I’m not going to be fair to this novel, which I didn’t enjoy. I probably would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t won the Booker Prize, though if it hadn’t won the Booker Prize, I wouldn’t have read it, and then—because I hadn’t read it—I wouldn’t have said “This won the Booker Prize?” But … Continue reading I probably didn’t like the novel Orbital because of where I’m standing on Earth →

I've seen this go around and be shared, as if it was real. It is not; he did not tweet this. And yet “it’s fake, people were fooled” doesn’t quite catch what is going when people treat it as if it is real. Were they fooled? By what? This image was first posted in a … Continue reading When Words Are Superfluous (Especially These Ones) →

There is something about how these inside lights transform the ground they’re sitting on—grass, normal grass—into something like astroturf, into an inside-outside. Astroturf is an outside thing that because it is inside, no longer is what it is (and yet can only be described as that, as being what it isn’t). This grass suddenly looks … Continue reading outside lights →

It took me a minute to make sense out of what I was seeing, a few weeks ago, because context was getting in the way. I was singing a chilean song to my toddlers in the back seat, and thinking about the park I was taking them to, and the way to get there and … Continue reading On not seeing the dull neo-nazi you just saw, and on 1488 14th st in Oakland, California. →

These are all objects worn by use, the same kind of use, the labor of containing. Suitcases contain a variety of things, and travel while doing so; pots and pans live a more domestic existence, and only “travel” to the stove from the cabinets or hooks or shelves where they live, and then back again—perhaps … Continue reading Free commodities, Manila and Bryant →

The spreadsheet brigade that's keeping LA's rental market from exploding.  I regret to inform you that Paul Graham, investor and founder of the startup training program Y Combinator, has published a new essay: "The Origins of Wokeness."  The TogetherSF and Neighbors for a Better San Francisco Merger: "Coming as it does after a disastrous election, … Continue reading Last Call Links →

Because the statement that “sf is so back” is given to us in quotation marks, we are being told that it’s not inference.ai who is saying that “sf is so back.” But it clearly is inference.ai who is saying that “sf is so back.” After all, they bought the billboard. They put the words on … Continue reading In line to be over →

An unbiased article that isn’t a deranged hit piece: The tech elite in San Francisco aim to redraw political lines so that conservatives can feel at home on both sides, and progressives are boxed out of politics as dangerous communist radicals…Tan, Moritz, and others involved in the city’s self-described moderate movement believe they have an … Continue reading The Sunday Reading is hard to escape →