Cat Pea

My post describes a personal encounter with a harsh, pretentious teacher and the artificial feel of a school that lacks real learning, then argues that true education should be a serene environment where students follow their curiosity to become wiser individuals who help build a better world for future generations.

The author argues that a recent article claiming four myths about education—IQ, effective schooling, genetics, and culture‑poverty—has misinterpreted how learning works; they claim IQ is only meaningful in therapy, that true education starts early with curiosity rather than formal schooling, and that genetics can be altered by simple habits. They believe schools should provide safe homes and real work experience, not just drugmed lectures, and that self‑education through many well‑narrated books is the most powerful form of learning to lift individuals out of poverty and cultural stagnation.

The post recounts the author’s early fascination with pixels and step‑by‑step commands for computers, which later evolved into building web pages and interactive windows that respond to button clicks via event handlers. They describe how programming shifted from sequential line execution to modular functions, then to methods inside objects, leading to nested object structures (e.g., rooms containing doors and locations). The author emphasizes organizing related functions into “bags” or classes—such as a File bag—and introduces the concept of a radio object that broadcasts messages so other components can react without direct calls.

The post chronicles a week of creative tinkering in which the author blends three main strands—3D printing, digital art, and music production—to explore new tools and skills. Starting with an attempt to re‑mesh inexpensive 3‑d baroque models for jewelry design that proved too laborious for their modest resin printer, they pivoted to Krita’s reference image feature, creating hyper‑realistic stylizations before moving on to tempo manipulation in Audacity and ffmpeg to remix songs for shuffle dancing. The writer also tackles a website generator and builds a tiny window manager in Atom to better organize the many open tabs, then experiments with an Xterm.js terminal and CouchDB‑inspired API as part of a lightweight “little OS” that can launch a desktop switcher, code editor and beat sequencer clone (modeled after Tone.js). Using Casio piano samples they compose four‑tone melodies for dance tracks, reflecting on how the cumulative learning—from 3D printing to music theory—has yielded a versatile foundation for future projects.

I reflect on the everyday practice of writing poems and creating art, stressing that true work—whether crafted manually or produced by neural networks—must be authentic, persistent, and continually learned, as shown by examples from Bukowski’s daily output and my experiments with AI models.

The author reflects on the evolving ad industry and proposes that we can regain control over our online experience by using simple, self‑hosted tools—RSS‑like feeds and web scrapers—to feed a local server with content we choose. He describes how a lightweight software agent can crawl the Internet 24/7, filter articles into categories, and deliver updates without relying on AI or third‑party analytics, while still allowing us to opt‑in for ads, notifications, or alerts. Finally he encourages readers to learn Linux on single‑board computers, build their own agents, and take back ownership of their data.

The author reflects on a recent Christmas when they gave bags of peanuts to nearby squirrels—only to see them quickly burying and retrieving their treasures—and on this year’s attempt to hand‑feed them, which ended in a whimsical “metaphysical” mishap as the nuts vanished. They describe playful moments such as feeding from an “enormous box of emergency pandemic trail mix,” joking about selling squirrels like kittens, and even noting a lone peanut left at a fire hydrant that might be a gift or threat. Amid these anecdotes they admit a drunken squirrel in a “crab‑able” tree seems to hate them, yet the narrative ends on a hopeful note: squirrels remind us of dance, play, and the simple joy of holidays.

I write small holiday scripts with Greasemonkey (or Tampermonkey) to extend browsers, turning UserScripts into a bridge between my web‑based OS and external APIs; after experimenting with simple P5.js sketches like a screensaver I built a lightweight terminal that emits command events onto an OS event bus, letting a single script control many functions via HTTP requests or network messages—an approach that turns a basic “Potato” program into a versatile code base linking browser add‑ons, Android APIs and web services.

Each time we start a new program or lesson, we encounter an endless array of possibilities; the post celebrates this infinite creative space, noting that while industry patterns exist, forging your own path can reveal undiscovered routes. It highlights how small changes—like event listeners with wildcard strings or browser file‑upload features that allow directory selection—can unlock powerful automation and new applications. In sum, programming remains a “Wild Wild West” of invention where even the tiniest tweak opens up a universe of possibilities.

The author reflects on humanity’s origins as violent apes, links criminality to social neglect, criticizes political greed and war-making, and proposes self‑education schools to raise global wisdom for peace.

The post argues that the key to becoming a successful artist is learning to trace your first drawings—whether by hand or using tools like Krita’s reference overlay or a wall projector—and then practicing until you no longer need to repeat it. By tracing, you study form and develop “head space” for creative thinking; persistence in this practice gives you confidence and helps you feel at home with art. The writer claims that once you master the simple act of tracing, you’ll be drawn into the muses of all art forms—painting, poetry, music, etc.—and that art is an internal gift rooted in your heart, bone, and sinew. In short, tracing is the first step toward mastery; from there comes confidence, creativity, and a lifelong love of art.

The post encourages us to actively seek out non‑fiction books as a source of growth, noting that these works are meant to be heard and felt, not merely read, and that study guides can help unlock their deeper meanings; it stresses the importance of personal uniqueness on the “scale of genius,” and how we must carry meaningful tasks forward, whether for ourselves or for lasting contributions to the world, while also embracing challenges such as hiking the Appalachian Trail to break free from indoctrination; it reminds us that self‑care means not just following others but rising and transcending, especially for those in difficult neighborhoods, and urges us to keep mind and body healthy—avoiding long barber‑shop stays, drugs, and alcohol—while maintaining a strong connection with our elder selves, whose wisdom can be tapped at any time.

The post argues that true genius is an inner faculty that cannot be measured by tests, but must be cultivated through reflection and experience; it is often suppressed by poverty, ignorance, and ruling elites, which leads to a mental impoverishment that hampers growth. The author laments how modern education has become a commercial enterprise that merely projects an illusion of learning, thereby perpetuating the theft of genius across generations. To break this cycle, one must actively seek out revered books, listen to the wisdom of past lives, and stand on the shoulders of giants, thus unlocking one's inherited knowledge and enabling creative feats that elevate both oneself and others.

Before humanity’s first moon landing, we supposedly brought back an angry raccoon; geese prefer to walk across streets hoping for treats, while skunks unknowingly spray perfume as affection; sparrows are deemed the most intellectual birds, and opossums boast bushiest tails they shave for style. Pigeons were the first animals to profit from religion, coyotes are often loving rather than scary, and ducks rush because humans found them tasty. Hunters find deer easy prey thanks to mud‑and‑beer scents; seagulls enjoy beach tickles, chipmunks helped create early microchips with their nimble fingers; hawks appear bored and try to look scary, squirrels once fought knights by sneaking into armor; owls clear bowels before rain, and humans—animals too—write poems that aren’t always true.

The post argues that humanity is one family whose unity is fractured by poverty, which in turn hinders true education; without this learning we fail to agree on anything, allowing wars and nuclear weapons while neglecting the homeless. It stresses that real schooling is lifelong growth through books—stories of great beings across generations—which we must narrate, comprehend, and act upon so our collective knowledge becomes an operating system of perception, choice, and experience; only by becoming “great beings” who inherit and synthesize this wisdom can we repair the world and make it ever more beautiful.

The author argues that a successful workout hinges on the right music: a bass‑heavy, rhythmically tight track that pulls you into a “warrior trance,” allowing each lift to sync with one beat of the song. He recommends using portable headphones (e.g., TFCard Headphones) and building a playlist of energetic dance or electro‑swing tracks—starting with slower songs like Alan Walker’s “Alone” and moving to high‑intensity interval tunes such as “Dance Monkey.” Rest should be brief (about 25 seconds) between sets, after which you switch to a new track. He stresses the importance of staying in rhythm, wearing gloves for confidence, and consistently adding fresh songs to keep the trance alive throughout your training session.

The post proposes a new way to build web‑based virtual desktops by treating full‑screen windows as independent “desktop” environments, rather than just document layouts. It argues that designers should let users hit F11 and enter a power‑user mode where icons launch separate desktop instances, keeping windows open for future work instead of closing them. The author then links this UI concept to functional programming techniques: middleware stacks in Express or Koa can be visualized as connected functions, with each function represented by a window on the virtual desktop and linked by SVG lines. By treating functions as modular components that share context, developers can build programs visually, test them, and allow community‑driven upgrades—all while keeping the overall structure simple and avoiding the clutter of traditional document‑based web design.

I was navigating an industrial area when I made a right turn that seemed perfect to me as a programmer, yet the car behind followed too quickly and also turned in haste. The whole episode highlighted the contrast between algorithmic precision—where every move is calculated—and ordinary driving habits, where people often make decisions on instinct rather than calculation. As we maneuvered through successive turns, I felt like an NPC learning the right-hand rule while my follower’s timing and confidence reflected a non‑programmer’s approach. The scene ended with us both arriving at the same road after a series of algorithmic turns, leaving me to wave off that we had “tested an algorithm” together.

The post is an informal reflection on speculative thinking in science and culture, beginning with a light‑hearted example from Seth Shostak and moving through anecdotes of radio building, cold fusion, and movie scenes that illustrate how ideas can spread like cults. It cites the 1989 Cold Fusion announcement to show the need for peer review and reproducibility, then gives personal stories of psychic readings, fairy tales, and radio‑static dreams to underscore how unverified beliefs flourish. The author discusses ufology as a pre‑religious phenomenon that can launch new cults, and brings in Jill Tarter’s SETI remarks and Carl Sagan’s “Contact” reference to argue that UFO enthusiasm is an art form that inspires questions, inventions, and poems. Finally, the piece speculates on Oumuamua as possibly a starship or interstellar monument, suggesting it might carry signals or a plaque to announce humanity’s presence, and ends by noting how rocks traveling between Earth and Mars could spread life‑building chemicals across the universe.

After reflecting on his school experiences and self‑education mishaps, the author introduces **Oumuamua**, a lightweight in‑memory database inspired by CouchDB and EventSourcing that stores every revision of each document using GUIDs and alphabetical merging to resolve conflicts. He explains how the project arose from experimenting with Redis, Memcache, RedBeanPHP, and PouchDB, and describes its design: automatic document IDs, versioning without mutexes, and a simple table‑like classification scheme. The post concludes by noting his iterative learning process and how Oumuamua embodies reliable, conflict‑free data persistence for browser applications.

Ineffective schooling—characterized by uninspired teachers and fragmented lessons—has left many learners with little real knowledge; the text argues that true learning must come from self‑directed study, creative culture, and a global shift toward intellectual curiosity, so that generations can build schools of genuine education, achieve personal greatness, and ultimately overcome poverty, crime, and war.

In this post the writer likens software bugs to “mambas”—snakes that always strike in pairs or more—and explains how a seemingly small fix can trigger a cascade of new errors. He recalls learning as a child that mambas appear together, then draws the parallel to programming: an end‑user sees a single bug, but for developers it often spawns additional ones when you patch it, just as a first mistake (e.g., a stray colon in YAML) can cause a generator crash and lead to further problems like missing audio files or IPv6 upgrades that require extra code. The post illustrates this cycle with examples of how one correction can rename directories, change timestamps, and ultimately leave the developer “mamba‑ridden,” highlighting the relentless, compounding nature of bugs in software projects.

The post argues that in many physical activities—from dancing and martial arts to shooting, fishing, key‑inserting, running, bodybuilding, poetry recitation, and even programming—repeated practice builds “body memorization” or muscle memory so that movements become automatic and can be executed without conscious thought; with enough persistent effort the body learns to adapt, making tasks easier over time.

The post explains how weight‑lifting can be viewed as a structured version of everyday activities such as walking or jogging for long distances, noting that astronauts rebuild muscle through hill climbs rather than heavy sets and that even very heavy people develop muscle from repeated motion; it recommends starting with light dumbbells (3–5 lb per hand), moving them to the beat of your music, adding overhead lifts, and using interval timers or audio‑editing tools like Audacity or ffmpeg to sync beats for efficient workouts; it also stresses a balanced diet rich in foods such as shredded lettuce and low in sugar, emphasizes proper rest intervals, and suggests adding shuffle‑dance movements with dumbbells while wearing a neoprene belt to keep the back ready for future sessions.