There is no pent-up demand
A story on Marketplace yesterday on euphoric shoppers on a spree after getting vaccinated suggests that there is pent-up demand that will explode once the enfor...
Category: reflections
Roundabouts make better intersections
I hate cars. But really what I hate are the changes attendant on cars: the distance, the ugliness, the isolation, the fear. I hate the distance between houses, ...
Tinnitus
About a month ago, shortly after my annual physical, I was sitting in the quiet between the ending of the daily conference calls and dinner, and I noticed a sou...
Missing Conversations
The advantage of Twitter, Facebook, and their ilk is that you can see your readers, all two of them, and they might become interlocutors. While I like talking t...
Wallowing
I’m trying to enjoy Katherine May’s Wintering (2020) 📚 but I’m full instead of envy. I’ve carried that sin for years; it’s always close to the ...
Preparations for the Storm
Waffle mixing here soon. I think perhaps coffee may be in order. I started reading Love in the Western World (1940). Twenty pages in the author is introducing h...
Little Fictions
I’ve been reading a fair amount of space opera and political science fiction recently: The Expanse, Old Mans War, A Memory Called Empire, Too Like the Lig...
Saturday, neither in the park nor the fourth of July
What will I make for breakfast this morning? I had a thought last night before bed, but I didn’t write it down and now don’t remember. I’m rea...
Parables of the Present
Started Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower (1993) 📚 this morning. Right away, I think: What do people think they will gain when society collapses? There...
Ars Electronica
Zoë Keating‘s cello loops and Imogen Heap‘s witchy gloves remind me that computers can also be playful extensions of human creativity, not just mac...
Meanwhile on the other side of the world…
Perhaps my favorite element of working overnight with folks from India, now that we are all working from home, is the small audio intrusions from my co-workersâ...
Leeway
Many folks have mocked Mr. Trump for his frequent golf outings, on the one hand because he did the same to Mr. Obama, and on the other because they think he sho...
The Wide Wonderful Web
Someone I follow on Twitter shared Elizabeth Kingston’s discovery of sea chanty TikTok and I fell down an audio rabbit hole because TikTok has a handy fea...
The Unread
When the pages in the calendar turn, I take some time to revisit the accumulations with which I clutter my days. It’s not you; it’s me. And time.
How Do We Sleep While Our Beds Are Burning?
A hazy morning today, like yesterday, here in New York, on the eastern coast of North America. The smoke from the wildfires along the western coast of North Ame...
Earplugs Removed
I turned off the air-conditioner and opened the windows letting in the air and sounds from outside. The day grew warmer and the house grew hotter, until at nigh...