What I’ve been reading…

Math letters for the curious

“The concept of infinity, the existence of the prime numbers, and the haunting beauty of chaotic systems can inspire artists, philosophers, and poets alike.”

— Math Letters

My Math Letters subscription recently wrapped up. I bought the mail subscription (one-time fee, 20 letters) a while back so I would receive a letter every couple weeks. In a world where content consumption is rapid and voluminous the slow trickle of receiving a physical letter in the mail every so often was a real joy.

I’m a curious person but I’m not really a math person and the letters were still very approachable. I never thought I’d get to experience the “wonder” of math concepts frustration-free with my morning tea.

The letters themselves are beautifully typeset on high quality paper, so I’ve been collecting them. They sit on a bookshelf in sequence along with my books.

Doors of McMurdo

“Each building has its own unique style, based on when it was built, the standards at the time, the parties involved in its construction and operation, and what role it plays in town.

Nothing more clearly illustrates this than the doors to the buildings. “

—  Doors of McMurdo

brr.fyi is a blog written by someone working at McMurdo station in the 2022-2023 season. I have a particular interest because a friend of mine also happens to be down there as we speak, so it’s fun to catch odd glimpses of life on the station, particularly the mundane details. Doors of McMurdo is all about, well, their favorite doors.

The Artist at Work

“I have no urge to revisit the conservatory anytime soon.”

—  “The Artist at Work”

Jen Myer’s short-story “The Artist at Work” has been on my Kobo for a while and I finally had a chance to read it. It was very good and very creepy, and I’ll always have a soft spot for any story set in Chicago.

My taste isn’t as good as Jen’s, but her newsletter is also what inspired me to try a little blogging of my own :)

What I’ve been playing…

Returnal left a mark on me

I’ve never been a fan of rogue-like video games but something about Returnal drew me in.

The first half of the game lets you know it will be uncompromisingly hard. The gameplay has a precision and finesse that will ruin every other video game for you, but Returnal expects a lot from you in return.

Combat feels like chaos until you let go and give in to the tidal wave of sensory inputs. “Getting better” in the game really means “turning conscious reactions into subconscious reactions”. Once I got out of my own way the combat became balletic. There was order to that chaos after all, as long as I allowed myself to surrender.

At first I thought this was all Returnal was, a highly polished sci-fi third-person shooter. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I’ll be vague to avoid spoilers, but the half-way point in the game represents a major turn in the story. I thought I was playing checkers, but the game made it clear we were playing chess.

After finishing1, my perception of the game is wildly different. Returnal is an unguarded exploration of trauma, shame, grief and psychosis. It explores these subjects with very little analysis or interpretation, leaving much of it to you. Returnal is unprocessed and unadulterated in a way that I find rare in our story telling, games, movies, television or otherwise.

I think humans are driven to make sense of trauma, our art often attempts to interpret it in the hopes of healing us. As important as meaning-making is, I think art has other roles to play too. Sometimes we don’t need help understanding, sometimes we need help feeling, especially in a way that feels safe.

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An aside: Trauma can mean a lot of things to a lot of people and I don’t want to scare you off this game. I won’t share much for fear of ruining the story, but I can say there was no excessive violence and no sexual violence in this game. Don’t be deterred.

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What I’ve been doing…

Moving slowly and eccentrically in the gym

Health issues2 over the last two and a half months have resulted in a lot of weight loss and it’s been hard to take in enough calories day-to-day. Big workouts and 700-calorie hikes aren’t doable or particularly safe at the moment, so I’ve had to adapt.

I’ve left the weekly hikes behind in favor of weekly walks through the Portland Japanese Garden. I bought a membership which means I can visit during members-only hours when it’s quiet and there’s hardly anyone around. It reminds me of how the gardens were when I was a kid, long before Portland’s population explosion. Usually I read at the teahouse afterwards.

I’ve also changed my gym routine. I lift much lighter weights and focus on moving slowly, particularly during eccentric contraction (for example, lowering a weight).

The new approach feels easier on my body but I’m also amazed at how different weight lifting feels when I approach it this way. Lifting/pushing is usually the fun part, now that I’ve reversed the emphasis I’m noticing a growing sense of muscular stability that I’m really appreciating right now.

Around the same time as I was switching things up I stumbled across this study which found eccentric muscle contractions are arguably the more “productive” of the eccentric/concentric pairing. Normally I have little interest in focusing on what’s “optimal,” I do enough of that in my day job, but it was nice to see that there’s some science out there saying my new approach is valid in its own way.

What I’ve been listening to…

I’m coming off an extended period of listening to country/folk/americana and done a hard pivot.

The playlist I made containing the songs below is currently labeled “wall of noise” so take that for what it’s worth. It’s not noise, but the songs are all heavy on layering which I’m finding cathartic right now. The songs are all roughly in the metal/industrial/electronic vein.

My eyes brain went black

I’ve been listening to MY EYES WENT BLACK at very high volume (it needs it) every chance I get. It takes a while to build up but by ~2:40 mark something magical is happening.

The strangest choir

I came across Frontier by accident, it’s one of the most unique songs I’ve heard in a while and worth sharing. There’s a choral Ghost in The Shell vibe in there I appreciate.

I still don’t know what witchhouse is

ΔXIUS LIИK pops up in “witch house” playlists a fair amount. I’m still not sure what witchhouse is but I know sometimes it’s exactly what I want to listen to. This is my favorite track on the ERA album. The whole album (and maybe witchhouse in general?) goes hard but at a slow pace, pretty ideal for moving at a snail’s pace through the gym.

I used to be a real “tab hoarder.” I would come across thoughtful articles on the internet that were longer in nature and required more time and thought than I could give them in the moment. These were pieces of writing I knew I’d enjoy, so I’d leave the tab open hoping I would find a moment of quiet reading and contemplation, but those moments never came.

I had already established a morning routine of distraction-free reading years ago, but that was for reading books. The last thing I wanted to do was pick up my phone. One of my “rules” for this routine is that I don’t touch my phone or laptop for at least an hour while I read.

However, when I bought an e-ink eReader with Pocket integration a new world opened up. Now when I see an article I want to read on my phone I hit “save to Pocket” and forget about it until I pick up my eReader in the morning where the article will be synced.

If you’re not familiar, e-ink displays are really different. They’re much closer to physical paper and not at all like a phone or laptop screen. eReaders also don’t come with any distractions. It’s almost like printing out all those thoughtful articles, but without killing trees.

The upshot of all this is my online browsing behavior is separate from my “thoughtfully reading longer-form articles” behavior. It’s perfect because, for me, the two have always been incompatible.

I’m not getting paid to endorse these things. I just adore this way of consuming online articles and I wanted to share it.

If this seems interesting to you I go into more detail below.

Pocket

I use Pocket to track articles I want to read. Nearly every site works fine with it, but some sites aren’t compatible. It’s so rare that Pocket can’t properly parse a certain site that I hardly notice.

Pocket can be installed as a browser extension on desktop and mobile. It’s easy to send an article to Pocket with a couple clicks or taps and then forget about it until I check my eReader later. It’s the same amount of effort as bookmarking something. I like the “low friction.”

When you save an article to Pocket it strips ads1 and reformats the article to a simple “reader” mode that’s just the article, headings, and in some cases images. If you’ve ever used reader mode in your browser it will look very familiar to you.

Pocket is free, but I pay for the pro version to support them. I don’t actually use the pro features.

I use a Kobo eReader which integrates with Pocket, my workflow looks like this:

• Articles I finish are archived. These articles stay in Pocket and you can still find them in your list of archived articles. Archiving also removes it from my Kobo.
• If there is an article I find exceptional I’ll “favorite it“ before I archive it, this makes it easy to scan my article archives later and see the articles that stood out to me.
• If I dislike an article I delete it . When I do this my Kobo deletes it from Pocket so I can pretend the whole thing never happened.

My eReader

I love e-ink displays. They don’t use light, instead millions of tiny capsules in the screen are physically flipped between their white side and their black side. It’s much closer to paper than it is to a computer screen, it feels more like a physical book. No LEDs burning out my retinas.

I think the current model closest to my own is the Kobo Libra 2, but they have other models. I suspect they all feature Pocket integration. The Kobo readers have a few features that are important to me:

• Amazon doesn’t make them. Yes, Kobo/Rakuten is still a corporation, but as you’ll see below the Kobo is far less “locked down” than a Kindle. I think Amazon is awful and I don’t want to support them.

• Integration with OverDrive. Chances are your local library supports OverDrive, which is a mechanism for checking out ebooks. With the Kobo you can authenticate with your library and checkout ebooks and read them right on your Kobo. I love libraries, and it’s nice to grab a book from the comfort of my couch.

• Integration with Pocket. Vital to the way I read articles. Pocket integration has been listed under the “Beta” section on the Kobo for years. I pray they never remove it.

• Warm backlighting. By default there’s no light emitting from an e-ink screen (for me that’s sort of the point) so you can’t read in the dark, but the Kobo lets you turn on a backlight if you need it. On my Kobo I can choose how “warm” the backlight is, the range is from bright white to a deep amber2.

• Support for some indie bookstores. My favorite local independent bookstore allows you to search for ebooks on their website and purchase them. Really it’s just a referral system, I’m not sure what cut the bookstore takes when you buy an ebook through them but if you’re not going to buy a paper copy of a book at least your local bookstore can get a percentage of the purchase.

And of course there’s Kobo’s own bookstore. I’ve bought a book or two through it, I have no complaints.

If you’re trying to find the right e-ink eReader for you then pay attention to both screen size and resolution, particularly the resolution. I upgraded to a higher resolution eReader and it made a huge difference.