My lovely wife Rachel made a video of our garden this morning. (Yours truly is the cameraman.) I hope she continues doing these. She knows more about what’s happening than I do and—let’s be honest—who wouldn’t rather listen to her talk instead of me?

This, from Freddie deBoer (via @ayjay), is true. I picked up the opinions habit early on because I thought it was what intelligent people were supposed to do. I’m now trying to unlearn it, in part because (as Freddie says) arguing over opinions is deeply unpleasant to me.

For a very large swath of the human population, probably the majority, constantly forming and expressing and fighting over opinions on contentious topics is an unusual and unpleasant activity. It’s not that many people out there just don’t naturally form opinions, on art and culture and politics, the way anyone does. But to think of those opinions as something to constantly bring into a state of contention with others, to argue all the time as a matter of day-to-day life, is intimidating even for many smart and principled people. It’s hard to recall now, but there was a very recent period in which most people had no greater opportunity to share their opinions than to say them out loud at work or a bar or during the fellowship service after church. The truly motivated might stand on the street with a bullhorn or start a paper newsletter or write letters to the editor. Most people never bothered. The cacophony of opinion we live in is very new.

The pileated woodpecker seems to be a regular at our feeders now. She has a distinctive, sharp call as she flies into the yard. Also, we do believe she is a “she”, because she does not appear to have the red cheek stripe that males have.

Rachel’s dad was cleaning out his garage and offered me this rickety workbench. I took it home and built a new top for it out of some salvaged studs from a hundred year old house. I fastened it to the wall and now it’s solid and serviceable.

The honeybees are loving the lavender right now.

Another good one from Cory Doctorow: Red Lobster was killed by private equity, not Endless Shrimp

We have a gooseberry!

Today was launch day for an endowment management system that a group of us have been working on for 18 months—and so far, so good. This is the third such system we’ve built over 20 years because there’s nothing on the market quite like it. Great system, well-managed project, but I’m glad it’s over!

It’s been a frustrating few days trying to get the finish right on this leaf of my in-laws’ table—and I still don’t have it right. But I’ve learned a lot more about finishes and techniques so 🤷‍♂️

A clarification on what I posted earlier: I am not saying that everyone is right about the object of their anger or anxiety. Obviously there are a lot of crazy ideas out there. But that anger and anxiety has its source in a correct evaluation that too many things are too consequential right now.