Portfolio Progress
Morning routine and email processing—entertaining Portland invasion video from Ian, sodium battery prompts, book on aging reference from Rajeev, Nate Hagen video from Bob Taylor. Cliffe no-show at 10am. Factor meal. Using The Brain as OneNote replacement—OneNote doesn't work well on MacOS. Leland's laptop work, setup Foo Minecraft server. Noon to 2pm Planet Fitness and errands. Photo work highlight: portfolio book of physical prints coming along well. Garage work during Lightroom processing. More photo work until 5pm. Minecraft progress stymied by reworking the warehouse. Yoga. Greatest Controversies explored Revelation and apocalyptic literature—genre conventions, barely canonical, two millennia of failed end-times predictions. Star Trek featured ESPers. Hogan's Heroes involved bombing ball bearing plant.
Portfolio Progress
October 24, 2025
Morning routine and cleanup until around 8:30, then dove into email processing until 10:00. Ian sent an entertaining video about the Portland invasion—Trump sending ICE forces there for no good reason, another example of federal overreach and political theater that accomplishes nothing constructive. He also posted more about sodium batteries, continuing to push on that technology's potential. Rajeev sent a reference to a book on aging: From Strength to Strength by Arthur Brooks. Worth investigating—aging well is increasingly relevant. Bob Taylor forwarded a Nate Hagen video that I didn't completely align with. Sometimes the framing or conclusions don't quite land even when the underlying data is interesting.
Was supposed to meet with Cliffe at 10am but he didn't show up. These things happen. Fixed a Factor meal instead—convenient when plans dissolve unexpectedly.
Spent time using The Brain as a replacement for OneNote, which doesn't seem to work well on MacOS. The Brain is working well so far—better platform implementation than OneNote's MacOS version. Continued working on Leland's laptop, got the Foo Minecraft server set up for him.
From around noon to 2pm: Planet Fitness followed by running a few errands. The kind of mid-day break that divides the day into distinct chunks—morning administrative work, midday physical activity and logistics, afternoon productive work.
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| Current work out my window |
The photo work included working on a book of physical prints—a nice portfolio book that's coming along well. There's something satisfying about seeing images transition from digital files to physical prints, arranging them in sequence, building a cohesive body of work you can hold and page through. The tangible result of months of shooting and processing. This was the highlight of the day—seeing the portfolio take shape, making decisions about sequence and selection, watching the book become real.
Played Minecraft afterward. A little stymied by reworking the warehouse—built something that needs fundamental changes, which is always more frustrating than building fresh. Sometimes you have to tear down what you've done to do it properly. The virtual world mirrors physical construction that way: sometimes the foundation isn't right and everything built on it needs revisiting.
Went to yoga. The regular physical practice that keeps the body functional and reminds you that movement matters.
Greatest Controversies tonight was about Revelation and related apocalyptic works. The book of Revelation—visions of the end times, cosmic battles, symbolic beasts, divine judgment, new Jerusalem descending from heaven. It's strange literature: vivid imagery, coded references, prophecies that have been interpreted countless ways across two millennia.
Revelation wasn't unique. The early Christian era produced many apocalyptic texts—visions of the end, revelations about heaven and hell, prophecies about final judgment. Most didn't make it into the canon. Revelation barely made it in itself, remaining controversial for centuries. Church fathers debated its authenticity, questioned its theology, worried about its strange imagery and cryptic symbolism.
The apocalyptic genre had established conventions: visions granted to a prophet, angelic guides explaining mysteries, symbolic animals representing kingdoms, predictions of cosmic upheaval, final victory of good over evil. Revelation follows these conventions closely. It's a product of its time and genre, not a unique divine revelation but part of a literary tradition of apocalyptic writing that flourished when people felt powerless and looked to cosmic intervention for vindication.
The coding made sense historically: writing under Roman persecution, using symbols to discuss Rome's eventual fall without directly naming Rome. The beast, the whore of Babylon, the numbers and images—these were transparent to contemporary readers who understood the references. Two thousand years later, removed from that context, people read Revelation as predicting current events, finding their own era's fulfillments of ancient symbols originally meant to describe first-century situations.
The interesting pattern: every generation of Christians since Revelation was written has believed they were living in the end times it describes. Every generation has found contemporary fulfillments of its prophecies. Every generation has been wrong. Yet each new generation repeats the pattern, convinced that now—finally—the prophecies are coming true, despite two millennia of failed predictions.
This connects to the broader pattern emerging across these Greatest Controversies episodes: early Christianity wasn't what modern believers think it was. Anonymous gospels falsely attributed to apostles. Epistles forged in apostles' names. Apocalyptic literature following genre conventions, barely making it into canon despite centuries of debate. Theological positions won through political victory rather than divine guidance. Documents selected based on which faction prevailed, not on authenticity or divine inspiration.
After Greatest Controversies, watched Star Trek—the episode about ESPers, people with extrasensory perception and telekinetic powers. Then Hogan's Heroes, which featured indirect manipulations to successfully bomb a ball bearing plant. The usual evening progression from weighty historical analysis to lighter entertainment.
The day had productive stretches and a real highlight. The photo portfolio book is coming along well—seeing months of work take physical form, making selections and sequences, watching it become tangible. That satisfaction of creative work moving from digital to physical, from process to product. Email processing surfaced interesting references and ideas worth following up on. Workout and yoga maintained physical capability. Minecraft provided both satisfaction and frustration, the way creative projects do when they require rework. Garage time accomplished necessary tasks.
The Revelation discussion adds another layer to the accumulating evidence about early Christianity's actual nature. Not just forged documents and anonymous gospels, but apocalyptic literature that followed established genre conventions, barely made it into canon, and has generated two thousand years of failed end-times predictions. Looking closely reveals human religious literature, not divine revelation—texts produced by people in specific historical contexts, following literary conventions, selected through political processes, interpreted endlessly to support whatever contemporary beliefs people want to justify.
The practice continues: examining what texts actually are rather than what tradition claims they are. Understanding Revelation as first-century apocalyptic literature doesn't destroy its value as literature or its importance to Christian tradition. It just refuses to treat it as something it isn't—refuses to read first-century coded references to Rome as predictions about twenty-first century events, refuses to treat genre conventions as unique divine revelation, refuses to ignore two millennia of failed end-times predictions by people who were equally convinced their generation was the one Revelation was really about.
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