After reading this post on canonical address books by @annahavron, it occurred to me that something like a physical record of important information that could be referenced by someone upon our deaths would be a great idea. I mentioned this to my wife Rachel and she said she saw something like that at our local bookstore and - after some searching - we found I’m Dead. Now What?, an organizer built for this very thing. We’ve ordered one for ourselves and one for our in-laws. I feel like Caitlin Doughty would be proud.

This is a great post that I needed to read today. “My point isn’t that we’re not living in a Diet Dystopia, because I believe we are, but that my cynicism isn’t at all helpful. All it does is make me bitter and unpleasant, like a Caffeine Free Diet Coke.”

I Welcome Your Performance hypertext.monster

That there is a fun ride.

It’s Beer and Waffles Day! The first race of the season is one of my high holy days. 🚲

I’m on a sixteen day streak with Day One. I’ve never been able to maintain a daily journaling habit but Day One is helping me do that. I had never heard of it before I saw several people on Micro.Blog talking about it, so thanks y’all.

This is an excellent video on how Amazon can afford to offer free shipping to Prime members. Basically, it hides the cost of shipping by raising prices across the internet. And that, folks, is monopoly power.

Now reading: “The dropout: a history” at Aeon. I’ve been in a sort of project of disconnection for several months now. Specifically, disconnecting in order to re-connect in a more healthy way. This article provides an enlightening history of the cultural concerns (and paranoias!) underlying the “turn on, tune in, drop out” movement. It’s easy to see parallels in the present day.

I’ve been making notes about the influences on my life. I noticed a surface-level contradiction between these two, which is resolved at a deeper level.

Malcolm X: for the way he learned and changed in public

Bernie Sanders: for his moral clarity and stability over time

I value Malcolm for his willingness to change and Bernie because he hasn’t. But change isn’t really the issue, is it? I value them both because they found true north and did not deviate from their course - whatever it cost them in terms of popularity and misunderstanding. It is a rare and valuable thing to find someone who has found and followed their deepest convictions.

Austin Kleon recommends studying something you love in depth - and it just so happens that I’m reading through the collected poetry of Robinson Jeffers. I’m keeping notes in Craft and hope to turn those notes into occasional posts. There are themes running through his work that very much interest me.

I’d also love to do something like this for the albums of Over the Rhine, or blog through the Tao Te Ching. Blogging through books (in the style of blockquote followed by commentary) was very common on the blogs I used to read fifteen years ago. I miss that sort of amateur scholarship.