micro

make a fresh pesto from scratch, throw it over some gnocchi, and listen to some Piero Piccioni, ideally while laying on the floor with a/the great love of your life.

I think part of what makes the internet so addicting to me is that I find novelty so compelling. my brain feels this itch for new stimuli, for periods of history I haven’t read about or immersion into lives extremely different from mine. there’s also this density of emotion in the way lives are compressed into stories. R and I watched this fascinating four part series on the life of Dean Potter, palms alternately sweating and gripping any nearby surface. what a gift to be able to learn from a radically different type of life.

one of my dear friends threw the First Annual Seattle Bike Rodeo yesterday and it was a true joy, chaos incarnate, but with so much fun. nothing went exactly according to plan, but in the end, no one cared, because the fun of being together and doing something novel was so worth it. there was watermelon smashing, hiding, seeking, starburst, tidying up, improvisation, panicked whatsapp chats, emergency pizza slices, a cow balloon, and a bonfire on the beach.

it reminded me of this wild interview Hasan Minhaj did with the spokespuppet of the gen z Luddite movement in NYC, and their reflections on novelty in person gatherings that don’t have a script. the kickass organizers also shared beautiful thoughts about building community, and everyone left with new friends.

read this interesting interview with Gary Shytengart about the value of sensualism (presence, enjoyment) in an increasingly tech-mediated world. reminded me of this essay on romanticism in SF and the Beauty of Everyday Things by Yanagi Sōetsu which I just started reading. there’s a thread here that resonates deeply that I want to follow.

we had an absolutely lovely weekend backpacking on the Olympic coast.

we hopped a 6:10am ferry and snagged a bear can at the Olympic National Park Wilderness Information Center in Port Angeles on the way over. we parked at the Ozette Triangle trailhead and hiked the Cape Alava trail 3.4 miles to the coast, then headed north 2.3 miles to the South Ozette River campsites. the tidal restrictions were no joke! at two points just before the campsites, the coast would have been totally impassible at high tide, and still required careful navigating at low tide to avoid a gnarly fall on rocks, barnacles, and seaweed.

at camp, we found a lovely camp spot tucked in some trees and we gathered water before the tide came in. the other people camping at South Ozette River were lovely, and we joined a group to hang for a bit at their fire. R taught me how to use our camping stove, and we had surprisingly good dehydrated butternut squash daal for dinner. it was the summer solstice, so it was light until 10pm.

we both slept well, with R sleeping in until 9am (a rare feat when camping). we made oatmeal for breakfast, and packed up camp and hiked out.

the tide pools were so incredible! green anemones, ochre sea stars, little fish and crabs that quickly darted out of sight, barnacles, mussels.

we also saw bald eagles and a couple deer. we heard lore of a momma black bear and cub, but (thankfully) didn’t see them.

on our way back, we ran into a couple friends camping at Cape Alava, which was a true joy! none of us really backpack and we happened to be taking our first real backpacking trip on the same weekend at the same trail, one of those cosmic moments of coincidence.

spent lunch today talking with colleagues about alternative visions for education. growing up, i often felt like school drained my deep intrinsic curiosity and instead trained me to do exactly the bare minimum required to get a 92.51% in the class.

i think it would be so cool if high schools were re-oriented around long term projects driven by student interests, with tutors helping students dig deep into a topic they have genuine interest in, and using that topic as a foundation for multi-disciplinary learning. i think essentially any topic a student chose could provide rich opportunities for learning anything - a student interested in sneakers and sneaker culture could learn about chemistry, materials science, and climate through the petroleum-derived plastics in polyester and other foams in most shoes. they could learn about global trade, supply chains, and manufacturing automation. he could learn about unit economics, pricing, and business strategy. they could learn about sociology, cultural diffusion, and urban history. tutors could connect students with active professionals working in relevant fields (if we had a collective social commitment to educate the next generation).

i deeply believe everything is richly interested if studied up close. so much is lost in our current system with a linear curriculum of “do it because I say so” work sheet style learning, and it doesn’t prepare kids to become high agency, creative, autonomous adults.

during the pandemic, R and I spent so much time together. we noticed that the question “how are you?” didn’t often produce interesting responses - we just default quickly to “good” without considering a response because emotion words feel so limited. we started asking each other “if you were a weather system, what weather system would you be?”, “if you were a plant, what plant would you be?” and it eventually evolved into the simplified form “if you were, what would you be?”. it’s an invitation to describe a vibe with a visual metaphor, and it doesn’t have to make any sense. you can elaborate and go deeper, or you can leave it unexplained.

here are some from the past few years, whenever i had the presence of mind to actually write them down:

• the cat or the old man with the beard
• a pack of crows in a middle school auditorium
• a set of yellow Ticonderoga pencils, with two removed, one sharpened well, one sharpened roughly
• five marbles in a pillow case
• clean chicken bones in a shoebox
• the hydraulic press or the objects being crushed
• a paper airplane - can fly surprisingly far, but often goes in unexpected directions
• an accordion - expands, contracts, produces joyful music

went to an absolutely fascinating talk by Lindsey Boles of Zeno Power about radioisotope power systems for deep sea and deep space power and heat. it was so interesting. the isotopes they use (Americium 241 and Strontium 90) are waste products of fission reactors. she laid out a compelling vision for their mission to advance science in space and the deep sea by solving the heat and power challenge, especially in very cold environments like the dark side of the moon.

more than half of cement emissions come from the calcining process in the production of cement - limestone (CaCO3) is broken down into CaO and CO2. i learned from this technoeconomic paper on direct air capture that one type of DAC (high temperature aqueous solvent) uses the same chemical reaction. a sodium hydroxide (NaOH) solvent is sprayed into the air in the absorption and reacts with CO2 to form sodium carbonate (Na2CO3). to regenerate the solvent, the sodium carbonate is reacted with calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) to form calcium carbonate (CaCO3) and regenerate the solvent (NaOH). the calcium carbonate is then broken to CaO and CO2, the CO2 is collected and the CaO is turned back into Ca(OH)2 to regenerate the solvent again.