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."