I am on a lakeside beach in northern Italy contemplating the clerical effort of being on the beach. Clerical as in administrative not ecclesiastical.
The packing, sure. Identifying the necessary equipment of clothes, whether beach shoes will be required, if a windbreak is necessary, games for the beach, games for the water, sunblock, towels, cool box, and so on. But packing is involved in everything.
Mainly: at the beach:
Ferrying from the car. Identifying a site, setting up base with towels, getting things out of bags, dressing, applying sunblock, putting different things back into bags, inflating inflatables.
When should we go for lunch? Does anyone want a drink? Someone will have to look after the bags. Or should we take the bags? There’s a fox a chicken and a bag of grain and now we want an ice cream so you go first and take the fox then leave the chicken but swap them with a soft-serve in a cornet with a flake.
Periodically moving the sun beds to remain in the (a) sun or (b) shade (delete as applicable).
Eventually going in the water.
There’s a lot involved.
I know people who are more practiced at going to and being at the beach, and you would imagine that this would mean a smooth and swift establishing camp and securing supply lines, but it turns out that complexity just increases, and there’s more cargo and more beach architecture, such that a swift splash around in the middle of the day is bookended by great logistical feats in unpacking and then the same in reverse.
I suggest that they enjoy it.
While I am trudging through the bureaucracy of applying SPF-50 and towers-of-Hanoi-ing my belongings to avoid filling my shirt with sand or getting pebbles in my shoes, circling the beds again and again to arrange them for optimum access to (a) sun or (b) shade (delete as before), picking up a book then diverted by needing to get something from a bag, diverted because someone needs a towel, a deep stack nested diversions all incomplete, oh now it’s time to move the beds again/reapply sunblock/and so on, and all I really want is a paddle and then an ice cream, the baroque performance that I regard as time-consuming drudge work interfering with and merely in support of my time at the beach, they regard these exercises as the actual point of being here.
The identification and eradication of clerical busywork was what led to the invention of the modern computing.
J C R Licklider, 1960, who, based on this insight, went on to fund Douglas Engelbart’s project in which he and his team invented the personal computer, as previously discussed:
About 85 per cent of my “thinking” time was spent getting into a position to think … my “thinking” time was devoted mainly to activities that were essentially clerical or mechanical: searching, calculating, plotting, transforming, determining the logical or dynamic consequences of a set of assumptions or hypotheses, preparing the way for a decision or an insight.
Preparing the way to get my gosh-darn feet in the gosh-darn lake, more like.
Yet who has more fun at the beach?
Me, unpracticed here, eyes on the distant prize, resentful of the continuous bureaucracy, considering ways to eliminate it?
Or that chap over there sitting paddling on his paddle board with - I’m not kidding - his dog, who you just know has enjoyed every minute of arranging all the things that got him to this point?
If you’re going to attempt to climb a mountain you should at least make sure that you enjoy the climb.
I enjoy the practice of writing. Some people do, some people don’t.
It doesn’t bother me whether I’m any good at it and while it’s a pleasant outcome if others enjoy reading what I wrote, that’s not the point either – I enjoy the lead-up, all the making notes, capturing ideas, thinking through some sequence or another, playing with words and rhythms etc, and especially and particularly where the process takes my own thoughts.
The benefit is precisely in the bureaucracy of it.
Yes I am once again holidaying in Europe, and once again being Europe-pilled by their long dedication to enriching everyday life.
UNRELATED SIDE NOTE ABOUT SHOOTING STARS:
A couple evenings ago, on the short walk between a restaurant and the car park, we looked up at the dark sky and saw a shooting star, actually what looked like a meteor breaking up – 20 to 30 seconds it took, crossing the sky, half a dozen or more individual fragments clearly visible to the naked eye, orange sparks travelling together and parallel streaks trailing behind.
We were spellbound. Open mouthed.
It was visible across Switzerland and Germany.
It was too slow for a meteor really. A rocket test? Probably a Starlink satellite deorbiting it turns out – similar high-up fireworks were seen in Brazil a few days ago and in Brisbane too apparently. So maybe that SpaceX launch a month or two back that didn’t quite lift its Starlinks to a high enough orbit, maybe that was it, and the satellites are being brought down one by one.
Does knowing what it was make it any less magical?
Partially it was a relief to be honest. It looked uncanny; my initial unwanted thought was that the fragment streaks had a nonzero chance of being a volley of ICMBs. I checked Twitter. The world we’re in.
So, phew, “just” a satellite reorbiting. The first I’ve seen and I’ll see many more of them in the future I’m sure.
There was intended to be an artificial meteor shower for the Tokyo Olympics (as previously discussed). There’s a new startup, Reflect Orbital, which can direct sunlight at your house after dark using its constellation of orbiting mirrors. I plan to use this to mess with the sleep of my enemies.
Unexpected lights in the night sky used to be seen as an omen and I think that’s the way I see this one too – the shooting stars over Italy mark a threshold moment. From today the sky is occupied, a threat, a resource, entertainment, whatever, but certainly not what it was, when I look up at the night sky what I see is different now.
I am on a lakeside beach in northern Italy contemplating the clerical effort of being on the beach. Clerical as in administrative not ecclesiastical.
The packing, sure. Identifying the necessary equipment of clothes, whether beach shoes will be required, if a windbreak is necessary, games for the beach, games for the water, sunblock, towels, cool box, and so on. But packing is involved in everything.
Mainly: at the beach:
Ferrying from the car. Identifying a site, setting up base with towels, getting things out of bags, dressing, applying sunblock, putting different things back into bags, inflating inflatables.
When should we go for lunch? Does anyone want a drink? Someone will have to look after the bags. Or should we take the bags? There’s a fox a chicken and a bag of grain and now we want an ice cream so you go first and take the fox then leave the chicken but swap them with a soft-serve in a cornet with a flake.
Periodically moving the sun beds to remain in the (a) sun or (b) shade (delete as applicable).
Eventually going in the water.
There’s a lot involved.
I know people who are more practiced at going to and being at the beach, and you would imagine that this would mean a smooth and swift establishing camp and securing supply lines, but it turns out that complexity just increases, and there’s more cargo and more beach architecture, such that a swift splash around in the middle of the day is bookended by great logistical feats in unpacking and then the same in reverse.
I suggest that they enjoy it.
While I am trudging through the bureaucracy of applying SPF-50 and towers-of-Hanoi-ing my belongings to avoid filling my shirt with sand or getting pebbles in my shoes, circling the beds again and again to arrange them for optimum access to (a) sun or (b) shade (delete as before), picking up a book then diverted by needing to get something from a bag, diverted because someone needs a towel, a deep stack nested diversions all incomplete, oh now it’s time to move the beds again/reapply sunblock/and so on, and all I really want is a paddle and then an ice cream, the baroque performance that I regard as time-consuming drudge work interfering with and merely in support of my time at the beach, they regard these exercises as the actual point of being here.
The identification and eradication of clerical busywork was what led to the invention of the modern computing.
J C R Licklider, 1960, who, based on this insight, went on to fund Douglas Engelbart’s project in which he and his team invented the personal computer, as previously discussed:
Preparing the way to get my gosh-darn feet in the gosh-darn lake, more like.
Yet who has more fun at the beach?
Me, unpracticed here, eyes on the distant prize, resentful of the continuous bureaucracy, considering ways to eliminate it?
Or that chap over there sitting paddling on his paddle board with - I’m not kidding - his dog, who you just know has enjoyed every minute of arranging all the things that got him to this point?
If you’re going to attempt to climb a mountain you should at least make sure that you enjoy the climb.
I enjoy the practice of writing. Some people do, some people don’t.
It doesn’t bother me whether I’m any good at it and while it’s a pleasant outcome if others enjoy reading what I wrote, that’s not the point either – I enjoy the lead-up, all the making notes, capturing ideas, thinking through some sequence or another, playing with words and rhythms etc, and especially and particularly where the process takes my own thoughts.
The benefit is precisely in the bureaucracy of it.
Yes I am once again holidaying in Europe, and once again being Europe-pilled by their long dedication to enriching everyday life.
UNRELATED SIDE NOTE ABOUT SHOOTING STARS:
A couple evenings ago, on the short walk between a restaurant and the car park, we looked up at the dark sky and saw a shooting star, actually what looked like a meteor breaking up – 20 to 30 seconds it took, crossing the sky, half a dozen or more individual fragments clearly visible to the naked eye, orange sparks travelling together and parallel streaks trailing behind.
We were spellbound. Open mouthed.
It was visible across Switzerland and Germany.
It was too slow for a meteor really. A rocket test? Probably a Starlink satellite deorbiting it turns out – similar high-up fireworks were seen in Brazil a few days ago and in Brisbane too apparently. So maybe that SpaceX launch a month or two back that didn’t quite lift its Starlinks to a high enough orbit, maybe that was it, and the satellites are being brought down one by one.
Does knowing what it was make it any less magical?
Partially it was a relief to be honest. It looked uncanny; my initial unwanted thought was that the fragment streaks had a nonzero chance of being a volley of ICMBs. I checked Twitter. The world we’re in.
So, phew, “just” a satellite reorbiting. The first I’ve seen and I’ll see many more of them in the future I’m sure.
There was intended to be an artificial meteor shower for the Tokyo Olympics (as previously discussed). There’s a new startup, Reflect Orbital, which can direct sunlight at your house after dark using its constellation of orbiting mirrors. I plan to use this to mess with the sleep of my enemies.
Unexpected lights in the night sky used to be seen as an omen and I think that’s the way I see this one too – the shooting stars over Italy mark a threshold moment. From today the sky is occupied, a threat, a resource, entertainment, whatever, but certainly not what it was, when I look up at the night sky what I see is different now.