How fast can it take to write 500 words?

How bad can it be while still counting?

I say — to you! If it is your voice, why not! Why shouldn’t it count!

And if you do not like your own voice, steal somebody else’s voice.

Steal Vishal’s voice, or Ben’s voice.

You see, I have not just tequila to consume today.

I have another deadline

another writing deadline.

Yes. You have watched me uphold the blogeppe. But did you not know that I have other writing?

Did you not know this is my fun writing?

Yes, I have other deadlines, and not just these midnightedly-setted

The fastest ‘geppo

gelatto-geppo

As long as any velvet is making contact with your pen, with your keyboard, as long as there is traction with literally any part of you inside of you — I say then it counts

People try to ‘pour out from the soul’ as a posture but you have to find the velvet some of the time, and sometimes when you find the velvet, that is all you find, and you have to give up on other priorities

You think Ulysees was written without this Velvet? You think Virginia Woolf wrote The Waves without this velvet?

I am not being very Johnny Truant here; I am a Thumper who has taken acid.

If you do not know what to write, write about that which excites you, that was so exciting to you that you had forgotten it;

Go to the place where life happens;

and where is it that life happens?

Write what you wrote in your groupchats;

I had written

So what would a wolfman priest do after he sexually devours his high priestess

would he take a nap

would he go back to work

would he keep hanging out

would he play music

I had written, on Japan, to

there are funny dark sushi places in alleyways like in the movies

that wouldn’t let you in as an american without any local

that have 5 types of sushi max, and sake, and indoor smoking

I had called my friend in Japan,

we talked about the thor in thursday. I told her about my research

she misses me and I miss her. she said I love you and I said it back

It was the first time

What does it mean?

Have I slowed down to even ask?

“who’s excited to discuss god’s interior decorating arc”
says a woman I admire

I had written previously on Judaism,

Fun quotes from a friend:

“However, part of the reason there is no priest is because everyone pretty much understands that the Old Testament is a text given to us by a mind so far beyond human comprehension that it’s Cthulhu-esque.

However, just because it’s beyond our comprehension doesn’t mean we can’t *try* to understand it. Judaims is about the journey of understanding God.

“

7:34 PM

❤️

“And the only way to do something as precious as that is to not hold back but to ruthlessly examine EVERYTHING to make sure it meets the standard to be attributed to literallly the most perfect being in all of existence

So a Jew arguing with you is a way of saying “your ideas are a thing which can help me approach the divine; let us approach it together”

“

7:37 PM

❤️

I had been thinking about philosophy

I had written,

”If I think about something a lot, it must be important to me”

“Actually if I think about something a lot it might be a tangle of confusing / unintegrated philosophical questions I don’t know how to look at, and my actual philosophical foundation is that wordless still pond I never look at over there because it’s just chill and peaceful”

“Maybe I would be happier if I hung out in my pond versus in my tanglewoods”

9 minutes! I am done! I can keep going

I had written, we can play a group game, “things that must be true”

For example, “that everyone who survives past a certain age in all of history learns that someone they cared about has passed, and has experienced that moment”

The woman I hope, to hear from, who I hope to hear from each and every day, she writes back,

this is not necessarily true of the insane!

I told the woman that I would buy another plant if the pothos did well, and I did: a parlor palm. Now I have two plants in terra cotta pots.

I told myself if the parlor palm did well, I would buy a third plant. It is doing alright, but I’m still only at two plants. A third plant might change the dynamic in a nice way, but I haven’t been ready yet. I am still making sure that I am giving adequate attention to each of my plants, and sometimes I am not. They each are not dying but neither one is growing too much more, even though they have adequately large pots. Perhaps they need fertilizer.

And so I am not a plant lady but I do have two plants that I am doing activities with. My planty microactivity.

I have a Masterclass account. I don’t know anybody who has one other than me. I really like them. When Masterclass first started, they would have a lot of really Big courses that were really cool. Marc Jacobs for example has a fashion design course with a lot of projects for you to do as cumulative homework, like an actual class. As they continued to make deals with celebrities in different fields, some of the courses ended up being pretty small. But they are still awesome.

It used to be the case that going through a course felt like a Big Hefty fancy thing. This was a really cool feeling. However, they have since updated their website to encourage more casual viewing. They made playlists, so that you can hear different perspectives on the same subject stripped from multiple classes (a feature I don’t use because I like hearing the same person talk for a long time). And so with this encouragement, just hanging out on their website not really paying attention but absorbing great content feels fun. My masterclass microactivity.

I think there could be a case for elevating microactivities to Microactivities, but I think it depends on the disposition of the person doing them. There can also be a game around trying to make your microactivities feel as large as possible, without them counting as a mesoactivity or a macroactivity.

In my own life, doing the laundry, loading the dishwasher, and changing the bedsheets do not actually make it to the level of microactivities. I had at some point decided that I do not want these activities to feel hard or in the way of anything else, and so I do them when I am pitter-pattering around anyway, metabolizing energy from a different activity.

I think it can be pretty customizable for every individual, and so I am reticent with making a list. But there are nice things to know about

Respecting the person who you are meeting with

Ideally you respect the person who you are talking to. There are people who meet with a person they do not respect, because they are making enough progress on their problems. There are also people like seeing their coach or therapist so much they basically forget their problems when they show up and mostly just hang out.

Between these two sides of the axis, there is respecting the person you are working with. You want to at minimum respect the person, and maybe there can be something a lot better than that, but if you do not respect the person you are talking to, you can probably find somebody who you do respect, and that will probably make you happier.

Some people have had the same therapist since they were seven years old. Some people have tried seven therapists in the past year. But every person who has ever used a therapist has at one point only had one therapist in their entire life. And that experience often makes a big impression on the person the possibilities of the profession. If it is a good experience, the person may keep working with this person for a long time. If this is a negative experience, the person may stop using any therapist at all for many years.

Working on problems one at a time

There are many people who can help with many problems! But there is a challenge around working on them in an order that makes sense. A good coach can figure out a pretty good order, but if you have something specific in mind, this is an area in which you know yourself best. The amount of work you want to put in this specific question of which problem you want to be working on actually narrows down what style of coach or therapist can do something good for you.

For example, if you do not want to expend much energy thinking about what problems you want to solve or in what order, there are coaches who will straight up tell you what sucks about you, what to change, what plan to follow, and then yell at you or give you the punishment you signed up for when you do not do it. Some people are really really really into this because they already feel like a worm, actually feel seen and respected when somebody else acknowledges it, and want to give themselves over fully to a process of transformation in this way. There are kind of a lot of these and they tend to advertise themselves pretty aggressively as the kind of people who provide this specific service, and not something else, because they want people to buy what they are selling, and not be confused about what exactly they are buying.

For this kind of person, another style may be helpful, which is a person who is very patient and actually very slowly gets you to reveal parts of yourself, so that they have more information about you that they can methodically and delicately coprocess with you, such that in learning gently to be transparent to them you also become transparent with yourself.

These people can actually be extremely advanced, and actually not put themselves out there very much in terms of advertising, so to find these you might either just get lucky or run into one of them when looking around at many options.

….to be continued!

Actually though, I am losing more weight than I thought I would be, for less effort than I thought it would be. This is good for people who do not really want to think, or really modulate their energy. I am not out with other people and so it’s a good time for it.

NEVER MIND! YOU CAN can Gatorade Zero.

But yeah being a weird buggy kind of sick is the first time that I am having issues on keto. I will have to troubleshoot.

Beef broth has been good. You can just put that in a cup and microwave it and drink it.

But yeah, biggest issue I have found is that if you have a stomach bug or something of that species, then you just don’t want to eat for a while, and then the thing you wan’t to eat isn’t going to be filtered milk or cheese or meat or anything like that.

I did have, half a slice of low-carb toast and some butter. And then broth and some ham and three baby carrots.

But like. This is probably going to be the biggest issue in being sustainable.

Merp merp

what to do

There could be a thing around if I know I’m sick, to just get the chipotle or the middle eastern place or whatever I know is legible to me and comforting, and not to expect myself to just sit down and make it because I have a rotisserie chicken. The chicken isn’t really helping me feel like a normal person.

Sometimes the difference between the easy version of a thing and a hard version is in the details.

Say your friend asks you to pick up a desert for their party. No problem. Now they say that the specific desert has to be both vegan and gluten-free please. This is now a much harder problem because the number of stores that is en route from yours to theirs that has deserts that contain neither eggs nor flour is….much lower. And you might be clever enough to narrow it down to “Ice cream” and think that actually a big store like Target probably has something that fits the criteria from being such a big and diverse store…but now you have to be smart, and not just agreeable to complete this favor. And if your friend isn’t actually responsive to their phone because they are getting ready for their party then you’re on your own about being smart. Probably some sorbet from the Target freezer section will work. Then again, you might not be passing a “Huge Store” either as those are generally only in certain parts of town given how huge they are…

This is just meant to be an introductory example for how something that is pretty easy can easily become pretty hard.

Often something seen as pretty easy can become very hard by either increasing parameters for success, or constraining either information or resources.

In the above example, parameters are increased (success criteria), and both information (exactly what the person might like) and resources (stores that contain the needed item) are constrained.

Usually for these things, I either do them myself, or when I delegate them I try to make it as easy as possible. “Hey can you get me at Talenti Raspberry Sorbet from Target, Walmart, or Whole Foods?” (Ostensibly also I would have a model around how convenient it is likely to be for them, and what hedges I want to put around the ask.)

What else makes things hard?

Things are a lot harder when people are tired. “Hey can you drop this off at the storage unit” becoming “Hey can you also find the speakers in the storage unit and bring them over to my friend’s house” can actually become a much harder ask if the person is very tired or is not great with weights (in the case that this is a large 6-part speaker set, the storage unit is very full, and you have to both find, excavate, and carry all the parts of the speakers).

The thing is, people like doing things for people, like to be chill about “small favors,” or want to seem dependable when they’ve been asked to do something and said yes, to do the variation of the errand that actually will be most useful to everybody.

Resentment builds up though when the ask is seen to be “easy” but actually it ended up being hard.

What else makes things hard?

Energetic mismatch. You go over to somebody’s house. They really want to get very drunk, you don’t. You have to navigate this. This navigation can be much, much more energetically draining than expected, such that there are generally pretty big social rules around not doing substances around people who aren’t into doing it with you at that time.

Just look at this:

Come on down to Florida
I got something for ya
We could see the kilos or the Keys, baby, oh yeah
Guns in the summertime
Chic-a-Cherry Cola lime
Prison isn't nothing to me if you'll be by my side

~Florida Keys

She pulls it off, in every song—without making it senseless or without emotional coherence with the entire song. This is hard to do!

I am currently in my “rare Lana Del Rey songs” era.

I am preparing to make a “My favorite Lana Del Rey Albums in Order” post. I wanted to do a silly introverted exercise.

There are many posts like this, but the point is to add a new post into the public discussion by figuring out my own feelings and opinions and putting those feelings and opinions thrustily.

And that is meant to be a beginner exercise to thinking about about putting into language what she is doing and why it moves me as much as it does, and what I am bringing into the conversation as myself, to be so moved.

I was definitely inspired by my friend ’s thoughtful series of essays on intellectual touchstones, linked at the end of this post. This essay is not an attempt to mirror those, as I do not yet feel prepared to write a post like that, about any writer. But starting to think seriously about a musician who I reliably return to, in this way, seemed like a fun first step in that direction.

Let’s start by pointing out that Lana Del Rey’s Ultraviolence in its full version is an entire one hour and 17 minutes long. It is basically a double album, and it maintains thematic and musical coherence this entire time. This is a formidable work. She had put out 9 albums in about 15 years. And then she shows off by having lyrics like this:

My pussy tastes like Pepsi cola
My eyes are wide like cherry pies
I got sweet taste for men who are older
It’s always been so, it’s no surprise

~ Cola

And the audience swoons for the virtuoso. I love it. I am glad that I learned to appreciate this.

I wish I had more to say. I guess I can’t do the thing for a musician either. But that I’d listened to Lana Del Rey for years and am realizing I have not even listened to every album says something about the extent and variety of her discography.

And so I will listen to every rare song she has, and rank her albums, to have a more intense relationship with an artist I already have an intense relationship with.

’s touchstone series:

The Blackthorn Hedge

Bourdieu as a Touchstone

Welcome to The Blackthorn Hedge. With this letter I’ll discuss one of my personal ideological touchstones, the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, according to my plan in “Laying the Hedge: Arc 1…

Read more

a year ago · 36 likes · 28 comments · John Encaustum

The Blackthorn Hedge

MacIntyre as a Touchstone

Welcome to The Blackthorn Hedge. This letter discusses the moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre as one of my ideological touchstones, the second in a small series planned in “Laying the Hedge: Arc 1” and begun with a letter on Pierre Bourdieu three weeks ago. MacIntyre is particularly known for his work on tradition, practice, and moral community, and s…

Read more

a year ago · 46 likes · 28 comments · John Encaustum

The Blackthorn Hedge

Hirschman as a Touchstone

Welcome to The Blackthorn Hedge. This letter is one day late, and it discusses the economist Albert O. Hirschman as one of my ideological touchstones. This is the third in a small series planned in “Laying the Hedge: Arc 1” that began with letters on the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu…

Read more

10 months ago · 17 likes · 2 comments · John Encaustum

The Blackthorn Hedge

Lorraine Daston as a Touchstone

Welcome to the Blackthorn Hedge, to the first letter after a long hiatus. This is one final letter of Arc 2 before I write a summary and begin Arc 3. This introduces the work of the historian of science Lorraine Daston as an ideological touchstone. She has the least general name recognition and the least polemical engagement of the five touchstones I’ve…

Read more

5 months ago · 36 likes · 22 comments · John Encaustum

I had written about him maybe twice before, here.

It feels a little bit…wayward, to write about him. But maybe I will appreciate it later, or maybe somebody else will.

Anyway. This is a fragile post, so I will just write it and submit it for the Foreverhaven, without thinking too much. Already I had the thought to write a different post, and had gotten caught up in some other writing.

The truth is I find thinking about him difficult. But every so often, something happens, or I look at something, and I notice that I am thinking about something that he once has said to me. When I was younger I would think that the advice is pretty general. Now I know that everybody gives different advice, everybody’s mothers and fathers emphasized different things.

He told me once, not to judge how smart a person is, based on how tormented they look. Sometimes, very smart people look tormented. But sometimes — often — very smart people look very relaxed, like they are not trying at all. Life is easy for them, thinking is easy for them. It is no trouble and would not look like trouble. He told me that if a person looks “normal” this is not evidence that their intelligence is not actually substantially above average.

I have met people like this. I have sat next to a football player in a class, and we were given the same assignment, and had the same amount of time, and he blew everybody out of the water. The former cheerleader COO of SpaceX seems like this.

Another thing he told me, is that if a person is really really good at something, do not assume that they are going to be very good at some other thing. Sometimes skill and intelligence are transferrable to other fields, but sometimes they are not. It would be a mistake, therefore, if I see somebody being really good at something, to throw some task at them without checking if they can do it, or if they want to do it, or if they would do it well. It is possible I myself have not even checked how hard the task is.

Probably one of the lessons I am most grateful for is to sit down with a movie or a book and to respect it as a work of art by the artist. The point was to not learn anything about the material at all, and to just devote an amount of time to it and absorb what the artist had to say, from beginning to end.

I have met very smart and literary people who do not have much patience for this, these days. They want to learn about what they are reading or what they are watching beforehand, evaluate it against what they have seen before, check if they are currently in the mood.

My father’s concept was that maybe I would not be in the mood, but now I am following the artist into whatever mood is created, and letting that process of emotionally alchemy happen on that ride.

My father is particular, and himself does not have sensibilities for very diverse or artistic art forms. This would be a scenario in which the student has taken the lesson and has run with it much farther than the teacher. I do not think I would be able to do half of the emotional alchemy I currently am able to do, without his putting me on a couch at a random time, putting on a movie, and telling me to sit there and watch it for sometimes three or four hours. I would have no idea what the movie would be, or why he was showing it to me. I have watched Dogville like this, and La Vita E Bella, and Once Upon A Time in America.

Respecting the artist, respecting the experience that the artist wanted to create — admitting that there is another experience I could be feeling right now, entirely different from my own, if I allowed myself to relax and be pulled by something, moved by something…

I use this a lot

look if you want better ambiance you need more lamps
you also probably need more rugs and pillows, probably you need more art, definitely you need more plants, you might need more books

but you definitely need more lamps

I have met very few people who have an adequate amount of lamps in their homes

listen.

you cannot rely on overhead lighting
most of the time, in most situations, you should turn off overhead lighting entirely and use standing lamps, or lamps on tables

if the only lighting you have in your home is overhead lighting, then you absolutely do not have enough lamps, because the number of lamps you have is currently zero

if when you turn off the overhead lights that come with your apartment or house, there is no way to get more light because there is nothing else to turn on because you have no lamps, then there are not enough lamps

“but I have perfectly fine overhead lighting”

has anybody ever gone into your home and gone “whoa you have really nice ambiance here”

or “oh you have really great lighting”

if not, then no, you do not already have an adequate solution for the specific problem I am describing

which is to make your home have something special
that makes people feel nice
that makes them want to stick around
that makes them want to be there, when they are sick
that makes you want to be there, when you are sick

If in this era of infinite electricity and electrical components you are not ambiance-maxxing and able to quickly go from needing to read a bunch of technical printouts, to being able to vibe, then you do not have enough lamps

I had a guy curl up on my couch instead of going home when he was feeling sick, because it was really nice for him to stay. He had a big house. He had family that was waiting for him. But he was feeling sick, and he curled up on this couch in my small living room, and he laid there, peacefully, until his family called him asking where he is, and then he went “holy shit” and drove back home.

how do you know if you have adequate lighting?
how do you know if you are “already doing it right?”

basically everybody has inadequate lighting
and so if you actually have adequate lighting, it would stand out and people will be complimenting you

they will tell you — “whoa your apartment has aura.”
or
“wow you have really great lamps”
or
“where did you get that lamp?”
or
“I want to keep hanging out here and doing activities.”
it will NOT be subtle

A lot of standard lighting installations — they flicker

The light flickers in a way that you almost certainly are tuning out and becoming hardened against because if you actually paid attention to it it would drive you into madness

You can start with this
It is cheap, robust, steel, battery-powered. You can can move it around different rooms, see what it looks like, see how it makes you feel. You can see what kinds of things it stirs in you, what feels the same, what feels new or different

do no start with an expensive new lamp right away, because you will be confused. you want to notice what windows you have, what curtains you have, where you need light, what activities you do. Where you tend to sit, where you tend to read, where you tend to wish you had extra light, or where you wish you were spending more time if the light were different somehow.

If an expensive lamp calls you right away, and you are not the sort of person who gets discouraged by having objects you aren’t sure what to do with, then go for it, if you think having the lamp will make you feel good about lamps

This is often how it happens
People often buy lamps impulsively
Lamps sing to people

An enormous worm from Dune, inside of a normal worm after the rain

If I were a worm, I would be a worm like this

just terrifying

I always have something to write here, if I am writing something to save the Foreverhaven

Today I have nothing to say

I started a journal, pretending I’m all Johnny Truant from House of Leaves, with my lewd allusions to things I do with my buddies named Lude

something like this

I have hopes for tightening up this blog, maybe use another blog for my Foreverhaven posts, but I am not sure

I like this blog enormously. I wouldn’t want it to sit empty.

Sentences I like:

The lads seem to like the gork

The cached elephant*

Need to tap into something like a rant, crush these next 400 words.

*The cached elephant is an image I made up today for a friend.

this image was from that image of, different people, who are blind, touching and describing different parts of an elephant. one holds a leg, one a trunk, one a tail. And some people (like my friend) would have capacities like, “oh there is a tail here, tails don’t exist in isolation, means there is a back further up” -- but other people wouldn’t have a cached imaginary elephant in their mind. they would just be like “i have a leg and can tell you all about the leg if you ask about the leg.” Asking for help can be like this. You are further ahead than people and so cannot talk to anybody about it, but you still might be able to get context from people if you ask just the right thing. But often people assume you know what they know — would not assume either you don’t or that what you see is a cached elephant — you are faking it a little bit, how clearly you see, not faking it qua faking, but you say things you see, and the person thinks you see all of it, when what you are doing is pointing at your cached elephant without being there to touch it. But they think you both see clearly — that you do see the leg — and that if you see the leg, you must be holding it, and you wouldn’t at the same time be seeing the tail — nobody has that much seeing — but sometimes people do.

I can’t get the poem from House of Leaves out of my head. But I can’t share the poem because finding the poem in the book was meaningful to me. And so if people discover it on their own, that’s a special poem.

Things from my Courier New Font Johnny Truant journal:

What if in longing there is room for more explosive closeness

maybe in absence is room for imagination

who knows what I’m supposed to be writing when I’m serious about writing.

I think today is the first day I really can’t think or write anything here.

In my first journal entry I wrote about the flies. It is hard, I think, not to notice other living things. Other things that can move and affect the environment at a faster rate than normal.

If I were a worm I would worry about rain a lot.

What else.

just keep thinking about things that are larger on the inside than on the outside

people are, books are

paintings, if they are good. computers. anything with hyperlinks. any animal. Any worm, even worms that are not Dune worms on the inside.

House of Leaves was my big book for 2026, in the way that Moby-Dick was my big book for 2025. By “big” I do not mean page count, though both are 500+ pages. I mean challenging for me personally, in some way, such that reading it leads to some personal growth. A “Dark-Souls-esque” book that might take me a few tries to get going and isn’t smooth sailing, but that I had pre-decided is a journey I want to go on.

I was really surprised by this book. It bounced off of me three times, when I tried to read it, before I finally made traction with it, and so I came up with additional prerequisites that would help me.

The first time it bounced because I wasn’t looking for something cold, technical, or particularly postmodern. I was hungry for intense emotions, and my brain wasn’t warmed up for reading this kind of writing. I looked at it, read the “introduction” by Johnny and some of the first chapter, but did not actually understand anything, even at the level of basic things that were happening.

The second time it bounced because I was overwhelmed by early intense and explicitly detailed masculine sexual tropes. “A hooker ‘painting’ the walls with her blood, and a stripper named ‘Thumper’ — not for me.”

The third time, I got through the introduction and got to the Navidson Record, but was very intimidated. What got me over the edge here I couldn’t have predicted. (It was getting bored with the Brothers Karamazov and wanting to read literally anything else).

Some of the prerequisites I did —

I read The Candy House by Jennifer Egan. I was expecting a kind of masculine, technical genius in House of Leaves, and The Candy House is a work of what I may loosely call feminine technical genius, though this is likely an unfair characterization given that “masculine” usually means something like “precise” and The Candy House is a very precise work. The first time I was glancing at HoL I was struck that I may have a longing for a lot of emotionality and predicted that I would be annoyed that this book that is famous for doing a certain specific thing wouldn’t be doing other things — and I worried that this would lead me to an unfair reading. “Wishing a book was another book” is a kind of non-charity that I try to avoid.

Funnily enough, even though The Candy House is a lot shorter, it took me a lot longer to get through. It was emotionally intense in certain ways, and getting through it was good for me. It involved a lot of precision around memory. It took me many months to finish it, even when I was getting into it. It took me about two weeks to finish House of Leaves when I started reading it in earnest.

This is one of the things I like about reading in this way, where if the reading is hard, you do some prerequisites. Often the prerequisites are valuable in themselves, and then you read more instead of being stuck!

The Brothers Karamazov with a reading group also really helped. I thought that I would have to wait until I finished the Brothers K before starting House of Leaves in earnest, or I would get too confused, but I was not liking the Brothers K that much, and wanted other content to triangulate it with. I was also having a harder and harder time reading it, into books 4 and book 5 of Brothers K, and so used that break to read all of House of Leaves.

This was helpful because though the Brothers K seems intimidating because it is Dostoevsky, it is a straightforward novel. It was written as a serial. It’s basically a telenovella. And so that was a good foil for a super normal, non postmodern book to contrast HoL with.

To warm up for the sexual content, the Brothers K helped, I read a bit of Ulysees, and some writing from friends. I had hopes of reading all of Ulysees, but realized that it is often treated as a “reach book” in its own right, a Dark-Souls-esque book, and would take me a long time. The Candy House helped me also in terms of wrapping my mind around Los Angeles-style ennui around sex. Watching Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac 1 and 2 was also helpful, as well as centering myself a bit into my own feelings with rewatching a movie involving sex I really really like, The Duke of Burgundy.

This helped me see that things like the “bloody hooker” and “Thumper” were not without some detached irony, and that “reading way too into these things as if this is where the emotional weight is, rather than plot device, because I find it personally new and intense” would be a mistake. And so seeing how other content and other authors play with this stuff and what they’re doing was really good for my reading.

All of these prerequisites were done at my own pace, and with friends. It was a lot of fun and felt like a natural exploration of my interests, with this goal of priming myself for understanding a specific book in mind.

I liked the book a lot more than I thought I would. I thought that, with my preparation and priming, I would appreciate the technical deftness of a genius madman, would not miss the emotional landings of normal books enough to stay focused and finish, would have good conversations with friends, and would respect HoL’s deconstruction of genre.

In fact I ended up just breaking down and sobbing at two specific major emotional points in the book. Just in a pretty normal, “oh my god oh noooo :( ”

I was surprised that my reading involved much less being taken in by any technical deftness and more swept up in the literal content of the book, the images it creates or provokes, and the emotional themes that it brings up.

I am somebody who tends to imagine things when I read (I learned recently that this is not true for everybody). The descriptions of the dark corridors conjured for me literal dark corridors, and then the themes around trauma, grief, and mental illness took me to those locations in myself, and now I am imagining the dark corridors be there, in those sites that the book is pointing me to.

I actually have a lasting impression in myself, after the book, when I am feeling hopelessly dark, in that instead of having a void, that just doesn’t feel like anything, instead I am having those infinitely expanding fractals of corridors and stairwells. Instead of feeling like there’s “nowhere to go” it feels like there are lots of places to go. They’re just dark. I don’t find it an accident that I have been texting a bunch of my group chats pretty dark stuff this week while reading! Feeling out my own expansion into my own darknesses.

I found this to be powerfully healing, and really touching in that the book is about the healing power of books for trauma, and I did feel like I had a big effect on some of my trauma stuff, from this reading.

The poems I found were beautiful. The special house of leaves specific poem I found especially deeply moving and meaningful to me.

Even now I tear up reading it, I don’t know

I am glad I primed myself not to be upset by things like “lack of women characters doing stuff” or “showing the internality of characters through dialogue” or “graphic descriptions of the kinds of things men want to do to women when they feel freedom to write about it.”

This let me get through the book

and I was really really moved by it. I found it very tender. I found it really really big in its tenderness.

I think learning about “what the book won’t be” actually disproportionately increased my enjoyment of the book in ways I would not have expected. I did that to curb disappointment, but actually the metacommentary on genre and “what is a book” that HoL does had been supplemented — that is, having built this relationship of things “outside the book” did help me both understand and enjoy what is inside of the book.

I am somebody who in my interpersonal and intimate dealings, has a fiery sunny mode, but also have a moon mode, enneagram 4w5, a little more looking at what’s missing and noticing how that shows what is there, more focused on silences and what breaks the silence…….

And that side of me really appreciated some stuff — a bunch of stuff that might be quieter but felt pretty loud to me, given my buy-in into generally taking myself into colder and smaller places in myself, farther away from the world (potentially my negative schizotypy stuff, derealization, stuff like this). And so from a place like that, dispositionally, and then following what the book is doing, it did lead me to feel a very big expanse of tender warmth around the ending, the last 30 pages.

There was a whole chapter in the book that involved a ton of citations involving things that are not in the book — just hundreds of citations of houses that are not the house in the book

there is a joke in the Index too - there are items in the index that are not in the book - that just say DNE - does not exist? but if you erase the letters DNE from INDEX you get IX which is chapter IX which is the chapter with all the citations of things that are not in the book……

And I think technically I do not usually follow things like this particularly well, tricks like this, but emotionally I did get very involved with this and so got a lot out of it

where I did get really really bought into the book, the story, what will happen to everybody involved.

I bought the setup that Zampanó was writing about a real film, and that the real film actually happened.

That is, enough “disbelief” about Zampanó existing was set up as a premise (who is this guy, why did he leave this manuscript?), and then questions about the film even existing, and then is what happened in the film even real — all these areas of disbelief were fleshed out (and this is one aspect of the technical brilliance that people refer to) — that a certain dance around “actually believing the novel” did indeed happen for me, and I did really care about everyone the way I would be if I was reading a normal novel.

I also decided to have certain buy-in early. For example, I was noticing all the instances of “house” that were in blue — I did not know why, and still do not know. But I had decided that the “house” in “blue” was going to be a magnificent little treat that I am extra emotionally invested in, like of course this is a wonderful thing, that “house” is in blue! as if this is a really important thing. It might be. I wouldn’t know why. But I got really invested in feeling the feelings around having buy-in for that early, as a cool thing, and I think that did give me an emotional foothold for the larger emotional arcs and surprises.

I basically read it in two big chunks. I read it from the beginning, through when they all come back from the house the first time — this took about 7 days. Then I took some time to do some work — a few days. Then I went back and finished the book in a day.

I found the ending of the book to be satisfying. I didn’t expect it to be. I thought that the “first ending, where I first stopped” after everyone returns from the house would be where I actually would feel complete and happy, that intense darkness labyrinth, and that everything afterwards would kind of just be a wind-down. But there was another crescendo and another wave, and that second wave was this big loving wave of warmth I really did not predict would be there, and I found the end to be really quite beautiful. It made me want to read the book again, kind of, but not yet, and maybe only just bits of it, now. I still am thinking about it and am overwhelmed in it, lost in it.

This book did leave me feeling like I would reread large parts of it, and then maybe reread it again in a few years in its entirety. I see how people revisit it.

I also did read it when I was pretty sad and a lot of the emotions in the book resonated with feelings of isolation I was experiencing in my own life.

I think I definitely got smarter reading it. Like probably actually increased an IQ point or two.

Some people talk about getting “lost in it” and that definitely happened to me. I didn’t really want to put it down, but did need emotional breaks. But a reading session for me without a break would be about 2-3 hours, which is long for me.

Still shaking, in a unique way, afterwards

I found it meaningful also that this book is about the death of books as a genre, in the age of digitalization, but also that it is about death literally, in that if you do not read it as a book about it in context of literature but just read it straight up, it still works. I read it more in the spirit of this second way, as a book about grief for people who you love who died, and how to keep living.

It talks about getting nutrients from soylent, so that the vegetables (and everything else) can be maximized for enjoyment, rather than for other qualities such as speed or nutrition. The broccoli does not have to be treated like a key source of nutrients, but instead it can be roasted, tossed in olive oil or vinegar, and have all other kinds of exciting things be happening to it.

Keto is pretty restrictive. People generally don’t know what it is. If you go to a restaurant and ask for something keto, chances are they will be friendly and excitedly helpful, and have some gluten-free-related idea, but wouldn’t really be aware of keto and will bring you potatoes with cheese (potatoes = carb = not keto).

Because it is pretty hard* to eat keto when you are with people or eating out, it comes off as pretty restrictive as a general case. Hence the “steak and broccoli” situation that is often associated with keto.

*(less hard than it seems if you do not use the word keto — “give me a plate of pastrami with coleslaw.” It is harder if you ask for something keto rather than asking for what you want that they are likely to be able to do. And they will likely assume you are gluten-free and ask if they need to be extra considerate — I always say no to extra consideration but otherwise just roll with it. I have also seen gluten-free people pretend to be keto or paleo in certain contexts where they may be judged unfairly for being gluten-free.)

Though it is restrictive compared to no diet or other diets, when you think about it, literally everything in the world is keto that is not a carb, or does not have added carbs. Literally, everything. Definitionally, functionally.

All meat is keto, most vegetables are keto. Most fruits, being composed of fructose, a sugar, which is a carb, are not.

And so being extremely extravagant on keto should be very possible. All spices are allowed, for example, and cream (not half-and-half).

Let’s think of some things.

Mussels? Keto
Oysters? Keto
The cool sauces that go on mussels and oysters? Can be easily keto
Cardamom? Keto
Smoked salmon? Keto
Kimchi? Keto
Borscht? Can be made keto without potatoes
Caviar? Keto
Peppermint tea? Keto
Ceremonial matcha? Keto
Gourmet venison sausages? Keto

You can literally walk around going, “I am the king of keto I am the king of keto!” and pretend your are some kind of paleo deer-hunting lord. You can pretend you are the most luxurious deer-hunter in the history of the entire world.

I actually find LARPS like this extremely helpful when doing hard things.

Now, keto may not work for you or be good for you. A lot of people can’t get past the keto flu. A lot of people also are bad at a kind of carbs tracking that makes keto worthwhile (if you eat too many carbs, you are out of ketosis, no ifs-maybes-or-buts about it). You can’t eat infinite fruits, which is a bummer for a lot of people who like fruits.

*(If you like fruit, the extravagance is extra important. You are allowed a handful of blueberries, blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries every day. Pulling a Benjamin Frankie and going a’whoring with them is therefore just basic utility maxxing.)

However this post is not about if you should or should not be keto, and is not examining the costs or benefits of it. It is merely saying that you can be pretty extravagant.

A lot of people when they think about diets or weight lifting or exercise or losing weight, they think about what feels punishing. That which is punishing is virtuous, and that which is virtuous works, right?

This is dumb. I hate this.

You aren’t going to get “the sort of body that attracts the opposite sex” by fasting all day, running around a track 30 times until you basically faint, and then only drinking saltwater and eating sardines.

Like, what the fuck?

One, this won’t make you jacked. Two, if your primary goal is to lose a lot of weight very quickly, that extreme diet is enough by itself. You don’t also have to run around the track. That’s just extra punishment. That’s just torture.

And also yeah, that would work at losing a lot of weight because it would be keto. But you know what? You can also do keto decadently. Hence this post.

For example that whored out salt and vinegar and olive oil roasted broccoli? Keto.

With all of the zero-carb substitutes for so many things, if you wanted to be soft-girl living and make something like a latte to drink every single day, you can do this. You can have your chai spices, you can have cream instead of milk or half-and half, or now they even have ultra-filtered milk, which removes the lactose, and so has almost no carbs and can work with both people who are keto and people who are lactose intolerant.

You can have a salmon benedict for breakfast, with your new latte, with a salad, with olive oil, and an already-before-adulturation-keto dressing or a special keto dressing if you wanna go all strawberry poppyseed-excitement or whatever.

And you know what? That meal will be 600 calories and keep you full for 7 hours and you will still feel like a fat fuck, because you enjoyed it.

And that’s the problem. In my next essay I will —

I watched Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2013) and Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2013) yesterday.

I didn’t watch the director’s cuts, (the normal versions were leaving Amazon) which adds an entire hour onto the second film, and either 25 or 40 minutes to the first film, and so I will not be talking much about these films specifically.

One thing I’d noticed though — it can be hard to make a good BDSM movie because in real life, people getting into BDSM isn’t usually a super big transformative thing for them, BDSM qua BDSM.

People have all kinds of kinks and fetishes, and generally do not have one very big overwhelming defining experience that pushes them into a whole new world. Sometimes this happens when a person enters a new relationship with somebody — but even then, they found something attractive about the person, sought them out, and kept seeing them and getting to know them better, and so it is not a complete phenomenological shock.

There are a few movies that involve a woman being kidnapped, and then “forced to fall in love” or something of this sort — but I have not watched any of these yet, and these would be relying on a sudden intense forced dynamic. (A reminder — very uncommon in actual BDSM, and this intense power dynamic has way less to do with BDSM and way more in common with…being kidnapped.)

Overwhelmingly, people who are into BDSM notice at some point, in small ways across time, and like other interests and other ways of exploring sexuality, are attracted to pursuing the interest and developing it as occasions come up, or as they meet other people with similar interests. There isn’t really a dramatic arc here.

Lydia Laurenson (as Clarisse Thorn) wrote a book I like quite a lot, The S&M Feminist, which has a lot of interesting stories, and also grapples with what it means to be a feminist and also enjoy being hit by men.

This book was written quite a while ago, long before OnlyFans, long before it was seen as particularly safe to be writing about alternative lifestyles.

There is a legitimate set of awakenings that can come from being hit for the first time and having an erotic response, a pleasure response rather than a displeasure response. And then a set of conflict and confusion that comes from how that squares with a pre-existing identity (such as being a feminist).

Dramatic arcs around these conflicts can be built.

However, there isn’t really a good arc around, “whoooa I was vanilla and then had this BDSM experience, crazzzyyy!”

****SPOILERS**** In 50 Shades of Grey, this is kind of what happens. (I have not seen the movie, I started it, found it basically unwatchable, and watched Secretary instead. I have read the book. I found it basically unreadable, but I read it.) But even there, the arc isn’t really about BDSM. It’s about a woman who meets a guy she thinks is weird, and she is into him, he has her do BDSM which she does not want to be doing, and then at the end he spanks her, she gets mad and leaves. The book is about how a woman does not like BDSM but is into this guy, and about her falling in love with him despite finding him pretty weird and annoying. (The book is filled with things like emails and text messages showing her annoyance.) If you replace BDSM with making her get on a fighter jet with him every day because he’s an adrenaline junkie and really needs to be on a fighter jet every day, it would be the same book. That’s how you can tell the book isn’t really about the BDSM.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) has a very special place in my heart, because of how good it is as a BDSM movie. What makes it so good? I WILL NOT TELL YOU! It is too good a movie. I will not give any spoilers.

This also wasn’t a one-off; he has done things like this with people before. His methods with me are pretty chill though hard-won and I vouch for them.

This post is too spur-of-the-moment to get into that, and so I am just recording some thoughts from today.

We were discussing my strange, now strangest, biggest problem, that has usurped the first place of the migraines, which is my weird debilitating sunstroke / heatstroke / sun sickness thing, wherein I am sometimes somehow incapacitated by the sun for hours. Very inconvenient sometimes to just get knocked out like that! Sometimes I get knocked out every day for a few days, sometimes every other day for a week, sometimes not at all.

This is very inconvenient, and I have thought about it before, and failed to make the progress I wanted to. And so I am now thinking about it again.

I like actually taking your biggest debilitator, or your biggest thing that makes you different from other people in ways that are inconvenient, very seriously. Not overly emotionally — everybody has things like this in some domain. Why not spend some brain cells working on the problems that make you the most sick / most annoyed with yourself / most annoying to other people. It does not mean that this thing makes you fundamentally broken unless you fix it, or anything like that. You don’t even have to fix it or want to fix it. Just if you made a rank-ordered-list, every person would have something at the top of the list. And I consider it virtuous to on occasion devote some brain cells to that.

I suspect that people don’t usually apply vigor to these problems because if it’s your biggest problem, and it’s actually your biggest problem, there’s a good chance that you’ve had it, and were not able to resolve it, for quite a long time. This means that the chance that you tried something for it, with some amount of care and discipline, and it did not work, is high. Which means you went through a judgment-avoidance-hope-failure loop. And if you’ve gone through that a few times, going through it again versus using a different strategy or maintaining a holding pattern can be hard.

Which is why I consider it virtuous, rather than neutral.

Anyway — my sunsickness. Notes!

I do not know much about the historical figure known as the Sun King or much about the Sun God. I have noticed I get similar intense reactions when eating Sichuan food. I often really love the sun, but when I am in a sunstroke mode, happy fondnesses for the sun are hard to access. I have never made a sundial. I do not know anything about sun intensity or how it changes over the course of a day or how it changes due to elevation.

These seem like low hanging fruit to research a bit. If I do not do that, I am not really trying.

My hope is to figure out what is overwhelming about this sun energy some of the time, and get better at channeling it through my mind and body, the way that Zuko channels lightning in Avatar. Or just figure out what the painful thing even is. Or figure out how to make an elixir / figure out what kind of food or drink may be helpful either in prevention of episodes or healing.

My hypothesis is that “figuring out what the painful thing even is” in a straightforward identification will actually end up being harder than healing it. My hypothesis is that learning more about the sun and other adjacent things will somehow allow me transform me in such a way that I end up doing the first option basically automatically and the sun stops being a problem.

My logic as an eleven-year-old was thus: the flute is the smallest of the instruments, and so it would be easy to carry. Over my life when I go places, I would be able to bring the flute with me easily.

I made my decision in large part based on the size of people’s cases. A few years later when I was allowed to borrow two instruments over the summer, I borrowed a saxophone as well as a flute, and did confirm for myself that I did like the act of playing the flute more than I liked playing the saxophone, and I just was better at it for whatever reason. I liked it enough to keep practicing it (I quit the violin after one semester — I liked bowing, but I could not stand sawdust. I did not like the “impure” sound as I was practicing).

As the flute became part of my identity, I overworked, stopped playing in college, started jamming again years after college after going to a jamming music birthday party in Los Angeles — there came a time when I would want to bring my flute places again, but then would not because “it is too much hassle” —

and then I remembered that it fit perfectly sideways into a carry-on into any plane, and what the hell am I doing, saying that it is “too big” or “too inconvenient” to bring places.

This is different from guessing at the actual probability that I would play it or not. The flute being too big to bring because I will not need it is a completely different question from is the flute too big to bring which I had decided as an eleven-year-old it is not and in fact is the easiest instrument to bring somewhere basically of any instrument in the entire world —

I think there is a lesson here somewhere, about remembering your own plans.

The friction is fake. You already decided there wasn’t going to be friction, you already decided you were going to feel free. What’s with this new self-binding?

Too hard, too expensive, too inconvenient, whatever man.

“I’m not the kind of person who — ”

There are real things that you should finish that sentence with.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty shoes on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my dirty luggage wheels on the bed.

I’m not the kind of person who puts my outside coat on the bed.

My god stop putting stuff on the bed! wtf!

I’m not the kind of person who is the person who washes the bed in this house is what I am hearing.

But otherwise, just this tying up yourself into ropes, wtf

The flute never changed. It’s the same size. It’s a standard size.

Compared to me, the flute only got smaller as I aged. Its relative size only got more and more convenient to bring places.

The optimistic and practical decision was already made. This neurotic hedging is what’s new.

anyweayy all this has solutions and processes. do not despair yet plz. In my poadcast —

Give people small things to take care of

That you can afford to lose

Follow up. See what happens. Have data

Inspired by: watching birds. Remembering I once had 2 parakeets as a kid I liked a lot. We gave them away to family friends when I got a cat. The idea was they would be safer. Both were gone within 6 months

nobody really did anything wrong. one flew into a window and died. one flew out of a door and never came back

flying is what birds do

when i was not watching them, the birds did what birds do

it is obvious, that things do what they do even when we are not looking, but because we are not looking, how do we know?

A different example. I stayed in a friends room while she is away. To thank her I leave her 2 plants. I come back 6 months later. Plants are huge. She redecorated the entire room. From navy blue now everything is wood or cream fabrics. Now enormous plants are a key focal point framing the bed.

Probably if one ran these experiments intentionally or a lot it could be fascinating

It can be unexpected. For example this second character is a spiky sort of lady. But she was nice to the plants 🪴

I gave her gifts in fact because she could get pretty spiky if she does not receive gifts

there will be surprises

you can give a book. often if you loan somebody a book you should expect to never see this book ever again

sometimes if you give someone a book, they will write you notes in the book, and give it back

sometimes they will give you that book back, with notes, and another book, or two books

you can learn about what you yourself want to be more like, when you let people surprise you

you can let people surprise you by making yourself open to surprise by establishing low stakes situations in which you genuinely do not know what is going to happen

when you start making predictions about people’s character, you can start to trip yourself up here.

“I will give her a plant because I bet she will mess it up, and then I will have evidence that she messes this up and I shouldn’t give her more plants to take care of because she cannot take care of things” would not be in the spirit of the exercise I suggest

It is actually the opposite of the spirit!

the spirit is a spirit of generosity towards people’s capacities, and generally to have an appreciation for what happens to “things” when you are not looking

I have learned over the years, that even if a friend seems “responsible” to not store anything in their house for more than a few weeks, because what happens to objects in houses is that they get lost — especially large houses that have the kind of space that can store things.

This would end up being tagged not as a quality of any of my friends, but rather as a “quality of large houses and the objects inside them.”

The few people who I have ever given advice about their dating profiles, unsolicited, inside a dating app, did not care at all. They were getting what they wanted and had their own game they were probably playing. And so given how little most people apply tips anyway, I don’t feel too bad about it, though if you wish to debate this feel free to in the comments.

Show different facial expressions, in different settings

One of the main checks on a dating app, and these days especially, is “are you a real person.”

To show that you are a real person, don’t do the thing where you have five pictures, of yourself, making the same exact face, against five different walls. Instead, have some variety.

That being said, you want to look like you are the same person in the pictures. If in one picture you have long hair, in another short hair, in another you are fat, in another you are skinny, in one you have a beard, in another no beard, the variance can add up to being high enough that it is hard for the viewer to triangulate what you actually look like. Most people do not fall into this error, but I see it on occasion. The “not enough variety” is the error I see more often. You want to use up all your photo slots, even if you think you might not have “enough good photos” because other people will be using all the photo slots, that is standard, and the ability to “make a decision on you” is more important than if every single photo is the best photo of you that’s ever existed. In fact every photo being way too good is itself kind of odd.

So you want to aim for something in the middle — enough variance, and not too much, such that the viewer can go “alright I see what this person is like and can determine if I’m vaguely into it or not.”

If you want to be texted first, have something in your bio

Look we’ve all made that mistake of writing that we are “way into Nietzsche” and then ending up with 20 unsolicited and unique bad Nietzsche takes.

But you still should make it easy, if being texted is what you want.

You can actually even get fancy and have a few different things, in entirely different registers, to know when somebody messages you, what vibe they liked about you and what stood out to them.

For example, if you write that you are into “Emerson, diner milkshakes, and playing rough ;)” you would have one kind of guy texting you about literature, one kind of guy texting you trying to make a date with you at a diner you like in town, and another kind of guy texting you about how he plans to toss you around.

If you get a million texts, and have a kind of guy you are looking for, one of these can be a red herring. For example, if you don’t want to be texting all day and just want to be tossed around, the above would help you see which guys just plan to toss you around, and you can respond to those, versus the guy who is giving you his hot takes on Self-Reliance. Or if you want a slow burn, you can reply to the Emerson guy.

You want to be careful though about how you set this up, and I wouldn’t actually lie about the red herrings. I would be honest, and then see what your authentic feelings are about the messages that come in, and if you are happy with how people are engaging with you and your ability to have conversations you want to be having at the pace you want to be having them, and then tweak accordingly.

Not paying attention to stakes

I am an overswiper. If I might be interested, I just swipe right and move on. I also never message first (the experiences I have had in which I messaged first, ended up being bad ones.)

In consideration of this strategy, I make my profile a bit worse than it could be. I do not want people to actually get way too excited about me given my reply rate. I have had profiles before, and I would get messages like, “WOW your aura is incredible!!”

And then I would go and change it a bit. I do not want to be doing seduction magic on the apps, actually, or get people I don’t know to be obsessed with me. “You seem really interesting” is about as far as I like going.

That being said, something like having a strategy of “not trying at all” (very few, bad pictures, just messaging hi, hi, hi, good morning, hi, hey” which I have seen) is also not considering stakes for people, in that it “recruits somebody else to do all the work.”

There are two main factors to consider.

The first is coordination with your partner. If you are alone, you do not have to worry about this, but perhaps you do have to contend with your own beliefs about what the task means in terms of your broader spirituality or what it means in terms of your self-conception.

(For example, perhaps being a man who does not do his laundry ever, is spiritually important somehow.)

(Or perhaps being a woman who does everybody’s laundry all the time feels somehow demeaning.)

The second factor is to actually set up the physical process of accomplishing the task.

As for the first, coordinating with your partner —

Sometimes this involves both people coming together, deciding neither of them wants to do something, and paying someone else to do it.

Sometimes it involves both people coming together and working out a system such that both of them could do it if they wanted to, easily.

Sometimes it involves one person owning the system for some time, figuring out how to optimize it for ease, and then looping their partner in once that process is done. (Note if a failure of looping-in occurs, there may be a situation in which the optimizer ends up the the default owner of the task for a while, but not optimizing because of this fear is not great — you can just stop doing it again.)

Depending on your specific circumstances, some of these options may be easier than others.

Perhaps you have a lot of money, and not much time to talk to your partner. Perhaps your partner really does not want to be involved, and you do have to figure it out yourself and loop them in later. Perhaps your partner really really wants to be involved, or has specific things they want to do, and you cannot just take it over even though if you may want to just take it over.

There are lots of variations on partner coordination. Regardless on which options around partner coordination are available to you, there are a few task-level guidelines which generally can make it easier.

Have the correct number of baskets

You stay at somebody’s house. You want to be a good guest so you take your sheets and pillowcases and take them to the washing machine. You run the wash. You wait 40 minutes. You move them over. Oh wait there is a ton of stuff in the dryer. There are no baskets around. You cannot move anything out of the dryer unless you put it like…on top? But then would it fall? And you can’t keep the stuff wet…um…

This is a washing machine. Unless you are in europe, also a drying machine. These are machines. When you think machines to make your life easier, also think assembly lines.

Doing the laundry is an assembly line. There is a straightforward, repetitive process, that runs every time. Sometimes there are variations. Most of the variations include “does this delicate item go into the dryer with everything else, or go elsewhere” and “what setting do I put this dryer on.”

Most of the time for most things just do warm and then tumble dry low. Warm actually cleans things, unlike cold, and drying on low keeps most things from getting damaged.

If people disagree on default laundry settings, please tell me in the comments.

But the point is there are only a few variations, and one of those doesn’t even really have to be a variation.

And so you really want to optimize flow, because that is where people get stuck.

First — is there detergent? Just always have a backup, and don’t throw it out when it’s empty. The easiest way for another person to “buy more” is for them to see which one got empty and just buy that exact same one again. That way there is not guessing. Ideally you’d have a spare around because you bought a few, but if for some reason some runs out, whoever is there, your partner, or the guest, or anyone, can just replace it.

Secondly, you want a spot for things that are wet, that do not go into the dryer. That is the first fork in the flow.

Then things go into the dryer. Great.

Lint mesh. Is there a place for people to throw the lint into?

Great.

Is there a basket for things inside of the dryer to go into, before they are being sorted?

Now — and this is important — the basket for clean things needs to be obviously different from the basket for dirty things, for your own health and sanity.

Perhaps they differ by shape. The from-the-dryer ones tend to be wide at the top. The not-even-washed-yet ones usually are narrow at the top.

You can also just do different colors. Black for dirty, white for clean.

Whatever makes sense with your sense of aesthetics and sense of decor. But do not be cheap and just have one.

Just having one laundry basket is a way to mess up your entire flow and start to go insane.

That is how laundry becomes a hard task that nobody wants to do.

(I am very tired, maybe will rewrite this soon)

The first time I had ever seen the tango danced was in a club in Berlin, where I walked into and it seemed like it was a shot out of a movie, everybody dressed up dancing like they are a professional. that scene made a very big impression on me and I kept an eye out for an opportunity to dance it.

this opportunity happened yesterday

This guy invited me, thought I said I knew how, then when I said I did not abandoned me to go dance with all the other people he already knew and who knew how to tango

😢

in his defense he did take me to the main teacher and asked what we should do, and she said to just sign up for the 6 week bootcamp they do

i am in town for 3 days

And so i did what any sensible person would do and i sat and observed trying to figure out the basic step

I could not figure it out

there was this little slide the ladies were doing sometimes, and there were these little spins that the ladies did, but I could not figure out the basic count, the way that exists for the samba, the salsa, and the waltz.

I kept looking at people for a while though

This guy sat next to me and was chatting me up

I said so whats the deal with them not being able to teach me to do literally anything, is tango not teachable?

He said yeah you really just gotta do that bootcamp

I said well is there a basic step

He said no there is not. there is a set of parameters and then you improvise a lot within them

hmmm

alright

this is starting to be promising.

I ask what is your field of study and he said chemistry

At this point I am like alright

Promising

chemistry people often are not intimidated by challenges, or have special ways of pushing through them. they are used to hard psets and staying up late

chemistry people are also potentially good about explaining clear parameters

I say okay chemistry boy

Are you going to attempt to teach me the tango or give up.

You are saying there is a lot of improv involved

And so can we not improv?

He says it is complicated

I say I am not afraid

So we go and he does some stuff

And is like wow you are a very fast learner

And I am like ...

I have at least 6 years on you and have also danced the salsa, the waltz, and the samba in the past. I am not completely confused

😂

And so he dances with me for a long time and I conclude the tango is my favorite of the dances I have done

🔥👏🔥

It is process oriented

There are principles and constraints you improvise inside of

And the man really does have to lead hard and the woman does have to follow very very hard

Then I see the Austrian woman the man who abandoned me left me for to dance with

And get her number

🔥

the man then hits me up an hour later and then 2 hours after than and then 2 hours after that

Which i do not notice because i am drunk with my friend at an indoor smoking shop, trying to write my sonnet for sonnet movie club

Anyway now I think we all should learn to tango

❤️

Just look at this magnificence. Can you imagine hiring an artist to make this statue on the left, going “nah too erotic, your older brother will know what’s up” and then the older brother makes this statue on the right.

The statues are apparently in St. Paul's Cathedral in Liège, Belgium, and so I guess I am going to Belgium.

If you want to looksmaxx for looking like a Greek God specifically, here are some tips.

Use Olive Oil

You do not need to take an entire bath in olive oil. You can get the spray-on-skillet olive oils, and just keep them around for when you feel like it.

You know that feeling when you are taking too many showers, perhaps because it is summer and you are working out and also swimming? And then you are feeling too dry? You can spray yourself with olive oil a little bit, and then not be that dry. There, done.

It is good for your skin, your hair, and your nails. It can be a little heavy, but that’s why you are just spraying some on versus lathering it on yourself.

Use Elastic Bands

Use wide elastic bands and stretch your upper back. Go on youtube and find some videos. Be inspired. The point is not to strength train with the bands. The point is to stretch parts of your back you normally would not think to stretch, and this gets your back used to being in the right position when you are just going about your day, having awesome Greek God posture, or when you are working out, so that the right parts are activated.

I learned this from a guy in the navy, and then again at my climbing gym, so it’s probably good.

Look in the mirror or on your phone and fawn over yourself

There is no reason not to fawn over yourself. Even if you hate yourself there is probably part of yourself that you like. Such as your sexy big toe. Or how your arm looks in that specific lighting with that one lamp.

Do not go “oh well that just looks good under that one lamp specifically.” Do not insult the Glory of God. If you notice perfection upon you, then enjoy it.

Look at old photos of yourself that you liked and fawn over those too.

Aristotle’s ideas of virtue involved becoming more of yourself, and more of who you want to become, through practice of being that. And so by looking at yourself looking like how you want to look, you internalize the image a little more, and actually become that more.

Literally Go to Museums and Pose Like the Statues

Feel the essence. Do not fear embarrassment. If you want to look legit, bring a sketchbook and some pencils, so that it looks like you are a true artist doing the subject its due service. There are all kinds of classes for all age ranges that mandate going to museums and doing weird things. Just have your sketchbook and some story, and you’ll be fine.