About a year ago, I wrote this post about continuous glucose monitors , that’s sorta ‘part 1’ of these two parts. Since then, and parallel to this most recent time with the sensor, I’ve encountered improvements to the ecosystem. The sensor technology is way better, as is the app/rendering of the data. The long story and comparison between the new system and the old the technology has gotten way…
author’s note: This is a story about an demonstration I filmed. I demonstrated a proof-of-concept for ‘intersection repair’. Lots/most intersections are broken in many ways. They don’t work very well, at least some of the time, for some of the users. Like anything broken, it can be repaired. I’ve got an interesting-to-me approach to repairing a broken intersection. Traffic cones are the main tool,…
Introduction I live quite close to this park in Denver, Cheesman Park. Last year, I wrote something about accessing the Botanic Gardens from Cheesman . A few months later I updated it, noting that I’d found mushrooms in the park and began feeding them to the fish. I also regularly am in the park doing these barefoot hill sprint things The koi fish obviously love the mushrooms, I’ve fed them to the…
Introduction I’ve long liked to accrue certain lists of things I like within certain categories. to list appreciable books invites a similar list for movies and movie-like things. It feels strange to list all of these movies like this, in some ways, especially the first two documentaries, juxtaposed against some of the other recommendations I have around here. Some of these shows I found or…
Introduction As is common for how I write these posts, this began as a few pages of paper notes, collected across weeks and months. This is a list of words and phrases and sentiments I find myself using around Eden, and a list of some words and sentiments I never use around Eden. I noticed, for instance, that I don’t say ‘nice work’ or ‘good job’, and many, many other people DO say those things in…
still sorta drafty, but also its entirely possible the point is easily apprehended, and I’m way over-explaining Introduction Elsewhere, I’ve been referring to a ‘vehicles per square meter per minute’ calculation, when talking about junctions on mobility networks. The first place was this substack piece, A Pattern of Repair: The Traffic Bean , then again in depth in The Traffic Bean: An Idea…
I’ve had a bunch of notes floating around related to Studio Ghibli, a production studio started by Hayao Miyazaki . If you like movies, or have kids, and have not yet encountered Studio Ghibli, you’re welcome. I first encountered Studio Ghibli in 2020. Their first film was released in 1984, there’s now 22 films they’ve made. I’ve seen nearly all of them. Studio Ghibli first written sometime in…
Introduction still sorta drafty I find that at some level, nearly everyone I know will take actions to protect their head from the environment. A warm hat in the cold, something for shade in the sun. Sunglasses, perhaps, or safety glasses sometimes. Ear plugs here and there. Maybe a mask if they’re sick or in a really noxious environment. Hello, its me. Here’s a collection of thoughts, all of…
Sometimes I’ve told people “I ride with Asian scooter norms.” or “I ride with Taiwanese and Balinese scooter norms”. Here’s what I mean by this statement. a ‘norm’ is ‘something common, accepted, sometimes codified in law, but certainly accepted as ‘right’ or ‘acceptable’ or ‘ethical’. There’s a distinctive vibe on scooters in Bali, and since I’ve spent a bunch of time there (partially because of…
Introduction I’ve long wanted to have a definitive place where I can explain why I keep thinking of/referencing this thing I call, others call, ‘frame control’. Here’s a good-enough concise definition: Frame control: the act of insisting that only one way of seeing something is valid, and using emotional leverage to force others to adopt it. Its often-enough a tactic of control, especially when…
Introduction What makes a skilled sport climbing belay? How would one build trust in a belayer that gives a skilled-enough sport climbing belay? This piece covers: the pinch-and-pump method for feeding ‘clipping slack’ managing the pile of slack before it feeds into the belay device How I use sandbags to balance weight gaps between me and a heavier climber. My routine for efficiently practicing…
Introduction I have two stories that I notice myself telling others, repeating them. I like to write down things I repeat often (or at all). The first story is about someone named Lynn Hill, and a time everyone thought she was attached to a rope. The second story is about some common themes among a certain class of accident, “avalanche accidents/fatalities”. I link emotional safety and physical…
Introduction note: the above reading time is counting towards the word count all the javascript animating this animation , the actual reading time at 250wpm is 25 minutes This whole resource is a collection of threads about this thing called ‘the traffic bean’ and a particularly gnarly junction near me. I live in 16th, this junction is one block north of me and a few miles east of me, 17th &…
Introduction Elsewhere I’ve mentioned “the role of the witness”, been sitting on this as a draft (in my head) for a long time. I absolutely cannot move away from the phrasing: Do not neglect the needful role of the Witness I capitalize Witness, as this is a real “role”, and it’s needed. The context when one finds themselves with this role is that of ‘witnessing mistreatment’. The mistreatment of…
“Traffic Cones and Junction Fixes: A DIY Guide” ? this is very drafty This post is probably best viewed on desktop, with some links opening new tabs, viewed, closed, and then this post returned to. There’s a lot of videos farther down, some of them are tiktoks (sorry) and some of them are youtube videos (that’s not my stuff) and then some of my stuff is also embedded via a service called “Wistia”.…
Introduction Most recent, most interestingly Here’s me placing some cones - this is a thing I do, I wish more people would do, read more/see more on /on-coning I’ll post some videos, and a little description for each. This is my first time using chatGPT to help me edit some images - I gave it stills from the video I took, and asked it to modify the intersection with some given parameters. I think…
Introduction This list of relational anti-patterns started as a draft of a written list in a small notebook I carry with me most of the time. Eventually, I was jotting down notes for both this this particular list and the list on the piece on sadness and grief , and there is certainly overlap. This ‘relational anti-patterns’ list came about when I was overhearing a conversation among a group,…
Introduction this post is very drafty, but has been sitting around getting longer for a few weeks now, so I’m simply posting now and will do some more rounds of cleanup, probably. I’d started writing some of this in a letter to a friend, then noticed that, with a little modification, i’d want to share it with a different friend. Then it kept iterating, once I started down this line of reasoning, I…
alternative titles: yielding isometric mid-thigh pin pulls , isometric deadlift 'holds' for fun and climbing Introduction A few months ago, I began some barefoot sprints up a hill at a local park, and discussed also adding heavy kettlebell swings . My back started feeling great, along with my feet, my legs, the bones and connective tissues and muscles. Truly, i’m now four months in and this is all…
Introduction A few months ago, maybe in November, certainly by December, I began this ‘barefoot sprinting up grassy hills’ thing I’m going about to talk about in detail below. Shortly after I started, I began making use of the kettlebells I’d usually ignored at the gym(s) I have access to. I’ve been dual-tracking in time the two topics in this piece, kettlebell swings and sprints, but because of…
Introduction Yes, peeing. Also called ‘pissing’, or ‘urination/urinating’. I noticed a collection of thoughts emerging in my mind, tied together with a very specific theme. I was pretty grown before I had necessarily encountered any of these things, so if any of this is interesting or relevant to any of you, may it go well for you. Please see todays ten thousand for more context. Also, would you…
Introduction v drafty, but wanted to get this out today. I’m publishing two pieces today, this piece you’re reading now is vastly more important than the other one, but it might be worth the click: On Peeing . It’s very different than this one. I’ve long had a central organizing principal of my life oriented around the concept of “Magic Strings”. A string being defined from the programming point…
Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to someone currently best defined as ‘a young child’. I once wrote a lot about my experiences of things, then took a break, and drafted this blog post on a few pages of yellow legal pad, by hand, brought/edited/extended for the internet here. Write It Now and such. This will end up maybe being a series of…
In the range of the human experience, there’s a lot of possible body modifications one can purchase for oneself. Over the years, I’ve purchased three. LASIK vision correction in ~2016 When I was pretty young, mid-20s, my then-employer placed like a few thousand dollars a year into an HSA account for me, as I switched to a ‘high deductible health plan’, so since it felt like ‘free money’, I decided…
this has been hard for me to write, has been sitting in one draft form or another for months. Finally getting it off the ‘drafts’ list, but only reluctantly. This is far too long for even me to try to read in a single sitting, especially on my phone, so it might be too long for you to try to read on a phone, or at once, too. I sometimes imagine that if I phrase something gently enough or the right…
Introduction Here’s quotes from Spare the Child: The Religeous Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse , by Philip Greven. It was written in 1989, same year I was born, 35 years ago as of 2025. It’s sometimes nice to be able to share quotes with people. Photos of pages from books work only so well. Some books, many books, I’m able to read via my kindle paperwhite + the…
Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s a recent post from the Sportique Scooters instagram: source This is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I once had a vehicle just like this photo. The helmet I used (and still use) is not as charming as this helmet, unforunately, but it…
Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path). this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have to suss it today. the dictionary definition of a polyline is ‘some string that decodes into lat/long pairs that can be…
This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava . It’s not trivial to get, but its interesting data, and you’ll have an abundance of polylines, if you want them. The polyline in question I got from…
this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path Segment One: Voodoo <> Cheesman, down Franklin Pardon my language. “segments”? “paths”? I’m referring explicitly to…
I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself referencing/recommending. Periodically, I refresh this list. It’s changed over the years. I am always reading interesting-to-me books (I count listening to the audiobook as a reading the book, and will mark it as read in my goodreads account ) 1 Some standout favorites, in lists of various orderings: The Art of Not…
note: since writing the following piece, I wrote something of a part 2, discussing in detail the portabella/brown/white mushrooms that grow in the park I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m…
As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to talk about all of it. Also the status of ‘child’ is quite temporary in society , and then perhaps less so in different…
this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy and less would be asked of you if I organized it a bit better. Here’s some starting points, to start conceptualizing his…
What Is “Jaywalking” authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note in my mind, as I write this. Some people might “believe in jaywalking” and view non-car-users as an underclass, and act in such a way that makes this belief manifestly obvious . Other people maybe know something feels off about it ‘being illegal’ to walk across a street, and might ‘simply’ be…
“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience) A ‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the kid we now know as Eden was en route and not yet born. I didn’t think much of it then. Cut forward to 5 days post-birth, Eden and her mom get the first at-home lactation consultant visit, from a lactation consultant affiliated with…
s In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey ; everything and nothing changed. Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid coercing others, only because both parties believed firmly enough that there was a duty for the others to obey .…
This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks. Part two, written about a year later, lives here. The technology has improved & the cost gone down, and other related thoughts based in part on…
author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later! another note: it’s difficult and annoying to view videos embedded from different platforms like tiktok, youtube, so mostly I’ve tried to re-host things on Wistia, so it’s less annoying to try to exit…
It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for 2021, and 2022, no annual review, though not for lack of thinking about it. A three year gap is no better than a two…
Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about parking at TJs. (Can I call it that? Trader Joe’s -> TJ’s?) Here’s a sampling from Reddit:…
Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap with Moses’ rule, but the way Moses wields his power over the mayor is absolute, and defies summarization. The mayor did…
Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at it’s job. But how well does it do it’s job? What is the job of a parking lot, exactly, anyway? The jobs of a parking…
Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicacy, complicity, being complicit/unwilling complicity, domination and oppression. Nobility ethics, colonialism, chattel slavery, supremacy. I’m sorta writing this towards a younger me - maybe if I’d found some of these books floating around when I was in high school, I’d have dodged some of the harm.…
I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful. Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been invited into homes and hearts, and write these words from a place in Seattle that has come to represent respite, friendship,…
As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus . On my website you can find the full text of three of the 12 chapters, so it feels needless to say this book has affected me . I had to do this…
I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much , or openly , or recently , or ever , or some combination thereof). I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent versions of “what’s going on”, because then: everyone has some confidence in at least some shared context Thinking…
please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow giving a nod to the experiences lived by all of us this year? For a variety of reasons, we’ve all had a variety of…
2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “ write it now ”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email. Some of you asked, essentially “what are you actually asking for, josh?”._ I thought about it for a moment, and said…
Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel like I’d have too do too much context-setting to get to what I really wanna write about I’m too sad/depressed/numb to care…