I was sitting in the park the other day and I heard some kids riding outdoor exercise bikes. They were clearly a bit rusty, because the big metal resistance wheels made a nasty squeaking noise. But then I got to thinking, well, what if you made a noise deliberately? You could design the big metal wheel to resonate at a particular pitch, and with a few of them in a row tuned to different frequencies you might even get some nice music out.
It seemed like a cool idea, but one that wouldn't be very easy for me to try without investing in some welding equipment. I figured I'd just leave it in the unrequited pile, but then I realised that I could just make a simple version of it using much more readily available tools. So I put together the above demo; go ahead, you can click and hold the bikes to rev them up and listen to the harmonious sound of singing bicycles.
It worked in all the browsers I tested it in, though the Safari version is a bit glitchy. You can find the source code on Github and a standalone version on my demoserver. The parameters are customisable, so you can make your own version with different colours and tones if that's something you'd like to do.
It really is a good feeling to just go all in on a silly spur of the moment idea like this. I doubt that my singing bikes will ever actually get built, but I'm glad that, in my own way, I could make them real.
Imagine you're at a cafe, and someone brings you bad food, or bad coffee. Not uncooked or infested with insects or anything outrageous, just something that isn't very good. What do you do? Do you pull your waiter up and say, "hey, this food tastes bad and this coffee is burned"? Or do you keep quiet, chalk it up as an unfortunate event and make a mental note not to eat there again?
I believe people split quite consistently across those lines. Some people will generally kick up a fuss, and some people generally won't. I tend to fall into the latter category, unless something really really upsets me or I compel myself to do it for strategic reasons. It certainly doesn't come naturally. I remember once I got a takeaway coffee that was so burned I actually couldn't drink it, and I went back to have it remade. This experience was profoundly uncomfortable.
On the other hand, I know some people who would almost always speak up if they felt they weren't getting what they paid for, got bad service or were unsatisfied in any way. To them, it seems to be quite natural, not something they build up to or think about, just an immediate reaction to kick up a fuss. This thing is not acceptable to me, so I'm not going to accept it. Those people are jerks.
Jerks get, sometimes deservedly, a bad reputation. A jerk is someone who doesn't respect people, who is selfish or inconsiderate. A jerk is someone who only values their needs and ignores everyone else's. But I think it's worth breaking that dichotomy down: your needs and the needs of others are separate things, and they don't have to conflict. Really, there are two separate questions: does this person value themselves? And does this person value others?
Returning to the cafe, the two conflicting factors are that you have been served bad food, but you don't want to insult or inconvenience the staff by saying so. It sure would be nice if you just kept your mouth shut. But, hang on, what if this was a one-off accident, the staff normally make great food, and they'd be mortified to know you ate this mistake anyway? And even if they always make crappy food, surely you're representing the truth better if they know about it. I would argue it's a perfectly just universe where the people who make you bad food feel bad, or at the very least it's not your responsibility how they feel if that's the true state of the world.
Beyond any of that, though, where's your value in this scenario? This food is bad, and you paid for it on the assumption that it would be good. The people who made it have a responsibility to you; what makes you think you haven't earned that? What makes you think you don't deserve the thing you paid for? The standard you accept or reject is how you project your values into the world, and how can you say you value yourself if you're not even willing to stand for your own standards?
So I think there is a good and a bad kind of nice. The good kind of nice doesn't yell at the waiter because they got bad food. The bad kind of nice doesn't say anything at all. The good kind of nice is considerate of their partner in a relationship and tries to fulfil their needs. The bad kind of nice ignores their own needs and ends up unhappy, or doesn't assert their needs at all. The good kind of nice values others, the bad kind of nice doesn't value themselves.
Parallel to this, the bad kind of jerk is someone who devalues people, disrespects them, or ignores their needs. The bad kind of jerk doesn't care what happens to other people. But there's a good kind of jerk, too: someone who stands up for themselves and their values, who doesn't accept or endure a bad situation because they're worried it will inconvenience others. It should inconvenience others! If someone is not meeting your needs, they should know about it. They should feel the friction of their actions not satisfying your values.
Someone who stands up for what they want, who calmly but firmly asserts their values, does a service to themselves and others. By providing a truthful representation of what they expect, those around them can make better decisions about how to act, and it's more likely that their expectations will be met. This is the good kind of jerk, and paired with the good kind of nice it means someone who values themselves and others, someone who gets what they want and tries to help other people get what they want too.
I think the world would be much better if we had more good nice jerks.
I've been working on fixing my recent falling behind, and after some time trying to muddle through it I've realised a few things. Firstly, when I get into the red I think I need to return to green as soon as possible. Secondly, I don't think I should ever try to catch up on writing.
I originally said I was going to set a cadence of one birdpost and one regular post per day, but I ultimately found that unsatisfying and counterproductive. When I'm behind, being slightly less behind is hard to frame as a victory. I can do the work to fix things and make extra posts and so on, but none of that changes the feeling that I'm still behind. Being behind can be a powerful (negative) motivator, but only temporarily; once it becomes a permanent state of affairs it tends to just be demoralising. The other thing is it sets me up for "what the hell"-style problems; I'm behind already so missing another one doesn't seem like a big deal.
As far as not catching up on writing, what I mean is really the same thing I said in Atonement: what I planned to do is gone, and I need to stop pretending I can still do it now that it's in the past. I can do something else instead, and maybe that something else will be better than nothing, but it's still not the original thing. So if I try to write something that day and I fail, then I don't write anything that day. I can still post something in its place, birdposts, failure posts, whatever satisfies my desire to fill the space with something. However, the chance to write something that day is gone, and trying to write extra posts back in time is just confusing the situation.
So my resolution is that whenever I get behind I will attempt to get un-behind as quickly as possible by filling the intervening space with whatever, but I'll keep writing posts as normal while doing that. These two things are separate, and I think keeping them that way will stop them from interfering with each other; regular posts won't use the same resources as backfilling, and the writing habit can exist independently from the work of keeping the posts up to date.
Sorry if you're not into birds, I suspect there are a few more of them than you would like in my post history now, but things should be back to normal shortly.
