Ma-le’l Dunes, Arcata, October 2023

In representative democracy, the votes of citizens determine the rulers. The implied question—who is a citizen?—has given democracy its most foundational injustices, from Jim Crow to the dispossession of Indigenous folks to women’s non-suffrage, from Israeli apartheid to the murder of climate refugees in the Mediterranean.

Can we imagine democracy without borders? Without non-citizens?

Our neighbor was tossing old Gourmet magazines. I took one from 2007 with a glorious moody shot of berry pie on the cover. Inside: a profile of a farm/inn in the San Juans, fresh caught fish, fires on the beach.

A postcard from a simpler world, a time before the climate nightmare got fully underway

Longtermism’s basic formula seems to be: short-term pain … long-term gain.

The main criticism I’ve seen focuses on the ellipsis: longtermists are hilariously confident predicting the coming centuries, and discounting the present.

But look closer at the formula and see: it’s a diet. Longtermism is diet culture applied to the scale of an entire species.

Do you want some of this? has to be one of the greatest threats of all time.

Still bizarre how many profoundly socialist policies the NBA / NFL / MLB have so franchises stay at parity, distribute wealth, etc. Esp. compared to the free-market Premier League. American Socialism is alive and well—unfortunately it’s entirely confined to the pleasure activities of the hyper-rich.

I’m presently enjoying calling the almost magical way people with special paper (or large numbers entered on distant ledgers) can compel others to do their bidding “money power.“

To clarify, I’m not anti-commerce. Just against a system where some dude has 10,000,000x more money power than me.

RIP to my beloved “I GOT THIS” socks. Finally had to let them go after one final washing at the laundromat.

In Game of Thrones the pirate culture folks say they “paid the iron price” for stuff they took by force. But in our society where for those born poor it’s “work or die,” with state police enforcing borders, anti-homeless policies, and private land ownership, is our labor not also taken by force?

Small request: can we stop giving all of the money to the very richest people? They literally need it the least.

The richest: using their money power to compel a few thousand people to spend years of their lives building them a yacht.

Me: working 1.5 jobs but still can’t afford daycare for my baby.

Somehow, despite being mystified by it, I never until today realized that Sufjan’s The Avalanche was named after a truck!

In Evan Osnos’s damning portrait of Xi-ist China he quotes the economist Xu Chenggang:

In the U.S., you have a jungle of free competition, dozens of laboratories competing—no one knows what is going to work. But the Communist regime will not allow for this. That’s the key issue.

To whit: the classic contrast between free-market capitalism and state communism.

But I wonder: assuming this is true, is it the capitalism part that’s powerful here? Or is it the relative anarchy of a “free market”? And are there other ways to harness that freedom beyond capitalism?

I’ve been writing long enough to know that, once I start revising, I will inevitably delete this draft’s flowery introduction. Yet each time I attempt to rush it or skip it or, really, treat it as anything other than the most important paragraph I have ever written, I immediately get stuck and can’t proceed.

It may be throat-clearing, but still: one can’t really talk when one’s throat isn’t clear, can one?

Business idea: pre-selected boxes of touristy tchotchkes that you can order during your holiday, guaranteed delivery timed for when you get back, perfect for painless distribution to relatives and coworkers as “got this for you” gifts.

Ireland Box (Medium): 3 “Kiss Me I’m Irish” t-shirts (S, M, XL), 2 Guinness steins, 8 “Beautiful Ireland” dish towels, 1 “Literary Dublin” poster, 15 postcards, 1 baby-size sweater.

Good morning power lines. Good morning trees. Good morning abandoned construction site. Good morning sun.

The ongoing failure of the California and federal political systems to do away with the barbarity of the twice-a-year time change—despite a passed referendum and the promises of winning politicians—is a small but bulletproof piece of evidence that our political systems are broken. End PST now!

When I was studying Russian in college, my mind was blown to learn that just like English has a separate word and concept for pale red (“pink”), Russian has one for pale blue (“goluboi”).

But now to learn English didn’t have a term for orange till oranges as fruit arrived ca. 1510?!

“So it’s this condition, a bunch of dander, scalp-area.”

“Sounds bad, what shall we call it?”

“I don’t know, dander-uff?”

Sitting at my computer trying to funnel 10,000 details produced by 50+ people into one coherent, high-quality magazine, I’m flooded with the sense memory of being 16, in the computer lab at Fort Bragg High School, trying to turn out a new edition of The Howl. I’ve been doing this most of my life.

There was this trend, the last two decades, to justify literature’s place in our lives via neuroscience (“develop your amygdala”) and self-help (see: Blinkist)—all so cringe. The thing is, we do need a theory of “Why Books.” I say books should seem as fun as a latte, a bath, or a walk in the woods.

Something tells me the publicity department behind The Eternal Audience of One by Remy Ngamije realized what books they’d be shelved by and decided, What the heck, let’s use the Viet Nguyen color scheme and lettering style. Yolo.

Reading the essay, “Why Content is King”, and this passage trips me up:

Why should people care if anyone else has seen their favorite show? Because shared experiences are the basis of mutual understanding. Even if we’ve never talked before, I can learn something important about you when we talk about our complex feelings towards Harry and Ginny’s relationship. You can send me a reaction gif with McGonagall giving “the look” and I will know exactly what you mean.

I read every Harry Potter book. Between age 9-12 I was quite obsessed. Yet now have zero memory—these details mean nothing to me.

A friend told me she traded her smart phone for a dumb one which only calls and texts. (T9, baby!) Part of me wants to follow her lead.

Listing the reasons not to, the first reason is, strangely: dictation. It would be awful not to dictate directly smoothly into notes or texts or anywhere.

Love a good webinar.

Webinar. Whoever coined that one must have been like, ‘Oh yeah!’

The sidewalks in our neighborhood in LA are overrun with cutely designed four-wheeled food delivery robots. Their nametags say, like, “Francisco”. Shocking nobody, these VC-funded cameras-on-wheels are funneling camera footage to the LAPD.