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Pursuit of Joy, Fulfillment, and Purpose

Tag: identity

  • Skittle Factories, Monkey Titties, and the Core Loop of You


    TL;DR

    Parakeet’s viral essay uses a Skittle factory as a metaphor for personality and how our core thought loops shape us—especially visible in dementia. The convo blends humor, productivity hacks (like no orgasms until publishing), internet weirdness (monkey titties), and deep reflections on identity, trauma, and rebuilding your inner world. Strange, smart, and heartfelt.

    Some thoughts:

    Somewhere between the high-gloss, dopamine-fueled TikTok scroll and the rot of your lizard brain’s last unpatched firmware update lies a factory. A real metaphorical one. A factory that makes Skittles. Not candy, but you—tiny, flavored capsules of interpretation, meaning, personality. And like all good industrial operations, it’s slowly being eaten alive by entropy, nostalgia, and monetization algorithms.

    In this world, your brain is a Skittle factory.

    1. You Are the Factory Floor

    Think of yourself as a Rube Goldberg machine fed by stimuli: offhand comments, the vibe of a room, Twitter flamewars, TikTok nuns pole dancing for clicks. These are raw materials. Your internal factory processes them—whirrs, clicks, overheats—and spits out the flavor of your personality that day.

    This is the “core loop.” The thing you always come back to. The mind’s default app when idle. That one obsession you never quite stop orbiting.

    And as the factory ages, wears down, gets less responsive to new inputs, the loop becomes the whole show. Which is when dementia doesn’t seem like a glitch but the final software release of an overused operating system.

    Dementia isn’t random. It’s just your loop, uncut.

    2. Core Loops: Software You Forgot You Installed

    In working with dementia patients, one pseudonymous writer-phenomenon noticed something chilling: their delusions weren’t new. They were echoes—exaggerated, grotesque versions of traits that were always there. Paranoia became full-on CIA surveillance fantasies. Orderliness became catastrophic OCD. Sweetness calcified into childlike vulnerability.

    Dementia reveals the loop you’ve been running all along.

    You are not what you think you are. You are the thing you return to when you stop thinking.

    And if you do nothing, that becomes your terminal personality.

    So what can you do?

    3. Rebuild the Factory (Yes, It Sucks)

    Editing the core loop is like tearing out a nuclear reactor mid-meltdown and swapping in a solar panel. No one wants to do it. It’s easier to meditate, optimize, productivity hack your life into sleek little inefficiencies than go into the molten pit of who you are and rewrite the damn code.

    But sometimes—via death, heartbreak, catastrophic burnout—the whole Skittle factory gets carpet-bombed. What’s left is the raw loop. That’s when you get a choice.

    Do you rebuild the same factory, or do you install a new core?

    It’s a terrifying, often involuntary freedom. But the interesting people—the unkillable ones, the truly alive ones—have survived multiple extinction events. They know how to rebuild. They’ve made peace with collapse.

    4. Monkey Titties and Viral Identity

    And now the monkeys.

    Or more specifically: one monkey. With, frankly, distractingly large mammaries. She went viral. She hijacked a man’s life. His core loop, once maybe about hiking or historical trivia, got taken over by monkey titties and the bizarre machinery of internet fame.

    This isn’t a joke—it’s the modern condition. A single meme can overwrite your identity. It’s a monkey trap: fame, absurdity, monetization all grafted onto your sense of self like duct-taped wings on Icarus.

    It’s your loop now. Congratulations.

    5. Productivity As Kink, Writing As Survival

    The author who shared this factory-mind hypothesis lives in contradiction: absurd, horny, brilliant, unfiltered. She imposed a brutal productivity constraint on herself: no orgasms until she publishes something. Every essay is a little death and a little birth.

    It’s hilarious. It’s tragic. It works.

    Because constraint is the only thing that breaks the loop. Not infinite freedom. Not inspiration. Not waiting for your muse to DM you at 2 a.m. with a plot twist.

    Discipline, even weird kinky discipline, is the fire alarm in the factory. You either fix it, or it burns down again.

    6. Your Skittles Taste Like Algorithms

    The core loop is increasingly programmed by the substrate we live on—feeds, timelines, ads. Our mental Skittles aren’t handcrafted anymore. They’re mass-produced by invisible hands. We’re all getting the same flavors, in slightly different packaging.

    AI writing now tastes like tapestry metaphors and elegant platitudes. Your thoughts start to echo the style of predictive text.

    But deep inside you, beneath the sponsored content and doomscrolling, the loop persists. Still waiting for you to acknowledge it. To reboot it. To deliberately choose a different flavor.

    7. What to Do With All This

    Stop optimizing. Start editing.

    Reject the fake productivity gospel. Burn your to-do list. Read Orwell’s Politics and the English Language. Re-read Atlas Shrugged if you dare. Dance. Fast. Suffer. Change. And when the factory explodes, use the rubble.

    Rebuild.

    And maybe, just maybe, make better Skittles.

  • Checkmark Chaos: Woke Journalists’ Epic Twitter Meltdowns Exposed!

    As the Twitterverse continues to evolve, there’s a new phenomenon gripping the social media platform: “Woke Journalists” who are more concerned with their coveted blue checkmark and labels than actual journalism. They’ve taken to their keyboards to unleash a barrage of complaints and virtual tears about losing their precious status symbol. But is this really the crisis they’re making it out to be?

    Picture this: a world where journalists prioritize the truth and integrity of their work, not the color of a tiny symbol next to their name. What an incredible place that would be! Yet, it seems that for some, the loss of a blue checkmark is akin to an existential crisis. The horror!

    Let’s dive into the shallow end of the pool and explore the melodrama surrounding Twitter’s ever-changing policies and what they mean for our intrepid, blue-checkmark-seeking journalists.

    First, let’s address the checkmark. Twitter initially created the blue checkmark as a way to verify the identity of high-profile users, ensuring that followers were interacting with the real deal. However, over time, this simple verification tool became an elitist status symbol, causing envy and strife amongst the Twitterati.

    Twitter has since made some changes, and not everyone is happy. Some woke journalists are downright distraught over losing their precious blue checkmark – a validation that they were once part of an elite group. Are these journalists more concerned with their social standing than their responsibility to provide fair and accurate reporting? It’s a question worth asking.

    And then there’s the issue of labels. Some accounts were being labeled as ‘Government funded’ which has them up in arms. But let’s face it: labels are everywhere in our daily lives. We label our food, our clothes, and even ourselves. Why should those accounts be exempt from the rules that apply to the rest of society?

    If anything, labels provide transparency and help readers make informed decisions about the content they consume. Isn’t that what journalism should be all about? Educating and informing the public? Perhaps these journalists should take a moment to reflect on the real purpose of their profession.

    So, to all the woke journalists out there, shedding tears over lost blue checkmarks and labels: it’s time to put things into perspective. In a world filled with pressing issues and real challenges, maybe it’s time to shift the focus back to what truly matters – telling compelling, accurate stories that make a difference. The world needs more truth-tellers, not blue checkmark chasers.

    Now, pass the tissues and let’s get back to work.

  • Summary of the book Atomic Habits

    Atomic Habits by James Clear is a self-help book that focuses on how small, incremental changes in behavior can lead to significant improvements in one’s life. The book advocates for the adoption of “atomic habits,” which are defined as “habits that are small and easy to implement, but also have a compound effect on your life.”

    Clear begins by explaining the concept of “the aggregation of marginal gains,” which refers to the idea that small improvements in various areas of one’s life can add up to create significant overall progress. He then introduces the “1 percent rule,” which states that making a small improvement in a given area (e.g., exercising one percent more each day) can lead to substantial progress over time.

    Clear then delves into the four laws of behavior change, which are as follows:

    1. Make it obvious: Make it easy to see the cues and triggers that remind you to perform the desired behavior.
    2. Make it attractive: Make the desired behavior appealing and desirable.
    3. Make it easy: Reduce the barriers and obstacles to performing the desired behavior.
    4. Make it satisfying: Make the desired behavior rewarding and satisfying in and of itself.

    Clear also discusses the concept of “identity-based habits,” which are habits that are aligned with one’s values and long-term goals. He argues that it is easier to maintain good habits if they are tied to one’s sense of self and purpose.

    Throughout the book, Clear provides numerous examples and case studies of how individuals and organizations have used the principles outlined in the book to make lasting changes in their lives. He also offers practical tips and strategies for how to implement atomic habits in one’s own life, including how to set goals, track progress, and overcome setbacks.

    Overall, Atomic Habits is a comprehensive guide to making lasting, positive changes in one’s life through the adoption of small, incremental habits. It is an inspiring and practical read for anyone looking to improve their personal or professional life.

    Atomic Habits