Essentially A Catholic Tragic Opera
“Decor voor opera 'Armida’” I have watched Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein! Now puts on everything-is-neurodiversity hat this film is absolutely definitely...
Strange Shibboleths for Children
Source Recently I’ve been thinking about the ineffability of art. Which is a fancy way of saying “hey, some stories are really weird and hard to explain what...
Capital-R Romantic Melodrama
Seated Dog, c. 1650 - 1700 (this papillon looks a lot like Rooibos, right?) A dog thought: This fantastic episode of Howtown explaining dog vision and smell...
Vulgar Poptimism Is Real In 2025
Palette, Rosa Bonheur Two reading recommendations this weekend: Celine Nguyen has a thought-provoking commentary on criticism (literary and otherwise). She...
A Deeply Ominous Fog Covering Up The Bay Bridge
Hello from the other side of Halloween, and a pretty busy week at work (for the first time in quite a while!). Yesterday a few friends decided to run a popup...
Hooked Up To A Probabilistic Text Generation Engine
I ran a half-marathon (self-scheduled) for the first time since I started getting arch pain last year. I’m hoping to run the SF Marathon next year... wish me...
Just Chilly Enough For Winter, But No Rain
I’ve just returned from a two-day team offsite in Vancouver. Hooray for oshizushi on the company dime! Vancouver was lovely — just chilly enough for winter,...
With All That Consumerism Out Of The Way
I’m sorry to report that I’ve become a shoulder bag person. I used to overstuff all of my pockets, sometimes wearing a windbreaker in unseasonable weather...
Welcome to Season 8
Hello again. It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I’m going to try writing weeknotes, vaguely inspired by Buttondown’s recent return to weeknotes and Gina Trapani’s...
Bare Minimum Skincare Routine
I’ve belatedly taken up a skincare routine, after much badgering from friends and loved ones. I found skincare overwhelming, but it turns out a “bare...
On Self-Deprecation
Recently, I picked up Quimby Mouse, which collects some of Chris Ware’s early Acme Novelty Library strips. Ware is arguably the greatest living comics...
If The United States Is Conscious, Then Why Not An LLM?
One of Jean Baptiste Vérany’s chromolithographs of cephalopods I recently realized I may be one of the only people on Earth to hold this philosophical...
Good Old Fashioned Linkblog
It’s been a while since I’ve done a good-old-fashioned link blog! So here’s some things I’ve been reading recently: “A cheat sheet for why using ChatGPT is...
Automating the Personal
Is there really value in personal automation? I wrote a whole essay on Raycast and I’m still not really sure. Even though xkcd has a helpful chart for how...
Time to Read the (Eastern) Classics
As promised last time: more classics! To keep this one manageable, I’ve kept it to just East Asian classics, which makes up the bulk of the non-western...
Time to Read the (Western) Classics
No more LLMs this week! Back to my usual beat... whatever that is. During the pandemic — a time that even now takes on the tinge of the historical — I...
Let’s Think Step-by-Step
Sorry, another LLM newsletter. I promise next week I have a different topic. (But first, some ideation for zine 4!) Recently there’s been some Discourse™️...
But What Is It *Good* For?
Today I’d like to talk about AI again. Feel free to come back next time if that doesn’t interest you 🙂 ‘Leibniz’s Calculating Machine’ from Theatrum...
Micromarriages
By popular demand: micromarriages. In risk analysis, a one-in-a-million chance of death is called a micromort. A skydiving jump, for instance, gives you 8...
Matcha Lattes
Lately I’ve been making a lot of matcha lattes. Here’s the recipe I’ve settled on. I heat 8oz (1 cup) of water to 180°F in my beloved OXO adjustable-...