• funraniumlabs.com blog. Radiation safety & laser guy’s blog. Horror stories and random fun stuff. Specialized safety professionals always have fascinating insights about systems design and the way society treats their domain. Here’s a great sentence: “To me, the efficiency of a crab as a environmental sample does not offset the terror of being trapped on a zodiac with an angry coconut crab.”¹
• Howard Zinn, Postwar America. Still
• Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. For class
• Carol Bensimon, We All Loved Cowboys (trans: Beth Fowler)

Listening #

• Rebecca Black, SALVATION and Boiler Room DC set. Sugar Water Cyanide is so much fun, it’s so pop. Her Boiler Room set is fierce and incredible but the shaking table made me anxious; it really blew my mind
• Carly Rae Jepsen, The Loneliest Time. I love this album so much
• Talking Heads, Speaking in Tongues

Tinkering #

• Whimsy Governance Board
• proxmobil3 poking continues

Writing #

• on train control (short form)
• on train control (long form)
• public records requests 1 2

Learning #

• I really want to learn German. Would love to live and work in Berlin at some point. The S-bahn and U-bahn are fascinating. Figuring out first steps

Body #

• Got sinus infection
• Decided to get flu shot at the same time
• Bad idea, consumed as much turmeric and cardamom as I could
• Itching to start running again

Eating #

• Qahwah House chocolate croissants
• Adeni chai
• Cheap veg samosas in Jackson Heights

Experiencing #

• Blizzard

1. carrying cost doesn’t pencil, I don’t gain more utility from it than it costs,
2. I have used it for email in the past, and some things are still tied to it,
3. it points to my website, but receives very little traffic.

My plan #

1. Cost #

I’d like to fully decommission this domain by roughly this time (February) next year (2027). It costs more than I feel it’s worth, and cleaning up my part of the Internet means having less domains, especially when somebody else might enjoy having it.

2. Email #

I haven’t given an email on this domain to anyone or anything in over a year, but I still receive some mail at it. I’m going to set up a folder for all email sent to it in Fastmail. Any email sent to this folder will be triaged. Spam will be discarded, anything else tied to it will be deleted or updated. This will help me clean up my online presence too.

3. Website #

A quick Google search reveals that this domain is not linked to publicly, so this is a non-concern.

The WGB is a fun project between myself and some friends. I cannot claim credit for the idea—it came up in conversation months ago, and has since been referred to jokingly by those present—but I did make the website. The Board seeks not to reduce the level of whimsy in the world, but to right-size and properly distribute it. Misplaced whimsy can be harmful, and lead to unwanted outcomes ranging from disappointment and tightening of rules to death and depression. The Board believes that the world is better when the whimsy within it is properly allocated.

If you have a whimsy-related matter, whether you’re unsure of the proper level of whimsy, or suspect an over or under dosing, refer it to the board by emailing board@whimsygov.org with a short description of the situation, and how you’d like to be referred to in the Board’s report (if at all).

Serving on the WGB is the honor of a lifetime, and I look forward to aiding in this important work.

Requested are technical specification requirements related to the contract with Alstom for 55 (plus options) new trainsets for use on Line 2. Specifically, documents detailing performance requirements, including acceleration rates, guaranteed emergency braking rate, top speed, maximum service braking rate. Also include information about provisions for automatic train control equipment, information on brake propagation (electrical sync or brake pipe), how third rail gap detection will be implemented, and details on traction-maintaining modes for adverse weather conditions, such as snow brakes. Additionally, include reliability requirements.

• Request mailed: 8 Feb 26
• Request receipt by TTC, reference number assigned: 17 Feb 26
• TTC requests clarification and confirmation: 18 Feb 26
• Clarification regarding proprietary vendor information given: 18 Feb 26
• Confirmation of clarification received by TTC: 19 Feb 26

So far #

1. I made a public records request

Listening #

Amyl and the Sniffers, Comfort to Me #

Aussie-punk. Great fun. Somehow I listen to this while writing and doing homework. I claim not to understand the workings of my brain.

of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? #

Watched a video of a barista competition, Gronlandic Edit was in it. I bought a CD of the album. It’s fun, and I’m enjoying it after not listening to it for a couple years.

Sinéad O’Connor, The Lion and the Cobra #

It just fits with dark Montréal winter days. I find it hard to grok that O’Connor was 20 when she made this album. RIP.

CMAT, Euro-Country #

See my notes from her concert. I love this album.

Reading #

I have been buying an irresponsible amount of books in the last few months. I’ve declared a moratorium until I make a dent in the to-read pilelist. In talking to the owner of my local bookshop, I learned that local book store’s “margin” on Bookshop.org is nearly equal to their in-store (about 5% less, at worst), which was nice to learn, and definitely makes me feel better about using it sometimes.

This Is How You Lose the Time War #

Amal El-Mohtar & Max Gladstone. Left a Red and Blue shaped hole in me. Tore through it in three days. A perfect story.

How Not to Network a Nation #

Benjamin Peters. Read with my book club. Prompted a lot of reflection on some large organizations I am enmeshed in.

Dune #

Frank Herbert. Probably going to abandon this one. I bought it mostly because I felt like I was missing out by not having read it, which I don’t think is a good reason to read something. I’m not really enjoying it so far.

Postwar America: 1946-1971 #

Howard Zinn. Really enjoying this. Learning a lot. Zinn has a really insightful perspective on things. I’m working my way through it slowly.

Eating #

Lots of Indian food, cheap samosas in Jackson Heights, biriani in Montréal. Ate a lot of burritos while home in San Francisco. I miss them. Taqueria Cancún, I miss you. I’m continuing to intern with MTA, but at the end of the month I’m moving up to an office in Midtown, which will have much better lunch options nearby (hello, Pick A Bagel). As much Hal’s sparkling water as I can. As much Hetch-Hetchy water as I can. As much Croton-Catskill-Delaware water as I can. Turkish coffee at Qahwah House. I tried Saudi coffee in Parkchester. Iced coffee from Pret and Café Grumpy when it’s cold.

Writing #

I’m doing a collaborative writing project with a friend and colleague that I’m really excited about that. Having fun and learning a lot doing it too. Having thoughts of writing a book again.

Tinkering #

Bought a decommissioned Init PROXmobil 3 reader from a guy in Seattle who bought a bunch from CapMetro in Texas. So did a bunch of my friends. We have a group chat dedicated to hacking on them. I plan to make mine able to control my music with different fare cards coded to albums from the city they’re from. If you also have one, email me¹ your Signal username and I’ll add you to the group thread.

I’ve also been installing Tailscale on everything I possibly can. I got a Kobo Clara Color for Christmas and put Tailscale on it and am glad I did. Taildropping myself books is really ergonomical!

Code #

Haven’t been doing much since when I’m not doing work or school or writing. I fight the computer enough at work. This will change soon.

Online #

Been enjoying learning about German trains and the DB rail network. A DB train driver posts videos about his job, explaining lots about the network and trains from a driver’s perspective. I’ve learned a lot, and really want to go to Berlin now. Also really enjoying Blondihacks’ Pennsy switcher live steam build series. I’m trying to do less aimless YouTube wandering and focus on a few things I’m interested when I watch online video.

Elephant’s foot #

I joined Liz Mulholland’s Taco Bell Labs Mastodon instance. I’m enjoying it! Slower social media is nice, though I’ve been kind of annoying about how difficult/impossible discovery by search is. Regardless, I’m trying to find my #CBTC people.

Outside #

It got really cold and snowy here in NYC, and I’ve been really enjoying it. I loved the cold snap and snow storm. I went sledding and loved how empty and quiet the city got. Of course, I’ve been reveling in the sneckdowns too.

This is so beautiful and tragic and hopeful. Ocean Vuong meets sci-fi meets sapphic love. This is the best thing I’ve read in a while. I feel raw.

…is how my notes scribbled in the back of This Is How You Lose the Time War, written as a finished the book late last night, read. I found myself having to slow myself down to fully enjoy this, because I kept wanting more and more of it. This, for me, is one of the pieces of art that are certainly better for engaging, but which brings a feeling of a hole once it’s been finished. The prose is delicious like Vuong, the story is gripping. I usually try to ignore the review blurbs on the back, but Madeline Miller’s calling this a “fireworks display” from the authors feels apt.

The prose is breathtakingly beautiful, the story as well. More shocking is that this was written collaboratively. Somehow. I’m currently writing some non-fiction collaboratively and it’s hard enough to sync on that. El-Mohtar and Gladstone, together, have created something beautiful.

I don’t assign ratings to books anymore, but if using Jay Beaman’s definition of favorite—the last thing that blew his mind—this book is my favorite.

It talks about the meetings that boosted and the meetings that killed the OGAS project, the Soviet attempt at a networked command economy, highlighting just how many little things stood in the way of the project, mostly circumstantially in the way, not oppositional.

The thesis laid out at various times in the book is that American capitalists succeeded in creating the Internet because they behaved like socialists, and Soviet socialists failed because they behaved like capitalists. I don’t agree with this, but I also think that this is not the point the book actually makes: there is more of a focus on the effects of dysfunctional bureaucracies, intra-field rivalry, diffusion of accountability, and institutional conservatism than of qualities and impacts of capitalism and Soviet socialism.

At many points, the book is overly structured (lots of “in this chapter” and clunky topic sentences, conclusions and introductions), I suspect in part due to Peters’ very academic background. He’s clearly super knowledgeable about Soviet cybernetics and the history of the OGAS project (and may be the only English speaker with this level of understanding), but his writing can at times make it difficult to feel engaged. I found the subject so interesting, but felt myself dissuaded from reading by the chunkiness of the prose.

This book was chosen by a book club I am part of, and I’m really glad I had that obligation to push me to keep reading it, because, despite the weakness of the prose, it is a profoundly interesting story, and carries with it important lessons on institutional cultures and topologies.

It’s a portrait of a kid going through it. The description of the railway he works on felt good to read, and details made sense. The novella is only 95 pages, but every word and detail in there feels so carefully chosen.

And it even mentions stringlines!

It’s the first Czech novel I’ve read, and I’d quite like to read more. I’m hoping to pick up some more of Hrabal’s work when I get back to New York.

It was great fun, and I’m a little sad it’s over, but I feel as satisfied, if a little hungry for more. I haven’t enjoyed sci-fi in a long time, but this was so tastefully done that the fictional science did not take away from the fiction itself. The story was great, the characters had depth, and the prose, though not boundary-pushing, felt deeply intentional.

I’m not a huge fan of how my writing looks on a dark background, I prefer the look of a letter or other writing on paper, but oh well. Keen web surfers will notice that I’ve returned once again to a macwright.com inspired listing of pages, and with it has come a sans-serif font. Expect more to change soon, I’m not quite satisfied with how things are.

I’m trying to write more as of late. In addition to more activity than usual, you may have noticed that I changed the name of the site! My blog is now named in honor of the MetroCard, an icon in its final days. XFER OK is the message that the vacuum florescent displays in turnstiles display when you use a transfer to enter the system. I’ve wanted to do something MetroCard inspired for a while with the blog, and so, when I realized that XFER OK is one of the most under-discussed by common messages spat out by the system (“Add Time / Add Value”, though wonderfully existential, would not make a good URL) a couple weeks ago, I immediately bought xferok.com.

Expect more ramblings. If you want not to be subjected to my aesthetic whims, use a feed reader.¹ Good day!

If you’re looking for an alternative social book logging platform, there are plenty, but I’ve decided that I don’t really need the social element. And I probably don’t even need the tracking.

Initially, I tried The Story Graph, but I realized that I just don’t really care about the social aspect. I deleted most of my social media last year, and I’ve been happier for it, so why add a new form, even if it’s ostensibly less unhealthy.

So if you want to know what I’ve been reading, it’ll be on this blog. I’ve realized the metadata of reading is actually not interesting to me. I don’t care how long it takes me to read a book, on average, or the specific percentage breakdown of my genre split. I just want to read, and share what I’m reading, and write about it sometimes.

Bye Bezos!

There are more than just privacy benefits. I find I can speak more freely, the storage footprint of my messaging is relatively constant instead of ever growing, and there is beauty in stringing together words into sentences into paragraphs for your friends, and having that information cease to exist after it has fulfilled its purpose.

What purpose does keeping spent words around serve other than to satiate our desire for control over the past. Conversation is not transactional, and need not be recorded in some indelible fashion, it is a collaboration between two or more humans to create meaning through temporarily shared conscious. Why should my words, devoid of the context of the present they were put together in, keep sitting around on spinning hard drives or flash chips somewhere, in my pocket, in Loudoun County, VA, on my laptop, taking power, wasting bits.

So turn on deleting messages. Delete some old emails. Write letters to your friends and then recycle that paper. Our desire to save everything from the present risks disrupting that very present. Maintenance and care are precious, don’t waste them on things that don’t matter. Let things go, or don’t, I’m not your mom.

“Maybe with good luck, we’ll find what alluded us in the places we called home” -Robuck Wright

Unduck #

s.dunkirk.sh

DuckDuckGo’s !bangs—which allow you to search corgis !gi and be taken straight to Google Images, or CDPQ !w for Wikipedia—are great. But DuckDuckGo is slow, and bangs are processed server-side, which makes a query with a bang that will trigger a redirect take a while. Unduck processes bangs client side with a JavaScript worker (I think), and lets you change your default bang, so you can use bangs with any search engine. I shamefully have !g for Google set as my default bang, but the amount of slop in every search page is making me reconsider.

Marginalia #

marginalia-search.com

Marginalia is a search engine that searches at the margins of the web: blogs, forums, scholarly articles. More importantly: it generally excludes stuff from the “corporate web”, which is annoying indie-speak for human/AI slop on big platforms. The search isn’t amazing, but it’s great when I need to query the blogs of thousands of cranks for information only they would have.

Tailscale #

tailscale.com

Tailscale is virtual private networking without a bunch of configuration or thinking about IP addresses. The free plan is more than you’ll need and they’ve committed to keeping it free, if that means anything. It’s nice having my Docker containers running on a rack in Virginia appear as if they’re on the same network as my laptop.

People also have taken to trying to install Tailscale on everything. I’m running it on a couple VPSs, one server, an Apple TV, my Kobo e-reader, my phone, and my parents’ devices. We’ve been in Montréal for medical reasons recently, and being able to easily route all my traffic through an American residential IP is really nice.

Tailscale does a lot more than I’ve mentioned here. Their blog is worth checking out to see a showcase of all the annoying things that can be made possible or easy with it.

Zotero #

zotero.org

In a world where Zotero exists there is no excuse to get citations wrong. Zotero has changed my life more than any other piece of technology in the last couple years. I add every source I encounter to Zotero, which has full text search for PDF contents, metadata, and annotations. It has a great PDF reader with annotation support, and group libraries also work great. You can buy more storage from them if you want syncing, run it fully locally for free, or point it toward any WebDAV server, the latter of which I have definitely exploited. The browser extension makes adding things effortless, and it is unopinionated about organization, allowing you to organize with tags, hierarchy, or a mix. Items can be in multiple collections (folders), which is amazing.

ocr-my-pdf #

github.com/ocrmypdf/OCRmyPDF

ocr-my-pdf is a simple command line tool that wraps tesseract and makes adding an optical character recognition layer to PDFs easy. In English: it makes the text in a PDF selectable. It has lots of options, and is easy to automate with.

If you just want something that works inside Zotero, check out zotero-ocr, which is also tesseract based.¹

Fastmail #

fastmail.com

Fastmail is a great, cheap, reliable email provider. They’re not weird crypto-libertarians like Proton Mail. Besides, using Proton Mail sucks. You have to use their bridge client to use it in normal IMAP/SMTP clients, and good luck on iOS. It’s slow, expensive, and you only get the security benefits they so widely tout if you exclusively email other Proton users.

Fastmail has a good UI, will happily generate configuration profiles for your iDevices or just let you set it up yourself, and it’s so cheap. I pay $6 a month to have email on what can only be described as an embarrassingly high number of domains. My Christmas present for my dad was migrating the family domain from Google Apps to Fastmail, saving us ~$200 a year.

11ty #

11ty.dev

The static site generator this blog is built with. It’s highly customizable but still easy to use, and it’s pretty fast. I pay $0 to host this site by using Cloudflare² Pages to build and host the files.

Apple Mail app #

It came with your iMacPhonePadPod

I just really like it.

Wera Hex L Keys #

weratools.com

These are the best tools I own. They’re a pretty penny, but they feel amazing, have some magic patented design that makes them not destroy your bolt heads. Treat yourself to good tools so you’ll keep fixing and building and making.

ExcalidrawZ #

excalidrawz.chocoford.com

ExcalidrawZ is a local Excalidraw client for Mac. Excalidraw is a really nice, fast and simple whiteboarding tool. I use it all the time, from taking notes in class³ to helping thinking through a complex idea, design or flow.

My bike #

Meet her

I love my bike, it’s the best. It feels like an extension of me in the most freeing, beautiful way.

CitiBike key #

store.citibikenyc.com

If you’re a CitiBike member, you can get a key for free. It’s a little NFC doodad that you can throw on your keychain. To unlock a bike, you stick it in the dock or tap the front of the bike. Even better, if you have Lyft Pink (which I only have because it’s a better deal than the CitiBike subscription–I don’t use any of the other perks), it even works in other cities!

Transit App #

transitapp.com

It’s just a good app. They offer free subscriptions to students or anyone else who can’t pay (email them), and have a cool blog where they talk about their cool tech.

My shoes #

I’ve got a pair of Doc Marten chelseas and some Hokas for running. They’re great. Both inspire confidence and make me want to use my Lamborfeeties.

TL;DR

Check it out here and pin it to your feeds.

Communications Based Train Control is an immensely important technology in the transportation world, but it’s not often talked about, and even less understood. A benefit of this obscurity is that it is reasonably easy to read all that is said about CBTC on a platform look Bluesky. If you’re someone with real world knowledge of CBTC, or an interested member of the public or industry, I hope this feed can help you keep track of the conversations around modern signaling.

Why #

CBTC is a tiny niche, tinier still on Bluesky. I figured it would be nice to have a feed to find conversations about communications based train control and other modern signaling systems. You can view it, or add it to your feeds here.

Keywords #

The system is not case-sensitive. Because it is a very simple system, it may misidentify posts on occasion, though measures have been taken to avoid this. If something has been erroneously included and has been there for longer than a week, DM me a link and I’ll remove it!

Any post including any of the following keywords will be included.

• CBTC, communications based train control,
• Trainguard,
• Seltrac,
• Stadler NOVA,
• TBTC, transmission based train control, 4LM,
• Grade of Automation, GoA1, GoA2, GoA3, GoA4,
• Alstom Fluence, Urbalis, Cityflo,
• OCTYS,
• OURAGAN,
• NExTEO,
• SACEM,
• IEEE1474,
• EN50126,
• IEC62290,
• VOBC
• zone controller,
• Muni ATC,
• Automatic Train Control,
• Automatic Train Protection,
• Secondary Train Detection,
• AWPS

And please, whatever you do, don’t ask GPT about signaling. It will give you nonsense.

I don’t mean to discount the importance of Gandhi in this story, but to let Ambedkar’s life and work be defined by his opponent feels reductive.

I still learned a bunch, but I’m feeling unsatisfied.

Obligatory disclaimer: While I work for a transit agency, views expressed herein are solely my own, and do not reflect that of my employer. No information included in this post is not available through publicly accessible documents.

CBTC #

Metrorail’s current train control system, though very functional, is beginning to show its age. WMATA projects significant costs to maintain the legacy system versus replacement with CBTC. In this way, the motives behind WMATA’s CBTC journey are prototypical and being pursued primarily to address an aging legacy system, with capacity improvements as an important but secondary concern.

Earlier this year, WMATA issued an RFI to vendors, in which they ask vendors to consider CBTC retrofits on the 7000 series cars, dual equipping (existing ATC and CBTC equipment), cutover strategies, PSD integration and vendor interoperability.¹ This document provides us some insight into what planners at the agency are considering, especially in terms of technical details.

We know now that WMATA intends to install and cut over the Red Line first. Given its operational isolation, this is sensible. Curiously, despite much talk of capacity improvements in the presentation, there is little talk of existing or future interlockings.

What I am most interested to see play out is the technical design of the train control system. Will there be a secondary train detection system? Will it be track circuit or axle counter based? Will there be a fallback wayside system? Where will signals be kept? To what degree will manual operation be tolerated?, possible? Will work trains be equipped?

Platform Screen Doors #

In some ways PSDs are the most interesting part of this proposed modernization program. They’re complex, expensive, present a difficult phasing and systems integration problem, and deliver benefits that I would not consider totally commensurate with their costs, financial and otherwise. But I give WMATA big points here for shooting for the stars, and if this is what it will take to sell GoA4 operation politically, so be it.

The systems integration challenges of CBTC are already great, and PSDs add significant project risk surface. I hope that WMATA can avoid some of the challenges that peer agencies looking to retrofit PSDs have faced.

My primary concern, however, is the potential for a negative impact on the ability to control dwells. WMATA already struggles to control dwells in the system (though the return of auto doors is aiding to abate excessively long dwells at stations that aren’t super busy). I worry that

1. Implementing PSDs now will lock WMATA in to their current suboptimal door configuration, and
2. PSDs will increase, instead of helping to control, dwell times.

First, on door layout: all of WMATA’s current cars have three 50 inch doors per side. This, combined with a suboptimal interior layout reflective more of a commuter rail system than a metro all contribute to excessive dwell times and poor passenger circulation. Passengers tend to hover around the doors (which are not offset), slowing ingress and egress, and decreasing effective car capacity.² WMATA looks to be interested in moving toward a more rapid transit like interior layout with the 8000 series cars, but they will not have more doors.

Installing platform screen doors without explicit provisioning for a modified door layout would, for all intents and purposes, lock WMATA in their current door count and placement ad infinitum. Increasing door count or changing placement would require expensive (if not impossible) modification of an installed PSD system, or to wait for the replacement cycle of both the entire fleet and PSDs to line up—an unlikely prospect given WMATA’s tendency to avoid whole-fleet replacement.

Dwells, again, are a problem on Metrorail. PSDs that are not aggressively tuned risk adding additional seconds and failure points to an already long dwell process. Any fraction of a second difference in door performance between car and platform is lost time, and every additional door is an additional point in which passengers can get stuck, obstruct, or otherwise delay departure. Serious conversations will need to be had within WMATA about whether this reduction in large delays caused by track intrusion is worth the many new small delay vectors introduced.

In a well tuned system, where train control, train and station all communicate flawlessly and natively, PSDs add a second or two to the door cycle. It is crucial that interfacing with PSD systems is handled natively in the CBTC system or the vendors be made to work closely. Ascertaining berthing status through any means other than directly interfacing with the signalling system will likely introduce far too much lag.

GoA4 and dynamic service allocation #

The implementation of both Grade of Automation 4 (fully driverless) operation will be more of a labor issue than a technology issue. WMATA, being the first in the U.S., will set the tone for the labor relations of the country in terms of GoA4 retrofits. There are a couple of likely outcomes here.

1. No reduction in headcount: Metro agrees to keep headcount steady. All operators are reallocated, initially to other lines, then to other duties. Savings are only realized in decreased marginal cost of service adds.
2. Reduction through attrition: Metro stops hiring new operators (or greatly slows the pace), letting attrition through retirement and reassignment bring operator count slowly to zero. Larger operational savings.
   Another interesting tidbit in the presentation is the mention of dynamic, demand based service allocation. While this is possible in a non-driverless environment, it is made exceedingly difficult and expensive, as extra crews must be kept on standby at all times at all locations where dispatchers may way to insert a train. In a GoA4 system, as long as equipment is ready, it can be deployed on short notice.

My bike sits sadly in the corner

The other day, as I headed for the stairs, a classmate who I’ve never spoken to was telling someone about how they love to leave a party early to ride their bike slowly home. I grinned like a mad woman and snapped my fingers as I walked by to show my appreciation for that sentiment. And then I went about my day.

But now I find myself stewing, yearning, sitting and thinking. I crave a bike ride. It’s cold now, and I yearn to bike. There are a couple minor things that I currently consider to be obstacles.

1. My hand pump has disappeared and my tires are a little flat.
2. I don’t have fenders on right now.
3. I don’t have a bike community here.

The first two will be remedied next paycheck with a visit to bike plant, a wonderful little shop that makes me miss Scenic Routes¹. I might even finally do that flat bar conversion. The third, I’m not sure about. I found community with bikes in San Francisco, and I’m in search of something similar here.

I’m not quite sure how to go about creating such a community for myself—it feels weird and self centered to even think about creating a community without some kind of anchoring institution a-la Scenic Routes.

I hope to find community here as I continue the long tradition of Californian bi-coastal yearning.

Yours in yearning,
Natalie

I was originally loaned this book in April of 2023 by Jay, but I never made it past the first couple chapters. That was no fault of the book, I was bad at reading then. I bought a copy for myself a couple months ago and finally read the whole thing.

Adam Mayer, the guest “lecturer”/lab leader in this class, gave a spiel at the end about how hard drives are a dead end technology, and with printers increasingly heading the same way, the amount of accessible, understandable consumer tech is decreasing. Everything is now on a chip, effectively a black box to a normal consumer. Kettles don’t have simple control circuits, they have microprocessors; cameras aren’t tear-downable, they’re computers. My little brother doesn’t strike me as a particularly tech-nerdy kind of kid, but if he were to be, what would have fostered that seed into a developed interest?

A friend recently worried about this to me. During a conversation about our childhood transit exploits, which for many included getting cab rides by friendly engineers and operators, they bemoaned the loss of this kind of early exposure due to the widespread installation of in-cab cameras on trains. While probably a safety-positive change, the loss of the storied institution of careers began by cab rides given to children is a sorry one, and makes proactive, nerdy outreach all the more important.

The kids that are really interested will find a way, like I did, but how many bright minds will we as an industry, as a society, lose out on because those kids never got their nerd seeds tended to?

I don’t mean to catastrophize, but I think this is a problem that not enough attention is being paid to. It’s not the end of the world, but it’ll certainly make it harder for us to find the kids who will help us stop the end of the world.

If you do something cool, show some kids, you might end up with an intern.

The plot isn’t the most important part, though it’s compelling, and the characters are beautiful. Vuong’s writing is reliably able to make me feel that I’m seeing the world in a more beautiful and awe-some way.

• Kurt Raschke’s kurtraschke.com, great posts on CBTC, fare collection systems, and technology.
• Uday Schultz’s Home Signal, great posts on the history of rail in the U.S., transit, and operations planning and scheduling in NYC.
• Seung Lee’s S(ubstack)-Bahn, amazing transit histories. Minus points for still being on Substack <3.

Confusing, frustrating, captivating, unnerving.

To me, reading Didion often feels like taking an uncomfortable look, briefly and clearly, into the part of myself that I fear the most.

The White Album contains some truly stellar writing, but calling it essayism at its finest would be doing a disservice to Didion’s other anthologies, like Slouching Towards Bethlehem, which I think captured me more. The White Album has a decidedly anxious tone to it, and while still captivating, I felt less compelled by her writing by and large here.

Highlights include In Hollywood, in which she is her most poignant and sharp, eviscerating the myths of Hollywood in a similar magnitude but dissimilar fashion as she did the Haight in Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

The Woman’s Movement struck me as strange, and I came away more confused than anything. The White Album is personal and destabilizing (her signature), and the couple essays on water are fascinating, mixing fact and place and politics in a way that fascinates me. If I can ever write about infrastructure half as compellingly I will be happy.

I found this book left on the sidewalk in the West Village some time last Fall and took it home. It then spent the better part of a year being too promising to get rid of but not enough to read. Only recently when I was out of fresh books to read and craving something narrative did I start it.

Madden jumps around through time and tells her stories of childhood in such a way as to make me feel like I’m there, in her child brain with her. When she was disoriented you are disoriented, when she was happy, you are happy. The way she writes takes a little bit of getting used to, but it’s so good.

I’m really glad I picked it up off the street, leave no sidewalk book left unexamined—I recently scored a 2022 copy of the AP Stylebook in the UWS.

I got this book through Book of the Month, which is why I read it before its official publishing.

Crying is one of those books that I had read bits of countless times, but had never fully read. Since reading an excerpt in a class in high school, it’d been on my TBR, but I only recently got around to it when I found that Book of the Month had it as an addon. Only recently did I learn that Zauner is Japanese Breakfast, who I don’t listen to, but I knew the name!

A bit after I finished it, my mom visited, and I just went shopping for some Indian ingredients in Jackson Heights.

There’s still something in the air / No matter where I go / You’re gone, you’re everywhere. — Cassandra Jenkins

I graduated high school in San Francisco in June of 2023. In July, two weeks after my nineteenth birthday, I got a message from Emily, one of the other core community members at Scenic Routes. Scenic Routes is an anti-profit community bike shop I’d devoted myself to when they helped me out and introduced me to the joy of riding bicycles in a way focused on joy and utility and welcomed me into their queer community.

“I have some tough news,” she said when I picked up the phone. I braced myself for the worst: Scenic Routes was closing; Emily’s visa had issues, and she had to leave the country; her partner Kat had broken her leg; Jay, the owner of the shop and more of a father than my own, was sick. It was worse. Hansel had crashed their bike while them, their husband Jerry, Jay, Michael, Parker and Vanessa had been on bike tour in Marin. No cars were involved, but they had hit their head and cracked their skull. They had been medevac’d to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. It was bad. They were in the ICU and unconscious. If they survived, they would never be the same, the brain trauma had been too great. If Michael, the other owner of the shop, and a nurse, hadn’t been there too, they would be dead already. Their brain was dead already. My carefree summer, the beginning of my gap year of growth and work and self-improvement over, my strained ideas of the ways of the world finally shattered.

Two days later, Michael and his girlfriend Ashley picked me up in a parking lot by my house in a friend’s car. I squeezed into the back seat with Kat and Emily, probably the two people I was closest with at the bike shop. In their thirties and living together in Cole Valley, both Kat and Emily worked in tech and organized for transportation justice, in what I jokingly called a form of moral offsets. I had never been in a car with any of these people, we prided ourselves on not driving. We were bus and bike girls, experiencing the world from the seat of our bikes and through the windows of the bus: the ultimate freedom, go anywhere, anytime, never circling the block for any other reason than wanting to peddle and feel the air a little more. It was healthier, cheaper, better for the environment. You could go as slow or fast as you wanted to go. It was the ultimate freedom. The bicycle: a liberatory joy.

Jerry had been riding bikes around San Francisco for 20 years, Hansel had grown up in San Francisco but didn’t learn to ride a bike until 2021, in the midst of the pandemic, when the city had banned cars from the Great Highway, a road neither great nor a highway, but beautiful and on the beach nonetheless.

“I realize how open we are to the persistent message that we can avert death,” Didion writes in The Year of Magical Thinking (Didion 2007). The idea that we death is avoidable begins to be accepted as truth. It’s an unimportant notion for someone not experiencing the death of someone close, it doesn’t fill them with guilt, or shame, if anything, it is comforting.

When it happens to someone close to you, someone you care about, someone whose life you are in as much as they are in yours, the idea that death is avoidable is poison, it is torture: Hansel still could be alive if I had just…

Hansel had been so excited about their bike, a Rivendell Platypus that they picked every part and color on, and we had built it at the shop over many late nights past closing. I had even worked on it. I thought about all the times I had worked on Hansel’s bike, every bolt I’d tightened, cable I’d tensioned. If I had just…

Jay took in Hansel’s bike for a postmortem, our version of an autopsy. There is a strange desire to know every detail of a death, as if we can reason our way out of it. He found no problems with the bike. Even then, I thought if I had just…

I’d spent the better part of that year on my bike. Riding every chance, I got, between classes, weekends, to school, from school, after school. I had worked as a bike messenger, climbing San Francisco’s forty-eight hills only to descend them again, time sensitive cargo in tow, on a trailer or in my messenger bag strapped to my back. Sweating, blasting music, feeling the power in my thighs as I pushed down the pedals, swerving between cars, quickly glancing at every traffic light in every intersection to calculate in a split second how I could run the light. When not at the shop or in school or riding for work, I was organizing with a radical street safety group called Safe Street Rebel. Being on my bike made me feel in control. The way I rode made me feel like I was the sole person responsible for what happened to me. It was how I’d met a lot of these people I now called friends and father figures and queer elders and community members. In 2023 I organized protest vigils for three of the twenty-six people killed on San Francisco’s roads that year. The death of a pedestrian, of a cyclist always weighed heavy on my mind. If we had prioritized actions on that street…

Fighting for a safer city, safer from the violence inflicted upon everyone who walked or biked, I was driven partially by knowing what I was fighting was probably what would kill me. Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics doesn’t track bike messenger fatalities (it’s a largely informal industry nowadays), it’s widely thought that being a bike messenger is the deadliest job in America, above logging workers, who are officially number one, but only suffer 98.9 deaths per 100,000 full time equivalent workers. Every messenger knows at least one dead messenger, most more.

Despite the death and the risks and the violence, I’ll never stop riding my bike. A life without that freedom, that feeling, that community is effectively the same as a premature death as far as I’m concerned.

Shortly after Hansel died, the executive director of the Bike Coalition, a local organization that had run the adult classes that taught Hansel how to ride a bike, stopped by the shop.

“There’s no wrong way to grieve,” she said. We talked, about Hansel, about the weather, about bikes. When she left, Jay turned to. “That’s bullshit,” he said. “There absolutely are wrong ways to grieve.”

That stuck with me. Jay was right. Grieving in community, we were seeing examples of it. People withdrew into themselves, were attention seeking, or took up space in ways that took space away from others. There are right and wrong ways to grieve.

Reading Didion late one evening, around one or two in the morning in my dorm in New York, getting up for water, I feel a subdued mania. I realize I feel this often after reading pages that strike at something deep within me. I’ve been reading Didion talk about her husband’s death. I narrate my actions but don’t quite have control over them. It feels like a subdued mania, not unlike the dissociative autopilot I enter when faced with the shock of impending loss: my friend’s crash, my dog’s hospitalization, the ends of relationships and big fights.

The sound of heavy rain through my open window takes my attention. Opening it as far as it can, I listen to the sounds of the city, muffled by the thick air of the approaching storm. It brings a peaceful lucidness back into me. It’s March, but the air is warm and humid. Though the air is humid I could see the Empire State Building, gathering mass at its base on 34th St and soaring upward, thinning at it reaches up toward where the stars probably are. I can’t see them because of the light pollution.

In the car, long stretches of heavy silence punctuated by awkward attempts at chatting was pierced only by the whirr of the road noise as we winded up I-101 toward Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital. We didn’t talk about Hansel. After parking in the cool shade of the third floor of a behemoth of a parking garage, we waited in the dry, sweltering Sonoma County heat to cross a road wider than anything in San Francisco. A helicopter flew overhead and landed at the hospital helipad. Though none of us said it, we knew it was probably the same helicopter that had brought Hansel here.

Inside, we signed in to the strangely pleasant hospital. The lobby was spacious and open, nicely air conditioned and paneled with wood. It had wide windows looking into an internal courtyard garden, and wide hallways leading off in different directions. I had grown to dread the sterility of hospitals, but Santa Rosa Memorial felt different. I felt that in the relief of this cool breeze, maybe Hansel would be okay.

We made our way up to the second or third floor of the west wing and were taken into the ICU waiting area. Jerry came out through the wide, white wing doors, smiling with his twinkling eyes evidence of recent tears. We sat with him for a while before going in. “Thank you,” he whispered in my ear as he hugged me. Not knowing how to respond, I just hugged him tighter.

Hansel’s head was lopsided and swollen, their breathing slow. “They would be so embarrassed and mad to be seen like this,” Jerry said through a sad laugh. I cried.

“If they make it out of here,” Jerry said, almost matter of factly, “they would have to spend the rest of their life in an assisted living facility.” Still, I hoped for a miracle.

My miracle never came. A week later, the morning before another group of us was scheduled to go up and see Jerry and Hansel in the hospital, we got a message to the “Hansel Updates” Signal group chat we’d set up. They were finally dead dead.

Part of grieving was coming to terms with the fact that things happen
whether we like them to or not. Things don’t happen for a reason. The universe is a bunch of chittering atoms that sometimes assemble in a way that sometimes briefly resembles consciousness before decaying back into entropy. In grieving Hansel, I wasn’t just grieving my friend—I was grieving my way of seeing the world. Everything is fleeting, and that’s beautiful.

“To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted,” writes Ocean Vuong in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (2019).

Sixty-four minutes of music dominated my listening in 2023. The soundtrack to June and early July that summer had been Janelle Monáe’s thirty-two minute The Age of Pleasure, a hot, steamy, queer fun album about fucking and floating: “I don’t step, I don’t walk, I don’t dance, I just float.”(Monáe, Seun Kuti, and Egypt 80 2023) After Hansel died, it was Cassandra Jenkins’ beautiful and devastating An Overview on Phenomenal Nature, about grieving the suicide of her friend and artist David Berman, who she was about to tour Europe with (Monger).

“I’m a three-legged dog / Workin’ with what I got / And part of me will always be / Looking for what I lost,” she sings on Michaelangelo, “There’s a fly around my head / Waiting for the day I drop dead / My DNA looks pretty strange / Can you see it on my breath?” (Jenkins 2021c)

An Overview marked a substantial change in style from her earlier work, much slower, sadder and more contemplative. You can hear her hurt in it.

An Overview became the closest thing I’d ever had to a religious text. I relied on it to coach and comfort me through grief. It was my most listened to album that year. We listened to it at the shop, I listened on my rides home, on the train, on the bus. I listened to it at home. The way I listened to music changed too, instead of making playlists, I listened to albums on loop for hours or days at a time. I listened to An Overview’s thirty-two minutes of songs hundreds of times. The lyrics of “Hard Drive” promised me it would eventually be okay, and I believed them:

I’ll count to three and tap your shoulder
We’re gonna put your heart back together
So all those little pieces they took from you
They’re coming back now
They’ll miss 'em too. (Jenkins 2021b)

In July of 2024, a year after the crash, Jenkins released My Light, My Destroyer. Jay described it as “showing healing.” My partner at the time loved it. Jenkins had quickly become my favorite artist, somewhat of a greater than life figure to me after my reliance on An Overview to guide me through grief. When I listened to My Light, My Destroyer, also thirty-two minutes, I hated it. I wasn’t ready for the person who was guiding me through a grieving process I wasn’t done with yet to be done with theirs. It wasn’t until months later, in New York, separated from that partner—physically distanced from the version of me that experienced Hansel die—that I realized Jenkins wasn’t done with grieving. Nobody ever fully moves on from loss. My Light, My Destroyer isn’t about being done, it’s about the next steps.

“Delphinium Blue,” the standout song from the album according to most critics, embodies what I was now doing: learning how to live again in the shadow of death. She distracts herself on lines like “I picked up another couple of shifts / I hear your voice when I’m closing / The nights fall like thorns off the roses,” narrating her actions to herself, a silent anthem that says just keep moving in the final chorus: “Chin up / Stay on task / Wash the windows / Count the cash / Cut the stems / To make them last / Keep it cool / Behind the glass” (Jenkins 2024).

About a week later, we biked down El Camino Real to a funeral home in Colma, a town where the living are outnumbered one thousand to one (five million buried, five thousand residents), we attended a Filipino Catholic viewing. A couple days later, we attended the funeral mass at Holy See, a huge, echoing Catholic church in the Outer Sunset, blocks away from where Hansel had grown up and lived. Through this time, my father kept up his incessant pushing for me to find a job, a therapist, follow through on the promises I had made for my gap year. I began to spend more time at my mom’s.

Interviewing Jay for this essay, I asked him how grief has shaped me, expecting a meandering response filled with his usual wistfulness and sharp but wise words—he was a poet before he became a bike mechanic or a restaurant guy—all I got was “how hasn’t it?”

He went on with another question, “what haven’t you grieved since I’ve known you? I think you’re grieving a functional relationship with your dad, you’re grieving life as a boy, multiple dead identities, the childhood of a little girl, you’re grieving a failed relationship, a life in San Francisco. Everything that changes is loss, all loss is grief.”

Putting words to what I had been struggling to wrap my head around is what Jay does best. My life had changed in a lot of ways, both small and drastic, and all of that led to—required—a period of grieving. Without loss change is meaningless, it dilutes the essence of what it means for something to be. Grief can be a generative force, not just a subtractive or necessary step in “moving on,” whatever that means.

“In some ways,” Jay tells me, “You were lucky to lose someone like this, in a community where you could learn how to grieve the right way, because there are wrong ways to grieve.” What I gained was a blueprint on how to grieve other losses, which may have been Hansel’s biggest gift.

Works Cited #

• Didion, Joan. 2007. The Year of Magical Thinking. 1st Vintage International ed. New York: Vintage International.
• Jenkins, Cassandra. 2021a. Ambiguous Norway. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. Ba Da Bing!
• ———. 2021b. Hard Drive. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. Ba Da Bing!
• ———. 2021c. Michelangelo. An Overview on Phenomenal Nature. Ba Da Bing!
• ———. 2024. Delphinium Blue. Album. My Light, My Destroyer. Dead Oceans.
• Monáe, Janelle, Seun Kuti, and Egypt 80. 2023. Float. The Age of Pleasure. Atlantic Records.
• Monger, Timothy. n.d. “An Overview on Phenomenal Nature.” AllMusic (blog). Accessed April 6, 2025. https://www.allmusic.com/album/an-overview-on-phenomenal-nature-mw0003468898.
• Vuong, Ocean. 2019. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. New York: Penguin Press.

I also found Larson’s tone annoying and a bit grating at times. Lines like “the architect’s name was Frank Lloyd Wright” are more annoying than revealing, and suggest a snarkiness that I didn’t like.

My mother and I together have three copies of this book, which I think is about 2.5 more than we need.

Briefly Gorgeous is the most beautiful thing I have ever read.

He doesn’t really mention women in this—thankfully—other than in passing, but in his other works, the way he writes about women is controversial (read: misogynistic).

I got it through Book of the Month, where, while searching for the hardcover ISBN, I recently discovered that they’ve flagged it with a notice reading “kindly note, this book is: Highbrow,” which seems a little dramatic, but maybe warranted.

I found this accessible in a way I really enjoyed.

It was a bittersweet read: it made me deeply homesick, an affliction which I’ve otherwise mostly avoided. It was cozy and thrilling and emotional and really easy to become invested in. It’s going to be hard to follow this up.

Cantú is able to tell both the inside story and outside stories of the border with nuance and care that ex-law enforcement people rarely display in writing.

I’ve tried to study maps, but unfortunately, they haven’t quite been enough to get me to wrap my head around just what each service does through the junction, so I decided to try my hand at making a map of what each service does through the junction. I started on paper, using Andrew Lynch’s fantastic track map to sketch out the track layout of the junction on paper.¹ Then, using Lynch’s map, a detail from NYCSubway.org,² and the official MTA subway map, I figured out which services take which routes through the junction.

I didn't have an orange highlighter.

After running this paper version by a couple of friends more knowledgeable than I, I opened up Illustrator and began to work on a digital version.

I went with a pretty simple design, because this is more an exercise in familiarizing myself with the junction than graphic design, but I’m happy with the product. I also decided to include the interlocking north of DeKalb Avenue here, because it felt like important context. In the future, I might make an animated version or break it down into how each route behaves individually, and then show that building into the full junction will all services. If I decide to more officially publish this, I’ll make a legend and add some explanatory text, but this accomplished its purpose, which was to help me understand this piece of infrastructure better.

Stuff management #

• homebrew, brew. Mac package manager thing.
• git, git. Git for version management.

Image/video/document conversion #

• ffmpeg, ffmpeg. Video and audio conversion. I use it a lot for flac -> mp3 for iTunes.
• ocrmypdf, ocrmypdf. Probably my most used CLI tool, looking to start selfhosting my Zotero library so I can automatically run OCRmyPDF on all new PDFs.
• imagemagick magick. I use it for image conversion, ie webp -> jpeg.
• LyricsFinder. Finds and adds lyrics to iTunes library mp3s.

Other stuff #

• curl, curl. Web request maker.
• cloudflared, cloudflared. Cloudflare Tunnels CLI.
• yt-dlp, yt-dlp. YouTube video downloader.
• zoxide, z. Cool, better, more ergonomic cd.

In July of 2023, Hansel died. Hansel had spent the last three years of their life defending their new found freedom. In 2020, when the city closed the Great Highway to cars creating a wonderful oceanfront park, Hansel learned to ride a bike. They were 35. They had moved to San Francisco from the Philippines when they were 4, and had lived in the Outer Sunset ever since. The city had been trying to return the road to cars, and a dedicated community had formed around the fight to keep our park. Hansel was one of the most passionate and personally connected to the park. That community had been my home away from increasingly uncomfortable home for the past year.

Every week on Thursday, we would hold community night at the bike shop, ending at 9 or later, and every night, I would ride home from the bike shop, down through the park, onto the Great Highway in its empty, foreboding, foggy, comforting emptiness. I would get there around 10pm or later, and I would spend the next 30 minutes slowly riding south down the asphalt, listening to the waves crash 300 feet to my right, and the occasional bus dumping its air into the quiet Outer Sunset night to my left.

When Hansel died, the sounds of the Pacific—the one that had comforted Hansel so many times in their gay, catholic, angsty childhood and through their adult life—took on new meaning. I started stopping about halfway down the crumbling road, where the dunes fall away and the ocean becomes visible and turn off the lights on my bike. I’d stop my music and sit on a guard rail on the edge and listen to the ocean. I’d let the fog envelop me, and, I’d sit. I’d whisper a hello to the ocean for Hansel, I’d thank it for being there. I would come out to it, because I didn’t get the chance to come out to Hansel, who was like a queer elder to me. It wouldn’t respond.

I would get back on my bike, colder, wetter, emptier, and ride the rest of the way to the end of the road. I’d wait at the quiet, foggy, red glowing bus stop for the L Bus that would take me back up into the mountains of San Francisco, the one I had been riding since I discovered the magic of the Pacific, of the Outer Sunset, when I still rode a skateboard. The bus that would take me back up the long hill I had just skated down.

In November, I moved in with my mother full time, and stopped taking the long way home. My new ride involved crossing the Golden Gate Bridge, on its narrow pedestrian paths long after they closed to pedestrians for the night. Here too I would stop, listening to the ocean 300 feet below me, thinking of Hansel. In July, they had crossed the bridge for their third and final time. Everyone else I knew’s crossings numbered even.

The last ~year of my life, I’ve been trying to separate more and more functions from my cell phone, so that I use it less, and am less bound to it. Until recently, music was probably the number one thing I used my phone for, and removing the need to have my phone on me to listen to music has allowed me to use it, carry it, and pick it up a lot less.

Discovery #

Discovery is one of the main selling points of streaming services. They advertise access to all of the world’s music, any song you want, whenever you want. Moving to the iPod has shown me that this is actually not as good as it sounds. Too much choice is a bad thing, and opening Spotify, I would often end up with decision paralysis, and end up either not listening to music, or listening to one of the 6 suggested (and often repetitive) albums on the home screen. This wasn’t satisfying, and despite having thousands of liked songs by hundreds of artists, I was listening to the same stuff all the time.

On the iPod, navigating the menus requires I scroll past all of the music in my library. Often, I turn it on to listen to one thing, but something else in my library catches my eye before I get there, and I end up listening to that instead. I find I’m listening to much more different music with my limited library than I was on Spotify with an infinite library.

Instead of relying on algorithmic discovery of new music, I’m a big fan of Record.club and talking to my friends. I Shazam songs at parties and out in the world all the time.

Acquiring music #

The music in my iTunes library has come from several sources, roughly in order of percentage of my library:

1. The collections of my mother and friends
2. Purchased CDs (concerts, thrift stores, ebay, artist stores)
3. Buying mp3s from Bandcamp/iTunes
4. The Internet
5. Friends that make and send me their music

Streaming makes artists very little money; if you want to support an artist, buy merch, music, or go to a concert (personal favorite method). Having a CD collection is awesome, and I’ve ripped a lot of my mother’s extensive CD collection (going through it with her and asking for recommendations has been a really nice way to spend time together!). Building up a library can be a lot less expensive this way, and I’m more likely to listen to a whole album and find something new I like than if I was streaming individual songs.

Closing thoughts #

Since switching to using the iPod almost exclusively, I’ve found that I feel a lot more satisfied with the music I listen to, and I’m much happier listening to music. Having music decoupled from my phone has also meant I carry my phone on my person a lot less, which has made me less distracted, less stressed, and generally happier. I feel like my relationship with the music I listen to has become more meaningful.

I use Zotero on all my devices, but mainly my iPad and Macbook. This means that I need some way to sync my library between the two devices, and I don’t really want to pay $20 a year for only 2GB of storage (after about a semester of use, my library is already pushing 600Mb. Scanned PDFs can be really big!). I’d also like to own my files, and be the one responsible if something goes wrong. I’ve been burned already by a reading/knowledge management tool shutting down (RIP Omnivore), and want to ensure against that happening again.

While poking through the Zotero settings, I found that there’s an option to replace Zotero file hosting with WebDAV. I’m really glad they offer an open option to use other file syncing services (or self host your file server), and I hope other developers can learn from this.

I poked around and found that someone had made an WebDAV implementation that runs as a Cloudflare worker and uses Cloudflare R2 as its file storage system. It was as simple as creating an R2 bucket (R2 has very generous free storage allocations, I store originals and resized copies of every image on this blog in an R2 bucket and have yet to pay a dime). R2 is nearly a clone of the S3 API, which makes it easy to understand and play with.

R2 not quite having directories, despite the way the dashboard looks (it is just a bucket after all) caused me a little confusion when setting up my WebDAV bucket for Zotero, but after a couple tries Zotero was able to create itself a zotero file and then start storing things.

My Zotero sync config, with some fields partially blurred.

This setup has worked great for me. I had one issue (earlier this week), where Zotero couldn’t connect, but I believe that was a problem with campus WiFi, not R2 or the worker. Sync is really fast, changes populate across devices within a couple seconds, and I get to carry all my knowledge around with me! Recently, during a conversation on the Holiday Train, me and another person both pulled out our Zotero libraries on our phones to find a document to show another person!

Zotero makes saving things really easy. Most academic URLs it can recognize (it’ll even try to get a pdf for you), and what it can’t can be manually entered. You can also enter batches of ISBNs, DOIs, and other identifies, and the app even has a barcode scanning mode that I used to scan in my whole bookshelf in about 2 minutes. On iOS you can “share” things into Zotero really easily, and the browser extension works great.

I’m on Bluesky now @nataliemakhijani.me!

During extensive weekend trackwork at the interlocking north of 59 St–Columbus Cir as part of the Eighth Avenue CBTC project, the A train is running via the 6th Avenue line, then the Second Avenue Subway to 96 St. That means 2AS is being serviced by R46, R143s and most notably, R211s during the diversion.

Of course, in typical 96 St fashion, dispatch is a total mess. Trains were bunching (impressive on a high-headway line like the weekend A) and leaving late the entire time I was there.

Riding R211s on the Q and 6 Av line was really fun. I would love to have been able to ride it express on 6 Av, but even on the local, the R211s have the juice!

I headed up on Saturday afternoon to get some pictures. On the way, I was treated to a 15 minute wait at 63 St Lex, during which the countdown clocks showed only F trains, failed, then came back and showed one F train in 32 minutes. I’m pretty sure the next F was closer than that, but I didn’t stay around to find out.

Nothing all that unusual here. 2AS is used to R46s

R143 Q train! Excuse the awful photo, I had to do a lot of tweaking to get the Q to be legible.

Q train riders can only dream of modern internal wayfinding

Probably my favorite photo of the day. Trains were really inconsistently signed up as A trains to various terminals, Q trains, shuttles and a bunch of other stuff

The entire station smelled like paint when this set came through. We think it was sitting in the pocket tracks north of 96 St for monday Q service and got painted by trespassers there. Vandalism is a bummer when it takes a train OOS, but having such a colorful train in the very clean stations was cool!

A quick preamble: This is a pretty unorganized, largely unedited stream of consciousness post. I’ll try to update it as my thoughts become clearer and change, but I make no promises.

The electorate as a whole swung right, even with pretty high turnout. That represents a significant paradigm shift that requires new ways of thinking about strategy. It seems like being neither more left nor more right would have helped Dems all the much on the national level.

It’s really hard to dismiss local results as the result of an off-year or special election, like it was with the failure of Prop A during the Boudin recalls. The entire country swung right, and turnout has been relatively high. We are seeing a shifting electorate, and we need to take steps to address it.

In San Francisco, things look bad. Prop L, which would have generated ~$30m yearly for Muni operations looks like its fallen victim to the Prop M poison pill. The fact that Prop M stabilizes revenues will eventually be good for Muni, which receives a large fixed percent transfer from the general fund, but Prop M comes with an initial decrease in revenues, meaning Muni both gets hit in the general fund, and doesn’t get the revenue Prop L would have generated. Prop L ran a really good campaign. I think as transportation activists we were largely blind to how big of a threat M was to be. I’m disappointed that we fell for messaging from the business community and business-adjacent orgs like SPUR predicting that L would outperform M, thereby voiding the poison pill. I’m upset and feel stupid in hindsight for listening to proponents of M when they told us that things would be okay.

L also caused an interesting split in the moderate/urbanist sphere, with GrowSF begrudgingly supporting Prop K. It’s worth noting that Grow originally did not want K on the ballot, and was very upset that it caused a split in their conservative base, which heavily relies on West Side conservative voters, who oppose the K most vehemently. These voters are the backbone of GrowSF’s moderate (read: conservative) base. The past couple elections have seen GrowSF become less and less urbanist focused as they become a general dumping grounds for tech and other money looking to control politics. I think this represents the end of a coalition of urbanist-y groups we used to be able to rely on, with them showing their allegiance to the urbanist fight being limited and largely aesthetic. Players were willing to support K, an easy and largely symbolic (and zero-cost) measure, but not L, because it costs money and would get in the way (politically) of their tax-reform measure. When the chips are down, these business aligned groups will not pick our side: money talks, bullshit walks.

Seeing the YIMBY-urbanist coalition break down is interesting, with SF YIMBY quietly distancing itself from GrowSF as Grow moves away from even the illusion of a housing based platform. SF YIMBY has opposed sweeps, and supported props K and L. I have nebulous thoughts about furthering polarizing the west side against the “pro housing” side and what that means for the electorate in the less immediate future. This makes me hopeful that the pro-housing movement can distance itself from its cancerous, conservative spinoffs, which will be essential if we are actually to build new housing. The consequences of not building new housing are becoming increasingly apparent and dire, and in my opinion made especially clear by this last election: if we don’t make housing more accessible in the Bay Area, the electorate will continue to become more conservative.

I think one thing is abundantly clear: we need to eradicate Grow SF. They are an existential threat to everything we care about, are can no longer be relied on even to support housing or transit. They are a cancer on the pro-housing movement, and they threaten hard fought gains like electing Dean Preston as supervisor for District 5.

That being said, SF YIMBY still has problems, and distancing itself from the policies of the people who fund it will be difficult. Something that has been front of mind for me is the notion that we, as the radical streets/transit group may need to get involved in housing politics and fill the role of the progressive part of the housing movement. I don’t think we can afford to ignore housing anymore. I think this warrants a much bigger, hard conversation about how we engage with this sensitive and politically hot issue, but I think the progressive urbanist perspective has a lot to offer, especially in changing the discourse around what types of housing need to be built. We should see getting public and social housing built as a matter of strategic importance to build a stronger, more progressive electorate in addition to its importance as our duty as a less conservative (lol) state to accommodate people fleeing increased persecution and political violence in conservative states.

A path forward #

The obvious question is where do we go from here, and I’m not going to pretend I have answers, but I do have thoughts and some ideas.

SafeStreetRebel #

Over the past year or so, SSR has begun to rely more on semi-spun off autonomous groups to actions, which has been successful. I think we ought to double down on this, and continue fighting for these small wins. We know that focusing works, and semi-consistent small actions and wins not only sustain and build morale and movement, but pave the way for bigger movements by building capacity and training new and existing organizers. I want to see us build our reputation as the people who get stuff done, build our organizing capacity, and better the city while we’re at it.

My friend pointed out that GrowSF has done a really good job of appealing to the ”pragmatic voter” with “common sense solutions,” and I think we need to fight really hard for those people. Right wing arguments are appealing because of their simplicity, and so that will be an uphill battle for us, but if we continue to show that positive change is possible, that we can do it, and that it works, we can push the window enough that progressive urbanism becomes “common sense.” I think continuing to build these small wins will provide a strong foundation for this.

I think this election has served as a harsh reminder that electoralism is extremely difficult, and often for minimal gain, and so if something can be accomplished with a sustained direct action and pressure campaign, we should absolutely exhaust that option first.

Housing #

I think as the full NIMBY progressives leave the scene, like Peskin, we’re at a unique and important point. It is absolutely crucial that we bring progressives into the pro housing fold, and bring the pro-housing movement to the left. Again, we can’t accomplish any electoral goals if progressives can’t live here. We need to expand the progressive electorate, and we owe it to marginalized people everywhere to have the capacity to accommodate people fleeing repression.

I really hope we can form a strong alliance between a progressive housing movement and a progressive transportation movement to bring about a progressive urbanist vision for the city, but we’re fighting separately right now, and it’s not working very well. Housing helps transit and transit helps housing, and both are progressive causes. Again, I think the progressive urbanist perspective has a lot to offer, especially in changing the discourse around what types of housing need to be built.

Labor #

I think labor is incredibly important on both the supply and demand sides of housing and transportation, and bringing labor into the fold will also be hugely important. Labor drives our buses, builds our homes, has to live in our cities and pay the rents. Forming a progressive labor alliance is essential, and I think bringing new workers into that alliance, ie unionizing Uber/delivery drivers will be hugely important. Labor built this country and city and we can’t afford to ignore it.

I aged out of Muni’s Free Muni for Youth Program last year, but wasn’t super impacted because I was mostly riding my bike, something I am privileged to be able to do. I was, however, riding and relying on Golden Gate Transit, paying upwards of $12 in fares most days that I went to work.

But it wasn’t until I moved to New York and started using transit a lot more that I began to really hurt from the cost of fares. The high fare and limited transfer policy has resulted in me trying to optimize my trips around reducing fares. The lack of unlimited transfers prevents me from making the most efficient trips (ie subway->crosstown bus->subway), and often discourages me from taking transit if I can conceivably walk (even if it is far).

I’m currently doing a research project on fare free transit, and in researching, I discovered Fair Fares, NYC’s program to subsidize local transit fares for NYC residents below 120% of the federal poverty line. Realizing I qualified, I decided to apply. Even finding the application proved difficult, and involved a lot of searching.

Once I made it to the Access HRA page, it took me longer yet to find the application, which is a buggy, slow React app that is difficult to navigate. When I first tried to apply, the application was down for maintenance, with no estimate of when it would be back up. It was like this each time I checked over the next couple days. If English wasn’t my first language I think I would have had even more difficulty. After finally filling out my application on the 8th of October, I received a long, English email confirming my submission. I had to download an app to upload documents (for some reason not an option on the web app), and after I had finally done that, I waited.

I repeatedly checked the portal to see if my application had been reviewed. Eventually, I gave up and checked less frequently. On the 30th of October I checked and found that I had been approved. I received no notification of this. The portal said that my MetroCard had not yet been mailed for a couple days. It finally says it has, but I have not received it as of the time of writing. I do not plan to use the MetroCard, I’m hoping to transfer it to OMNY. I’m a very literate person who is well versed on the inner and external workings of transit agencies and government, and I cannot for the life of me figure out whether OMNY even has support for Fair Fares yet. Without OMNY and its fare capping, I will spend more on fares. The Fair Fares and OMNY website both make differing claims about support, and as far as I can tell, OMNY does not yet support Fair Fares. I am not the only one with this confusion, a quick search turned up 10s of people on Reddit and other forums with the same questions, most unanswered. In the twenty nine days it has been since I submitted my application, I have paid $150.00 in fares, not including railroad fares.

• logseq compatible, can work with my existing graph
• selectively public
• all pages in graph rendered
• working backlink surfacing on pages
• ability to extract some block-level data from Logseq (ie part but not all of the contents of my journal pages).
• integrated with some kind of syncing solution, so that edits made to my graph update the website, whether they were made on my phone, ipad or computer. this probably means separating content from code so i don’t have to rely on git for content. i currently pay for logseq sync, and would love to be able to keep using it.
• markdown renderer that can understand logseq specific syntax, like tasks with dates/deadlines, task states, etc.
• logseq as a source of truth?

I’m not quite sure what this would look like in practice. Publishing my writing here has helped me a lot, and I would like to reduce the barriers to that.

I loved Palo Alto. I’m writing this minutes after finishing it, after a long spell of not touching it. I’ve found a lot of conclusions of history focused books to be unsatisfying (and so be it), but Palo Alto’s Resolution chapter is fantastic. It reframes the whole story of Palo Alto, and then focuses our energy on where we go from here. It’s easy to feel hopeless after a read like this, and the undying power of Hooverism, but I’m leaving this with understanding and an inkling of hope.

I started Palo Alto on Amtrak on the way to visit New York to decide where I would be leaving the Bay for college to. As the California Zephyr wound its way north and east along the shores of the Carquinez Strait, on one side the Bay, on the other Chevron’s oil refinery, I began reading Palo Alto. I think it’s fitting that a book I began during a scouting trip for leaving the Bay, I finished from the fruits of that trip.

Palo Alto has changed the way I understand California Capitalism, and The World, and I think anyone doing lefty stuff, in the Bay, California, or anywhere else in the U.S., should probably read this.

Now that I’ve finished Palo Alto, I feel like I have to finally read Imperial San Francisco, which for whatever reason I’ve been putting off for a long time. My notes from Palo Alto aren’t very organized right now, but if you want them, email me. I’ll do my best to get them up here Soon.

the museum as a metaphor. beautiful book. really enjoyed. the big blue circle (last couple pages). i want to read foucalt. tgsm has given me new vocabularly to describe my experiences. i really don’t want to force people into any restriction definition of transness notes from 10-02-2024, immediately after finishing the book.

On my phone, turning Private Relay (aka my VPN) off did the trick. Unfortunately, even with my VPN off on my iPad, I couldn’t get it to work. Hopefully this can be useful to someone! Email me if you have more to add.

Since starting college though, the amount of knowledge in my graph has increased a lot, and links between concepts covered in different courses and previous knowledge have begun to emerge naturally. It feels like all of my note-taking and work has paid off, and I’m now even more motivated to get information into my notes.

I’m making it sound like it’s been a ton of work to populate my graph, but it hasn’t actually been that much work. Two things which are relatively low effort have been responsible for the lions share of the content in my graph:

1. Reading notes (see Getting Kindle notes into Logseq and My current Logseq+Omnivore workflow). I already take notes when I read as I find it a low effort way to help me process what I’m reading. Since I read a lot of ebooks and online articles, getting those notes in is relatively easy. With physical books, I try to type up my notes that I take in the margins or on sticky notes, but this doesn’t always happen. For PDFs (mostly assigned readings), I use Highlights on my iPad, and export my notes as markdown to logseq.
2. Journaling. I use Logseq’s journal pages to keep track of my schedule, take general notes, and to think things out. Through this, a lot of not fully matured ideas and bits of thought end up in my graph, which gives them space to exist, and possibly mature through connections occurring over time. This idea is central to the organization of this blog.

Logseq is really cool, but I wish it was more beginner friendly. I think it makes a lot of sense to people with computer backgrounds, but little sense to anyone else, which is apparent in its userbase. Obsidian seems to be a far more legible and understandable option, but I found that a block based workflow was a lot more flexible and useful to me.

This essay was written for a writing class at The New School. It is inspired by Harry Mathew’s The Orchard, which is great. I’ve made some small edits to preserve privacy.

• I remember the first time I met Hansel at the trans march. They were probably in drag. I was with my ex, and Jerry said hi to us. I hadn’t met either of them before.
• I don’t remember when I next saw Hansel. It was probably a couple months or more after, when I became involved at Scenic Routes.
• I remember the joy on Hansel’s face when they test rode their Rivendell Platypus for the first time. They floated down the block of Balboa Street between 6th and 7th Avenues, so confident and upright and proud.
• I’ve been told that Hansel talked about adopting me. Whenever I talked about the man I called my father they wished they could just rescue me.
• I remember riding across the Golden Gate Bridge with Hansel for the first time. They had never made it across on foot or bike. The view of the water hundreds of feet below through the gap between the sidewalk and the road terrified them. The next time they crossed the Golden Gate Bridge would be their last, never making the return crossing.
• I remember Hansel every time I cross the bridge. The evenness of the number of my trips across it haunts me.
• I don’t remember the sound of Hansel’s laugh as vividly as I used to, as I did in the days after they died while it echoed on loop in my mind.,
• I remember Hansel telling me about their queerness, I was one of the few they told. I never told them I was a girl. The most painful part of coming out again was not being able to do it to them.
• I remember realizing shortly after Hansel’s death I hadn’t just lost a friend and community member, but a queer elder. I’d only ever lost family members before that, and I’ve never been particularly close to any of my family.
• I remember Hansel’s Catholic funeral that they wouldn’t have wanted. I cursed their dead body pumped full of formaldehyde for being dead. I thanked them for their life.
• I remember almost being killed by a driver on the way to the viewing at the Catholic funeral home in Colma, the Bay Area’s Philippino center, and the city of the dead. 5,000 living 5,000,000 dead. “It’s good to be alive in Colma” reads the sign at the border.
• I remember picking up the phone to Emily Horsman asking if I was ready for some heavy news. I said yes. Nothing could have prepared me.
• I remember the trips up and down from Petaluma to see Hansel’s dying body, hold their dying hand, even though I only made the trip twice.
• I think Hansel’s death makes me remember my mortality, but it only does that sometimes.
• I remember Hansel’s voice and mannerisms in my head like an angel on my shoulder. I hope never to not be haunted by it.
• I remember Jay being haunted by “the dead guy’s stuff” in his apartment. I remember my mint “Slow Is Forever” bandana taking on new meaning: we gave one each to a select group of people who had been especially close with Hansel.
• I remember the funeral praying the rosary for Hansel. They would have fucking hated it.

Through February 2nd, the New York Historical Society has an exhibit on the book, celebrating the anniversary. The exhibit is really interesting, and is composed of various pieces of Robert Caro’s archive, which is stored at the Society.

Notes from interviews with Lillian Edelstein (left) and Robert Moses (right).

One of the most powerful parts of the book is the chapter on Moses’ choice to build one mile of the Cross Bronx Expressway through East Tremont instead of Crotona Park, which would displace 1,500 less people. The museum contrasts the notes from an interview with Lillian Edelstein, one of the evicted who led the fight against the alignment with notes from an interview with Moses himself, where he dismisses Edelstein and others fighting. It’s a really shocking contrast.

I was also wowed to learn that Robert Caro and his editor, Robert Gottleib (who he has since worked on every book with), had to slash 350,000 words from the original draft to get the book to a size that was possible to bind into a book. The final draft is ~650,000 words, so the original draft was ~1 million words.

Signed copies with personalized inscriptions are available of all of Caro’s books at the NYHS shop, where Caro stops by every couple months. This exhibit will be up until February, and I can’t recommend it enough. The small bit I included is less than 10% of what is there.

Links:

• Robert Moses and the saga of the racist parkway bridges
• Exhibit page
• Robert Moses: an Atlantic Portrait, The Atlantic, 1939.
• The Cross Bronx Expressway and the Ruination of the Bronx, Vassar.
• The Plans for the Lower Manhattan Expressway, Slate.

Today was my first day of classes since I had COVID last week, and it went great. Despite having an 8am, I really enjoyed everything. I’m taking a writing class, urban ecosystems, code as a liberal art and a course called philosophy of the city.

Today I had the writing class—which is focused on non-linear, branching stories— and urban ecosystems in the morning, and then philosophy of the city in the afternoon. I really enjoyed all of them. The philosophy class has been really difficult, with really dense readings, but they’ve still been mostly enjoying.

I’ve been enjoying all of my readings, which I didn’t expect to happen, because in high school I usually hated my readings. Taking notes on the iPad has made things a lot less frustrating, and is helping me practice better note taking (still not quite there yet though; i highlight too much and write too little).

I’m considering going vegetarian again. I was pescatarian for years when I was younger, and had no problems other than a bit of a lack of protein, which I could definitely overcome now.

New York City is wonderful. It’s going to take so much restraint to not feed myself only halal cart food.

I want to get back into writing on specific topics more, I think it makes more interesting blog fodder and lets me get into researching and arguing something, which I like.

I had been planning to go down to Philly for Labor Day Weekend before I moved, but ended up scrapping the plan because I wasn’t sure how busy I would be with school and because Amtrak got expensive. After two consecutive days of testing negative, I decided that I would let dead plans live again and head down to Philly after all. My suite mate—who is from Philly—also tested negative around the same time, so we headed down together,

Getting out of Gotham was pretty routine. Our weekend L train was of course packed to crush load, and the 3 wasn’t running and the 2 was delayed, so we took the 1 train up to Penn Station, where I failed to get us to the right subway entrance, so we had to cross 7th avenue at 33rd street, where the 7th av bike lane disappears, so I almost got hit trying to jaywalk (my fault). We headed down into Penn Station and with 12 minutes to board our train decided that we should grab some food, since we didn’t eat breakfast.

We got in line at Raising Canes, and got out with 2 minutes to board. We got to the platform with 0 minutes to departure but the train was busy that conductors were telling people boarding from the NJT zone escalators to walk up the platform toward the front end of the all multilevel train because the rear cars were crush loaded, so we got all the way to the second car before they ushered us on. Turns out when you make a social good free, more people use the social good.

We walked through the second car which was standing room only to the first car, where we finally found two seats. Unfortunately the front car had the fogged up windows that are typical on NJT multilevels, so we couldn’t see anything. Then we were on our way.

As we crossed the portal bridge, we began to slow down, but with foggy windows I couldn’t appreciate the construction on the new portal bridge. We slowed to crawl outside Secaucus Junction, probably because we fell out of our scheduled slot on the corridor.

By the time we got to New Brunswick, we were 30 minutes late, with each stop on our local train taking a lot longer due to how busy the train was. All the platforms in the New York direction were packed too!

At New Brunswick, my friend Jeremy Zorek hopped on our train, and rode with us for a stop on an errand. Free transit makes things so convenient and induces so many choice trips that would otherwise be taken by car, or not taken.

The whole way down, every Amtrak train that passed us was visibly full, and super long. The Northeast Corridor is a workhorse on Labor Day weekend.

Our train cleared out a lot of New Brunswick and Princeton Junction, which is pretty typical, and we pulled into Trenton, NJ the final stop on NJT’s Northeast Corridor service, a couple minutes early, on track 3. Our SEPTA Regional Rail Trenton Line train was waiting for us on track 4, so it was an easy cross platform transfer. SEPTA sat for about 10 minutes until its scheduled departure, and it took us about an hour to make it to 30th St, where I said goodbye to my suite mate—after trying to get some photos of the Avelia Liberti sitting in the 30th St yard—and got off to meet my friend!

The City of Brotherly Love #

I waited in the 30th St waiting area for a fit, and edited some photos on my iPad. Since I have a USB C iPad Air, I can sync directly from my camera to the iPad, and use Lightroom or Apple Photos to edit photos on the go, which is a really nice workflow.

30th St beautiful as always.

Then I hopped on to the L and met my friend in Center City. We walked around, got Halal cart food, coffee, and people watched and caught up in Rittenhouse Square for a bit, a bit of a tradition for us. Then she took me to explore the Schuykill River trail, which was recently expanded.

Then we headed over the river to explore the “backrooms of Amtrak”—as my friend Rose put it—under the decking at 30th St station. It was super cool, and we got to see a yard move of a Metroliner cab car behind a ACS64 and the Avelias sitting around.

Sleeping Avelias!

This sign is so cool

The area is full of no trespassing signs, but the road itself is public, as far as I can tell. If you go here, please please please be respectful, don’t use flash when taking pictures, and _stay on the road_. If you stray off the road, you’re asking to get hit and killed by a train or arrested. Don’t do it, and if you’re asked to leave, leave.

These are all that’s left of the Metroliners, the precursor to the Acela. They’ve been turned into cab car versions of Amfleets.

Being able to be this close to the trains is really, really cool, and a little bit scary. It feels like it shouldn’t be legal. Be responsible and respectful.

After exploring, we headed over to a friend of Rose, in a beautiful part of town.

We headed out from there, both Rose and I on our way home. We got to 30th Street, where I used the nice Amtrak bathroom before boarding my 9:30 SEPTA Regional Rail Trenton train. I made it to Trenton with about 20 minutes before my free NJT NEC Local, at 10:57pm.’

Trenton was really really busy, free transit is awesome!

It really challenged my (rudimentary) (based solely on vibes) ideas of the Civil War, and the role New York and northern cities, as well as Europe, played in it.

I’ll upload my notes soon, I’m just excited that I finished it!

Configuration #

1. TZ=America/New_York - setting this allows you to manipulate the build VM’s timezone. If you do not do this, you may have inconsistent timezone rendering between builds in frameworks like Liquid, as CF can build each deployment in a different data center.¹

Injected #

1. CF_PAGES_COMMIT_SHA - hash of current commit
2. CF_PAGES_PAGES - equal to 1 in all pages build environments
3. CF_PAGES_BRANCH - name of branch used to build deployment
4. CF_PAGES_URL - url of deployment at time of build
5. engine/language version variables
   1. NODE_VERSION
   2. GO_VERSION
   3. PYTHON_VERSION
   4. RUBY_VERSION
   5. EMBEDDED_DART_SASS_VERSION
   6. HUGO_VERSION
   7. PNPM_VERSION
   8. YARN_VERSION
   9. BUN_VERSION

I think I got sick. I’ve been congested and had a scratchy throat for 24+ hours now. I’m going to rally today and try to get some food and cold medicine to hopefully stop this before the weekend is over. Needless to say I’ll be masking extra carefully.

Well, I had COVID-19. I still have it! So this post will probably not be super interesting. I posted on Mastodon asking about isolation timelines. From what I’ve read, it seems like minimum responsible time to exit isolation is next Saturday. Two of my suitemates have COVID now, but in the interest of not increasing viral load, I’ll be continuing to mask when leaving my room (thank god I have a single).

Monday #

Last night I went on a walk for the first time. I wasn’t coughing, the elevators weren’t busy (took the stairs down anyway), and it was late at night. It helped so much. I’m really feeling stir crazy. This is my first time being substantially sick in a long time.¹ I’m going to turn the masked walk into a nightly thing, since it was so helpful. I only have one window, and it’s north facing, so I get no direct sunlight (Mount Sinai reflects some at me though in the late afternoon), and my window only opens a couple inches (my suitemate described my room as Norwegian prisoncore).

Showering and brushing my teeth has been a challenge. Some reading I did suggested that in high humidity (ie post-shower) air, aerosolized respiratory droplets can stay in the air for longer (up to 25 minutes), so I’ve been carefully timing my showers and teeth brushing for when no one else is home, something that will become harder now that other suitemates have COVID.

My symptoms have been limited mostly to occasional headaches, body aches and congestion. The congestion and PND makes me cough a good deal, but that’s the only persistent symptom. I’m really lucky to have a mild case. This morning is the best I’ve felt, I woke up without a stuffy nose, and felt really good, so I’m hoping my body is almost done. Isolation is a lot easier if I feel well enough to go outside for longer every day.

I am missing my first day of classes today, which sucks, but I made friends with somebody in the one class I have today who will share their notes with me. I’ve got three classes on Tuesday, so we’ll see how that goes. I’ll be emailing those profs today.

Ren and I are reading The Power Broker together, and I’m so excited. I’m a really fast and impatient reader, so once again I’m trying to learn to slow down.

Tuesday #

Woke up Tuesday with even more minor symptoms, hooray!

I missed classes yesterday, and more today, so I’m attempting to catch up on reading. I haven’t quite figured out how to organize my school notes in Logseq yet, and I’m looking for examples of note taking systems. If you’re in academia or a profession or position where you take a bunch of notes, please let me know how you do it! I don’t care if it’s boring or not unique or doesn’t work, I just want to broaden my sample size. Please email me! <3

My profs have been super accommodating, so I’m just trying to figure out how to read syllabi. I have a lot of organizational tools, but I’m not really sure how I want to structure my academic stuff yet, including assignment/todo tracking. I think I’ll probably take class notes in my Logseq journals, and just note tasks in there and then make some kind of dashboard to query those? Again if you have examples, please email me, I don’t bite.

Bliss

I’m really happy to be back in proximity to the Snack Belt. I’ve been ordering groceries from West Side Market, who seems to use their own delivery people instead of exploiting people like the apps do, and being back in NYC means I get to enjoy Hal’s seltzer water and chips again (Hal’s black cherry sparkling water is the best sparkling water I’ve ever had).

Wednesday #

Symptoms continue be more minor. I’ve been reading a bunch. We ran out of the toilet paper but a friend is bringing us more.

I really appreciate how much less toxic the housing discourse is here. The pro-housing movement in NYC doesn’t seem to be dominated by borderline fascists with unlimited tech money like it is back home. Read an interesting piece by Benjamin Schneider about applying Jacobs to NYC’s City of Yes rezoning to encourage densification in the outerlands of NYC.

Thursday #

Woke up feeling the best I’ve felt yet at around noon. I’m hoping I can get my sleep schedule back in order before Monday. I tested today and was negative, so I masked up and went to buy more tests. I’ll test again tomorrow morning, and assuming I’m negative again I’ll start going out again, albeit very cautiously and masked. Today I got a new iPad with a pencil and a keyboard. I’m hoping that it will help me with my Logseq note taking workflow, since most of my professors give us PDFs of our readings. Logseq’s mobile app doesn’t have pdf opening/annotating support yet, so I’m trying to figure out a good way to deal with that. Some people on the forum have suggested using an app like PDF Expert to open the pdf files and annotate them in that, and that Logseq will then pull in those annotations. I’m not sure if that works with my workflow, which involves writing between the highlight blocks, so I guess we’ll see. If you have ideas, please email me. After testing negative, I went on a little celebratory walk, and discovered that there’s an Indian place 2 blocks from me, which is exciting!

Friday #

I tested negative again in the morning. My lingering cough is almost gone, and I’m feeling almost 100%. I went on a walk and ended up at a place nearby that does plant-based versions of bodega classics. I got an avocado toast, and sat at a table outside and did some readings on my iPad. I read Joan Didion’s essay On Keeping a Notebook, and it really resonated with me, as a notebook carrier. I’ll upload my annotated pdf at some point.

I’m considering using free NJT to hop down to Philly tomorrow to see some friends. I’ll be Trenton-shuffling because it’s so much cheaper, and because Amtrak tickets are really expensive now. I snagged a $10 ticket from PHL-TRE back, which I’ll refund if I don’t use, but I figured it would be nice to have the convenience of skipping SEPTA on the way back.

I’m loving having an iPad, it’s made reading and annotating for class much easier, and I can use all the help I can get after missing my first week of classes. I’ve started using the app Highlights instead of PDF expert, and so far I’m liking it better. It lets me export my highlights and notes as markdown, which makes getting it into Logseq a lot easier, though that export is a premium feature—I’m on a free trial, I’ll probably stick with it for $22/year.

The Power Broker changed the way I understand New York City, Long Island, politics, and how I conceptualize the link between built form and history and power.

Rereading #

I began reading the actual book in August of 2024. I’m reading it with my partner.

Major themes #

• [[power]]
  • threats of [[resignation]]
• [[civil service reform]]
  • elitism in [[good government]]

Introduction: Wait Until the Evening #

• opens with [[Sophocles]] quote

  One must wait until the evening
  To see how splendid the day has been.
  —Sophocles

• moses swam at [[yale]], class of 1909

  • tried to lie to swim team donor, tell him money was going to a swim team and not his own minor sports association. when team captain told him not to, he tried to threaten his resignation, it was accepted. #resignation

• jump to [[robert f. wagner jr.]] oath of office 45 years later, passes up moses for [[planning commission]] at the urging of [[good government]] groups [[citizens union]], [[city club]]

  • moses threatens [[resignation]], wagner appoints him to planning commission

• examine his life through the lens of [[power]]

  Power is the backdrop against which both confrontation scenes should be played. (4)

• moses wielded immense money

  including, in fact, only those public works that he personally conceived and completed, from first vision to ribbon cutting—Robert Moses built public works costing, in 1968 dollars, twenty-seven billion dollars. (9)

  equivalent to $244,039,655,172 in 2024 dollars

Part 1: The Idealist #

1: Line of Succession #

• moses mother and grandfather were very rich. part of [[our crowd]]
• [[bella cohen]] dragged family to new york, involved herself in [[settlement houses]] run by rich [[german jews]] to americanize [[eastern european jews]]

2: Robert Moses at Yale #

• tried to lie to swim team donor, tell him money was going to a swim team and not his own minor sports association. when team captain told him not to, he tried to threaten his resignation, it was accepted. #resignation

3: Home Away from Home #

• attends [[oxford]] after yale
  • became swimming caption
• was popular
• enjoyed oxford’s elitism
• became extremely arrogant about not thinking about clothes or money. always [[entertained]]
• became a strong [[anglophile]]
• picked up british thoughts on civil service and government
  • that governments of the lower classes should be scorned. it is the right of the upper classes born to wealth to take care of the lower classes through public service
  • became increasingly racist against the brown, black and asian people conquered and governed by the british
• picks up [[good government]] beliefs about [[patronage]]
  • but in a classist way

    The Civil Service of Great Britain reveals it’s author as the possessor of a depth of class feeling and conservatism more appropriate to a retired colonel of the guards than a young progressive from New York City. “Open competition “maybe with the young author said he wanted—but the openness was to certain individuals only. “Merit “maybe the determinant he said he desired, but it was not merit based on a man’s handling of his job. The competition Moses wanted was a competition open only to a highly educated upper class the marriage he was talking about was Merritt not in public service but in the education given exclusively to members of that class.

• 1913 while working toward Ph.D. at [[Columbia]], joins ranks of the [[Bureau of Municipal Research]]

Part 2: The Part 2: The Reformer #

4: Burning #

Chrysler Building!

I arrived in NYC on the Lakeshore Limited last Friday. I’m loving it so far. I miss home, fog, hills and non-humidity. NYC is so strikingly beautiful. I’m beginning to make friends, and having a couple friends here and on the way is really nice. People here are more friendly than I thought, but definitely not as willing to have random conversations with strangers like on the west coast.

I miss my partner, but we’ve been finding ways to feel connected remotely. I’m putting up maps of home (Muni map and a Hagstrom map of SF). I’m about 15 minutes from the main campus buildings, which I really like. It forces me to walk every day, is helping me accomplish my goal of walking all of lower manhattan.

I’m excited to be here, and excited for classes to start (for the first time ever!).

I’m noticing a lot of things.

• There are so many helicopters
• People are actually quite friendly
• People are far more stylishly dressed here
• Everybody walks
• Horns oh god the horns

Too many cooks in our very small kitchen

My suitemates are amazing! We’ve made onigiri already. We’ve got Lebanese, Puerto Rican, Chinese, Cambodian and Indian in here, so food is yet to be boring!

I’ve been meeting tons of new people, and something that has really stood out is meeting other Indians. Being from the Bay Area, I associate us so strongly with tech, and meeting Indian students who have no tech ties has been a bit of a (pleasant) shock.

I think I got sick. I’ve been congested and had a scratchy throat for 24+ hours now. I’m going to rally today and try to get some food and cold medicine to hopefully stop this before the weekend is over. Needless to say I’ll be masking extra carefully. My room is finally starting to look a bit more like a place someone lives and less like a messy Norwegian prison. Photos to come. If you’re here and want to meet up, shoot me an email!

I’m walking every mile of street in Manhattan. I’m starting with “lower” Manhattan, which I’m defining as south of (and including) 14th St. I’m using Strava and Wandrer.earth to keep track.

At a glance #

Progress: %
Unique miles: 000/000mi

Jane Jacobs, in The Death and Life of Great American Cities, talks a great deal about Civic Center.¹

I’ve been really wanting to get into cartography for a long time, and I’ve decided that I should just pick a space and try to map it. I’m still deciding on styles, and so I’m going to be browsing some old maps for inspiration.

I think before anything else, it will be useful to establish a list of todos.

Steps #

1. Research
2. Information gathering <-- I am here.
3. Measurements

This is going to be a long term project, I think. I want to continually return to it. I have no sense of what the timeline will be, and I am defining failure only as giving up. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m hoping this will be a good instance of learning/trying/thinking/failing in public, and that others can take something from it.

Research #

I want to define my scope before doing anything else.

Area #

Civic Center and the surrounding area is big. I think that in order to make this doable for me, at least in the beginning, I will need to choose a smaller area. I want to center Civic Center Plaza, include the buildings adjacent to it, and then ~1 block in all directions.

My scope area

I’m going to define my area as the blocks bordered by Hayes, Franklin, Golden Gate, Jones and Market. Which includes a ton of government/civic-minded buildings and open space. I’m not going bigger because I’m worried about setting my initial goals too high and becoming unmotivated.

I also really like the buildings in this area.

I also spend a lot of time waiting for the bus here

Inspiration #

In order to figure out what I want my map to look like, I’ve been looking at a bunch of different sources of inspiration. I want to make something pretty enough to hang on a wall.

I’ve decided that I want to digitally illustrate this from scratch, instead of using GIS software like QGIS or ArcGIS. I haven’t learned QGIS or ArcGIS yet (I’m hoping to begin GIS courses in college this spring!), and I think that if I have experience making a map look nice from scratch, I’ll be able to make better use of features of draw effects in GIS software. At the very least, this should be fun.

So far I’ve found

• Abe Bingham’s Detailed Map of Downtown San Francisco
• Old Maps Online
• High Quality Map of Ottawa by Alex Urquhart
• Hagstrom map of lower Manhattan (I have this one on my wall!)

Abe Bingham's Detailed Map of Downtown San Francisco (detail).

Shoreline detail from Alex Urquhart's map of Ottawa.

Hagstrom's map of Lower Manhattan, I believe from the 1940s.

A Sanborn fire insurnace map of Manhattan, circa 1911

Features #

I’ve settled on a top-down orientation (birds eye view), with the following features:

1. Buildings
   • footprints
   • names
   • icons
   • use types
2. Streets
   • names
   • mode icons
   • transit lines
3. Parks
   • amenities
   • areas
   • landscaping
4. Boundaries
   • parcel lines
   • street numbers
   • administrative boundaries (if applicable, ie districts, BIDs)
5. (bonus) Hayes Creek²

I’m going to orient my map north, instead of along the local grid, because San Francisco doesn’t have one main grid, and because Market is part of a different grid than most of Civic Center.

Information gathering #

Since I’m not mapping unmapped territory, I’m going to mostly rely on existing maps and measurements. I considered surveying things myself, but couldn’t figure out a cost and time effective way to do so (I also have no idea how I would even begin to approach that). I’m going to rely mostly on SFMTA striping diagrams. These are engineering drawings of the striping and features of roads, and they include measurements. Here’s one of Polk St. I wanted to find a site survey in the The Civic Center Historic Plan Library but couldn’t find anything useful.³

SFMTA striping diagram of Polk St between Market and McAllister.

A map of Civic Center from the 1987 Proposal from the Mayor's Office.

Diagram-o-rama

Striping diagrams are nice because they provide details about the adjacent land, as well as the street itself. I should be able to scale them all to the be the same, and then lay them all out like puzzle pieces in Illustrator. I may not even have to bring them into Illustrator, since they include the measurements!

Design choices #

Scale #

I’ve decided that I want to print and size my map to an A2 sheet (16.5×23.4 in), so I’m going to choose a scale that will fit nicely within that. My subject area is about 1400 feet (Franklin, Golden Gate to Hayes) by 3400 feet (Golden Gate, Franklin to Market). Accounting for the tilt, my area is about 3600×2000 feet. I used MapTools.com to play around with scales, and decided on 1:2000 scale, which will mean my depicted area is about 21.6×12 scale inches, which gives some room for margins and a legend.

In Illustrator, that looks roughly like this.

I'm using an artboard to mark out the boundary of the map itself, which will make exporting just the map easier later.

Measurements #

The next step is laying out all my references onto the canvas and calculating sizes of individual features.

• cmorrow.net cool personal website of an artist-type who makes a lot of cool things in different mediums
• maggieappleton.com a neat example of a polished digital garden + essays
• sfstreetcars.co the bay area’s lost streetcars
• The website of bucketcreature

Many nights I cry. I’ve been planning little goodbye get togethers with friends, and I feel like I’m mourning my relationship with a place. I’m not going to stop being friends with my friends (I hope), or stop loving these places, but I’m going to go longer than I ever have without them, and I’m going to miss them.

I got my ears pierced, which I’m excited about. I have to be really careful not to snag the jewelery with my mask and items of clothing.

Things were better a couple months ago, when I had Instagram uninstalled, and slightly less better when I respected my self imposed Screen Time limits on the app.

Not having any microblogging apps has been fantastic. No more compulsive Twitter or Bluesky scrolling, the latter of which isn’t even meaningfully helping correct or abandon the evils of Twitter. Little note: if you are still on Twitter, you are funding Elon Musk’s transphobia,¹ Trump campaign donations, and a littany of other horrors, whether or not you post or just browse.

Instagram is my biggest clutch right now. I’ve distanced myself from Discord, but still compulsively open it occasionally. I have one group chat of friends that is unfortunately on Telegram, an app used mostly by Nazis, drug dealers, crypto scammers and teen Nazi drug dealer crypto scammers. (TELEGRAM STOP ASKING ME FOR MY BIRTHDAY).

I reinstalled Instagram in the first place to post from the Scenic Routes account for work, but have since logged back in to my personal account. I think having the app installed at all is a hazard to my mental health, time and relationship with technology. Unfortunately, I’m about to move, meet a ton of people at orientation and elsewhere in NYC, and Instagram has successfully made itself the broker of social connection for my age group.

I could move to using Instagram only on my computer, or keep the app and impose harsher screen time restrictions on it, but I’m wary of that.

Email me.

Why I write on the Internet #

• Writing encourages me to continue to develop thoughts, instead of having them, posting them in their infancy and abandoning them. I find that this negative pattern of behavior is encouraged by microblogging platforms like Twitter, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc. I place a strong emphasis on growth of ideas on this site. I want to encourage myself to have ideas, develop them, challenge them, and refine them.

  • Publishing my ideas encourages me to fact check and further research them, which either strengthens my idea, or complicates it. Either way, I become a more knowledgeable person.

• Thinking in public further encourages me to develop my ideas, and, I hope, serves as an example of a healthier way of thinking to others. Making mistakes in the open is a great way to learn.

• I want to contribute to the personal web. I’m going to steal this from my friend Emily Horsman, who says

  I miss the corners of the internet where you’d Google some niche thing and one person with a blog had already written about it. You’d go look at it and they’d have shown their homework and given it to you without watching two minutes of video first or showing you a bunch of ads. These corners still exist and it’s still possible and I’d like to be a part of it — sharing knowledge under the premise of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”

  I believe that the dissemination of knowledge is incredibly important. I want to contribute openly to the human project of understanding our environment and the world around us.

• My friends read this, and as someone who is bad at managing social bandwidth and maintaining connection over long distances, my friends being able to read about what I’m up to and thinking is hugely beneficial. Hi friends :).

Join the personal web #

If you’re interested in trying to help remake the internet in the image of people, not corporations, here are some starting off points.

• marginalia search engine
• neocities
  • youvegotkat

• I didn’t like the tone of the narrator
• The novelized nonfiction is cool, and confused me
• I might want to come back to this at another time, but right now I don’t have the bandwidth.

Why am I feeling nostalgia for this shuddering aluminum clatterfuck? It couldn’t fit bigger than 28s and the too-big frame required me to slam the seatpost, which of course sported some heavily used mystery saddle. I was so eager to get away from this bike, and I did when I built my Fuji. My Fuji was the antithesis of it in many ways: steel frame, fat tires, 26in, canti brakes.

After a bit of thinking, I realized it wasn’t actually the bike itself I was yearning for, but what it stood for: riding a hundred or more miles per week on an “uncool” bike that made no sacrifices to comfort or utility. Was the milk crate on the cheap rear rack ugly? Yeah. Did it do a really good job of carrying my backpack back and forth to school? Yeah. Were the bottle cages cheap and dinky and ugly? Yeah, but they carried enough water for me. Was the cockpit not at all aero or high leverage? Yep.

donut run!

But it was so fucking comfortable—even with those stupid 28s and shuddery aluminum frame. That bike was absolutely everything I needed from it then. I was eager to get away from what I considered a shitbox, but looking back at it, it’s no wonder that it facilitated my falling in love with bikes as a lifestyle. If I’m honest with myself, I miss it. I think the yearning for something of almost pure comfort and utility that rejects the dominant idea of coolness is responsible for my crosscheck dreams. The lightning bolt built following trekthought will be very cool.

great highway with emily and kat :)

The 1100 was also in my life at an important time. I was beginning to crack my second egg (boy->they->*girl; you are here), and I was becoming immersed in a community of lovely people. All these photos are from school-lunch-break excursions that filled me with a sense of freedom or rides with friends. I fell in love with bikes while doing lunch time donut runs to donutworld and riding up and down the great highway with kat and emily. I was coming out of my shell in more ways than one, and this bike really helped with that. I learned a lot about myself on this bike.

the coolest cockpit

We’re coming up on one year since losing Hansel, a gut wrenching, heartbreaking process that taught me how to grieve, how to be in community, and how to to truly embrace joy. A year without them, I still feel like I’m learning from them. They taught me a lot about being queer without realizing it. My biggest regret is not coming out to Hansel before we lost them. Without knowing it, they showed me just how much joy could exist in the simple act of being queer. It was their voice in my head that finally brought me to come out to Jerry, Kat, Jay and Emily. Oh the things an out Hansel and I would have gotten up to. Their voice still keeps me going as I figure out this whole queerness thing.

I remember one night, after community night, me, Jerry and Hansel hung out in the living room on JFK, and talked about gender. I was so close at that point, I wish I had told them then.

I recently returned to that family member’s house with my partner and mother’s support to gather some things, among those a drawing of Hansel and a photo of my brother. While there I wrote a letter to my brother and left it on his desk.

The drawing of Hansel was made after they passed, based on a photo of them in drag posing with my bike at trans march 2023, the happiest I’d ever seen them. I got sick last week, and I’m only just beating it, so I missed trans march this year, having to watch it from my couch through my friends’ instagram stories, but the whole day, I thought of Hansel. I’ve come a long way since summer of 2023, in no small part thanks to them. The bike they posed with in that photo is my fuji, the successor to my trek—a bike that was like the fisher price version of the last bike they rode, their rivendel platypus. Their first test ride of that bike was the second happiest I’d ever seen them.

I still feel them when I’m near the Pacific. I think if I whisper my name into the ocean and tell them, I’ll feel better.

Hansel at Trans March 2023 in drag. So fucking beautiful. Serving. Photo: Jerry.

Tell everyone you love in your life that you love them or you’ll regret not doing it when they die. I passed in Walgreens today despite my absolutely ravaged post-sick voice. I wish I could tell hansel. I hope my brother writes me back.

There’s something so cool about riding BART between Ashby and MacArthur. The 70s viaduct is just the right height and profile to make you feel like you’re getting an intimate, impossible view into a neighborhood. Unfortunately, MLK, the street BART runs above, is a former red-lining (painful irony) boundary, and BART construction came with a road widening that made MLK even more of a barrier.

SEPTA just released designs for the M5, the badly needed replacement for the Market-Frankfurt line’s M4s, which have been unreliable since they were delivered. From one city with a streetcar+metro tunnel under Market Street to another, ❤️.

And in NYC, new student OMNY cards are launching, giving students 4 entries a day to the transit system, all year, at any time. No more metrocards capped at 3 fares a day only between certain hours. Hell Gate

I’m hoping that embracing failure will help me prune my list down, which in turn should help me finish more books, faster. One way I’m embracing failure is listing books I’ve abandoned on my reading page as DNF (did not finish). I want to feel less ashamed of abandoning a book I’m not enjoying or even just not ready for right now.

I’m challenging myself to finish or abandon at least one book before the end of the month. I think I can finish The Death and Life of Great American Cities this month if I really try, but I’m having so much more fun reading Gotham. I’ll probably abandon The Devil in the White City.

The idea that I read too many books felt very obvious at the time of writing this, but I’ve since had a variety of different feelings on it. I want to include some quotes from Simon Sarris’ Reading Well.²

You should start many books and complete few. You should never feel beholden to completing them, there are simply too many worthwhile works to read.

When you have found a masterpiece, you should reread it just as you would revisit a beloved foreign land, or a faraway friend.

You should buy books on a whim, whenever possible, enough that you start to forget about them. You shouldn’t know the whole contents of your own shelves. If you create a home library it should act as one: It is there for you to discover and rediscover, to get lost in. Sometimes you can start or continue a book only when the mood is right, so it is good to have a storehouse ready. But you should also prune the unworthy. A good garden needs both.

This specifically has been something I’ve been trying to avoid, from a budget consciousness but also from a belief that I need to focus more on finishing books. I feel less confident in that now.

there is too great a fondness for non-fiction. I think this arises from a belief that superior knowledge of the world comes from non-fiction. This thought is attractive to people who build systems, but over-systematizing and seeing systems in everything can be a failure mode.

Please send me fiction recommendations, especially if we’re friends.

Shrimp #

It would never again look this pink or clean. Photo credit: Emily Horsman.

Upright conversion #

VO Postinos or curvy bars or milans, VO grand cru levers, might settle for the adjustable avids. I’ll probably replace my downtube shifters with my microShift thumbies from my Fuji, set up the Gr*nt P*t*rs*n way. Probably will a pair of Gordos or Ergon grips. This is my number one want right now.¹ Going upright will allow me to finally get a full 137 basket on—it currently won’t fit between my drops—and enjoy proper basket life.

brakes #

I eventually want to go full Paul cantis + levers. Long term stretch goal etc etc.

dynamo #

Long term goal. The cheaper Shimano hub will do.

bits n bobs #

• blue lug trans colored cargo net—ok it’s not officially called that but that’s because they’re cowards
• vo flat pack rack or something nicer
• a pink u-lock (kryptonite please make this)
• rear rack of some kind maybe idk, would make fenders suck slightly less
• more colorful housing, maybe some of the “vintage” stuff from Yokozuna. unfortunately they’re cowards afraid of the color pink
• outershell every day tote (cow, obvi)
• Yellowbird Bar Keepers bar ends (holy shit they oxidize)

Anxiety #

The past couple weeks, I’ve been doing virtual pre-move in stuff online for school, and beginning to think about packing and logistics. In the last week, roughly since getting home from our Chicago trip, I’ve started thinking about goodbyes, and it’s beginning to click in my mind that I’m really not going to see this place for a long time. I feel whiny for even writing about this or having these thoughts, but I’m scared. So much of what has made me love San Francisco so much is the community I’ve become a part of, and I won’t be able to play as active a role in a that from 3,000 miles away. Our little urbanist-gay-bike-politic community is small at its core and deeply bound together by wins and losses and death and triumph and friendships. I’m really scared that months away will begin to push me out of the communities and relationships I care so much about.

Past experiences have made clear to me that I just don’t have the bandwidth to maintain non-immediate relationships when distance is added to the equation. I’m scared to live a life devoid of the everyday comfort of the Scenic Routes community, I don’t know what to do without being able to organize with SSR, and I am going to be arriving in NYC with very little of a local support network; I’ve only got two high school friends I still talk with that live there.

I’m dreading goodbyes. I expect to be a tearful mess at whatever ends up being my last time at the shop, and with my close shop friends—I’m only leaving a couple months, but fuck. Even more I’m dreading the rapid approach of my last moments inhabiting the same physical space as my partner. I’m a ball of anxiety right now, especially when I forget my SSRIs, lol.

Unfortunately, since I’m leaving the state of California sniffle, I’ll have to find a new therapist and psychiatrist too.

Should I build a read-it-later app? #

In my quest to bring all my reading and notes together into one place,^{1 2} I’ve been playing with a lot of different tools. For a while now, I’ve been using Logseq as my container for all my notes, tasks and writing, and Omnivore as my reading app for web content. Email newsletters, RSS feeds and save-for-later pieces all go to Omnivore, where I read them. Notes I take in Omnivore are imported to Logseq. Books I read on my Kindle are imported into my Logseq graph as well.³.

I’m not completely satisfied with Omnivore, but it seems like it’s the best option that meets my needs. I’m not satisfied with my Kindle either, partially for similar reasons. Taking linked notes on a Kindle feels incredibly clunky, and the import process is suboptimal, and prone to breaking and Amazon’s frustrating software limitations. Omnivore is better, but it still feels clunky to take linked notes in it. I’m beginning to think the ideal reading set up for me would be an e-ink tablet running Android, with a Logseq plugin acting as the reading app, enabling native Logseq note taking. Switching between devices/apps to take notes while reading is a deal breaker. I’m wondering if it might be worth it to buy a Boox tablet and build a Logseq plugin.

I’m trying my best to look forward to some stuff. I have some goals and things I’m excited to get to do in NYC, and I figured making a list would help.

Walking Manhattan #

Ever since reading about a couple people who walked every mile of street in Manhattan,⁴ I’ve wanted to do the same. In order to make it more measurably, achievable and less daunting, I plan to start by targeting completion of everything below 14th St. As I’ll be living on or near 14th St, this should be convenient, and help encourage me to try new streets in my every day commute to classes. On my last visit, I wanted to walk all of Broadway in Manhattan, but ended up not having enough time before leaving for Boston to stay with friends.

The LIRR at Woodside #

In the last couple weeks, I’ve become enraptured in the Long Island Railroad. Call it a special interest, a rabbit hole or one of my various diagnosis. I’ve been watching videos, reading—including a morbid Wikipedia binge on New York State railroad accidents—and otherwise engulfing myself in the LIRR. My friend Jeremy Zorek brought me railfanning at Woodside in Queens last November, and it was super fun. During evening rush hour, local and express trains use every track, stopping or whooshing through at 80mph. Coupled with the 7 train above (which crossed the LIRR a couple other times, all scenic), it’s a fun place to be as someone with train on the brain. I’ve even been playing with the notion of trying to become an LIRR engineer at some point—it’s replaced my NYC subway train operator dream. That one is a probably not a great idea for my lifestyle though, I should just buy Train Sim World 4.

Bikes #

I’m hoping to get a job at a local bike shop in NYC this year or next. I’m eyeing Bike Plant in Bed-Stuy, for their Scenic Routesean vibes.

For me, one of the great joys in life is exploring a new place by bike, most recently Chicago. I’m excited to do the same in NYC, and to learn all the weird little routing tricks. My current mental map of NYC is based mostly on the subway, and I’m excited to further develop that while layering on bike and foot routes.

I’m really excited to have my own bike. I’m bringing Shrimp on Amtrak. I’m still hoping to have some time and money before I leave to make some modifications to it, but if not, I’ll survive. The marvel of a flat place, I recently discovered in Chicago, is that you can ride on tops of the drops.

My really cool friends #

A couple friends of mine from high school now live in NYC and attend Columbia and Barnard, and I’m excited to be within want-to-get-dinner distance of them again. Meeting new friends, however daunting, is also something I’m looking forward to. I’m excited to have more people in my life from more backgrounds who will complicate my understanding of the world.

Speaking of my awesome friends who are complicating my understanding of the world, my longtime friend Leanne has recently been telling her story and working to expose the abuse and profiteering of the wilderness camp child therapy industry. It’s awful and horrible and she’s been doing a far better job of managing the press circuit than I did last summer during our “ConeSF” anti-AV press blitz. You should listen to this interview she gave. If there’s one thing you click in this post, it should be this.

Monday (8:35am) - Wednesday (2:30pm) #

Amtrak math: your seat is bigger when your partner sits next to you.

I’ve fallen into photography YouTube again, and it’s making me want to try film. My friend Vallery loaned a film camera (more than?) a year ago, and I’ve yet to touch it, but I think I’ll finally start to play with it. The original idea was for me to shoot some nature-y scenes, and then her to shoot over it through bus windows, I think. I recently found the camera going through some of my stuff.

I’ve been enjoying shooting on my Fuji X-T30 II a lot lately. I installed a cheap Chinese grip and removed the left cage part of it so that it just heightens the body and adds a bigger grip area, and it’s made the camera far more comfortable to hold. It also gives me better mounting points for my Peak Design strap’s anchor links.

Sacramento, CA

Riding the first train out of the Bay after pride weekend is amazing, highly recommend it if you’re not a raging homophobe. We’ve befriended so many queer people, and the train has above average style.

This is going to be an evolving post (finally, a use for my tended/planted thing) over this trip, so check back, or don’t.

Sacramento, CA

Sacramento, CA

We’ve got our bikes on this train, and there’s a private car—Bella Vista—owned by Friends of the 261, a heritage railroad that seems to be in the business of preserving the Milwaukee Road. If I won the lottery, I’ll charter a private car trans-con, SF to NYC. Maybe I could convince Caltrain to let me start in SF, though it seems Mr Lipps isn’t super fond of me (long story; not everyone takes criticism well).

Leland's railroad

I've never noticed this no smoking sign on the Superliners before, but it's cute!

Winnemucca, NV

The desert is so beautiful. It’s a landscape I’m trying to appreciate more. I’d love to spend some time out here but it’s known for being home to Christian Nationalism. Last I checked they aren’t too fond of girls who were once boys. (Sir, your son looks like a girl).

Somewhere east of Battle Mountain, NV

I’m thinking of ditching Lightroom for Capture One (or apple photos, as recommended by Harper Reed’s blog)¹. I need a decent app that can handle RAWs on my phone, and then I can truly be fully liberated from the oppressive boot of the jpeg and adobe. As an experiment, all the photos for this post will be imported and edited using Photos.

I’m still loving my Fuji X-T30 II. I’m trying to treat it a little more like a film camera (more time to set up shots, less spray and pray), and so far enjoying how that makes me shoot.

Traveling on Amtrak is reigniting the map making desire fire in me again. I never thought I’d say this but school can’t start soon enough, I’m excited to learn GIS. I’m tempted to teach myself QGIS in the mean time.

I woke up at 5:30 today in western Utah, in some sort of mountain pass, and it was beautiful. I stayed up to watch the sunrise before going back to sleep, I’ve never felt so peaceful.

I’m not feeling much different. I say something along these lines every year, and I don’t know why I always expect something to suddenly change because an arbitrary set of arbitrary units of time have passed. I think this year is the least I’ve thought about my birthday before it happened. We got thai food near the hotel for dinner, it was pretty good.

Wednesday - birfday #

too many cars

Unfortunately, chicago is more than a little addicted to cars. The underground roads and ramps everywhere, wide streets and Lakeshore drive are a big bummer. also, trump tower, lol, go away.

Chicago does their fireworks on the 3rd (probably because of my birthday), so we went toward the lake to watch them. The stacked roads of the Loop are crazy. The fireworks lasted a not-too-long ten minutes, and were pretty good.

I’m wanting to start a newsletter or roundup or something. If I keep wanting to in a couple weeks, I’ll consider setting something up.

Thursday - beautiful riding #

ren zaro

ren zaro

Today (the 4th), we had a late start, had a big breakfast that included an oreo latte (better than expected and almost as good as i wanted it to be!), and then meandered our way up the lake front trail, which is amazing. I think I get the Chicago hype that has a vise grip on the urbanist internet now. It was beautiful, this is a beautiful city.

ren zaro

I really like Chicago. I’ve been here a couple times, but this time I’m very impressed. Chicago is a very American-feeling city in a way that LA and NYC don’t.

Almost looks like Asia. ren zaro

ren zaro

Friday - last day downtown #

We went to visit Central Camera, which might be the Scenic Routes of camera stores. Ren got a UV filter and I got an orange filter guy. I asked one of the staff and they recommended the Pentax K1000 as a first film camera. I’m film-curious, but a little scared about how expensive it can be. Strong opinions welcome.²

“You could benefit from being more judicious about picking up new expensive hobbies” —My friend

I picked up an orange filter for my 35mm lens and I’m loving it. It’s fun to modify photos without software.

Today was our last day in the hotel, so we checked out, dropped our bags and headed out on our bikes. We tried taking the L but it was too crowded, so we ditched after 2 stops and rode to the Chicago History Museum, which was a nice ride. The bike infra so far is comfortable, but could stand to be more protected. I won’t throw stones in a glass house though. We’re staying with our friend Piero.

“Go find me a bar, I’m going to the casino to win my money back.” Overheard at Michigan and Ontario.

Rode Ren’s bike. It rips post-modifications. On our way to our friend’s apartment, a woman asked us if we traveled here from California. She proceeded to talk toat us about bike advocacy in Chicago. Among the notable quotes are “bike police are good, we like them” and “they’re pitching parents against non parents.” Reminds me of a type of “urbanist” we have back home. A no car but might not take the bus type.

I’m itching to get back into building cool stuff on the computer. I might try to play with some digital programmatic map stuff again. Just learned about protomaps, which is cool.

Saturday - go Cubs #

Neon!!!

Wrigley Field is incredible. We biked down Clark St to the ballpark. Wrigleyville, the neighborhood it’s in, is fantastic. The park feels so integrated into the neighborhood, and the whole area is beautiful. My reference for ballparks is Pac Bell Park in San Francisco, and this is way better. They also have a cool old scoreboard that seems to use a matrix of light bulbs and has manually set scores for other games going on.

We could see the 'L' from our seats too!

The ride to the ballpark was really nice. Clark has continuous bike lanes, often protected, and some cool raised protected bike lane/bus boarding island interactions.

The yard at Howard straddles both running lines (purple and skokie swift)

We met back up with Piero, and took a ride on the Purple Line, which is ridden with 6mph slow zones. We walked to the Bahá’í House of Worship. My photos sucked. Then we walked to a beach nearby, which was pretty. We headed back south, got pizza and called it a night.

Sunday - our last full day #

I love this orange filter

We set out with intentions to get to the Chicago Architecture Center in the Loop, but that got derailed (my fault). We ended up at a cafe on Broadway at Wilson called Stan’s Coffee and Donuts, which had pretty good vibes. The highlight of it was definitely looking out the window at Wilson Station on the Red and Purple lines. It has a modern station house and an old one, that seems to be disused now. It started raining, so we hunkered down in the cafe for a while. A trans woman came in with almost the exact tattoo I’ve been dreaming of for months, in the exact place I want it, which was kind of shocking.³

We eventually decided we wanted to move, mostly because our laptops died. We decided to ride through the pouring but warm rain to Ritual Coffee House (right by the Brown Line) on Irving Park. The ride was fun and very very very wet. There was a slight second of regretting taking off our fenders on the eve of the trip, but that didn’t last long. We walked into the cafe literally dripping wet. When I pulled out my notebook wallet to pay, the barista asked where I got it from and said her boyfriend would love it (heterosexuality claims another victim!), so I wrote down the very long Etsy product name of it for her.

Leather Journal Cover for Moleskine Cahier Notebook Pocket size with pen holder 3.5" x 5.5" Field Notes Cover Personalized Refillable

maybe she thought i was cute, am i reading too much into it? (most definitely)

On the wall I spotted a poster for a Courtney Barnett show in Chicago on the 26th. Her album Things Take Time, Take Time is great. Against the same wall is a huge record shelf, and the record player played jazz, dad rock, and some unplaceable (for me) stuff.

Monday - back on the rails #

To get to Union Station from Ravenswood, we decided it would be easier to take Metra with our bikes and bags. We took the 11:32 train from Ravenswood station. As we waited for the door to the marked bike car toward the rear of the train to open, the conductor began shouting at us. We ran over toward him and the doors that were opening while he screamed and swore at us. Ren fell getting their bike on, and we both got scraped up having to hurry up gallery car steps while carrying our bikes and bags. The conductor had sent us into a non bike car, so we were forced to obstruct the ADA area. When he came by to check our tickets, he was increasingly rude. I don’t want to recount the whole thing here, but I’ve archived Ren’s tweets about the experience here.

This is the direction of travel at this platform.

Metra wayfinding also sucks. They run trains on the left side (reverse of American normal), and platforms are labelled with the less-than-intuitive “To Chicago” or “From Chicago.”

Very commuter oriented. It doesn't even mention the train's terminal.

The UP-N terminal is Ogilvie (Chicago has like 5 mainline terminals), and Amtrak runs out of Union, so we had to walk a couple blocks down Clinton, which wasn’t awful, but it seems crazy that stations that are in line with each other aren’t connected or consolidated.

Miraculously, I took no photos of Chicago Union Station this trip. When I went to baggage to pick up our bike tags, the attendant told me to head with the sleepers and tell boarding staff we have bikes. We did and they let us board with the sleepers, which was nice and gave us an opportunity to get our bikes to the baggage car in the front of the train and get settled before the masses got on.

At our midnight-ish fueling stop in Omaha, Ren and I ran up and down the platform and I got a couple mosquito bites, which I had managed to escape up till then. The bites are making me miss San Francisco, where there are very few mosquitos because of a DPH vector control program that pays bike messengers to drop larvae poison into storm drains (that’s what those little painted dots on storm drains are).

Tuesday Moon Siren #

It’s Tuesday and we’re being mooned from the Colorado River. Each time the observation car erupts in laughs, which I’m dubbing the Tuesday Moon Siren.

We stopped about 30 minutes after the mooning due to UP track work to mitigate rail thermal expansion (it’s been > 70°F everywhere we’ve been on this trip). Eventually we started moving toward the next signal again, and then suddenly stopped. It felt like an e-brake and the engineers got out and walked the train after. About 10 minutes later we started moving again. I’m glad I have my books (see my Amtrak packing list). We’re led by AMTK 817 (P42DC)⁴ followed by AMTK 146 (P42DC).⁵

Passing the UP MoW yard is fun

This trains vibes are significantly less queer than our train out, which was the first after Pride weekend, but still pretty good. We’ve had good conductors (no Chris Lopez or Brad though, bummer). Our cafe attendant, Ms Jeffrey(? todo: fact check this) is super nice and funny.

From talking to our cafe guy Spiro on the way out and now Ms Jackie on this train, it seems like Amtrak has ditched all the fun tea flavors like Constant Comment and the fun fruity and lemony ones for just green and black, so maybe bring your own tea too.

Wednesday - delays delays delays #

In the mean time: I built a delay tracker

Toiletries, medical, comfort #

• Body wipes - I have Wilderness Wipes, I use them to keep from getting stinky when I’m in coach and can’t shower. Wash your feet!
• Tissues
• Extra socks - this is so critical. having fresh socks to put your clean feet in feels so good
• Small blanket - I’ve been using my keffiyeh and a heavy fuzzy blanket we brought from home, depending on temperature, but the best is a thin “cocoon” blanket I borrowed from my mom once.
• Sleep mask - you can use the blanket to cover your eyes too. For safety reasons, the lights in coach never fully go off.
• Slip on shoes/slides/slippers - Something you can slip into and out of quickly. Helps avoid feet stink (want to maximize time out of shoes)
• Earplugs - I use my Loops a ton. I have the ones that let you switch between levels of muting, and they’re awesome on the train.
• Something to help you sleep
• Basic pain killer
• Cough drops - don’t be the person coughing all night
• Face wash - having a clean face makes a big difference in comfort. I have a tendency to associate a dirty feeling face with feeling like a man, so this is a must for me - it can double as shaving cream for me too, which is helpful in the dysphoria department.
• Bandana for hair (optional) - curly hair people, you won’t be able to shower for a couple days. Keep it contained
• Gum (optional) - high elevation routes (the top of the Zephyr is nearly 10,000ft above sea level) can get your ear pressure messed up, chewing something helps.

Entertainment #

• Books - I always bring my Kindle, and sometimes a paperback book too. Reading on the train is one of the best experiences.
• Notebook - I write a lot down
• Cards/games (optional) - if you’re traveling with someone.
• Camera (optional) - will probably bring you joy. fwiw it is challenging to take good photos through the train windows.
• Headphones, earbuds, etc - if you listen to anything without headphones you deserve to be thrown off in Helper.
• Download some music you like. Maybe this is the excuse you needed to ditch streaming and start buying. I often download a couple Well There’s Your Problem episodes too.

Food #

• Dr Pepper - I love Dr Pepper and Amtrak only serves Coke products on board. On the Zephyr I usually bring one and buy another at the Grand Junction, CO store on day two.
• Something spicy/hot sauce - the only remotely spicy menu item is the greek salad, which comes with two peppers with a bit of a kick. If you like spice you should bring your own hot sauce (no liquid restrictions on Amtrak) or spicy instant ramen or something.
• Cash or a credit card - sometimes the cafe car machine can’t process debit cards. Bring a physical card or cash, because the tappy thing breaks occasionally too. You’ll also want to tip your car attendant.
• High calorie filling snacks - the cafe isn’t super expensive but it adds up. I’ve seen people subsist entirely on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I usually bring some nuts and rice cakes.

Misc #

• Water bottle(s) - you can fill them at the bar in the upper level of the lounge car.
• Sunglasses
• Dual USB brick - everything I use is USB-C in some capacity, so I bring a double 60W brick and a single 60W. I’ve seen people bring extension cords for the aisle seat (outlets are in the walls) and run small fans and other things off them.

If you have recommendations or things I forgot: [].

I’ve been really frustrated with Amazon’s Kindle firmware. The device is really locked down and unfriendly to being used in any way that isn’t the “proper way”—which involves purchasing books only from Amazon. I get my ebooks from the library and through other means, and I use Calibre to sync them onto my Kindle. I keep my Kindle in airplane mode all the time because I despise the ads. If I pay for a device I should own the device and get to decide what I do with it.

Because of this, I assumed that there was no way to get notes off of the device without using the Kindle app, which seems only to work for Amazon-bought books. I basically gave up on getting notes off my Kindle, and resigned myself to the fact that I would have to pull out my Kindle anytime I wanted to cite or review notes on a book. In the last week or so, I became increasingly frustrated with this reality, and so I started doing more research and poking around the Kindle more.

If you plug a Kindle into a computer, it turns into a USB file device, and you can access some very limited files from the device. Among those files is My Clippings.txt. A-ha!

Unfortunately, there are some dumb limitations. Amazon’s locked down stupid firmware imposes a cap on highlights, and past a certain point, a books highlights and notes will no longer be put into My Clippings.txt, more on this later. The structure of the file is also unfriendly to being dropped into any kind of note taking app.

While poking around on the Logseq forum, I found someone who got annoyed enough that they made a plugin to import the contents of My Clippings.txt, process it, and insert it into Logseq in a way that makes sense. The plugin is called my-highlights, and it’s pretty simple. It allows you to put your highlights and notes in corresponding book pages, or (my preferred option) in journal pages corresponding to the date of the note/highlight. If you opt for journal pages, it adds a link to the book page and under it, nests all of your highlights and notes, each marked with #highlight or #note. It has a couple shortcomings, like not nesting note blocks under their respective highlights, but it works pretty well.

it feels deranged to do this but it's so much better than transcribing by hand while reading

Drawbacks:

1. My Clippings.txt can only have so many highlights from one book before they stop being included in it. This is solvable by fucking with the book title in Calibre occasionally.
2. The plugin doesn’t nest notes under their highlights. I have an issue open on GitHub. If it doesn’t get fixed, I may fork the plugin to implement nesting.
3. The plugin doesn’t handle a fault with My Clippings.txt well. The clippings file stores all versions of an annotation as separate notes, so if you edit a note, both versions of it will end up in your graph. This is more a flaw with the Kindle, but the plugin should probably address this.
4. The plugin doesn’t have many advanced options. A template with variables to dictate how highlights and notes look would be nice and would allow power users to take more advantage of Logseq’s query features.
5. Writing in Logseq/Markdown on a Kindle feels deranged. Typing #[[]] on my Kindle is annoying.

That being said, I’m very happy with this. My Logseq graph now captures all of the written content I consume, which is really nice, and means I can easily search everything I’ve read/taken notes on. I’m excited to see how this holds up when I begin college in the fall.

Here’s some funny Jean-Paul Sarte lore. Everything evolves into crabs. A friend sent me this, I think they found it on Twitter. I don’t know what book it’s from but I want to read it.

btw, my friend Jeremy alerted me to the fact that all of Manhattan is labeled in Turkish right now on Wikipedia’s English language maps and it’s too funny not to include.

"New York is the İstanbul of America"

In less than two months, I’ll be moving to New York City for university, and I can only bring one bike. As a result, I’ve been thinking a lot about what the perfect, do-everything bike looks like. My perfect, do everything bike used to be my Fuji (year and model unknown, lol), but due to my neglect and some unluckiness, it’s in bad shape. It’s also a little big and heavy to be a good bike in the city where rooms are famously small. Shrimp is the preferred option right now, but I’m anxious about having such an outwardly nice bike in the bike theft capital of the country. But also, lol, bike theft only really happens to people that are dumb: bike lockup rules.

Shrimp is nice and light, but I’m not sure I want to consign myself to a drop bar only life. Seems pretty antithetical to the whole slow is forever thing.

This lack of clarity invited in the fantasies. I could scoop up a cross check frameset and run it with upright bars with a little sweep and maybe throw some bullhorns on for when I want to feel zoomy. I could run it with a rear rack and a front rack, for ultimate bag compatibility. Panniers on the rear when I need them, and a 137 on the front for my Tunitas tote. The dual racks would make fenders suck less, maybe I could even run them all year round. It would have a dynamo wheel and some nice tires, ultradynamicos or rene herses. I could lock it everywhere and scratch the hell out of it and then at some point get it powder coated some big fun color. I would rock Gordos or ergon grips for ultimate comfort. It would have good feeling brake levers, VO grand crus or paul canti levers. I’d run it with cantis probably. Because I’m insane, I of course compiled a list in my dream bike mania, which I’ve uploaded to accompany this post: my derangement.

I can’t afford that fantasy bike right now, but I think I can get close with Shrimp. I’m thinking of ditching the drops for some flat bars with a little sweep. Velo Orange Postinos or something similar. I could throw some Ergon grips on there. Flat bars will let me finally replace the half basket with a 137. I can throw my stem caddy on the back of that, and live out my properly-bagged dreams.

When I told my partner about my Cross Check ideations, they told me that I need to do what I taught them to do a couple months ago: fall in love with my bike again. I don’t have to always chase something new. Loving what I already have can be an act of care for me (and the planet). I’m excited to cross the country with my Lightning Bolt. The perfect bike for me is the bike I already have. The end.

A boy full of joy. He has no needs or wants. Oh to be Atlas

TL;DR: bike theft is a crime of opportunity. Much like with a bear, if your bike is a little harder to steal than the bike next to it, it’ll be fine. These are the things we recommend, and neither Jay nor I have ever had a bike stolen.

One: don’t lock up overnight, ever. #

A tale as old as time, I’ll illustrate it with a dialogue we’ve had many times:

“Fuck dude, my bike got stolen”

“Where?”

“Cole Valley”

“Where in Cole Valley?”

“Outside insert bar here”

“You went home with someone and left your bike there?”

“yeah”

It doesn’t matter where you are, leaving a bike locked up outside overnight is a guaranteed way to get it stolen, and your hot date from the bar won’t last, and isn’t losing your bike over (probably).

Two: Use a good u-lock. #

I’ve been using Kryptonites for a couple years and like them. The smaller the lock the better. Big locks may seem tempting for the convenience of locking to anything, but they make leveraging the lock open a lot easier. We like the KRYPTOLOK MINI-7. If you’re feeling extra, throw a second lock on or a cable through your front wheel. A cable-only lock absolutely does not cut it. If you want some of that premium rush swag, you can use a big thick chain lock.

Three: Lock to the right stuff. #

Give whatever you’re locking to a little jiggle. If the bolts on the bike rack are loose, be careful. Also, I don’t care how tall the pole is, if there isn’t something solid at the top that’s wider than your u-lock, don’t lock to it.

Don’t ruin your life over it:
Embrace it if it happens. File a claim with your renters insurance and don’t become a resentful and vengeful person. Bike theft sucks, but it’s not the end of the world, and it’s not worth living a life of fear over. Living an enjoyable life is about making risk calculations. Sure, I could ask every business if I can bring my bike inside, and never lock up on the street, and my bike would probably never get stolen, but to me that’s not a worthy trade. I’d rather not live in fear. I’ve had bottles stolen off my bike, but I continue to leave them on there when I lock up, because that extra step and extra paranoia just isn’t worth it to me.

A note on garages #

Garages are rough, and at least in San Francisco, are often a target for bike theft. If you want to do something about that, you can sink a rack or anchor into your garage floor, and lock to that. Or just bring your bike inside and stop treating it like a 1920’s dog. If you’re cold, it’s cold, bring it inside.

taken from the suicide lane

The list:

1. Decade of Fire
2. The Last Black Man in San Francisco*
3. Pissing out Cancer*
4. The Pruitt-Igoe Myth
5. Bill Cunningham New York > we are here <
6. Radiant City
7. Dark Days
8. Mossville: When Great Trees Fall

*: Not a doc

Decade of Fire #

Decade of Fire takes a look at the burning of the Bronx in the 70’s. Between 1970 and 1980, 7 census tracts in the South Bronx lost 97% of their housing stock.¹ The South Bronx burned for a decade, and politicians did nothing to stop it (in fact, they made it worse). The dominant narrative is that the poor, Black and Brown residents of the South Bronx were just too stupid, lazy, degenerate, etc. to take care of their neighborhoods, but anybody who doesn’t have a cross burning hobby should be able to recognize that that’s bullshit. Decade of Fire is a narrative documentary story told by Vivian Vázquez Irizarry as she investigates what really happens. It’s incredible. Please watch it, it will break your heart and fill you with hope.

We loved it. The story of hope that it ends with is beautiful, of community organizations that started up fixing up burnt out buildings after the fires still around, still fighting for a Bronx for everyone. The manor in which the burning of the Bronx became a redlining enabled wealth transfer from tax payers to landlords all while housing was destroyed is shocking.

The Last Black Man in San Francisco #

The Last Black Man is so good. It’s beautifully shot, everything is pretty. The imagery is powerful, nostalgic and comforting, all while subtly telling a story of abandonment, gentrification and displacement. The movie opens with a man preaching a gospel of “what the fuck is going on” as men in hazmat suits encounter a normal-clothed little girl in Hunters Point. The second scene places the two main characters, Montgomery and Jimmy on a skateboard together, moving through a city that once was theirs, a city that they helped build, but now feel shunned from. It’s a beautiful story of refusing to cede everything to a gentrifying city. There’s also some beautifully captured Skoda trolleybus sounds in a wonderful bus scene that symbolizes everything Muni is. You should watch it.

By the way, the house is at 959 Golden Gate in the movie, but it’s actually at 959 South Van Ness in real life. Makes sense that they would move it to the Fillmore though. It’s just as beautiful irl.

Pissing Out Cancer #

Pissing Out Cancer is Hank Green’s new standup special on Dropout (the college humor people’s new streaming service). It’s really funny. It’s nerdy in an accessible and hilarious way, and Hank is funny when he’s not catering his output toward children! We needed something fun to break up the mostly sad lineup, and this did a great job.

The Pruit-Igoe Myth #

A devastating and sad documentary about the failure of the Pruitt-Igoe public housing project in St. Louis. The documentary takes a deep, nuanced dive into everything that led up to the failure of the complex, including St. Louis’ catastrophic decline in the white flight era. It’s on my watch-again-and-take-more-notes list.

Bill Cunningham New York #

A really really really fun doc about Bill Cunningham, the Times’ street fashion columnist. He lived a life full of bicycle joy and had a pretty un-classist view of fashion. He seemed like such a cool guy. Please please please watch this it will bring you so much joy if you like bikes or photos or clothes or cool old guys.

Radiant City #

> we are here <

Dark Days #

Mossville: When Great Trees Fall #

I want to contribute to what I think was the best era of the Internet, at least topologically. I think that the era of the blog is due for a renaissance, and I think personal sites are the only way for the Internet to truly become a tool that uplifts and enables the better parts of humanity. Writing that last sentence really makes me wish that Steven Pinker wasn’t associated with the phrase “better angels of our nature.”

There’s a contradiction here, and I want to recognize it: the way I gained an audience for my bullshit expression was through Twitter. I personally have benefited from platform capitalism. I was pretty good at Twitter, and became somewhat of a local persona in the transit scene in the Bay Area. It is possible to build a network and find online community without using Twitter or Facebook or Instagram, but it’s a lot harder, and I did not do it. I wish I had though.

I’m thinking a lot about this as I prepare to move to a new city where I only have a couple of friends. Luckily, I’ll be at a university, and have all of the opportunities to form community that that brings, but I’m attending a small university, and I may struggle to find enough people with shared interests and beliefs to be satisfied.

I have a lot of things going for me here. I’m a core part of a bike shop with a community around it (don’t call it a third space, that guy sucked¹), and I was a well known figure in the local online transit/urban-interested scene. I won’t have either of those in New York, and that makes me nervous.

I have very good friends there, and I love them dearly, but I do not share many interests with most of them. Our friendships are built more on shared experiences and existing trust. Friends are amazing, but a community they do not make.

This was supposed to be a piece about how it’s kind of annoying to build a web 1.0 style website with modern technology, but I seem to have had more important things on my mind. I’ll end the teenage angst here and move on. Meat below the fold.

Running 11ty with --serve

Stack #

I’m going to get this out of the way because it’s the thing most people are probably curious about. This site is statically generated using 11ty. The content is written in Markdown files, and the built static site is served from Cloudflare Pages.²

In the past I used to do a bunch of processing on images and store them in an R2 bucket and serve them out of that and a bunch of complicated shit. I don’t do that anymore. Images are resized at build time. I’ve extended the Markdown image syntax so that I can keep everything in pure-ish markdown.

Images used to look like this:

{% image "DSC_6396_16x9.jpg" "Close crop of buildings in downtown Manhattan" "Natalie (shot), Vallery Lancey (edit)" %}

I was using a custom 11ty tag called image, which ran a bunch of code to pull from the cdn, process an image, and then generate the html for it using eleventy-image. It was a mess, was slow, and didn’t work that well. It took me over a week to get it working. It also meant that my markdown files were not actually compatible with any other renderer, which is super annoying, because it meant I couldn’t use a Markdown optimized text editor, had to rely on building my site to see what things would look like, and it made it annoying to bring writing in and out of Logseq, a dealbreaker on it’s own.

I also had a bunch of friends ask me to build them websites like mine, and I didn’t feel good making them set up git lfs and navigate my weird image workflow, which required running a build on a dev machine before pushing it to production. Now, all someone needs to know is basic Markdown and they’re ready to write.

My new image syntax looks like this:

![Workers on the tracks at Coney Island—Stillwell Av::edit: Vallery Lancey::1920](DSC_7087.jpeg)

Which becomes:

edit: Vallery Lancey

All the information my code needs is in the markup for the image, and if someone were to render my files elsewhere, images would still show, just with a little extra information. Additional arguments are tossed into the alt text/caption area, separated by double colons ::. I accomplished this by setting the image parser in Markdown-it to a custom function.

![Caption::?Credit::?Width](source)

Width is optional, I only use to downscale huge images. I plan to augment this system at a later point to add PDF and video support using the same syntax. Right now my image optimization is rudimentary, but it can easily be scaled up in the future for a more performant client experience.

I can edit the site from my phone now (or any other device), and add images whenever I please. Now that the workflow sucks a little less, I feel comfortable deploying versions of this site for my less code-savvy friends, success! I’m going to be making a website for my friend’s photography soon. It’s my first web design client work in a long time, and I’m excited about it!

Kamerafoto #

After a bit of a slump, I’m mostly back to every day camera carry, which has been nice. A couple months back I got a Peak Design Slide Lite strap, and it’s made every day carry a lot more comfortable. Is it worth $60? If a camera strap can be worth $60 dollars, this is definitely the one, but I’m not convinced that a strap can be worth that. I’m also upset that I bought it a couple months before they released everything in a tan color. I’m stuck here with boring grey :(.

I’ve also got a PD bag. I got a good price on the smaller of their sling bags through their marketplace, which is a cool thing for a brand to offer, and I think shows that they really believe their products are meant to last, which is cool, and good for planet! Peak Design people, if you’re reading this, stop making stuff for cars!

The sling bag is perfect. The back handle thing on it holds a U-lock perfectly, and with my 35mm prime on the camera, I can throw a canned drink where I’d normally have another lens—I read a piece in the latest issue of Calling in Sick arguing that Dr Pepper is the perfect end-of-ride anti-bonk food. All my other camera doodads, plus some Wera wrenches, fit in there too.

I’ve been shooting 95% through my $60 33mm prime from 7Artisans. I love it. I’ve become pretty good at zone focusing, and having a fixed focal length is really nice and makes me zoom with my body. I’ve ditched lens caps after reading How to Leica like a noob who shoots Leica from Harper Reed in favor of shooting through an always-on UV filter, which has little effect on image quality, and means that I never have to think about a lens cap. They’re about $8, so breaking one is far from the end of the world, or even the shooting session. Reed’s post is great, and has a bunch of other valuable little points.

Fuji XT-30 II

I’ve got this little cage/grip thing on the camera. I took the non-grip side off, which helps the camera keep a slimmer profile. I’m liking it so far. The X-T30 is too small for my unfortunately-large hands otherwise.

Cartography #

I’ve been thinking a lot about cartography and map making. I used to make a lot of transit diagram maps, but I’ve since mostly lost interest in that. Now I want to make real, geographic maps. Possibly even as a career. It seems like I’ll need to learn GIS, which I’ll learn in university in the next couple years, and drafting (still not quite sure what this is).

I’m going to attempt to self-teach myself QGIS, in hopes that I can satiate my thirst for cartographic creation until I learn how to do like the pros. I’ve found very little online about how modern maps are actually made.

I believe catalyst to this was a cartographer coming into Scenic Routes. He sold us some of his Marin trails and San Francisco Walking maps. They’re really cool, I think we’re selling them for like $8. I wish I had asked him how he made them, but I didn’t, and we didn’t get any contact info from him.

I have ideas of how one would make a map like that, but I’m not at all confident in them:

1. Survey the subject of the map (how does one survey?)
2. Compile data
3. Use GIS software to plot the data
4. Style that GIS map

I bought a student license more than a year ago for a year of ArcGIS, but lost motivation and got busy with school and other things, and never really learnt much. I’m hoping this time will be different.

I’m not confident this is how it works, or is the best way, and I don’t really know how to do any of those things to begin with. I’m hoping learning QGIS will help me establish some known unknowns. My dream is to make beautiful maps like this one of Ottawa. I also want to learn how to programmatically generate maps. I want to make beautiful and legible geographic bus maps, I want to make maps like Andrew Lynch’s track maps. If you have any tips, or any knowledge, or cool maps, send them to me (email on about)! I want to make maps as a useful tool and as an art.

Dogs! #

My partner and I set out down to Belmont to do some dog and house sitting for a friend of theirs. We got to watch perfect angel Timmy for a couple days.

idk why this photo is such low quality, thanks tim apple

Timmy is a corgi-mix I suspect. He’s 12 or 13, very sweet, and not very trusting. I spent the first day working on earning his trust, and the second day he let me pet him! He likes to be loved, he just doesn’t quite know how to let it happen. Same Timmy, same.

While Timmy-sitting, we popped by our Berkeley friends’ lil birthday party. I got to meet the people my partner grew up around!

Cooking happened.

Pasta was made

Photo: Sam Greenberg, X-T?

Bernie (named after the senator) was met. Bernie lives in Berkeley with his people, and was found while canvasing for my friend Cecilia Lunaparra’s (victorious) campaign for Berkeley city council.

Music, death #

At the beginning of the month, I pulled the plug on my Apple Music subscription. My music library is now made up of things that I own. It feels good. I feel myself developing more meaningful relationships with the music I listen to as a result.

Ripping CDs

Casandra Jenkins is coming to San Francisco right after I move to New York City, and my heart is broken. Somebody on Bandcamp described her music as “better than therapy.” An Overview on Phenomenal Nature was the sound track to grieving Hansel at the shop. We’re coming up on a year without Hansel, and I still cry at least once a week. I hope someday to write about how special of a person they are. I love you Hansel.

This website #

My old blog had a bunch of sections, and I’m not sure that that’s the best way to do it. So for now, this only has one section: posts. I’ve been working on this for the past couple of days. The theme is a little more me, and it’ll hopefully help me write longer-ish form stuff more.

Extra photos #

The bike corral has been filling up lately. And we only had to [REDACTED] Nuru once!

The apartment is starting to feel like home

While writing this I listened to And In The Darkness, Hearts Aglow by Weyes Blood, and The Loneliest Time by Carly Rae Jepsen.

My MO the past ~year has been to add friction to things I want to do less, and take it away from things I want to do more. I’ve distanced myself from social media, and my phone more broadly. In an effort to bring meaning back into music, I cancelled my Apple Music subscription earlier this month in favor of buying and ripping music.

A couple months back, I began a slow-progressing project: gps doohickey. GPS doohickey is a little ESP32 powered GPS logger that I will carry with me everywhere. It will give me a 24/7 GPS trace of my life. It won’t send anything to the cloud, it’ll only sync to my computer at home. It’ll help me accurately and automatically geo-tag photos, replace my phone for Strava, and let me do cool data things. Big data is cool when done on a personal scale and without the involvement of capitalists.

My X-T30 has helped remove yet another dependence on my phone: photos. It’s smaller than my previous camera, a bulky Nikon D3400, it has nicer looking RAWs (less dependence on phone/computer to edit), and it’s comfortable to wear on my back for hours at a time. My favorite Chicago Camera store, Central Camera, didn’t carry it, and my local camera store has been closed for a couple years, so I went against my moral intuition and ordered it with an 18-55mm Fuji lens from B&H. B&H, being the climate arsonists that they are, charges you more for non-2-day shipping, so I figured what the hell and ordered it to our hotel.

While waiting for my Fuji to arrive, I shot my last couple days of photos on my Nikon. When I got home, I gave it to my partner. It’s brought me a lot of joy to see it bring them joy lately. They’ve been using it for a multimedia class they’re taking.

Nikon D3400

A farewell, of sorts.

My Fuji arrived, and I began shooting on it. I fell in love immediately. Walking Chicago’s magnificent mile, and photographing my favorite building ever (Carbon and Carbide) was amazing. I love this camera.

The thing I photographed the most on that trip was the archway off of the main hall at Union Station. Above boring, 1990s looking sliding glass doors soars a beautiful wall of stone, the bottom row etched with “To All Trains”. A couple months later, Steve Albini would die, and Shellac would publish To All Trains, with a photo of that very same sign as the cover art.

From my notes on June 7th:

I was introduced to Shellac only after the death of Steve Albini, who seemed like a cool guy. I walked into the shop and Jay and Joel where playing a Shellac record and told me Steve Albini had died. That night Jay sent me a couple TikToks of interviews with Albini, and I began to slowly explore their discography. To All Trains was released shortly after Albini’s death, and I’m really enjoying it. Scabby The Rat is my favorite song on the album right now.

On that trip, I lost my headphones. I used my AirPods and Loop earplugs on the trains home——we took the Empire Builder and Starlight——and didn’t notice until I unpacked. I’ve been mourning them since. They feel like the last missing piece in my puzzle to enjoy music more meaningfully. I miss them.

I’m saving up for new headphones right now, but good Bluetooth headphones with noise cancelling are expensive. I’ve been researching and reading reviews, and so far my front runners are Sony WH-1000XM4s (what I had) or Sony WH-1000XM5’s. The XM5s sound a bit better, but are pricier, and I don’t trust that the hinge won’t break. I want headphones that sound good, have good noise cancelling because I’m going off to college (consensus seems to be that Sony’s WXM line is best), comfortable, and have the ability to listen over wire, as I plan to eventually build my own mp3 player. If you have opinions, I want to hear them. email me.

Lately, I’ve been listening to:
Kind of Blue, Miles Davis;
The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, David Bowie;
Wusul, Shay Hazan;
To All Trains, Shellac;
BRAT, Charli XCX

My workflow #

I use Logseq for all information management, and for planning my days. I still use Google Calendar, but only for events, days I’m working, etc. Everything else lives in Logseq. I have a big list of tasks, and I’ll use Logseqs built in schedule command to schedule them for dates, or just let them sit in the list. I lean heavily on Daily Journals. I have a template with the following sections: agenda, schedule, notes, and inbox. These sections come from a forum post on the Logseq forum (can’t find it), though I’m making some of my own changes.

Agenda #

Links to my daily writing (if I do it that day), what I’m reading, and what music I’m listening to. I log documentaries and other stuff under reading too. I also pick 3 major (> 30 min or intellectually/emotionally hard) tasks for the day (from my running tasks list), and throw in minor tasks too.

Schedule #

Not the same as Agenda. I throw non-task things that are happening today in there, like seeing friends, work, etc.

Notes #

Where notes from the day go. Thoughts, feelings, information, whatever, everything. I tag and link as much as I can, and I can always prune later, but I’d rather be over connected than under. This is where I put notes on what I’m reading/listening/watching today. Eventually those will get moved into a page for the piece if need be.

Inbox #

This section I don’t really use. The idea is that I would assign future things from here, but I just use my big tasks page for that, so I’ll probably remove this section.

Every online article I read, I read through Omnivore, which a fantastic all in one read-it-later/rss-feed eater/reader app. There’s an Omnivore Logseq plugin that syncs all my notes on pieces in Omnivore into my Logseq graph, so I can mention articles I’ve read and block embed quotes and my notes.

I’m trying to use my phone less (post about how soon i promise!), so I carry around a little notebook every day. I use that as my brain dumping ground, note taking space and whatever else I need it to be during the day. At night I dump anything worth keeping into Logseq. I have a little leather wallet carrier thing that has my notebook + a pen loop and some cash and card space. It goes everywhere with me. A 48 page Moleskin Cahier lasts me about 3 weeks. I haven’t figured out a good way to get notes off of my Kindle, so I’ve just stopped taking notes on it, and started using my notebook or taking them right into logseq, which is kind of annoying. If you have a better solution pls help.

I’m still figuring out a way to publish out of my graph. Obsidian was far better for this with Obsidian Publish, but I much prefer and rely on Logseq and it’s features, which makes Obsidian Publish not an option. I may experiment with using Obsidian Publish on Logseq graphs.

This has been working fantastic for me. I feel far more on top of things, less forgetful, more thoughtful, and my memory feels stronger.

Note to the editor: you can take my em dashes from my cold dead hands.

In (online)² communities, often a kind of petty tyranny emerges in people that it might not be expected to. This is something I have noticed on both ends, as a community member as a moderator.

In online communities, moderation actions generally do not have an equal and opposite reaction. The moderator is largely immune from the protest of the moderated. This is because the moderator both has total control of access to themselves (ie user can’t protest), and because [[It’s easy to not feel bad for people far away]].

This, as well as computers and digital social interfaces, make moderation actions that would be socially difficult in meatspace easy online. It is unsurprising that some people abuse power, this happens everywhere, but it seems to happy to more people in online communities, especially those who might not otherwise be susceptible to patterns of dickishness.

1. It is exceedingly easy to mute, kick or ban someone from a Discord server, it’s a lot harder to ask a friend who has stepped over the line to leave your home. The immediate social repercussions are largely removed for the moderator. Usually, you don’t even have to hear or see their reaction.
2. Social media is largely designed to encourage conflict.
3. Online communities that parallel meatspace communities tend to attract people who are not as comfortable in meatspace.

I think 1 and 3 are a particularly vicious combo. I have seen people who would only tell somebody to shut up in extreme situations in meatspace mute people without warning online. Anecdotally³, the people most active in online communities, especially communities where meatspace counterparts exist, tend to be more socially awkward, or otherwise do not do as well in meatspace social interactions. Before I came out of my shell, this was me. I struggled in meatspace social interaction, feeling out of control of social situations. Being a moderator of an online community was the exact opposite. Not only was there a bias for people to be agreeable to me because of the power dynamic, my barrier to action against behavior I didn’t like was far lower. In 2017 I would never have told somebody to fuck off in meatspace, but had no problem muting, kicking and banning people online. Obviously, the correct space to be behavior wise was somewhere in between, but I was swinging between the two as I swung between meatspace and online. This is something I’ve worked a lot on, though transitioning has also improved my security in social situations, which was largely the root of the problem.

I think point 2 is also important, and exacerbates the problems of 1 and 3. Take for example Discord, where functions that punish a user are shiny red buttons, vs the default gray. Combine that with the fact that it feels good to moderate when we’re told our job is moderation, and you have a recipe for petty tyranny.

Solutions #

I can only think of two solutions:

1. Therapy for everyone (half-joking).
2. Better systems.

In order to build communities that can scale, it is critical to understand and embrace building systems to account for the undesirable parts of human behavior. In online communities, this can look like requiring moderators to put reasons on all moderation actions (IME: works very well), and those reasons should be monitored by other moderators and admins. Some communities choose to make this moderation log public, all the power to them.

Another solution is harder to implement, but works fantastic in conjunction with moderation reasons: open discourse among the moderation team (bonus points if they talk to regular users who are important to the community as well). I moderated an online community that had both of these things, and we had relatively little problems, far less than similar communities without these practices. We received praise from community members and our mod team was largely popular, and enjoyed a friendly rather than hostile relationship with the community.

It’s also worth saying that [[Strong communities self moderate]], to an extent. But building strong community requires moderation.

a retelling of a weird moment that happened that when my friend rose and i visited our other friend aviv in massachusetts last spring.

It’s a warm saturday evening. We’re getting back to Lowell late. Everything is closed except this one establishment. So we gamble. We order online from the commuter rail as it trundled slowly into the North Billerica station. As we alight the cozy softly lit train to the harshly lit platform. We’re feeling optimistic. We hop into Aviv’s car, and they drive us down the quiet roads of Lowell. They drop us off at the Chinese restaurant on an old-town-y feeling road. Most of the shops are shuttered, but we can imagine the warmth that spills out of them during the day when they’re open, how they animate the street. Aviv drives off back to their building just a couple blocks away, and says they’ll meet us there.

Rose and I look at the restaurant, look at each other, shrug, and walk across the street. Rose goes in first and talks to a waiter, explains that we’re picking up an order.

As I walk in I’m awash in unexpected sensory inputs. To my left is a 4 man band of older white men, playing rock from the 60s-80s. Think John Melloncamp. Center left is a bar, tended by a middle aged friendly looking Chinese guy. He’s talking with customers at the bar with an understanding smile on his face.

After waiting about midway deep in the restaurant behind the barstools but in front of the empty seating area, I approach a waiter to ask if they have a restroom. He says yes, and gestures next to the band. I walk in front of the band, who at this point is performing a rendition of some John Melloncamp sounding song. They’re not talented enough to pull off the keyboard or drums for Tom Petty’s Running Down A Dream, but if they were, they totally be playing it at this moment. I smile an apologetic smile as I walk in front of them to get to the bathroom door. I open the door expecting a single stall, but instead I’m in a small hallway, with a door at the left end with a USPS logo that says “USPS employees only.” I figure oh, they share a bathroom with USPS, makes sense, both are small buildings. I turn to my right to find the ladies room. Expecting written labels or pictograms, I’m instead greeted by two framed photos on two doors. To the right is an action shot of Tom Brady playing for the New England Patriots. He’s tackling someone and there’s chaos behind him. It’s an idealized portrait of what a man should be on the field. Brave and courageous yet calculating, unstoppable but agile.

I pivot my head left, to the other door. I sigh, reach for the handle and turn it, stepping into bathroom marked as “Marilyn Monroe.”

One advantage of taking the Thruway bus instead of BART: the view.

Lot’s of nice scenes riding this month.

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

We got these adorable hats in, they’re Adam’s hats, which we’ve loved for a long time.

Fuji X-T30 II

It feels like the Page Slow St Parklet gets cuter every day, I love the guerilla yarn bombing going on in the city, curious to see how this stuff will hold up with our humid (read: foggy) climate.

Fuji X-T30 II

Happened upon this adorable minivelo in Hayes Valley while heading to the Peak Design store to warranty my Mobile case and pick up a Slide Lite for my new Fuji X-T30 II before date night at Delfina.

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

And a customer has a bike with the same paint scheme as Blueberry, though it’s a 1420, not an 1100.

Fuji X-T30 II

We’ve got some funny stickers in. The yellow stickers are meant to cover the MIPS label on helmets. Vibes at the shop have been great, it’s been nice to chill out and get into a focus state working on a bike.

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

We’ve got this awesome contraption in right now. It was brought from India, and requires zero cables or housing. The brake system is fully rigid, which I think is super cool. These Bheem bikes are really popular in India because they’re reliable, low maintenance, and cheap.

Fuji X-T30 II

Fuji X-T30 II

The headless horsemen. We’re building up the red and purple hardrock for my friend Noelani!

Fuji X-T30 II

Maddie came by! Check out her beautiful new Mash in in the latest issue of Calling In Sick mag.

Fuji X-T30 II

What is a feed #

Feeds (often called RSS feeds) are just a standardized, machine readable way for websites to tell other software what content is available. If you use some kind of news reader app (Google Reader (RIP)), you’re already using them. If not, reader/read-it-later apps are awesome.

Omnivore, my app of choice, has changed the way I consume writing on the Internet, and helped me read more. I’m not the best person to tell you why you should use a read it later/feed reader app, there are plenty of people with stronger opinions about that on the Internet if you want that.

How to get started #

Use an app like Omnivore (free, open source, my choice), Feedly (freemium), Inoreader (freemium).

Find the feeds for the blogs/websites you want to follow (there’s a link in the footer of this website). Copy it, and add it as a feed to your reader app. Sometimes they can be hard to find, most WordPress blogs have a link to a general feed and a comments feed on the sidebar (you want general), and others have it somewhere else. Usually a command+f for feed or rss on the homepage is enough to find it, if not, ask the author!

I just learned you can follow Mastodon accounts from your feed reader too!

Once or hour or so, your app will check my websites feed to see if there’s anything new, if there is, it’ll put it into your reading list. I don’t do emails when I post or have any kind of sign up, because I think that’s annoying, I don’t want to handle or have your data, and it doesn’t let you choose how you consume my posts.

Everything that isn’t a book I now read through Omnivore. Check out what I’m reading and enjoying at my books and stuff pages!

If that’s too much for you, I’ll still be on Mastodon for the time being. Find me @natalie@sfba.social, or follow an RSS feed of that account here!

If you’re interested in having a blog (you should be!), I’ll be writing about that soon. More people should have blogs!

I miss the corners of the internet where you’d Google some niche thing and one person with a blog had already written about it. You’d go look at it and they’d have shown their homework and given it to you without watching two minutes of video first or showing you a bunch of ads. These corners still exist and it’s still possible and I’d like to be a part of it — sharing knowledge under the premise of “from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.”
—Emily Horsman’s Bike Stuff about page

Discovery #

If you rely on Twitter or any platform social media to discover new things, and think you can’t leave because of that, I encourage you to try Marginalia, a search engine focused on blogs and the non corporate internet. There are so many people writing interesting things out there.

The Last Fire Season is a mix of personal narrative and the history of fire, settler colonial land practices in California, and an ode to gardening. It helped me think more clearly about my relationship to California: knowing that the state is founded upon and still perpetrates incredible evils, but also loving it, the land and people it represents.

This book played a large part in the inspiration for the planting/tending metaphor on this site, and my ideas of digital gardening.

My sense of what it looks like to crack and transition is rather weird, because I spent a couple years between cis and binary-transness thinking I was an enby. This book really complicated the idea of gender fluidity for me, in a way that I can’t put into words but have really appreciated.

I ride too fast. I get sweaty on every ride. This is avoidable. Two of my three bikes (Blueberry and Shrimp) are pretty aggressive drop bar bikes for zooming. I need to ride slower. I’m calling this transition Speed Reassignment Surgery. I have a third bike, named Burrito, it is the solution to my problems. I’m going to talk about that bike.

I built this bike in January of 2023. It was originally named Burrito, because, like a small donkey, it could carry lots of things. At the time, my only other bike was my Trek 1100, Blueberry, which couldn’t carry a ton, and didn’t feel great doing it.

Originally, I ran a Velo Orange Porteur rack. Eventually, I decided this was too big, and switched to a Constructeur rack with a 137 basket. This was ideal. I could easily throw my Tunitas 137 Basket Tote (made in San Francisco!) in and go. This was my every day commuter, and my do everything bike. Frequently during breaks between classes, I would ride from school in the Haight into Golden Gate Park, or up Mt Sutro or Twin Peaks.

It’s a fantastic bike. It’s comfortable, it can do anything. It has 2300 miles on it (actually more, I went about a month without logging anything on Strava while riding a lot last summer), and I love it dearly.

This bike has taken me to some of the most beautiful places, up Mt Tam, home, along the Vancouver Sea Wall, to peaceful redwoods (my favorite place), the stunning Pacific Ocean ecosystems of western Marin.

It’s got ample gearing on the high and low end, it’s indestructible, it’s comfortable, it’s reliable. It can do anything.

So why haven’t I been riding it? The real answer is that I don’t know, but I have some ideas.

I took the front rack off last year (I don’t quite remember why), and that really hurt the usefulness of the bike. Then I rehabbed my Trek roadbike and started riding that more (lighter, more convenient in the city, faster). I got addicted to speed working as a messenger, and it’s time to ride slow again.

I want to appreciate the places I ride, the people I pass, the smells I smell. I need to go slow.

I want to pick up more food, run more errands, find more cool things, and carry it all in my basket. I want to bring picnics to Golden Gate Park and firewood and a blanket to Ocean Beach. I want to ride with my friends. I need to go slow.

As part of this transition, Burrito is going to get powdercoated. Gone is boring gray, all hail RAL 3015.¹ I’m going to put the Constructeur and 137 basket back on. I’m going to more it even more upright, even more comfortable. I’m going to lower the gearing. I’m going to use the messenger bag less and the basket more. I’m going to live slower.

Oh and I’ll probably build a dynamo wheel.

Thanks for reading my ode to slowness and bike bio for Burrito. If you’ve got adivce or ideas for my speed reassignment surgery, email me. me+blog@natalie.lol.

From learning to read in kindergarten until about 6th grade, I was a huge reader. I couldn’t be torn away from books. My mom would often find me asleep with a book in hand and the light still on. My favorite place at school was the library, and I would often finish a book per day.

I credit the Internet, depression, and ignorance for taking my ability to read. I don’t mean I became illiterate, but I become unable to sit through a book without being forced to (and even then, I usually didn’t do it). I didn’t read a single book on my own during high school.

Only since I started my gap year have I been able to return to reading for pleasure. Something which I dearly missed. It wasn’t that I wasn’t trying, but I just didn’t have the bandwidth to retrain my brain to sit through long things.¹

What happened #

I think my losing my ability to read came mostly from frying my attention span. I started to become really online after 7th grade, and become a heavy social media user. I spent most of high school off of ADHD meds (which I had been taking since 1st grade), and so I was already running a dopamine deficit, which made building new (healthy) habits really hard.

I tried many times to get back into reading, and failed every time. I felt immense guilt for having lost such a valuable skill, and it was cause for a lot of self loathing. This really sucked, and was the last thing my depressed, unsure self needed. I think being able to read would have both really helped me do better in school (another pain point) and discover my queerness faster.

The only long-form content I consumed was video essays,² because they were what could hold my attention. Frequently I would get burnt out on YouTube, Netflix, etc, and nothing would do the trick.

What has worked #

Since graduating, I’ve tried again to get back into reading, and I’ve been successful. It’s been awesome. Hopefully this can be useful to other people experiencing the same thing.

I started with shorter, easier, things. I reread The Great Gatsby, which I loved when I read it in class, on the Coast Starlight, and I really enjoyed it. Then I moved on to longer, unknown stuff. My friend gifted me The Topeka School by Ben Lerner, and I loved it. For a while, I was working as a bike messenger, so I had lots of time to listen to things, and I started listening to The Power Broker (the audiobook is 70 hours!), and I loved it. I ended up riding more just to listen to it more.³

The Power Broker was big for me, I didn’t think I would have been able to get through any nonfiction for a long time. After that, I picked up some queer books from Green Apple Books (support your local bookstores! Green Apple is even union!), and sped through them. Then I started reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, and loving it. After that, my mom gave me a Kindle, which was a game changer. I always carry it with me (its home is a pocket in my bag), and I read whenever I have downtime away from home (the bus, waiting rooms). I also gamified reading just a little bit, with Goodreads,⁴ but that and the ease of getting ebooks made me start too many books, many of which I had to ax from my reading list. Still though, now I’m reading multiple fiction and non-fiction books at once, and enjoying it.

Recently, I’ve started making heavy use of Omnivore, a read-it-later+feed-consumer app. I dump anything that looks interesting into there, and now instead of scrolling on my phone during downtown, I read. It syncs my progress across devices, has a nice distraction free reader, lets me follow a ton of feeds.⁵

I’ve recently added a books section to my new blog (this), here. I’m working on getting everything from the old site over to there.

Takeaways #

This has been a lot of yapping and rambling. Here’s some of my takeaways that I hope are helpful.

• Slight gamification helps in the beginning, but ditch it ASAP.
• Read things that you’re actually interested in (this seems obvious, but it’s so important)
• Start easy, build up (but always have something easy to fall back on)
• Having multiple things going at once is helpful as long as they’re spread across difficulty levels. Being able to say “oh The Second Sex sounds a little dense for me right now” and still have something to read is great, and helps build the reading habit.

Emily Horsman

This is my first new bike. I got the Crust Lightning Bolt frame for free because it was dented and we didn’t want to sell it. It’s 52cm, and black with rainbow sparkles, it’s awesome. This is the first new-frame bike I’ve owned, my other bikes, my Mt Fuji and my Trek 1100 are both older used frames that didn’t come to me new. It was shocking how easy things went together, and reminded me that in the year-ish since I built my Fuji, I actually have learned a lot! The build took about 6 hours, down from a week last year!

The wheels are some 650bs we had laying around the shop, and the stem and bars are from our used parts, though I’m probably going to swap to wider bars.

The drivetrain is a mostly new mix of stuff. I’m running a 9 speed Shimano Altus RD-M370-SGS rear derailleur and an older used Shimano derailleur¹ up front. I’m running a CN-HG53 chain over a 9 speed 11-34 microSHIFT H09 cassette and a 42-26t New Albion crankset. I’m running that all in friction with downtube Dia Compe shifters, having only one piece of 4mm housing is glorious.²

I built this bike right before storm season hit the Bay Area, and it’s been a rainy one. I’m running VO Zeppelin fenders, which I love the look of. Those limit me to 38mm tires, which is fine, as I’ve still got my Fuji with 2.1s. I’m running GravelKing slicks.

Cockpit #

I have reason to believe that I’ve perfected the cockpit, at least in layout. I’d like to get some wider bars (only by a couple cm), I feel like I’m missing a little bit of leverage compared to Blueberry, but switching bars isn’t a big deal since I’ve got rewrappable Grepp tape, in pink of course. I love my Outershell drawcord bar bag (made in San Francisco!), and the draw cord normally wouldn’t work will with a quill stem, but it works perfectly with my Peak Design Out-Front Bike Mount, mounted upside down. This way I can access my phone³ and still open the bag. The bag comfortably fits my Cleverhood, some snacks, my phone, AirPods, keys and whatever else I have in my pockets. I’ve got a Spurcycle bell snuggled in there too. I’m saving up for a dynamo, but in the mean time I run a battery light strapped to a fork blade or on the bars.

4/16: I’m thinking about eventually moving to bar ends for more comfort and chill riding.

I’m using Tektro RL520 levers, I dont love them, but my options are very limited by my awesome and cheap brakes, Shimano BR-T4000 V brakes. They’re cheap, they have insane stopping power (I can lock out my rear wheel with two fingers with stock pads). The only downside is that being long-pull severly limits drop bar options.

Another reason I want to go a little wider with my bars is a basket. I love basket life, and a Wald 137 wont it between my current bars. My aim for this bike is for it to be my everyday bike, and it needs to be able to carry stuff. Once I’ve got a basket on it, Blueberry can fully become my carry nothing ride fast goof around bike.

6/26: I’ve since switched to wider handlebars that let me get away with a Tanaka half basket. I normally think half baskets are a roadie-esque dumb “weight saving” thing, but I’m glad they exist now. I’m going to switch to wider bars (or go flat) so I can fit a full 137.

Contact points #

I swear by Diety Deftraps. They’re my favorite pedals I’ve ever ridden, and I think they look awesome. I’m running a WTB Speed saddle right now, but I might swap it for their Comfort saddle, or try out an Ergon.

Biking in Doc Martens, it can be done (though my usual shoes are Vans)!

So far #

This bike has already taken me on some awesome adventures, and been a joy to ride. It’s a great middleground between the confidence and the speed of my other two bikes, despite a lot of rain, I’ve already put a couple hundred miles on it.

Reading makes the vulcanizing compound set faster.

Would it really be me if I didn’t include a BART shot? Squeezy Bean of course in use.

Hope you enjoyed this at least 10% as much as I enjoy this bike! I’ll write about my other bikes soon, thanks for reading :)

Photo: Emily Horsman

With the Squeezy Bean, you never have to worry about your bike sliding around on BART, falling over with a trailer, or rolling down that hill. Just pull it tight on your brake lever (I usually use the front brake), and you’re good!

We’ve got em, they’re less than a snack and coffee from Cindarella, pop by, grab one, change your life.

They’re made by our awesome friend Sarah Katz-Hymen, and we’ve got a bunch of different colors!

Emily and Ben shenanigans

Also in shop news, 20% of all tire sales this month go to AROC. Free Palestine!

edit: Vallery Lancey

Content warning: this article talks about death (though not in detail). It also talks about acute mental health issues and other potentially upsetting topics. It may be triggering. If you need help, call or text the crisis hotline: 988.

As the Bay Area begins to see more instances of people riding outside of trains, and as I prepare to move to the East Coast (most likely New York City), I’ve been thinking a lot about “subway surfing” and how to stop it (and why the things we’ve tried haven’t worked), and I wanted to put those thoughts into writing.

I hope this piece can help facilitate more conversations about this problem, but it is not a super researched piece. What I will write about here is mostly a collection of my thoughts, and takeaways from my discussions with friends, both inside and outside of the transit industry. If you’re a journalist, or are in the industry, or have thoughts on this, shoot me an email.

“Subway surfing” is the popular term for riding outside of designated passenger areas on trains (roofs, couplers, between cars). This term is problematic in itself. Obviously, this is super dangerous, and the consequences are dire. The last few years have been a substantial uptick in the number of incidents of people riding outside of trains, but the problem isn’t new. Surfing has been documented on the New York City subway. It first emerged as a hobby¹ in New York City (and South Africa) in the 80s. Almost immediately, deaths started happening.

It is the most deadly trend to become popular among youth in a long, long time. Subway surfing involves hundreds of factors outside of ones control. If any of those hundreds of dice roll wrong, the consequences are death or serious injury. Tracks are electrified, tunnel clearances are low or zero, and trains move fast.

Who and why? #

The vast majority of people who subway surf are young, shockingly so. Generally, they are high schoolers or recent high school grads, 15 years old to late twenties, and usually male. An article in Curbed tells the story of a recent high school graduate in New York City who used to surf trains, but stopped after multiple of his friends died surfing.²

Nowhere is this epidemic worse than in New York City, where the MTA tracked more than 450 incidents of individuals riding outside trains just between January and June, 2023.³ Though this problem exists elsewhere,⁴ I’m going to be talking a lot about New York City, because nowhere has the problem been more pronounced and the failure to address it more acute.

How we got here #

Despite happening since the 80s, surfing has increased massively in the last couple years. The main driver of this growth has been social media, which has catapulted a formerly niche activity done by those on the fringes of society into a trend. TikTok and Instagram are the main culprits, where subway surfing videos go viral, with dozens garnering millions of views. This virality and the temptation of social clout compel more and more people to take up subway surfing.

(Social) media coverage #

Surfing has become cool,⁵ and as more and kids are seeing their peers do it, and deciding to try themseles, more and people are ending up dead. Often, kids start because they see others doing it on social media. They talk about it at school⁶ and post videos and pictures of themselves doing it on social media (mostly Instagram and TikTok). According to the man interviewed in the Curbed piece, surfing appeals most to kids who have bad home or school lives. He started surfing “to escape ‘issues at home.’”⁷ As the youth mental health epidemic continues to worsen, and as social media continues to amplify videos of surfing, it will get worse and worse, causing more deaths and trauma.

But surfers find both the act itself, and the social media clout they get from it addictive, and get hooked after their first time, says the interviewee.

Another culprit is the media. Nearly every major outlet in New York City has run flashy headlines about surfing. With the press’s help, what was once a niche, unknown hobby has become a commonplace topic of discussion, boosting its reach a thousand-fold. If it weren’t for the press’s careless coverage (and bad faith calls to action) and social media, surfing would not be the epidemic it is today. We’ll talk about the press more later.

What New York tried #

Faced with increasing pressure to do something about subway surfing, the MTA launched a big, loud, flashy campaign of PSAs, outreach, and messaging in September, 2023.⁸ The campaign involves frequent, system-wide PSAs in the subways from kids, trying to make subway surfing seem not cool. They include slogans like “ride inside, stay alive,” “this is the subway, not Coney Island,” and other flashy soundbites. If you’ve ridden the subway recently, you know how annoying these announcements are, and how many eye-rolls they elecit from young riders. Much like the post 2015 anti-vaping ad campaigns, it has been ineffective. Worse: subway surfing incididents have gone up. We know mimicking DARE tactics won’t work,⁹ so why is the MTA doing it?

MTA’s campaign is a response to claims by the mayor and the media that MTA is at fault, and that they aren’t doing anything. Motivated more by wanting to look like they’re doing something than logic, it is failing.

There are a couple reasons MTA’s approach is failing:

1. Kids don’t like to be told “no.”
2. It doesn’t make surfing harder.

Anybody who has ever worked with kids knows that kids don’t respond well to being told not to do something by an authority figure. Being told no only makes them want it more. It becomes rebellious and edgy to go against what you’re told. This approach makes subway surfing seem cool. This DARE-style “just don’t do it” approach that relies on scare tactics doesn’t work,¹⁰ and represents a failure to target this kind of messaging at the people it needs to reach. The content of this campaign might be reassuring to the people who want something to be done, but they fail to reach the people who really matter: surfers. Most kids know not to surf, and the ones who are brave enough to try feel challenged, not dissauded. They know it’s dangerous, to them, that’s part of the appeal and pointing it out is useless at best and counterproductive at worst.

It is possible to reduce the amount of people surfing through effective, carefully planned, targeted outreach, but this is not that.

The fact that this messaging won’t positively impact the people who surf, and the fact that MTA hasn’t introduced any new physical barriers to surfing (while increasing awareness of it among kids!) explain this campaign’s ineffectiveness.

What is there to be done? #

It feels like a bleak situation. Aside from funding and staffing, surfing is arguably the biggest problem facing large and mid-size transit agencies in the U.S. right now. But there are things that can be done.

Making surfing uncool, not taboo #

As long as subway surfing remains something that “the man” is telling kids not to do, it’ll continue to be cool to do it. It’s a fine line to straddle, but subway surfing needs to be made uncool instead of taboo.

Transit agencies should adopt better detection and reporting methods. If a train crew is made aware of someone riding outside the train, the train should stop and discharge all of its passengers at the next station. Announcements should be made informing passengers that the train is being taken out of service due to people riding outside the train (it can go back into service at the next stop). This will make passengers angry. It’ll make subway surfing seen as more of an antisocial behavior, and it will become stigmatized and uncool. It’s hard to feel cool after making 1,000 people mad at you because you messed up their commute. Another benefit to taking trains out of service is sending the message that if you are caught surfing this train, you will not be able to continue surfing this train.

Secondly, agencies need to be much more careful about their messaging. Snarky PSAs like those played on loop by MTA are counterproductive, and make kids want to rebel. If anti-surfing PSAs are going to be deployed, they should be short and succint: “riding outside of subway cars causes delays.” They should be not be patronizing or able to be seen as a challenge by potential surfers.

Responsible journalism #

The media has played a big role in creating this problem, and it needs to behave more responsibly for things to get better. The media reports on subway surfing a lot like they report on school shootings: incorrectly. They describe in detail the actions of surfers, they include pictures and video of surfing, they use the term “subway surfing”¹¹ incessantly, they include pictures and names of people who do it. They lionize surfers and give them noteriety, which only makes more people surf more often. If you’re a reporter or an editor, here’s what you can do:

1. No flashy headlines.
2. Avoid talking about surfing when reporting on surfing fatalities. Simply say that somebody died after riding outside a train.
3. Avoid lionizing surfers, both dead and alive.
4. Never show photo or video of people surfing.
5. Don’t blame the transit agencies. This kind of pressure causes reactions like NYMTA’s, which is reactionary and a failure.
6. Highlight the delays and trauma caused to operators and other passengers.

Physical deterrence #

In New York and the Bay Area, people often surf by climbing onto trains from within the space between cars. Fortifying these gangways so that they’re harder to climb out of, and in the long term, acquiring fully sealed, open gangway trains like the R211T where getting from the inside to the outside of the train is nearly impossible.

Agencies should invest in better detection systems to detect people riding outside of trains sooner. If at all possible, remove things that allow people to climb onto trains, fortify gangways, make train roofs slippery. In San Francisco, Muni can invest in coupler-covers to shield the couplers on the front and back of their LRVs.

Social media moderation #

The biggest piece in this puzzle is social media. Currently, social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, do little to nothing to quell the surge of surfing and conquesting videos. I’ve reported such posts hours after they were posted. By the time Instagram even responded to my report (deciding not to do anything), the videos had been shared and reposted multiple times and racked up thousands of views. We know Instagram and TikTok are capable of fast, effective deplatforming of certain topics, as is evidenced by their ability to censor pro-Palestinian content with high accuracy.

By the time Instagram responded to my appeal to their decision to not remove the post, removing the post, the video had gained hundreds of thousands of views. This is typical for surfing videos. Unfortunately, in the case of the most recent trackside fatality on BART, two large Bay Area focused Instagram accounts reposted the initial surfing videos, encouraging the young poster to keep doing it.

Peer-to-peer #

Kids aren’t responsive to “the man” telling them no. If they’re going to hear it, it needs to come from people their age who they will find relatable. Kids who lose friends to surfing should be given a platform to talk to other kids.

Thanks for reading. If you have thoughts, or are an agency/journalist, you can get in touch with me by email.

“you just have to watch the first 4 seasons and then it gets good” as a book, but it’s so worth it —me, december 2023