Late additions
Some late additions to my opps list are: Russell Brand, Anthony Blinken, Jimmy Carter, Lana Del Ray, Sherane from GKMC, the principal in iCarly, the Statue of Liberty, Empress Dowager Cixi, Tim Horton, Aphrodite, J Cole, Nayib Bukele, Frieza, Hannah Arendt, Travis Scott, Zarbon, cracked 19-24 year olds in the US, sneak dissers, playa haters, people who say “Boku No Hero Academia”, Dark Souls PvP hackers
Convergence
Ever closer never there
Zero in never ever
Go around in a square
Square circle round a tether
Blur the line it's hardly there
Squint your eyes altogether
Fuzzy sharp inside the lair
Shadows cast from pitch black nether
Great mercurial me
Cruel and mercurial arbiter of memory I am, the Caesar of my life - rational and irrational, winner and ultimate loser. I’ve crossed the rubicon from the cliffs of bupropion to the shores of brexpiprazole, and I’ve forumed with the soothsayer, bewared the ides of springtime refreshment. So resolutely did I decide that one drug had flooded my mind with the fog of war, rendering the path forward and back translucently opaque. So confidently had I discerned that such stumbling would lead me to wander off a ledge, or worse, stabbed twenty three times by my own blades. And yet time goes on, and the soothsayer sees the future, not the past. As much as I resent Shakespearean tragedy, brexpiprazole is working.
Scratch work
\[\DeclareMathOperator{cp}{cp} \DeclareMathOperator{dist}{dist} \newcommand{\pp}{\mathbf p} \newcommand{\xx}{\mathbf x} \newcommand{\dbyd}[2]{\frac{\text{d} #1}{\text{d} #2}} \newcommand{\partials}[2]{\frac{\partial #1}{\partial #2}}\] \[\begin{align*} \pp(t) &= \begin{pmatrix} a\cos(t) \\ b\sin(t) \end{pmatrix} \\ \dist(\xx, t) &= \lVert \xx - \pp(t) \rVert \\ \cp(\xx) &= \pp(\underset{t \in [0, 2\pi]}{\arg \min}\ \dist(\xx, t)^2) \\ &= \pp(t) \text{ s.t. } \lVert \xx - \pp(t) \rVert \text{ is minimized} \\ \partials{\dist^2}{t} &= \dbyd{}{t} \left[ (x - a\cos(t))^2 + (y - b \sin(t))^2 \right] \\ &= 2 \left[a\sin(t)(x - a\cos(t)) -b\cos(t)(y - b\sin(t)) \right] \\ &= 2 \left[\sin(t) \cos(t) (b^2 - a^2) + ... \right] \\ &\text{whatever i give up} \\ &\text{i'll just use a root finding algorithm} \end{align*}\](I didn’t end up using a root finding algorithm)
Here’s what I was trying to figure out how to do:
I realized later in the day that I did it incorrectly, and my original approach was correct (thanks Leo)
Though I do think my flawed approach is good enough for my purposes, where I’ve chosen parameters so that my SDF should only really be used close to the surface
Today I read nothing
I’m sure it’s quite clear that this blog is largely inspired by Today I Wrote Nothing by Daniil Kharms - a manuscript never prepared for publication, full of material written only to be written. To be totally honest with you, I haven’t even finished the book, despite recommending it to everyone around me.
Oh to be a cat
Oh to be a cat… Maybe it is trite - I find myself couching a lot of things I say in acknowledgment that they’re trite - Here I go again acknowledging - This is what I’m talking about. Oh to be a cat, nothing would be trite. I would speak by opening my mouth or closing my mouth, none of this tongue and throat nonsense. Oh to be a cat, with no gender, participating in no society. Oh to be a cat, lying on a carpet, or perhaps on a window perch, or in a cat tree, or on a shelf, or a couch, or a plastic bag. Oh to be a cat, busily cleani Oh? To be a cat? Picked up by my owner, without my consent? In fact, with my clear protest? Oh, to be a cat - up in the air, no promise of being back down on my own four feet! Oh to be a cat, my perfectly combed fur smushed in all the wrong directions by human lips barraging my forehead. Oh to be a cat being cradled like a baby, as if I am supposed to find comfort as I am compromised, exposed, and frankly abducted. Oh to be a cat, put down in the opposite end of the house, far from my comfortable plastic bag.
Discussion
I don’t know anything about economics and I don’t have the background to understand modern monetary theory but I know austerity is bullshit. I haven’t read Nietzsche but I know that domination and slavery are not the natural order of things. I’m not very open minded about this stuff. I’ve read some Marx and no Engels and I know utopian socialism is a pipe dream, and so is anarchism. I don’t need to watch “Breadtube”, I know that Ben Shapiro is a moron, or at least he says moronic things. I don’t need to watch the news to know Mark Carney won’t fix anyone’s life, or that movement conservatism in Canada hates me. All this stuff is, how you say, shit from a butt. I’m not interested in it anymore.
Pinball II by MIKE and Tony Seltzer
The newest album from MIKE, the “leader of the arcane”, and Tony Seltzer, unsung hero of the DAW, has me entranced. It sounds exactly like the rapper himself - at home everywhere. This time he ditches his sound-collage style production to rap on Tone’s equally timeless take on SoundCloud energy.
A perfect combo for a perfect switch-up, the duo seamlessly translate their eccentricities to this new style. Big MIKE’s effortless extended rhyme schemes circle hypnotically as tracks spiral into each other, a perfectly unpretentious application of the height of technique. DON’T FORCE IT though - thirty MIKE bars with one rhyme scheme sound as natural as a couplet, as throwaway as a lesser rapper’s verse about a lesser topic.
Can’t be proud what you done for success
Can’t be shoutin’ when nothin’ was said
That’s my fault, my humble request
Think I found the trouble I dreamt
Sour (Tony), set, all them clouds above me again
Meanwhile, Tony Seltzer pulls out all the stops - borrowing Iglooghost’s keenness to let no two bars of a track be the same, Seltzer stuffs each beat over-full with musicality. Whether it’s ivvys1’s sparse drums on Dolemite, or the playful bass slaps on DON’T FORCE IT, the hats that sit next to (not inside!) the claps on Hell Date, or the chops and screws and perfect transitions throughout the album, there’s never an aspect of a track that hasn’t clearly been doted on.
I highly recommend this album to anyone who likes rap music.