posts from 2025 / 06

1. silly workaround for passively seeing who you muted in slack without unmuting them is to paste a link to a muted post in the message window, hit space, and let the preview unfurl to yourself and only yourself, where it reveals all to you even though you have the poster blocked and can see neither the poster nor the post in chat

   🤷🏻‍♂️

2. obviously not gonna happen but i should be able to take a drivers license equivalent exam and road test to earn the right to roll down the lower windows on muni buses and ride with my elbow hanging out, maybe stick a hand out to wave it in the breeze, and so on

3. we lose sun on our western-oriented patio around 3 or 3:30 in the afternoon this time of year but the summer sun sets just north enough to tag from around the other side of the building and hit the farthest northwest patio corner from 5:30 to 6:30PM before we lose it again and that sun patch is like my secret book nook to escape out to for one month a year. I love it.

4. so stoked about the martian I didn’t notice spiderman

   

5. it was kinda nice to get to civic center and not really find any electeds going on about some nonsense on a PA system, it was just like, well we’re here, that was nice, there’s the avakian revcom weirdos [wayne’s world wayne seeing-stacy-face] there’s the people from salt tabling, ok, well let’s walk back up market and see how long it is, wow this is a lot, very cool

   ah well I guess that’s it, ok, cya, I’m gonna go get a beer, ok cya I’ve got plans, yeah cool, later

6. relaxing this morning after breakfast reading a bit before heading to the Dolores Park to Civic Center “No Kings" march later today and I get to Inferno III ( https://archive.org/details/dante-dantes-the-divine-comedy-the-inferno-2012-dante-alighieri-robert-hollander-jean-hollander/page/n61/mode/2up), beginning with the famous “abandon all hope, you who enter here” gate of hell, and where Dante and Virgil encounter the damned for the first time, in the vestibule, who in life were neutral and never took a side.

   😬. Well, ok then.

   

   

7. as a bonus, this helps me feel ok not passing along second-hand “advice" or information, or even posting much at all anymore

8. I kinda remember being mad like twenty years ago that every other move needed to be considered with an “in my experience, __” prefix and this is how long it took me to connect it? wild

9. a move I’ve noticed cool hip with-it conflict-avoidant people do which I’ve decided to try to do is to make more claims about my own experience than I normally would because it feels redundant or just a lot of work to do all the time

   so instead of “you should __" or “people should __” I try to go with with “I have __ and here’s how it worked out for me, to me.”

10. I picked up the inferno (this hollander one https://archive.org/details/dante-dantes-the-divine-comedy-the-inferno-2012-dante-alighieri-robert-hollander-jean-hollander ) off my now two-shelf long to-read, half-read, and probably dnfing pile because I’m about to get to it in the Berkeley philosophy lectures I I’m listening to on walks anymore (Dreyfus mentioned previously, https://archive.org/details/ucberkeley_webcast_itunesu_461120619) and it’s in the form canto, commentary on canto, canto 2, commentary on canto 2, and so on

    ffs

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Fire#Interpretations fascinating takes.

    The Botkin theory is very plausible, and these critical essays from Boyd on the Nabokov mailing list is also a fun read (i’m on 3 of 9, made possible by reader mode in my browser, the archive newlines are a little weird).

    (you know you are reading some real lore when you see the old “name-l” listserve decorator)

    https://bookwyrm.social/user/gravely/comment/7641408

12. “Brother, can you spare securing the existence of our people and a future for wh—“

    “Sorry friend, I don’t carry cash.”

13. gravely started reading The Inferno

    

14. I never have any urge to post what I think about people like stephen miller on here because it would feel like bad smalltalk, just casual observations of a shared banality.

    for some insane reason I instead am constantly not posting the same nonsense on linkedin, a website I don’t understand and dislike the need for, because “they” (??) need to hear it.

15. Delightful, ridiculous companion to Pnin,. I’m confident I missed a lot (I only occasionally referred back to the lines of the poem referenced in the commentary) and still enjoyed it.

    

16. sun ra’s nuclear war is a form of if it sucks hit da bricks with a better refrain:

    oh what you gonna do (oh what you gonna do)

    without your ass (without your ass)

17. working on learning to play Pancho and Lefty this with thumb and fingerpicks like Townes turned into "I wonder if there’s any Townes stuff on bandcamp?” (there is, including this Live at the Old Quarter release) turned into falling in love w/ the label, Fat Possum Records,’s ( https://fatpossum.com) motto (p good merch too):

    “We’re Trying our Best."

    

18. Shirley Jackson with theater kids. Mostly stuck the landing but idk.