Category: Notes

What a truly terrible day for America and the world.

“Historically, driving has come with very few costs for the driver — in fact, most of it, from road infrastructure to free parking, is actively subsidized by the government.“

https://www.theverge.com/2025/1/16/24344732/nyc-congestion-pricing-tracker-data-google-maps

What’s the typical life expectancy of a towel? Just realized I bought these from BBB when I first moved here in 2015.

Can’t sleep. Memory lane.

[Claire de Lune by …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead](https://music.apple.com/us/album/claire-de-lune/1045224071?i=1045224078)

On the enshittification of the Internet from [CNN](https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/13/business/enshittification-internet-meta-nightcap/index.html):
>First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

>You know, I think life is an embarrassing, soul crushing marathon. But then I remember: (gasp) there’s cinnamon toast!

-Bruce McCulloch

13/365 📷

True story, my wife sleeps with this tattered quilt every night because she likes the way it feels. It was her dad’s when he was a kid.

Glad y’all are having a “normal” winter back in Michigan. After the last couple of years, I was starting to think that maybe the climate had changed enough for me to start thinking about move back, but…I’m good. ☔️

12/365 📷

Same, kid. Happy 3rd birthday. Love, dad.

I had my dentist appointment on Friday to get my teeth scanned in preparation for clear aligners. I’m excited but a little nervous. I have a deep bite, there’s a gap on the top, and crowding on the bottom. The correction of a deep bite can change the face. Should be interesting.

A satellite map compares the areas of the Palisades Fire and the Great Chicago Fire, with color-coded overlays and size measurements.

[Source](https://x.com/shauncooley/status/1877410391443255485)

On NYC congestion pricing:

[New Yorkers Have Little Data but Big Feelings About Congestion Pricing](https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/nyregion/new-york-congestion-pricing-reaction.html)

I’ve always been a late bloomer. I wonder what will bloom next.

11/365 📷

I went to a meetup today and we visited several art galleries around the Pearl District. I found the prayer wheel with the octopus uncanny given the book I just finished. The artist allowed us to place a piece of paper with a prayer inside, which I delighted in doing.

Finished reading: [The Mountain in the Sea](https://micro.blog/books/9781399600477) by Ray Nayler 📚. Brilliant book.

When I lived in Florida over 20 years years ago, gated communities were everywhere. I’ve lived in Oregon for 10 years now and I still haven’t seen one.

10/365 📷

New bed day.

>I ask you one thing
Do you remember me?
I miss you

9/365 📷

>To be seen by others is the core of being. Perhaps this is why humans are driven to create minds besides our own: We want to be seen. We want to be found. We want to be discovered by another. In the structured loneliness of this modern world, so many of us are passed over by our fellow humans, never given a second glance.

Excerpt from The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

>What does it mean to be a self? I think, more than anything else, it means the ability to select between different possible outcomes in order to direct oneself toward a desired outcome: to be future-oriented. When every day is the same, when we are not presented with the necessity to choose between different possibilities, we say we don’t “feel alive”—and here I think we guess at what being alive actually is. It is the ability to choose. We live in choices.
—Dr. Ha Nguyen, How Oceans Think

Excerpt from The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler

Morning walk.

Photo from a few weeks ago of a dragon made of Christmas lights and spitting flames in downtown Caldwell.

8/365 📷