D&F 2-12-23
D&F 2/12/23
I'm finally bicycling again! After what felt like months, but was only a few weeks, I'm able to go outside and bicycle a little. I haven't done much in the way of serious miles or climbing (thanks COVID) since the start of the year, but this weekend included a nice little bike camping trip that did wonders for my spirits.
I want to do a lot more bike camping and bike-touring this year, even if it means a little less foreign travel. The joy of cycling to a far-off destination and pulling a tent out of a small bag on that bike is such a nice payoff. I would always rather spend 3 or 5 hours on a bike seeing sights than in a plane; cramped and anxious. If you have cool campsite or trip ideas, especially near the bay area, please let me know.
Other than the delight of being outside a bit again, my life is back to its regular schedule of watching films, reading books, and being a manager. I got a new keyboard this week, which I'm using to write this week's newsletter, and I wrote a short review of it. I joked with a friend that for managers, one of the best nerd hobbies to get into is keyboards, because we spend so much time typing messages to our coworkers. The other great hobby is anything that helps you vent stress.
Links
- This video posted a while ago but I keep re-opening it to laugh again. I think robots will eventually be an even greater part of construction, but someone has to teach them not to do consistently deadly things first:
https://twitter.com/hacer_kun/status/1616526468342743040
- Making an easy-to-read, educational graph is a challenging task that so many MBA and news-types utterly fail to master. This graph in particular is so bad it can only be a psyop. I really don't want to go to war with China, tbh. I don't care how many very large balloons they send over here, let's just agree that the planet is very small, and we should focus more on taking care of it and ourselves and less on dick-measuring fights over sovereignty. We all suck at government, ok?
- Amazon is quickly joining Google search in a race to the bottom of quality. These days if you try to buy a screwdriver or light bulb from Amazon, you're more likely to see results from companies called DYSYESLLHHHHSX than Makita or GE. Instead of worrying about large balloons we should perhaps instead question our purchases of cheap drop-shipped crap and the very large American monopoly companies that benefit from it.
- Disturbed by the accumulation of wealth at the top that enables ghouls to keep buying multi-million dollar properties while normal people are laid off as a thanks for increasing profits? Capitalism... is working. People raised between 1950 and 1979 benefited from a ton of socialist policy and government programs and entitlements, but have made it their apparent life mission to remove all these programs from ever helping anyone younger or non-white. While the policy of this newsletter is still a revolution that redistributes wealth and provides to each according to their need, in the meantime at least we can teach those around us that the only way forward is to erode capitalism to make way for a system that actually supports life.
- File this under: best thing I read this week. I love bowel guy. Lockwood has such a knack for storytelling, and weaving together disparate parts of her life with strange observations. I hope she writes more books soon, because Priestdaddy and Nobody is Talking About This were triumphs. If you haven't read anything of hers, I highly recommend looking through her LRB archive, or picking up one of the aforementioned books. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Closing
My energy levels are still pretty low, post-Covid, so I'll end this week's missive for now. With the weather looking more and more "spring-y" every day, I can't wait for the warmth and greenery that last month's rain promise. I'll catch you outside for a nice beer and basket of fries, space cowgirls~