Now that we're officially past 2019, I thought it would be a good time to look back on what my blog has produced this year. I'm calling this post "The Conflux" since conflux is defined as "a coming or flowing together, meeting, or gathering at one point," and this post is about all of my blog posts coming together. (Also, it's a pretty obvious pun on Chromatic Conflux.) Loosely inspired by Magic: the Gathering Head Designed and columnist Mark Rosewater's N Hundred and Counting series, I will look back on every post and give it a rating between 0 and 5 stars,* and a short description of what I went through in that post, including a notable quote from it, so you can get a feel for the post. Here's what each rating corresponds to.
Ratings
Oh, and if you couldn't tell–I'm getting random images off of Google Images for stars, just for extra fun. In chronological order, let's go! (I've also added the categories to help you decide whether to give the article a reread.)
Remember that thorns can be beautiful to find utopia.
I didn't actually write this thinking it would be my first blog post. I wrote it because I needed to write it. It captures something I truly believe in my heart. In fact, last week's post, "Someone's Treadmill," touches upon many of the same themes–I think that post captures the sentiment better, due to the fact that I go beyond my own intuitions, provide more examples, and expand more upon my claims–but that's the theme I believe in my heart. And it doesn't have the modern dressings I've added to my blog along the way, like images, section headers, and more than six paragraphs, so it's not a five-star post, but I'm still proud of it. It's brutally honest.
Puerto Rico is home to over 3 million Americans, compared to Wyoming's less than 600,000, yet Wyoming outnumbers Puerto Rico 3:0 in electoral votes.
I love ranting about the Electoral College, and this two-parter gave me an opportunity to express that. I make some interesting points, but I don't tell the entire story. In fact, a sequel to this series is in the works where I go deeper and look at who the Electoral College has actually benefited in the historical record. (Hint: The answer isn't "always Democrats" or "always Republicans.")
Remember to remember.
This post provides some nice description of my diary system, and how it works. It's a pretty cool system–I still do it–and it's effective. Though I will say that some of my descriptions that were on the vague side aren't as memorable. I doubt I would have recalled "The Egg" if this post hadn't mentioned it.
A property of this ladder which I noticed while writing examples is that while you're writing a meta sentence, you can't say its metalevel or its metalevel would be raised.
This is a post about meta, or things that refer to themselves. For instance, if you asked me, "What question should I ask you?" and I responded, "You should ask, 'What question should I ask you?'" that would be meta. But the gimmick was that every sentence in the post was meta, which constricted the writing and made it a bit inaccessible. I'm proud of my execution of the gimmick, but the post is a bit hard to get through.
After all, τ is defined based on the radius, which is more widespread than the diameter anyhow.
I compared circle constants pi and tau in this post in an effort to illustrate which is better. However, I think my post was somewhat unoriginal. Linked is a Numberphile video that's like my post, but better.
“Teach your children calculus And keep the planet safe Or feathered stones and empty bowls Will also be their fate” –Christopher N. Carlson
Every election year, California voters receive pamphlets with detailed descriptions of the ballot initiatives and candidates that are being voted upon. Well, as it turns out, some people run for the higher-ticket items, like governor and senator, as a complete joke. At the very least, they don't spell-check their candidate statements. I posted the 10 best here. It doesn't really have a moral, but it's an entertaining read.
"So, Parents for Safe Routes is a group of committed parents, neighbors, community members–you don't need to be a parent to be part of Parents for Safe Routes." –Jen Wolosin
For a school project, my partner and I made a video about someone who was bringing positive change to the community–in this case, Jen Wolosin, the founder of a group called Parents for Safe Routes, an organization lobbying for bike lanes and other technologies to make the city a safer place. It's a good-quality video, and I recommend watching it if you haven't already.
While a Tooth Fairy will give you cash, a Tooth Ouphe will simply take away your teeth.
The gag was that the post was 13 words, the same length as the title, but the last few words were at the very bottom and linked to an article about the ouphes, a race of creepy fairies. I just don't think it was a particularly funny gag. I'm not sure if this is two or one stars, but it wasn't great.
It was also hot and smelled like horse poop.
The first few paragraphs are a long tirade against waiting, airport security, etc. with views I'm not sure I 100% agree with, rereading them. For instance, we are working to reduce car crashes. In any case, read only if you enjoy long rants.
However, there is a redeeming quality. At the end, I posted some humorous photos from the trip to Washington, DC that served as the catalyst for the post. They're funny. Just skip to that part.
I have a need to, at some point, make something new, that no one has ever found before.
This was my favorite Chromatic Conflux post for a long time. The reason why is similar to "Utopia": it captures a meta-message running throughout my life, the need to escape echoes of what has done before and make something of my own. It's not perfect, as I think some sentences were worded a bit clunkily, but overall, this is a top-tier post and I highly recommend it to everyone.
Like dreams, instead of letting ideas go, you should think about them, and see if you can find a way to make them interesting.
Though I liked "Echoing" better than this post at the time, upon reflection, this post was more important. It was well-written, beginning my tradition of using section headers, and it started the era of Avocado vs. Cucumber, which is a game I've created about which I've written two more posts. If you haven't read this, it's perhaps my most foundational post to date, and it will illustrate the importance of milking ideas to their fullest potential.
May 8 - The Horse Path Effect [Philosophy] along with a StuFLaW
That would make a lot of residents mad since their house would be demolished, and people don't like their house being demolished.
I remembered this post as being kind of meh. I wrote it something like a month in advance, for instance, as I went on about better things like echoing and the game of Avocado vs. Cucumber. The Horse Path Effect is all about when ideas that are long-term good don't get done because they're short-term bad. It's well-written, if a bit stale. Sort of like when Sir Isaac Newton "discovered" the law of gravity. People knew that things fall towards the ground. But before Newton, it wasn't clearly codified. This post codifies the Horse Path Effect.
Oh, and StuFLaW, or Stuff From Last Week. It's a series where I post nuggets from the previous week. It updates on Tuesday when I have something to say. I haven't had much to say in awhile that hasn't gotten covered in the main post. StuFLaW is fine, but weird to read in the archives. It's very time-sensitive.
This is because people like to feel like they're making progress.
The Illusion of Movement is all about how good it feels to be making progress, even when that progress is ephemeral. The post is somewhat short and fluffy, but informative about the world, when it comes down to it.
That's a wrap on Part 1, since this post is getting long and we're only in May. Until next week!
–beautifulthorns
*I strongly prefer 0 to 10 scales over 1 to 10 scales. This is because, in the latter scale, people often rate things as a 5, thinking that's dead center, but it's not. This feeling is less pronounced for 0 to 5 scales vs. 1 to 5 scales, since I think people realize 3 is in the middle, but still. Also, if something is the worst, wouldn't you want to give it nothing?