From Austin Kleon’s wonderful weekly newsletter, a link to his post, Lean on Me by Bill Withers. The quote within that resonates with me:

What is masculinity in the modern world? It is an interesting question as it leads to a lot of uncomfortable skepticism around your motivation. Am I implying men are victims in the feminist world today? No. What I am implying is that thankfully we have progressed with feminism, but in putting our focus there, we have lost a clear definition of what it means to be masculine. The reason I find the question particularly interesting is that most every definition I have heard could reasonably be applied to women. Does the question even matter? It seems it might as boys are falling way behind in many metrics and there are a lot of poor quality men out there (just ask your single friends).

I have been on a quest to build my running capabilities over the past 18 months. I finally succumbed to a second running injury, my left heal in the form of plantar fascitis. It is not fun and it is taking much longer to recover than I had hoped. Luckily I am at the point where I am able to run again, but really should give it a full day of recovery to let my foot bounce back - so to speak. This is not inspiring to me when I am most motivated by working towards a challenge. Where does this leave me besides trying to get back to where I was? My old love, biking.

This site and how it is hosted is inspired by Derek Sivers. I know of him from his book Anything You Want, which I highly recommend. He gives a very detailed set of instructions for breaking away from the big tech universe and to host your own thing on your own terms. It involves a fair amount of terminal, but I am happy to spend any time I can in the terminal.

Every summer will be hotter than the last. This is likely due to global climate change and my failing memories. This early summer has already resulted in grumpy teens in their southern rooms. They sit over the garage and one room in particular runs much warmer than everywhere else by about four degrees. The room has an attic access through the closet and a lot of warm air radiates from the attic space. The goal of this project is to cool the room down.

I read part one of The Godfather, but decided to abandon the rest of the book. The movie portrays the book really well, in fact almost exactly. The dialogue is nearly word for word. I think it is a testament to how well both are crafted. This leads me to wonder, why am I even reading the book if I get nothing new out of it? So I decided to move on.

Let us talk about that narrative in your head. The one where you have attributed bad intent by those around you. Everyone conspiring against you. Sorry, you are likely wrong and here is why: Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees

Back up to my early thirties and I was insufferable in many ways. Home projects were a dread. Being a self-described engineer, any problem I had to solve, I would think of the most efficient series of steps to accomplish what needs to be done. I would let this happen in the background while I went about more exciting distractions. Nothing got done, but it felt like I was doing important planning and design work.

I’m disappointed Apple has gotten into the Augmented Reality business with the announcement of their Vision Pro device. What the world does not need is more digital infused glass dividing us human beings from each other. I was happily satisfied to call the Meta VR headsets a massive lighting of cash on fire experiment that we would all laugh at. With Apple getting into the game though, they bring their brand coolness factor and it’ll launch an entire wave of enthusiasts because we know Apple will do it right. What does “right” mean though? This feels like the answer to a question nobody is asking. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised though. It is Apple’s highly capable abilities that put a black rectangle in everyone’s hands and created the foundation for which we stopped being a social people and just push digital bits back and forth as a proxy for our relationships and a society.