About a month ago, I went on a first date with a woman I met on OKCupid. This one was unusual in that I thought it went well. We had a lot in common. We went out to dinner, and stayed talking in the restaurant for a solid hour and a half after we finished…
Last year, as I was writing my December post a day, I wrote a lot about Star Wars. The Last Jedi came out and I watched all the other films leading up to the release. I was pretty ambivalent about The Last Jedi at the time, although the more I’ve thought about it, the worse…
Charles Dickens wrote a piece called “A Christmas Tree” as a magazine article. In it, he describes a gathering of people admiring a Christmas tree. Then he goes on to describe all the memories that get triggered by the sight. He remembers childhood toys, food, and ghost stories among other things. Until this year, the…
Christmas time is here don’t want the trees to get cold so bring them inside *** Hanukah ended but there’s no need to be sad memories remain *** Nature has gone cold gray is the dominant shade unless there is snow
This isn’t about the morality of using Amazon, or monopolies, or wages, or anything like that. It is about the experience of using Amazon. By some measures, Amazon is the most successful business on the planet, maybe in history. It’s kind of hard to believe. When it comes to actually using their site, there’s a…
Having a sick kid is the worst. It’s a stress like no other. And my kid isn’t even seriously ill. It’s just a nasty cold. She’s going to miss a couple days of school and then be fine. It’s not half as bad as when she got the flu a couple years ago. But I…
I was talking to my brother the other night. He was telling me about a podcast he had listened to where the woman who talks about music always makes the same complaint when she doesn’t like something. She says it’s too simple. Ironically, she loves Bruce Springsteen, and it doesn’t get much simpler than Springsteen’s…
Sometime around twenty years ago when I was in my early twenties, I read a book called “Truth: A History and a Guide for the Perplexed” by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. I can’t seem to put my hands on it now, but I remember the preface opened with a bit about Santa Claus. The author was wondering…
I care about language. But, when it comes to language, I am very much a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. Basically that means that I don’t really care about how people should use language, I care about how people do use language. If you want to use “literally” figuratively, go for it. I’m cool with…
