2.06.2026 - Weekly Digest
Say hello to my housemate (Tiger)Lily. Hard of head, soft of heart.
M 2.02.2026
h you should have been here when Claude was alive, they tell me at the science academy. Claude was this albino alligator everyone talks about like he had a personality, like he had a prefrontal cortex, like he loved children and wouldn’t have eaten them, and everyone is in mourning and there’s a shrine festooned with illegible handwritten cards. Everywhere I’ve ever been the locals tell me how cool it was right before I showed up, like I’m here to flip your houses or drive prices up and I say I’m broke, I’m not a threat, all defensive, and they’re all yeah but Claude was really special. He was the best. Yeah I bet he was. Real dynamic conversationalist. Like you're all not just sad because he's white.
T 2.03.2026
Got me some learning at the museum anyway. Thanks to A + P for scratching my nerd itch with a membership.
Rainforest display in a three-tiered column with a wraparound ramp. Humid. Primordial. Blue-green bird with a red crest hopping between branches. Little dinosaur looking MF. What kind of bird is that? This guy doesn't know. I was gonna ask the docent, he says. I throw him down to the lower level where the macaws can have at him.
The macaws by the way. Yeeshus we get it you're loud. That's some evolutionary trait. Guessing the predators don't have a hard time finding your screaming ass.
Humpback whale skeleton hanging over half the ground floor. Aren't they going extinct? How about a real whale for once? Why all these bones all over the place.
Reminder to watch The Voyage Home where in the 1980s in the future there's a Cetacean Institute across the bridge in Sausalito. Also to invent transparent aluminum so I can get rich enough to have my own whales.
W 2.04.2026
Tiny hominids in glass cases. This one was good at climbing trees. We know that because she fell out of a tree and died.
Here's how colors work. There are colors you can't see. Maybe you're not trying hard enough. Maybe it's your fault you're not rich enough to have cone enhancement procedure.
Good news though: went to a talk where a director from the Environmental Defense Fund was plugging her book and it turns out fisheries have actually improved in the last twenty years as a result of cooperative efforts. Cooperative efforts. Fancy that. Couple of ol' boys down Galveston way got together and figured out they could make more money if they didn't kill off all the fish and their fisherman in the process competing derby-style. In other news poking your own eyes out for decades has consequences.
Th 2.05.2026
Protest at Ocean Beach.
What it looked like from the side:
What it looked like from the air:
There was a band playing along with the new Springsteen Minneapolis song and Mom thinks the singer might be Barry Maguire who had a big hit in the 60s with Eve of Destruction. I'd like to think that but a quick search reveals he passed away in Oklahoma City at 90 a few years ago. Not saying it's not, of course, these are weird days. Just unlikely.
Up into Sutro Park where the remains of a mansion look out over rocky cliffs. Someone's used a broom to sweep a circle in the dirt. For meditation purposes or summonings. In a gap on the ramparts a woman in the lotus position smiles with her eyes closed towards the sun.
American ruins. There are a lot of those considering how short of a time this experiment has been going. Blow into a place, cover it with roads, suck the resources out and breeze back out when the deed is done.
An exogeologist told me about how mining communities work. They blossom and bloom and dry up in a few years and become a ghost town with one bar with a swag counter and a jerky closet out back. The UP is mostly like this if you only focus on the civilized parts. Better to relax your gaze and let the trees take over.