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i'm talking that toy block, developing sense of agency shit.

i challenge you to roll three sixes for no reason.

In 2019, a large chandelier was installed underneath Granville Street Bridge, to aesthetically enhance the area. It was controversial at the time - a symbol of what's wrong with luxury condo development.¹

I used to work near Granville Island, so when I visited Vancouver in early 2025, I wanted to walk around my old stomping grounds and pay the chandelier a visit.

I walked to where I remembered it being installed, and discovered it had been removed, presumably for maintenance reasons. Disappointed, I went home and lamented to my sister.

smerching is when you're looking for an emoji.

usually we smerch because we can't remember which drawer the emoji we're looking for is stored in (is 💦 nature or human?), but sometimes also because we're not quite sure which pictogram best conveys the tone of what we're trying to express, and even less frequently because the emoji picker we're using isn't on the latest unicode version and isn't showing 🫨 even though we swear we've looked everywhere.

"museum of thirst"

ostensibly an exhibit about the history of water and plumbing. it takes an hour to walk through. there are salted snacks at the start. heaters are turned up high. there are water fountains and vending machines throughout, but they're all out of order. there's a stationary bike that powers a water pump, but no matter how hard you pedal you're always just a bit short of getting water. thirst-generating pictures everywhere of sweating glasses of icy water, etc.

Tul, the fearsome barbarian, pursues the duke down one of the castle’s corridors. Elsie, his gnomish wizard companion trails behind, holding her velvet hat in place with one hand and a crumpled scrollbook with the other. Slam! The duke locks the door behind him, and his footsteps disappear up the tower. Roaring, Tul crashes his shoulder into the door, but he rolled a 2, so the door doesn’t budge. When Elsie catches up, she rolls a 20, and the door bursts open. The duke can’t have gotten far!

a magic the gathering engine + evolution algorithm to develop and playtest duel decks that were perfectly balanced, variable, and fun.

i don't want to spend my time reading through all the cards and playtesting with myself before printing some new decks to play with my friends, and i don't want to use online decklists because they're typically too competitive (filled with 4x of the best cards) and repetitive to play.

my library on shuffle has elicited some eye-widenings in me recently. tracks where the lineage is so obvious that it's… surprising they even changed the title. a sneaky spiritual cover.

KIND WORDS by Gretchen is one, of Horizontal Hold by This Heat. Everyone in that Calgary scene was obviously, famously inspired by This Heat but I hadn't heard these two songs back-to-back before to realize how direct it got. thanks shuffle.

I was listening to a podcast the other night where one of the hosts complimented Tim Urban on his knack for defining conceptual structures that help clarify a confused subject. Unfortunately, the given example was Tim adding Up-Down to the Left-Right political spectrum, where "up" is being educated and rational, and "down" is being primitive and emotional.

As far as poltical compass memes go... pretty bad.¹

Still. Love a good model.

in arguments, i sometimes say “this is bad because it damages our souls.”

i think i got it from david graeber.

but what does it actually mean?

it's probably easier to understand what it does, which is, i think, create a sort of rhetorically unassailable position. what are you going to say? nuh-uh! it doesn't damage our souls! are we both just going to assume we know exactly what the other person means by that? no.

i searched "nominalism" on youtube, hankering to listen to someone discuss it as i ate sultana bran.

i clicked on the first video and a man sitting in front of a shelf of leather bound books started talking to me.

i thought he seemed a bit like Philosophize This! in his manner, except his leading example was a joke about how it's impossible to answer simple questions like "what is a woman" without having a biology degree these days.