Figure 1. A map of San Francisco, California. The path of a 12 and a quarter mile (19 and three quarters kilometer) ride is indicated. About 387 feet (118 meters) elevation over three and a quarter hours, (one and a half hours moving).
I felt like repeating the ride I did a few weeks ago through The Presidio and Lands End but with more trail riding (mulch and dunes) through Golden Gate park.
I tagged on Twin Peaks to get started because why not?
Figure 1. A map of San Francisco, California. The path of a 27 mile (43 and three quarters kilometer) ride is indicated. About 1693 feet (516 meters) elevation over three hours, (two and a quarter hours moving).
I’m up in Napa to see “Beat: Belew/Vai/Levin/Bozzio Performing the Music of King Crimson” and had some time to kill so I got in a quick hike before dinner.
This time of year, harvest has passed for much of the fruit the region is famous for but it looked to me like the neighboring vines were still laden just beyond the fence here by the park.
I saw lots of live oak, lizards, and golden grass.
Figure 1. A map of Napa, California. The path of a one and three quarters mile (two and three quarters kilometer) walk is indicated. About 3300 steps and 525 feet (160 meters) elevation over three quarters of an hour, (half an hour moving).
A nice bit of trail riding and portage, a brief detour around Hardly Strictly in the park that I completely forgot about, a detour to make a flat white and pick up the family, and then a loop out to Standard Deviant for smoked kölsch and Colombian food.
It’s finally summer in San Francisco, a week after its official end on the calendar.
Figure 1. A map of San Francisco, California. The path of a 29 mile (46 and three quarters kilometer) ride is indicated. About 1302 feet (397 meters) elevation over six and a quarter hours, (two and three quarters hours moving).
Buses in San Francisco now say FARE REQUIRED on the LED displays on the front and side where they used to only indicate the line number and final stop street name or something like that. For a few seconds that is replaced with what it used to say, which is helpful.
It’s an LED display because buses aren’t fixed to a line and might be used on one line on day and another line some other day.
Anyway, this implies that FARE REQUIRED is also a temporary situation that might change, which is nice.
In the interim between now and it going away, I just accumulate 5 seconds or less of vitriolic hatred for the bureaucrat who is imposing this useless delay on my life while I stare at a thing I already know waiting to find out if the bus is going to be one I’m waiting for or not.
I add this to the 2 seconds of my life the new BART gates take to open when the old ones were instant and when I collect enough I convert these seconds to Camel Cash™ which it turns out is still a thing.
"Well, it’s complicated, they are doing that because—“
Let me stop you right there. Enjoying and knowing complications is gross and I want no part of it and do not truck with those who do. No. Absolutely not. It sucks and I’m right that it sucks. Thank you.
Figure 1. Cover of The Nerd Reich by Gil Durán, published 2026-08-18 by Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, a 336-page ebook.
I’ve been reading Durán on socials for a while and pre-ordered The Nerd Reich as soon as that was possible.
It is an incredible bummer that a few thousand weirdos have accumulated so much, and even more of a bummer, for lack of sufficient invectives, curses, and scenes of pianos and ACME safes and potted flowers falling on their heads one after the other just before they light an exploding cigar only to get get hit by a speeding locomotive and then run over by a municipal bus full of commuters, that a pile of them are fascists. That they beclown themselves so thoroughly is at least a hopeful preview of their future demise but in the meantime, here we are.
And so of course they merit another book by and for the left detailing all of the material power they’ve marshaled for the right, and why.
I have friends who enjoy hate reads. We have learned to make them hide the links they posts to each other so that the rest of us don’t accidentally follow. This book is not a hate read, but if you are like me, you will not exactly enjoy reading it. This kind of read renews my enthusiasm for not extending libertarians any generosity whatsoever, a limitless enthusiasm that needs no renewal. And so it takes me a while to get through because I have to treat this kind of nonsense like an assignment to myself, which I keep putting down saying things like “god damn it” and “what an asshole” and so on.
Durán includes dozens of pages of citations. This is great because it made for a happy surprise when I finished the final chapter with plenty of paper left in my right hand.
I haven’t used these citations to look up any of the more frustrating claims Durán makes, and I need to be cause I winced near the end of the penultimate chapter, Antichrist, when Durán cites a poll that found that 44% of American christians support a specific weird set of principles the book has presented. This is of course plausible (that said poll exists and concludes such a thing) but the conclusion it comes to, to me, is not. I’m not a christian and so who am I to know what’s going on with American christians lately but I don’t think it is plausible that many of them share even basic beliefs about what their own religion is all about. I winced similarly when reading a Good Naomi (Klein) book’s story about some beclowning of their own that SFO Airport officials got up to, I think in The Shock Doctrine, which I happened to have just read a bunch about, when her telling of the same tale was fine but a little off.
I winced because I like to think I’m reading stuff like this from the high ground, and not also mad and titled by and like the subjects being described but of course I am mad and tilted, and I don’t know how anyone can write bout this stuff without feeling similarly and maybe allowing a little of that frustration to bend their analysis. It’s fine, whatever.
A great gift for the tech executives in your life, or if you like tilting your actual friends, them too I guess. I really hope a bunch of people read it and come to the obvious conclusions Durán has come to, and so it is nice to see it and Durán get the attention it merits. I would much rather that hard line dogmatic poll-driven pluralistic better-things-are-worse-actually aw shucks there is no such thing as neoliberalism third-way Atlantic reading capital D democrats read it. Haha, just kidding… unless?
Figure 1. A map of San Francisco, California. The path of a nine and a quarter mile (14 and three quarters kilometer) ride is indicated. About 194 feet (59 meters) elevation over one hour, (three quarters of an hour moving).
Figure 1. Macro photograph of a rose in peak bloom. I don’t know the name of this variety of rose but it is a very pale pink with yellow and white highlights that make it seem almost iridescent in the morning shade. Stunning enough that I stopped the take a picture, and I pass lots of blooming roses on my walk to and from school drop off in the mornings.Figure 2. Selfie at home in the mirror by the door. I’m wearing a black 501s and a black chore coat with my handle, Gravely, chain stitched on the right breast in goldenrod thread, over a black and white plaid flannel over a light pink t-shirt. I’m wearing a new-to-me Twitch Unity Guild baseball hat in light pink with the twitch glitch logo with stacked unity pride flag drop shadows. A blurred print of Booty-Boop, my old avatar, by Joan Cornella is behind me on the wall over one shoulder and a rainbow Eames ball coat rack on the wall over the other shoulder.
