in this culture because our technology allows it: contraceptives, cheap entertainment, cheap credit.</p>\n<p>At some point, what you're trying to do with policy is to ban or discourage the use of useful technology——useful in a narrow sense to some people. I don't think any state policy has ever successfully done this. There were virtues to many previous lifestyles——the rigors of paleolithic life probably cultivated a lot of strength virtue. But we just can't go back.</p>\n<p>I guess that's my main problem, a lot of the movement is about going and RE-vitalizing older cultural forms. I just think it's not possible. I would make the exact same argument with their protectionism and industrial policies. But that's a failure they share with Democrats.</p>\n<p>My suspicion is that if we, as a society, get really focused on building new things, on achieving big goals, and the achievement of those national priorities gets tied up with status, we'll see culture heal from the bottom up. And governments are actually really good at making big national projects, and to drawing money to them, and money in turn draws status. Once status is aligned with the \"common good,\" the rest is easy.</p>\n<p>I'm thinking of this old article I read which theorized that the pyramids weren't built by slaves, that it was probably some kind of public works, summer camp type system where healthy men would come contribute for a season, and that it could have featured games where teams were competing to add more bricks. They aligned masculine impulses with a natioal project with status. That feels like what the New Right is trying to achieve.</p>\n<p>So, these are streams of consciousness, and I don't have a conclusion in mind when I start writing them, but my intuition is that national projects, something like a new moon landing, a new New Deal type program, huge national missions in science and technology, hundreds of operation Warp Speeds, a new and bigger peace corp, a national service programs that compel college students to do a semester doing some for of community service in underserved areas——things like this could really revamp America. If it sounds lefty, we can add a bunch of flags and eagles on it, pass it in a bill called \"Reclaiming the American Century.\"</p>\n<p>In short, I think that the new rights gets the problems right. But they should listen to their friends in the old right and Cato and all that. The government isn't good at policing people's lives or changing culture, it's really good at spending money. So make a policy platform focused on effectively spending it. (they don't have that right now they're going to blow up the deficit cause inflation and put a sales tax on Americans through tariffs)</p>\n<p>I'll see if my thoughts change after I read Deneen's new book.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.17.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.17.24.html",
      "title": "An important three weeks stretch in American politics",
      "date_published": "2024-07-17T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "June 27 - Biden illustrates remarkable aging and cognitive difficulty at the debates\n\nJune 28 - NYT editorial board asks for Biden to step aside, followed by steady defections from his party\n\nJuly 13 - Trump nearly assassinated\n\nJuly 15 - Trump picks J.D. Vance as VP candidate, Teamster president speaks at RNC\n\nHistory will probably remember this as a pivotal stretch in the 2024 election, even though its remarkably early. It feels like the contours of the race have been decided this summer.\n\nPredictoins:\n\na. calls for Biden to step aside simmer down, we slow walk into a lackluster convention, where he gives a competent speech, maybe even as good as the State of the Union, and we get a lot of opinion pieces saying now is the time to get in line. But the energy behind the candidate never recovers from the defections in June.\n\nb. the Biden campaign is a bit muted in the aftermath of the assasination attempt, lower temperature, but will go back to a more confrontational mode once Trump gives them more material from his own campaign\n\nc. J.D. Vance will be an effective surrogate and turn at least some higher information, better educated voters to Trump. I don't actually feel like he does much as far as the \"white working class\" even though that's how he's marketed. Don't those people already support Trump in the polls? It'll be the suburbs of the midwestern states, the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals where he'l make a bigger, but small, impact. These high information voters have delivered for democrats in off-year elections so this would be bad for them. Low information voters and lower turnout minorities have already shifted towards Trump since 2020; these two minor inroads into the Democratic coalition prove fatal for Biden's campaign.\n\nd. Trump stays more disciplined in messaging than 2020, since he now has effective surrogates and the numbers behind him, he can coast. Trump wins.\n\nI could be wrong, obviously. Maybe J.D. Vance is only appealing to weirdos on the internet and won't be that effective with normie educated suburban types. Maybe Biden gets that dawg in him in a couple of weeks (really doubt this he's looked really bad). Maybe Trump starts talking more again and reminds people that he's insnae. But right now this is how the race looks to me. I've been mostly wrong in the past so let's see if this pans out. At least I'll have another opportunity to adjust my priors.",
      "content_html": "<p>June 27 - Biden illustrates remarkable aging and cognitive difficulty at the debates</p>\n<p>June 28 - NYT editorial board asks for Biden to step aside, followed by steady defections from his party</p>\n<p>July 13 - Trump nearly assassinated</p>\n<p>July 15 - Trump picks J.D. Vance as VP candidate, Teamster president speaks at RNC</p>\n<p>History will probably remember this as a pivotal stretch in the 2024 election, even though its remarkably early. It feels like the contours of the race have been decided this summer.</p>\n<p>Predictoins:</p>\n<p>a. calls for Biden to step aside simmer down, we slow walk into a lackluster convention, where he gives a competent speech, maybe even as good as the State of the Union, and we get a lot of opinion pieces saying now is the time to get in line. But the energy behind the candidate never recovers from the defections in June.</p>\n<p>b. the Biden campaign is a bit muted in the aftermath of the assasination attempt, lower temperature, but will go back to a more confrontational mode once Trump gives them more material from his own campaign</p>\n<p>c. J.D. Vance will be an effective surrogate and turn at least some higher information, better educated voters to Trump. I don't actually feel like he does much as far as the \"white working class\" even though that's how he's marketed. Don't those people already support Trump in the polls? It'll be the suburbs of the midwestern states, the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals where he'l make a bigger, but small, impact. These high information voters have delivered for democrats in off-year elections so this would be bad for them. Low information voters and lower turnout minorities have already shifted towards Trump since 2020; these two minor inroads into the Democratic coalition prove fatal for Biden's campaign.</p>\n<p>d. Trump stays more disciplined in messaging than 2020, since he now has effective surrogates and the numbers behind him, he can coast. Trump wins.</p>\n<p>I could be wrong, obviously. Maybe J.D. Vance is only appealing to weirdos on the internet and won't be that effective with normie educated suburban types. Maybe Biden gets that dawg in him in a couple of weeks (really doubt this he's looked really bad). Maybe Trump starts talking more again and reminds people that he's insnae. But right now this is how the race looks to me. I've been mostly wrong in the past so let's see if this pans out. At least I'll have another opportunity to adjust my priors.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24-2.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24-2.html",
      "title": "Just doing things sometimes",
      "date_published": "2024-07-16T12:00:02.000Z",
      "content_text": "The young professional's ability to delay gratification, simulate the future, and think longterm is what makes them able to be a white collar professional. You gotta go to school, get the internships, do graduate school, yadda yadda. And then maybe one day you can make money and do what you really like, but not right now. (Can you tell I'm a law student?).\n\nThis trait is useful across many domains, and what I think is selected for most in the great \"middle\" of the professional class. But it's also something that can be weaponized against you, that can turn you into an instrument of someone else's ambitions, until your whole life has passed you by. A trait that is important to earn a living, but not good for living.\n\nI'm remembering a quote that talks about how higher IQ people often can be less entrepreneurial because they simulate too many eventualities, and get frozen. I feel that we see that in the young professional class today, across personal and professional domains.\n\nPeople in the professional class wait a long time to have kids, to select a partner, and to get married. These are things that are treated like rewards after you've set up a life, not just part of living. You'll often hear people bring up divorce statistics and all that when they talk about it.\n\nYoung people in the professional class embrace ideas like FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), or selling out for a period so that they can do what they \"really want\" in the future. There was a great NYT article about Harvard students who increasingly go into management consulting and finance thinking they could do something pro-social once they've made money.\n\nIn contrast to millennials, who I think had a bit more of a raw online presence, Gen-Z really curates their online brand——soft launches of relationships, different tiers of access to different content. It's like your life is a little enterprise.\n\nI think the story here is that a set of values that are adaptive in the professional sphere--high conscientiousness and the ability to delay gratification--leak too much into other domains of life.\n\nI believe I've fallen pray to this general trend, and have been trying to balance it out. In other domains of life impulsivity and risk-taking is highly rewarded. I'm thinking about the romantic sphere. If I thought about approaching women the way I thought about my career I would be cooked. But maybe there are other areas life where I'm inappropriately applying white-collar values and getting cooked.\n\nWhere I've gotten cooked, and others have in the past, is probably the creative sphere. In high school and early college, when I had an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, I would generate more random content——photos, paintings, writings——and a lot of it would be good. A lot of it would be shit. After steadily being indoctrinated into white collar values, that ability has eroded. Before doing something or putting something out there I would think \"well what would someone think of this\" or \"what's the end game, how does this advance my objectives.\" Anyone who has done anything creative knows that those sort of thoughts just kill your soul and your ability to make anything.\n\nI think I have rediscovered this truth on twitter dot com in recent years, where the most interesting and thought-provoking accounts are unhinged and anonymous. Many of them are just white-collar professionals who want to blow off steam and have interesting observations they can only share under a pseudonym, and that pseudonym allows them to remove the inhibitions of white-collar values and just think out loud.\n\nSo I will embrace that tradition and use this little HTML site and twitter dot com to think out loud. It takes me 10 minutes to put one of these together. I can make money and advance my interests and delay gratification in other areas of life. Who cares.\n\nEnjoy my word vomit.",
      "content_html": "<p>The young professional's ability to delay gratification, simulate the future, and think longterm is what makes them able to be a white collar professional. You gotta go to school, get the internships, do graduate school, yadda yadda. And then maybe one day you can make money and do what you really like, but not right now. (Can you tell I'm a law student?).</p>\n<p>This trait is useful across many domains, and what I think is selected for most in the great \"middle\" of the professional class. But it's also something that can be weaponized against you, that can turn you into an instrument of someone else's ambitions, until your whole life has passed you by. A trait that is important to earn a living, but not good for living.</p>\n<p>I'm remembering a quote that talks about how higher IQ people often can be less entrepreneurial because they simulate too many eventualities, and get frozen. I feel that we see that in the young professional class today, across personal and professional domains.</p>\n<p>People in the professional class wait a long time to have kids, to select a partner, and to get married. These are things that are treated like rewards after you've set up a life, not just part of living. You'll often hear people bring up divorce statistics and all that when they talk about it.</p>\n<p>Young people in the professional class embrace ideas like FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early), or selling out for a period so that they can do what they \"really want\" in the future. There was a great NYT article about Harvard students who increasingly go into management consulting and finance thinking they could do something pro-social once they've made money.</p>\n<p>In contrast to millennials, who I think had a bit more of a raw online presence, Gen-Z really curates their online brand——soft launches of relationships, different tiers of access to different content. It's like your life is a little enterprise.</p>\n<p>I think the story here is that a set of values that are adaptive in the professional sphere--high conscientiousness and the ability to delay gratification--leak too much into other domains of life.</p>\n<p>I believe I've fallen pray to this general trend, and have been trying to balance it out. In other domains of life impulsivity and risk-taking is highly rewarded. I'm thinking about the romantic sphere. If I thought about approaching women the way I thought about my career I would be cooked. But maybe there are other areas life where I'm inappropriately applying white-collar values and getting cooked.</p>\n<p>Where I've gotten cooked, and others have in the past, is probably the creative sphere. In high school and early college, when I had an underdeveloped pre-frontal cortex, I would generate more random content——photos, paintings, writings——and a lot of it would be good. A lot of it would be shit. After steadily being indoctrinated into white collar values, that ability has eroded. Before doing something or putting something out there I would think \"well what would someone think of this\" or \"what's the end game, how does this advance my objectives.\" Anyone who has done anything creative knows that those sort of thoughts just kill your soul and your ability to make anything.</p>\n<p>I think I have rediscovered this truth on twitter dot com in recent years, where the most interesting and thought-provoking accounts are unhinged and anonymous. Many of them are just white-collar professionals who want to blow off steam and have interesting observations they can only share under a pseudonym, and that pseudonym allows them to remove the inhibitions of white-collar values and just think out loud.</p>\n<p>So I will embrace that tradition and use this little HTML site and twitter dot com to think out loud. It takes me 10 minutes to put one of these together. I can make money and advance my interests and delay gratification in other areas of life. Who cares.</p>\n<p>Enjoy my word vomit.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.16.24.html",
      "title": "Why build a website like this",
      "date_published": "2024-07-16T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Because it is 2024 and we spend hours a day online and we own nothing. We live on the property of others. And having your own property is basically free.\n\nThe current state of the internet is as if land was free but we all decided to live in some rich guy's manor. Maybe it makes sense that we all spend our days and share our thoughts there, because of network effects and all that. But to not own anything at all aside from that? No where to hang your hat? It seems absurd.\n\nYeah it makes sense to use twitter, instagram, substack, and all of that, it makes perfect sense. But since it's free to have your own little spot, why not? It actually astounds me that more people don't do it. I can put anything I want here, I can put photos here. I can make this look however I want. It's cool.\n\nWill see if I do anything useful with it. Public notebook is what I'm thinking, paired with a twitter profile for connectivity with the world.\n\nIn my ideal vision for the internet, we don't all rent little spaces on \"platforms.\" At least, that shouldn't be your primary online identity. Right now, for people my age, your instagram page is sort of your online home page, where people can see that you're legit and all of that. Is there a better way?\n\nOlder people, especially academic and software people, have a memory of early blogging sites and still have online profiles and personal website built in that tradition. Young people do not know of any such tradition.\n\nWhat if everyone hosted their own website, maybe following some popular templates, and social media was just some app that built feeds from the websites themselves? I'm thinking of an experience where you go online and just see RSS feeds from everyone's personal sites. Maybe the UI of this site looks like twitter or instagram, with a scroll wall and user names, but the content comes from autonomous domains.\n\nI don't think this sort of idea would take off, because it doesn't enhance the user experience in anyway. But just on principle, it would be better. More decentralized, more ownership. The platform is an aggregator and skin, but your stuff is yours.\n\nIt occurs to me that no one cares about this at all. That people are very content being renters and being dependent on centralized platforms for everything. Finance, education, entertainment, public debate, everything. In some cases leasing a car is a better financial decision to own it. There are efficiencies, economies of scale, great network effects to doing things this way. I wonder what would need to happen for the internet to decentralize.\n\nDeconcentration of capital and land in history has always followed a calamity or revolution. Fall of the Roman Empire. Communist government. I don't see the equivalent for the web, maybe because I lack imagination. India seems to have a creative solution with its UPI system and India stack. I guess that suggests that there are policy solutions when it comes to payments and e-commerce. But what about publishers of content?\n\nI can imagine the government creating a digital public square, where they give every U.S. citizen some domain name, just like they have a social security number, and you are entitled to some fixed server hosting space, from a nationalized Oracle or something like that. It comes pre-loaded with a template website. You can use this how you wish, or sell the space, build whatever you want to on it. Since it's hosted on a publicly owned, nationalized server farm it is subject to first amendment protections, unlike your speech on twitter. There's some website, we can call it \"social.gov\", that creates an RSS feed from these sites, you could have a national twitter.\n\nThere are plenty of complications with privacy, web architecture, and how this website would present content (algorithmically? Decided by a public corporation?). Best case scenario its governance looks like the Fed, worst case it's run by a very politicized agency. But I feel that it wouldn't be expensive to build and run. There are probably articles where people discuss ideas on how to build a public social media. Will have more thoughts on this in the future.",
      "content_html": "<p>Because it is 2024 and we spend hours a day online and we own nothing. We live on the property of others. And having your own property is basically free.</p>\n<p>The current state of the internet is as if land was free but we all decided to live in some rich guy's manor. Maybe it makes sense that we all spend our days and share our thoughts there, because of network effects and all that. But to not own anything at all aside from that? No where to hang your hat? It seems absurd.</p>\n<p>Yeah it makes sense to use twitter, instagram, substack, and all of that, it makes perfect sense. But since it's free to have your own little spot, why not? It actually astounds me that more people don't do it. I can put anything I want here, I can put photos here. I can make this look however I want. It's cool.</p>\n<p>Will see if I do anything useful with it. Public notebook is what I'm thinking, paired with a twitter profile for connectivity with the world.</p>\n<p>In my ideal vision for the internet, we don't all rent little spaces on \"platforms.\" At least, that shouldn't be your primary online identity. Right now, for people my age, your instagram page is sort of your online home page, where people can see that you're legit and all of that. Is there a better way?</p>\n<p>Older people, especially academic and software people, have a memory of early blogging sites and still have online profiles and personal website built in that tradition. Young people do not know of any such tradition.</p>\n<p>What if everyone hosted their own website, maybe following some popular templates, and social media was just some app that built feeds from the websites themselves? I'm thinking of an experience where you go online and just see RSS feeds from everyone's personal sites. Maybe the UI of this site looks like twitter or instagram, with a scroll wall and user names, but the content comes from autonomous domains.</p>\n<p>I don't think this sort of idea would take off, because it doesn't enhance the user experience in anyway. But just on principle, it would be better. More decentralized, more ownership. The platform is an aggregator and skin, but your stuff is yours.</p>\n<p>It occurs to me that no one cares about this at all. That people are very content being renters and being dependent on centralized platforms for everything. Finance, education, entertainment, public debate, everything. In some cases leasing a car is a better financial decision to own it. There are efficiencies, economies of scale, great network effects to doing things this way. I wonder what would need to happen for the internet to decentralize.</p>\n<p>Deconcentration of capital and land in history has always followed a calamity or revolution. Fall of the Roman Empire. Communist government. I don't see the equivalent for the web, maybe because I lack imagination. India seems to have a creative solution with its UPI system and India stack. I guess that suggests that there are policy solutions when it comes to payments and e-commerce. But what about publishers of content?</p>\n<p>I can imagine the government creating a digital public square, where they give every U.S. citizen some domain name, just like they have a social security number, and you are entitled to some fixed server hosting space, from a nationalized Oracle or something like that. It comes pre-loaded with a template website. You can use this how you wish, or sell the space, build whatever you want to on it. Since it's hosted on a publicly owned, nationalized server farm it is subject to first amendment protections, unlike your speech on twitter. There's some website, we can call it \"social.gov\", that creates an RSS feed from these sites, you could have a national twitter.</p>\n<p>There are plenty of complications with privacy, web architecture, and how this website would present content (algorithmically? Decided by a public corporation?). Best case scenario its governance looks like the Fed, worst case it's run by a very politicized agency. But I feel that it wouldn't be expensive to build and run. There are probably articles where people discuss ideas on how to build a public social media. Will have more thoughts on this in the future.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.15.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.15.24.html",
      "title": "J.D. Vance VP Pick",
      "date_published": "2024-07-15T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "Feels like Washington has actually turned a page today and that the old Republican Party is actually gone.\n\nSome observations: (1) Trump didn't go for the sycophantic vibe of Scott or the weaker personality of Rubio (2) out of all of the picks I feel that Vance doesn't do much for him as far as expanding demographic appeal (3) Trump picked a \"rising star\" type figure who, out of all of the veep picks, feels like a protege (4) this suggests, against my better judgement, that him and his team actually believe in something and building something that will outlast them politically, the other picks would have been more strategic but not have sent a message ideologically.\n\nIs this a good thing? For the first time since maybe the Taft/Roosevelt/Wilson race, there is no party which is a true standard bearer of businesses interests, like the New Freedom vs. New Nationalism era, we're really just working with different strains of populism. I guess it means that the American politics may finally be leaving Gilded Age 2.0 and into Progressive Era 2.0. Seems to rhyme nicely with the past.\n\nBut I guess it's still bad because Trump is a uniquely dangerous person. Will have to see.",
      "content_html": "<p>Feels like Washington has actually turned a page today and that the old Republican Party is actually gone.</p>\n<p>Some observations: (1) Trump didn't go for the sycophantic vibe of Scott or the weaker personality of Rubio (2) out of all of the picks I feel that Vance doesn't do much for him as far as expanding demographic appeal (3) Trump picked a \"rising star\" type figure who, out of all of the veep picks, feels like a protege (4) this suggests, against my better judgement, that him and his team actually believe in something and building something that will outlast them politically, the other picks would have been more strategic but not have sent a message ideologically.</p>\n<p>Is this a good thing? For the first time since maybe the Taft/Roosevelt/Wilson race, there is no party which is a true standard bearer of businesses interests, like the New Freedom vs. New Nationalism era, we're really just working with different strains of populism. I guess it means that the American politics may finally be leaving Gilded Age 2.0 and into Progressive Era 2.0. Seems to rhyme nicely with the past.</p>\n<p>But I guess it's still bad because Trump is a uniquely dangerous person. Will have to see.</p>\n"
    },
    {
      "id": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.12.24.html",
      "url": "https://knxnts.xyz/blog-7.12.24.html",
      "title": "On Recent Events",
      "date_published": "2024-07-12T12:00:00.000Z",
      "content_text": "It all certainly seems very bad.",
      "content_html": "<p>It all certainly seems very bad.</p>\n"
    }
  ]
}