Let us begin this blog post in praise of miniature things.
Here is my extra small knipex pliers. I use these all the time. I get excited to use them, which is a sign of a good gizmo. More of life should be pleasurable. We should demand tools that are a joy to look at and use and even to fidget with. Too many joyless and/or ugly gadgets and doodads out there. Sometimes I use these pliers, which I keep on a magnetic strip on the wall of my living room along with other frequently-used tools that have enough ferric material to defy the earth's gravitational pull, and I say to myself, Hot diggity dang these are so useful that I'm going to slip them in my pocket and carry them around all day in hopes that I can once again encounter something needing plying/crimping/twisting so I can enjoy wielding this wee whatsit. I carry it around for a day or two. I put it back on its magnet home.
I am a compulsive penny-picker-upper. No matter the weather or how filthy the penny looks I will pick it up and put it in my pocket. I also pick up pens and lighters off the ground. Sometimes they work. When they don’t at least I un-littered them. Back left pocket is my designated trash pocket. Has been for years. As someone who walks miles of city streets everyday let me tell ya, that’s a lot of coins/pens/lighters. I have so many lighters. The mini Bic lighters are a treat to hold and use. Tiny flame vessels. If Bic lighters were refillable without the weird hack of sticking a pushpin in the hole after you add butane they'd be a perfect product. And not plastic. Albatrosses eat up lighters and fishing line and busted ball point pens then vomit them up into their hungry babies’ mouths who then promptly choke and die on account of their less-developed gizzards. That alone should make us stop using all this plastic garbage. I’m on the side of majestic seabirds over convenient disposable plastic trinkets. At least I picked up a few before they got swept down the storm drain and into one of the massive trash vortexes defiling the grandeur of the open ocean.
Look at this itty bitty pipe I bought for five dollars from Paragon Machine Works at the Philly Bike Expo years ago. Cute! Paragon Machine Works just announced they’re closing. I realize it’s niche to feel bummed about that. I’m a bit bummed. Lots of companies don’t do anything good for the world. The world’s a prettier place for having some nice steel dropouts on steel bike frames. Also they made these pipes out of leftover bits for fun to sell at their expo table.
Years ago someone gave me and Naomi an Advent calendar of Bonne Maman jam jars. Look how cute the jars are. I saved two of them. Two more than necessary.
Mini sharpie. A big sharpie is fine. An excellent product as far as mass-produced commodities go. But this one is mini. Maybe less lethal for a confused albatross chick? I'm a sucker for mini things.
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Fun little narrative history of how we got to “Fake Markets.” It’s a blog post from 2017.
It seems this “market” has some awfully weird traits.
1. Consumers can’t trust the information they’re being provided to make a purchasing decision.
2. A single opaque algorithm defines which buyers are matched with which sellers.
3. Sellers have no control over their own pricing or profit margins.
4. Regulators see the genuine short-term consumer benefit but don’t realize the long-term harms that can arise.
Another quote:
But there’s still time to get it right. It’s not inevitable that we have to give over our open markets to new Fake Markets dominated by one or two giant tech companies. And perhaps the single biggest thing we can do is both the hardest and the easiest: We can change our own behaviors. Look at the apps on your phone right now. Are you sure you are comfortable with what’s going to happen when everyone’s running the same apps that you are?
The rough narrative history described in the post feels true. And I enjoy reading rants of people who are angry the internet sucks now.
Eventually it becomes impossible to function in society without a bunch of rent-seeking apps. I want it to cost less to go about living. The tech bros want your life to be more expensive and less pleasurable.
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Some Wikipedia articles I have read recently, linked here for your viewing pleasure:
An Idiot Plot is when there’d be no story if everyone involved wasn’t a grade A nincompoop.
Nertina Pulligera. These snails migrate and sometimes the little snails hitchhike on the bigger snails.
What a beautiful three sentences:
The operculum, a "trapdoor" used by the snail to close its shell, is slightly convex on the outside with fine lines running lengthwise. Its back end is pale tan, while the front is pinkish with dark blue circular streaks in-between. From the inside, the operculum is slightly concave and dirty green with rosy white spots.
So you know I clicked “operculum.”
I love a Wikipedia rabbithole because there is so much I know nothing about that others know so much about. That’s how strange your knowledge seems to others.
Virtually all pulmonate snails are inoperculate, i.e. they do not have an operculum, with the exception of the Amphiboloidea. However, some terrestrial pulmonate species are capable of secreting an epiphragm, a temporary structure that can in some cases serve some of the same functions as an operculum. The epiphragm may be distinguished from the true operculum by its homogeneity and want of growth marks.
There are snail experts out there. The above paragraph would take them no effort to read. They’d nod their head and say “Yup that’s all true snail facts.”
But it was all news to me. An endlessly fascinating planet we’ve got here. So much I know nothing about.
Throughout my life I’ve been told I have no rhythm and that I’m tone deaf. Neither is entirely true. I have trouble clapping to a beat. I cannot drum. It takes me longer than others to name what song is playing even if I recognize it as familiar or even feel excited about the fact that it’s playing. I dug into this article like a hypochondriac looking for a devastating diagnosis. Upon further consideration I don’t think I have a disorder. I think I’m just bad at music. Great Wikipedia article. Reading it made music seem to me even more like an arcane dark magic I'm forbidden from comprehending.
I love music. Can’t live without it. What’s better in this world than a crowded bar full of people singing along together to a song that’s made us all feel more alive? A complete mystery. Play me two notes and I may not be able to tell you which is higher/lower. But have you ever locked eyes with a stranger in the pit and sang along to one of your favorite verses of a song you’ve both separately listened to for years? That’s the good shit.
You don’t have to understand or be good at something to enjoy it. Phew.
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The MeToo reckoning clearly didn’t result in adequate changes in society to keep shitty men from doing shitty things. In maybe 90% of the cases in which prominent men are outed as sex pests I think to myself, “Good riddance. I saw that coming. Glad we all know and agree he’s a piece of shit now.” Then the other 10% are devastating. We’ve known about Noam Chomsky in the Epstein emails for weeks now. I know there are lots of people who say they saw it coming. I didn’t. Now I look back and see red flags I chose, on some level of consciousness, not to see. I remember mentally dismissing some comment of his about the “excesses” of the MeToo reckoning. Bad feeling.
Some good insights in this article. Chomsky always worked with horrible people (war profiteers.) He thought if somebody was nice to him then it was OK for him to be buddies with them. And in some sense, yes, it’s good to be friends with people who have different values than you. Advising said friends on how to do PR for themselves as the world condemns them for sex-trafficking kids is in many respects similar to being friends with somebody who works at the Pentagon deciding which bombs to drop on foreign children.
You know who the first MeToo crappy man was that made me feel angry and devastated instead of angry and smug? Jesse Lacey of Brand New. Making music that makes teenagers feel less lonely is sacred work. Pretty shitty that he was grooming young fans. Relistening, there are red flags galore. Sad stuff.
Cesar Chavez was a serial sexual predator we now know. That’s a gut punch.
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This is an even more worthwhile read: The Academic Justification for Male Supremacy
Brockman describes Edge as “Elitist, yes, but in the good sense of an open elite, based on meritocracy.” He goes on to describe the process, saying: “The way someone is added to the Edge list is when I receive a word from a Steven Pinker, a Brian Eno, a Martin Rees or a Richard Dawkins, telling me to do so. It’s as simple as that and I don’t recall ever saying no in such circumstances.” Rather than a meritocracy, this is a good description of an “old boys’ network” (and all four he cites are indeed men). He does not mention any other way to be added, meaning if you’re not already within these circles and do not know the right people, there is no way to join the Brockman — and Epstein — elites.
Another quote:
As the writer Ana Marie Cox put it a few weeks ago, after a similar deep dive into the emails from academics, “Epstein gravitated toward fields and figures that rank humans, explain away cruelty, or biologize inequality.” He didn’t choose intellectuals for their success or status alone, she continued: “He identified and aligned himself with the intellectual machinery now justifying our current dystopia, including the academic rationalizations and motivated reasoning that hover behind the most terrible excesses of the Trump administration: glorified phrenology, violent misogyny, genetic determinism, and elite impunity.”
Noam Chomsky sympathized with Epstein over “the horrible way you are being treated in the press and public.” He wrote, in February 2019, long after Epstein’s first conviction and soon before his second, about “the hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder.” This is a man more concerned about the treatment of a convicted pedophile than his victims.
Oof.
The whole article is worth your time.
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It has been said that comparing yourself to others is not healthy.
One thing I do often is compare myself to others to feel better about myself.
Listen. I’m easily in like, the top 10 percentile of men on a shittiness scale. Have I made comments that made women and girls uncomfortable without realizing I was doing so? Yes. Have I dominated conversations, given more weight to men’s opinions than women’s, done less housework than my wife, made choices that reinforce patriarchal power structures instead of challenge them? Yeah, but not on purpose at least. I make an effort. And as such, I am a far-above-average guy. You too, readers who identify as guys, can be above average by just giving a shit. That sober reckoning gets me out of the paralysis of guilt and shame.
So maybe comparing yourself to others isn’t all bad.
There are other blogs with better advice for your self-esteem probably. I don’t know. Grade yourself on a curve now and then. It’s OK to be average at lots of things. It’s fine. But try to be significantly above average at not-being-a-piece-of-shit-to-women. The bar is very low. You can do it.
Non-men readers of this blog, congrats on being non-men. You’re above-average. Pat yourself on the back. Or call the nearest man and ask them to rub it. If they refuse they may be a below-average man. Beware.
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I like academia. I like institutions of higher learning and want them to thrive. I just don’t want them to be old boys’ clubs and hedge funds and places to train up the next generation of massacre-contraption-profiteers.
College campuses shape young people in a way I celebrate. They also have a lot of Larry Summers types.
My undergrad experience, which was at a rural liberal arts college with an unapologetically conservative social/political/economic/religious bias, was overall a great experience. I got to live in a walkable community and spend my days talking with friends about their careful reading of philosophy and theology texts. That’s the dream. I want more of society to be shaped like a liberal arts college campus and for college campuses to be less like the capitalist misogynist white supremacist patriarchy.
One specific praiseworthy part of the built environment of college campuses is so much good loitering space. I'm pro-loitering. Lingering, public lounging, park bench picnicking, loafing, etc. you can count me in.
In Tok Pisin, the trade language of Papua New Guinea, the word for loiter is "raun tasol" and it doesn't have any negative connotations. Except for in places where they've put up bilingual signs that say "NO LOITERING / I TAMBU TRU LONG RAUN NATING." Pretty confusing stuff. Why am I not allowed to wander aimlessly and sit on a grassy lawn? There's no reason. Public space should say, "You belong. Come hang out here." I guess maybe "raun tasol" is closer to "meandering aimlessly" and "raun nating" is like "loiter purposelessly." Whatever. My point stands. This is a pro-raun-nating pro-raun-tasol blog.
That's where I lived in middle school and high school. That's why I don't understand your pop culture references. I was in a compound in the jungle.
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Wonderful article here in a 1996 issue of Bicycling Magazine. What publication would print an article like this now? “Reviews” are all glorified affiliate links now. I’m so tired of people selling me things, especially when they don’t explicitly say that’s what they’re doing. This article is fun and informative and the conclusion is basically, “Yeah, these tube sets are all basically the same. You probably don’t need expensive stuff.”
It may not be important journalism but it’s good journalism. I don’t want to read important stuff. Makes me sad. I want to read fun stuff. This is fun to me.
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My buddy Amanda’s been in a sci fi book club since before I ever knew her. That’s a long time! I met her at Atlantis in 2012. Her book club buddy, Chris, is moving away, and gave me this beautiful 1987 Fuji Del Rey which he had saved from being thrown away by a neighbor many years before but had just sat in his basement since.
It’s in incredible condition. Original tires, dry-rotted of course. Though I did manage to reuse one of the tubes. Original rims spin true. Still has the handlebar wrap shown in the catalog. Suntour derailers and shifters— beautiful little contraptions.
I imagine someone bought this thinking they were gonna be a cool road cyclist then their life got busy and they never rode it much at all. The chain matches the brand in the catalog. They didn’t wear out a single chain on this thing.
It’s my size but entirely redundant to own. I’m a sucker for silver components but the black Nitto stem and black Nitto bars are growing on me.
Naomi smiled as I told her all this stuff she doesn’t care about. She puts up with my bullshit.
I put a Panaracer Pasela ($40) on the back and some Kenda budget tire ($20) on the front. Why those two? They were the ones in stock at my friendly neighborhood bike shop. 27” aka ISO 630 wheel size. Annoying. There should not be multiple competing standards for similarly sized wheels.
Don’t know about the nonsense of bicycle wheel sizing? Read this article by the greatest bicycle enthusiast the World Wide Web has ever known.
I like a good bicycle catalog. This is the golden era of bicycle catalogs. What a beautiful opening page spread.
I don’t know what an “uncompromising recreational cyclist” is. The copy from the 1984 catalog for that year’s version of the Del Rey says it’s “created for the demanding recreational cyclist.” They changed it to “uncompromising” by the time the 1985 catalog came out. I’m neither demanding nor uncompromising but this is a good bicycle. I’m grateful for nerds who upload PDFs of old catalogs for us to look at.
“Fuji never has a feature that is there just for show or to make a model seem to be something that is not.” Advertisements were something different back then.
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Alec Karakatsanis writes clear and important work. There are many people and institutions deeply invested in growing the panopticon of unfreedom who love to say that the demand to defund the police is not realistic or pragmatic even as the policing and punishment industries are at their largest and most expensive in human history with no good returns on that investment.
Even if you just read the first few paragraphs it’s worth your time.
I need a reminder sometimes that it’s not nuts to believe we can and must defund the police immediately and remake our whole society as unlike the caging/surveillance/torture machine. Alec Karakatsanis is good at showing how sensible that position is. I desperately need truth-tellers amid the noise of the hopeless drivel of the Adults who say a kinder society is unrealistic.
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My birth is significantly closer to Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus than to today.
Fun tool to doink around with. Good website. The internet is still a fun place if you look in the right places.
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Here’s a guy who plays piano for elephants. When they flap their ears that means they’re happy. Elephants are the biggest-brained critters on this planet.
Mary and Francis both like these videos a lot. This guy has tons of videos of him playing piano for elephants. Mary (1.5 years old) has few words but "elalala" is "elephant." She always yells it. Ellalalala! Ellala! She correctly identifies drawings and photos of elephants wherever they appear. She's surprised and delighted by these exploited creatures being surprised and delighted. If that isn't nice I don't know what is.
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Francis frequently requests this video:
I could take it or leave it. Sometimes childrearing means enjoying something just because someone you love enjoys it. Nothing wrong with that.
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Here’s a wonderful opinion piece in the Irish Times about my least favorite technology: the automobile. It’s a great piece of writing that hits on all the good anti-car points I’m always screaming about: The pleasure of walking and cycling, being attentive to and prioritizing the wellbeing of children, being honest about how machines aren’t just shaped by us but we are shaped by the machines we choose to use.
It’s a short and enjoyable read. Not an angry rant. It's a celebration of a slower and more attentive pace of life that comes from not being regularly strapped into a kid-killing machine whenever you wanna locomote.
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I authored an article on a website which, unlike this blog, has journalistic standards.
I do not know if Josiah Daniels is an exceptional editor or if I just really enjoy having an editor. It's a gift to read someone's writing carefully enough to give thoughtful feedback, sharpen and clarify their ideas, cut down wordy sentences, remove all their excess commas, uncapitalize all their Needlessly Upper Case words. Raise a glass to Editors. If what I said is not true of editors in general then just raise a glass to Josiah. A+. Good editor.
I wrote it about this piece of art I made. If I link to a page to purchase art I made have I violated the Ben Wildflower Art Bloggity Blog editorial policy of Absolutely No Advertisements? Quite possibly. What are you gonna do? Fire me? Go read a better blog?
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I hope your day is beautiful. It's sunshiny here in Philadelphia.