Work in progress.

Some things are broken round here.

  • Seven birthdays with my wife

    Published on March 1, 2024

    When my wife Sabrena and I first got together in early 2017, she said I was her early birthday gift. Not actually knowing her birthday, I asked her when it was: exactly two months from when we got together.

    You must understand, at that time I was a bit of a fuckboi and two months was a very long time for someone like me. I had no idea where I was going to be, who I was going to be with, or what I was going to do even two days ahead of time. Happily, things worked out: we have been together for seven years, and married for six of that.

    a photo of a beautiful woman wearing a very distinctive top. the photo is black and white and shot on film

    Happy birthday to the love of my life!

    In 2018, she agreed to marry me, and move to San Francisco with me, sight unseen. She'd never even been to the United States at that point.

    The life we've built together here is wonderful and comfortable; exciting and engaging; fun and full of laughter. Here's to many more birthdays together.

  • Chobanicore

    Published on February 7, 2024

    Chobanicore: the style of natural, soft colors and airy composition in branding popularized by Chobani's 2017 rebrand is also known as 'paperback chic' and 'Chobanicore'.

  • Spycraft and statecraft

    Published on January 31, 2024

    Spycraft and Statecraft: A new article in Foreign Affairs by William Burns, Director of the US CIA says "China remains the only U.S. rival with both the intent to reshape the international order and the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do so. The country’s economic transformation over the past five decades has been extraordinary. It is one for which the Chinese people deserve great credit and one that the rest of the world has broadly supported in the belief that a prosperous China is a global good. The issue is not China’s rise in itself but the threatening actions that increasingly accompany it. China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has begun his third presidential term with more power than any of his predecessors since Mao Zedong. Rather than use that power to reinforce and revitalize the international system that enabled China’s transformation, Xi is seeking to rewrite it"

    Listening to your body: interoception, or our 'body's sixth sense' is a sense that many autistic people struggle with. I certainly do. But there is now a growing interest in what these signals actually mean, and how they work in the context of brain-body integration.

  • Fish eyes

    Published on January 30, 2024

    Lucas Sin shares how Cantonese chefs gauge water temp: shrimp eyes (80C), crab eyes (90C), fish eyes (99C about to go into a rolling boil). The video is also a good instructional resource on how to prepare and cook shrimp, especially Hangzhou style tea shrimp. Good recipe to come back to and try.

    Hennepin County, Minneapolis has reduced its chronically homeless population by 80% in just five years via a combination of funding, deep community engagement and a housing-first approach that’s matched with real housing resources. Besides cutting chronic homelessness, Hennepin County has also managed to reduce its unsheltered population by 22% since 2019, while the country’s totals moved in the opposite direction.

  • A Year of Creative Endeavors

    Published on January 5, 2024
    1. In 2023, I got to explore a whole year of creativity, namely in film photography, photographic darkroom printing, piano and saxophone-playing, and drawing
    2. Film photography felt like an old friend I was coming back to: I was already shooting film 20 years ago, but dropped off for the digital world
    3. In moving to San Francisco, I also found a community of film photography experts and enthusiasts around whom I could build a creative practice
    4. It's much easier to continue pursuing a hobby when there are events to attend, people to share, and spaces to go to for it
    5. I crossed off the vast majority of items on my learning wishlist for photography: I learned to bulk roll film, I learned to shoot medium format, I learned to develop film in all processes, I learned to scan film and also print (in a darkroom, and digitally)
    6. I'm now reasonably confident in all of those things, enough for me to be able to print photos for art shows
    7. Not sure where I want to go with the printing thing, but it came in handy when I also, in the last two months of the year, started teaching photography at a community space in my neighborhood
    8. I gave disposable film cameras to participants (who are either unhoused or who mostly live in the supportive housing in the area), who then went forth and took photos of their lives and experiences
    9. A local film lab helped us develop the negatives, and I printed out a selection of participants' photos for a small private art show at the community space. I am now working on documenting and showing some of this work online and will share it when I am ready!
    10. In developing a 'creative practice', I've come to see that the work I do in photography or in music (or even meditation) all have similar roots
    11. It's all about establishing a regular practice on something in my life where, maybe I won't ever be a professional, but it's something that I personally really enjoy and can learn from
    12. It's enough joy to be able to work on these hobbies that bring me peace and solitude
    13. When I sit in a completely dark darkroom, that's one of the only times I am away from a screen
    14. The hour or three that I spend in one helps me center my thoughts around creating something beautiful that can bring happiness to someone else (my wife, for example, really likes having prints so she can decorate our home with it. I also love giving prints to friends)
    15. Given that I stepped away from photography for a decade or so because I was burned out by the practice of commercial photography, which killed my love for it and which also made me uninterested in picking up a camera for a very long time, I'm very happy with... this, whatever this is!
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