As flawed as this country is (and forever will be), I’m still a pretty proud American. And the kids are truly the future, so let’s take care of them and nourish them and teach them well.

I finally had some time to update my Colophon page today. I quite like it!

I’ve been reading a volume of Demon Slayer every morning this week, and I’m just enthralled with it. It’s so good.

Morning skies are the best skies.

I took this last summer, a week after I purchased my macro lens. I remember following this little guy for a while because he wouldn’t stay still long enough for a photo. I had so much fun doing so that I really miss the vibrancy of life that winter seems to lack.

Craig Mod in his introduction to his new newsletter huh:

As I was conjuring up the shape of huh it struck me as slightly insane that more photographers don’t do this — mail out a single photo once a week. Ideally we’d subscribe to a cadre of our favorites. Maybe they’d all arrive on Wednesday and Wednesday would be this visual inbox party. No comments, no likes, no stream of other images to compete against, no Reels to be sucked into, no algorithmic curveballs. Just a few beautiful images, from the four or five photographers whose work we adore. Things to be enjoyed as units unto themselves in ways that are difficult to do in the din of social streams. And best of all — if we want to say something nice, we just have to hit reply. No public-space posturing.

Photography Wednesdays sounds amazing.

Earlier today, as I was walking to the main office at school, I saw Zoe, a second grader, with a snow shovel. She was shoveling snow when I asked her, “What are you doing?”

Aubrey, another second grader, ran up to me, face full of excitement, and said, “We’re building a fort!”

I noticed that Aubrey had a brand new pair of glasses, her first. I said, “I love your glasses.”

She turned her head to the side so I could see the temples of her glasses. They had cute hearts on the side. “I like the cool design,” she said.

I showed her my glasses and said, “All mine say is Ray Ban.”

Aubrey pulls me down so she could see and then says, “That sounds like a band. You know what you should do?”

“What?”

“You should get all the teachers together and have a rock concert in the gym.” She paused for a second and then says, “And you should invite Ray! He could play guitar.”

Ray is another second grader in her class, and I laugh pretty hard and say, “Does he know how to play guitar?”

“I don’t know,” she said. And then she ran away and went back to building her snow fort with Zoe.

Viet Thanh Nguyen on page 267 of The Sympathizer:

You know how to tell if someone’s really dead? Press your finger on his eyeball. If he’s alive, he’ll move. If he’s dead, he won’t.

When I was an EMT, a paramedic told me of another way to tell if someone’s playing dead: rub the knuckles of your first two fingers hard against their chest. No one can pretend after that.

I think this was the last family photo where we were all together. It’s been a while.

As someone who absolutely loved Octopath Traveler, you best believe I’m all over Project Triangle Strategy. I downloaded the demo this morning, and I can’t wait to play it later today.