I’m quite impressed by the two large updates to Apple Fitness, which I hadn’t noticed until the past few days. The first is Stacks, where you can add several workouts to a Stack as you’re browsing the workout library, and then start playing the stack as if you are making a larger workout composed of smaller parts. For example, I could ...

Thought #1 Dance music tends toward characteristics like fast, bouncy, energetic, epic, aggressive, big. Most people associate dance music with festivals, namely raves. What’s fascinating about UK House (this is my general name for it, but RateYourMusic calls it a mix of Outsider House and Deep House) is that it’s slower, hypnotic, sad...

RR: Okay, so an anti-AI project where you get the AI to generate large amounts of objectionable content: Feed an image generator this line of text: children in suicide vests. Generate 1000 images, and publish as a set. Run the content through an AI image merge to make it into a video. Catch some writhing Cthulhu horror. DA: Using AI to...

I somehow feel as if I don't have much to share with my friends. Rob, who I have worked, climbed, and written with since 2018, has been able to power through my distant silences—my consistent and regretful inability to start up conversation from a distance—by bringing up many topics and phenomena he's seen on the internet. He has a dif...

Wendell Berry’s essay “Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer” outlines a checklist for his standard of technological innovation: 1. The new tool should be cheaper than the one it replaces. 2. It should be at least as small in scale as the one it replaces. 3. It should do work that is clearly and demonstrably better than the one it repla...

Without any chance to tour the Angeles National Forest, the hand crew has put it on themselves to at least take a look around the foothills that surround the Dalton Fire Station. A trail up from the fire station led to a winding road, with a pull-out full of bicyclists, trailrunners and hikers ready to go up the “Poop Out” trail, one w...

Apparently Gavin Newsom and CalFire announced the end of the 2022 fire season in California. As a firefighter in Northern California, it feels as if it had ended back in August. Surprisingly though, as the 2022 fire season closes, we are still being sent down to Southern California for a cover assignment due to the potentially threaten...

For more than a decade, when I like the design of a website, I right-click and select "View Page Source" or "Inspect" to see what's under the box. I want to know what .css or Javascript they are using, or if they're working right from a WordPress or Micro.blog, etc. Just recently, I passed by scripting.com, and saw that each paragraph ...

The trouble starts when your self is too reliant on your occupation, your location, or your lifestyle. You wonder: Without these identifiers, who are you? So you don't quit your job, you don't change location, and you keep at a lifestyle, even if it doesn't fit your self so much anymore. You begin to push against a stream, then a river...

From mid-September. September 17, 2022 From bad scheduling to a four day flu, I had little opportunity to run, and I’m happy for it. I wanted to think about the past week’s events, because they appear to me tied to variables much greater than me, which is kind of cool to see. The energy-eroding nature of wildland firefighting My job is...

This was back in mid-August. Since September, the garden did astoundingly well in growth, but it was too late in the Fall for full success. I'll make an update on the garden soon. August 12, 2022 When I first took a look at the garden in our newly rented house, I expected the plants to be affected by too much shade and a ground aspect ...

Thank the Spotify algorithmic gods, I have rekindled my love for Jungle and DnB, especially the 90s style where it seems like anything is still possible for the form. Since the 2000s, Jungle and DnB ossified into genre constraints rather than platforms for experimentation, with the strong exception of artists like Detboi or Burial, whe...

After watching the movie, I searched for any videos comparing Austin Butler’s performances with Presley’s real ones. I should have realized that there was a lot riding on the idiosyncrasies of Presley’s movements during each of his milestone events—Elvis was known for his movement, after all. It was fun enough to see Baz Luhrmann and A...

“Starting in 1942, Rodale Press magazines and books repeatedly asserted, suggested, inferred and implied both subtly and overtly, both straight out and between the lines, that organically grown food is far more nutrition than chemically grown food— a half-truth. J.I. Rodale was an ideologue at heart. Absolutely certain about the rightn...

A lot of “dance” music I listen to is on the edge of dance. It doesn’t drive hard enough, doesn’t micromanage one’s experience; it sometimes doesn’t ask for attention. The best way to describe a lot of dance music I listen to: Imagine watching a spy movie where the protagonist enters the club to find his target. The club is modern, wit...

“In the introduction to the book, the critic Elaine Showalter writes that Oates used Monroe as “an emblem of twentieth-century America.” A woman, Showalter later adds without much conviction, “who was much more than a victim.” The writer-director of “Blonde,” Andrew Dominik, doesn’t seem to have read that part about Monroe. His Norma J...

When I find a philosopher that I truly connect with, it is an immediate, visceral reaction. Even when I cannot remember the details of a philosophy, I can vividly recall its feeling and intention. The feeling of immediate and fundamental connection are so self-apparent that when I read those who do not ignite a fire within me, despite ...

Now, after reading two hundred pages mostly regarding suffering, I realize how little I think about it. But I realize that suffering is central to those utopian thinkers, with whom I don’t relate. Suffering is a part of life, but in such a way that I don’t have much to say about it. I am too busy trying to succeed in the small aspects ...

I find it fascinating that a working class hero is so different from a white collar hero. The working class hero, like the firefighter or the emergency medical technician, is recognized as the general idea of all firefighters or EMTs. When they Dan the Firefighter, they don’t see Dan, they see the Firefighter. If Dan were to ever leave...

I read Jordan Peterson’s “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos” (2018) to better get a perspective on the thinker and why he might be so relevant to pop culture nowadays. I attempted to read “Maps of Meaning” a couple years ago, but I couldn’t absorb what he was saying, as it was written like any other academic book that hides its l...

After I dropped out of computer science in Seattle, I moved to Florida to study International Relations, an amorphous degree program that allowed me to take classes ranging from Chinese fiction to African economic statistics. I came to the humanities from the highly organized and digitized field of computer science, and I didn’t let go...

“Sustainable, ethical farming builds soil nitrate and soil organic matter levels by first plowing under a lush legume green manure. However, keep in mind that most kinds of garden vegetables require more nitrate than legume green manuring can usually create. Yet garden writers not equipped with the experience to evaluate farming techni...

“To quote Robert Parnes, 'the vegetable garden is an endless sinkhole for plant nutrients.' It has to be. Many kinds of vegetables require extraordinarily rich soil to grow well. Vegetables were like that during Roman times, and they still are. It’s in their genes. But sustainable, biologically oriented farming aimed at producing nutri...

Description of the Nothing Phone: “Designed with intention. Full of warmth. And joy.” ““… the phone has illuminating light strips on the rear of the phone, which appears to be made from transparent material.” The Verge, “Nothing reveals Phone 1 design a month early”” ““… Nothing’s phone looks kind of different. So no matter what happen...

Twitter seems like the perfect social media platform, and perhaps it is: posts in digestible form, text-centric, shareable paragraphs, re-sharing features that can turn any post into wildfire, and a timeline that is clean and concise. It's easy to imagine Twitter being the market square filled with evangelists and marketers trying to s...

A couple days ago, Susanville, CA lost power for about 6 hours. I was coming back from some trail exploring, and wanted to pick up some groceries for a curry Sosa was planning on making. The Grocery Outlet politely waved us away; we barely picked up that they had a power outage. Thinking it was localized, we tried Safeway, then Walmart...

When in a troubled state in 2014 through 2016, I always found company in the work of Autre Ne Veut, particularly in their 2013 R&B album "Anxiety". The off-kilter production and shrill singing voice of Arthur Asher makes for an alienating experience, which pairs well with the lyrical content: Manic love and death are the primary topics...

Being an active member in the outdoor work and recreation industry, I was already introduced to the concept of "Brand Ambassador" well before the current term of "Influencer". Typically the brand ambassador was a professional in their sport or work, and would be adorned with some amount of brands like a NASCAR driver. Many times, they ...

Just like any other time I’ve lived by myself, I had little to feed my social self except music in Austin, 2019. I lived in my aunt’s neglected condo on the south side, and despite all the room it had, I rarely shared it with anyone except a few sporadic instances of parties and an old relationship. I filled these long moments of alone...

Almost all of my multi-day “expeditions” have been a failure. But like my unread writings, these trips are my children: I love them unconditionally, because even though I didn’t meet the expectations I set upon a map, I lived those experiences and their consequences. That is, the pains, the disappointments, the decisions to I made base...