Friday Notes (Sep 4, 2026)

“I have of late — but wherefore I know not — lost all my …” interest in blogging. (In fact, I have a pretty good idea wherefore, but I really like the speech the quote comes from. It’s the same one with the memorable lines: “What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason. …”).

Only six posts May–July and none in August — not even an edition of Friday Notes. I am seriously off my blogging game!

Which means I have a bit of a backlog on these Notes posts, so it’s beyond time to crank out another edition.

The aforementioned Blog Blah has multiple sources — a rather wide variety of things that have been distracting me or dragging down my interest in blogging. I intended the recent math fun post for July, or for crying out loud at least in August, but it I put it off and put it off until the first of this month.

Part of it is a growing dislike of social media, which I blame for many of our current social issues and conflicts. All our Social Revolutions end up being both amplifications and amputations. We gain something socially game-changing but also lose something equally important in the process.

[There is some discussion these days about what the Ai Revolution might amputate from us. There seems a growing sense that we may need to treat Ai the way we do nuclear power: with severe restrictions on access and use.]

Social media, to my eyes, seems to have amputated our common sense and attachment to physical reality. It presents an endless landscape of fantasy bubbles and essentially imaginary people — people you never meet in Real Life™, never share a conversation with. I could be anybody (even an Ai), and who would ever know?

[I think it’s a wonderfully appropriate coincidence that social media has the initials SM — same as sadomasochism.]

Increasing my antipathy for social media in general is the increasing pollution of Ai-generated noise. It puts me in the frame of mind to just walk away from it all; certainly nothing I’ll ever do will make an impact. A key characteristic of Social Revolutions is their inevitability.

On top of that is that part of my schtick here is trying to pass on some of the cool things I’ve learned over the years (at least, I think they are cool). But it’s hard not to notice that no one really cares; curiosity seems rarer these days. We’re all caught up in the Modern Miasma. (And I continue to think we’re all suffering from some kind of Millennial Shock. The 2000s seem to have blown our mental fuses.)

But I keep writing posts in my head. It’s the actually-sitting-down-and-writing-them part that’s been so unappealing lately. Maybe I just needed a break; as mentioned in previous posts, there has been a lot more (than usual for sedate old me) going on this summer.

Bottom line: no idea whether the hiatus will continue. Kinda taking it as it goes.

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Speaking of stuff going on in Real Life™, my new windows (and blinds) project is complete. My condo has two bedrooms (12×15 and 10×12; the latter I use as my “office”), and each has a window.

The office window looks out to the walkway to my front door:

You see the garage through the window. My front door is to the right.

The bedroom window looks out as the grassy area between condo units (it faces south, so I get good daylight all day, but I especially appreciate the morning light):

The blinds were pretty easy to install. A few basic tools (drill, nut drivers) required, and pretty clear instructions. I didn’t get it quite right the first time: the three brackets went in fine, but I muffed clipping the blind assembly into the brackets. The first time I tried to adjust the blinds, the whole assembly fell on me. Re-read the instructions and did it right, and now they’re rock solid.

The blinds are adjustable top and bottom (rather than bottom-only), which I really like (my old ones were the same way). I like being able to block the view through the lower window but leave open access to the sky and air.

As a minor project, I also replaced all the boring white plastic switch plates and electrical outlet plates with shiny brass ones. I’d done a few after I moved in back in 2003, but at the time, I found the cost prohibitive and only did a few. I’m still stuck with BWP plates on the phone jacks; I haven’t been able to find brass versions anywhere.

I also replaced my front door:

Very solid door! (Note the triple-bolts along the right door jam.) My old door didn’t have a window (somewhat inexplicably to me called a “light”). The entryway faces essentially north — more precisely north-north-west. To the right is a guest bathroom and the laundry room (which has a door to the garage). On the wall, another brass switch plate.

Even replaced the grill on the floor vent (lower right). Tracking in salt-laden snow over the years had corroded the old one.

The garage on the north side means the only north-facing windows I have are in the office (shown above). This entryway was the darkest part of the house. Now that I have a door with a “light”, I get plenty of daylight in this corner. And it spills into the kitchen (behind me), which was also dark; the only daylight it got was spill from the patio doors and skylight in the adjacent living room.

Speaking of the patio doors:

Also, my new couch, coffee table, and recliner chair (and new end table behind the chair and couch). I’ve had that picture of Target Field for ages but — another minor project — never hung it on any wall. Putting it above the mantle gives me a natural spot for the small amount of baseball merch I have (not really a merch guy).

I managed to install these blinds myself, too, though it took me three tries to get the height right.

My old window frames had water damage, and the windows were aging badly. The patio door was in rough shape — the screen door was basically unusable. The outside frame around my front door was badly weathered.

The only things left on my big TODO list are installing ceiling fans in both bedrooms and having my HVAC serviced (and possibly replaced) before winter gets in gear. Nothing’s wrong with it (as far as I know), but it’s 30-some years old, and the blower fan is pretty noisy (now that I have hearing aids to hear it).

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That has all been fairly positive, and it is truly great to get some long-standing projects done (like getting my garage door serviced).

On the negative side, the Minnesota Twins have been (again) very frustrating this season. More about that another time. Two physical issues have been weighing me down. Aging behind it, I suspect (well, aging and a devil-may-care lifestyle). Issues with my lower back and/or hips have made it hard to keep up any regular walking program.

I’m also having a weird double-vision problem. Not the side-by-side double image one gets when they cross their eyes (or drink a lot) but a vertical double image. My left eye seems to be naturally focused above (and slightly to the right) of my right eye. It makes reading tough unless I use an eyepatch. Seems worse when I’m tired; often first thing in the morning, I’m fine (or the effect is at least manageable). It can also affect using the computer and is part of why I haven’t been blogging (or coding) much lately.

One of the TODO items this summer was getting an eye exam and a new prescription, which I did, but that didn’t correct the double-vision thing. I’ll have to revisit my eye doc and try again. I worry that something might be wrong — a small stroke, for instance — with my visual cortex. It’s a bit worrisome.

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While I was out getting home-improvement stuff at Menards and Lowe’s (and sometimes grudgingly at Home Depot), I noticed my car odometer about to reach a fun number:

That day I planned to visit Menards, and when I set off, seeing how close the odometer was, I fretted a little it would hit it while I was on the freeway and couldn’t stop for a photo. Per the map, I calculated it would happen just before I got to Menards or just after. Turned out to be just after. I got all the way to Home Depot and pulled into the parking lot just in time.

Unfortunately, I parked such that the sun reflected off the dashboard. On my way out (after buying a few more brass switch plates, which were why I had to go to Home Depot), I just went far enough to turn the car around for another try:

But that short distance was enough to roll the tenths digit to an eight.

Not bad for a 2010 car!

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Eternalism (aka the Block Universe Hypothesis) seems popular these days. At least, I’ve recently seen a fair number of people asserting it. Usually claiming that Einstein believed in it (debatable, I think, if not plain false). I’m not tempted to write about it a fifth time, but I will say the apparent growing belief in it strikes me as another disconnection from physical reality.

No shred of evidence exists in its favor, so it’s strictly a metaphysical guess.

FWIW, see: Blocking the Universe (LLC, 2019), Back to Block (LLC, 2021), Unblocking the Universe (Sub, 2025), or Eternalism and Special Relativity (2026). That last one goes into detail about why SR does not necessitate eternalism (quite the opposite, in fact).

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Speaking of non-physical theories with no evidence for them, I’ve also covered the Many Worlds Interpretation quite a few times. Enough times to be pretty much done with it.

Most recently on Substack, see One Universe or Many? (Sub, 2025). If that wasn’t enough, I also wrote five follow-up posts with deep dives into specific topics [see The Born Rule; Mass, Energy, and Matter; Schrödinger’s Cat; The Wavefunction; and Wavefunction Ontology if seriously interested].

Not to mention the thirteen or so times I’ve touched on it here. Suffice to say it depends on whether a multi-universe-sized wavefunction makes sense. Or not. I’m pretty firmly in the or-not category.

None of which is the point. I just want to tender a meme:

Which addresses the belief that quantum computers work because they leverage the computing power of multiple worlds (which to me is building a fantasy on top of a fantasy).

What my little meme suggests is that integer bits (which can only be 0 or 1) offer a much smaller domain than a pair of real numbers (as for qubits). That, plus quantum entanglement, is what accounts for the power of quantum computers.

There is, however, an interesting question as to whether real numbers are an appropriate way to describe reality (they cause a lot of issues). I’ve seen theorists challenging that recently, and I think they have a point.

It is possible reality is rational, not real. If rational numbers are the appropriate way to describe reality, even long-term classical determinism is out the window.

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Back in the July edition of Notes, I wrote about my long-abiding sense of letting the past die (killing it if you have to). Learn from it, sure, but don’t carry it around; it’s literally history.

I think I’ve always been this way, and it is a contrast to the more common view of keeping traditions and preserving the past. Outliers enjoy finding company, which is why the Kylo Ren line is so memorable (and oft quoted) to me. I stumbled over another kindred soul, albeit also a fictional one. I didn’t record the book or author, but I think it was a British murder mystery by Patricia Wentworth (featuring her amateur sleuth Miss Silver).

Without further ado:

“I suppose that’s it,” said Deirdre. “I can’t understand it myself. I never keep anything.”

“You look forwards, not back?”

Deirdre said slowly:

“I don’t know that I look anywhere … I mean, today’s usually enough, isn’t it?”

D’accord!

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Contrary to what I just wrote, I’ll leave you with a blast from my past:

I’ve mentioned here many times how science fiction was an early gateway drug to both knowledge about and love of science. I still favor hard SF to this day, the harder the better. Not to get carried away with the drug metaphors, but the Life Science Library books were a hugely heady narcotic for my developing brain. I spent many, many, many hours poring over these.

These were published over the years between 1963 and 1967. As with encyclopedias and other serious collections, one could have a subscription to the series, with new ones being automatically sent. My dad subscribed — one of the greatest gifts from him (among many).

They’re seriously out of date now (though much of the basic information remains correct), but this series of books is why I aced my science classes in high school. I already knew a lot of it.

As the photo above shows, I still have them. Many are in bad shape: loose pages, weak spines, wear and tear on the covers. But they’re serious books; very well made. High-quality clay-coated paper (which makes them weigh a ton).

I’m not dead set on keeping them (per what I wrote above). My problem in getting rid of them is that they have a very high sentimental value to me, so I’m reluctant to just trash them (likewise a couple of boxes of old love letters). I need a disposal method appropriate to their meaning to me. Fire would do it, but there are all sorts of rules about burning things. (Can you be cremated along with some of your belongings?)

Whatever. For now, they’re decorations in my living room.

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I think that’s enough for now. As I said up top, there’s a bit of a backlog, so I may have to publish two Notes posts this month.

Eh. Or not. 🫤

Stay science-ing, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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