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(pinned post) Welcome to the occasional blog of Robert Thomas Hayes Link.
Because?
Sat Sep 5 11:49:49 PM UTC 2026
I continue to find most online activity dissipating. I scroll more and more. I write less and less. And there is no feeling that my writing reaches anyone but myself except when I contribute snippets to my microblogging service of choice beige.party.
Too, and quite properly, work dissipates some of my non-work energy. The microblogging somehow insinuates itself more easily into the work day, a way to kill seconds while waiting for a filesystem task to complete. It doesn't feel the same as actually stopping to focus on some other task.
As has been observed ad nauseam, this results in decreased focus for everything. It's not just that things vie for my attention (such as the spelling of vie, which threw me for a second) but that my ability to focus and concentrate is diminished through the use of these toys.
And of what value is focus and concentration?
I was mansplaining to my love the general inferiority of gui to command line, exemplified by a little test file I have of about a half-a-million lines of chess data which loads and is scrollable and searchable in lynx but which gui browsers cannot even load. It was in the context of my complaints about working in a remote environment for my day job and how the configuration of that environment is such that simple filesystem tasks such as downloading a one page pdf ends up taking as much as 90 - 120 seconds rather than the 500 - 1500 milliseconds it should take. It's not just the lost time, but the loss of confidence in the system, the loss of momentum. Even if such acts took a consistent five minutes, that would be something to work with, but the terribly inconsistent performance created by the multiple layers of networked access leads to a system so unreliable as to be almost unbearable.
So, work is no less dissipating than microblogging. And blogging seems less even than a passing fad, but a left over conceit the world has outgrown.
In the end, then, I am writing for myself. I may or may not review this entry any time soon, but I am sure to look it over as I get ready to make my next post. So let that be enough for now. There is plenty on my mind, maybe too much, and still too disorganized. I yet contain multitudes, and am quite mindful in this moment how they each are somewhat starved for something this sort of activity seems to give and which others do not.
Soon it will change.
Sat Aug 1 02:32:40 AM UTC 2026
"If self is illusion so too self-determination."
I am especially harsh on the superstition that "only an alcoholic can help an alcoholic." That's just nonsense, like saying only a bald man can shave my head or only a drowning victim can throw me a life preserver when I've fallen overboard. What it is, it's a cop out when people say, "Only another alcoholic can help." Someone who wants help takes the life preserver thrown to them.
Thu Jul 30 08:18:15 AM UTC 2026
to say writing is for the reader is to miss the point writing is for the writer who needs to put words in a row at the keyboard or with pen and paper or spray painted on a wall creatives create but that still puts it wrong like saying sex is for making babies writing is for the writer creating is for the creator here i am putting these words in a row
hello again fighting off a summer flu so whatever rethinking i do is suspect not that the fever is really so high still, i recognize hot temper *** thinking about how these words will and won't reach anyone any where or when and the strange stimulus response overlay which sets this particular meat machine a typing *** more soon
Tue Jul 28 06:22:31 AM UTC 2026
dear lord, what the heck am i still doing here, wherever here is, writing to whom? the alternatives? i've indulged a'plenty; lots of time wasted scrolling, scrolling, scrolling worse, trolling, trolling, trolling simply posting "here" is too isolated, masturbatory and my "communities" are dissipating (and none of it really measures up to professional standards for my profession) (but i was this first, certainly i am this and my profession, in some measure, some mix) all the more reticent to post "on line" knowing i am thereby feeding various theft-based consumer products so the impetus to write is stymied (there's always "real" writing...for a publisher, for print, not shared until ready for press) who ever had the bright idea of putting our journals out for the world to see in the first place? shoot the miscreant!
Sat Apr 11 10:40:20 PM UTC 2026
reaching for relevance grasping old tools, or toys weighing the talking to no one called blogging against the talking to no one called social-media
Sun Mar 29 09:50:15 PM UTC 2026
i contain multitudes and am arranging a few evictions and house arrests
Sat Mar 28 12:53:36 PM UTC 2026
A friend tells me I am not done, and that some of the things I say to her she is not hearing elsewhere and I should write them down because I have articulated them well. I will try. Another acquaintance, in a marketing email, presages some writing under consideration and spurs me to action. I will try. But today it will be a small offering.
What good comes from an event such as today's "No Kings" rally?
The current rise of authoritarianism in no small part owes its success to apathy, alienation, and disaffection of those who would oppose it. To the extent people of good will and liberal values, progressive values, positive and inclusive values are sidelined by despair and hopelessness, to the extent our political will is sapped and stunted, to the extent the forces of fascism exploit that despair, any act of encouragement and hope is helpful.
How much more helpful, then, millions rising in the streets to share not only our outrage but our hope, our joy at not being alone?
Concerns about such demonstrations being purely performative, or dissipatingly cathartic are well placed, but miss a central point: We exercise our humanity by such efforts, not only hastening the day when we muster political clout thereby, but in the immediate moment deepening the values which make resistance and persistence worthwhile.
Fri Mar 27 04:18:10 AM UTC 2026
if i say nothing i say nothing disagreeable if i agree i am agreeable and if all i do is say nothing or agree what becomes of me? what do i become? a full cup, under a strong tap all the old pushed out before long
Fri Nov 15 02:38:18 AM UTC 2024
Having a little trouble enabling shared clipboards in virtualbox.
167 of 292
Discussion of 1,000 children seen for tonsil complaints. "No matter how many times a child had been cleared before, each new examination carried with it a 50-50 chance that he or 2 would be declared in need of a tonsillectomy."
166 of 292:
By detaching us from our environment and educating us into subservience and a sense of inadequacy, school undermines our natural defenses against addiction.
This fits with my observations that what college is really good for is teaching obedience. I do not recall reading this far into the book, but I keep running into bits like this which fit some long held prejudices.
What still remains is for future changes in education to reflect this growing awareness that institutionalized unreality is harmful to us all.
A dear friend reminded me this morning of David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, "This is Water." The similarity of themes seems striking, all the more so because she mentioned it in context of my describing some of the thoughts inspired by my reading of Love and Addiction.
Fri Oct 11 08:38:24 PM UTC 2024
First, there's a problem with the time stamp on the local machine. I'll work that out later, but it's claiming UTC while showing Los Angeles time.
Second, a snip from "Love and Addiction" by Peele and Brodsky:
A study by Mark Lepper and his colleagues shows that if small children pursue some activity originally out of natural inclination and are then instructed and rewarded by a teacher to perform the same activity, they will stop performing when the teacher, and the external structure and approval he provides, are removed. Is it surprising, then, that when a student emerges from beneath the sanctions of school, he typically shows no desire to pursue the subjects he was taught in that context?
This makes me think of jokes about sex-work, what once was done for fun then done for money becomes, well, work.
But I suspect there's something deeper here, and I expect it will be connected in the next few pages with how people fall out of love.
I find my current modes of expression and interaction fail me one way or another. Yet I benefit from the tool of writing as a means of better articulating and organizing my thoughts. So, a new blog.
Not much to say just now, however, tonight's posting time got tied up in setting up the site, such as it is. More soon.
Email me: rthlesq (at) gmail (dot) com.
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