Venkatesh Rao

zugzwangxiety: state of knowing you have to make a move, that it will certainly make your life worse in the short term with no guarantee of it doing any good in the long term, and just procrastinating as the clock runs out, making the situation ∂worse with every ∂tick anyway

∂worse/∂tick is my kind of idiot calculus... not quite a ticking time bomb but that's one clean-edged special case

People don't procrastinate empty. There's always some a cope activity too. In order of healthfulness of copes: 1. Displacement (vacuuming, cooking) 2. Humor 3. Meditation side-dishes like bonsai 4. Meditation 5. Actually doing the thing and accepting the worse state

Humor is the laziest cope that is aware that it is a cope, and is the level I prefer to hold my arrested development steady even as the whack-a-mole game against entropy goes steadily worse

The problem with all coping strategies with an internal, cognitive locus of response is that not all problems are psychosomatic or a case of referred pain. Sometimes you do have to make a move in the real world. Sometimes the infected tooth has to come out.

thoughts inspired by adam's post here on save rooms as a metaphor for covid coping... struck me that they are zugzwang zones... delay zones of non-zero cost in a deteriorating situation where any non-passive move will have make things worse faster https://twitter.com/Aelkus/status/1345858100625088514 …

like everybody else, there are problems I am... shall we say wishfully neglecting to think through/act on while covid is raging (some because I can't act, others because I don't feel like acting), all of which are getting ∂worse by the ∂tick of course... zemblanity ftw