Sam's L33t Journal

Buns Out

Sun, 12 Apr 2026 00:15:08 GMT

It's rabbit season! Though I don't know if this will be as bumper a crop as last year. At any rate, spring is here for real, even though the week began with some April snow, drifting down in large fluffy clumps which didn't stick to the well-over-freezing ground.

Only one week is left until Japan trip.

Finally managed to get together with Xave and friend's for tabletop game today after some months of not getting schedules to line up. I went to Lou's in Harvard for dinner and it was pretty amazing. It's the latest venue for Jason Bond in exile, he's a luminary for sure, I do hope Bondir will get a new lease on life some day. The bartender in front of me at the bar kept up a whirlwind pace, the food and drink were really good.

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PAX and Other Paragraphs

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 21:22:02 GMT

Haven't written for a while, so writing about a variety of things this time:

Last weekend, I went back to PAX East for the first time in a long time. I stopped going some years ago when tickets started selling out almost immediately. That seems to no longer be the case, though the event was still pretty busy day-of. It was fun, but I didn't enjoy it as much as some times in the past. I have little tolerance for standing in line for things. At the Magic booth I played an apples-to-apples-style game with packs of Strixhaven, promotion for the upcoming set returning to that setting. I didn't find a lot of indie video games that really jumped to the top of my play-next list. The demo that I found most striking was for Of the Devil a Phoenix Wright type game of high stakes legal defense with a cyberpunk dystopia setting, Persona-esque aesthetics, and heavy leaning on card games and gambling as inspiration for its mechanics and metaphors. I played a demo (and wound up getting a copy) of Duat, which was a beautiful and interesting little board game. It's one of those games that gets surprising complexity from simple rules, it's quick and pretty fun. The openings are quite constrained, so I wonder if it will continue to hold interest as I play it more, but it definitely seems pretty neat. The craziest tech demo was for immersive-scent peripheral OVR. (Credit for trying, and it works well enough. Who knows, maybe in the future this will be an obvious key component of interactive experiences that produce heretofore unseen depths of emotional resonance and immersion.) Erica played a game of Lanternlight, a simplified tabletop roleplaying system designed to be easy for kids to learn and play, designed by game designer Andrew Harris in collaboration with his daughter, Anika.

I had to take Erica to the doctor for a blood draw this week, and boy oh boy was the pre-suffering much worse than the actual getting the thing done. Proud of her for being able to master herself eventually. The ancestral lizard brain has a long history of keeping humans safe, but it has a real lack of chill and a poor understanding of modern medicine.

We went to my Aunt Milly's house for the first Passover Seder this year. Always nice to see my Boston extended family.

We saw the The Super Mario Galaxy Movie this weekend. Most of the criticism of it that's going around is objectively correct, it's not that connected to the Mario Galaxy games specifically, and it's real simple, thrown-together, and shallow. It kind of feels more like a theme-park-ride than a movie, but I found it fun.

Japan trip is rapidly approaching, and the pre-trip logistics are done but my travel stress is high.

A favorite link from this week: My journey to the microwave alternate timeline - An essay centering on the book Microwave Cooking for One, a bit of history-of-technology, history-of-cooking, culinary-alternate-futurism that makes me (a bit) want to get a Corningwear Pyroceram microwave browning dish.

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The Matter

Tue, 17 Mar 2026 04:40:16 GMT

I'm traveling for business for the first time in quite a while. Once again making a brief sojourn in the Valley of Blasted Sand.

I'm trying to arrange for the fence to be fixed at my house, since the snow removal service was trying to see how much you could compress a giant pile of snow against a fence before you are basically just trying to knock the fence over with a snow-plow. (Not very much. To their credit, they are covering the repair.)

I wanted to comment about the insane anti-trans legislation passed over the governor's veto a few weeks ago, but I'm at a loss for words. Insane fascist nonsense. Why is "maybe just don't harass anybody" always a bridge too far for these people?! Seems like it's always the "party of small government" trying to establish the Federal Pants Inspectors.

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Refridged

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 21:42:13 GMT

One thing I forgot to mention that was a significant change in my life from last week: I got a new fridge! Okay, maybe that's not the most significant. But it had been a number of months of low-level annoyance about my fridge working, but not quite as well as it seemed like it should: Milk going sour a bit more quickly, veggies not keeping quite as fresh, jars in the back frosting over a bit more frequently. That sort of thing.

Anyways, I eventually figured out that the magic phrase I wanted was "garage ready" (I wanted something with better temperature control but no fancy frills or plumbing) and arranged for a delivery. The Home Depot crew sure were efficient and organized, got new fridge in and old fridge out in a few minutes even though the process included popping the front door right off its hinges and putting it back in place after. I've been pretty happy with the new fridge, a Frigidaire top-freezer model. It also has a magnetic front (my old fridge didn't and I found that inconvenient, but obviously that's the sort of minor inconvenience it's not worth buying a new fridge for). The only thing worse is that this model lacks a light in the freezer (apparently pretty common in "garage-ready" top-freezer models). That's not too much of a problem so far, though. I suppose if it's a pain I can try to stick a rechargeable light with a motion sensor in there, if I can find something that performs okay at those temperatures.

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Sparkling Dark

Tue, 10 Mar 2026 23:31:54 GMT

Wear your longjohns from October to May
And you will not be chilly, not even one day

Sometimes in March it's way too warm for that, though! Record temps. Maybe it's the usual spring fake-out but today was beautiful! Local legend Keytar Bear was playing near the Galaxy Park Fountain in Kendall. I rode a Blue Bike into work and then had to go quite a ways from Kendall to find an open dock.

This weekend, we saw Dead as a Dodo, which was fantastic. It's a surreal, fairy-tale-esque story of a skeleton boy and a skeleton dodo hunting for bones to stave off their impending disintegration in a far-future post-apocalyptic underworld, when a certain occurrence overturns the natural (and supernatural) order of death (and life). Really weird, great, surreal stagecraft and puppetry.

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Back to the Storms

Sun, 01 Mar 2026 21:24:58 GMT

Workation in Baltimore was extended due to weather and it was great. Really, really great. Very nice to get extra time with Melissa and Elliott and Simon, wound up taking the slow trip home by train all day on Tuesday so Erica could be back for school on Wednesday (Monday and Tuesday were snow days anyways). Erica wasn't thrilled about the prospect of such a long train ride but then it was fine, she did some craft projects and watched Lu Over the Wall again (we watched it together for the first time on that trip in Cleveland) and the time passed pretty quick. I even managed to get in a productive day of work from the train, despite the flaky wifi.

The storm wasn't as snowy in Boston as the last, but slightly south of Boston got whacked. Providence got more snow than in the Blizzard of '78.

Since then, I continued to spend the rest of the week wringing out concurrency bugs and the US government managed to start another war. And the government is sanctioning AI chatbot company Anthropic for saying its contract doesn't permit the self-described "Department of War" to use the tech for mass surveillance and unsupervised killbots. (With OpenAI stepping into that vacuum, guess it's time to rewatch Slaughterbots and have nightmares.) Just the usual.

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Workation

Sun, 22 Feb 2026 03:32:52 GMT

It's been an interval.

This week, I've been traveling to visit family and work from elsewhere during Erica's school vacation, giving Julie a startup focus week. I got a lot done. Enjoyed some time at home in Cleveland, and a lovely visit with Melissa and family in Baltimore. This time we're staying at Melissa's place (since my parents aren't also staying over) and it is very nice and cozy. Baltimore is really a lot of fun. The weather is lovely today, but the whole east coast is getting more snow at the end of the weekend.

On an unrelated note, here are links to a few interesting things that have been swirling around my mind:

An AI Agent Published a Hit Piece on Me - In which an AI agent responds with hostility to having it's open source software contribution rejected.

Will Artificial Superintelligence Kill Us? - This is from a few years ago, but seemed like a really good summation of the core topics and questions about the risks posed by very capable AI systems.

Child's Play: Tech's new generation and the end of thinking - Interesting essay on the SF AI milieu, which among other things pivots around Scott Alexander's prescient short story, The Whispering Earring.

They Hate to See You Happy - Walking monologue video essay that I think is a really interesting meditation on misery and happiness.

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Out In the Cold

Mon, 26 Jan 2026 03:38:56 GMT

Everything seems too much lately.

My own life is quietly busy. Last weekend was Mystery Hunt. Definitely was a good time this year. Felt like I was able to contribute less than usual, felt like there were more difficult "insight needed" bits and fewer puzzles with lengthy mining through clues, but there were at least a few puzzles where I helped move things a bit towards a solution or even found some key bit of insight. My team came far from first this year, but we did finish hunt in the wee hours of Monday morning, and I was glad to stay up for what was really a very fun and charming end-game.

This past weekend Erica had her in-town birthday party on Saturday, and I was a bit stressed about the details leading up, but it all went well. Today, some real winter weather rolled in. The last time Boston got a real blizzard was in 2022, we've had several winters in a row that have been quite light on snow. Erica and I walked through the snow to Time Out Market for lunch after her art lesson, and though heavy snowfall had commenced and there were already a few inches on the ground, we passed more than one jogger and one couple holding their (I assume) usual iced Dunks coffee in their bare hands. Never can get Boston down. We boarded a train direct to Union Square, had to change trains when our train went out of service three times, and then were delayed getting into Union due to a frozen switch. I made hot chocolate when we got home, and frittata for dinner.

I've been playing a lot of Hades II, and got in my first victories on both routes.

The national news is so dismaying. It seems like the administration has decided that interfering with or just annoying their goons is worthy of summary execution. And Republicans are still largely behind this. The story I'm alluding to is even more egregious than the ICE murder that I was talking about in my immediately last post. Again, sending masked agents door-to-door to ferret out crime somewhere is not how America does law enforcement. It's not a way of doing law enforcement that's compatible with the substantive personal freedoms that America values and protects. If that's allegedly the only way to enforce a set of laws, it certainly calls into question whether those laws are at all just or reasonable, and also calls into question the motives who insist that this particular approach must be pursued, that all its deficiencies must be remedied by sheer overwhelming scale.

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Past Americana

Sat, 10 Jan 2026 19:04:01 GMT

Winter break with family was good. Very relaxing. I am locking back in to my health goals in the new year, though, after a few weeks of little exercise and lot beer and cake.

I read There Is No Antimemetics Division (a great piece of sci-fi psychological horror by Sam Hughes / qntm, all of his stuff is great) and started watching Severance (also great sci-fi suspense psychological horror, but the sort of existential mystery where I really, really hope there's a coherent core to the mystery and a complete plot arc for the characters). I reread Redwall, which Erica also read recently. I continued reading The Chronicles of Narnia to Erica, now on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I also read John Green's Everything Is Tuberculosis, one of the most interesting pieces of nonfiction I've read in recent years.

I've been enjoying watching the speedrun streams this week from AGDQ.

And my surprise favorite of the week Brown Sugar Clementine Polar seltzer, one of their winter special-edition flavors. It tastes like how you'd expect from that description, which is a very strange thing for seltzer to taste like.

And now for some tonal whiplash because there are a few more serious things I want to talk about, and apparently when I don't write for a few weeks these days, America makes meaningful steps towards both Civil War 2 and World War 3.

The US military kidnapped Venezuela's head of state, and while I acknowledge the Venezualans would be better off rid of Maduro, it's not so clear to what extent they are. It seems to be less "regime change" and more "bump off the top guy and hope the next up will give you a cut". Right-wingers brayed about how this means America can "just do things" now, it's a big "mission accomplished" moment. All very familiar. Axing the whole international order just for this seems questionable to me, though. And maybe it will work out, but if so, the Trump administration seems to be lining up a whole series of similar things to do until one of them very much doesn't.

Additional oil in Venezuela resources will take a lot of time and investment to unlock, but maybe some big buyers of Trump Coin will profit along the way, even under this sort of policy environment. Trump claims the newly-promoted number two will be handing over 30-50M barrels of oil to be sold, with proceeds spent at Trump's sole discretion. Seems like a crazy thing to happen, if he's even telling the truth about that in the first place.

On the domestic front, Minneapolis is again in the news as a panicky (at best) ICE agent Jonathan Ross killed Renee Good, a poet and mom who was, as far as I can tell, trying to obey the possibly-contradictory orders of masked goons who surrounded her for no good reason. Of course, Trump's base is quick to smear Good as a would-be murderer. Being opposed to ICE or liberal generally is motive enough. The Vice President of the US then smeared the victim as a terrorist and would-be murderer. Even taking VP Vance's word for it, ICE was there to do "door-to-door" immigration raids. That's not how law enforcement in the US is done. If Fourth Amendment protections mean anything, it includes requiring law enforcement act on specific cause. Door to door "show me your papers" because some crime is happening somewhere is deeply anti-American. And the penalty for in any way inconveniencing or even annoying the thugs carrying out those anti-American actions is apparently, in their view, not just death, but death followed by being publicly slandered by the Vice President. The FBI is jumping in to confiscate the evidence and preclude the state enforcing their own protections of their citizens' rights. "Abolish ICE" is the moderate position.

The one bit of good news globally, it seems, is from Iran, it seems there is some chance the people there will actually overthrow their government of murderous terrorist-supporting theocrats. That really would be a big change to the global order. I'm inclined to be pessimistic about everything these days, but the people suffering under that certainly deserve better.

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Just Catching Up on Some Shows

Fri, 19 Dec 2025 01:49:56 GMT

Made it down to the Seaport Winter Market this weekend. The hot-chocolate-filled ring croissant that Lakon Paris was serving up was the winning treat of the event. Those really are some genius patissiers.

I watched Murderbot, based on Martha Wells sci-fi series about a rogue security android (sort of) that has slipped the systems keeping it enslaved which, plagued with anxiety, is using its newfound freedom to keep its head down so it can spend more time watching its favorite TV shows. And, of course, keeping its head down means dealing with the latest batch of odd-ball idiot humans who are doing their best to get themselves killed. Alexander Skarsgård plays the lead, and aside from some cool effects on the main character's armor and helmet, the show tunes down the degree to which the protagonist looks like not a normal human so that the viewer can be hurled into the uncanny valley purely on the strength of Skarsgård's performance (IMO a good decision). It's funny and dramatic and the rest of the characters and cast are great as well. I think the shorter episodes worked well with the pulpy source material. Definitely recommend this one if you like this sort of thing, especially if you already like the books.

The news continues to be terrible. The President responds to mass killings with essentially "stuff happens" and double homicides with, insanely, more or less "it's that guy's fault for being annoying about not liking me". Half the White House is gone with ever more ambitious plans to replace the wreckage with who knows what. What remains is being covered with ever more tacky and outrageous displays. We're hurtling towards another unnecessary war for oil. The nation has been made a laughingstock, and we deserve it.

My team's Android Jetpack library made it to its first stable release. A big milestone.

I'm exhausted and looking forward to winter break. I hope I can get some rest.

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Remember That Time Back in Act One?

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 03:55:18 GMT

Was really nice going home for Thanksgiving, though I was feeling under the weather for the first part of the trip. Melissa and her family were also home for the holiday. Simon is four now.

We went out to see the second part of the film adaptation of Wicked, and it was pretty good. Not as good as the first half, but it's stuck adapting the weaker half of the musical after too long an intermission. Worth seeing if you liked the first half.

I started watching Pluribus. Really good. Vince Gilligan's shows have more thought and creativity put into individual shots than many shows put into entire seasons.

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I Still Wish I'd Gone There More Often

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 00:44:19 GMT

I woke up this morning reminded by a dream of some nearby restaurants that had slipped my mind, with a sense that some were definitely gone and others were, well, I hadn't thought about them in a while. And as I tried to recall more of the details, I couldn't remember the names and the geography just didn't fit together. I'm sure some of the details are real, but I can't really parse out which or how it fits together. But some of those places I probably visited only in dream. And even there the urban geography has inexorably shifted.

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The Dem Defectors

Thu, 13 Nov 2025 03:48:56 GMT

It seems the government shutdown is heading to an end after eight members of the Democratic caucus have broken with their party, and the shutdown deal currently contains some pretty heinous provisions, including an attempt to allow $500k payouts to Senators who participated in Trump's 2020 scheme to replace entire states certified election results with fraudulent ones. Which is absolutely insane corruption the likes of which would be a world-ending scandal under any non-Trump administration but is just par for the course now.

To me, this raises some interesting questions about why and (this second point seems a bit neglected) why now. After all, these the defectors all held the line before. Maybe they were waiting for critical mass, but at least someone changed their mind and could have (but didn't) do so earlier. Well:

1. Being seen to "fight hard" encourages voter turnout among the base, whether or not it accomplishes legislative goals. But now the 2025 election is over, and the 2026 election is a long way off. Even the defectors held off until after the election. They could have coordinated to defect earlier with probably no electoral consequences for them personally (for one thing, most are retiring, and the rest aren't up in 2026), but they didn't.

2. Republicans are in favor of destroying the federal government (even if perma-shutdown isn't their first choice of how) and are willing to inflict unlimited pain on the American people. So they wouldn't necessarily have budged even as Thanksgiving (and so on) was ruined, the economy actually dealt a huge blow, and damage dealt to state capacity that will take decades to repair. (David Brin has a similar take.) The 2025 election results certainly look bad for Republicans, but 2026 was already looking pretty bad for them, and making it look slightly worse for them doesn't necessarily make them more inclined to compromise. They also have primary elections to consider and their own base that doesn't want them to budge.

3. Even if House and Senate Republicans blinked, Trump alone is sufficient to hold the "House CR or nothing" line, they wouldn't have a veto-proof majority. Trump was already pushing Senate to abolish the filibuster and push through the House bill. Of course, abolishing the filibuster is something that Conservadems would hate. It would remove any reason for Republicans to negotiate with them now, or for a slim majority of actual liberals (if that ever happens) to negotiate with them later.

4. On the other hand, as sort of a alternative to that first point, it's possible that the defectors saw Mamdani win and regretted holding out until the election in the first place.

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Erica is Keeping Busy, Too

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:27:47 GMT

My work has been very busy, as has Julie's.

Ink Jetpack is in beta, and developer relations published an elaborate sample app demonstrating it's capabilities.

Last weekend, I took Erica to the Day of the Dead event at the Peabody Museum. Erica had fun with all the craft activities. And we all went to the singalong theatrical release of K-Pop Demon Hunters with one of Erica's friends and their family. Was pretty fun, I see why that film has been so popular.

The Somerville election happened. All the ballot questions passed. Jake Wilson will be our new mayor. Three of four on Somerville YIMBY's councilor-at-large slate were elected.

This weekend, I took Erica to the new special exhibit at the MFA focusing on the work of Winslow Homer, especially his watercolor. Really cool.

I cooked an easy orange chicken for dinner tonight, which turned out really well even though I was completely winging it on the recipe.

I finished reading The Difference Engine and started reading Souls in the Great Machine, connected by the odd thread of both being sci-fi about unusual computers. The first is basically alt-history of "what if Babbage's analytical engine was actually built and the computer age started about 100 years early?" The second is far-post-apocalyptic sci-fi featuring a massive human-powered computer. That second book is part of a trilogy. For some reason I read the middle book in that trilogy, Eyes of the Calculator, a long while ago, then got the sequel, then realized it was the middle book and thought I should read the first book first, then didn't get around to that until now.

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Shutdown Teardown

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 17:09:26 GMT

Yeah, the White House probably does need more event space. But if Biden or Obama's approach to that problem was to bypass all process and demolish an entire wing during a government shutdown as quickly as possible so as to present it as a fait accompli? The Republican reaction to that would definitely not be calm. And it's incredibly naive to think either the ballroom will be paid for entirely by donations or that the all donations nominally for the ballroom will go to that project, given the history of how responsibly Trump-affiliated nonprofits manage their donations.

Trump is also trying to get the DOJ to pay him $230M in recompense for prosecuting him for his obvious and egregious crimes. This includes asking for actual damages for legal fees he never paid and punitive damages which the law bars paying. The decisions on all of this will be made by people who were Trump's personal lawyers, including those defending him in these specific cases. This by itself seems a wild scandal, but it's just another day in (what's left of) the Trump White House.

There's also been talk about the supposed necessity of a third Trump term, term limits be damned. Of course this is trolling, but this is an administration that governs through trolling, stupidity of the plan (as after the 2020 election) is no barrier to the existence or seriousness of the attempt. Personally, I'll bite the bullet on the (admittedly still too contingent) prediction: If Trump isn't dead or something, they'll try the straightforward plan of just running and winning the Republican primary. And in that case, I think SCOTUS would say on 1st Amendment grounds, political parties can put forward the candidates they want, however foolishly (after all, eligibility rules theoretically could be changed, no matter how much a constitutional amendment is definitely not actually happening). And if he wins, will they want to rule in a way that amounts to "the Republican can't win"? I'd guess it would come down to some combination of "whether he's 'obviously ineligible' is a non-justiciable political question", "that's the responsibility of the Electoral College", and "the mechanism is impeachment". Of course, that would also require Trump to actually win, or for one of his alternative slate of plans to actually succeed.

Trump's also ordered the military to restart nuclear weapons testing. Don't know where to begin with that. Seems insane.

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Somerville Questions

Mon, 27 Oct 2025 19:14:22 GMT

I usually do something about how I'm thinking about the upcoming election, so here goes.

Mayor - Wilson: Somerville is having a challenger vs. challenger mayoral election this time, and it seems the big difference between the two candidates is on housing: Both in favor, but Jake Wilson supporting a more incremental approach of upzoning areas of the city near transit (note that's most of it), Willie Burnley taking Somerville YIMBY's favored "upzone all of the 'neighborhood residence' zone to 'urban residence'" approach. I think their agendas are similar, but I think Wilson will be more able to get stuff done, and "get rid of 'neighborhood residential'" is a much harder sell despite being very similar in result to more targeted upzoning.

City Councilor At-Large - Istvan, Wheeler, Mbah, Link: This is Somerville YIMBY's slate.

Question 1 (New City Charter Ratification) - Yes: After a long process to update Somerville's charter, the new version seems to be something with broad consensus support: Mayors past, present, and future are in favor, city councilors are in favor, local civic groups are in favor, etc. Seems like a straightforward improvement.
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Question 2 (Four-Year Mayoral Term Instead of Two) - No: More discussion here. I was leaning "yes" earlier, now I'm leaning "no". A bit uncertain. Best argument for: Longer terms help new mayors recruit better high-level staff. Best argument against: City council is every two years, and the power balance is still stacked against them, even if the new charter passes.

Question 3 (The Palestine One) - No: Well, here I feel even not making a recommendation is likely to get me yelled at. Here's the full wording:

"THIS QUESTION IS NOT BINDING: Shall the Mayor of Somerville and all Somerville elected leaders be instructed to end all current city business and prohibit future city investments and contracts with companies as long as such companies engage in business that sustains Israel's apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine?"

I guess the way I break this down is like so: I think analysis of a ballot measure should be focused on the case where it actually does something. In that condition, I think it's likely to hamper city government here while not doing any good for anyone.

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Timebomb-Based Governance

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 15:20:34 GMT

I wish the US didn't have so many factors of the political system involve the government threatening to blow itself (along with the US and maybe global economy) up every few months: The budget, the debt ceiling, "temporary" measures as key parts of various policy frameworks.

Meanwhile, Trump's demolished an entire wing of the White House to turn it into Mar-a-Lago 2. Apparently there's a really pressing need for event space, so it's a shame that Trump's inevitably going to fill that niche with tacky garbage. And it's insane to unilaterally demolish a WH wing during a government shutdown. Imagine the reaction if Obama did anything even remotely like that.

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Sage Advice

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 19:58:34 GMT

My mom was in town last weekend for her high school reunion, and it was a pretty great visit. Friday evening had dinner with cousins Amy, Josh, Sylvie, and my Aunt Milly at Dosa & Curry. There was a lot of stuff going on for HONK! Fest all weekend. Julie and I took Erica to the festival in Davis on Saturday, and we all went with my mom to the Harvard Art Museum on Sunday morning before going to the parade.

Monday was a rainy, quiet day at home, but I decided to do a cooking project Erica had been planning, she wanted tomato soup with pesto grilled cheese. So we baked milk bread and made pesto and made the soup with fresh tomatoes and herbs. I made the soup more or less according to this recipe, but I didn't broil the veggies after baking, added more garlic and herbs, used a can of coconut milk instead of cream, and also added a can of tomato paste. For the fresh herbs, I used all the fresh tarragon and sage in the packets I got from the supermarket. Which was an ounce each, so a questionably large amount, and I would have felt like a fool if I'd ruined the soup on that account. I thought it turned out great, though, and fortunately everyone else liked it, too. I really love sage, though. Season your food more, it's fine.

New people are starting on my team at work this week. Busy, busy.

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Summer Hangs On

Wed, 08 Oct 2025 00:10:23 GMT

Still feeling like I'm not keeping up with what's going on. I'm doing some good cooking, though.

There was a second community meeting about the apartment building that's going to replace a falling-down ruin of a house in my neighborhood. The revised designs look pretty great.

There is an ongoing government shutdown because Republicans can neither compromise nor achieve unanimity within their own governing coalition. They've pasted "radical Democrat shutdown" across every government email and website, though. The shutdown hasn't prevented them from going on about which part of the US the government is allegedly at war with this week. Meanwhile, Trump's tasked a lawyer who has yet to prosecute a criminal case with making James Comey rue the day that he ever crossed Hillary Clinton. And Trump is rumbling about how he'll talk to the DOJ about a pardon for Ghislaine Maxwell (who he doesn't remember and probably hasn't even heard about before, to take it from him).

Basically the last week it's been highs in the 80s, though it's early October.

I started reading The Magician's Nephew to Erica.

Some new people are joining my team at work. Looking forward to the organizational rebuilding.

My mom will be visiting town next weekend, for her high school reunion.

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Apples and Fluff

Wed, 24 Sep 2025 19:42:26 GMT

Last Saturday was the 20th annual Union Square Fluff Festival. Had some great weather, so the crowds were heavy, but still managed to see some cool performances and eat some tasty treats. Himalayan Kitchen's fluff momos were the sweet-treat winner, graham-cracker-and-fluff-shell fried apple dumplings with caramel sauce and toasted fluff, really quite a dessert.

On Monday, we went to have Rosh Hashana dinner with my cousins and extended family, which was really nice.

The trees are starting to turn colors. (Is there a connection in the Hebrew calendar between the day beginning at sunset and the year beginning in fall?)

Erica got her rental instrument for school, she's going to study the viola along with a few of her friends.

I started playing Donkey Kong Bananza, which is a ton of fun. Really does feel like a Mario Odyssey sequel, but with more mountain punching.

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As Big as the Sun

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 01:49:19 GMT

Erica seems to have entered an absurd questions phase, and her preferred question is "what if there was a [type of object] as big as the sun?" I do not understand her new obsession with solar-scale constructs. (What brand of toothpaste does the sun use? Solgate!)

The Somerville primary election was yesterday, so we have the pretty exciting news that we're going to get a new mayor. The current mayor got absolutely wrecked in the primary and didn't manage to make the cut to top-two. The general will be between two challengers who are both current city councilors. It will be really interesting to see how they present their ideas as they campaign head-to-head, much more interesting than if the general were mostly a referendum on the incumbent.

I finished (the first season; apparently it's renewed for a second and I can't wait, but the first season also feels like it stands on its own) watching Common Side Effects, that show is spectacularly great. It's an animated sci-fi story centering around a mushroom that can cure anything. Reminds me a hair of King of the Hill (no coincidence, Mike Judge is a producer and one of the voice actors) and Scavengers Reign (Joseph Bennett is also one of the creators), but also reminds me a lot of Pulp Fiction and Paranoia Agent. It's not a comedy, but it is quite funny in addition to dramatic. It has a somewhat caricature-esque sketch-artist style for the character designs, in addition to some lush scenery and creative psychedelia and a bit of surreal horror. Apparently a good way to do comedy drama is just have all of the characters be huge weirdos in one way or another. There are lots of interesting ways to be weird, and no one is really normal, after all.

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Things Get Ever Worse

Fri, 12 Sep 2025 02:08:43 GMT

Senseless violence is an unmitigated tragedy. And not less so when the victim is someone who has worked to make our society, in relevant ways, less like other polities where this sort of tragedy happens far less frequently.

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Computer Salad

Sun, 31 Aug 2025 23:44:05 GMT

Last weekend, went back to Cleveland with Julie to pick up Erica and meet some of my extended family for a family reunion. Was pretty great. Melissa was there, but Elliott and Simon were absent, since Simon's been traveling a bit rough lately and he was due to start a new preschool soon after.

On Wednesday, Erica started fourth grade, the two intro days followed by a four-day weekend.

On Saturday, I did a bunch of activities with Erica, including going to the Farmers Market and doing some cooking. We went on the tour of the Taza chocolate factory, which has been on my activity to-do list for a while, since that's very close to our house. I made cucumber salad, for which for some reason my mind kept trying to substitute a more nonsensical phrase.

Today, I baked ginger-lemon scones from the Flour cookbook with Erica, which she picked out as a cooking project. Turned out well.

We had an appointment this weekend to get our seasonal vaccines, but it was abruptly cancelled. I'm hoping that things will get sorted out. But the CDC seems to be in an insane state right now, and the government's vaccine policy seems to be at root straight-up in favor of more people getting sick.

(I'm reading A Wind in the Door to Eria and it's uh interesting timing in the context of Sec. Brain-Worm's comments about "mitochondrial challenges".)

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Too Hot

Thu, 14 Aug 2025 00:38:17 GMT

I should write something anything.

Erica had a few weeks at Creative Arts Camp at Tufts. Several of her school friends did the same session. Seems they did a lot and had a lot of fun.

Now Erica is off with my parents at Cascades Dance Camp. We all met my sister in Baltimore for the hand-off. Was great catching up. Very nice trip.

Work is keeping on.

I've been reading The Secret Garden to Erica.

I had dinner with Julie tonight at Too Hot, a new Sichuan restaurant in Harvard Square. Incredibly tasty, made me sweat almost as much as the weather.

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Watching the Rabbits and Bees

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 00:33:42 GMT

I finished reading Watership Down to Erica, reading to her over video call in the evenings while she was on her trip. Great book, I'm very glad that I got around to reading it. It is simultaneously:

A fantasy story where the main fantastical conceit is "what if rabbits had mythology?"
A war story centering around the Battle of Arnhem with the twist that the protagonists are rabbits.
A Tolkein-esque story told in the style of something translated from another language, pieced together and recorded from an oral tradition. (And that in large part as an extremely elaborate setup for a climactic bit where one of the protagonists gets the last-minute "you could give up and join me" speech from the big bad and rejects the offer in a way that otherwise would not be getting past the censors in a book intended for children.)
A book where prose description of flowers is a surprisingly high percentage by volume.

Definitely understand why it's a classic.

On a possibly-related (but definitely a pretty big jump of a tangent) note, one of the thing that's been bouncing around in my head is some of the discourse around wild-animal welfare, centering around this recent post arguing against beekeeping and responses like this. It's interesting, but personally I think that post has intuitions that are wildly off from mine. Bees' lives seem like they'd be full of stimuli that would be particularly pleasant and non-aversive for bees. They routinely store surpluses, which gives them flexibility about when they gather food. Kept bees lose some of that surplus, but seem to gain quite a lot in exchange for that, and compared to most domesticated animals they're uniquely able to just leave if conditions are bad. There was also some discussion arguing the post was emblematic of the pitfalls of negative utilitarianism. Seems like there are a lot of contexts where it's easy to add (or multiply) up pains and sorrows and decide it would be preferable to succumb to the call of the void. I was also reminded of this good but really odd sci-fi short story, which took me a while to re-find based on my vague recollection and I link to without further context.

Also, it is really pleasant to stop and watch bees harvest. I've definitely spent a lot of time doing that this year.

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