Autumnal Open Thread
My move is coming down to the wire (omg so many things to juggle!), kids are heading back to school, I’m going to be traveling, and it’s a holiday weekend here in the States, so there’s probably not going to be too much going on here until next week. Thanks for your patience…I can’t wait to get back to work here.
In the meantime, I thought I’d open up this thread for folks to share what they feel like sharing. I’ll go first below…
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My daughter came over the other day for the last time before I move and she goes back to school. We've been trying to make some good focaccia and pizza all summer but have been stymied by my misguided dough excursions. So for this last hurrah, I left the dough completely in her hands and it turned out great. A very nice last feast in a place that's been our home for the past 10 years. ❤️
Best of luck with the move, Jason! Looking forward to finding out where you're moving. (Just the city or area or whatever. Not like the exact address. I'm not a creep, I swear. Okay bye.)
I'm going to need more detail on "misguided dough excursions" at a later date.
Really enjoyed this analysis of the two different perspectives on artificial intelligence as presented by Star Wars vs Star Trek. https://uxdesign.cc/what-star-wars-got-right-about-ai-6404ae7c2e62
That's a great piece. Fiction can be a good place to hash out ideas. Star Wars brushes up against the ethics of creating human-like machines too, most directly in the otherwise - forgettable Solo.
This may be closing the barn door long after the horse has bolted but I think we should add a fourth rule to Asimov’s three laws for robots:
A robot may not impersonate a human being or otherwise fail to reveal its artificial status.
If this rule were in place, I think we’d be a lot less concerned about our children turning to chatbots for companionship, among other harms AI brings in its wake.
Robots are not humans. Humans are not robots.
Ross Bell may I share your idea elsewhere, with attribution?
A random Facebook post led me to this book, The Road to Tender Hearts, which I loved. I had forgotten that I enjoyed her previous book, Unlikely Animals. It’s rare I find a book that I can’t put down, and this was one of them. Funny and heartwarming.
I received that book as a gift a few months ago but haven't picked it up -- I will now!
I found it by way of r/IReadABookAndAdoredIt and LOVED IT. I read it on the first day of the year and was so glad I did.
i'm navigating starting a new dj gig tonight with our 12+yo dog getting diagnosed with a tumor in his head yesterday. we have a long-planned trip coming up in exactly a month from today to visit friends with land for sale in washington state, but also thinking we should cancel. feeling super anxious & just shitty in general. never easy losing a pet, but decisions about end of life are so so difficult.
Oh, buddy. I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry, that is such sad news to get. Wishing your dog as much comfort as possible, and you some solace.
We had our first family dog put down a few years ago now. She was 15. It was really hard to make the decision but looking back I think we waited a few months too long. She was really in a bad way for the last couple months, sick and suffering. I think she was very close to just dying outright when we finally had it done. I don't know, it's weird to play god and make those decisions for another living thing.
This helped us, and if not you hope this might help someone else: As our pup got older and after his diagnosis, our vet asked us to write down five things our dog loved and, when he couldn’t do three of them, told us it was time to make a decision. But not to make or worry about it before then.
We got six months before we crossed three things off the list, and I don’t think it was a moment too soon or late. Making the list early meant we made it with clear heads, and it helped us prep the kids too.
It makes my heart sink to hear this. I wish you the best of luck with him, and the heartache that will follow. It took me a long time to get over the loss of my pal, but now I smile when I see pictures of him and say “Hi Sam”.
So sorry to hear — I know how gutting that experience is. 12+ years sounds like a long and (I'm guessing wonderful) life with you and your family, if that's any solace. Sending positive thoughts!
Also, what kind of DJ gig? Intrigued.
It's not easy - I feel for you. If this isn't already part of your plans, see if you can get the vet to come to your house - this will be much nicer for your dog. Also what we did was to ask the vet to leave the body behind for a few hours - it was healing and good for the psyche to sit with our dog's body - to not see the body breathe, to feel it get colder, to notice it getting stiffer, to say thank you, to say goodbye.
thanks so much to everyone for sharing your kindness, thoughts, & suggestions. read them to my husband & will come back to them as we navigate this next bit 💛
We just navigated a summer of skin cancer surgeries with our 9-year-old, Cat the Dog. During the diagnosis and multiple post-surgery biopsy phases, discussions about what decisions we would or would not make were brutal, but they also gave us space to balance what Cat brings us with what brings Cat joy and comfort in equal measure.
I hope you discover some of that bittersweet balance in those memory-laden conversations. If/when you return to this thread, I'd love to know the silliest thing your dog does. And how does he know that he is YOUR dog?
I really feel for you. I went through this myself a couple years ago, and it still weighs on me. I try to remember what our vet said: "At a certain point, keeping them alive is selfish. Letting them go is hard but it's the final kindness you show them."
So many hugs. I hope you are able to enjoy your time left together.
So sorry to hear about your pup. My 12/13-year-old was diagnosed with a meningioma last fall and can very much empathize with the anxiety/shittiness of end-of-life decisions. Hang in there.
I started playing LearnedLeague, a daily online trivia competition against other players, earlier this year. I have a couple of invitations, if anyone is interested in joining. Hit me up.
I would be interested in joining.
Ive always been interested, but worried I would suck. Would love to give it a try.
I also have invitations available to anyone willing to commit to the rules of the League. Have been playing for several years now and love it!
Fellow LLama here. The great thing about Learned League is that it slots you into tiers based on your performance. If it turns out you do in fact suck, you will play against people who suck similarly. The first season is free, so it can't hurt to try. Just don't forfeit or cheat!
This looks cool! I’d like to join. Do you need my email address?
Ooo ooo ooo, how can I get an invite from you? Would love to give this a go
I have invites, too, if anyone wants them.
If you're interested, please text your email address to (360)525-3083. I'm allowed two new player referrals per quarterly period. In the interest of fairness, I'll submit the invitations in the order of the requests I receive and submit them to LearnedLeague when I get new invitations in subsequent quarters. Once you get an email from LearnedLeague, there's about a three-month wait before your first "rookie" season.
There are two commitments you need to make when you join LearnedLeague:
1) No cheating. Cheating is define as getting any outside help (online or IRL) in answering the questions.
2) Avoid forfeiting. Forfeiting means not submitting answers for a given match day. There are 25 head-to-head matches in a "season".
I've gotten requests from readers here and have submitted them to LearnedLeague. Any more requests will be delayed to future seasons (next year), unless the other LLamas who responded above would like to volunteer their referrals.
I would also like to join...if someone else with referrals is willing to let me know how I can leverage them. :)
Also interested in joining!
I’m interested! Let me know how I can get a referral.
Yes me too!
If anyone has a remaining referral code I would love to join as well.
Email me at prpl_99 under the yahoo domain (fill in the rest) and I will send one of my invitations to you.
And now mine for this season are spoken for as well.
A 40-plus-year friend's mother (1941–2006) died less than a day ago. She was one of my extra mothers. Coincidentally, I read this piece just a few days ago, and it's a beautiful, appreciative remembrance by someone of their mother, who happened to live during the same years. What I Learned from My Mom (1941-2026)
Maybe it's the brutal heat down here in Tennessee, but the last few weeks have been existentially overwhelming. On Monday, Wendell Berry, my favorite author, passed away. On Tuesday, I coincidentally met a man who was close friends with Wendell and who has a hand-lettered and signed copy of Wendell's poem, The Peace of Wild Things, hanging in his home. In this moment where everything seems designed to capitalize on our fears, Wendell's words are a welcome reminder that art and nature are antidotes of despair, impervious to the algorithms, and always close to hand--if I just remember to look.
I am sorry to hear about the heat and about Wendell Berry. A bad combo making for a bad week.
Thank you however for posting that link. I love it. We are so lucky to have a canon of the wild writing in this country that is unbeatable: Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, William Stafford, Robert Frost, Henry David Thoreau, Stephan Jay Gould, Edna St. Vincent Millay, John Muir, Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, the list could go on and on.
My goodness, yes! Thank you, Noah.
Thanks for sharing about this poem, Whit. 🙇
Of Wendell's passing, my friend said - "All the wrong people are dying." I'm linking to my favorite Wendell poem "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front." It is especially prescient these days, and always puts a lump in my throat. I would also highly recommend the biography of Kentucky painter Harlan Hubbard that Wendell wrote. Harlan lived purposefully and mostly successfully against the status quo, and Wendell really conveys his appreciation of that integrity so eloquently. Having been born and raised in Kentucky, Whit, I'm really appreciating the dry Colorado heat vs. the ever moist nooks and crannies of river and hills country back home.
I just posted about this after running into Nick Offerman's reading of Think Little. On Being also has a wonderful animation of The Peace of Wild Things that you might enjoy.
Anyways, not to take away from Wendell Berry, but Offerman has a great voice for narration, so I looked up what else he's done. Not only has he narrated his own books and a few of Berry's, but he's also narrated two by Twain, which seems fitting.
Wendell Berry’s poem “To Know the Dark” has always resonated with me as winter approaches. It’s a real banger.
Love Offerman. In the vein of him, and Wendell Berry, I found out about Wendell Berry's death through James Rebanks, who has hosted Nick Offerman on his farm (and I think gone in with him on some cows) and also was mentored by Wendell Berry. If you haven't read James' books...do.
" Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come."
That resonated with me and my garden this morning, thank you.
The Atlantic ran a nice obituary about him (paywall but worth it):
https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/2026/09/wendell-berry-obit-legacy/688530/
I am teaching (my 28th year) and have class sizes with over 40 kids. Luckily, the school has totally banned phones and encouraged us to go as "off-line" as possible. Honestly, those two changes have had the most impact on improving the school day for all of us. IRL learning is the best.
p.s. Today the kids in my environmental science class set up "decay labs" with chunks of hotdog meat resting on a substrate of their choice in sealed containers. Here are the substrates the kids thought of: perfume, dirt, toilet water, spit, energy drink, sugar, vinegar, rubbing alcohol, bark dust, dish soap, salt, bleach, and grass.
There is probably a for-profit app for this experiment, but guess what, doing it in real life is 1000% more fun! The mold they will grow (or not) is hilarious! Everyone is on team mold!
This is wonderful and I very much want updates on the winner!
Don't you mean "updates on the wiener"? ;)
40 kids in a class is totally unreasonable, outrageous. Thank you for being a teacher, Noah. I wish our society did better at funding public education.
The fact that we ever let phones into the classroom was a mistake.
Agreed with Tim -- 40 kids is bonkers. I'm sure that adds a ton of required skillsets to what is already a challenging job. So much respect for what you do! I will share this with my history teacher wife and unleash a torrent of guilt over her small class sizes. She's insanely fortunate!
Just kidding about unleashing a torrent of guilt, btw
40 kids! 40! OMG, I can't even imagine. My sympathies.
I live in the greater Puget Sound region (where Seattle is located), which is absolutely replete with ferries. So, my sweetie and I are building out a "How Many Ferries Can We Ride?" trip, with the following rules: 1) Car ferries only (ferry routes are way too dispersed geographically to make public transit feasible), 2) Minimize doubling back on any roads, 3) No repeating of ferry routes, 4) Complete in 3 days or less unless we add in a jaunt to Canada.
We're having a ton of fun finding new routes we never knew about, and look forward to a hopefully mid-Autumn trip, life events permitting. Either way, having the plan mapped out will be fun to have at the ready!
And for anyone unfamiliar with the region's ferries, I truly believe they are the single best form of sightseeing, and the ferries are so iconic to this region.
I love this!
I play a similar game in every new city I visit: how many forms of public transit can I take? I give myself bonus points if I design a single day where I access them all.
In a very Vermont twist on this, I am currently trying to hike all the trails on a local mountain before the snow flies -- there are more than 25 of them!
That sounds great. Last year we spent our family summer holidays traveling the Finnish Archipelago sea by bicycle and took many ferries. It was a great way to keep the kids entertained while cycling.
Please report back with itinerary and reviews!
That's delightful. What would the alternative be to rule 1? You'd also have to do the water taxis?
For the last four years, my version of this has been to eat at every McDonald's in Manhattan on foot in a day. (Mostly apple slices.) I'm not a very competitive person but I've really enjoyed trying to beat my time every year.
This is so cool. We attended a wedding in Friday Harbor a few years back and that area is so amazing. The ferry rides were so fun.
I am SO easily influenced when it comes to buying nonsense, so I stay off of instagram or else I end up with skin care I won't use and a plethora of other crap, but my daughter recently discovered tic tacs and when I found a teeny tic tac container on the floor of our playground, I looked up tiny tic tacs and instantly ordered them. They're so cute and they come in a giant tic tac container :D
Sorry to be throwing in an amazon link but other suppliers sell them for triple! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01K85YZZW?lv=shuf&channelId=500&plpRedirect=mhFallback
I've been building and tuning this silly Magic: the Gathering deck for a couple years now. It's my Skeleton Ship deck. It's a little awkward to explain how it works without getting into all the rules of MTG but essentially it's a combo deck. When all the right pieces are out, they can activate each others' abilities in an endless loop, making infinite mana (the resource you spend to activate abilities and cast spells.) That's fine and pretty straightforward to assemble, but in the game just having a loop that goes on forever doesn't necessarily lead to a win. So I've stumbled upon this metaphor: I've been building an engine, and the secret to winning is leveraging the exhaust that the engine produces.
It's fine to create enough mana on each iteration to start the loop over again, but it's not at meaningful velocity until it's netting at least one extra mana per loop. That's the exhaust. That extra mana can go into casting other spells that actually defeat opponents.
Is this useful? Is it profound? I don't know! I just like a good metaphor. Also when I play Skeleton Ship I can meaningfully whistle the "Popeye the Sailor" theme while I set up.
Oooh, that sounds cool! Back in the day I had an early Arbitrarily Large Number deck that used a sacrifice/raise engine that was fun. I'm glad people are more used to them now.
This just tickled me, thank you Phil! I have been pondering puzzles these days. Sometimes they are thrust upon us (hard decisions about elderly pets) but often we seek them out (MTG, LearnedLeague). Are they the crux of what it means to be human? Or a patch for what’s missing in our modern lives? Anyway, I like ‘em and I’m afraid of what happens to me when I don’t have work puzzles to solve anymore.
Phil, your deck sounds cool. Would you consider posting a link to a decklist?
In the process of launching a small record label, and it's the most fun I've ever had in my life. We're finalizing the album art for the first album, and if everything goes well, we may have it out next month. I truly think it sounds amazing and the album art is looking beautiful. Very excited to get it out in the world.
I made a map of rap video locations. Please pass along any you know!
Love this. Please add Nelly's "Country Grammar" to get my hometown of St. Louis on the map. : D
This is so great. I'd add Bowling Green, KY where Nappy Roots made the video for Awnaw way back in 2002!
I'd love to add those! Any chance you all know street intersections?
I don't know the street intersections unfortunately, and I think for the video there were multiple shooting locations likely in rural areas. I think I missed that your map was that detailed, but cool to know that it goes down to the nitty gritty.
Ooh! I've collected a few: 3rd Bass "Steppin' to the AM" and Queen Latifah's "Ladies First" have locations in and around present-day Industry City. 3rd Bass "Brooklyn-Queens" starts at The Dime Savings Bank Of Williamsburgh, as well as Grand Army Plaza.
Thanks Colter!
Nelly's at the St. Louis Arch, among other spots around STL. : D
Sending strength and empathy to those weathering hard stuff right now.
Excited for / mildly anxious about my school year starting in a few weeks. I'll be half-time taking an online advanced diploma in local history course from Oxford. Gonna be so much reading and weird to be back to major time obligations after a recovery half-year since my uncle died, but I'm excited about what I'll be learning.
Trying to close out so many projects and to-do's before class starts 😆, but also trying to relax and enjoy my free time while I've got it. Today involves setting up Proton Pass (leaving 1Password after they doubled down on supporting the ethnic cleansing anti-vax guy), refreshing all my big emergency earthquake water supply jugs, giving away some furniture I don't need to the construction guys working next door, and playing Strange Antiquities (a lovely cozy game about running a spooky shop; yes, you can pet the cat).
Oooh, didn't know about 1Password. Gotta look into that.
I’m an enthusiastic user of 1Password and I’ve long admired their focus on usability and customer service; but I hadn’t heard about this controversy. Here’s a summary: 1Password sponsored an opinionated Linux distribution created by David Heinemeier Hansson (aka DHH), who also created Ruby on Rails and has some extremely disgusting opinions.
This situation and others like it are an interesting twist on the concept of separating art from the artist. Software is a different sort of expression than art, most importantly in that it’s built by teams and is never actually complete. So there’s a very good chance that every essential product in our software stacks was built by one or more people with disgusting opinions (for example, Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds). Where do we draw the line?
I'm getting super pumped about our local women's pro soccer team, ACFC, and soccer in general. We're starting to vibe on the field, scoring more, and overall having more fun. Here's hoping that we can finish above the line and sneak into the playoffs.
Also, all my kids will be playing soccer for the first time, and I'm coaching two teams. One of the kids is starting U10 and it definitely feels more "real" now than in previous years. Hoping to give the girls a positive experience, but honestly a little scared of parents as they start to see this age group as when things start to matter more.
Here's hoping ACFC's new CEO and coaching staff get you guys the stability you need to go finish strong! The talent is certainly there... And OMG Chilufya is a treat to watch. We saw her score against the Reign and, despite the dismay at my team letting her score, it was electric to see in person.
Parents are so important in youth sports. I was lucky enough to have a terrific group of parents that hardly ever complained. I coached my daughter from 8U until they got to high school. I took it as a job well done about half of them are still playing in high school, despite always being a true recreational team.
Check out Part 1 of my new silly short story, The Wish Giver's Song, and maybe share what you think! <3 https://peteswitzerland.bearblog.dev/wish-giver-1/
In other news, my next semester of evening grad school starts in a week, and I'm getting sleepy just thinking about it. I'd prefer to settle into bed at 9:30pm wearing cozy pajamas like the Sleepytime Tea bear, but alas.
I've been taking improv classes for a couple years with Washington (DC) Improv Theater, and this cycle I was able to earn a spot on a Harold team. (That's a particular style of long-form improv.) I've never thought of myself as particularly funny and having to perform onstage in front of an audience makes me queasy, but I have really loved how improv helps me push past inner judgmental voices, be more spontaneous, and make more room for play in my life. Have also made so many hilarious and kind friends. I really recommend that everybody take an improv class at some point in their life!
I second this! I don't feel like a particularly funny person either, but I've taken very casual improv workshop classes through our parks and rec department and done backyard improv with friends I made from those classes for two years now. There is nothing quite like the utter magic of creating a story ex nihil with friends! My face always hurts from grinning by the end of an improv evening. It meets the definition of fun from Catherine Price, which I love: playful, connected, flow.
I also am preparing a kid to go to first year university this week. She is leaving us! Wasn’t she just a baby yesterday I don't understand how time is supposed to work.
Also randomly got into Baldur’s Gate III and I am totally obsessed. I forgot how much I loved the original back in the day. I love how they let you try so many dumb shenanigans like you would try in real d and d.
I came across all these oil barrels at one point and added a bunch to my inventory.
Then later there was this powerful boss who I’m pretty sure was evil and I thought it would make sense to kill but was worried. So ended a dialogue agreeing to do a quest for them and then casually placed three oil barrels next to them, walked away and shot a fire arrow into them. Boss died and then chaos erupted and a bunch of people I thought I was saving died because I’d started a minor war. Anyway so yeah, as I said it’s awesome and I'm obsessed.
BG 3 is great. What class/combo did you settle on for your character?
I wrote an essay – MacPhone: How I Created the Hybrid Mac-iPhone Desktop-Handheld that Apple Won't Make.
In addition to my other responsibilities, (homeschooling 2 kids, 2 parttime jobs, being a parent etc) I am helping out a friend and mentor resurrect a free community event she used to host biannually: a birth and baby fair. It’s meant for families in the family planning stages, pregnancy, postpartum and early childhood. It does a few things: connecting families to resources, offering free workshops and creating community and networking opportunities for birth workers. Covid killed the event and it’s been a labor of love to bring it back to life. We have over 60 vendors and I’m so grateful. Our community has been so enthusiastic, it feels so good!
Also, sent my 2 middle schoolers to public school for the first time this year. I’ve been preaching about raising your kids with a village mindset for years and turns out I was ignoring the most obvious and helpful one, ha. A few hiccups but they seem to be doing great at their small artsy charter school. (Appreciating their no phones and no Chromebooks sent home policies!)
Another teacher here! I'll be using this weekend to paint the last few pieces of terrain I've been working on for our schools D&D Club. It's so nice to go from hiding our "nerdy" hobbies in my high school days to working at a school where kids can let their nerd flag fly proudly! Ours is a magnet school, so the kids are for all over the area and it can be a challenge for a lot of them to hang out. There are few things more satisfying than watching 30+ kids across different grades and backgrounds creating, sharing and adventuring together!
A good friend's child was not able to join the school D&D club because there was too much demand (!) I remember the satanic panic and this is just wild to me.
My friend ended up running a game for his son and daughter that I get to hear about, which is a pretty great outcome IMHO.
September is here and it's time to plant! My wife is super into feeding and photographing our birds this year, so we're adding more blueberries and serviceberries. I also have one woody peony and two different species peonies on the way. The Rhododendron maximum that I impulsively purchased actually lived through the summer in a pot, so I'm eager to get that in the ground too. Lots more but I'll stop there for now.
On the indoor fun front I finished reading A Trade of Blood, which was terrific. My mom is reading the series as well after I shamelessly had it shipped to my parents' house. Digging back into Starfield and reconnecting with the spaceship design system which is some easy creativity.
:D Shamelessly shipping books to people is a pro move, love it!
My friend made an excellent NYC map trivia game.
Updates 3x a week with a new puzzle.
https://plotz.nyc
I enjoyed this VERY much and will keep returning to it :)
Friends: if you’re feeling anxious, beat down, without hope make 90 minutes in your day to watch this beautiful, thoughtful, refreshing show on PBS about Mary Oliver and her poetry.
https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mary-oliver-documentary/37967/
For those who were interested in my nerdy civil-procedure board game (Tag! The Jurisdiction Game), from the last Open Thread, the crowd sale went really well. Almost 100 copies sold (really twice what I was hoping for). Read more about the game here, if you want.
Hm, I'm getting a dead link here?
https://civprogame.my.canva.site
Thanks, Jason!
I'm just excited for a three day weekend here in the states!
This is amazing. A 17,000 word guide set in monospace with words carefully chosen so that every line looks fully-justified.
https://unsung.aresluna.org/i-just-chose-words-carefully/
Any guesses as to where Jason is moving? I’m thinking something more urban than Vermont but where the mountain bike in nature remains viable, places like the Colorado Front Range or Raleigh-Durham.
I’m thinking he will be moving overseas. Perhaps Switzerland or maybe Italy or Germany? That could also be projection on my part, so.
It's been an interesting August/start of the school year for us as our oldest moved away to college (only an hour away but still). We are adjusting and thankfully get to go see him play soccer almost every week. Definitely bittersweet but it is exciting to see him fulfilling a dream.
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