Mere Being - 035 - September - evening photographs, writing, chickpeas
I've been sick, with the kind of respiratory illness that was both objectively mild and still feels like it punched a hole through the middle of the month, makes it difficult to talk about "what happened."
Before that I was taking evening walks in the park again, and making photographs around the edge of summer.
It doesn't yet feel like it's conclusively autumn yet. For every cool day there's a warm, wet one. The leaves are turning, but there are still flowers. I expect that feeling to turn soon, and quickly. Carpets of color are starting to form at the base of trees.
Writing Work
I "finished" the first draft of Why I Moved to Minnesota (or Why I Moved to Minneapolis? it's gotten shifty) and shared it with paid subscribers. It's really more of a draft 0.5 than draft 1.0 — more pile of notes than proto-essay. I'm taking a break from thinking about it for a few months but I suspect that when I come back to it I'm going to have to approach from an entirely different direction — not just in the writing but in the approach to the writing.
Speaking of paid subscribers — the "reissue" of Nomad Exquisite continues. Over half the original issues are now up on this website.
The newsletters now more than cover the hosting costs for this website. Thanks again to everyone who has signed up. (If you too would like to support this newsletter financially and get bonus newsletters, you can sign up for a paid membership here.)
Playing around with Simpler Machines
I've also published four posts to the weekly newsletter.
The Paperclip Maximizers are Already Here
Reviews of the Disney/NFL t-shirt collaborations
I'm trying to explore more topics. Simpler Machines has never had a super clear thesis, but it was originally supposed to be mostly about software and software process. I still think and find myself writing about that a lot but its tinged with ambivalence in a way it wasn't when I started the newsletter. I've had this intense sense for the past few months — really since Claude Code "arrived" over the winter holidays last year, really — that the industry has gone totally insane — that we're experiencing a kind of collective psychic event, like that month all the kids got Tourette's Syndrome over TikTok.
I don't necessarily want to be writing about that all the time but it also feels weird to be writing anything else related to software right now.
Simultaneously: I don't really have a good sense of what "works" anymore, in terms of getting posts shared and collecting new sign ups. Subscriptions to the weekly newsletter have dropped by about 5% over the past year. New people are signing up, but the rate isn't keeping up with churn. It feels a little bit like I've stumbled into an unsatisfying local maxima. So I'm trying to explore a little bit more— hence some weird stuff, like "Pittsburgh Steelers fans got into a fight in the reviews of a Disney t-shirt."
Chickpeas
Cooler weather means I'm meal-prepping by cooking beans again. This month: Black garbanzos. I cooked them according to the standard Rancho Gordo method, then the next day mixed them with the peel from two preserved lemons, a little rosemary, and caramelized onions. I wish I'd cooked them a little longer but they were otherwise pretty good, especially served alongside a little Greek yogurt.