TIL this great word:

This is pretty much what I do for a living, but with STEAM ideas. I meet-cute with them, become infatuated, convince a publisher or foundation or brand to pay me to develop that infatuation into a full-blown stalker-style fascination/obsession, and then package it up in words and pictures so that someone else can open it up like a little present and (ideally) experience some of that limerence too.

So, yes, it’s basically “gee whiz” by a fancier name. As I get older I’m having issues with that—like it’s somehow too pat or superficial a way to spend one’s professional energy, even though icons/personal-heroes like the Eameses, {whoever created 3–2–1 Contact}, James Gleick and Jonathan Corum are existence proofs to the contrary—but maybe I’ll explore that ambivalence in later newsletters.

Anyway: The few/proud of you who subscribe to this newsletter have signed up for my limerence care-package service. I’m excited about the first issue, which I’ll be sending out in mid-October when a couple of my current projects go live. But for now, this is a little preview—not of my own stuff, but of some stuff that gives me a similar feeling of infatuated-fascination. (Infasctuation? No.)
 

My new favorite podcast: Robot or Not

Each episode is simple: two dorks engage in a lively 1–3 minute debate about whether or not something is a robot. That’s it. Is the Canadarm a robot? How about KITT from Knight Rider, or the trains in “Thomas and Friends”? What about love?

It’s so great. Why? Because it’s about one of my favorite things: metaphysics. Sorry if that makes you want to throw up in your mouth, but I am the son of two librarians and a dictionary-definition nerd (see diagram, which only a nerd like me would ever bother making) and sussing out the fuzzy boundaries of abstract concepts, definitions, and categories is my catnip. 


Basically, “Robot or Not” is a philosophy lesson disguised as a silly pop-culture fart. 

And it’s quick! They get in, they get out. No pinning the butterfly. It makes me think I ought to try making a low-stakes micro-podcast of my own...

Thus endeth this preview issue of my newsletter. Was it too long? Where do you fit in the Venn diagram (judges will accept "nowhere" as an answer)? 

Talk to you in October,

-J