I love this Imbolc essay from Rhyd Wildermuth.

Not only is memorizing Dune’s “Litany Against Fear” during childhood not silly, I commend it as a solid practice for an adult. I did it in my early forties and I’m not even much of an SF reader. And I have a button on my backpack.

Either I’ve gotten trapped in a “woodworking + Maine” algorithm or there seems to be a high per capita ratio of woodworkers in Maine.

Technology is a program of control. Within certain limits, this is good & necessary. Outside those limits, it is a rejection of reality. Living in an increasingly artificial time (AI, AR), we must embrace the contingency of reality by being vulnerable, open, & sincere–a hard, countercultural task.

A company offers free access to the Headspace meditation app, yoga classes, blood pressure monitors, and wellness coaching to help their employees cope. What if–stay with me here, I have a crazy idea–they just didn’t put as much pressure on people?

I like Ted Gioia’s seven heretical questions about progress. But, being the animist, agrarian(?), anarcho-primitivist(?), whatever-the-hell that I am, I would edit his statement:

Progress should be about improving the quality of life and human flourishing. We make a grave error when we assume this is the same as new tech and economic cost-squeezing.

As follows:

Progress should be about improving the quality of our ecosystems and ensuring the mutual flourishing of all life. We make a grave error when we assume this is the same as new tech and economic cost-squeezing.

We must–absolutely must–start thinking beyond the merely human. Gioia may well agree with this, but we need people to start saying it explicitly.

We’re in the “path of totality” for the solar eclipse on April 8. I found out this morning that IU is cancelling classes across the state and holding an event with William Shatner. I find this hilarious and adorable.

Amazing story (via @ayjay) on newly discovered ways that redwoods survive fire. We went on Tom’s Muir Woods walking tour in 2022. He told us that redwoods are practically immortal, if only humans would stop screwing things up.

We have reached that point in the annual audit that I feel like an old-timey telephone switchboard operator during a gossip emergency.

Look, I’m glad people are re-discovering HP Lovecraft but some of us have been living in fear of malevolent gods from the briny deep for a while now.