Not to be missed: How to Build a Car That Kills People: Cybertruck Edition.

I tend to look at cars from a pedestrian’s POV—that’s how I spend most of my time on the streets. This tank seems designed to crush toddlers, decapitate elders, and probably be plowed into protesters. It should be illegal.

Just passed another of these cute little delivery robots while out for a run. It was taking up 3/4 of the sidewalk and didn’t move to yield way at all as I came upon it. WTF? You can’t ride a bicycle on the sidewalk here. These things are a clear violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Nothing but respect for MY PRESIDENT, the naked writhing modern dance orcs that take over your room in the Getty’s funky AR app “United Visions." This is what William Blake wanted.

Yesterday I wanted to make bread, so I mixed up some leaven. But it got cold, rose too slowly, and I ran out of time. So… pivot to pancakes? I found the recipe from Wild Fermentation, mixed the batter up before bed, and cooked them this morning: whole wheat sourdough pancakes! Kid loved ‘em!

The worst and best part of editing articles is the need to dissolve yourself into the subject, into the research, into the structure of the piece. It’s always more laborious than I expect.

The cheerfully awestruck tone of the hosts of the corporation-deep-dive podcast Acquired sometimes strikes me as identical to paleontologists reverently describing the jaw structure of a T-Rex. Except the T-Rex is still here! It’s still eating people!

“Using AI to write is like taking a moped for your morning run. It’s stupid… What AI does is it makes us stop thinking, and it takes over that part.”

This talk, from Oliver Reichenstein, (the founder of iA Writer, which I use constantly), is great.

We’re way too conservative around small, good ideas. (See wild success of NBA’s in-season tournament.) Here are some more:

• The dollar should reverse split. $10 to $1, $1 to 10¢, etc
• Kill the time change
• Election day = holiday
• CPS but for guns
• Annual citizen’s assemblies

Make change normal!

Ten thousand is the original a hundred billion.

This immortal faith some have that computers will eventually become advanced enough that we’ll “upload” our intelligence into them and live immortally inside the machine—is it not bleedingly obvious to everybody that body and mind are basically synonyms?

Read my lips: I. Am. Not. A. Google. Doc.

Putting a pin in Relax, Electric Vehicles Really Are the Best Choice for the Climate to send to those relatives (you know who you are) who keep talking about going electric, keep turning towards internal combustion.

HondaLink over here giving strong “graphic design is my passion”

Boomer climate doomerism comes down to this, I think: fear of the unknowable. Now, yes, it’s true, none of us know for sure what the unfolding climate crisis will hold. But for younger folks, we can expect to find out. We’re in it. Contrast the dull dread of foreseeing an apocalypse one won’t meet.

Went to a “holiday lights botanical garden” this eve. It was, as advertised, dreamlike. But after almost two hours wandering through the LED wonderland, I started to remember that nightmares are a type of dream, too.

A neighbor left a pile of old Gourmet magazines out on their stoop. After a few days walking by them, I took this issue home. And I keep studying that cherry pie cover. What is it that makes it so incredibly great? A platonic ideal of image and text coming together.

2007, baby. The good old days.

High school me: There was once a genocide, a terrible aberration that must never be forgotten.

College me: Another genocide came before the famous one + inspired it. More should know.

30s me: Genocide happens all the time, there was one in my hometown, my country is supporting one this very minute. Fuck.

West Hollywood, September 2023

My idea of the kind of dull task perfect for AI: collecting the programming schedules of all my favorite radio stations and collating them into a TV guide-style picker. Someday, maybe.

(The other night, I asked the AI where I could stream Barbie for free, and it very confidently gave—you know it!—the wrong answer.)

Highland Park, November 2023

Art by my wife, 1994

Just ran into an old post of mine about Mohsin Hamid and writing other subject positions. It includes this line:

I of course want and love transgressive fiction, but I don’t want it to transgress against people, and especially not against oppressed people.

Makes me think: are there two types of transgression? Transgression against taste, and transgression against people?

I guess my model of the right way to do it is The Story of the Eye. A giant middle finger to taste, the Catholic church, and common decency. But not actually hurting anyone!

When I watch videos of modular synths (for instance: Benn Jordan’s video about tape delay) I always think: in another life, this is absolutely how I spend my days.

(Connected: Robin Sloan’s synth-included short story, “In the Stacks (Maisie’s Tune)")

COVID vaccine #6, a jab in my right arm at around 4pm yesterday. This morning, arm sore, body achey. Around noon a headache. Now, laying in bed, working on laptop, feeling that feeling that before the ‘VID vaccines I never knew what it was: the immune system rallying, on high alert, in every inch of my body.

There’s something so fun and frantic about working under a print deadline, realizing all the hundreds of little decisions that remain to be made, knowing you’ll now be making most of them over just a handful of days, hoping you mostly get it right. (Also: exhausting.)