Hi friends,

On my last night in Bengaluru, I took a break from filing out expense reports to write about my week there. By the way, the alternative title I considered for this post was "Hustle and honk" because a coworker who wistfully told me about the changes to the city over time said "Now it's all hustle and honk" and I thought that was great--but I also thought he might feel weird if he found my blog post and his words quoted there, so I'm only telling you about it in this email intro, because you were cool enough to sign up for emails about my blog.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Dispatch from Bengaluru on my blog instead.

By the way, if you think there's someone who would enjoy my blog, please feel free to forward them the newsletter or share the blog post link. Even thought the email sometimes has little secret extras, neither my blog nor this newsletter is a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

I'm sending this email from an airplane. I'm somewhere over the Pacific Ocean right now but thanks to the magic of satellites, I can still send information packets all over the world, if a little more slowly than usual. Neat, huh? (So no images this time. I tried to add some but the upload times out.)

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Dispatch from the road on my blog instead.

By the way, if you think there's someone who would enjoy my blog, please feel free to forward them the newsletter or share the link to the post. Except when I accidentally forget to publicize it, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

Lego annouced a Twilight-themed set this week, which inspired me to write about my long-held opinion: Bella/Truck is the real romance in Twilight.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Bella and her truck on my blog instead.

By the way, if you think there's someone who would enjoy my blog, please feel free to forward them the newsletter or share the link to the blog. Unlike the Cullen family's vampirism, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

Is it better to keep your resolutions secret or commit to them publicly? I try to work it out in this week's post--at least for myself.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Secret vow or public proclamation on my blog instead.

By the way, if you think there's someone who would enjoy my blog, please feel free to forward them the newsletter or share the blog post link. Unlike some New Year's resolutions, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

Happy New Year! I'm going to try something a little different. Instead of sharing just the intro to my blog post in the newsletter, from now on I'll include the entire post. I don't know how well that will work, especially with footnotes, so each email will also include links back to the blog. Let me know how you like it. You can just reply to this newsletter and I'll get your email.

The New Year's Eve walk

Hi friends,

I was going to write about the books I've read this year but instead I've written about one sentence from a book I haven't yet finished, Measure What Matters and the business business business idea that action is more important than thought.

Ideas aren't easy

Hi friends,

It's the sleepiest time of the year, so this week, I bring to you some soothing pictures of decorative mushrooms and my napping cat.

Yule nap time

Hi friends,

I started the week thinking about folk heroes, the way that people who commit crimes might nontheless capture the popular imagination and be valorized as heroes. There's been a bit of hand-wringing in the discourse about how that's bad and a murderer is no hero. So I started thinking, yeah, about that--in the stories we tell, what is a hero?

What's a hero?

Hi friends,

I wrote about current events. Kind of.

The state monopoly on violence: How it works and how it stops working

Hi friends,

This is an art PSA for people in the San Franciso area. You might think "peak season" is for picking apples and leaf-peeping, but it also applies to art installations.

It's peak Turrell skyspace viewing season: Go see The Three Gems by James Turrell at sunset

Hi friends,

Some imagined technologies become so common in science fiction that they fade into the background, like faster than light speed space travel or sonic showers. Today, I try to trace the origin and development an imagined technology that's not yet fully assumed into science fiction canon: artificial wombs.

Artificial wombs: A brief history of ectogenesis

Hi friends,

It's another watercolor painting episode. I hope you find it as soothing as I find painting watercolors.

Plein air in San Francisco: Hills and the ocean

Hi friends,

There's a book by the poet Adrienne Rich called Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. Maybe it's the tendency to utter quips like that that caused Plato to kick poets out of the Republic. Even if no poetry will serve, there is certainly still consolation to be found in philosophy.

The consolations of philosophy

Boethius wrote The Consolation of Philosophy in 523 while in prison awaiting execution. In it, Philosophy, personified as a woman, visits him in his prison cell and talks him down from his despair. She explains where true happiness is to be found. Not with fickle Fortune, who has abandoned him, but with constant Philosophy and virtue, which no one can take from him. It's a wonderful book, but I'm not mentioning to suggest this amazing work of early Christian Neoplatonism is the book for the moment. Nor do I mention it just because Boethius was an incredible badass who stuck to his principles, though he was!

I mention it because when I woke up on Wednesday and checked the news, I thought well, fuck, and what now? And very soon after that I also thought, how can I make sense of this? And how can I deal with what happens next? Then, very like Boethius, I took consolation in my philosophy, which is that knowledge is power. I always think, if only I knew a little bit more, I could surely figure this out. Or, if I could just understand it, maybe I could deal with it better. That kind of thinking can be a trap--it's how I get stuck reading low quality hot takes and other people's panic just to get some news. But there are some things I've read that helped, and so I'm going to suggest them. Read more...

Hi friends,

This election day, San Franciscans will be voting for a number of local measures in addtion to the big national elections. Prop K is one of them and if passed would turn the Great Highway into a permenant park. This week, I wrote about why I think that's a good idea. (Election day in the US is November 5, in case you missed it.)

Yes on K: Turn the Great Highway into a great park

Hi friends,

In this week's post I write about the kind of stories I like to read most, and wonder if--as I seem to be running out of them--if this is a sign that I should try writing them.

Cosmic horror but make it funny: I'd also take planetary romance that's a also romance-romance

Hi friends,

I accidentaly wrote about World of Warcraft. And then I accidentally forgot to sent you an email to tell you I wrote about it, until today.

Blow your cooldowns. A.B.C.: Always Be Comparing

Hi friends,

Some questions came up after last week's senior cat performance review, so I wrote an FAQ this week.

CAT FAQs: Frequently asked questions about my cat

Hi friends,

I wrote a performance review for my cat. As a senior cat, she had a pretty high bar to meet in her first 90 days, and I wanted to make it clear to her that she did.

90-day performance review for a senior cat: Her job is cat

Good evening, Shinjuku. In a few days, you will reach your 3-month mark in this household, and so I would like to take this time to deliver your formal 90-day performance evaluation. As a cat, you may not be aware of the passage of time in terms of calendar days. You also don't know how to read, so I will provide this review to you verbally, and at the end of the session I will print a copy and crumple it into a ball so you can enjoy it later. Neither reading nor using a calendar are expected skills for your role, and I mention these things only by way of introduction and to set your expectations for the process that will follow. Read more...

Hi friends,

I have questions, but not a lot of answers, I'm afraid. Join me for a meander in anti-nostaligia.

Why does the mall feel so bad? Or, travels in hyporeality

Hi friends,

This week, I want to share some watercolor paintings from the road.

Plein air in New England

Hi friends,

Do you have meals that you always eat on certain days of the week? I do, and wrote about one of them.

Fancy Friday bread and cheese

Every Friday, Paul and I have bread and cheese for dinner. The tradition started when I used to go to pillow fort yoga after work on Fridays, and Paul would meet me on the way from yoga to pick up the bread and cheese from Whole Foods for an easy dinner together. We were doing it for a while when I learned this kind of thing is called a charcuterie board. The tradition has morphed over time. Pillow fort yoga is no more and we both work from home on Fridays. When we finish work, we walk together to a nearby corner grocery, wrapping up the workweek. Read more...

Hi friends,

I wrote about reading, and the way turning reading into achievement or virtue leads to strange ideas about fake and real reading. It's a beef I've had for a while (a long, long while), though some recent conversations about fake writing helped me put the ideas together.

What counts as reading? Reading rainbow trout entrails

I was forbidden to learn to read before I went to school, lest I get too bored in the initial years, become habituated to goofing off, and fail to develop good study habits. This, the family legend goes, was the fate of my uncle, who, being the youngest child, learned to read from his siblings and by the time he went to school, had nothing to learn, and became a poor student as a result. He got so bored he could never focus. Solution: no reading for preschool AK! My parents refused to teach me. My grandparents were forbidden. Do not teach AK to read until it's time!

Hi friends,

I had to relearn the lesson: Schedule time for maintenance or the machine will schedule it for you applies to our bodies. But this isn’t really a post about self care. This is a post about making a joke warning sign compliant with ANSI and OSHA standards.

Unscheduled maintenance

I finished a big project at work and immediately came down with a cold. I overworked the last two weeks and I think I was more vulnerable to picking up an illness as a result. I haven't overworked to this level in years and had to relearn my lesson, I guess. Schedule time for maintenance or the machine will schedule it for you applies to our bodies.

You might have seen one of these warning signs, or at least a photo of them.

Hi friends,

I saw a bunch of raccoons and I have photos! They are pretty cute if I say so myself so check out this weeks post for your daily dose of bold baby raccoons. (If you are scared of raccoons this is probably not the post for you.)

North Lake raccoons

Isn't this where we saw a bunch of raccoons in 2020, one of those times it was really hot and we came to park? And there were way too many people who didn't get the concept of social distancing, which maybe didn't matter so much outdoors anyway but we didn't know that then, and the raccoons were also definitely way too bold and willing to get near people. Yeah. I remember that.

Hi friends,

I wrote about why it can be hard to know what you want and to ask for it, both on the internet and in person. Yes, this is a post about desire. Desire for a specific kind of very nerdy jokes.

Seeking the Big Otter

One thing I've missed since I moved from Twitter to Mastodon is a certain strain of hyperintellectual shitposting. And, it's not like I could go back to Twitter and read it. Most of those people aren't posting anymore. There are plenty of very sincere Marxists on Mastodon, and many lovely anarchists, but people who were brain-poisoned in graduate school into finding critical theory hilarious seemed to be rare. I mean, they're always rare, but I could usually find them. Then, one person I follow posted this incredible joke, "columbo is the lacanian Big Other which is why he is so psychically effective against criminals."

Hi friends,

Have you been watching the Olympics? I've been watching a lot. My household got a month's subscription to a streaming service just so we could watch all the sports, not just the American highlights. OK, not all all the sports, but a lot of them including some sports that don't get much airtime, like my favorite, women's weightlifting.

Spoiler warning: This post has spoilers for the women's weightlifting 49kg weight class at the 2024 summer Olympics.

Women's weightlifting at the Paris Olympics: In which I nerd out about the vicarious thrill of moving iron off the floor

Hi friends,

Last week I wrote about self-expression in poetry, and this week, I wrote about it in painting. Among other things, I wrote about how painting can be a form of externally-focused meditation. I'm really happy with how this post came out, though it's difficult to summarize, and I hope that you'll check it out.

Self expression in painting: The allure of emotional watercolor

Unlike when I write poetry, when I draw or paint, I don't care all that much about the outcome or the effect of the work on others. I enjoy the process and sometimes I enjoy the outcome. It's possible I can be so free and easy about it because I'm not very skilled, so I can't actually control the outcome anyway.

Hi friends,

Somehow, I've never written about my personal philosophy of creative expression before. I started thinking about it because of watercolors, but this first part is just about poetry.

Self expression in poetry: There is no outside the self

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post which, while inspired by my cat, is actually about what's wrong with the internet.

The internet of cat slop

I got a cat recently and I'm still figuring out how it works. So, I've been doing a lot of internet searches for things like:
- Why does cat meow
- Cat meows loud at night
- Cat vocalization meanings
- Cat makes a sound that sounds like hello
- Cat needs nightlight

Hi friends,

I've been thinking about two things all week: my new cat and work. So of course I wrote about the cat.

A cat enters the scene

Hi friends,

I made some kombucha. No, you don't have to drink it. In fact, it's not ready to drink yet but brewing it made feel like a mad scientist and I love it.

Kombucha experiment: A pet shoggoth makes fizzy vinegar

Why would I want to drink rotten tea? Is what I thought, and possibly also said, the first time heard of kombucha. Even though I happily ate and made many other fermented foods and drinks, kombucha seemed weird and gross. Honestly, I think it had a lot to do with the culture. I mean, actually, both the symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeasts and the culture of the people who made and drank kombucha. It seemed like a lot of hippies, or maybe hipters, with a disquietingly easy-going attitude to food safety loved to brew this stuff and also wanted to get you to drink some as a kind of dare. These felt like the same kind of people who would fail to pasteurize jam or drink shots of Fernet.

Hi friends,

Do you like photos of succulents? What about photos of really weird succulents? Then you might enjoy my recap of the San Francisco Succulent Expo.

Photos of the 2024 SF Succulent Expo

In the show, SFSCS members displayed their prize succulents and cacti and competed for the "Nicely Grown!" award in several categories. I took most photos in the show room, because the plants on display were particularly unusual and beautiful. I thought I had a sense of just how varied and strange succulents could be, but at the show I learned how much more there is still to explore.

Hi friends,

I like to doodle while I watch TV. Usually it's just random shapes. But sometimes a phrase, or a visual theme pops out and becomes the subject of my drawings.

Tea and cake in Bridgerton: Let them eat tiny cake

I've recently caught up on Season 2 and 3 of Bridgerton and I could not help but notice that there was a lot, and I mean truly a generous quantity, not to mention a vast variety, of prominently displayed delicious cake. There was also lots and lots of tea drunk out of various pretty teacups held in matching saucers. I have to assume that the specifics of the cakes and snacks were as historically accurate as the dresses, which have progressively gotten weirder as the show seemed to lean into the fantasy vibe.

Hi friends,

Believe it or not, I published this late last night but I haven't got around to sending out this email until this (Friday) evening. I wrote about the growth curve of all sorts of things, and how it feels like it might just accelerate forever--but it doens't.

Sigmoid curve: The illusion of forever growth

What does a sudden outbreak of superheroes, the growth of a new technology, and the spread of a pandemic through the population have in common? The sigmoid curve! If you're a statistician or biologist or any number of -ists, you probably already knew about sigmoid curves. I just learned about it them this week.

Hi friends,

I've been playing around with watercolors for the last month. Yes, it's another picture episode!

Watercolor interlude

Watercolor is a great medium for capturing the feeling of a scene, if not the details. The set I bought is a portable palette with a self-watering brush, so it's very suited for taking with you and painting outdoors. The fancy term for that is plein-air or en plein air which is just French for "outdoors."

Hi friends,

I went on an adveture to H Mart in San Francisco, and I wrote a review.

A review of H Mart in San Francisco: Visiting the Korean mega-grocery at the edge of San Francisco

Sometimes, when I see something beautiful, I want to stare at it forever. I want to consider it from all angles and let its beauty pour into me and flood my senses. I feel a warmth in my chest, a radiant, glowing sensation a lot like falling in love. That is how I felt at H Mart. I wondered through the aisles clutching my shopping list like a talisman against the near-overwhelming desire to buy more than I could possibly carry home. I probably looked confused, and I was a little confused, but more than anything I was overwhelmed with joy.

Hi friends,

I went down a research rabbit hole to find out where the A to Z bread recipe originates. I've been making it for years and years and you've probably had some if I've ever fed you banana bread. This is not, by the way, a sneaky preamble blog post to the recipe. It's all about the sleuthing and its results. We've got footnotes! I've even started experimenting with Chicago Manual of Style citations. And yes, fine, I do link to the recipe, but that's not the point. The point is, who is Hazel Gentry?

The California origin of A to Z Bread: In which I obsessively trace the history and authorship of the A to Z bread recipe

You would be forgiven if you thought that A to Z bread is just one of those American standards like banana bread or blueberry muffins, or heck, apple pie, and that it's been passed down since ye olden days from grandmother to granddaughter, homey and ancient. My hunch was that it was probably developed in the Midwest, or maybe New England. Well, you'd be wrong! And I was wrong!

Hi friends,

Why is writing a handoff document so hard? I found some ideas in Dave Snowden's 2002 paper about knowledge management that help explain it.

The paradox of the handoff document

Writing a handoff document confronts you with "the paradoxical nature of knowledge." You might think that what you know about a project can be stored and passed on, or at the very least that you know what you know, but as you try to write it down, the impossibility of the task becomes more and more evident.

Hi friends,

This week's post is on a somewhat timely topic, the weird iPad commercial that everyone hated. It was not enough for me to just go "yuck," I had to find some postmodernist theory about it.

Crush, the triumph of the simulacra: What's so upsetting about the iPad ad?

In the iPad "Crush!" video, objects used for artistic creation are crushed by a hydraulic press, along with books, records, video games, and toys. The last item to be crushed is a yellow ball with a face. Its eyes tragicomically bulge before popping out along with a splurt of paint as the hydraulic press closes. The press lifts again and reveals an iPad, with no sign of the crushed objects remaining.

A lot of people hated the commercial, hated it so much that Apple apologized for the video within a few days and decided not to run it as a commercial. As one of the haters, I was surprised by how visceral my feelings were, so I started thinking about it, and then, like any normal person, I picked up my collection of books on semiotics to try to make sense of it all.

Hi friends,

I wrote about an animal encounter I had this week. This is not one of my fictional stories that starts out sounding real like the one about the spiders. This is hard hitting, old-school personal blogging of the let me tell you a thing that happened.

Walpurgisnacht raccoon: The one who takes everything in its hands pays a personal visit

I heard a strange noise, like a grunt, kind of like a mix between a snore and someone straining with effort, but weirder. Animal, definitely animal. Then it happened again. It was about an hour after midnight, and I groped for my glasses on the bedside table. I went to the window to look. A raccoon stared back at me.

Hi friends,

I wrote a review of the new Snufkin video game. I focus more on the philosophy than the game play, so even if you never intened to play the game, you might enjoy reading it.

Snufkin, wholesome anarchist role model: A review of Snufkin: Melody of Moominvalley

It's a lovely morning in Moominvalley, and you are a horrible Snufkin. Except you're not really horrible, are you? And Moominvalley seems to be a bit less lovely than you had been expecting. What's going on?

Hi friends,

Do you like pictures of birds being cute? Then you will probalby like my latest blog post which is mostly exactly that. Even if you only sort of like birds, you might find you enjoy birds being cute.

Birds being cute: A special photo episode

It started out sort of joking about 10 years ago, but now I am definitely and unironically into birds. While I enjoy spotting a new bird, I also like observing common birds. If you pay attention they do some pretty neat things! So this week, I'd like to share some of my collection of photos of birds being cute.

Hi friends,

I travelled to Texas Hill Country to catch the total solar eclipse. It was amazing.

Solar eclipse in Hill Country: Staring at the face of God for three and a half minutes

About ten minutes before totality, a patch began to clear just around the sun. I laid on the ground and looked up through the eclipse glasses. The crescent sun became a sliver, became a glint--the diamond ring effect--and then, totality! Glasses off. I cried out, something involuntary, I think "AHHHH!"

Hi friends,

This week, I concluded the sex in art series I started in the beginning of March. The post is as much about the difficulty of talking about certain things as it is about the thing I am talking about, the Albert Serra film, Liberté.

Talking about it and doing it in Liberté: Sex in art needs no excuses, part 4

A group of dudes in pre-revolutionary France have been kicked out of the French royal court for being unmitigated pervs. They travel to a forest where they meet up with a German noble who is a fellow libertine and try to convince him to help them out or join them in their forest frolic. I think there are four nobles and their four valets, but with the wigs, it's a little hard to follow.

Hi friends,

I made an amazing discovery! I figured out how to use assistive text-to-speech to have my iPhone read books out loud to me. Let me tell you about it, and show you how you can try it yourself.

My pocket computer reads me books: Text-to-speech on iOS

My past experience with screen readers was not great. They would read every single thing on the page including UI text, and they would just read that page. Not ideal when you're trying to cut some onions while listening to a book! It turns out, time has passed and the assistive options are way better now.

Hi friends,

The sex in art series continues. This week, I wrote about Ken Russell's The Devils.

Sexual repression leads to blasphemy in The Devils: Sex in art needs no excuses, part 3

In Ken Russell's The Devils (1971) bottled up sexual obsession erupts as demonic possession of a group of cloistered nuns in 17th century France. A repressed nun develops a sexual obsession with an extremely not repressed priest and soon everyone is running naked and screaming while doing very naughty things with crucifixes. It does not go well for anyone, and the story ends in ashes and tears. The story is based on historical events, the Loudun possessions, and some of the weirdest and saddest shit depicted in the film actually happened.

Hi friends,

I wrote more about sex in art. This time I have examples! Well, just one example for now because I had so much to say about Poor Things. By the way, this post has mild spoilers for Poor Things. I don't think knowing about them will lessen your enjoyment of the film but if you hate knowing anything about a movie before going to see it and you haven't seen it, well, you know, be warned.

The joie de vivre of Poor Things: Sex in art needs no excuses, part 2

In last week's episode, I made the aesthetic-ethical claim that sexuality itself is a legitimate subject of art. I want to pick up where I left off, with the example of three films that take sex and sexuality as their subject, though to very different degrees: Poor Things, The Devils, and Liberté. I'll take the films in order from most approachable and easiest to justify as art to the most challenging.

Hi friends,

I wrote a polemic (which is a fancy way of saying the part of an argument where you say your opinion without putting much effort into convincing anyone) about when you can have sex in your art and still have it count as art.

Sex in art needs no excuses: Sexuality itself is a legitimate subject for artistic exploration

The very phrase "gratuitous sex" implies the idea that depictions of sex must somehow be earned. Your film or book or whatever work of art may only have sex in it if it's in service of something else, like plot, or character development, or important philosophical questions--and even then it must have an appropriate amount of sex. Otherwise the work is cheapened by it, or, worse, gets booted from the category of "art" and get relegated to "pornography."

Hi friends,

This week, I reviewed a book I just finished and enjoyed .

Review: The Left Hand of Dog by Si Clarke

Our hero, or point of view character anyway, is a pretty normal human named Lem. While enjoying a vacation in lovely Canadian wilderness with her dog, Spock, Lem gets abducted by aliens, yes along with her dog. The aliens travel in a spaceship that looks like a huge, pink teapot. I don't want to give too much away, but hijinks ensue. We get scifi classics like universal translators, and learn about their pitfalls, like the false familiarity of Figurative mode and get the running gag of them saying "No frame of reference" when things don't have an equivalent--which is fairly often.

Hi friends,

Happy blogoversary to rinsemiddlebliss! In this post I reflect on a year of regular writing and posting, and share my favorite posts of the last year.

Happy blogoversary: 52 blog posts, one Friday at a time

It has now been one year since I've restarted my blog and started posting every Friday. The actual anniversary was February 10, but that wasn't a Friday so instead I'm celebrating today, with this, the 53rd blog post since the reset. I'm pretty good at starting things but not always so good at keeping them going, so I feel pretty proud of this streak. Not only did I manage to maintain the streak, I also set myself a realistic goal.