When I was a kid I freaked out my family because they could not find me for several hours. It turned out I was at the elementary school a block from my house, at the back fence across the field, playing a game my friends and I had devised where we pretended these tree roots were little rooms in a little house. We would bring our own small toys or make characters out of grass or rocks or whatever.

Anyway, at some point I looked up and here was my older brother, striding across the field and calling out that I was in a pickle because nobody had been able to find me for quite some time. Then we went home.

I recently bought a boom box, not a true vintage one but a re-formulated Aiwa machine that can play CDs and cassettes and also has bluetooth and a slot for SD cards and one for USB sticks. And a radio.

For the first time in many years, I am now able to listen to a birthday mix tape that my brother and his then-girlfriend and their other friend made for me in 1986. It features an original masterpiece of harmonica and stupidity called “F*ck You Buddy.”

I bring these up because the game at the school and the playing of the tape did not generate any sort of database entry.

There’s a special feeling that comes over me when I am not generating a database entry. I am not having that feeling while I am typing this, because I am surely making data at this moment. But later I will go in the yard, or listen to “F*ck You Buddy” again, or move some artwork from one room to another, and - nothing will happen. No machine will register this. Nobody will know, and nobody will care. And by “care” I mean mine my day for BuSiNeSs ReAsOnS.

I feel that it would be good to spend more time generating no information at all.

Neptune Road

A comic about people inventing a life on Neptune

Things Of The Week

Would you like to read about an incredibly esoteric concept? Why sure you would! It’s: Stigmergy.

In the past, Marseille, France was considered kind of an industrial place. But it’s been transformed by neighborhood-level creativity. This look at it is lovely.

Here is an actual marvelous form of recording of information: Moshpit, a gigantic catalog of playlists from concerts over decades.

Featured Thing

is the second Brainwaves cartoons collection, Best of Brainwaves Volume Two: Mom, Dad, I'm a Cat (at BookShop), because while I’m making the third book I’m looking through this one and heck, there are some of my very tip-top favorites in there. Like, “the first marsupial.”

Also, License my cartoons: CartoonStock are terrific and I’ve been with them forever

Okay! That's enough nonsense for now.

May you spend hours playing with no idea anybody is looking for you, may you do stuff that can’t be put in a database, won't you be my neighbor? - Betsy

“Wherever we go, we are friends” - Sloth and Manatee