Google Research should build a small shrine to the fruit fly.
Incorporate the body of a fly and the extracted essence, the connectome itself, engraved onto something effortful and monumental: perhaps it would be appropriate to use chip fabs, our civilizational peak, to lay it down on unique silicon.
Clipping
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clippings > A shrine for the fruitfly connectome
[https://interconnected.org/home/2026/09/26/connectome]
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clippings > You reach out to the world, trusting it
[https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/travel-by-foot]
There is a loop here, which for me started when Christoffer and I bicycled to Finland:
1. You reach out to the world, trusting it, and 2. then you end up in situations and meet people who surprise you and expand your sense of possibility, which 3. gives you more landscapes to explore, 4. and so on and on. -
clippings > Free market but not capitalism
I believe in the free market but not capitalism, which I define functionally as any economy in which the more money you have, the easier it is to make money. That’s positive feedback and it leads with mathematical certainty to cavorting billionaire pedophiles. If we don’t want the insane atrocities of the super-rich, we must set it up so that the more money you have, the harder it is to make money, and the less you have, the easier it is.
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clippings > A zen koan
[https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/book-review-the-dialectical-imagination]
One afternoon a student said “Roshi, I don’t really understand what’s going on. I mean, we sit in zazen and we gassho to each other and everything, and Felicia got enlightened when the bottom fell out of her water-bucket, and Todd got enlightened when you popped him one with your staff, and people work on koans and get enlightened, but I’ve been doing this for two years now, and the koans don’t make any sense, and I don’t feel enlightened at all! Can you just tell me what’s going on?”
“Well you see,” Roshi replied, “for most people, and especially for most educated people like you and I, what we perceive and experience is heavily mediated, through language and concepts that are deeply ingrained in our ways of thinking and feeling. Our objective here is to induce in ourselves and in each other a psychological state that involves the unmediated experience of the world, because we believe that that state has certain desirable properties. It’s impossible in general to reach that state through any particular form or method, since forms and methods are themselves examples of the mediators that we are trying to avoid. So we employ a variety of ad hoc means, some linguistic like koans and some non-linguistic like zazen, in hopes that for any given student one or more of our methods will, in whatever way, engender the condition of non-mediated experience that is our goal. And since even thinking in terms of mediators and goals tends to reinforce our undesirable dependency on concepts, we actively discourage exactly this kind of analytical discourse.”
And the student was enlightened.
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clippings > Monotheism solves a concurrency problem
[https://apxhard.substack.com/p/monotheism-solves-a-concurrency-problem]
The declaration of “there is only one God” means, in practice, “a single process with a single goal is the best explanation for reality. You are a child of that process.”
The monotheistic religions claim “You can trust reality itself.” That’s huge, if true.
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clippings > We had come to grasp our own unremarkableness
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48216955#48216955]
With all due respect to Kevin Kelly (who has lived a life worthy of the aphorisms he writes!), I prefer the guidance of George Saunders (via Lincoln in the Bardo):
Please do not misunderstand. We had been mothers, fathers. Had been husbands of many years, men of import, who had come here, that first day, accompanied by crowds so vast and sorrowful that, surging forward to hear the oration, they had damaged fences beyond repair. Had been young wives, diverted here during childbirth, our gentle qualities stripped from us by the naked pain of that circumstance, who left behind husbands so enamored of us, so tormented by the horror of those last moments (the notion that we had gone down that awful black hole pain-sundered from ourselves) that they had never loved again. Had been bulky men, quietly content, who, in our first youth, had come to grasp our own unremarkableness and had, cheerfully (as if bemusedly accepting a heavy burden), shifted our life’s focus; if we would not be great, we would be useful; would be rich, and kind, and thereby able to effect good: smiling, hands in pockets, watching the world we had subtly improved walking past (this empty dowry filled; that education secretly funded). Had been affable, joking servants, of whom our masters had grown fond for the cheering words we managed as they launched forth on days full of import. Had been grandmothers, tolerant and frank, recipients of certain dark secrets,who, by the quality of their unjudging listening, granted tacit forgiveness, and thus let in the sun. What I mean to say is, we had been considerable. Had been loved. Not lonely, not lost, not freakish, but wise, each in his or her own way. Our departures caused pain. Those who had loved us sat upon their beds, heads in hand; lowered their faces to tabletops, making animal noises. We had been loved, I say, and remembering us, even many years later, people would smile, briefly gladdened at the memory.
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clippings > What if you appreciated your hobbies less
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47842259]
To me, this is the purpose of the creative journey. Knowing yourself better, and enjoying all of the steps involved in arriving at what is always a surprising destination. That’s EXACTLY how I used to feel about creativity. I was an art major who didn’t make it, and I found that expressing myself via my hobbies was good for the soul. Then I almost died and completely lost interest in making art!
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clippings > Ten commandments for being a man
[https://www.reddit.com/r/daddit/comments/1sky66y/comment/og2o98w/]
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Treat others how you wish to be treated.
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Don’t be afraid to show your feelings but learn to control them.
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Listen to people
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Be prepared to admit you’re wrong when you are.
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Don’t waste time with people who don’t deserve your time.
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Buy your friend a drink when they need it.
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Always join in a round, but if you can’t, you should make sure you say that from the start.
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Don’t listen to any of those goobers who will sell you the right way to be a man online. They want you weak and miserable so they can get money from you.
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Comparison is the thief of joy.
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If you’re worried about something split it into two choices. (A) Can you do something about it? (B) Can you not do something about it?. If A, then do it. If B, then don’t worry as you can’t do anything any way.
Pick and choose - this list works pretty well for me (44m)
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clippings > We're all living in Romantica
[https://aella.substack.com/p/the-other-porn-land]
Okay so hear me out: we’re all living in Romantica.
I think it’s pretty insane that we just expose kids to romance with zero safeguards. We literally go make them cute animated movies of people falling in love in simplified romantic ideals and go ‘here you go, kids, mainline this straight into your actively-forming brains. We are not going to provide any education or give you any warnings about this whatsoever.’
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clippings > Theology is an aesthetic endeavor
[https://www.secretorum.life/p/you-are-gods-i-made-a-human]
Though it employs the language of analytic philosophy, I would argue that theology is better thought of as a purely aesthetic endeavor. Do not ask if it is logical or if it is true; ask if it makes the world more interesting or more beautiful; if it adds depth or dimension to your experience. It did for me.