#computer
Very tiring day today. Didn't feel as rested as well as I wanted so I wound up lamping in bed for 25, 30 minutes. Oy... Got ready, had some breakfast at Porter, realized I could've made a panini at the last moment, didn't take one to go. Got back up to dorm, made some coffee, and snacked on some more of the "piquant popcorn" that I've been all over for the past couple of days. It's so good. The flavor is mild and vaguely savory, which I think is why I keep snacking on it. I think yesterday I wound up eating a third of the bag. Today I kept myself in check much better. But the temptation was real. CMPM 80H lecture over Zoom was dry as ever, and my groupmates were especially quiet. I like to think they felt guilty for not doing anything this weekend, but honestly, they could easily care less. Left the Zoom call a bit early to pack up and head to Psyc 116. Psyc 116 was a real tough one. I had my midterm and a handful of the questions were quite difficult. I marked up my exam packet like crazy trying to make sure I was reasoning through the problems correctly. Wrapped up my exam 25 minutes before the allotted time ran out (by then, it was just me and two others in the room) and headed out. Struggled to stay awake for about 10 minutes before I sucked down some more tea. Just a couple hours later, at the beginning of my Psyc 123 lecture, grades for the prior midterm came out. 39/40. Psyc 123 lecture also felt a bit easier on the brain because we covered language — a topic extensively discussed and familiar to me from last quarter (Psyc 125), and before. Had dinner at RCC around 7:15 with Richard. Convo was a bit quieter than normal for the first hour because Richard felt anxious and demoralized trying to find housing, and even veered a little defensive when I asked him what he meant by stability/instability (at least as a basic followup question). He seemed to warm up more after I clarified I was asking about stability/instability with reference to war (nations that go to war are unstable because war is itself an unstable act, even in healthy nations), and we headed out. Looking for a place to talk we swung by his dorm lounge again and the i-Lounge and just sat down on the stair-ish area on the outside. The conversation by this point had turned to a world where consumer automation had successfully changed human society, but determining what human social relations meant (personality, sex appeal, good faith, beloning, etc.) was an open question. I kept trying to go at it from the perspective of a scientist looking in, I think, whereas Richard was much more willing to take the perspective of the person actually living in such a world. Of course, Richard is also a big proponent of consumer automation in the first place, so he can think about these ideas better. I think I was a bit tired from my midterm. To be honest, all I could really think of was how normal my understanding of sociocultural interactions with technology was. It's very mainstream. Socioculture and technology mutually constitute and irritate each other. We've always been with technologies. Many changes to our behavior and thinking tend to be incremental and hybridized, rather than wholly inert or wholly upheaved. Richard seems to have a sharp technical conviction for the future that is more occluded to me, I think. Got back to dorm around 9:30, about 2 hours of talking, and unwound the rest of the night.