8/28 It is now normal even for kids to speak to a few hundred or thousand people. They do it before even reaching their teen age.

8/27 I have not developed any musical handwriting yet. My notes look like the scribblings of a first grader, adjusting to an unbelievably alien system.

8/26 First tiktok since about a year. Got my workflow straight, used CapCut for the first time. For every task there’s a video that explains it in about one minute – it could not be done better in writing.

8/25 Learned that there’s the position that it is morally reprehensible to ride e-bikes, apparently for environmental reasons. As long as you could do it with mere muscle power, it is a waste of energy to make it easier. – Should actually be thankful for that argument, as it brings a question about the human condition to the point.

8/24 Discussed Kant’s remarks about extraterrestrials. What does it mean when somebody (something) is more intelligent than something else? Aren’t they performing the same operations, only one does it faster? A single thought goes several more steps, while the steps themselves are nothing mysterious? What radically different, irreducible operations could there be? Compare the concept of self that is not developed in newborns, the executive function that is not developed in teenagers. – Same thing about ethics. Would something with better ethics operate in the same system of values, only be more consistent, more selfless, more heroic about it? What kind of values, or principles, could there be that would be incomprehensible to us?

8/23 Faces down which tears are running at the convention.

8/22 Watching the speech as we, like we often do, hold hands under the bed cover. J calls me my fellow American and says she has never watched anything of any convention.

8/21 Georgia, of course: a hornet of a neon kind of color crawling on the outside of the tinted car door window as we get to the office.

Watched the convention. At first I had it on my laptop and asked J if she minded if I left the audio on, then she suggested I’d put on the big screen.

8/20 Night flight to Atlanta. The full moon high in the east, and a veil of cloud below it of no discernible thickness, extending toward us but disappearing, the lights of the cities below unabated, unflickering.

8/19 What kind of nerd do you have to be to watch the Democratic National Convention? And what kind of nerd to speak at that Convention?