Sometimes I feel like: you don’t work hard, you worry hard.
When I’m spinning my wheels… thinking about what needs to be done, not doing it, and feeling busy all the same.
Adulthood
There’s your Bar Mitzvah. There’s your driver’s license. There’s your eighteenth birthday. There’s your thirtieth birthday. And then there’s the day you buy yourself a winter coat for the first time, instead of wearing a hand-me-down.
From Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket:
”You are a practical people, Americans, everyone is either some kind of inventor or at least a gifted repairman.”
My mom’s dad was an inventor. My dad’s dad was a gifted repairman.
Today human drivers are actually very good. They create a collision causing an injury only about once every 1 million miles, and they cause a fatality only about once per 100 million miles driven. In terms of injuries human drivers operate at 99.9999% safety, and for fatal collisions their performance is 99.999999% if measured per mile. …
Yet Waymo today [with human minders] is actually 90% safer than humans [alone].
Relationships are an endurance art
To state the obvious: relationships are an endurance activity. (I wanna say “sport” but they’re not a sport. More like an art.)
It should be easy, but also you should work at living well together.
When you’re young and you have a sleepover, you usually want to run away from your friend by the end of it. You’ve driven each other crazy.
Heading in to a million spousal sleepovers in a row (if we’re lucky), wanting to run away from each other isn’t an tolerable outcome, so we give each other space, maintain our patience, and, I dunno, prime our minds for extended enjoyable cohabitation.
In which Chris Arnade weaves together the history of Chicago as an industrial city, a city of stock brokering and financialization, with real people’s lives in a Northwest Indiana McDonald’s.
“I took that old Bible in to get my driver’s license because I lost my birth certificate to show them I was born here, because it’s got all the births in my family written down in it, one after the other, like a family tree. … I figured they could use that to give me a driver’s license but they didn’t, so that’s why Scott drives us.”
I like the first, second, third nature model of understanding the long-running national march away from the practical and toward the abstract, and the psychic consequences of that:
Once you move on from creating a second nature (infrastructure and all that follows) to a third nature (financial abstractions), which has fewer visible ties to first nature (the natural world around you) other than blips on a screen, then a lack of grounding shouldn’t be surprising. In that way Chicago can be partly blamed, since it created the monster that came back to eventually consume it.
Robin Sloan: Language models are a fundamentally manic technology
The “ideal” setting for a brain (or an economy?) isn’t necessarily straight down the middle. A dip into the realm of mania can be useful, sometimes revelatory. I don’t know if many creative projects would ever get started if our brains didn’t sometimes relax the standards by which they light up.
Yet for a human mind and a human heart, one really good project is more nourishing than ten cruddy ones; that was true a hundred years ago, and it’s true today. The AI coding companions will never ever say: “Hey … whatever happened to that other thing you were working on?”
Around this time of year I think of a neighbor my family had when I was growing up: Jack, a round old man, kind of shaped like a jack-o’-lantern, with just as many teeth. He sat on the stoop of his ’20s brick bungalow, in a blue button-down and suspenders, scowling at kids by default (resting scowl face). The bush in front of his house was home to a family of raccoons. The raccoons came and went from the premises and tended to them more than Jack did.
We never knew much about him, other than that he lived alone. And at some point he came to symbolize loneliness for me. A particular wintry, sun-is-gone, Chicago type of loneliness. Something adjacent to Charlie Brown’s nighttime Christmastime. When the city is so dark and quiet that the stars seem to make noise, however few we can see.
I don’t know if Jack was generally sad or happy. Maybe he loved his life. But I find myself wishing he were around, so we could check.
Kevin Kelly: How will the miracle happen today?
“One might even call the art of accepting generosity a type of compassion. The compassion of being kinded.”
Hallie Bateman's plea for the new year
I also loved Hallie’s recent essay about her eating disorder.
Chris Arnade: Modern life is good, actually
We could quibble with any individual point or stat in Chris’s essay, but this rings true to me:
It’s interesting that the people most bothered by technology in the West, and most drawn to a prior lifestyle, are the highly individualistic and idiosyncratic intellectuals—not the “normies,” who when given the chance to choose overwhelmingly want the lifestyle anti-modern elites believe is so destructive.
Angine de Poitrine.
Van Gogh: "Just slap something on it"
You don’t know how paralyzing it is, that stare from a blank canvas that says to the painter you can’t do anything. The canvas has an idiotic stare, and mesmerizes some painters so that they turn into idiots themselves.
This inspired me a little today.
Via James Edward Dillard.
“Ewald’s curiosity regarding the evolutionary process of infections was sparked by a bad case of diarrhea he had in 1977.”
I saw someone wearing a USB charging cable as a necklace the other day. The charging block was a pendant.
My friend Hannah Sellers interviews Alex Rybarczyk, a mail carrier artist.
We Used to Talk About Russia Joining NATO
In December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, sent a letter to NATO asking it to consider accepting Russia as a member of the alliance sometime in the future …
During a series of interviews with filmmaker Oliver Stone, President Vladimir Putin said that he suggested Russia joining NATO to President Bill Clinton when he visited Moscow in 2000.
Putin said in a BBC interview … in 2000 that it was hard for him to see NATO as an enemy: “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilized world.” …
On 5 March 2000 … asked if Russia might ever join NATO, [Putin] replied: “I do not see why not.” …
In response to a March 2009 suggestion by Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski that Russia join NATO, the Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said … “Great powers don’t join coalitions, they create coalitions. Russia considers itself a great power.”
The medal that the Soviet Union awarded to servicepeople who contained and cleaned up the Chernobyl disaster depicts alpha and beta particles and gamma rays over a drop of blood.
Clean-up of the site is scheduled to be completed by 2065.
Chernobyl Cost Over 900 Billion Dollars
Also, Russia hit the New Safe Confinement structure—which keeps radioactive contaminants from spreading—in a drone strike in 2025.
Ban to Thrill; Institutionalize to Kill
When literature was considered transgressive, moralists couldn’t get people to stop buying and reading dangerous books. Now that books are considered virtuous and edifying, moralists can’t persuade anyone to pick one up.
Saw one of last summer’s tomatoes in the Chicago semi-thaw.
Leonardo da Vinci, Prankster
“[Giorgio] Vasari described how Leonardo took a lizard captured by an assistant, pasted on a beard and wings, and kept it in a box to frighten his friends. He also took the intestines of a steer and ‘made them so fine that they could be compressed into the palm of one hand. Then he would fix one end of them to a pair of bellows lying in another room, and when they were inflated they filled the room in which they were and forced anyone standing there into a corner.’”
(Isaacson, 176.)
The execution of King Charles I was kind of a revolution before people used the word “revolution.”
Remember MBWYT: Men Be Watching YouTube.
Don’t underestimate the Ass in Chair Principle: you’ll do some work if you decide, strictly, to keep your ass in the chair for an amount of time.
We’re still cashing Reagan’s checks. Luckily, this one‘s a good one.
After an initial agreement between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1985, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project emerged; construction of the complex began in Cadarache, France in 2013, and tokamak assembly began in 2020.
Caro Arnim on courtship with her husband, physicist Ted Taylor:
We whistled themes from Beethoven symphonies, from Handel, from Bach. We tried to remember them. For people who are shy, that’s not a bad way to start, if you have trouble talking.
On the bow of a sinking ship, a delusional captain shares a nugget of wisdom:
Very often lawyers, or people in general, want to make every conceivable argument, and you get in the situation where, by making every point, you essentially make no points. I’m a big believer that you have to figure out what your winning argument is.
Neutrinos are abundant subatomic particles that are famous for passing through anything and everything, only very rarely interacting with matter. About 100 trillion neutrinos pass through your body every second.
Now, scientists have demonstrated that the Earth stops very energetic neutrinos—they do not go through everything. These high-energy neutrino interactions were seen by the IceCube detector, an array of 5,160 basketball-sized optical sensors deeply encased within a cubic kilometer of very clear Antarctic ice near the South Pole.
(From 2017.)
When Los Alamos scientists exploded the first fusion device in 1952, they discovered two new elements in the blast debris.
(Via John McPhee’s The Curve of Binding Energy.)
Hi, 2026.
It makes me sad that heavy metals are so hard to avoid in our drinking water, baby food, protein powder.
I love Fresh Farms… so much. Best produce, widest array of international products I’ve ever seen.
Alexa Plus offered “vivid descriptions of sunsets” to me.
I’m in awe of the vintage devices in Marcin Wichary’s newsletter.
The MTA Sztaki Syster N? The Canon Cat? Are you kidding me?
I love this family.
"Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew."
“Failing and Flying” by Jack Gilbert, via Atoms vs Bits.
Happy Birthday, Sammy! 🎉
At first I thought this story was trite, but it stuck with me.
I want to open an adoption shelter for my friends’ excellent unreleased albums.
The orchestration of Herb Alpert “This Guy’s In Love With You” is crazy.
And: “If not I’ll just die…” Gulp.
When I landed in New York my parents presented me with a hunk of noodle kugel.
Kawésqar people wear few clothes, not more, in the winter.
Jumbo Slice For Your Busy Life not a bad band name.
I can’t believe it’s 2025 and any politician still starts their message with the idiomatic “folks.”
At the beach last week, I loved to see the seagull footprints on the sand.
Mid-walk, entering “the zone,” on day seven, I arrived to Karuizawa in a state of extreme beatificity. Just felt good. … If the creator itself came down from the sky at the end of a big walking and photographing and writing day and asked: Did ya do all ya could today? I’d be able to answer, without hesitation, heck yes. I suspect we’re “programmed” to feel good about this … I’d go so far to say that “full days” is one of the wells from which we derive our humanity.
At the DMV, when they ask you to put your face in the vision tester machine, they hand you a little slice of paper towel to protect your forehead from germs.
“I’ll feel good if I clean the house.” But then you won’t feel good because you didn’t work on your creative stuff.
“I’ll feel good if I work on my creative stuff.” But then you won’t feel good because the house is a mess and you’re behind on everything.
So you gotta clean a little and work a little (or a lot).
The beach moves to the parking lot one shoeful at a time.
When the Left talks about spending less money on defense, we should talk about how we’re going to keep everyone safe in the same breath. Diplomacy and deterrence should be mentioned every time we talk about opposing militarism and ending war profiteering.
The Onion: Plan To Start Little Stationery Store Too Sad For Bank To Deny Loan
Del Toro’s Frankenstein:
“The hunter did not hate the wolf. The wolf did not hate the sheep. But violence felt inevitable between them.” (The Creature)
“Forgive. Forget. The true measure of wisdom. To know you have been harmed, by whom you have been harmed, and choose to let it all fade.” (The Blind Man)
Towards the end of the 1970s, Di Modica bought 54 Crosby Street, a vacant lot not far from his first studio. After tearing down the original shack, he built a new building using salvaged materials, completely to his own design and without planning permission. Among the materials he used were seven-meter beams of timber that he attached to himself and dragged back to Crosby Street through the streets at night, as well as 8,000 bricks that he bought for $400 from a priest. He would then go on to add two underground levels, again without the necessary permission, covertly removing the rubble under the cover of darkness. Crosby Street would become his creative center, where he lived, worked and hosted lively art parties and events.
New post: Tennessee Bass Bumping
In talking, you wanna go slow enough to only say things you mean to say.
In musicking, you wanna go fast enough to say things you didn’t know you wanted to say.
Cory Arcangel made a cool video for Oneohtrix Point Never.
Who needs junk food when there are cucumbers with a fanciful pinch of Maldon salt on them? I mean really?
We used to be able to tell computers what to do. Now they make stuff up.
A few weeks ago I learned about charge pumps. And they sounded to me like a zillion fresh starts strung together, increasing your ability to do work.
We opened a door and Charlie Chaplin slithered out from behind it. (A cardboard cutout folded and fell down.)
Liam and I saw a fucking armadillo! Making its nighttime rounds in New Orleans.
This book cover made me audibly say “wow.”
New albums from Liam Kazar and Mavis Staples out today! I played on part of both of em.
From Paul I learned to use detergents and cleaning sprays more liberally.
I pay close attention to my snot.
Pop Tarts
If the world were ending tomorrow
I’d eat some Pop Tarts
Oliver Burkeman: You have to do the living yourself
I don’t mean to suggest … that environmental or pharmacological tools have no role to play in behaviour change. … Willpower has severe limits; you can’t reliably use it to power through problems that are emotional at their core. … And yet … There seems to be something crucial about … actively committing and recommitting, again and again, to going in the direction you want to travel, instead of acting as a spectator to your life, watching to see whether the systems you’ve put in place perform as you’d hoped they would or not.
If you’re not in that gathering mode, you won’t be making anything. It’s easy to flip the switch and say “I’m in gathering mode,” but you have to mean it.
To operate smoothly, economies have long depended on essential platforms, be they city markets, Main Streets or infrastructure like railroads and bridges. … Historically, the government has imposed limits on how much money the platforms could take from the people and businesses that relied on them … These limits were imposed not to constrain economic growth but to foster it: They protected the incentives for other economic actors to invest and build on the platforms. …
Last year, Amazon charged private sellers, on average, between 50 and 60 percent of their sales in fees, according to the research firm Marketplace Pulse. You don’t need a degree in economics to see how that can discourage investment and innovation. … It’s effectively a system of private taxation.
Mowed the lawn on a show day.