Hi friends,

This week, I wrote about magical powers in the anime series Dandadan.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Magic balls, psychic aliens, and part-time yokai: The versatile sources of magic powers in Danadan 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. While I might not always remember to publicize it enough, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

I've found an unusual motivation to keep up with my Japanese study.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Escape from the horrors 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. While I might not always remember to publicize it enough, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

This week, I wrote about my latest obsession: learning Japanese. Once again, I'm including the full post in the email.

If you prefer, you can read Learning hiragana: The easy part of Japanese 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. While I might not always remember to publicize it enough, my blog is not a secret. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

Hi friends,

This week, I want to share some photos from a side-trip to Kyoto I took during my week in Tokyo. This is kind of a lot of photos. So while once again, I'm including the full post in the email, if they don't load or you just want to see them a little bigger, you can read Fushimi Inari Taisha: Kyoto's famous Shinto shrine 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.

Thanks for reading and see you on the internet!

Hi friends,

I'm still travelling, so this week I wrote one more post about that. This time I have decent wifi so I included a couple photos.

Once again, I'm including the full post in the email. If you prefer, you can read Dispatch from Tokyo 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. Knowing people read it is my reward and motivates me to keep writing.

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