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Pretty Good Hat

I finished reading How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. What a fascinating novel: Told in interconnected short stories and read compellingly by more than a dozen performers, it’s the story of a global plague discovered in melting permafrost that ultimately spans beyond the entirety of human history. Despite that scope it’s intimate; each story is a vignette of loss, grief, love, loneliness and carrying on. Amid it all, Nagamatsu imagines what capitalism would be like in a world devastated by a new plague and climate change at the same time: an economy of death-related services, weird cryptocurrencies, and skyscrapers converted to cemeteries that tower over flooded cities and failed crops. It’s vividly realized in the details of everyday life in this hypermodern and changed world while tracking across centuries, and so compelling.

A top down view of the left half of a split keyboard, an Iris, with blue keycaps and acrylic white top case. Beside it sits an orange coffee cup. Both rest on a desk mat of dark blue with abstract lighter blue shapes.

I’ve been using my Iris now for a little over two months and am feeling pretty fluent with it! In the never-ending quest for perfection, I might change up the switches for something just a bit more positive feeling.

The launch of the new Destiny 2 expansion, Nightfall, adds a new subclass – Strand – and restructures the mod system that affects player stats gained from armor. I’m happy to report that it only took me a couple of hours to revise my Shiny tool to find optimal armor loadouts using the new mods and subclass fragments! I had to hunt a little through some old code, and next time it should be a simple and easy update due to having fixed how I work with the manifest.

An indoor bicycle, a Peloton, photographed from the front at a low angle. A pair of black cycling shoes sit next to it on a light blue mat.

My weekly indoor rides at the old gym used to be my favorite thing each week, my 5am community. I hesitated on getting an indoor bike for such a long time and I’m happy I finally went for it.

After a week of Aeropress coffee, I opened up, took apart and cleaned up a few key components of this old and much-loved espresso machine (I promise I polished it up afterwards, too). I think it still needs a descaling, but it seems to be pumping along once again. I’m so satisfied.

A water-spotted steel espresso machine with its top cover off, sitting on a gray countertop. Red-handled crescent wrench and pliers sit next to it and a large white mug with an H on it sits beneath the machine’s steam wand. Two water tubes lead out of the top of the machine into a reservoir behind it, and a mess of light blue and brown wires snake over the exposed boiler.

I drove early to Starbucks for this morning’s coffee, because my trust old Lelit machine appears to finally be out of magic. If today’s repair efforts fail, I guess I’ll be in the market for a new one.

Screenshot of a pixel-style game showing a party of player characters on the right side and a giant floating monster with rays of light emanating from it, on the left.

I’m really having a good time with Chained Echoes. This was the first pretty hard boss and I had to think about how to handle it, revising my tactics and leveling up my party a bit more before I successfully finished it off. This is a great Steam Deck game for kicking back on the sofa.

I just learned about this really neat community space in town: The Co-coop (for Coconino County co-op, I assume) has a tool library, ceramics studio, coworking space, fine art printer, laser cutter, metal and wood shops, textile room, and a community garden! Wow. So many cool things to check out, learn and tinker with.