To Thrive in Chaos

 Good evening,

What does it mean to thrive in chaos? I've been hearing it a lot lately, and begun to take notice. A lot of comments from older, slower individuals like, "When life gets chaotic you need to be able to just breathe..." and following my lack of reaction or any microscopic signal of agreement comes the "...oh but you probably thrive in chaos." Yes. I've not once forgotten to breathe while navigating "chaos". 

Last night I snuck a few rehab friends out of their court-mandated AA meeting and we went to a Taylor Swift concert. That's a fun sentence. That's a statement that fills me with a type of peace and happiness that alcohol has never been able to do. We didn't actually go in to the stadium; the goal was not to see Taylor Swift. I was already planning to go to the meeting and socialize, and the meeting just so happens to be a few blocks away from Raymond James Stadium. By 6pm the Tetris blocks in my mind started to rain down, falling perfectly into place as I latched onto the idea. A quick, seemingly harmless text to everyone asking "thoughts on a bail out to the stadium to listen to Taylor Swift live?" and that was all the convincing it took. 

I had to backtrack. I don't want someone losing custody because they listened to Decker and fell in line on the way to Taylor Swift. So I messaged them, asking how much trouble would actually come from playing hooky; you know, ballpark. And their response was that they hadn't thought about it, with a few jokes like "oh there goes Decker, always thinking about consequences and shit." (I mean, yeah. There's a reason I tend to get away with everything.) We still ran the risk assessment but, deciding the most likely trouble to come would be a drug test and finger wag, determined it was an excursion worth the risk. We ultimately couldn't resist the insatiable pull of chaos and its minions: unpredictability and randomness. 

Chaos, as I prefer to define it, is a system with a sensitivity to initial conditions. It seems to me that predictability is the key tenet which is lacking in chaos, and that scares people. There is a solace of control in predictability, the inputs lead to the outputs with a straight line between. If I leave the house a minute late, I can expect to arrive at my destination a minute late. And leaving on time will result expectedly; predictably. When I arrive is not random, it's insensitive to the initial conditions of when I leave. Chaos does not follow.

Per the math, chaotic systems are characterized by the randomness, the complexity, the underlying patterns and interconnection of variables hitherto unknown. Just one slight deviation in where I start changes where I end up. I could know that leaving the house on time will have me arriving on time, but when I actually make it out a smidge early I find myself arriving at a McDonald's in Jacksonville six hours later. And the next day I leave one nanosecond late, no problem I can probably make that up, but then I somehow end up at a university starting a class on economics. That is so unpredictable! How does one live like that? It's madness! True, but it's not boring. 

Those who thrive in chaos seem to wither in boredom. Boredom terrifies me; it's creeping tendrils climbing the walls and wrapping around me only to reveal that it's nothing at all, and that is the problem. It's not pleasant or peaceful or relaxing, nor is it painful. It's just the ordered, predictable, steady awareness of existence, and not shit to do. 

There's an imperial-era Russian painting I remember from middle school that always comes to mind when I contemplate boredom. The Princess Who Never Smiled. It's a masterpiece of semantic evocation. Despite sitting on her throne, in her palace overlooking the city, surrounded by a hoard of zany characters trying to impress her with lutes and cool outfits, Rasputin makes an appearance, there's a guy doing the chicken dance...etc. But the princess is sitting there and just looks fucking bored. 

It's not that she has no form of entertainment or engagement, she has a room full of options. But she has no interest in any of it. Like the Indiana Jones fella in the back offering her a golden tablet embossed in what appears to be a treasure map, dotted squiggly line, big red X and all. I don't know Tsarevna but that sounds like a pretty fun time to me! But, regardless what I think, it's just not worth it to her. 

The painting is actually a visual representation of a Russian fairytale of the same name. As the legend goes there was a princess who never smiled, casting a pessimistic haze over the kingdom. The king promised to marry her off to whoever could make her smile. He just wants his daughter to be happy. The scene in the painting ensues and like every Hallmark movie the snobby rich white guys, with their hieroglyphic board games and their choreographed clown acts, do not interest her. Walking past outside the castle (retellings vary widely from this point on) there's a poor young man working on an apprenticeship...yadda yadda yadda look up the middle part if you want blah blah blah...and he ends up befriending a mouse, a fish, and a beetle (random side note there's a beetle in nearly every version of every folk tale in Eastern Slavic culture. I don't know why. I'm sure there's a reason but I've been down in this Russian folk tradition rabbit hole for far too long and at this point I'm just accepting that they must just like beetles). 

The poor apprentice walks back home past the castle with his new pestilent friends and notices the princess, bored shitless on her balcony. Stunned by her RBF beauty, he falls in the mud. The mouse, fish (somehow up walking around with the rest of them), and beetle rush to his aide. The animals aren't much help, they're kind of weird, but in their various antics and eccentricity the princess bursts out laughing. She marries the apprentice and he becomes a handsome prince. 

What a bizarre story; it gives the painting a new light. The girl is so enmeshed in boredom, despite the world at her whimsy, she spends her days just staring out at the people going to work. Her father, the king, doesn't understand it. There are literally people hanging upside-down from the rafters trying to make her smile. Gustav Fabergé is handcrafting imperial Easter-eggs out of the crown jewels for her (yeah, that Fabergé!), and the king watches this for YEARS. In one version he overhears that she almost cracked a chuckle in the Cathedral, only to learn it was because she got caught sneaking out and stealing a pair of shoes. Then the guy with the walking fish slipped in the mud and the beetle ran over but could only clean his boots and there're these magic coins I forgot to mention and the mouse was there and did something equally unpredictable and... Oh. I understand the Tsarevna better than the king.

I know why she's bored in that painting; she thrives in chaos. 

The God card

 Good morning,

If you remember a while back, one of my biggest problems with AA was their choice of words. Like if they didn't really care about what religion you are, then why throw capital-G God (He/Him) into every aspect of it? Like the second of the 12 Traditions is "For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority — a loving God as He may express Himself in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern." 

To me that seems a bit dogmatic, and I typically think "the Catholics got their hooks in on that one", but in that book I'm reading it goes into more detail. In short, when AA was growing rapidly in the 40's, the founders were running into problems. Some groups were running strong and doing well, but others, usually a state or two over from the founders, would get a little carried away with the whole religion thing. And, like you do when it's 1941, gay and black people were getting turned away, women weren't allowed to sponsor and had to listen to the men. All the typical dogmatic bullshit that seems to always come with organized religion. 

The founders were in a pickle. When the whole organization is nontheistic, how do you get people to be nice to each other without playing the God card? The answer, in this case, was to play the God card. 

One of my biggest hangups with religion and the bible and AA is that words have meaning. So if I'm able to find a contraindication or inaccuracy on a cursory glance, how dumb must the people be who're drinking the koolaid? It's why I like math and dislike the New Testament. Math is math, no matter who you are or what you believe, it just is. We can prove this over and over again in different ways ad infinitum. 

The bible on the other hand is provably not the direct word of God. Therefore, someone using the bible as their "God card" justification for being a dick is a bit problematic. However if you're the founder of a budding organization, you can throw that card right back on the table ("oh I'm sorry, are you GOD? No? Then shut up and color.")  

There will be people turned away or disgusted by the word "God", and there will be racists who kick black people out of their club unless literally God tells them not to. Both of those camps exist. Which is most likely to look past the contradiction and change their opinion once they've thought it through? 

I've been thinking a lot about words and meaning. Last time I wrote about the "bless you" enigma, and I think what gets me so spun up about it is how over and over again throughout history it gets realigned to the predominant beliefs. When I'm reading the bible, I'm so compelled to dive into the historicity and figure out what and who said what and why -- which is what I consider to be the true meaning because I can't accept the "God wrote it" hypothesis. 

Earlier my dad told me the Doctor's Opinion and subsequent book of AA didn't seem very insightful and asked why I was reading it. I think there's a lot to unpack with that, because my whole conclusion was that this doctor's opinion is old as shit and has no consequence other than prefacing the book. 

The next portion of the book is Bill's Story (Bill is like the Jesus of AA) and it's basically a memoir. Reading it with a blanked-slate open mind, my initial reactions of the guy were a) he's intelligent, b) he's funny, and c) he's definitely "Group 1", probably'd be wearing a nice polo shirt to his AA meetings. But most importantly, he's right. He's right about a lot of stuff. (Side note, I like to think the historical Jesus was this way, and people just got way too carried away with his "message" in the 300 years it took to write everything down and agree on what was and wasn't real.)

Sometimes it takes him a few dozen pages of a book to explain why sometimes he uses the phrase "higher power" and other times "God"; but that's way better than having to look up etymology papers to understand backwards shit in the bible. The point is, it's intelligently thought through. It's dogmatic to a purpose, and those who are open-minded enough to look past the dogma typically aren't the one's being racist dicks. 

The Doctor's Opinion

 Good evening,

    I'm thinking about ideological staying power tonight. Per my AA sponsor's request, I'm reading this book that might as well double as an apocryphal text of the bible. You see, this book was written in 1938, so no one's claiming this thing was the voice of Yahweh or anything; but at the same time, the book was written in 1938, and medical standards and ideals have evolved. 

    We start the book with a long opinion piece written by a doctor, aptly named: "The Doctor's Opinion". I can save you some time by spoiling the end of the chapter, the doctor's opinion is to read the book. It is also the doctor's opinion that alcoholism is an allergy, and that a psychic change is necessary to cure an addict. This is at a time when nightshade was the standard treatment for addiction.

    This is usually where I start tuning out. Actually, "Copyright (c) 1939" is where. I know I can save time by pursuing more recent information. And don't get me started on the bible. At least we had printing presses and social security numbers in 1939.  There's so much stupidity in the bible that could just be filtered out at this point, (did you know Noah lived to 950?) and there's non-canonical apocrypha that's amazing (one of them is a treasure hunt!). How does humanity decide what stays and what goes in the most influential book in history?

    For a while, the answer was simple: The Pope, whose official duty is the office of shepherding the apostles and bishops. So it was basically interpreted by group consensus, with no one checking anyone's work. Then King James (long may he reign) decided to translate it to English which involved changing every important character's name to something less... jewy.... Hence Thiago becoming James (and hey that's the King's name! He must be divine) Seriously that would be like George Bush declaring one day, "James is a nerd name let's call him Blake" and for 400 years we printed bibles like that. 

    So the bible's a mess. The New Testament really fell victim to the whims of powerful men living before the enlightenment when 'we said so' went against nature. But now it's 2023, and I'm reading the medical opinion of a doctor from the 1930s thinking about what it has to say. Which... honestly, isn't much. It sort of reads like a modern doctor explaining in simple yet undeniable terms to get vaccinated. In fact, I never hear "The Doctor's Opinion" quoted or discussed in any substantive detail.

    I think the fact that there is a doctor's opinion is more compelling than the writings in that opinion. The passage is in the very beginning of the book, and in the same vein as "Let there be light" the concrete has set. It's a meme, an idea that can quickly be transmitted to someone else, memorably, no explanation needed. And the thing I love most about memes, is they fall prey to natural selection. 

    The New Testament of the Bible never traveled down this path. After a few hundred years of different books popping up claiming to be the actual word of God the priests got frosty and decided "BOOM! 27 books! Three cubed! It's done! We will revisit this never!" The die is cast for all eternity because 3^3 is just too sticky for all those worshipping a trinity. 

    But the Old Testament, as well as the Mahabharata, Epic of Gilgamesh, Illiad, Norse Sagas, etc. all traveled down the Oral path. Oral myths and legends were written down after evolving. They were memes, told with faulty memory, and thus subject to selection pressures and evolution just like everything else alive. Memorable parts remained, boring parts forgot, fat trimmed, symbols strengthened, and in the end the hope is to have the same meaning left on the other side of time. We still call the largest island on Earth the same name given to it by a Viking marketing campaign. 

    I'm playing devil's advocate with my usual train of thought, I feel like I have to when faced with dogma. I think most intelligent readers can parse out that the meaning in the bible and Jesus Christ matters more than the fact that his name was actually, almost certainly, Josh (Ye'hoshua, yeah I hate it too but look it up). And while it's humorous to read the opinion of an old-timey doctor who is just god-damn CERTAIN that alcoholism is an allergy; his opinion is still there, outlasting his body and mind by decades in the very front of this fucking book. 

    I'll wrap up by asking when you, dear reader, learned to say "bless you" in response to someone sneezing? What book is lying around on coffee tables that spells out clear-as-day "make sure you bless people who sneeze!" It's nowhere in the bible. Once plagues started breaking out circa 750ce some pope in Rome decreed it be that everyone say bless you after a sneeze. But we've been doing it way longer than that. 

    Sneezing makes an appearance in the Greek myth of Prometheus, of all places. According to one very-difficult-to-trace account, after receiving the spark of life the world's first man sneezed. And Prometheus said unto him, "bless you" (tpffuh thank you). 

   Speaking of the Greeks, Aristotle wrote a book called 'Problems' in which he tries to apply logic and reason to the "bless you" enigma, to no avail of course, and I like to imagine him with bloodshot eyes shaking his head saying, "I guess we've just always done that".

The ancient Rabbis had no better answer. But they still did it. In Rome, before Rome was Rome, it's written in ancient pagan shrines as a habit of utmost necessity for the Saturnalia harvest. The fucking native Hawaiians had a phrase, "sneeze and you shall live" which of course is to be said after someone sneezes. 

    Pacific Island cultures are about as causally disconnected from Aristotle and Rome and Rabbis as you can get. The idea of blessing someone after sneezing has THICK roots. You can look at a table on Wikipedia of every culture's response to a sneeze, almost every language that still exists: Zulu, Khmer, Lojban, Navajo, Tamil, Yiddish. It's like, the way we react to an immune response is the one thing we can agree on as a species, which is weird. 

    Scientists can look at rocks, and fossils, and meteorites and gather snapshots of life that existed before any human or mammal, or bible. Linguists can trace back cognates in the various languages spoken along trade routes and come to conclusions like there sure are a lot of Sanskrit sounding words for 'boat' in Aramaic. 

    But we will never know the first person to answer a buddy's sneeze with a blessing. It's the slime mold of ideas. Someone did it once thousands of years ago, and now practically everyone on Earth does it daily. So, does The Doctor's Opinion really matter? To me, no probably not. It matters about as much as someone saying "bless you" after I sneeze. It only really impacts me in the fact that it only still exists because countless dead people have kept it alive. So I say "thank you", and I move on.

Signals and Systems

    I recently watched a lecture on flow and it really conglomerated a lot of observations I've made over the past month or two. I've been reflecting on some of the happiest and saddest moments of my life thus far, and not-so-independently realized it's far more valuable to reflect on the most meaningful. If we were to measure the happiest moment of someone's life, per the chemicals and connections in our brain, it would probably be the first time being fed after birth. But we don't remember that; it's meaningless, not in a survival sense, but it's meaningless to us.

   I think my happiest memory - ever - was driving down Sheikh Zayed road between the skyscrapers of Dubai with Karen on our honeymoon. It was at night, just after Ramadan so there was a crescent moon, we went through a 6-lane tunnel and came out to all the Burj's lit up; the song "Waiting for Love" played in the background. Every aspect of that memory and my description of it has meaning. The waves of sound synchronized in just the right way through the car speakers, the hundreds of cars on the massive freeway and their lights dancing in the peripheral, the inability to see the tops of the buildings, the moon at a specific time of year; they all seemed to be signals to us to be at an energized peace. THAT is what got cemented into my head to enjoy for the rest of my life. I don't remember shit about being born. 

    Even darker times, times in Cambodia, times deployed, times in rehab, I can for some reason conjure good memories be they happy or sad or angry. This bothered me. "No goddamnit. I'm not supposed to remember being deployed or in rehab better than when my son was born." So I did what I do and started reading and watching and reflecting. 

    The first thing that I noticed was at rehab with my friend Aaron. We would joke and shoot the shit... like ALL day. We had a well oiled flow of conversation, and of laughter. People would gather around wherever we were sitting just to listen to us bullshit for 15 minutes between classes. It was after about a week of spending all day together that I realized our laughs had synched up. 

    What the fuck does that mean? I mean the rhythm of our literal laughs, our loud bursting cackles, had become synchronized. He or I or someone else would say something funny, we'd look at each other, and every subsequent "ha" was like the beat of a metronome. I noticed it because I made fun of it, "Dude we're turning into crows..." which made the why of it all click: BIRDS DO THIS!

    If you're reading this you've hopefully been introduced to the sandhill cranes that we share real estate with. They like to laugh. Well, I don't know if it's a laugh but it's a loud bursting cackle that they like to do together. If you can mimic it or play the sound from a speaker, they will start to anticipate the "call" cackle and answer with the "response" cackle in synch with your next "call". Sometimes there'll be five of them in a group in the morning, all circled up cackling in unison like they're summoning Cthulhu. It's very interesting to watch. 

    I'm starting to think that's the purpose of laughter, a reflex in communication. It's communicating "I get it, I understand the group of people around me well enough to understand that now it is time to laugh...riiiiiiiight...now." I think yawning is similar and maybe even dancing. 

    There are a lot of social behaviors both birds and humans share. Flying in formation is one of them. Have you ever seen a massive flock of starlings fly in warped disposition, making each bird a pixel in a turbulent macro display? It's an example of emergence that is borrowed from by the Air Force in the simplicity of "ok you go here, and I'll say this, and then I'll go here and when I do that you go back over there". But it's not simple, it's complicated. It's a football play, a symphony, a dance. 

    There's a problem of course, which ends up solving itself, in that it takes a ridiculous amount of practice and communication to fly in formation. And when you're flying a plane right next to another plane you don't have much time to correct or communicate. Radio calls are things that are quick to say and very recognizable: "Two" for acknowledge, "Knockitoff" to split up, "cakaw-cakaw" etc. Things have to be time efficient, but that means you don't have time to spare for thinking about it. It becomes reflex, like the birds drawing figure eights in the sky without even being aware of it. 

    The time investment it takes a bird to fly in formation with thousands of others, or a human to learn a complicated dance as a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader, is tremendous. It becomes a filter for those higher echelon examples, but even at it's most basic it's a signal to everyone else: "I've made the effort, thus I belong." 

    There's a lot of research that shows that these signals matter - they are meaningful. A palm tree is a signal that you're someplace warm, the smell of sand and salt is a signal you're on vacation, a Michael Jackson song is a signal that the year is 1985, or at least that's how it feels. A son or daughter's eyes have a quaint familiarity signaling it needs care - your care. 

These signals are meaningful, the Almighty CNS has decided that, and they are layered. That's the best answer I could come up with as to why I remember driving to a hotel in Dubai better than the actual happiest moment in life - which was probably a long time ago, and must not have mattered much. 

Brendenn Bremmer

      On March 18th, 2005, Brendenn Bremmer put a gun to his head and ended his life. He was 14 years old. He showed no signs of depression, he had remarkable musical talent and intelligence, he graduated high school at age ten. His life was perfect, he was already accomplished, and he was on his way to start a career in anesthesiology. Despite his learning things quickly, he wasn't pushed by his parents, he simply wanted to learn to read among a slew of other things at age three. Brendenn had experience and interest in firearms, so death by accident was ruled out. 

    His mother was a novelist, very Christian, who noted her son's interest in the spiritual world and always doing the right thing; she speculated his suicide was enacted in order to give his organs to those in need; "he came, he taught, he left." His father said, “He’s become a teacher. He says right now he’s actually being taught how to help these people who experience suicides for much messier reasons. Before Brandenn was born, this was planned."

    This event 15 years ago had the nation asking... Why? Why would such a gifted person in a loving family with scant signs of social anxiety or depression end his life with absolutely no warning? I have a theory.

    I am 27 years old, with scant signs of social anxiety or depression, from a loving family, with a successful career as an Air Force pilot. I almost tried to end my life one day with absolutely no warning. Brendenn's story and mine should terrify America. 

    I have musical talent and intelligence. I knew how to fly a plane before I learned to drive a car. My life is perfect, I'm already accomplished, and I have started my career as a pilot. Despite learning things quickly, I wasn't pushed by my parents, I simply wanted to learn electrical engineering among a slew of other things. I am experienced and interested in firearms and any accident in that regard would be unlikely.

    My mother was a novelist, very Christian, and I hope she recognizes my interest in the spiritual world and always doing the right thing. I would never end my life to donate my organs. I don't believe any rational person would do that. I hope my father thinks of me as a teacher to help people and would do anything to end America's mental health crisis that takes 50,000 lives each year.

    I deployed in December. In Germany I took an Ambien and while asleep called my wife and rambled about someone I didn't know named "Janet". The next day while telling me about it, that reminded her to recommend The Good Place. I watched it. That sparked my interest in Ethics, while deployed to a warzone in which we probably don't belong. I also watched Messiah, which sparked my interest in theology. I also read, a lot. In April I went home, and I read more. 

    In July, I decided to follow the example of Eleanor Shellstrop and better myself; so I quit drinking, I started working out, and I started paying more attention to everything I watched and read as a result. At some point in August, I realized all the media I was consuming had something in common. I realized this could be used for good instead of evil or futility, and I may very well have been the first person to have that realization other than people like Brendenn Bremmer.

    The more I paid attention to what I watched and read the less I slept, and my mental health quickly deteriorated to think either I could predict the future, Seth Meyers was talking about me, or God was communicating via coincidences. This happened in a matter of days; while Brendenn Bremmer probably would've kept to himself and carried on, I was extroverted enough to talk to my entire family about my conspiracy theories. And they told me I was crazy but it would all be fixed if I just went to sleep. They were wrong.

    How many other people start to confuse one coincidence after another in rapid succession for God or Seth Meyers talking to them? How many people are told they need to be locked in a mental institution if weird things starts happening to them? Why can't people who are confused about life just go to a psychiatrist, have an honest conversation, and get the medication they need BEFORE they need to be restrained and injected with Lorazepam? 

    As absurdity approaches infinity, the probability of it being real approaches zero. But that does not mean it's impossible for a rational person to flip a coin ten times in a row and predict it every single time. If you watch an hour long standup special from three years ago, and every single joke has some application in something you've thought that day, the chances that time travel is real is still zero, but that does not mean it's impossible to happen. Even though the chances are astronomically low, a rational person would turn to God or science or something bound to their life, instead of admitting the impossible. 

    I believe that is why we have a mental health crisis in this country. Depression and burnout rates are through the roof and luckily COVID may have lead to positive changes in that regard. But for rational healthy people, they may eventually realize that this world is absolutely absurd and God is talking to them even though he would want us all to survive. They just think they can get to something better.

“You see, we don’t know how to explain these kids — not scientifically.”

The Feedback Loop

On 29 July 2020, my life changed. I stopped drinking, bought a kayak, and went fishing. My wife and I had purchased a trailer and straps and all the necessary accoutrements so loading should've been a breeze. It wasn't. The kayak would get crooked, the straps twisted, and it took half an hour. "This system needs to be better", I thought. 

There is one system in particular that has always fascinated me: the positive feedback loop. That is when the output is increased by a factor, and fed back into the same system as an input. With it, scales near infinity can be reached fairly quickly. Drinking is a positive feedback loop. You drink, you become hungover, and you drink to overcome it. It's a dirty hack of our own minds. And as I said, drinking at scales near infinity can be reached fairly quickly with this particular feedback model. But what if you applied a positive feedback loop, well, positively? What would happen?

I thought of that while spending another thirty minutes trying to tie down a kayak. If I could just incrementally make it easier, the efficiency would skyrocket, and quickly too. The first trip I discovered it's far easier if you remember which direction the clip needs to to be facing. The second trip I discovered the straps won't twist if you lay them out before wrapping. The third trip I found you only need two straps, not three. Those incremental improvements, while insignificant in their own right, become part of a system to tie down a kayak as quickly as possible.

The best part is no one had to teach me. There are hundreds of YouTube videos about tying down kayaks; I know, I've seen them. I could've asked my in-laws how they do it. But I didn't have to. All it took were small inputs, multiplied over time. It no longer takes me 30 minutes to tie down my kayak, but I thought to myself, "okay, that worked, but it was too easy. A feedback loop can't possibly be the secret to menial chores." With that I started experimenting. 

Sobriety, nobody wants it but some people need it. I'm not one of those people, but I was drinking a lot, and I did want to cut back. So how can we reduce something with feedback? Introducing the negative feedback loop, the deranged twin of positive feedback. How can we take every input to a system, and reduce it over time?

Well, step one: remove alcohol from the house. That's easy enough. Step two: don't go places where there is alcohol. Step three: do something else. Kayak fishing was perfect. All I had to do was go fishing and not drink at the same time, and I would not drink. When I got home, if I had to mow the lawn, I would mow the lawn and not drink. Starting at day one, this seems impossible. However, every single task or miniature adventure led to some dopamine being released with a lack of alcohol, and that was important to me. This is the negative feedback loop; every input goes through the system, the output is lower than it started, and it goes through again. You can reach zero, or approach an asymptote to zero, fairly quickly with these as well.   

That's two points for feedback loops. Then I started getting cocky, what if we tried layering feedback loops onto each other. I'm just gonna apply some negative feedback to combat my urge to sleep in, throw in something positive to take better care of my house, I'll figure out how to best structure my weekend by developing a feedback loop for planning the day. Oh, it went well. I was tackling three or four house projects per weekend, working out everyday, reading, still had time for fishing and screwing around; the implication was clear. This system works. And it works a lot better than the previous system I had.

There were THREE WEEKS of this bliss in life. Things worked, I worked, the system worked. Sometimes the line was blurred with trial and error, that's how much I can trivialize efficiency. Can't back a trailer on the first try at your favorite fishing spot? Well pick a tree, try aiming for that. Didn't work? Pick a new tree. It's still positive feedback as long as you get closer to the goal with each stroke. After a handful of tries, if you have a good memory for which tree worked, you're gonna back that trailer in dead center every time from then on.

So, where did it all go wrong? Things got weird after that. Really weird. MacDill found a guided missile at the Lakeland Airport and the US Postal Service was being sabatoged by the president and there's this website called Imgur. and I had the bright idea of applying a positive feedback loop to gain fake points on the internet. 

I Had a Dream

Good morning, I had a dream last night. In it, I was playing with dynamite in Washington State. But I never blew myself up, because I knew how dynamite worked. Actually, it may have been ammonium nitrate. That would make a lot more sense. I'm guessing you saw the dramatic explosion that took out Beruit (if not, drop everything and watch it now). I ended up down the Google rabbit hole reading about ammonium nitrate, and was aghast to find that similar ammonium nitrate explosions have happened dozens of times throughout history. In fact, so many have happened recently that there are 3 or 4 caught on camera, like Beirut or Tiangjin.... The Beruit explosion was 2750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate. The Oklahoma City bombing was 0.18 tonnes of the same. The biggest nitrate explosion, however, happened in 1921 in post WW1 Germany, at 4,500 tonnes. So I started reading about that... In WW1 Germany, they used ammonium sulfate for artillery, but we're running out of sulfur. So they started making a 50/50 cocktail of ammonium sulfate/nitrate. Well, when those chemicals are stored together they liquify and harden, becoming a solid resembling plaster or dry wall. Since it was stored in silos, it was very difficult to retrieve because they had to mine it out with pickaxes. Until they found a quicker method: blowing up the silo with dynamite (that is 100% true look it up). They literally were using dynamite to blow out their bomb reagants. Now, the Germans had sworn up and down that this was safe, and done tests to show that as long as it'll less than 60% nitrate it WONT blow up. In fact, throughout WW1 they used the dynamite method 20,000 times to retrieve their explosives, without anything bad happening. But their tests were flawed, it's not the composition that mattered for stability, it was humidity of the substance. As long as it's above 2% humidity, it won't blow up, and as it came out of the factory it was 3-4% so it didn't. Until it had six years to dry in the silos, then it was below 2% humidity, and they dropped an actual dynamite charge into a 4,500 tonnes silo of explosives. Boom. The Germans no longer use dynamite in conjunction with their explosives. And from what I can tell, the Lebanese no longer store their confiscated explosives in Hangar 12 of the port.