Anticlimactic

The World Cup is a great festival for the world. Not perfect, it is one of the few events where people from all over the planet come together to play.

For that, it is also strangely anticlimactic. The group stage brings abundance – 48 teams this year – and every day comes with countless stories about the teams, their countries, players, and fans.

In the knockout phase, the matches are supposed to be better because of the more balanced pairings and the all-or-nothing outcome. Also, the number of teams dwindles exponentially until the final, the most important game of football/soccer, where only two are left.

By then, most of the world already doesn’t care.

Checkmating the White King

There's always chess going on here in the Roscoe-verse. Here's a Correspondence Chess (CC) game I won this morning playing Black by catching the White King in a Bishop-Rook-pawn-Queen combination checkmate on my 43rd move. This game started on the 16th of June and ended this morning. The graphic above shows position of pieces on our board at geme's end, and our full move record follows: 1. d4 h6 2. Bf4 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Bd3 d5 5. Nc3 Bd6 6. Bg3 O-O 7. Nf3 Nbd7 8. Ne5 Nxe5 9. dxe5 Bxe5 10. f4 Bxc3+ 11. bxc3 b6 12. Qf3 Bb7 13. e4 dxe4 14. Bxe4 Bxe4 15. Qe3 Bxg2 16. Rg1 Nd5 17. Qf2 Be4 18. c4 Nc3 19. a4 Bf5 20. Bh4 Ne4 21. Qg2 Qxh4+ 22. Kd1 Nc3+ 23. Kc1 g6 24. Re1 Qxf4+ 25. Kb2 Ne4 26. Red1 Nf2 27. Rf1 Qd4+ 28. Kb1 Ne4 29. a5 Qxc4 30. Qf3 Nd2+ 31. Kb2 Nxf3 32. Rxf3 Qxc2+ 33. Ka3 Qc5+ 34. Kb3 Rfd8 35. axb6 cxb6 36. Rc3 Rd3 37. Rxd3 Bxd3 38. Kb2 Rc8 39. Rxa7 Qc3+ 40. Ka2 Qc2+ 41. Ka3 Rc3+ 42. Kb4 Rb3+ 43. Ka4 Bb5# 0-1

And the adventure continues.

Pittsburgh Pirates vs Philadelphia Phillies

Today's MLB Game in the Roscoe-verse has the Pirates at (43-44) playing the (49-38) Phillies. First pitch is scheduled for 11:35 AM CDT, only minutes away as I sit here listening to the Pirates Radio Network, waiting for the start. As I usually do, I'll follow the game's score and stats in real time via MLB's Gameday Service where we also find a link to the radio-call of the game.

And the adventure continues.

I think today may be the best I have felt in the last few weeks. Physically I feel a bit of exhaustion, but mentally and emotionally I feel a little better.

I am even considering leaving the house to do an activity today. I haven’t done anything in the last week, with everything going on with my dog, but she seems okay today and I don’t think anything would drastically change if I leave for a couple of hours. I have a pet camera that I can check on her from wherever I am, and I will be 10-15 minutes away from home if anything changes.

No update on my situation yet, I am growing somewhat anxious because it is limiting a lot of what I can do without depending on anyone else. Also, it would be nice to work and know when my next paycheck is coming.

Thank you for your message. I am currently out of office with no set return date. I will get back to you when the time is right.

I don't often wade into politics here, but in light of the 250th anniversary of the most important political document ever drafted, I'm making an exception. The recent Supreme Court ruling that President Trump's Executive Order interpreting the 14th Amendment's language on citizenship is unconstitutional was not surprising to me. Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, and Justice Barrett, though appointed by Presidents Bush and Trump, have disappointing track records. Perhaps the shining points in this ruling were the dissenting opinions of Justices Thomas and Alito, whose 90 and 40 page dissents present brilliant lessons in history and law. They should not go unread. Given their length, here are a few excerpts that I found brilliant. (Note: I removed numerous legal citations to make them more easily readable)

In America, you were generally a citizen if you were born here and this was your home. The legal word for home was domicile. The concepts were so linked as to be taken as effectively synonymous at time...Citizens were not the people who were temporarily passing through a territory or who happened to be born within it. Citizens were the permanent members of the body politic—the people whose roots were in a place, who called that place home, and who would, if necessary, go to war for that place...

The Court’s decision to hold the Citizenship Order facially (i.e., always) unconstitutional, in other words, makes it unlawful for the President to enforce the Order against a single person. He cannot enforce the Order against a child of an alien enemy or a child of a foreign spy. He cannot even enforce the Order against children who are raised in foreign countries, join foreign armies, and fight wars against the United States. The Court, without considering any of these individual circumstances, holds unconstitutional the application of the Citizenship Order in all of them.

In my view, the Citizenship Order is not facially unconstitutional. The Order is consistent with the original meaning of the Citizenship Clause, at least insofar as it applies to children born to parents, here lawfully or unlawfully, who are not domiciled in the United States. The Citizenship Clause was enacted for people who were born in this country and called it home. It was enacted for freed slaves such as Dred Scott, who had “a domicil” here and therefore were entitled to sue as citizens. It was enacted for men such as Frederick Douglass, who demanded citizenship “not as aliens nor as exiles,” but as “Americans.” Its authors and supporters promised, over and over again, that it would exclude the children of “persons temporarily resident” here, whom “we would have no right to make citizens.” In Senator Trumbull’s words: “What do we mean by ‘subject to the jurisdiction of the United States?’ Not owing allegiance to anybody else. That is what it means.” And, for decades after ratification, it was interpreted by all three branches of Government and by a wide range of legal authorities to be limited to people who were already Americans.

— Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, dissenting opinion, Trump v. Barbara

This is one of the most important decisions in the history of the Court, and in my judgment, the Court has made a serious mistake. As interpreted by the Court today, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on virtually everyone who happens to be born in this country, including the children of “birth tourists,” women who come here solely for the purpose of giving birth to a child and then promptly return home. Careful analysis of the text of the Fourteenth Amendment and the process that led to its adoption shows that it does not degrade the concept of United States citizenship in this way. Instead, the Fourteenth Amendment confers citizenship on only those children who, at birth, owe allegiance solely to this country...

According to the Court, the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause codified the British rule of birthright subjecthood with only one new exception, which was needed to accommodate the unique status of American Indians. That is a curious claim, and it is ironic that the Court should embrace it only days before we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence, which emphatically renounced the foundation on which the British rule rested. That rule did not concern “citizenship.” There was no such thing as a “citizen” of England, Scotland, or Ireland. The inhabitants of the British Isles were the King’s “subjects.”

— Supreme Court Associate Justice Samuel Alito, dissenting opinion, Trump v. Barbara

If you're interested—and I daresay you should be—read the entire decision and opinions here.

#history #politics

Letzter Tag für die Uniunterlagen: 26. Juni

Einen Tag vor der Deadline zu arbeiten hat leider doch nicht geklappt. Aber da es heute wieder schrecklich heiß werden sollte – wir nähern uns langsam den 40 Grad – haben wir beschlossen, von zu Hause aus zu arbeiten. Eigentlich ist es im Büro kühler und auch das Internet funktioniert dort besser. Aber man muss erst dorthin fahren und später wieder zurück. Also war es am Ende eine klassische Win-win-Entscheidung.

Wir haben uns bis zum Abend in unserem heißen Zimmer eingeschlossen. Und dann begann meine klassische Arbeit in letzter Minute! Eigentlich lief alles ganz gut. In den letzten Tagen bin ich erstaunlich produktiv geworden. Trotzdem haben mich drei Stunden konzentrierte Arbeit ohne Pause völlig erschöpft. Eine ganz typische Situation. Bei dieser Hitze war das wirklich blöd anstrengend. Übrigens klingt das deutsche Wort “blöd” für mich ganz ähnlich wie unser litauisches “bliamba” oder sogar wie das noch stärkere “blet”. Letzteres würde ich übrigens für offizielle Anlässe ganz sicher nicht empfehlen. Wie meine Kollegin und ich oft scherzen: Das hier ist eigentlich nicht für die Presse bestimmt. Da fragte ich mich plötzlich, ob wir dieses Wort vielleicht ursprünglich vom deutschen “blöd” übernommen haben...

Für heute reicht's vom Schreiben. Alles Weitere wäre wahrscheinlich gesundheitsschädlich. Ich möchte lieber noch etwas Positives an dieser schrecklichen Wärme finden. Und tatsächlich gibt es da etwas: die veränderten Schlafgewohnheiten unserer Hunde. Normalerweise möchten beide mit uns im Bett schlafen und am liebsten liegen sie beide neben mir. Das ist manchmal ziemlich anstrengend. Sie suchen sich nämlich keine feste Schlafposition, sondern wandern die ganze Nacht hin und her und komplizieren meine Erholung. Wenn es allerdings so heiß ist, zeigen sie ihre Liebe etwas vorsichtiger und bleiben lieber auf dem Boden liegen. Das gefällt mir.

1 July 2026

Bel sito (working title): have been working on a painting that began from looking at the golden wallpaper surrounding two small lamps hung askew at the hotel Yena and I stayed at for our last night in Venice on our recent trip. This has already been a unique process as far as accumulation is concerned—I've been gradually working into the painting day after day with pencil, scratches, and thin layers of the same shade of gray-blue (leaving light out of the picture, for now) aimed at the intricacies of the patterning, not for detail's sake but to hopefully get closer and closer to the effect of a wave of shimmering ornateness flattened into something threatening to become monolithic and frozen and cold. A good conversation about this yesterday with Edith in her studio as she works away on a similar visual tangle in the form of a patch of grass under a bracelet. Identifying naturally occurring dynamics, toggling them towards an equilibrium or lack thereof. Questions around how closely to hold the biographical as an invisible structure informing material decisions. If at all.

Currently parsing through James Duffield Harding's On Drawing Trees and Nature (originally published in 1855; expanded reprint published in 2005), and I've been pretty directly referencing his teachings on line, light, form, and negative space with respect to depicting foliage as I develop Bel sito. I think there's maybe something about what the mind does when confronted with varying amounts of blank space—automatically conjuring what it knows or hopes to be true—that feels analogous to the affectionate warping of patterns as they are reshaped in the process of being committed to memory.

The last dream I can recall was me, alone, having the sudden recollection of having casually taken out my IUD. My immediate thought was, “why would I do that?” I thought about moments where I took out my contacts and Invisalign and how relieving that can be. Sometimes I don't expect that relief and it feels kind of good but I feel best when I can see clearly or feel my teeth straightening. But it wouldn't make sense to need a respite from my IUD. It's practically invisible until I get my period.

In my dream, I was so convinced I had taken it out until I thought, that isn't even actually possible. People can't just take out their IUDs independently. I immediately felt better knowing with certainty that my IUD was still where I needed it. And that was it, the whole uneventful dream.

The next morning, I reflected on my dream even though it seemed meaningless at first. What made it significant to me was that I was able to reason with myself while I was dreaming, something I don't remember ever doing before. Perhaps it's because I am twenty-six now.

This dream reminds me of a recent time, in my awake life, where I felt convinced a guy I started sleeping with asked me about STDs. I felt poorly over the next few days that he could ever think I'd have one. I wanted him to see me as clean and responsible like I assumed him to be. The feeling became so prevailing I asked him about it the next time we saw each other. I genuinely asked, “did you ask me about having an STD? Because I am so convinced you did. I've never had one.” He was a bit taken aback but warm saying, “I think it's because I told you how I'd hype the crowd at my high school football games by chanting that the other school's girls had STDs.”

I wonder if I should be more worried about these occurrences where I've convinced myself of situations that never happened. The STD moment was the first time this has happened and the dream the second. Well these are the only times I actually know of, upon reflection. Will this become an issue for me the way it is for my grandmother and my mother and even my younger sister? I've been quick to write them off as irrational, behavior that is a product of not reading books or having stimulating conversations or questioning their religion. I don't have a complete thought here.

Angine de Poitrine in May 2026 at the Great Escape by Pauil Hudson. (Via WikiMedia — License: CC BY 4.0)

This morning I installed a music player that I am unfamiliar with, and decided that the first thing I should listen to is Angine de Poitrine Vol. 1 and Vol. II since I hadn't listened to them in a while. And then I found, by coincidence that they played the Montreal Jazz Festival last Saturday (June 27th, 2026) and broke the attendance record set by Stevie Wonder in 2009. I cannot imagine what the guys behind Khn and Klek are thinking right now. Just a year ago they were relatively unknown, and now they're playing for 200,000 fans in their hometown.

There have been a couple of things that I keep hearing and reading about Angine de Poitrine that bother me. The first is they are the “Answer to AI” or “AI could never come up with this music”. The second is they are just a fad and won't survive. And, of course, I have some thoughts on both of these topics.

Are They The Answer to AI?

I both agree and disagree with people who say this. There are two ways to look at it. The first way, and this is what most people mean, is that Artificial Intelligence could not create microtonal music based on building loops. The premise is that we don't normally listen to microtonal music, so there is no way an AI could come up with it on it's own.

But, what if I were to say that we do listen to microtonal music, just not nearly as much or as often as we do equal temperament music? We've had groups like King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard that have incorporated microtonality into their music for over a decade. True, they haven't risen to the same level of popularity of Angine de Poitrine, but they have proven popular enough to have produced twenty-five albums worth of music.

However, there are other things to consider. For some reason there are a lot of people that seem to assume that “microtonal” means using 24 EDO (Equal Divisions of the Octave), instead of the typical western style of 12 EDO instruments. But that isn't completely the truth. We have had composers and musicians going back as far as the 1940s that used (and often built) instruments with different tuning systems. The most notable was Harry Partch, who came up with his on 43-tone non-EDO tuning system.

But also, we should consider that instruments from other cultures do not adhere to the typical 12 EDO tuning systems. Possibly the most notable being the Sitar, which uses a tuning system that is unlike western tuning systems. Of course Indian Raja's have been reasonably known in the west, especially after George Harrison introduced the instrument on several Beatles songs.

Given that all of these types and styles of music are likely known to AI's, which have been fed vast catalogs of music, it's quite possible for one to come up with a form of microtonal music. The reason an AI hadn't come up with something that incorporated microtonality isn't because of the AI itself.

The reason that I agree with this statement is that Angine de Poitrine is more than just their microtonal music. They have an absurdist aesthetic combined with dadaism. They invented some lore for themselves as aliens that have come to earth and love rock music. Their music is more about making fun or parodying pop-rock music.

All of this is a complete package that would require someone with the imagination and artistic knowledge to have come up with. And, that's why there is no AI equivalent of Angine de Poitrine. The majority of the people prompting AI agents to create music don't have the level of knowledge and imagination.

Are They A Fad?

This is a more difficult question to figure out. There is one side of me that thinks the “gimmick” is likely to get old after a while. But, how long will that be? I don't know, and I don't think anyone really knows. If someone thinks they know they are likely just guessing. I mean, after all, how long did KISS go with their makeup and outfits? How long did Angus Young wear his schoolboy outfit in AC/DC?

In Japan, it's not at all unusual for music groups to adopt some form of aesthetic. Band Maid has been going for over ten years now wearing maid costumes. And I won't even get into the Visual Kei artists and their adoption of varying types of costumes. There is a whole culture in Japan which links visual aesthetic and artistry in a way that isn't a gimmick, it's expected and accepted.

What could be a bit trickier is where they go musically. Right now it seems that a lot of people see 24 EDO based sound as a novelty, instead of being a serious form of music. But I don't think that is an issue. There is still a lot of ground for them to explore musically with microtonality.

But I do think they will need to find some way to change up their format. Right now they have a uniquely identifiable music style. They will need to find a way to iterate on this style. They will need to find a way of keeping it fresh, while not alienating their current fans. I could speculate on several ways they could do this, but I am not them. I don't have the same thought process they do. After all, they've been playing together since they were thirteen years old. It's only for them to figure out where they want to go next.

So, in the end, are they a fad? Who knows, and who really cares? Just ride along with them. If they fail, they fail. If they succeed, then they succeed. I'll keep listening and decide when and if I want to stop listening. That's all you can do.

---

Categories: #Music Tags: #microtonal, #antiai, #rockmusic, #parody, #dada License: Copyright Unattributed. Licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0.

What is Evidence-based Practice in Nursing?

Calling out to all the students embarking on their academic journey in nursing! Your assignments are a vital part of your education. In this case, evidence-based practice, or EBP, is a cornerstone. Wondering why? Well, it helps in providing the best quality patient care.

Moreover, for you nurses it is not a buzzword. EBP goes beyond this in Nursing. Think of it as a guiding principle that contributes to your decision-making. Moreover, it enhances patient outcomes.

Hence, EBP is vital for doing nursing assignments. Well, for those who do not know what this is, this blog is for you. Here, we are going to dive deep into evidence-based practices. Moreover, we are going to discover its role and significance in Nursing. So, come on! Stop scrolling and read our blog! It is going to come in handy during your academic career. Let's go! But hold one! First, we will understand what evidence-based practice is.

Evidence-Based Practice: A Brief Overview

EBP means using solid evidence, such as research observing patient preferences and your clinical expertise, to enhance decision-making. Think of it as a grounded approach for nurses to provide better outcomes. Gone are the days when nursing professionals relied on their institution. EBP has enhanced the healthcare field.

Some common examples include Protocols on alarm fatigue and management of angina. So, this was a brief overview of EBP. Now, come on! Let's move to the next part and discover its core components. They include:

Key Components

Here are some of the critical components of EBP in nursing.

1. Research Evidence

It is a foundation that helps make clinical decisions and improves outcomes. It includes diving into scientific studies, systematic reviews etc to collect the findings.

2. Clinical Expertise

Here comes the next one! Let's face it! Nurses are the valuable assets of the nursing field. With them they bring expertise, skills and knowledge. Well, they have hands-on-experience. It helps interpret research findings to enhance the quality of patient care.

3. Patient Preferences

Knowing the patient preferences for better results is vital. Well, recognizing this, EBP emphasises the use of patient preferences and goals for decision making. Moreover, by communicating with patients, nursing professionals ensure proper outcomes.

So, these are some of the key components of effective-based practices. Now, come on! Let's move ahead and discover its significance. Let's go!

Significance of EBP in Nursing

EBP is pivotal in bridging the gap between theory and practical applications. Moreover, it helps in delivering innovative patient care. Here are some of the other reasons why it is vital in nursing. They include:

1. Enhanced Patient Outcomes

Yup! You heard it right! EBP in nursing helps in providing enhanced patient outcomes. Furthermore, they ensure that interventions made are by using the best available evidence. Also, whether it prevents complications or manages diseases, it improves patient care. Now, come on! Let's move to the next point!

2. Cost Reduction

By using the EBP, nursing professionals can save on costs in the healthcare sector. Wondering how? By avoiding unnecessary procedures, one gets better care without compromising the quality. Hence, the reason why EBP in nursing is vital

3. Professional Growth

Yeah! EBP contributes to one's personal and professional growth. Furthermore, engaging in these provides one with skills needed to excel in the field. Well, while working on the tasks they learn how to incorporate theory into the practice. Thus, it fosters life-long learning and critical thinking.

While EBP plays a vital role in nursing, applying it can be challenging. Do you want to know what they are? Then look below!

Challenges

When implementing EBP in nursing students, they often face difficulties for various reasons. They include:

1. Let's be honest! Access to all the available resources is not possible. Hence, it can hinder one's focus. Moreover, it can impact their ability to stay updated with recent trends. But, one can now access every research material. Wondering how? Well, by seeking help from cheap nursing assignment help UK. These experts can also guide you on what to do. Hence you should go for them.
2. Being on a time crunch is another barrier. Due to a heavy workload, one finds it hard to engage in EBP practices.
3. Moreover, many nurses lack the relevant skills and training for research-based practices. Hence, it can impact the EBP. For this, providing education is vital.
4. Moreover, many nurses can't adapt to the change. Well, it also poses the challenge of using EBP practices.

Conclusion

You have reached the end of the guide. So, evidence-based practices are not about gaining theoretical knowledge. Instead it is about gaining practical experiences. Moreover, by using the best evidence one can enhance patient care. It also helps drive better outcomes. Also it helps in cost effectiveness.

However, EBP in nursing has its own perks. You can overlook the challenges it brings. Be it unavailability of resources, time constraints or lack of skills. They all serve as barriers. Thus for this healthcare experts need to come together. It will help with better patient care. Through constant support and education one can gain knowledge on EBP.

A one-day event by curator Lesia Kulchynska in collaboration with de Appel, Sepp Eckenhaussen and Shared Visions

Artistic practice is often a risky economic endeavor. In fact, many contemporary artists have to combine their exciting but underpaid artistic practice with other jobs in education, retail, web design, or any other field where their artistic skills can be converted into marketable services. While artistic practice is a space for freedom and experimentation with no guarantees of financial reward, the job market requires obedience to clients’ demands, in exchange for money. We want to challenge this dilemma, and relaunch the service industry on artistic terms.

We invite artists to join a one-day event, where they can present their artistic practice in the form of wayward, unique, and unreplicable service in exchange for money, something tangible or intangible, symbolic or material, straight on the market.

The artists are welcome to fashion a type of service that is not classified in a standard market service list, but that conveys valuable experience to others. This could be a nail design in a unique painterly manner, a lesson on whistling one's favorite songs, a saying good-buy workshop, or anything else, suiting their specific and extraordinary experience, talents, and attitudes. Your potential customers most likely don't know yet that they need this service, but we believe that they will appreciate it once they encounter your unexpected and precious offer. There are no limits except for the rule: the services cannot be modified upon the demand of the customer, only enjoyed as they are. We are, after all, still dealing with art.

With this project, our aim is to go beyond the logic of the service industry and invite artists to reinvent and appropriate the idea of “service” according to their needs and values. The artists participating in the project will become part of the emerging community of unclassified service providers.

Apply for Service at Dappermarkt here!

Who can submit proposals?

All artists (and others) interested in this format and living in the Netherlands are invited to submit proposals to participate in the Service project. We look forward to your service proposal, which you would like to use as a tool for exchange with the broader community. We welcome individual as well as collective applications.

What do we offer?

The four selected participants will share two market stalls at the Dappermarkt for one full day. On the market, they are free to sell or exchange their artistic service however they see fit. For a baseline income, each participant or collective will receive a fee of €300 (including taxes) and an €80 production budget.

How to submit applications?

Fill out the Google Form with a brief description (max. 150 words) of the proposed service idea and describe the type of exchange you envision (max. 100 words). Provide brief information about your occupation and artistic practice (max. 100 words).

Selection

The organisers will select four participants from the applications. They will look for proposals that:

○ Show wit and the capacity to surprise;

○ Propose artistic practice as a service (as opposed to offering the instrumental application of artistic skills as a service or offering artistically produced objects);

○ Are likely to generate engagement with the people at the street market;

○ Are feasible within the given limitations of space, time, and budget;

○ Complement one another, so as to host a diversity of practices.

Practical details and timeline

○ 13 July: Application deadline.

○ 21 July: Announcement of the selection.

○ Ca. 31 July: Online preparation meeting. The participants, organisers, and production team will meet online to introduce themselves and their practices, and discuss the practical details of the market day.

○ 5 September: Service at Dappermarkt.

○ Ca. 7 September: Debriefing. Since this will be the first event of its kind in the Netherlands, we are keen to co-learn from the experience. We will host a get-together at de Appel to debrief and share experiences among all participants.

About Service, Kiosk, and Shared Visions

Service at Dappermarkt is a joint activity of Lesia Kulchynska’s Service, de Appel Kiosk, and, on behalf of Shared Visions, Sepp Eckenhaussen. Each of the three is a long-term project aiming to manipulate the economic rules of artistic labour. In Service at Dappermarkt, they collaborate for the first time.

Service was initiated by curator Lesia Kulchynska. It functions as an online and offline platform for artists to offer unusual services and performative actions to the general public, in exchange for money, something material or immaterial, something symbolic, another kind of exchange, or just for free. Previous Service events have been organised in Kyiv and Kaunas (info here and here). The website is currently offline because of the war in Ukraine, but you can read about it here and here.

de Appel Kiosk is a series of events and interventions at Dappermarkt and Albert Cuypmarkt, two of Amsterdam’s most iconic street markets. Through the de Appel Kiosk endeavour, the organisation reflects on practices of exchange and barter in market economies. Read more about Kiosk here.

Shared Visions is a European project that aims to establish a transnational cooperative for visual artists – a democratic, solidarity-based structure committed to reshaping how artists live, work, and organize, especially in the Balkans and Eastern Europe, and across wider international contexts. In various contexts, it has been experimenting with visual art in barter economies. On behalf of Avans University, researcher and organiser Sepp Eckenhaussen is the Dutch partner within the Shared Visions consortium. Read more about the project here.

Apply for Service at Dappermarkt here!

Today I had the pitch a friend event where G And I pitched each other. To be completely honest there weren’t really people there that I felt like caught my eye, but I did have a good amount of interest in me. I have a few girls come and approach me, and they weren’t unattractive or undesirable people at all, just not necessarily my type. I thought about how interesting it is to be on this side of the stable matching theorem, because there were these girls that are showing interest in me, and aren’t horrible candidates I guess for a lack of a better way to put it, but at the same time I’m not really like overly enamored by them. And so I don’t pursue them, because I’m used to being able to chase what I desire. I do appreciate the confidence boost however.

The hot sun behind thick gray clouds — which occasionally rain down on the tall grass from which insects rise in swarms as I go near them — shines with a pleasant warmth.

I see that the lush green apple trees have grown since spring, and I think it’s because of this tropical weather.

The first tree we planted in this orchard, when we were full of dreams, previously thought dead due to having been chewed on by roe deers, now sends its lower branches heavenward, green with life. Only the top half of its crown is dead.

And I sit inside the air conditioned room, working using the topmost of four stacked laptops (It’s the last week, then I’ll be using the one below it), feeling pretty good.

Feeling, I imagine, like the first apple tree I just described.

Berlin, Again

I am in Berlin this week for work.

It is probably the city I have visited more than any other in my adult life. Strangely, it is the first time I have come here because someone put a meeting on my calendar.

I first came to Berlin in August 2017. Almost nine years ago. Sometimes that feels like another lifetime, sometimes it feels like last month.

Berlin has never really been the main character in my life. More like a recurring one. It keeps showing up every few seasons, looking a little different each time.

Back then the city smelled different. I don't know if it actually did, or if memory has a way of adding its own perfume.

Pizza Funghi was five euros. A döner was four. Cash was king. The streets looked tired but never apologized for it. There were buildings that probably needed fixing years ago, but somehow they belonged exactly where they were.

I had a friend who knew Berlin better than Google Maps ever could. The kind of person who always seemed to know where the next warehouse party was, even when there wasn't supposed to be one. We wandered through parts of the city I would never have found on my own. I saw things I've never seen again, in Berlin or anywhere else.

Some cities ask you to visit.

Berlin used to ask you to disappear for a while.

A few years later I started coming here much more often. Too often to feel like a tourist, not often enough to call it home.

Somewhere along the way, the city started speaking more English. Card terminals quietly appeared where cash once ruled. There were more cafés I'd bookmarked than clubs I wanted to visit. The airport finally looked like it might actually open.

The Berlin I knew was growing up.

Or maybe it was simply becoming easier to understand.

The friend who first introduced me to Berlin had moved on by then. So did I.

The people I spent time with now liked cooking dinner together, reading books, sitting in cafés for hours, walking through parks, arguing over which restaurant to try next. None of those things are particularly Berlin. They're just good ways to spend an afternoon.

These days the city reminds me of parts of New York. Still rough around the edges, just with nicer coffee and better insulation.

Some famous clubs have disappeared. New glass buildings seem to appear every time I come back. People from everywhere have made a home here. Some arrived looking for a fresh start. Some came looking for freedom. Some simply came because this is Berlin.

Cities don't stay the same.

I don't think they are supposed to.

Neither do the people who keep returning to them.

These days I am more excited about finding a restaurant I've never tried than a club I have never heard of.

I think that's a fair trade.

But every now and then, I still find myself looking for the scent of the Berlin I first walked into.

I recently spent a week at a friend couple’s house. They go back and forth between two cities that are drivable from each other. I've known the woman for a long time. The man, I’ve only met him once or twice, just exchanging basic greetings. The first night, three of us had dinner together. It was a pleasant time. They were telling me about how they were doing as a fairly new couple. He jokingly said to me, “I like that she thinks I am always right.” She laughed. I didn’t laugh because I didn’t particularly find it funny. I found it icky. Throughout dinner, I was picking up on his fragile ego and controlling tendencies. I wished and wondered if she was aware of these qualities in him. A couple of days passed. She told me they decided to leave town a bit early. I immediately sensed he didn’t want to be near me. He knew I saw what he tried so hard to mask. Despite the cool-guy image he presented to the world, he seemed awkward and uncomfortable in his own skin. It was painful to watch. I’ve been there, too. Back then, being around someone who was unapologetically real was intimidating. I couldn’t bear it. Like they were piercing the blind spot I so desperately wanted to ignore. I hope this man heals. I hope he will learn I am not his enemy, but he is.

#stories