All posts by Nathan Ruffing

All, Comfort and Convenience Plagues

Quit TV Cold Turkey

I quit TV cold turkey about 17 years ago, in 2003. I was about 20 years old. I had always watched some TV up to that point with whatever free time I had, maybe an hour a day. I did not consciously quit. I just moved and never bought a TV. I still watch movies if they are planned and I sit down to watch one I’ve chosen with friends. I also watch live sports, which I prefer to watch in a public place like a bar.

Stage 1: “I’m Missing Something”

For several years, I felt like I was missing something. I felt like people knew something I didn’t know.

Stage 2: “No, They’re Missing Something”

Maybe 5 years in, I started realizing I was getting all the relevant news within a few days just by hearing conversations. I wasn’t missing anything, I was just getting it second-hand. Instead of “news” I was seeing people’s emotional reactions to the news and it was very disconnected from real life. For the first time, I felt like they were missing something, not me.

Stage 3: Produce for Perspective

In 2014 I started a blog with the goal of being able to at least amateur produce every type of media available. In 2018 I spent a lot of time learning to record and edit video. That gave me really interesting perspective.

Often when watching a movie now I’ll switch to imagining the studio set around the scene instead of the movie plot and it transforms their acting into an awkward situation. You have to be a bit maniacal to act as intensely as actors do in a movie studio full of colleagues.

The teleprompter is the other thing I notice. For a monologue looking into a camera, one minute continuously is about the max I can memorize to record. Watching news anchors or commentators go on and on for 20 minutes reading a teleprompter with feeling as though they really believe what they are saying it is creepy. The teleprompter is obvious if you have ever tried to record a message into a camera.

Stage 4: Twilight Zone

Within the last few years I’ve more and more gotten the feeling that I’m John Boyega’s character from the movie The Circle. Fun to imagine I’m a hero of course! I still see people’s emotional reactions to news and TV shows that are mostly fictional or over-dramatized – but now those emotional reactions are widespread enough that they are literally the news. It’s bizarre.

With the coronavirus recently I made a concerted effort to systematically find the most truthful, reliable, objective news sources possible. It is helpful to have actionable information.

TV I Have Seen

I can nearly list all of the TV I have seen for 15+ years and why I saw it.

In early 2008 my roommate had several seasons of The Office on DVD. We binge-watched 3 seasons in a weekend. That’s the last TV show I really got hooked on and binge-watched.

In 2009, my roommate had a TV and I watched a lot of Family Guy by default because he watched it all the time. It was comical how little else we watched. Pure random Family Guy episodes. 90+%.

In 2011-2013, I remember that several of the new type of TV series started coming out because people were binging Dexter, Eastbound and Down, Breaking Bad, Always Sunny in Philadelphia. The conversations sounded like fun but watching the shows sounded like a chore to me. I never did. I would say by this point I had completely lost interest. I was irreversibly uninterested.

I played a video game for the last time in ~2001. I played Age of Empires for about four hours straight. I attended a swim meet afterward and I was imagining the people to be little characters from the game. I haven’t played anything since other than maybe Wii at friends’ houses.

All, Brazil Now What Migration Series, Industrial Change Surfing, Rage and Frenzy Politics, Real Estate, Travel, Ventures Quarterly

Gone Sailing

On 2 November 2020 I decided to depart the corporate career path (energy engineer) for the rest of my life. My knee-jerk solution was to learn to sail and make sailing my occupation somehow. Regardless of what I do, I made the decision because of a fundamental idea: I am convinced that true progress in the next several decades will not be in new technologies, but in learning to use the existing technologies in a more wholesome way. As I went down the list of categories on my blog, I realized my decision affects almost every category.

Brazil Now What Migration Series: I once again do not know where I will go.

English Lessons: language is basic. Will I teach English from a sailboat?

Industrial Change Surfing: Industrial Change Surfing is about decisions – this was an enormous decision based on industrial changes.

Rage and Frenzy Politics: I believe the current polarized divisive politics partly arise from frustration with the diminishing returns of tech. (A pause for sailing is in order!)

Real Estate: boats are floating real estate. (the tax is maintenance!)

Travel: Sailing is the oldest form of long-distance water travel!

Ventures Quarterly: I have not been faithful to quarterly updates lately, but this obviously represents a ventures update.

All, Ventures Quarterly

Concentrated Exhaled Breath


This video on YouTube

Recommended: How Cabin Air Systems Work

https://pall.com/en/aerospace/commercial-fixed-wing/how-cabin-air-systems-work.html

Recommended: The Mathematics of Weight Loss

https://www.tedxtokyo.com/translated_talk/the-mathematics-of-weight-loss/

  1. Be outside
  2. Open the windows
  3. Put a fan in a window
  4. Ventilation
Everything else is show.

Solutions and Relevant Industries

  • Will outdoor meeting spaces get a boost?
    • Will we set up meetings in parks with mobile audio equipment? simple Bluetooth speakers for example. I have already heard of this in some schools.
  • Will we have hoses running to each workstation to selectively exhaust or filter exhaled breath? – this sounds funny but I really think we will see this if it does not already exist and I just don’t know.
  • Will we investigate air flow within each room of a building to maximize the exhaled breath content of the exhaust air? (better efficiency) Airplane cabin air systems already do this.
  • Mobile air sanitation devices?
  • air flow
  • ventilation
  • energy cost of fresh air
  • air flow visualization
  • energy recovery ventilation ERV
  • heat recovery ventilation HRV
  • air balancing

Search EBSRS3

All, Brazil Now What Migration Series

Brazil Now What 10: Sailing

I have always been interested in sailing but I consider myself a land lover. I thought sailing would remain a dream unfulfilled, but now with the world freaked out by a virus, the ocean is calling.

Employers?

Sailing Holidays, UK

World Sailing, governing body of sport sailing, UK

PR Sailing, Netherlands

Brussels International Sailing Club

Dr. Sails, Barcelona

The Moorings Yacht Charters, Clearwater

Dream Yacht Charter, Surbiton, Surrey

Sunsail Yacht Charter

Nautal, Barcelona

YachtCharterFleet, London

ClickandBoat, Boulogne-Billancourt

Sailing Enjoy South America, Buenos Aires

All, Brazil Now What Migration Series

Brazil Now What 9: KU Leuven Master of Engineering: Energy

Of all the universities in the world in 2020, I feel like I was at one of the best ones. The academics at KU Leuven are challenging and relevant. The university itself was taking the real action necessary to stop the virus.

Yet they still went online. I tried. I don’t do online.

Thanks you KU Leuven for the effort. I continued at KU Leuven much longer than I would have at most other universities, I am sure.

All

Leuven Info

Recycling and Separation

Step 1: know what the “fractions” are. Best separation info I have seen is the photo below:

This handy info is in the Living in Leuven from A to Z handbook under ‘W’ for waste. KU Leuven distributes the handbook at orientation. I wish there were a better photo of this somewhere. Maybe a poster? Anybody?

Step 2: get yourself some bags based on what you think you need. Maybe coordinate with neighbors as the bags are quite large for one person. Where to buy the recycling bags? I bought mine at Carrefour. Various places sell them. Ask at the checkout.

Step 3: the Recycle! app (icon below) can tell you when trash will be picked up at your address. Once you put your address in the app (ask your neighbors or landlord exactly what to enter) it tells you what will be collected what days and can remind you.

The app can also tell you where to take items in fractions that are not one of the main categories.

Note: I heard from multiple sources that in March 2021 the pink bags are going away and the items in that fraction will be joined with the blue bags – so don’t buy a lifetime supply of pink bags now.

The app cannot help you know what to separate. The grainy picture above is better than the app for that.

Groceries

  • Delhaize is good. It is the only grocery store I have been to so far. Delhaize also has a delivery option that works great.
  • Grote Markt has farmer’s food markets on Saturday. It may be everyday, but I know I saw them Saturday. I believe they are the best price.
  • ALDI has better prices than Delhaize I hear but I haven’t had a chance to compare yet.
  • There are little markets everywhere.
  • You can have restaurant food delivered with Deliveroo. Easy to use, but gets expensive fast.

Miscellaneous Shopping

  • HEMA is not the “saver” option but has many things: bed sheets, kitchen items, utensils, pots and pans, many things.
  • Carrefour is where I bought my city trash bags.
  • Action, I have not been to yet, but I think has more items like HEMA.
  • Handy Home Merckx is a big hardware store. I bought a coffee thermos and power adapter there.
  • SPIT is second-hand items so if you get lucky there and find what you want you save money. If you have extra, you can donate here.
  • Diestsestraat from the Leuven city center to the ring road, if you have a shopping list and walk that street you are sure to find many things you need. Also, the Stadskantoor (CIty Hall) is very visible at end of Diestsestraat and you will need the Stadskantoor. The train station is by the Stadskantoor as well.
  • Also Bondgenotenlaaan, which is one street over from Diestsestraat, has shopping.

Cell phone SIM card

If you need a Belgian SIM, Orange works great for €15 per month for 4Gb plus texts and 50 minutes prepaid. The data is valid for a month, so the result is usually €15 / month unless you want more minutes. If you do not need the data, the minutes and texts are valid I think 3 months so even cheaper that way.

Fun Dutch language material, click here.

All

Reality Overdose

With modern technology, media, and communication, one can access unlimited amounts of whatever one wants. For me, I went “extreme reality.” For years I selected entertainment that was pure non-fiction of some form. The following is a short list of the most mind-blowing descriptions of reality that I consumed, either by reading or listening:

Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond. I include this mostly because so many people mention it when discussing reality topics. It is good, but it takes a distant second place to Sapiens.

The History of our World in 18 Minutes, TED Talk by David Christian. Fascinating, just what the title says. The universe in 18 minutes. What to Watch 6

What is so Interesting about the Human Brain, TED Talk by Suzana Herculano-Houzel. Mind-blowing. “Man smart, therefore man make fire,” … ? No. Well yes, but, “Man make fire, therefore man get smarter.” The cause-effect is reversed according to her because of food energy. Makes sense. What to Watch 6

The Fall and Rise of China, a lecture series in The Great Courses, by Richard Baum. I listened to this beginning to end twice. The extremes of the Chinese Communist Party and China in general as a country are absolutely shocking.

What to Watch 24: Energy of an Industrialized Society. I do a pretty good job here of putting modern energy consumption in historical context – in under four minutes.

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging, by Sebastian Junger. This is focused on US military experience and connects the experience to our human need to feel belonging in small groups defined by clear purpose and understanding.

Sand Talk, by Tyson Yunkaporta, a look at global systems from the indigenous perspective. Imagine there is an indigenous university with an anthropology department studying industrialized global systems. What he says is recognizable in everyday life.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, by Yuval Noah Horari. This is the real kicker. If you want to skip the rest of reality, start with this. Every chapter, you are left thinking, “My God, no way. But yeah, sounds about right.” I personally think he goes too far in predicting a hyper-tech bionic man future with aspirations of “a-mortality,” but maybe I’m just hoping.

Sapiens asserts that a unique quality of humans is our complex language, our ability to communicate complex imagined realities, and our ability to act in unity on shared imagined realities. As he described what appears to be the probable objective reality, I felt the strong urge to immediately stop reading, and curl up into a ball until I can forget what he said and return to the blissful ignorance of human fantasy-land.

My favorite novel is The Great Gatsby. I read it for the second time in 2015 and that may be the last time I read a novel before five years of all reality. But now it’s time to return to fiction.

All, Rage and Frenzy Politics

Evan Sayet on Modern Liberalism – OK Now What

2007: Evan Sayet – Regurgitating the Apple How Modern Liberals “Think”

Historical Context

The historical context I notice is that Evan Sayet presents himself as a New York Jew who would by his upbringing typically identify as a liberal, but due to events that were recent at the time of the speech – in 2007 – he identifies politically as a conservative Republican. He uses an analogous story – starting ~9:00 – to place himself and his own political conversion within the historical context of the points he drives home.

The Perceived Problem

Modern Liberals don’t think. Starting at ~9:30 Evan Sayet reasons out exactly why modern Liberals “don’t think.”

The Actual Problem

We are all considering issues nationally instead of locally. We are getting most of our information from impersonal national sources like television and the most popular participants on social media. We are imagining that our problems and their solutions come from national change.

Liberals usually think up change and drag conservatives kicking and screaming to a better place with national change while the conservatives filter the change with prudence. Now, Liberals are thinking up how to destroy what’s been created while both sides are distracted from important local problems with nationally-created mass media and consumer culture. Neither side will give up the comfort the system provides even while the system itself crumbles.

What the Mainstream Media Says

The mainstream media blasts entertaining political provocation like this at full-volume 24/7.

My Opinion

The idea that modern Liberals have arrived at a point where they can’t find anything to change is not new. I believe it is accurate. I believe the content of the video is a mostly-accurate description of what has happened to modern Liberalism. However, there are just a few words I would alter. Instead of saying modern liberals “don’t think,” he should have said, “liberals focus exclusively on how to make change nationally through government and mass media. In their fanaticism for change, near perfection has required them to consistently mess everything up.”

Solutions

The core of the solution is to address our problems that appear national at a local level. The only way Hollywood and other national entertainment will improve is to be abandoned and replaced locally. The only way the federal government will improve is to be less by being challenged by local governments.

Evan Sayet gives the solution at 24:10. “We have to take back universities, schools, media, the entertainment industry.” I agree. This is best done with participation in local government, local decision-making, and local entertainment. If we must educate our own children because the Liberal-influenced education administrators will not do it properly, how can we get it done? Fortunately our schools are funded locally, but we must participate in their governance. How can we entertain ourselves locally? Live minor league baseball, youth sports, adult sports leagues, golf, live local bands, symphonies, plays, and concerts are the answer. Unfortunately we face the challenge to eliminate what threatens these things with complacency: TV and air conditioning. We must turn off the TV, open the doors and windows, go outside and socialize.

At 43:22 Evan Sayet says modern Liberals question authority and attack the ability to distinguish right and wrong, but we have not replaced the authority and morality with anything. We need to replace this authority locally. A return to dressing decent in public would help. Once we turn off amoral TV, what do we do? We will only know once we do it. If a state were to refuse federal funding in order to maintain sovereignty, what would be the effect? How would we fund local projects and infrastructure? Are we prepared to really challenge the power of the federal government? How can we prepare? Are we educated voters on these issues?

I list five “bad” items in my Industrial Plagues category that bring only comfort and complacency and should avoided to the max extent possible: TV, cars, air conditioning, sugar, pills. These five items are almost entirely new in our daily lives in the last century. They barely existed in 1900. Nationalism and the internet are equally as new as the “bad” five items, but they each have a good side. They bring more than just comfort and laziness. Nationalism keeps relative peace and the internet enables almost unlimited bi-directional communication. We must learn what these two things really mean in order to understand the solutions to the complete failure of national leadership. Nationalism is only effective if the large whole is made up of strong, healthy individual parts. We cannot outsource everything to the national specialization. Hollywood and Netflix cannot be our source of entertainment. The internet can enable local entertainment and I don’t mean friends on Facebook and YouTube. Blogging is a great way to experience the bi-directional internet. Blogging can be as simple as organizing your internet experience and sharing it with others in a positive way that you completely control. Pay attention to local events through the internet. The internet, unlike television and Netflix, is just as powerful locally as it is nationally.

All, Rage and Frenzy Politics

“Science”

“Science” is the labeling of what one feels like saying with the name science to give a conclusion credibility by association with real science through the word. The connection to science is often also established through implication by quoting whatever study or statistic feels like it supports a conclusion. Usually characterized by:

  • Using a personal survey of media headlines as evidence to support a conclusion.
  • Citing “a consensus of scientists” as evidence.
  • Using a correlation, however weak or even just perceived, to establish a cause-effect relationship.
  • Presenting a conclusion to an audience who mostly follows the same “science.”
  • Use of some form of the phrase, “They say…”
  • A religious adherence to a conclusion.
  • A religious dependence on what “they say.”
  • Accusation of the use of “science” by an opposing view.
  • Adherents to the religion of “science” almost always watch some TV and / or read mainstream media.
  • Reference to a well-known opposing individual or a story of a scientist who fabricated data in order to shift discussion to easier more familiar opposition.
  • Grouping complex issues into “two sides” due to low-resolution thought, short attention span, and inability or unwillingness to comprehend complexity / a continuum.
  • Reacting to a lack of evidence by shifting to a more extreme conclusion rather than adjusting hypothesis, level of certainty, or searching for objective evidence.
  • Claims of reading “both sides” to get a “balanced view,” under the assumption that the right answer is “in the middle.”
  • Misunderstanding and misapplication of the terms evidence, hypothesis, reproducible, correlation, cause-effect relationship, theory, objectively, confirmation bias, and other terms critical to disciplined science.
  • Lengthy discussions between disagreeing parties, both using “science” to support opposing conclusions.
  • Equating the opposition suggesting a bias with conspiracy theory.
Science

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science#Scientific_method

Religion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion

Both science and religion have their place. Mixing the two, or using one or the other to harm other people is bad.