Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 61

Notes on the search for the perfect pen

Requirements: quasi-legible, smear-free results for rapid, left-handed thought-vomit exorcism / quick dry time / above average ink capacity / ease of local access to purchase.

The cast-asides: Pilot G2, 0.7mm and 1.0mm (flimsy pen, smearing ink); Pilot V-5 Precise (too fine a point); Papermate Flairs (former beloveds but too thick of a line); uni ball Signo 207, 0.7mm and 1.0mm (close, but too light; the 1.0 was an unwieldy blob-dropper); uni ball Vision Elite 0.8mm (very close, but); uni ball Air 0.7mm (thought for awhile that it might be the one but the bleed through on Moleskine notebook pages was a deal-breaker); Zebra G-301 (ink longevity was worthless); Papermate Inkjoy (no, just no); uni-ball Jetstream RT 0.7mm (almost perfect but too fine a point)…

Current winner: uni ball Jetstream 1.0mm, which, in spite of the pain from the plastic cap ridge that interrupts the otherwise comfortable rubberized grip and digs into the base of my thumb, I find myself writing more with them. That’s all the endorsement I need. Yet to be determined: ink capacity / longevity.

Also in use: Staples mini-pens for my two Moleskine Volants, one for on-the-go thought capture and the other for recording the results of four-times-daily blood sugar testing aka blood sacrifice to the beeping giants. Not entirely satisfied with this option, though: they tend to write rough near the margins and the too-thick clip tears the hell out of the Volant covers. Suggestions welcome.

Under consideration: The retractable version of the Jetstream 1.0 to see if that ameliorates thumb discomfort by eliminating the pen cap.

The saga continues.

(TW)

Inevitabullshit: A Collection of Resources on the End of Net Neutrality

As news broke — timed, no doubt, to distract from the horrific Republican tax overhaul and to ensure that its announcement fell through the holiday cracks — of the latest version of the FCC’s plan to gut net neutrality protections, I struggled to find a word that best expressed that particular combination of enraged inevitability / inevitable rage endemic in this, the age of the orange malignancy (I refuse to say his name). The best I’ve come up with with is inevitabullshit.

Will update this as the story unfolds, but here’s a starter package of links and reads about this particular flavor of inevitabullshit:

+ The FCC’s final draft of its proposal to end net neutrality, to be voted on 14 December.

+ While they were at it: The FCC ignored your net neutrality argument unless you made a ‘serious’ legal argument, via The Verge.

+ Oh, and by the way: It’s not just net neutrality: The FCC could also relax one of broadcast media’s biggest rules,via The Washington Post.

+ FCC explains why public support for net neutrality won’t stop repeal, via Ars Technica.

+ FCC Chairman Pai’s statement on the draft order on gutting net neutrality protections in favor of a “light-touch, market-based framework”

+ FCC announces vote to destroy net neutrality next month, via The Verge.

+ Here’s How the End of Net Neutrality Will Change the Internet, via WIRED.

+ Oh, yes:  NY AG probing ‘massive scheme’ to influence FCC with fake net neutrality comments, via The Hill.

+ For a look at what I believe the internet will look like in the wake of Pai’s kowtowing to the telecoms, I point you to this fascinating article in The Economist on the issue of airport slotting.

Here’s my own comment from July on the first round of Pai’s FCC’s initial moves. I reproduce it here for the sake of completion:

There is no question that net neutrality must be protected; the only question is why are we walking down this path again? It’s simple: this is nothing but a barely disguised act of political spite from the current administration towards the legacy of the previous administration without regard for the fallout and the impact on consumers. We have been down this road before; the matter was settled in 2015: the internet is a protected telecommunications service under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934. It must, for the benefit of civil society and generations present and future, stay that way.

I’ll update this listing of resources as more become available.

(TW)

Inputs 13 – 14 November 2017

Is the Mosaic app TV’s natural next step or a gimmick too far? (The Guardian)
Congress Questions Trump’s Exclusive Hold on the Nuclear Football (Foreign Policy)
Inside Life’s hotel, a launchpad for crackdown on North Korean refugees (The Guardian)
How subscriptions became a driver of profit at The Economist  (FIPP.com)
Why Did Leonardo da Vinci Write Backwards? A Look Into the Ultimate Renaissance Man’s “Mirror Writing” (Open Culture)
Twitter Is Not That Important (Alternet).

 

ARRIVAL

While the dogs stand with tiny paws at the window parking at humans who dare cross the church parking lot on the other side of the driveway, a moment to share my thoughts between “hushes” while still fresh-ish…

From its opening moments soundtracked by Max Richter’s stirring “On the Nature of Daylight” (an artistic masterstroke that unfairly precluded Jóhann Jóhannsson’s score for Oscar eligibility) to its final denouement, again bookended by Richter, ARRIVAL — anchored by career-best performances from Amy Adams and Jeremy Renner — projects a composed assurance as it reveals its beautiful secrets layer by layer, its message of unity in the face of the unknown permeating each frame. It is a rare film, one that made me say, “This is the best film I’ve seen in a long time,” without hesitation.

I’m still processing it.

I’m sure I will have more thoughts to share on ARRIVAL as processing continues but these blurb-y notions are the first; post-percolation thoughts might show up either in future installments of these first draft ramblings or in next Sunday’s email dispatch, though who knows.

Currently reading: Chang-rae Lee’s ON SUCH A FULL SEA.

(TW)

The Files

During my time as an archivist and later executive director at a Cold War deep history / JFK assassination non-profit, there were two dates which we held aloft as goalposts of survival: the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, on 22 November 2013, and today, 26 October 2017, the day that, at long last, the remaining files on the JFK assassination would be – as a 25-year-old law dictates – released. Now that we are here (and I am not), what incredible morsels will be found inside these three thousand documents? What earth-shattering revelations will stand exposed?

Having spent 2005 through 2009 immersed in the millions of pages that were already released, I can safely say: probably nothing , or at least nothing that would be considered earth-shattering on its own. At best, the unseen pages will help connect disparate dots in the murky patchwork that constitutes modern American history;  history, after all, isn’t made of paper: it’s made of people, an always-fluctuating dichotomy of conflict that more often than not stands in stark contrast to the written record.

Unless I’m very mistaken — and I’ll be the first to admit if and when I am — the biggest story out of the files will be that they are now no longer invisible. Beyond that, it and the stories they tell will—unfortuntately—fade into obscurity as something else shiny and new barrels forth in our landscape of the new new new, now now now.

Reading: A DEATH IN BELMONT, by Sebastian Junger.

(TW)

Meta-Informality 0001 (For Now)

When I write meta-Informalities it’s clear that I lack the clarity to have something to say; the discipline, however, requires that I must push through and find something, anything, to say — exorcism via keyboard.

I’ve lost count of many times I’ve gone meta. Reboot/recount with this volume.

These pieces are how I bring myself back to the work and back to myself while doing the work. They declutter the brain from the New York Times, the newsletters, and the omnipresent clusterfuck that constitutes the world of 2017. They are my way of signaling to myself that I am alive even if I sometimes feel the opposite before/when/after I write them; they remind me that there is something resembling a brain in here and that it hasn’t turned into an inert morass of overloaded inputs, corporeal and digital.

To the work.

Reading: Faulkner, THE HAMLET (still) / Listening: typing.

(TW)

The Coming of the Cone

In which this home briefly returns to being just a house.

Izzy, the newest member of our family and my little rescue, is spending the day and night at the vet to earn her post-spay cone. It’s only been a short time since the little dog came into my life, but in the hour since K dropped her off, her absence marks a striking and disconcerting return to this house being simply a house.

I know that tomorrow, the Puppers will come back, slightly groggy and with a ring of plastic around her head and that home will return. In the ten ensuing days of Izzy’s JURASSIC PARK-dilophosaurus cosplay, The Morkie will no doubt attempt to teach her her trick learned during her days of beconement: how to scoop up gravel and hurl said pieces with abandon.

Until then, this is a house. And I am here.

(TW)

Ceding Control to Pleather Chairs

There is no comfort to be found regardless of how one contorts oneself in the pleather waiting room chair: there is only the view of buildings or parking lots, a months-old Sports Illustrated with the address label amputated, and the persistent sense that all is out of one’s control, be it the patient or the waiting.

The persistent ding of elevators and the air raid drone of equipment wheeled across shined floors with scuff marks intact. Floral wallpaper / stark lines, anesthetized against the world outside allowing only its own ecosystem of perpetual waiting and perpetual motion to rise above the din.

Legs over the side of the chair or legs crossed / slouched or straight / upside down or rightside up / the address label is still removed and one struggles to remember which section of the parking garage one is parked in and whether the parking will still be free when one leaves. (Seventh or sixth?)

The question of when the patient will leave, the waiting for the results and the waiting to find out that the results require more testing and more results; the only thing interesting on television is QVC and there is no room for opinion except for a universal disdain of the gold zippers on the floral bomber jacket that might match the floral wallpaper or the mauve of the exercise ball behind the windows of the physical therapy center, the hum of a treadmill.

The question of when the waiting will get to leave and wait no more (until tomorrow); begrudging acceptance that one doesn’t necessarily cede control when one passes through the glass doors and the non-smoking campus signs but the moment one wakes up.

(Happy birthday, Dear Morkie)

(TW)

Hypocrisy / Anomaly

With their incessant and hypocritical drum-banging for states’ rights, the Republican party (or whatever passes for its present iteration ) governs as though they are perpetually the opposition party; they are an anomaly: historically it is the minority party that pushes for states’ rights while the majority attempts to maximize federal reach.

However, it is impossible to see this drum-banging as anything but a smokescreen to expand Republican donor power from the top down: for example, Graham/Cassidy would have transformed Medicaid subsidies into block grants under the discretion of the states, but nearly 70% of those states are under Republican governorship.

They are always on the defensive, their Koch/Mercer policies too unpopular and out-of-touch with the majority of the population to stand on their own legs; they must instead be persistent repudiations of forward progress, efforts to dismantle and tarnish the legacy of a progressive administration. Maybe that’s part of their strategy (if they even have one beyond bluster and premature keggers): it’s far easier, the messaging far more simple and visceral, to stand in opposition to something than it is to be for something — especially when the policies for which they must stand are indefensible, the cruel wants of a donor class steeped in hypocrisy and the 140-character ravings of reprehensible conman.

(TW)

Up for Air from the Stream

I recognize that I am talking to myself here, thinking out loud. And that’s fine. These unpolished scribbles are for me, a way to unclog my brain matter before the day’s work and explore ideas that would otherwise accumulate with no possibility for exorcism. They also function as a form of connective therapy. A way to push me to publish again, to pull myself out of a shell in which I’ve encased myself since the first book came out.

For almost a decade, I’ve let the Twitter slot machine (a brilliant comparison whose source I now forget) of promised reassurance mask itself as a balm for my shell when it was only feeding my OCD — indeed, these 30-minute “post and forget” pieces are a way to share without caving into the self-inflicted torture of caring what people think about these snippets of vulnerability and forcing myself to not seek to allay my insecurities about existing in a digital world by making them worse. Hence, a two-week disappearance from Twitter and–for now–a stream reduced only to sharing these pieces as quickly as possible and the movement of the Twitter app to an iOS folder called “Reassurance Seeking”; if someone communicates with me, I’ll see a notification and respond in kind, but my days of putting my face into the stream and drowning are on indefinite hiatus, if not at an end.

(Of course, this could change tomorrow: one of the key things about this digital world of ours is that it is always changing; there is never a right way or a wrong way to go about anything because the right way and the wrong way could swap places in a split second).

At the same time, I recognize the fact that being connected is essential in this little career of mine, even if it’s to a community of one. To cut myself off from tools of connectivity is insanity; to be a tool to connectivity even more so.

These pieces are an effort to utilize the medium / media in a manner with which I’m comfortable and, in offering a much more minimalistic existence, present an honest expression of who I am, for better or worse.

Reading: THE HAMLET, by William Faulkner // Listening: SEX, by The Necks.

(TW)