Pick any

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I watched a video this morning, and I find the ideas expressed there quite interesting.

In essence, it’s about not agonizing over choices available and trying to maximize outcomes, because if the choices are similar enough for you to actually have to spend time on analysis, it’s likely that the outcomes of both choices will be identical, and you’re never getting back the time you wasted on trying to figure out which is the best.

I think I could find issues with this concept in spiritual and ethical matters, where choices actually have important consequences. However, I keep seeing people who agonize over all kinds of equipment – what do I get, is this the best, or should I get the other one?

I’ll tell you an example of how I solve those problems. Once I was trying to buy headphones, and since I didn’t know anything about those, I went online and tried to figure it out. Of course, it was a mess, because everybody has their favourites, so I basically found two mid-range models that people bitterly argue over back and forth, and bought one of those that I found in the local store. My logic was that if one was clearly better than the other, there wouldn’t be any arguments about it, so they are both obviously similar enough that whichever I get, it will be fine. So I bought the headphones and they worked great, and I still have them.

So, instead of trying to maximise the outcome by investing more time in trying to discern minute details between two almost identical options, I always choose to just be done with it and continue living my life. Essentially, the harder to discern which is better, the less it matters in any meaningful way, because if one was actually better, the choice would be easy.

Standing hay

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We went out for a hike up the local hill yesterday, regardless of the 35°C temperatures; we were just so incredibly done with being locked up under AC for three days in a row. Altitude helped somewhat, but it was still hot.

Dry grass and brush in golden sunlight is my favourite motive recently, and I wonder if there’s some symbolic meaning to it, or is it just aesthetics. The practical part of my mind is concerned with the fire hazard aspect of it, since it’s peak fire season and the island is covered in dry kindling.

Speaking of which, I watched footage from the Spokane, WA wildfire in America, which spread to the residential area and burned down 600-700 structures, and that’s data from yesterday morning, and the fire is completely uncontained. The worst part is seeing the houses burned down to ash, and green trees still standing around them, which means those wooden houses are by far more combustible than the vegetation, which is indeed an engineering anti-achievement, and the only other time I’ve seen anything like that was in the Los Angeles fire. Pro tip: in Europe, we stopped building houses from wood after everything burned down multiple times and we figured it’s a bad idea. We didn’t do it because we ran out of wood, but because we ran out of wooden houses.

Also, I heartily recommend just copy-pasting Croatian firefighting solutions instead of re-inventing the wheel. We made all the mistakes, corrected them, and now we have it down to science, and we are so much better at it than the Americans it’s not even funny, and we’re a small country of 4 million people. But I digress.

Biljana’s RF 100mm f/2.8 L macro just arrived:

That’s the first time that we had to replace an optically perfect lens (Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM) because of electronic issues – focus hunting, aperture opening randomly, IS glitching or not working at all… It’s a shame, really, but it’s just a matter of having to accept reality that it’s malfunctioning, instead of countering it with “but it made such great pictures”. I think it’s better to say that we got excellent use from it considering the faulty electronics, and we also got it very cheaply used, so it gave us very good use for the money. But trying to push it further would mean that Biljana would leave the macro lens at home because she wouldn’t want to deal with the glitchy behaviour. So, now she has a lens that should be optically identical, except for focusing even closer, and everything that was broken on the Sigma should now work fine. The last two times we took pictures of hermit crabs I was getting much better yield with the Sony 90mm G macro, simply because she had to wrestle with the broken autofocus on a moving target in the macro range. The fact that she managed to get some good shots regardless is a testament to her skill and tenacity, despite the lens.

Taken despite broken electronics.

I’m thinking what the lesson is. Perhaps it’s that you sometimes just have to solve problems with money, instead of trying to wrestle with broken gear and trying to push through the pain. It’s not worth it.

No tomorrow

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We’re having a combination of heat wave and peak tourist season here, combined with spending increased amounts of karmic stuff like there’s no tomorrow, because there likely isn’t.

As you can probably imagine, it’s not the most comfortable situation. But it is what it is. Someone has to do it.

The situation with the Campi Flegrei supervolcano got worse; there was an earthquake swarm with the strongest one being 4.7. Mind you, those are not tectonic earthquakes that relieve the tension. Those are volcanic; they are a sign that magma is creating pressure on the cap rock, and the hydrological layers closer to the surface. It’s cracking rock. Eventually, there’s a “boom”, and then a huge ash cloud happens. I’m keeping an eye on it because I live not that far.

It’s not just that; lots of volcanic and tectonic stuff seems to be increasing in activity all over the place, and it might have a common cause. I have theories, but those are cheap until there’s more evidence.

The reason why I’m looking into those is that the karmic spending and other things are going on at a pace that indicates a great rush. For instance, people are going through critical stuff they need to work through in order to understand things of great importance for them. I wouldn’t expect that to be going on unless everybody is about to say goodbye to their earthly existence permanently and in short order.

 

Status and recognition

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I don’t know if anyone even asks themselves why I’m writing this – about money, projections and desires. I mean, it’s obvious – it’s one of the fundamental problems everybody seems to have, and it’s recurring, and it never goes away for as long as you’re alive. It’s as pervasive as gravity. You can’t overstate it.

And yet, some people do overstate it, and make it into all there is, while others understate it and pretend it’s not a big deal.

Your place in society is important. It defines your level of access to resources. This, in turn, traditionally meant not only the difference between having food and shelter or not; it also meant the difference between being able to reproduce or not, and the difference between being protected at all cost, and being sent into the dark as the first one to die in a crisis. So, status symbols usually came with one’s position in society, and people learned to try to replicate and fake those, probably in order to confuse people into giving them more respect and resources than they would normally command. It works on people who don’t know you, but not on those who do.

So, obviously, everything that deals with your status in society is a matter of genetic programming, and you will instinctively try to make the best possible impression. However, overdoing it will ruin you and achieve the opposite.

To me, the entire thing is weird, because my instinct, and here I mean the true me, is to calm things down and try to be as understated as possible, in order not to intimidate or scare people. It took me a while to understand that here, in this body, in this world, this is a wasted effort, because most people won’t know or perceive anything about me anyway, and too much of an understated appearance is actually counterproductive. So, the thing about status symbols and perceptions is something I had to learn here, because I never had to, before.

Right reasons

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I’d just like to make one thing clear.

When one is suffering from material adversity, and they think material solutions are going to improve their situation, for instance they are cold during winter because they can’t afford heating, they are eating bad quality food or starving because they don’t have money, or they don’t have a good housing solution because they are destitute, they are more-less completely justified in their thinking. Money would indeed improve their situation, because the problem is caused by the lack of money. Materialism, in a sense of desiring things for their material properties, such as desiring a warm blanket when you’re cold or a good meal when you’re starving, will indeed solve a material problem. I’m not saying you should not desire material things for their material properties. It’s only reasonable to do so.

What I’m saying is, don’t desire material things for their abstract, ideal or spiritual properties, because that’s bullshit and a trap. Associating spiritual conditions with material conditions is a form of projection and bondage of spirit to the material world, and it’s a terrible idea.

Basically, it’s perfectly fine to want a car that is comfortable, fast, safe and durable. That’s what a car should be, as a physical object, and you’re perfectly reasonable to want one. The problem is when you associate ownership of a certain brand or model of a car with some spiritual state or achievement, and you think owning it will mean that you made it, that you attained success.

In fact, it’s going to have only its physical properties, and its brand-related social-status properties are going to have some effect, but never what you hope for or expect, and sometimes the exact opposite. Illusions of that kind are notoriously fickle.

Buying for the physical properties is, for instance, how I buy lenses. It’s a matter of how sharp, what aperture, how free of optical defects, how heavy, how well built, and how expensive. I make a list of all those properties and the winner is usually the lens that has the best image quality, but not at the expense of twice the mass and twice the money. It needs to be a reasonable balance of properties. Also, brand name doesn’t actually mean much to me. I owned so many brands of gear that I don’t care, but I will prefer the original manufacturer of the camera because of the possible incompatibilities of the electronics, because they are a thing, to the point that I recently had to replace Biljana’s Sigma 105mm EX DG OS HSM macro lens for Canon because the electronics were so glitchy or outright malfunctioning on her Canon RF system, that no amount of optical perfection could make up for the issues. It is one of the optically most perfect lenses I’ve seen, and it was replaced because it’s unreliable and possibly electronically faulty.

I don’t give a shit about mythical brands and their mythical properties. I care about tangibles, about actual performance and what I personally perceive of image quality. I care about the brand being well adopted in the professional circles, because then it’s going to continue to exist and the system isn’t going to die and force me to change it. Also, if it’s popular, the manufacturer is going to earn lots of money, and that means new good lenses and cameras. That’s why I avoid small exotic brands. Give me something that the professionals use as their bread and butter system; if it’s good for them, it will be good for me. And the ultimate test is going to be image quality. If I’m not getting the image quality I want, I’m going to dump it. If it works for me, I’ll be as happy as a hog in a field of corn.

And what brand name is on what, I don’t give a single shit. I used to have a Sony camera, Soligor macro extenders, Viltrox adapter and Canon lens as a singular working system. As long as I’m getting the results, it might be literally anything. Within reason, of course; I won’t buy something that’s better than what I need. Some specialist professional piece of gear that’s super expensive and designed for specialists with needs different from mine will be shrugged at and ignored. I won’t buy it just because it’s great, if it’s not great for my needs. I certainly won’t aspirationally buy Leica or Hasselblad just to look “serious”.

So, materialism, in a sense of buying physical objects for their physical properties and function. I heartily recommend it. Idealism, in a sense of aspirationally buying exclusive branded items for their elusive spiritual properties… fuck that.