Saying a lot to say nothing really gets a bad rap. Talking in circles
for a while is great even when, ultimately, it's only to prove that
there's not much to say in the first place. Because, really, there's
not all that much to say, anyway. And, the most interesting thing about
all this nothing is the only way to come to terms with it is the futile
act of attempting to symbolize it. If we don't do that. If we fail to
go through the motions of attempting and failing to symbolize the
something that is actually nothing, we might mistake it for something.
We risk pooling meaning behind shaky, fragile signifiers that we never
explore, never peel back the lid to see the emptiness inside. The idea that we always have to convey some datum, some rational and utilitarian fact with our speech seems noble on the surface, but that's the only place it can ever exist. It perpetuates shared delusion. It allows us to put too much faith into the fantasy that we have all this under control. What if the only real way to cast light on this lack is to dance around it? From this standpoint, saying a lot to say nothing is one of the most important things we can do.
Hansen Writing Ball This morning I switched on my monitor, noticed the LCD screens of my newly built mechanical keyboard--the Ergodox Infinity--go from "breathe" to a greeting with the qmk logo from its freshly flashed firmware, and then my monitor greeted me with its Emacs session from yesterday. Even though it was not my original intent when switching on and plugging in, I found that I couldn't resist continuing to type up the next logical part of a keymap I started working on for a different mechanical keying device: My long-finished but never customized RAMA m10. Ergodox Infinity (center) RAMA m10 (top right) As I finished joyfully typing the rest of LAYER1, on to LAYER2, it made me think of a story I once read about Nietzsche and his typewriter. I remember the striking thing about it, and probably the reason it occurred to me again in this moment, was how much Nietzsche wrote about using the typewriter and how he thought about how our tools and techni...
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