lazy boys don't stand a chance

[scz]

I'll split the difference

Between medicine and poison

--Julien Baker, "Hardline", 2021

[scz]

"I love pleasures that slow down our tempo: kissing, sleep, ice in a drink."

--Leanne Shapton, in a beautiful essay about wild swimming and the book "Waterlog" by Roger Deakin, Harper's, August 2021

[scz]

I'd picked up the rental car on a sleepy Monday morning in Anchorage. It was overcast and cool. Driving back to the hotel, I put Gillian Welch on shuffle and left it on after picking up E and the kids. They were sleepy in the car, still jet lagged.

The drive out of Anchorage along the Turnagain Arm is beautiful and haunting, and I will remember that moment clearly, listening to "I Dream A Highway" stretch on and on while the mountains rose up around us. Posting to help this memory stick. E took this photo from the passenger seat.

[scz]

"It seems to me we’re living in a world that we fabricate for ourselves. We decide what’s good and what isn’t, we draw maps of meanings for ourselves . . . And then we spend our whole lives struggling with what we have invented for ourselves. The problem is that each of us has our own version of it, so people find it hard to understand each other."

"The fact that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future is a terrible mistake in the programming of the world. It should be fixed at the first opportunity."

"Newspapers rely on keeping us in a constant state of anxiety, on diverting our emotions away from the things that really matter to us. Why should I yield to their power and let them tell me what to think?"

--Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

[scz]

INTR3PID, airplane by Felipe Pantone

[scz]

From Harper's, Dec 2020. Bonkers.

[scz]

"waste your summer praying in vain / for a savior to rise from these streets"

Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road

[betterinpolish]

pokrzywa (noun): stinging nettle

Perfectly mnemonic, as the word contains not just one but two pointy sounds, "poke" (pok) and "shiv" (rzyw). It sounds a bit evil when you say it, and I always appreciate one word instead of two.

[mybeautifulpoland]

Wrocław, Poland by _pionowo_

[scz]

Making Espresso at Home Is Kind of a Nightmare

Making home espresso is hard to do right. But if you really want café-quality drinks, here’s what you need to know.

This misses the mark because the goal for most people isn't "truly great" espresso, it's decent everyday espresso. You can make that at home without a high-end setup, I know because I do every day. My current machine cost $150 from Target, the one before that was hand-me-down. I use a blade grinder (gasp). The espresso is pretty good, I can taste the difference when using better beans. It's not as good as what you get in a very good cafe (and even there, they sometimes pull a bad shot), but it's solid, and I like it better than the bitter stuff you get at a mass market cafe (e.g. DD or S-bucks).

[scz]

Shout out to whoever was blasting "What's Going On" by 4 Non Blondes in the south Philly Home Depot parking lot at 9a Saturday morning.

[scz]

The "Reggae on Sunset" playlist from Numero Group. Try it (on shuffle).

[glompcat]

This question and its answer from The New York Times work advice column is W I L D.

[breadislife]

My easy but delicious Mai Tai recipe:

1 shot gold rum

1/2 shot fresh lime juice

1/2 shot pineapple-orange or orange juice

1/2 shot almond syrup

Shake, serve up or on the rocks with pineapple or lime garnish.

Almond syrup is homemade simple syrup with almond extract added to taste. Right now the rum I'm using is Mount Gay Eclipse.

[breadislife]

How to Prepare Fresh Coconut

I’ve cracked more than my fair share of fresh coconuts, and tried a number of ways to open them, including doing as the monkeys do and lifti

Prepared a coconut this morning (yes, after coffee), of course inspired by the Almond Joy and Snoballs episodes of Gourmet Makes. This is the method I used, though I did not heat the coconut to separate the shell and the meat - I just hit it more with the cleaver, and used an oyster knife where needed (apparently it's useful for all things shelled). The coconut cost $1 at Cousins and it was fresh, the water tasted great.

[scz]

Watched last year's Hellboy. It wasn't Good, but probably much better and made more sense for people (like me) who'd read the source material graphic novels - a lot of the imagery was taken very directly, and it was very fun to see those styles and images translated to the screen. Plus, evil Milla!

[scz]

On the occasion of running more miles in March 2020 than I had in a decade, here's my running life for the last twelve years.

Thanks for the miles, Covid-19.

[scz]

Not happy to report I've now reached the "injured from too much running" phase of my isolation.