D&F 2/26/23
Today’s newsletter is a bit late because friend of the letter Drew reminded me that the game Kerbal Space Program exists. I spent around 10 hours this weekend flying shoddily-made spacecraft around a virtual solar system, and sometimes landing. My media and game habits tend to be cyclical insofar as one week I play lots of games, the next I might watch movies, and another could be all books. I used to judge myself for which one of these I wanted to do, since cinema or literature feels more important than tv or games, but approaching my 40s, I don’t care anymore.
Aging is wild! I don’t really feel like I’m in my late thirties until I hear myself get off a couch, but years of therapy, meditation, and failures mean I’m much less likely to get mad at myself. I hope that when I’m approaching my 80s I have even more chill—and more time to fly little spaceships around after ambling up a hill.
It’s Drive to Survive weekend, my dudes:
This season is a delight despite the actual race season being hit or miss. Highlights include Otmar trying to learn French, Mattia failing, and Ricciardo drawing dicks on everyone. F1 is an absurd, rich fuck of a sport, but I have loved it since I was a kid. It’s wild seeing non-motorsports folks in the states give a shit about racing, and I can only hope the coming Netflix show about cycling does the same.
The real lesson is everyone loves a himbo.
Links
- If you’ve spent much time on the three T’s (Tumblr, Twitter, and TikTok), you’ve experienced the special mall-cop/hall monitor anger these platforms inspire:
- When I was little I would snag my grandma’s Harlequin romance novels out of curiosity and a desire for more books to read. I don’t think they ever clicked. It’s so hard to write compelling fiction, and romantic stories especially tend towards saccharine or stupid in my opinion. Nowhere else is this more apparent than the shit romances online being churned out by underpaid writers in China and all over the world. On the one hand I respect the romance novel fans who keep book publishing running, but on the other hand the crap writing of fan fiction and e-pulp are up there with pirated YouPorn in bad smut hell.
- Have you heard? The American worker is less productive these days. Is it “quiet quitting” or “millennial entitlement”? Can we blame gen Z? What about the decline of the “traditional family”? Wait, what? It’s the “return to office” that CEOs love to trumpet from their yachts and digital detox retreats?!? Surprising no one with a brain, if you make people sit on busses, trains, and in traffic for hours every day to risk disease and be distracted by constant interruption, they can’t make as much progress. Is spending time together good for teams? Of course! But is spending hours every day in a liminal non-work commute and then sitting quietly at a desk surrounded by other people productive, not at all. I can talk about this all day, but until the rich fucks who run companies learn that layoffs, cutting benefits, and instituting stack-ranking destroy all motivation and hamstring their beloved profits I’ll just keep grumbling.
- Ok, rant over. Here’s a nice cat:
Closing
With rain in the sky it’s unlikely I’ll get my bike ride today, so if you need me I’ll be watching Drive to Survive, studying for Japanese class, and cooking black cod for a late lunch. This week marks the start of March and hopefully spring. Tons of friends are traveling this month, but I’m planning to stay close to home, and keep rebuilding my cycling fitness. COVID really took things out of me, on top of a trip to Japan, and a ton of winter rain, and I’m eager to feel capable up a mountain again. I hope the last bit of February is lovely for you, and you’ve got your spring wardrobe laid out and ready. It’s almost time to blossom, space cowgirls~