Blog posts and updates from nickyflowers.com
I'd been thinking about the Hank Green Situation again today, and how bizarre his framing of it was: he got addicted to the "level of dopamine" the chatbots were giving him. "Level of dopamine", like, is he getting his blood tested? Does he think knowing the amount would tell him anything? People act like dopamine is some toxic party drug you have to watch out for, lest you get too dependent on…
Product Vendor Output Spawner Yield Supplier Thought Contriver Glut Deviser Stuff Slinger Thing Flinger Pulp Pumper Load Dumper Scrap Chucker Grist Giver I'm a Fucking Downer I'm a Binge Thinner I'm a Big Dipper I'm a Big dipper, big dipper, big dipperrr Big dipper, big dipper, big dipperrr Big dipper, big dipper, big dipperrr Big dipper, big dipper, big dipperrr Nicky Flowers - I lost the plot at…
07/27/26, Goin' to the Buddhist temple // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF27mmF2.8 R WR I was reading this fantastic paper on the history and science of cyanotypes last night instead of sleeping and I drifted off thinking about how I could get into the cyanoworld with my digital camera. Easy! Today, I took the Acros film simulation recipe I use and cranked up the blue. It's a cyanolike . No chemicals, no…
Over-the-air TV in my (bay) area is hit-or-miss but when it hits, it gets weird. I recorded myself making a sort of VHS channel-flipping collage, taking the temperature of the country on its 250th birthday. We have a fever! I spent a bit agonizing over how to make my crappy tape rip better, but accidentally recording on EP mode plus not wanting to spend a million dollars on a good capture card……
07/05/26, Lake Merritt // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF 16-50mm Taking pictures through a pair of public binoculars is not easy and the pictures are bad. But the pictures? The pictures are good. BONUS BIRD BPHOTO This is a juvenile black-crowned night heron. If you're wondering why he looks like that, he just drank all of this: Nicky Flowers - I took 240 photos today... it's possible I'll have a hard time…
The radical centrists would have you believe that nothing good can ever happen in America. Only half-measures that are incrementally less shit than whatever the fascists offer us is pragmatic enough. They will smear a Muslim man in New York trying to bring childcare & rent control to the people and for simply being who he is. When he wins, they write off the city’s population as freaks of nature…
A lot of times I'll get back home from a photowalk and see that none of the shots turned out all that great. Luckily, that doesn't really matter anymore. Seeing a part of the world that isn't my bedroom and taking a piece of it home is enough to keep me going. It's proof I was out there! I'm alive and I still feel things other than despair! Even the bad photos prove that. 06/29, Wildcat Canyon…
Today, I put my VHS copy of It! The Terror from Beyond Space in with with the laundry, set to speed wash. I have no idea how a B-movie ended up in my dirties. This is basically where I've been at lately. This film simulation recipe for X-Trans V cameras, Suboptimist, was an attempt to capture the flavor of my current state. Thankfully, going out and taking pictures and having ready-to-go Superia…
I wanted to make something that feels like one of those inexplicable 19 year old videos that pop up on your YouTube home page, like an oasis in the desert, and you're like "Thank fuck, something without an ad read". And so I did. Nicky Flowers - I missed making little videos!! I should do this more... - 06/16/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
I couldn't get a picture but my new favorite yard sign looked like this: All other yard signs that aren't as good as this one should go — like, does anybody need to know who you want to be mayor? Let's put signs up that ask the tough questions. "What the fuck is going on?" is my idea for one but there are all kinds of good questions we should be asking our neighbors. How Much Blood Should Be…
05/10 - 05/11, San Leandro + West Oakland // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF16-50mm // I really should be writing down my settings for later... I meant to take more pictures, but trying to fix my printer took over my week. That Brother was like a brother to me, or so I thought; brothers should never go out of warranty. I also have been trying to fix myself but, if you can believe it, it's less…
YEAR SEVEN OF "...AND ALSO WITH YOU" CAN BE FOUND HERE!! I meant to post about this here one whole week ago but I'm here now: my good friend Meys and I have been producing a wonderful show called "...And Also With You", which comes out every May 4th and consists of us reviewing Star Wars Episode IV one minute each year. You might have heard about it, I mention it about once a year. We rank the…
04/27 - Around my neighborhood // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF16-50mm // Custom Acros recipe, 12800 ISO i am very close to getting over my latest bout of depression, with a dash of being terrified of everything i have been stewing, and not the yummy kind tonight, i had a breakthrough: none of what i worry about will mean anything in 20,000 years (this *is* comforting to me) Nicky Flowers - If you are…
04/05 - 04/08, Berkeley // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF16-50mm // All sorts of film simulations/recipes but mostly custom Velvia i've been walking around Berkeley a lot again this week; i needed to get out of the house for a while and it's more fun to photograph than where i live. i even stayed in a hotel for a couple days to let my girlfriend finish up the worst of the pest control at home (bless her),…
I bought the entirety of Peanuts for peanuts on Thursday and have been binging it with great interest. I grew up with the funnies and omnibuses of funnies from the library in my hands daily, but Peanuts never really struck me the way things like the more boisterous Calvin & Hobbes did. I guess turning 30 and getting really depressed helped make me get what's so special about the strip, especially…
Nicky Flowers - inkjetting my way into kitty cat heaven - 03/12/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
It's as conscious as any LLM can be. Which is not at all. No. I wrote two more paragraphs about the exhaustion I feel discussing the conscioussness of machine learning models and then, you're not going to believe this, I got exhausted and deleted them. It's not a conversation worth having. There's an unshakable faith in a small amount of people in the consciousness of Claude or ChatGPT or…
Nicky Flowers - Still thinking about them... are they thinking about me?... - 02/26/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
Nicky Flowers - This sign made me so sad I went crazy but I'm okay now - 02/24/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
02/09/26, Downtown Berkeley & UC Berkeley // Fujifilm X-S20 // XF16-50mm // All sorts of film simulations/recipes My wonderful girlfriend gifted me a new camera to replace my ancient and, sadly, dysfunctional digicams. This kind gift plus an unrealted emotional breakthrough 5 years in the making the other day has lifted me out of the beginning of the year doldrums. The news is going to keep trying…
01/19/26, as my gf and roommate and I went to Chinatown // Olympus Stylus 120 // Harman Phoenix I 35mm 30! I feel quite different but that's mostly due to current events. I think we all feel different. But it's been very nice being 30, actually. I just didn't think I'd make it! 20 years ago, it felt like this impossibly distant thing for me. Here I am. Hello. Suuure, America is dead and dying, but…
today, during my date with da wife // Instax Mini 12 // monochrome instant film on a sheet of paper Nicky Flowers - The small pleasant moments that make up the day fucking rule. Shout out to the quotidian. - 01/17/26 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
I feel both relieved and prickly about the end of 2025. I'm ready to move on completely (which is why my end-of-year review post is over a week late) but I'm also afraid of what's to come (what with the news...). Give me just a bit more January before my birthday on the 19th! Or maybe we can just reset the calendar to the 1st and try again. The only resolution I nailed down is "calm down", but I'd…
Late night Christmas Eve walkin' // Fujifilm FinePix F40fd Nicky Flowers - Hang in there - 12/24/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
My girlfriend is on a long-term mission to show me all the classic anime I never got around to. This time, it's Gundam '79. What a show!! I was expecting a simple toy commercial and what I've gotten so far is a narratively complex toy commerical. I have been enjoying it immensely. Here are my favorite names I've encountered so far. Nicky Flowers - oh also my favorite character is Kai i love…
Last week on bluesky, the something app, I was like "hey if you get me this synth i'll make you an album with it" — thinking no one would take me up on the offer. Someone did and here I am with a CAT and a commission! Getting to know this small metal box has been an absolute dream. I never thought real hardware was all that important but my love for synthesis is re-ignited like brand new, fiddling…
And who says commercial radio sucks eggs? Well, I do, and will continue to. Last night was a nice change of pace for a small part of iheartradio-land, however. Something interesting happened over at Cities97: A radio station here in Minneapolis is stuck - cities971.iheart.com [image or embed] — Bill Corbett ( @billcorbett.bsky.social ) December 2, 2025 at 6:18 PM Thank you MST3K's own Bill…
It's too easy for me to let a day slip on by. I'm way too good at piloting myself around anything interesting happening, guiding my way towards sorta-pleasant nothing. I tried getting out there more last year and then, well, The Incident. The Surgery helped but for the past few months, I've still been mostly drifitng around my house. I was keeping busy with my various personal & professional…
MY CONES ARE ALSO NAMED BART Nicky Flowers - i love traffic cones and i love public transit aaa - 11/24/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
I saw someone say that online yesterday and it's been rolling around my head ever since. "god will have his justice in the end”. Well, that might be nice for you and him. It’s nice when your buddy gets a win, I get it. I’m gonna need something real though. Justice for everybody, not just god. As I understand it, there’s a whole book that talks about how he got plenty of justice. I think it’s our…
Earlier today, after we got done yelling with each other about how we hate the world we live in, my girlfriend was telling me about pre-Marx utopian thinkers... trying their best. I was particularly enamored with this bit of text from an odd early socialist: source Nicky Flowers - Macintalk Fred + Serum 2 is a great combo, it turns out - 11/09/25 - (send any comments/questions to hello at…
I've been having a nearly impossible time getting started doing anything. I'm perfectly in the middle of 12 things that all need doing and I'm stuck in the center. Who the hell keeps doing this to me, giving me all these things to do? Oh well. To try and break free and point to something I could say was finished, I went Erik Satie mode via Arturia Wurli V2. I also wanted to see if I could maximize…
You're allowed to make a cartoon whenever you want. Animate away, my friend, no one can stop you. Chuck Jones, Hayao Miyazaki, whoever animated the sad blob in those ancient Zoloft commercials, and now you — legendary animators. Welcome... I'm happy to have you on board. Nicky Flowers - 10/27/25 - I've greenlit a full season of a new cartoon series to debut whenever I have room in my schedule to…
My best, proudest American quality (probably the only one I possess and could actually be proud of) is my ability to bullshit. I'm not the best at lying but I am a champion bullshitter. Regional champion, at least — I won a modest cash prize for it in college. There was a whole tournament the bullshitter fraternities & clubs around the country organized, it was actually a lot more fun than you'd…
Taken over the course of the day // Fujifilm FinePix F40fd I'm back going on walks purely to take pictures. It's been a few months of recovery but I think I'm finally in a better spot health-wise than I was before the surgery. I'm still not 100% and there may be further surgery in my future, but it's definitely time for me to get back into it. Gotta get out there, gotta put some good miles into my…
Why does she have to be the only thing happening in music at any given point? Why can't someone else have some of the attention? No, we gotta take up all the vinyl plants to make 20 variants of the yearly track dump. We gotta have the painfully slow social media roll-out with all of the requisite non-social media stops to farm for clips. We gotta do the discourse of the pre-release and the…
Life. It has a way of being a lot of silly nonsense all at once. In the midst of all of that precious nonsense, I managed to finish my 11th Annual Summer Single and release it on the 21st of last month! I meant to write a whole post about it then, about what doing the Summer Single project for 10 whole years has meant to me and what I'm looking forward to in the next 10 years. Then, life. I got…
I'm pissed off. people keep asking the ceo reasonable questions about this and all she can do is say stuff like "violence is violence and it can't be the solution. the heart of the mind is the home of soul and that's where we should all live" [image or embed] — Nicky Flowers ( @nickyflowers.com ) September 14, 2025 at 6:31 PM I said what I said, and I'm still feeling it. I just…
I put my e-mail at the bottom of every post on here and encourage questions, as well as things that are more of a comment than a question. And I got one yesterday that isn't best answered privately, which a lot are! Let's see: "Help I waz trying to have a mingus moment but I accidentally had a Dolphy moment instead. How do I fix this?" - Bezier There is, unfortunately, nothing available on this…
IT IS EASIER THAN EVER TO EXPERIENCE ... A MINGUS MOMENT (only through Mingus are these Moments possible) "What's a Mingus Moment?" Try this out — you'll know a Mingus Moment when you feel it. Thank god he did, but... how does he do it? Nicky Flowers - 09/10/25 - Many Mingus Moments May Mean Millions Meet Meaven (Mingus Heaven) - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
1959's best Z grade sci-fi film about a boy simply too kind & shy to kill all life on Earth, the girl who loves him, and the grandpa who sleeps on the couch. The alien ship he's rebelled release some lobsters into a cave, and some other things happen as well. I've put the nicest copy of the original film I could find through my video synthesizer and a tape delay and, therefore, made the film's…
My Tascam Portastudio journey this year has been so fulfilling in many tiny and large ways. It's also been very... "grounding" might be the word. It grounds me in a way I wasn't expecting. I've been recording and rehearsing and rinsing and repeating all of August and the Portastudio has held up very well. I was thinking about buying some belts and such to prepare for when I need to do some repairs…
I'm not sure why I didn't post about this last week when we did the "pilot" episode but today, it's official—I've got a new weekly podcast with my good friend Meys. I guess it's not technically weekly until it happens at least twice. I'm not sure. Anyway, episode 1 came out today and can be listened to the normal way (for this show): by calling us at (607) 225-5763 . That's right!! That number…
Nicky Flowers - 08/20/25 - It's hard not to just play with the Portastudio all day every day. - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
It's been so long since it rained here. The weather is so perfect all the time that it becomes numbingly boring. But then in the winter, we get the storms. Some storms are more welcome than others. Today, I found myself listening to the EP I released last year. I don't listen to my own work every day, but when I do, I don't usually cry. But Track 2, "Thunderstorm", got me good. I wrote it shortly…
I think YouTube needs more short, ad-less videos that are just for fun. I think I am the person to provide such videos to the platform, even though it frankly doesn't even deserve my scraps. "YouTube but if it was good" would be very appreciated, someone get on that. I can chip in a few bucks for the project. That's right, I'll give someone 20 dollars to make YouTube 2. Here's the full version of…
Nicky Flowers - 07/30/25 - Nothing better than making fun crap on nice hardware (Vocals running through the Boss ME-50B on track 1, Korg Volca Sample on Track 2 for drums, and the Stylophone Theremin on track 3, all on my beautiful Tascam 424mkII). - (send any comments/questions to hello at nickyflowers dot com)
How do people do anything at all? And how do they do it consistently? What's the secret to doing things (why wasn't I told)? And why does my therapist keep telling me I should probably get screened for ADHD? There are many questions in life and none of the answers will solve my problems, because I still would have to do stuff once I knew what I should be doing. I'm tired of doing stuff. I had a…
It's been two weeks after I had surgery on my damn lumps and, while still bruised and inflamed, I'm feeling a bit better already. Follow-ups with the surgeon have eased my anxieties about why I'm still in pain (editor's note: turns out, your body reacts strongly to getting cut open! who knew). I had been calling it a "lumpectomy" until someone pointed out that that's a specfic operation which…
On June 25th, 2023, I was sitting at my desk drinking a quart of gin and thinking about killing myself. I had tried quitting alcohol multiple times in the year and failed each time within days. I felt like nothing mattered anymore and if I drank myself to death, nobody would care. This, of course, was not true. But the alcohol was louder and more persuasive than anything else so I kept on…