{"id":4235,"date":"2018-03-31T14:16:47","date_gmt":"2018-03-31T21:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/?p=4235"},"modified":"2018-03-31T14:16:47","modified_gmt":"2018-03-31T21:16:47","slug":"the-saturday-currents-or-why-care","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/31\/the-saturday-currents-or-why-care\/","title":{"rendered":"The Saturday Currents, OR: Why Care?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-4236\" src=\"http:\/\/www.dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/centaur-dining.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"400\" srcset=\"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/centaur-dining.png 1080w, https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/centaur-dining-300x200.png 300w, https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/centaur-dining-768x512.png 768w, https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/03\/centaur-dining-600x400.png 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I prefer pictures of food to pictures of myself, but, since my phone stopped charging and started shocking people (along with emitting a lovely BURNING smell) you get old stock footage or Photo Booth for the time being.<\/p>\n<p>And now, the currents:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Currently Reading:<\/strong> <em>Merida, Chasing Magic<\/em> (because I want to understand children&#8217;s books better, and I like the drawing of Merida&#8217;s awesome red hair which is an inspiration for my drawings of Serendipity) and <em>The Cognitive Neurosciences, Fifth Edition<\/em> (because I am working on a project on the engineering applications of consciousness research, and research on the neural correlates of consciousness has exploded in the last twenty years).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Currently Rereading:<\/strong> <em>The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings<\/em> (because Lent), <em>Planning Algorithms<\/em> by Lavalle and <em>Reinforcement Learning<\/em> by Sutton and Barto (because my robot navigation research is heating up and I want to understand the connections of reinforcement learning and classical planning, both of which have related but different ideas of value iteration; also because I&#8217;m planning on coding a small toy DQN to help me better understand the larger machinery I use at work).<\/li>\n<li><strong>Currently Dreading:<\/strong> Finishing my taxes, and finishing my edits on Shattered Sky by David Colby. Both so late! Sorry.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Currently Missing:<\/strong> My wife, on a business trip; my cats, at home waiting for me to finish up lunch, shift gears, and go home to go through The Tax Pile.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why do these things matter? Why should you care? I know some people could care less about the incessant Facebook updates by people saying where they are and what they are doing. Some people I know even call sharing updates humblebragging as a way of shitshaming people into shutting up. (Hey guys! You know who you are. Message from me to you: <em>Fuck off, kthanksbai<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p>Not me. I like seeing people say what they&#8217;re up to; I like the birthday wishes on Facebook or the posts by famous writers saying, &#8220;ugh, I can has no brain today, here is a picture of a cat&#8221;. I still remember after my Aunt Kitty died sharing on Facebook my last picture of her, and all the people I knew who showed up at the funeral only because I had posted it.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s human and natural to share with each other what we are doing. It lets each of us know that we aren&#8217;t alone dealing with the good or bad. If status updates aren&#8217;t the thing you&#8217;re into, get off Facebook or Twitter. There&#8217;s nothing wrong with that: I know many people have done it and have felt better for doing so.<\/p>\n<p>For me, there are so many people I only stay connected to because we have that instant means of connection. And (ssh: between you and me) there&#8217;s always my ulterior motive: the more I write, the better I get at writing, and the more I discover and perfect my own voice. And just about everyone I know who does that just gets more interesting the longer that they do it.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why I&#8217;m <strong>currently &#8230; blogging.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Hit save, then publish.<\/p>\n<p>-the Centaur<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I prefer pictures of food to pictures of myself, but, since my phone stopped charging and started shocking people (along with emitting a lovely BURNING smell) you get old stock&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[193,243,202],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-4235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-real-life","category-the-currents","category-writing","tag-we-call-it-living","ratio-2-1","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4235"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4237,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4235\/revisions\/4237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dresan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}