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.

Hi friends,

Living in San Francisco, it's hard not to be affected by the spirit of moon-shot technological invention. This week, I'm open-sourcing the draft patent for my best practical invention so far.

Inflatable rock: A draft patent for a large rock that you can fold up and carry in your pocket and then unfold, inflate, and deploy as needed

Because it's small and light when stored, but large and heavy when deployed an inflatable rock would be incredibly useful in all sorts of circumstances when you want something big and heavy, but find it inconvenient or even impossible to bring that thing with you.

Hi friends,

Today is my birthday and I’m celebrating with some light literary criticism of a counterculture classic from San Francisco hometown hero, Anton LaVey.

How to have a happy birthday: Take a page from The Satanic Bible

In The Satanic Bible, Anton LaVey declares that one's own birthday is the highest holiday in the Satanic religion. As such, one should celebrate the crap out of it. The Satanic Bible is like a second-rate fusion cuisine dish combining Ayn Rand, Nietzsche, Crowley, and a big helping of homey self-help style all served in restaurant with a confused heavy-metal/goth aesthetic. Which is to say, it's kind of funny and it's got some good ideas among all the weird shit. The bit about birthdays is particularly good...

Hi friends,

This week's blog post touches upon a seasonal topic: getting your annual review and learning if you're going to get a raise. It's also kind of a PSA.

Workers in California, ask about your pay scale! The California Equal Pay Act requires employers to tell you

Tell me if you've heard this one before: You're having the annual review conversation with your boss. Your boss reviews your accomplishments and congratulates you. You've done really well! You have a bright future ahead at Company. Keep going! Then you get to the compensation part of the conversation. Company rewards hard work and your boss would love to give you more of a raise but alas...

Hi friends,

I hope you like photos of hawks looking alternatively majestic and goofy. Because that's what I have for you this week.

Hawkstravaganza: Three days of hawk spotting, and a bonus coyote

Hi friends,

Inspired by recent news, I wrote about missing information in airplane manuals and their consequences.

Undocumented killer feature: Weirdly incomplete Boeing 737 MAX manuals

On January 5, 2024 the door plug of a Boeing 737 MAX 9 airplane blew out during flight. Nobody died. The flight crew got the plane back down and made an emergency landing. The cabin crew kept the passengers relatively calm. That's the gist of it. In all the discussion that's followed a little tidbit caught my attention, "No one amongst the flight crew knew that the cockpit door was designed to open in case of a rapid decompression, Boeing is going to make changes to the manuals."

Now that's interesting. No one knew the door was designed to do that. Boeing will update the manuals. 737 Max, haven't I heard that name before and didn't that also turn out to have involved manuals? Yes, and how!

Hi friends,

I wrote about how trying to get all of my book reviews and notes out of Goodreads turned into a weird programming side quest. "Yak shaving" is what programmers jokingly call these alluring and seemingly necessary activities you do on the way to doing the thing you actually want to do. Even if you're not a programmer, you've probably found yourself doing something like that.

Book scraper yak shave: I just wanted to export my book data from Goodreads

Goodreads has an export function, but, as I quickly discovered, it doesn't export all the data you might want, and some of it is formatted in annoying ways. No problem, I though, I'll open it in a spreadsheet (the export is a CSV) and clean it up. I'm trying to learn Python and cleaning up a bunch of data sounds exactly like an Automate the Boring Stuff with Python kind of problem. But I have so many books and the data was so messy. I might need to grab it myself to create a cleaner output.

Hi friends,

I wrote a blog post about my favorite holiday of the year, the in-between days from Christmas to New Year, the intercalary interstitial interregnum.

I love the quiet. The Christmas obligations have been dispensed with. Either I have fulfilled them or I have failed to fulfill them, but in any case they are moot now. New Year's Day will bring the fresh start feelings with perhaps a sense of obligation to make plans for self-improvement and maybe even act on them. But not yet. We are still in the lull. Days off for many people. I am one of those lucky ones, though even when I did work on these days it's been quiet.

Read more...

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy.

Good morning, Boston, and New England, generally

This is going to be one of those stream of consciousness posts. If you've come to enjoy my more philosophical or practical posts, I'm afraid I'm about to disappoint you. Actually, I think I'm not even supposed to apologize for what I'm about to write; that's definitely a rule. So I'm sorry for breaking that rule, as well. I guess every style of writing has its formal pro-forma introduction. In ye olden times it was a poem invoking the muse. In the blog post it's an apology. So there we are. The introduction is dispensed with and I can proceed to the main meander.

Hi friends,

I wrote a blog post about how I read books using text-to-speech.

Text-to-speech is not just screen readers: How and why I use synthetic voices to read me books

I could not get enough Severus Snape fanfiction. But I had a problem: I also wanted to knit. A lot. I could not get enough knitting and I could not get enough Severus Snape. When, a couple years earlier, I had experimented with speech to text (the experiment failed) I also discovered that my early model Mac laptop could to text-to-speech. It was pretty robotic and I didn't find much use for it. Until suddenly I very much did have a use for it.

Hi friends,

The days are short and the nights are long*. Even in California, December makes the earth's axial tilt felt, and I long for the brief hours of sun. Which is why I wrote about sun worship this week.

Worship the sun: It's traditional, it's natural, and it's reasonable

If you're going to worship something, the sun is a reasonable choice, and quite possibly the most reasonable choice. From the perspective of a person living on earth, the sun possesses all the important qualities of a god. Ancient people thought so, and some religions still hold the sun sacred. Modern scientific understanding of the sun only makes its god-like qualities more apparent.

Hi friends,

I wrote about some books I've been reading, and the books they led me to read as a result.

Some excerpts from The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner: The science fiction to German philosophy pipeline strikes again

I recently finished The Star Fraction and The Stone Canal by Ken MacLeod, two science fiction novels that are full of direct references to all kinds of socialist, communist, and anarchist ideas. As in, not only are people living, for example, in some kind of anarchist society as in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed or Iain Banks' Culture novels, but they directly discuss specific schools of thought and thinkers. One of the thinkers directly alluded to was Max Stirner and his ideas of egoist anarchism.

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. It's all about the pies I have been making for the last month or so: cottage pie, steak and onion pie, chicken pie, and pumpkin pie.

Pie season: A progression of mostly meat pies

At some point in the summer, I wrote PIE SEASON on the wall calendar next to October 16th. In case you’re wondering where this season and its official start date come from, I made it up. It was too hot to make pies when I got a nice new baking dish and pie bird, so I declared pie season for when I estimated it would be cooler. And when I say pie season, I mostly mean savory pies.

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post about the James Turrel skyspace in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Seeing the obvious in the Turrell skyspace: The Three Gems by James Turrell in November

"We're here at the perfect time," said M- and we looked up at the sky for a bit. Then she said "Do you know what this piece is about?" I felt like someone had asked me what coffee is about. Isn't it obvious? "Um, it's about the sky," I said. We sat there quietly for a while and then she said "Do you want to know what it's really about?" And I said yes, and she explained.

Hi friends,

I heard that some of you like lists of books, so I made a list of books. Not to give away too many spoilers for my blog post, but one of the books I should be reading is Gender Trouble and in the post, you can read my excuses about why I'm not.

Books I should be reading but am not, along with my selected excuses

A book is not a pizza. It will not go off if you take a long time to read it all, and nothing is wasted if you read only a portion. Also, unlike pizza, you can get books out of the library or buy them in electronic form, so none to very little waste is produced as a result of you not finishing the book. There are plenty of books I start, decide I'm not into them, and don't finish. I don't consider it virtuous to finish books nor sinful to abandon them. Non-fiction and poetry books are often perfectly enjoyable or useful if you read only a portion.

However, there are some books that I think I should read, not out of some kind of moral obligation to the book itself, but for other reasons that are important to my life projects. Nonetheless, I am not reading them.

Hi friends,

This week's post has been a long time coming. I mean, I've been thinking about it for a couple of years, and then held off posting until the moment felt right. I explore how an internet challenge for male abstinence fits into a long tradition of cultivating vital energy and magical power. It gets weird.

Content warning: The linked post contains frank discussion of human sexuality and may be an info hazard. There are no graphic images.

Sex magic for the masses: In which we start at No Nut November and arrive at orgone

Hi friends,

The last weekend before NaNoWriMo feels like a good time to share my theory about sword and sorcery and what makes those stories tick. I present to you

Sword and sorcery and the mid-career hero

For a long time, I've been thinking about why I love some kinds of fantasy, even though it's not that good by my usual standards, while at the same time I can't get into other kinds of pretty OK fantasy that everyone else likes. Like, why do I love the Witcher short stories and TV show, but find Wheel of Time just OK as a show and impenetrable as a novel series? (And why are the Witcher novels so meh?) Why did I inhale every Andre Norton novel that came my way but could barely get through The Lord of the Rings? Why is Luke Skywalker so boring and Conan the Barbarian so awesome? Also, why does Columbo feel like it belongs in this list even though it's not fantasy?

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. Another one about current events! This one is about the weird syllabus tacked on to the latest California Ideology manifesto.

pmarca's reading list: All I've got is a hammer engraved with There Is Nothing Outside of the Text

Earlier this week, internet rich guy pmarca posted a manifesto on his pal Musk's web forum, which he then reposted on his personal web log. It was OK. However, what struck me as interesting was the list of names at the end. Unfortunately for me, I've got a bit of a Columbo-like tenacity about just checking up on a few background details so uh, I looked up every one of those names, and I made a table. So you don't have to. You're welcome and/or I'm sorry. Read more...

Hi friends,

There's a new thing on my blog that you might enjoy. I posted this persuasive essay on Tumblr last year, but hardly anyone saw it and 'tis the season for bat discussion, being both Halloween month and a Friday the 13th, so I'm taking it out of the spooky decorations closet, cleaning up the bat poops stains (typos) and putting it up for you to enjoy (possibly, enjoy again).

Is Batman a furry? A completely logical examination of the facts

Consider that he:

• Wears an anthropomorphic animal costume for personal reasons
• Feels a strong emotional connection to the animal, including using that animal’s iconography as a kind of identifying marker
• Wearing the suit allows him to express a true aspect of his personality that is otherwise hidden, which matches my understanding of fursonas Read more...

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. Because you're cool and signed up for my newsletter, you get to learn about it first.

Shaky Saturn, you're my guy: Seeing and knowing what you're seeing

It's too hot to think and all the smart things I was going to say leaked out of my brain at about 5 p.m. After staring at the internet for an hour instead of writing, I stepped onto my deck to try to cool off and saw a kind of yellowish-orange blob in the Eastish. I'm due for a new pair of glasses and nighttime really brings out my astigmatism for some reason, but my color vision is rather good just the same. Maybe it's Mars, I thought, and brought out my sky app to identify it.

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. It's about how I got tricked into filling my house with succulents by Big Succulent. There are a lot of photos.

I did not choose the succulent life; the succulent life chose me

The first succulents I remember distinctly were a pair of cacti that my grandmother had in a sunny little back room that I had to pass through on the way to the outhouse. The cacti were rather small, and they lived in different places depending on the season. I mostly don't care for cacti, because I think they are out to get you Read more...

Hi friends,

You may ask, how can this be, two posts in one week? Well, it's a special occasion, the Autumnal Equinox, and I thoutght it would be nice to celebrate by sharing a poem with you all.

El Camino Del Mar at Dusk

Happy Autumnal Equinox to all in the Northern Hemisphere! There is a certain peculiar feeling I get at the autumnal turn. It's a gestalt, a felt sense, some kind of suchness or maybe haecceity of this change, like I can feel the shift of the entire world though the complete combination of all the little shifts all together. Actually, to call it a feeling would imply it's an emotion only and that's entirely too single-dimensional a sense of the thing. It is both stronger and more subtle than that. Because of this ineffable but recurrent sense of this moment, I have written multiple poems trying to eff it, as it were. The poem I'm sharing today is part of that spontaneously-arising series. Read more...

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post about, yes, for a change, a real trending topic. Everybody is thinking about the Roman Empire this week because of a TikTok meme about asking dudes how often they think about the Roman Empire. But most of the things they are thinking about are the same old boring stuff, in my opinion.

Thinking about thinking about the Roman Empire: Eating dormice with garum from the trashcan of memology

I think a lot about Pompeii, because I was obsessed with volcanos as a kid, in exactly the same way as some kids get obsessed with dinosaurs. Also because I saw Last Supper in Pompeii: From the Table to the Grave at the Legion of Honor in San Francisco in 2021 and it was so astounding, I made an important change in my life. That exhibition had a lot of day-to-day stuff from people's lives. Previously, I found a lot of stuff about Rome pretty tedious because it tended to focus on marble busts of boring looking dudes with names that all ended in "us" and their military exploits. You may take it as read I am making the jerking off motion in the direction of a phalanx. I mean OK, a phalanx is cool once. A jar full of holes that people bred dormice in on the other hand? That's cool at least a dozen times. Read more...

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. It’s a poem about choosing to do something dangerous on purpose. I also talk a little bit about the “four seasons” bias in nature poetry.

The Gate of Pinecones: First published in The Coachella Review in the Winter 2018 issue

Thanks for reading and see you on the internet!

Hi friends,

I wrote a new blog post that you might enjoy. Normally I post on Fridays or very late on Thursday, but I'm sending this one sooner because it's about a play that you can see this weekend if you're in San Francisco.

Hair metal fantasy Cymbeline in McLaren Park: A review of San Francisco Shakespeare Festival's 2023 Free Shakespeare in the Park production of Cymbeline

The poster for Cymbeline in the park looked like a hair metal fantasy movie from the 80s. I’d seen it every time I went to get burritos at my local taqueria, and I thought, whatever this is, it’s gonna be weird. On that promise, it delivered. Read more...

Hi there,

I wrote a thing. Like, just a few minutes ago. I thought I'd tell you about it here first.

The inner life manifest as supernatural in The Shining: Are the ghosts real? Yes. No. Maybe.

I rewatched Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980) this week as homework. I've been writing so much about metaphorical haunted houses and I thought the metaphor was getting a little thin. I wanted to ground it in a real haunted house. Or at least a real fictional haunted house story. I thought the movie was even better than I remembered it, more beautiful, much scarier, and much richer in meaning. However, it's not so much of a clear-cut haunted house story. My spouse, who watched it for the first time with me, found the ambiguity annoying. Are we supposed to think the ghosts are literally real? Are the characters hallucinating them? Are they a metaphor? What really happened? Read more...