D&F 3/5/23
With the constant rain lately in Oakland, I’m looking for bright spots, and this morning for the 3rd time since I moved here I heard it: thunder! Snorri was a bit scared, but I was elated. I missed lightning and thunder from Texas. My hope is that we can keep the the sky fireworks but avoid importing tornados. The deal I accepted by moving here is that we fear the ground on the west coast, and not the sky.
This morning’s storm whipped through my area, and now it’s bright and sunny outside. Later I plan to do a bit of cycling as long as the weather holds, and appreciate some of the blooms and greenery on the hills. But first, it’s time for F1 quali and the Strade Bianchi! Race season is back in full force.
If you haven’t seen Drive to Survive, I highly recommend it:
There’s a trailer out for the cycling/Tour de France show out as well:
If you hate wheeled vehicles or racing, or it just leaves you cold, perhaps I can interest you in a lovely write-up of friend of the newsletter Jenny’s new book. It was pretty wild seeing press and news react to her first book as she got increasingly exhausted by the coverage and somewhat misunderstood by many of the takes based solely on its name. I’m hoping Saving Time is better received for what it actually is—not self-help, but a critical, historically-informed look at the capitalist construction of time and work. I haven’t gotten my copy yet, but it’s headed to the top of my stack when I do. In the meantime, I’m still reading Kropotkin and Erik Olin Wright.
On the fiction side, I’m reading the latest non-Recluce book by L.E. Modesitt Jr. and it is taking me back to the limited fantasy and sci-fi shelves of suburban bookstores and Half-Price Books of my youth. When I was a kid in the 80s and 90s, every car ride, family outing, or evening was all about reading. We didn’t have portable video games or smartphones, and even the family TV was rarely for what I wanted to watch, but I could choose the world of words to explore. I love how many more entertainment options I have now, but reading will always hold the closest place in my heart.
Links
- I’m calling this bug “piss wizard” from now on:
- In public transit thought technology this week is a plea to consider the amount of subsidy of roads and cars as a loss, or busses and trains as a similar investment:
- The US government wants its cut from corporate grifts, and as such is disincentivized from actually regulating or fining corporations and “religious” institutions more than the profit they make. There are many smart people with ideas on how to fix this, but some combination of banning lobbying, limiting campaign funds to a standard low rate, or even the lottery-based election system I’ve mentioned before could make a positive change:
- I don’t agree with every tip in this list, but it’s an interesting one to peruse nonetheless. I do like this one though:
Kindness is vastly underrated. Everyone can be kind—it requires no special skill or training, yet has an immediate, positive impact. It is perhaps the ultimate life hack.
- Back in my day it was completely normal to send extreme shock sites to your friends as a joke, find a copy of Faces of Death on VHS, or navigate to Rotten.com to satisfy weird curiosity. It wasn’t particularly healthy, but it was what we did. Kids now have access to way more and worse content on the internet, but there was something especially gritty and gruesome about these videos and sites that made it feel like a dark secret. You would whisper the names of these things as a shibboleth of internet savvy as you made friends in high school or college. A certain type of person is attracted to the secret-society nature of hidden horror, and I’m one of them. The end of this article gets into what those same types of folk are into now, and I’m very glad I left my curiosity behind with my college years. I guess my only tip is that if you’re a parent, be careful what your kids can browse to and see on Youtube and elsewhere but know that one day they’re going to see exactly as much weird shit as they want. Luckily there are lots of great therapists around to help later.
Closing
After all those links, I need a nap. On my tv the bicycle boys are winding their way around the white roads of Italy, and I’m making another cup of coffee to fight that post-prandial nap feeling. I was reminded this week by a podcast that it’s almost SXSW time again, and had a brief moment of wistful memory of the many SXSWs I attended from senior year of HS through the early 2010s, drinking for free and seeing wild shows. I don’t think it’s nearly as relevant as it felt back then, especially the interactive portion, but SouthBy was the place Twitter launched, Foursquare gained broader popularity, and homeless men were transformed into wifi hotspots. Ok, so that last one was particularly bad.
I’ll never be young enough again to drink nonstop for a week of festivities, but that’s ok. Instead, I’ll sip this coffee, watch my programs, and slowly climb my bike up a mountain with a huge smile on my face. Whether you’re still a youth, or enjoying the riches of maturity, I hope you get a few big smiles this week, space cowgirls~