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Oct, 2025

Oct 2

Learning Phonetics The American phonetic alphabet is a subset of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), which contains a unique symbol for every consonant and vowel sound in language. If I want to learn how to transcribe words as sounds and syllables, then I need to study the AmE subset of the IPA: 24 consonants, 10 monophthongs, and 5 diphthongs for a total of 39 sounds. Here's one neat, mnemonic-based resource I found: AmericanIPAChart.

Oct 3

Everything happens in time, and time moves in circles.

Oct 4

Reverse Outline Template Questions

Is your primary goal to persuade (argument-led) or to entertain (story-led) your reader?

• (Argument-Led): What is the anecdote you will use as evidence for your argument?
• (Story-Led): What is the abstract idea exemplified by your story?

Here's one way that existence is absurd:

We humans can imagine infinite bliss, but all we ever experience is finite suffering.

A more optimistic characterization of "late-stage capitalism":

An economic system in which all profit-incentives are aligned with the needs of the common citizen, in which each laborer can earn a living doing work he or she finds fulfilling, and in which each dollar earned contributes to the unattainable, immaterial, and unquantifiable objective of human flourishing.

Oct 7

A few things I say often that I think are pretty clever and hopefully helpful:

• "There are solutions to these problems" (to transition a conversation away from a problems-focused rant to a solutions-focused brainstorm).
• "Let [him/her] surprise you" (to short-circuit your feedback loop of overthinking and rumination about how some interpersonal conflict or conversation is going to go, when you are assuming how another person will respond instead of just focusing on what you can control).
• "**The burden is not knowing **" (to counsel someone who is suffering and who is reluctant to share about their experience for fear of being a burden to others)

Here's an analogy to describe the difference between effusive and explosive, volcanic eruptions: one is like a geyser (explosive) and the other like a spring (effusive).

It's also important to note that explosive eruptions are masculine, whereas abusive eruptions are feminine. This is most explicitly evident in the fact that mail ejaculation is explosive/geyser-like and female ejaculation effusive/spring-like.

The defining feature of the yin Yang symbol are the two small dots within the two swirling shapes. Those dots are known as the seed of the opposite, and the seeds are what make the yin Yang symbol, one of creation, entanglement, and interdependence, rather than mere interaction or collaboration. The one is within the other, and both yin and yang are defined relative to each other.

Oh my God! Oh my, God? Oh, I'm God.

I saw myself inside another woman, through the eyes and mind of my love in the moment I made her hate me.

Volcanoes deliver new mass Aloft, depressions in the earth receive snowfall Snowfall, compiles and compresses into rivers of ice: Glaciers, the wombs of new space. Rivers of rock, freeze into mountains; Rivers of ice melts into valleys.

Oct 8

A strictly secular and atheistic physicist explaining the Big Bang, using the most poetic and memorable language he can muster:

And the Universe said, 'Let there be light.'

Oct 10

Lying is only permissible in the context of poker and proposals.

Oct 11

Our generation is more consumeristic than any other but less materialistic.

Oct 13

What's more romantic than sunrise in the rear-view mirror?

Oct 14

Adolescence as a secret state; it is not one to escape, but one to embrace. The word comes from the Latin adolecere, which means to ripen. If one is not in adolescence, one is rotting.

The only other thing you could possibly be doing if you are not ripening is rotting. It's better to be a green banana than a brown one.

Write a poem about scuba diving that is about a surreal spacewalk.

Oct 16

One Way to Improve Writing Education

The single worst thing about academic writing is that students only ever get practice writing for an audience who is required to read their work. Thus, students fail to learn or practice or even to need the essential writing skills of capturing and keeping your reader's attention. How many English Comp. essays have a good hook? How often could you skim a college student's essay and not miss out on any information or any of the experience? Too often.

There ought to be some sort of competition, a sort of market of ideas, built into any form of writing education. Imagine if for every essay assignment, every student were required to anonymously post their final draft to a class forum and if every student were required to read 2–3 essays. Then, the students who had the highest-voted essay(s), based on quality of content and style and reader-retention, would earn extra points.

For "The Arbiter":

Whether this was a dream or a memory—in the moment, I did not know.

We know what is right. The only question is whether we will delude ourselves enough to justify doing wrong.

Oct 17

The letter 'W' is three syllables when spoken, so any initialism that includes the letter 'W' is worthless when said aloud, since the acronym is bound to be as many or more syllables than the full words themselves.

Example: Saying "PNW" to refer to the Pacific Northwest (both are five syllables, and you run the risk of the person you're talking to not knowing to what the initialism refers)

Oct 18

My ideal sunset has clear, blue skies to the west and the east, and then fluffy white swath of cumulus clouds to the north and south, because those act like cotton swabs that soak up and refract the sunsets pinkest hues. I'm walking southbound along the Hudson looking at a pink-saturated swath of clouds right now: 6:25 p.m., Oct 18, 2025.

Oct 20

A potential edit to one of my favorite aphorisms (nouns instead of gerunds at the end):

Birth is a leap, and death is a landing; living can either feel like free-fall or flight.

Three months ago, Casey Neistat published a 12-minute video that is essentially an ad for this company ModRetro, and I am not mad at all about it. I watched it today, in full, and am grateful to have learned of this company and of their first product, the Chromatic, which is "the last GameBoy." I am fully aligned with what seems to be the company's ethos, creating single-purpose products that last. I would love to have one, and it would actually be my introduction to the GameBoy, because I only ever had the GBA SP.

Oct 21

Life knocks on your door. It is a door without a peep-hole, and life has the key to unlock the door. You have no choice of whether life will enter and no warning of what it will bring.

Oct 22

Adverbs are weak words that can often be replaced by more illustrious nouns or more apt and descriptive verbs. The only strong adverb is one that is unexpected and/or ironic, an adverb that is delightful.

A sound, rigorous, and valid argument is one for which (1) each claim is true, (2) each claim is justified, and (3) each claim logically follows from the others to the conclusion.

• Soundness: Are your claims true?
• Rigor: Have you justified each claim and shown why/how each is true?
• Validity: Does your argument flow, does everything follow? (If A and B, then C.)

The first snow or a winter in the mountains looks like dandruff on a bald scalp, rather than a layer of sunscreen.

Oct 26

I agree that there is no inherent meaning in life; if you dog to the center of the Earth or dissect a human heart, you will not find meaning. But, unlike the nihilist, I believe that there is boundless meaning besides. It is all the meaning we humans create with our divine minds.

[[Nihilism Is Untenable]]

Oct 27

The traditional, biblical (Catholic) Christian idea of humility is meekness. Meek like a midge that gets swatted or squished. But a healthy and more life-affirming humility is the idea that man is not God and that man does not owe God anything for the gift of life.

Oct 29

Okay, after some hemming and hawing over several weeks (I believe months now, since my mom first alerted me to the publication), I am officially a subscriber to Mountain Gazette. I can't really believe it took me so long; this publication is completely aligned with everything I stand for as a writer and editor, and it's exactly the type of journalism—probably the only type of journalism—I want to be reading.

One thing I did do more impulsively (without so much hemming or hawing), I did pre-order Mountain Gazette's first book: Print Ain't Dead, which is a sort of all-star collection of stories from the magazine's archive (est. 1966). That book doesn't launch until January of 2026, but within the next couple weeks, I will receive issue 204, the fall 2025 issue, my first issue of this high-art, large-format publication on the outdoors.

After getting to know the brand, through their website, history, and this video about the community, I can't imagine a publication more deserving of my dollar. I was hesitant to subscribe without being able to peak into any of the issues and get a feel for whether it lives up to their claim of literarly quality, but I am convinced enough now to order the latest edition, to want to get my hands on it sooner. (The magazine is a two-foot-wide, tall, 160-page thing that's printed twice per year and only delivered to subscribers; it is not available at newsstands, etc.)

Perhaps this YouTube comment from a long-time subscriber (the only comment on the video linked above) encapsulates the ethos of this publication and the character of its readers:

Twice in the year Gazette oclock comes round to my wee cottage in the Scottish Highlands, Kev the postie will drive up the track and stick his head through the workshop door and shout "That big book is here from over the sea" The big brown envelope will then sit at the end of the bench until the working day is done and then I will pop into the cottage and throw a couple more logs on the fire and kick the boots off and sit back on the old tweed chair, pour myself a wee dram and open her up. Gazette oclock is an old friend who brings joy and reminds me that print aint dead. – @rabmcleod3508

These are people I want to be associated with. This is a publication I want to read and contribute to. Even without reading it, I know it's a cut above Outside, and I am happy to support their vision and mission. Print ain't dead!

Part of my preparation for moving from the NYC area to Charlotte, NC, is to understand the geology of the state and fuel my excitement to explore it. I found this page on NC, from World Atlas, as a great way to orient myself and to acquaint myself with the three regions of the state: The Mountain Region (Blue Ridge Mountains) in the west, the Coastal Plain in the east, and the Piedmont Plateau between them, wherein Charlotte lies.

NC is home to the tallest peak in the U.S. east of the Rockies: Mount Mitchell, 6,684' at its peak. That, I didn't know, and that's exciting.

If I were to take the most romantic, literary, and metaphorical look at the landscape I'm moving to, I would focus on the fact that Charlotte is only one county away from the Uwharrie Mountains, which are estimated to be more than 500 million years old and are among the oldest mountains in the U.S. There's a story to tell, via geology, with parallels to human progress and the ebb and flow of culture.

Most people don't know, or haven't thought about how, the oldest mountains are less impressive and less dramatic but are nonetheless ancestors, wise elders, compared to the dramatic peaks that we covet. I have felt this way for most of my life, ignoring the Appalachian Mountains, for instance, in favor of the Colorado Rockies and Sierra Nevada.

Oct 30

Land acknowledgements are inherently capitalistic and colonialist (and, therefore, hypocritical).

Here's an example of a land acknowledgement from American University's School of Education:

The School of Education wants to acknowledge that Washington DC is the traditional territory of Nacotchtank/Anacostan/Piscataway people. At American University's School of Education, we acknowledge this legacy and find inspiration from this land.

This one is actually better worded than others I've heard. "The traditional territory" is less possessive than something like "This city sits on Nacotchtank land." Regardless of the wording, though, land acknowledgments have implicit in them the idea that the land has a rightful owner. And I can't help but think that would go against the beliefs of native people. Of course, they are the traditionally or ancestrally the native's lands, but these lands are not indefinitely and not inherently the native's lands. Wouldn't any native say that these are God's lands?

It's quite an American and capitalistic thing to acknowledge the previous owners of something. It treats the land like an asset, and the land acknowledgement is like a vanity plaque on the side of a new building that honors the principal donor.

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