We launched Write.as on this day way back in 2015 — eleven years ago! To celebrate, for the next two weeks ending February 16, we're having a sale on our long-term 5-year Pro plan and iOS app.

Read more about how we got here on our blog — and for more on this discount, read on.

5-year Pro Plan

From the very start, we built Write.as with an eye toward the next decade-plus. As writers ourselves, we wanted everyone to feel comfortable knowing the words they published here would still be there tomorrow. So in 2020, we launched our 5-year plan, a steeply discounted plan that both helps sustain our small business and gives you peace of mind knowing you’ll have a place on the web for years to come.

As has become tradition at this point, we're again offering our long-term 5-year Pro plan at an even higher discount. With this, you can get everything Write.as has to offer on our Pro plan for just $180, paid once every 5 years (25% off our normal price). This is also available to current and past 5-year subscribers who want to renew their long-lasting subscription.

Besides our normal Pro features, our 5-year plan comes with up to 10 blogs (instead of the usual 3), plus extra Write.as invites for friends and family, and bonuses like a chance to join office hours with our founder, Matt.

Grab this discount before Monday, February 16th at 11:59pm Eastern, when our sale ends — see our five-year subscription page to subscribe, restart, or switch from another Pro plan.

WriteFreely for iOS

During this sale, you can also get 33% off our WriteFreely iOS app! It's just $7.99, paid once, to install on your Apple devices today and get all future updates.

This app works with the open source platform behind Write.as, called WriteFreely. That means you can use it to publish to any WriteFreely community, including your Write.as account!

Purchase the app on the App Store during the sale to grab this special discount.

It's been incredible growing, evolving, and creating a writing space for everyone over the last decade. We can't thank you enough for pouring out your words, and choosing to do that here on Write.as.

We're excited to keep growing alongside you, and to see what we all write over the next decade! 🎉

#WriteAs #WriteFreely #sale #discount #Deals

Today, February 2, marks 11 years since we officially launched Write.as! What started as a minimal, anonymous article publishing platform in 2015 has since grown into an ecosystem of apps, a community of writers, and an open source platform called WriteFreely powering it all.

To celebrate, for the next two weeks ending February 16th, we're having a sale on our long-term, 5-year Pro plan, and iOS app. You can read all about it on our Write.as Deals newsletter.

In the beginning

When we launched Write.as in 2015, the internet was quite a different place. Our founder, Matt, saw some of the issues of the time, and wanted to build a product that directly addressed them, with digital privacy at the forefront.

At the time, the world was still hearing news of mass surveillance by intelligence agencies around the world, combined with what we already knew about the dominant tech business model that has since only continued to metastasize, summed up in a then-new term called “[surveillance capitalism](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstractid=2594754)_.”

On top of that, we recognized the cycle that cheap, free-flowing venture capital perpetuated, as helpful products sprouted up with all cash and no business model, only to go away once the money ran out. Over and over, people would connect and create on these new apps and platforms, only to see them close down without much notice.

We wanted to do things differently: encouraging free expression by protecting privacy, and building with an eye toward the next decade, not the next funding round.

How far we’ve come

Now 11 years later, we’ve grown to host over 600,000 users and 6.6 million posts. We’ve helped non-bloggers start blogging, and writers find new community and readers to share their work with.

We’ve released our source code, so anyone can host their own individual blog or entire writing community, where they have choice and control over their data and how the app runs. We were one of the first platforms to bring long-form writing to the modern open social web (the “fediverse” as powered by ActivityPub), and have since grown with it over the years. There are now hundreds of independent blogs and communities running on WriteFreely across the web!

In the years since launching, we’ve also inspired similar minimalist blogging platforms and anonymous publishing tools. And we’ve stuck to our original principles — that we would always remain ad- and tracking-free; that we would be funded by our customers, not venture capital; and that we would continue building the open web.

Looking ahead

So what’s next? As always, we’ll continue carefully maintaining the platform and tending to everyone publishing on Write.as. We’ll continue developing WriteFreely, so you’ll never be locked in with us, and can host your data where you please.

We’ll also continue developing new features where they make sense. Some are planned that will help more people interact with your blogs from across the open web, and we have plenty of small quality-of-life fixes we hope to get out soon.

As always, we’re honored to be the platform of choice for so many writers around the world, and to be trusted with your words. If you haven’t subscribed to our 5-year Pro plan yet, be sure to do that while our sale is going on. Otherwise, we’re proud to be a success story for building sustainable, open and long-term products for the web, and we look forward to doing it for many, many more years to come!

As always, thank you so much for writing with us.

#anniversary

(this is just pure haterade. there’s no valuable analysis going on here, if you liked metroid prime 4, ok! neat. carry on)

it turns out that the only thing worse than chasing a trend that doesn’t really mesh with your franchise is to abandon chasing the trend so late in in development that you end up panicking your way into creating something that meshes even less well.

metroid prime 4 is a total failure on every level except for two:

1. the art design is genuinely wonderful, when it’s allowed to be (i.e. when it’s not being applied to the most boring desert in all of video games)

2. the UI and gameplay mechanics are generally rock-solid, which makes sense considering they’re essentially identical to every other game in this series

otherwise, everything about this game that’s unique or an attempted progression on the prior entries in the series is bad.

the motorcycle is the loudest failure because it’s an open and constant admission of so many other failures. you use it to travel between the actual levels, across a barren and bland desert, occasionally crashing into some green rocks because it’s the closest thing to interaction you’ve had to do outside of holding right-trigger for a couple of minutes. it achieves the aim of a loading-screen elevator, but less efficiently and with more time for you to gawk at the sheer hours of wasted effort until even the gawking feels repetitive.

the other thing the bike does is open doors via abysmally slow stock animations involving a lot of gears and slowly rising platforms. thrilling.

the game’s new set of abilities (sorry, PSYCHIC POWERS) are either cribbed from previous games (but now it’s a PSYCHIC spider ball!) and/or utilized entirely for tedious puzzle-solving and combat. I liked the guided-shot okay until the third time I had to fight the mini-boss that requires you hit three orbiting drones through a wave of other orbiting drones several times in succession in order to be able to do any damage, which puts a lot of strain on the floaty flight controls and camera that they aren’t refined enough to handle.

the story has a theoretically interesting angle (you’re explicitly doing archaeology, the alien species asking for your help is long dead) except it’s just a variation on a thing every metroid game is doing, and the execution here is remarkably bland and over-reliant on the samus-as-holy-savior stuff that always feels like a bummer when it comes up too much in any given metroid.

but also we have NPCs!

oh christ the NPCs. nothing tells you how fucked this game’s development was than the moments when mackenzie won’t shut the fuck up about how you need to get to the lava world now that you have the lava wheels on your bike, multiple times, as you drive your bike in a straight line directly towards the lava world. thank you video game for repeatedly yelling at me about your own failures of level and world design.

metroid prime 4 is the most scared game I’ve played in a while. the game is absolutely terrified that you’re going to feel potentially lost, miss a turn, stop doing the next thing on the checklist (there’s only the one checklist). your shithead NPC companion will never leave you alone. he’s not physically present as much as the opening moments might make you fear, but he’s still always barking at you.

when he isn’t, it’s because the game has you going down a straight corridor towards another straight corridor, and so it can breathe a sigh of relief knowing you won’t have any dangerous pretensions about choice or exploration.

the favored level design here is “walk through a linear series of rooms while the lights are off, get to the place where you turn the lights on, then walk backwards through that same linear series of rooms, but now the lights are on and probably some bad guys woke up!” the game puts a dot on your minimap when you enter a zone that shows you where the area boss fight’s gonna happen, and then there is virtually no need to ever open your map again because there is no branching or maze-like behavior at all (except in very short bursts that always, always wind back on themselves in the simplest possible fashion).

going back to the NPCs for my last big complaint: all these idiots talking to samus makes the decision to have samus be mute extremely weird. it’s not weird in, say, metroid prime 1 or super metroid, because in those cases samus is exploring a hostile alien world by herself and has no need to be talking to anyone. in a game where she is interacting with someone a lot — metroid fusion — it’s also fine because she does talk because samus isn’t a fucking mime, she’s not doomguy, she’s just a bounty hunter who usually operates solo!

if you didn’t want to give her a voice actress and risk people being annoying about it or comparing it too directly to other m, there’s a simple enough solution there: get rid of the fucking NPCs, or at least avoid having them do stock-video-game conversations about where the objective is and what it looks like. having samus do mario-RPG-ass pantomime in these sequences is absurd and does the opposite of what metroid games usually do, which is use her relative silence as a way to reduce the friction between player and situation.

that this game doesn’t suck to play on a moment-to-moment level only exacerbates its failures, to my mind. the scaffolding for even a “pretty good” game was already here, it’s called the metroid prime trilogy, you get zero points for that stuff still being here and you certainly don’t get points for the stuff you tried to add. so if we’re doing the math, that’s going to be zero points overall. congratulations.

(I think the new suit sucks too, but now we’re just being petty. wouldn’t want to be petty)

Nothing very special about this, I just kept forgetting exactly what the ingredients were so I wrote them down.

Ingredients

• 1 C Water
• ¼ C soy sauce
• 5 tsp packed brown sugar
• ½ tsp ground ginger
• ¼ tsp garlic powder

  ---

• 2 Tbsp corn starch
• ¼ C cold water

Directions

• Mix first set of ingredients together in a sauce-pan and put over medium heat. Heat to just short of a boil.
• Mix corn starch and cold water together in a cup, and stir until dissolved.
• Add corn starch mixture to pan, and cook until thickened, about 5-7 minutes.

#recipe #sauce

Quick and easy, and I usually have all the ingredients on-hand in case I need to “use up” some leftover rice (which I almost always have after making a meal that includes rice, because I make a big batch so I have leftovers).

Ingredients

• 3-4 Cups cooked rice
• 1½ Cup milk (or 1 14oz can lite Coconut milk)
• 1 (14 oz) can sweetened condensed milk (sweetened condensed coconut milk works)
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 egg (you really only need the yolk, but what do you do with one egg white at that point?)

Directions

• Rice, milk, and sweetened condensed milk all go in a pan on low heat.
• While that warms, beat the egg and vanilla and set aside.
• Stir rice and milk frequently.
• When milk comes to a simmer, spoon about ¼ cup of milk into the egg, whisking continually until mixed, then pour back into the pan, stirring until it's all mixed.
• Lower heat and stir for another 5-10 minutes until pudding is almost as thick as you'd like. It will thicken more as it cools.
• Serve hot. Or cool. Or cold.

Notes

• If you don't eat it all immediately, you can also take leftover cold rice pudding, shape it into patties, coat it with batter, and pan-fry it to have delicious fried treats.

#recipe #dessert #rice

As writers, we collect, save, and apply information. So much so, we end up with physical and online clutter. Bookmarks are a great example.

If I go by Pareto principle (correct me if I’m wrong), about 20% of all the websites I save are the ones I go to all the time. And about 80% are those I’ve been there once and never come back. I’m a pack rat and deleting unused bookmarks can be painful.

I can’t believe how many bookmarks I’ve saved throughout the years. Many have broken links and there are websites I wonder why I saved them in the first place. I might as well take screenshots of the information on my phone and go back to them when I need them.

Anyway, I feel so much better deleting all the bookmarks I don’t need. One less thing to worry about (until I start collecting more).

#bookmark #cleaning

Ingredients

• 1 Box dairy-free yellow cake mix (Duncan Hines, for example) plus the ingredients it calls for.

Streusel Ingredients

• ½ Cup cold vegan butter (I prefer coconut-oil based for desserts)
• 1⅓ Cup general-purpose flour
• ½ Cup white sugar

Rhubarb Ingredients

• 2 Pounds (6 cups) chopped rhubarb (½ inch long pieces)
• ⅓ Cup white sugar

---

Directions

• Preheat oven to 350F.
• Wash and chop rhubarb. Put in a large bowl and sprinkle with sugar. Let it sit while you prep everything else.
• Mix cake batter according to instructions, but prepare a second pan. This will make two 8” square cakes very easily.
• Mix streusel ingredients with a fork until crumbly.
• Pour cake batter into pans.
• Drain any liquid from the rhubarb (save it for something else!) and put rhubarb on top of batter.
• Sprinkle streusel over the rhubarb.
• Bake cakes for 3-5 minutes longer than the cake mix box calls for, until streusel is golden-brown and delicious.
• Let cake cool.
• Enjoy!

#recipe #dessert #rhubarb

Ingredients

• 2 pounds rhubarb (5-6C), chopped
• 1 C sugar (or a little less)
• 1 pint (500ml) heavy cream
• 1 box yellow cake mix, made to directions

Directions

• Make cake mix and put it in cake pan
• Mix rhubarb and sugar well
• Pour rhubarb mix over cake
• Pour cream over top
• Bake 45-60 minutes at 350F (longer if the rhubarb is frozen)

Notes

• A 9x13 inch cake pan works. Smaller and you might have to make two cakes.
• The time is highly variable. I had two different ovens, both with accurate thermostats, one of which finished this cake in 45 minutes very reliably, the other of which always took longer (55-60 minutes). No idea why.

#recipes #dessert #rhubarb

This is one of my “pre-mise en place” recipes. Earlier in life, I didn't generally prep ingredients ahead of time, but rather prepped each as it was needed. This will work with some recipes (like this one), but in general, leads to chaos in the kitchen.

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp bacon grease
• ½ sweet onion, diced
• 1 large carrot, cut into coins (5-6mm, ¼ inch thick)
• 2 medium yellow or red potatoes, cubed
• 1 large Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and cubed
• 2 pork chops, 12-18mm, ½-¾ inch thick
• salt and pepper to taste
• ½ cup apple juice
• 1 tsp Chinese five-spice
• 1 tsp Wondra flour

Directions

• Begin heating a cast-iron skillet to sauté temperature with bacon grease in it.
• Dice the onion, and toss it in.
• Slice the carrot into coins, toss them into the skillet and stir.
• Cube a couple spuds. In they go. Stir.
• Peel, core, and cube a large Granny Smith apple. Into the pan. Stir.
• Unwrap and pat the pork-chops dry. Lightly season with salt and pepper.
• Move vegetables to the edges of the pan, and put in the pork chops.
• Put the veg on top of the chops.
• Add apple juice.
• Lid the skillet and lower the heat. Let simmer for 6 minutes.
• Flip the pork-chops, add five-spice
• Move veg back on top of chops, lid again. Simmer for 3-7 minutes, until meat is still just pink in the center.
• Pull meat and veg from the pan, and make a pan-gravy with the juice using 1 tsp of Wondra flour.
• Serve and enjoy!

Feeds: 2

Note that you can put the skillet on a grill if you want to cook this for tailgating. In that case, it's probably better to prep all the ingredients ahead of time.

#recipe #mains #pork

# AVISO: USO DE IA NO TEXTO #

Imagine um país em que, para dirigir um carro, não fosse necessário fazer prova no DETRAN.

Bastaria se matricular em uma autoescola qualquer, assistir às aulas — boas ou péssimas — cumprir presença e, ao final, sair habilitado a dirigir um caminhão de 8 eixos em via pública.

Soa absurdo?

Pois é exatamente assim que funciona a formação médica no Brasil hoje.

Um diploma que não garante competência

No modelo atual, concluir o curso de Medicina é suficiente para exercer a profissão.

Não há, após a graduação, nenhum exame nacional obrigatório que comprove se aquele recém-formado domina o mínimo necessário para cuidar de vidas humanas.

O diploma virou, na prática, um atestado de frequência — não de competência.

E isso não seria tão grave se todas as faculdades formassem médicos bem preparados.

Mas esse definitivamente não é o caso.

A explosão de faculdades e o colapso da formação prática

Nos últimos anos, o Brasil assistiu à abertura desenfreada de cursos de Medicina.

Muitos deles surgem sem estrutura adequada, sem hospital próprio, sem campo de prática suficiente e, em alguns casos, sem nem fazer convênios sólidos para garantir treinamento clínico real.

As ações judiciais

Há situações em que decisões judiciais autorizam cursos mesmo quando os requisitos mínimos não estão plenamente atendidos. O resultado é previsível: alunos se formam sem ter atendido pacientes em volume e complexidade suficientes para desenvolver raciocínio clínico seguro

O sistema finge que ensinou.

O diploma finge que certificou.

E a população paga o preço.

ENAMED: uma boa ideia… com o objetivo errado

Diante desse cenário, o governo criou o ENAMED. À primeira vista, parece um avanço. Afinal, trata-se de uma prova nacional aplicada aos formandos em Medicina.

Mas o problema está no detalhe — e ele é enorme.

O ENAMED não é um exame de habilitação profissional.

Ele funciona apenas como um instrumento de ranqueamento.

Na prática:

• A nota serve para disputar vagas de residência médica;

• Quem vai mal não sofre nenhuma consequência profissional;

• Quem não faz a prova continua apto a trabalhar normalmente;

• O diploma, sozinho, continua autorizando o exercício da Medicina.

Ou seja: a prova existe, mas não protege o paciente.

O que a Medicina brasileira realmente precisa é de um Exame de Proficiência Médica — um filtro nacional, obrigatório, objetivo e inegociável.

Algo simples no conceito, mas poderoso no efeito:

Só pode exercer Medicina quem provar que sabe o mínimo necessário para fazê-lo com segurança.

Esse exame teria três funções centrais.

1. Proteger o paciente

Antes de qualquer debate corporativo, ideológico ou político, a prioridade deveria ser óbvia: evitar que pessoas despreparadas atendam a população.

2. Responsabilizar as faculdades

Se uma faculdade formar dezenas de alunos e nenhum passar no exame, a conclusão será inevitável: o curso é ruim. E curso ruim não deve continuar funcionando.

3. Parar de culpar apenas o aluno

O discurso atual é confortável para o Estado:

“Se o aluno não sabe, a culpa é dele.”

O próprio governo autoriza a abertura das faculdades.

Se existe um título profissional que permite atuar sobre a vida de terceiros, o Estado tem a obrigação de garantir que esse título signifique algo concreto.

Cada coisa no seu lugar

O problema central da Medicina no Brasil hoje é a confusão de funções.

• Universidade serve para ensinar

• Prova de Proficiência serve para autorizar o exercício profissional.

• Residência médica serve para formar especialistas.

Hoje, o país mistura tudo:

• Usa uma prova como ranking,

• Trata especialização como filtro de qualidade,

• E deixa o exercício básico da profissão sem nenhum controle real.

O resultado é um sistema frouxo, incoerente e perigoso.

Medicina não é presença em sala de aula.

E muito menos um experimento social feito às custas da população mais vulnerável.

Se advogados precisam provar que sabem advogar antes de trabalhar, é indefensável que médicos não precisem provar que sabem cuidar de vidas.

Chegou a hora de parar de fingir que o problema não existe.

De parar de proteger instituições ruins.

E de exigir, com todas as letras:

Só deve atender a população quem provar, de forma objetiva, que sabe o mínimo necessário para ser médico.

Qualquer coisa diferente disso não é descuido: É irresponsabilidade institucional.

#blog

I have these fleeting thoughts constantly. How to say it. What to say. When to say. Should I put it on Reddit? Should I weave it into a story? Is it even worth telling anyone? So I figured I would just put here here on my page as a silent post for anyone curious to read.

Sometimes when I get heavy thoughts, I don’t think my life is worth anything. Before you go all in and think “oh someone needs to call someone” or “get therapy” then you truly don’t align with my wishes or mindset. You have things. You have a support system. You have community. You have something to integrate into.

My mental state socially is just totally wrecked. The unspoken cracks of post divorce male depression are probably widely documented but once you live it and experience it, it just hits hard. Daily, I deal with thoughts of what if or dreams of connections or just going into a world that is not cold or hostile or draining.

I live my life outside of my home in transactions. “Give money for xyz, pay for this, get this, work for someone” – I rarely see the world outside my home as something meaningful or even enriching. I see stress. I see a source of anxiety. I don’t see an happy ending.

In this void of negative thoughts, create. I world build. I go to totally different places in my mind when I write my stories. I try to escape without ending things.

Right now, my cat is looking out the window. A house cat. A silent cat. A strange cat. But she says the most profound things in her communication. She just wants me breathing. Pets, Cuddles, Playtime, food. – I am her world. I have other living creatures too. They depend on me as well. My mom is still alive. I have anchors to keep me here for now.

Outlive my mom, Outlive my pets, Then decide if I want to take a nap. I’m so tired.

If you read this, thanks for acknowledging I exist. I’ll be ok. No plans to nap right now.

Human I am hungry My food dish is not full Fill it so I may eat

Thank you, Human

Human I am thirsty My tiny fountain is not sufficient Turn on the big one so I may drink

Thank you, Human

Human You are dirty I do not care about your cleaning rituals Hold still so I may clean you

Thank you, Human

Human You are sad I will lay on you until you feel better Stay there so I may take care of you

Thank you, Human

#Poetry #RileyPoem #Kindness

drafts 003 – january bullets

it's sometimes hard to collect all the thoughts i have and synthesize them in singular essay. as such, i started collected the random thoughts i have throughout the day. here's a couple from last month:

• not to sound like every 25 year old ever but i’ve been thinking a lot about neuroplasticity a lot. it’s pretty rare that i lose my train of thought as i speak, as i’ve always tried my best to be exact with language even as a kid. it was to the point where i wouldn’t event start essays in my 8th grade languages arts class since i needed my introduction to be perfect. and ngl, this kinda followed me into adulthood as i get into writing consistently as a hobby, evidenced by my countless essays drafts i furiously wrote in a dream-like haze after reading for more than like ten minutes. i feel like there’s a metaphor there if you squint hard enough. i mostly find myself lacking the words in the middle of work meetings, looking to the side of the screen trying to connect the cerebral dots in my brain back again, making eye contact with megan on my katesye poster that is blue tacked above my desk.
• my apartment is a two minute walk from a harris teeter (this is giving context i swear) and i wear the whole most horrific outfits of my life in there—like i know it dad would side eye me if i was stranger. it’s mostly bc that short of a walk doesn’t necessitate a full “outfit” to be worn. and by “outfit” i mean putting on jeans and a t-shirt i guess? it’s not like putting on those articles of clothing takes a ton of effort, but why do i need to try that hard before 9 AM. anyway, it makes me eternally grateful i don’t live by any of my coworkers. i would be absolutely stunned if i saw my manager saw me in the dairy aisle (she might be lactose intolerant idk her tea), staring directly at the banana socks i stole from my bf peeking through my all-black birkenstocks. that fr just sent a chill down my spine.
• i’m being dead serious when i say this but why don’t more people use vsco?
• ok this year i really need to learn spanish. not only because i have moots in south america (#iykyk), but because i simply can’t believe there are white people out there living in china speaking the language near perfectly with the people at food stands. like if they can do that, i should be able to order at a dominican restaurant without sounding like a toddler.
• i’ve been obsessed with watching recaps of niche internet drama on youtube for the past couple of weeks now. the sheer volume of videos is so baffling to me as there’s countless beefs between creators i’ve never heard of that sometimes lasts months on end? like there’s feuds between those influencers you only see in those reels your gen x mom sends you. they’re truly living in a different reality and i applaud those youtubers for putting in the time to chronicle these events to me while i sit in my bed… sometimes high. why do i know what podcast ash trevino went on (sitting with her kids mind you) after she received allegations of not giving said kids a bed to sleep on? why do i also know that the host of that podcast recently released a course on “how to be an influencer” with an application that didn’t need any social media handles? let me stop.
• i don’t know why i always scrape by surviving january. every year, without fail, i find myself counting down the days to february 1st. i think it started in high school when i was waiting on college app decisions for what felt like an eternity, desperately trying to be validated for the countless hours i spent studying for ap exams. it all felt like a blur. somehow simultaneously comforting yet foreboding? i just remember being really scared! it’s a new year of my life and it’s up to me to carve a path for myself. i don’t think i’ve ever shaken off that feeling and it’s kinda metastasizing in my psyche, praying to get found out.
• trixie mattel is rupaul’s successor
• i’ve been listening to my playlist from 2019 and i think south florida was patient 0 for that gen z aesthetic everyone posts on their pinterest boards. i get the association with la and emma chamberlain and that sort of side of the internet plastered with video thumbnails of rex orange county refracted by the discoloration of a jakarta filter—however comma—i think broward county is the real inspo. do you even know who traithalon is? right…

20 January 2026

Starlight Way (working title): I've wanted to make an all-white painting for a while and have failed at past attempts, but it seems I may have finally found a way into one. Which in my head felt something like approaching the painting as a white Conté crayon drawing on toned paper. The nucleus of the image is based off of a 9 meter sculpture of a scaled model Qatar Airways Boeing 777-9 aircraft around Heathrow Terminal 4 near Starlight Way. The painting doesn't reflect that specific location visually, so there's maybe an angle in tying it to it through the title, but that may change. Think it will actually, doesn't need that. Maybe just Plane is better...it is. Anyway, the important part is what the paint is doing. The explorations of space, value, line, and yes—plane—that emerged. I think I can trace those elements back to two works I looked at a lot this week:

Phoebe Helander, Wire Form III (Divided Space) (2026) David Ostrowski, F (Jung, Brutal, Gutaussehend) (2012)

Each of these paintings address space/the picture plane/gravity/color in interesting ways, and while it's unwise to reach for these effects intentionally, I do think what subconsciously drew me to portraying the sculpture was related to these concerns via its position as an object unmooring from the ground while remaining fixed to it. And I think what resulted sits at the center of an axis that acknowledges multiple potential trains of thought without committing fully to any of them—emerging from/being pulled back into a place of origin, crossing/being stuck at a horizon, taking off/crashing, dissecting space/being absorbed by space, and additive line/subtractive line.

18 January 2026

Walked along the perimeter of the Walthamstow Wetlands on a path lined by a high sloping grassy bank/berm. Its crest sat in my sight just at the height of some of the taller buildings across the reservoir in Tottenham. Lots of ducks waddling around at the crest, which made for a fun effect—like they were using the tops of the buildings as stepping stones for their webbed feet. They may have actually been geese or some sort of geese hybrids, necks were pretty long. Maybe Canada Geese. In any case, it was gray paved path, big soft wall of dull green/yellow, wet black feet on buildings, gray-brown feathers, and gray-blue sky. To mind: Frank Walter: Untitled (1988, a green/blue/white/beige landscape), Richard Diebenkorn: Bridge (1961), Alex Katz: Untitled (Dog On The Beach) (2002). Flat wall waves of color. Compressed, stacked, arranged, brought forward. As I was walking, one duck/goose followed me for a couple minutes. It would waddle ahead of my gait, swivel its head to stare at me as I passed, and then waddle further ahead of me again. Until it stopped to snack on some grass, at which point it was no longer interested in me.

What Is Norco Used For? Benefits, Limitations, and Safety Considerations

Norco is a prescription pain medication commonly used to manage moderate to moderately severe pain when non-opioid treatments are not sufficient. It combines two active ingredients—hydrocodone (an opioid pain reliever) and acetaminophen (a non-opioid analgesic)—to provide effective short-term pain control under medical supervision.

What Is Norco Used For?

Norco is typically prescribed for acute pain situations, and the Norco Pill is commonly used to manage post-surgical pain following dental, orthopedic, or minor surgical procedures, as well as injury-related pain such as fractures, sprains, or trauma. It is also effective for severe dental pain and short-term flare-ups of pain when other treatments are not sufficient. Doctors usually recommend when alternatives like NSAIDs (such as ibuprofen or naproxen) or acetaminophen alone do not provide adequate pain relief.

How Norco Works ?

Norco’s effectiveness comes from the dual action of its active ingredients, which work together to provide Norco for pain relief in moderate to moderately severe pain conditions. Hydrocodone acts on opioid receptors in the brain and spinal cord to reduce the perception of pain, while acetaminophen enhances overall pain relief and helps reduce fever by acting on pain pathways in the central nervous system. Together, these components make Norco for pain more effective than either ingredient alone, often allowing lower doses of the opioid while still achieving adequate pain control.

Benefits of Norco

When used appropriately and for a limited time, Norco offers several benefits:

Effective pain relief for moderate to severe pain

Faster comfort and improved function during recovery from surgery or injury

Combination therapy that may reduce the need for higher opioid doses

Short-term symptom control, helping patients rest and heal

For many patients, these benefits can significantly improve quality of life during acute recovery periods.

Limitations of Norco

Despite its benefits, Norco has important limitations:

Not intended for long-term or chronic pain management

Tolerance can develop, meaning higher doses may be needed over time for the same effect

Dependence risk increases with prolonged or improper use

Side effects may limit tolerability in some patients

Because of these factors, healthcare providers usually prescribe Norco for the shortest duration possible and reassess pain frequently.

Safety Considerations

Using Norco safely is critical due to its opioid content.

Common side effects may include:

Drowsiness or sedation

Nausea or vomiting

Constipation

Dizziness or lightheadedness

Serious risks include:

Respiratory depression, especially at higher doses or when combined with alcohol or other sedatives

Opioid misuse, dependence, or addiction

Liver damage from excessive acetaminophen intake