Hi, I’m Adam and past-you thought it would be nice to hear about what I’m excited about right in your email or feeds. I appreciate you sticking around, especially the folks who have been around since 2012!

Arthur Conley asks, do you like good music? Annie Dillard asks a similar question, for writing:

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?”

“Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”
— Craig Mod, Walking with Annie

I’m returning to the guitar, lately. Mostly playing scales, arpeggios, and trying to undo flat-fingered bass-guitar habits so I can play barre chords. Getting the basics right before I try to put together a song or two.

Seems like well-crafted sentences are maybe the same kind of practice for writing. Or perhaps perfect sentences are melodies. Stack several of them, and you’ve got a song or the spine of an essay?

Either way, a more considered form of study/practice at the writing, seems interesting. At least for a bit. A rising tide of sentences raises all essays. Sentence practice it is!

But also, let’s play a game. Here are seven context-free sentences I’ve found in my writings this year. And, one photograph about sentences. It will make sense.

Not wrong, but the toothpaste is out of the tube here. — RIP my vim muscle memory

Bo Diddley is metal. — Eponymous Trifecta A few months later, I stand by this. I’ll even double down: the album Bo Diddley by Bo Diddly containing the song “Bo Diddley” may be a concept album about Diddley.

🎧 Human Touch is the Phil Collins-est of Bruce Springsteen albums. — Oscar winners of the 1990s

I hope those who've stuck around can recover it, someday. — A book that makes you nostalgic for your imperfect home state is a good book I was pining for a return to Texas’ individualistic but supportive qualities, and recover it from the Texas GOP they did!

Absent a leap forward in the practicality and ergonomics of formal verification, can we manage the flood plain of incoming code with beaver dams of linters, style checkers, and good old-fashioned grep? — The local maxima we need to reach the next global maximum Obviously, I had just seen Hoppers before writing this.

Most days, the world writes for you. — Some days, you write for yourself.

Robots continue to feel nothing. — Once more, with feeling

There's plenty of room for humanity in between the tokens. — Notes from the agent coding (not quite) vanguard

I don’t claim this is a good photograph. But, a good sentence has the same quality as the subject of this photograph. Maybe that one goes on the good sentences board, too!

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