So, more results from the no-poo front because I’m abandoning it. Because I’m slightly bored of talking about my hair, only bullet points. I’m mostly writing this down for later reference.

• hair did eventually stabilize without shampoo, but always felt slightly nasty
• vinegar is vital for shape, but fucks up my skin
• baking soda mostly fixes all problems, but is tricky to dose right
• no-poo hair dries very slowly, and almost requires sitting in the sun for a while or it will turn into a mess
• gave up, bought shampoo¹ again, happy now
• plan to use shampoo 1-2x / week, otherwise only water - so far, works
• no-poo could work if you have soft water and/or get the baking soda concentration just right and never use normal water (or have robust hair and skin²)

(And yes, I’ve tried all obvious variants of “use filtered / boiled / … water”, “change concentrations”, “use boar bristle brush” etc.)

Also, pomade is fucking awesome. Got myself some Royal Crown and that’s me all day:

I mean, sure, you can make a case that natural healthy hair is oily and flexible (and real paleo men hunt their own meat and fuck other oily men) but I definitely prefer it stripped of all oils (electrified feeling, whee!) and then forced into shape, and that has absolutely nothing to do with me being a neurotic control freak.

And because I’d pull a Dharma & Greg on pomade and marry it after the first date if I could, means hair length doesn’t matter much anyway, and I’ll just fix some irregular spots as soon as I find the time. For some reason, I’m now completely relaxed about the whole thing. Hm.

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Speculation: the trick to staying in (hypo)mania territory (and not slipping back into depression) is enjoying the constant drama and catharsis you go through. I’m not sure if it’s turning me into a melodramatic attention whore (and if that’s better than a whiny pessimist), but introspectively, it feels more like I’m (finally!) turning camp. I seem to get more stuff done that way, and at least half the time I’m calm and reasonable, (and the only crazy thing I do is write overly dramatic posts from time to time, not start flame wars, kill someone out of jealousy or invade Poland, you know), and I’m definitely enjoying it more.

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I note that I have accidentally tricked myself into a very regular exercise habit. I started using Fitocracy as a simple way to track basic fitness requirements - earn X points per week, nothing more. I started really low (like, 10 points / week) because I suck, and then one day, I went running on too much DXM for like 150 points and I couldn’t handle the (comparatively) huge surplus. So I changed my schedule to 100 (then 150) / week because I knew I could just run for about an hour once a week, roughly, and that’s it. Did that till April, then got lazy and didn’t want to run anymore.

So I had to deal with 10-20 points/day, and I looked for easy-but-efficient exercises, like crunches, and I’m still intending to run any time now, seriously, just you wait, but actually, I’m now at like 2x30 crunches every day (or something equivalent). Small and easy enough that I can do it even when tired and at 10 minutes before midnight (to not fail the contract), but demanding enough that I feel more energetic and make progress. (From barely 1x20 crunches to routinely 2x30.)³

That’s like the lamest actual victory due to laziness and economic pressure ever. Still, I’ll take it.

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Also, read more, freaked out more, started writing (what I thought was) a quick post about utilitarianism and putting benefit and harm on the same scale vs. different scales, but then half-way through, I noticed that the point was actually more interesting than I thought and then spent 3 hours thinking through what a multidimensional utility function that obeyed VNM would actually look like.

Then noticed that it looks exactly like Bayesian math, with each dimension acting as a moral prior, and that “probabilities are preferences” is not just an obscure thing, but really a deep similarity. (I also wondered if Pascal’s Mugging disappears when you use a proper utility function, i.e. one that sums to 1, like probabilities. Easiest way: imagine agent that use Solomonoff prior as its utility function, can it be mugged?)

And then I got pissed that I re-derived the position I wanted to argue against, and how dare the utilitarians be right in the end. So I’m confused now and need to think more.