Zinzy Waleson Geene

It’s a cruel God who would end Succession and Ted Lasso in the same calendar year.

Racism is the relief I feel when I’m woken up at 5 by a drunken fight because I see I won’t have to hear any racial slurs from the participants, who are Black.

“Before and after historical calamities are human beings creating themselves and contributing to the larger follow of civilizations.” Enjoying Michael W. Twitty’s Koshersoul.

If you use FigJam extensively enough, eventually you’ll find yourself presenting a board that contains an accidental swastika.

As I grow older, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the various conflicting regimens I have in place to take care of my skin, scalp, hair, et cetera. Will it only get worse from here?

Reading a book on Bijlmer Bajes (a famous Amsterdam prison), and I’m chuckling at the architect’s decision not to add bars to the windows, but instead rely on “wire alarm” in the glass. Obviously it resulted in a lot of prison breaks, but what fascinates me is that the user story changed completely from a prison guard aiming to keep a prisoner from breaking out to them aiming to be alerted to a breakout attempt.

Just noticed this UI change, Barry, I like it!

Earlier this week I found myself in line at a coffee place giving my friend a very passionate speech in response to her question “why would anyone have a website?”. I always marvel at people who don’t share this sentiment with us, James. Nice to meet you!

Apparently I have a thing for non-Dutch podcasts about the Netherlands.

Enjoying Sunday night dinner with Anja and my father-in-law. As of recent, we’ve been experimenting with taking it down a notch, food-wise. Rather than wowing guests with eight hours of cooking time, we now feel much more comfortable cooking a few dishing and ordering stuff we love. Today, our Middle Eastern menu was complemented by dishes from D&A.

One skill I’m pleased to have been cultivating these past few years is giving myself a permission slip to rest. I just woke up from a two-hour nap and boy, the world is a new place. Anja clearly remembers the dragon I would turn into whenever I was in need of a nap or just waking up from one. As though I would need to punish myself for having taking a break. Now, it’s a mere drop in an ocean of post-nap ecstasy for me.

I’m now writing these notes using an Apple Shortcut (as inspired by Mu-An. It’s a great way to publish IndieWeb content without having to do any special magic. Setting up this posting strategy has helped me evaluate how I handle notes on this website. My writing often contains short, daily reflections, but it may be worthwhile to move that to this section. Then I can reserve the writing area for longer-form content. Derek Kedziora is great at that, maybe I’ll see if I can be, too.

Archiving my previous Now entry from December 13, 2022.

• In Amsterdam simultaneously enjoying and dreading the cold
• At Leeruniek thoroughly enjoying solving design and mentoring challenges
• Preparing for our corgi puppy
• Invested in my yoga and meditation practice
• Teaching myself, once and for all, to play the piano

Isn’t it so that, if a cog in the wheel doesn’t work, the entire thing falls apart? What a beautiful reflection, Adrianna. I’m glad I read it today.

This is precisely what I love about webmentions, the return to the cozy web!

We’ve begun rewatching Succession again to prepare for its fourth and final season. If you haven’t watched it yet, it is a pure Shakespearean spectacle worth every second. Never before had I seen a work of fiction in which every single character is an antagonist.

1. Continue a seemingly unending cycle of laundry
2. Write in my diary
3. Bake challah

I’m not sure what it says about me that I find it annoying when people don’t recognize that my puppy is a corgi.

Today might be the day I finally bake a challah for shabbos again.

Playing the piano is helping me put some puzzle pieces in the right place. I’ve always had the ability to reproduce the pitch of a song, but it wasn’t until I began playing the piano that I now seem able to identify the key by name. It may seem silly or small, but that’s a game-changer for me. It makes me feel that I can put everything together now; as though I’ve come full circle.

I was pleased to find out just now that the longest distance between two things on Earth ever photographed is a whopping 443 km. Photographer Mark Bret was in the Pyrenees when he was able to photograph the Alps. (Via Marnanel)

I love this essay, Simone. Fully embracing the very IndieWeb concept of a personal website has helped me shake this feeling of FOMO, I imagine the same way it did for you. Don’t be hard on yourself, though, we all fell for this concept, and many of us still do. If society presents something as a way to solve a problem, most people will eventually try it. And while it does solve some problems, it also creates others. I have a few Gen Z friends who never fail to make me feel old whenever they talk about “their personal brand” in an unironic way. Gives me the shivers.

Hey

Darn Barry, I feel like 2023 is throwing you for quite a loop. Ever since you wrote about you getting laid off I think about you every now and then. I’m sorry this happened last week, although I must say I suppose it’s a lucky thing those divvies wanted to get a break-in early bird special.

I was today years old when I learned that American Express and AMEX are the same thing.

If you still needed convincing that I’m Grandma Tech at home, struggling to use even the most straightforward of functionalities, please be aware that I was today years old when I learned that, five years ago, TextExpander released a custom iOS keyboard that would’ve solved so many of my mundane problems, and all I was doing was asking myself “why am I even paying for that app anymore?”

I’m quite excited at the prospect of an impromptu, Kimberly Hirsch-is-in-the-Netherlands-inspired IndieWeb meet-up.

Listening to act two of This American Life’s episode The Runaround, in which we meet a boy who can only really calm his mind by running loops around the block, I can’t help but wonder: it’s beautiful to see a young problem-solver with ADHD make life easier for himself, but were there other people who thought of the compensatory behaviors often displayed by people with an eating disorder?