Lockdown in 775 Square Feet

Lockdown in 775 Square Feet

Self-quarantine in a tiny house. Is it possible?

Let’s be honest: are we really talking about possible anymore? Is shutting down an entire country possible? Putting a school system online in three days? Closing the majority of the airport because there aren’t enough flights to keep most terminals open? Cancelling the Olympics? We are far beyond impossible now. My Fellow Humans of 2020, we have all gone through the Looking Glass. On this side, ‘why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.’

And one of those impossible things is that I would be able to survive for weeks on end without Ever.… Read more

The 2010s in Review

The 2010s in Review

I am still trying to wrap my head around this being the beginning of a new decade, as well as a new year. My approach towards New Year’s resolutions is basically nonexistent, since I am apt to reinvent myself on the spot whenever I feel the need, which tends to be multiple times in a year. However, I do love telling stories. In fact, the only possible way for me to ever make sense of my life is by telling it back to myself. Not once, but a thousand times. Memory is a funny thing. Our brains are constantly arranging and rearranging the past to make meaning out of it; reinforcing the parts that fit our own internal narrative and discarding the other unhelpful bits.… Read more

E-Ink and the Future that Never Was: The Onyx Boox Note Pro

E-Ink and the Future that Never Was: The Onyx Boox Note Pro

Roman Mars did a great episode on his design podcast 99% Invisible last year about Dirigibles and the Future that Never Was. His intro went like this:

For over a century, lighter-than-air vehicles have captured the public imagination, playing a recurring role in our visions of alternate realities and futures that might have been. In these visions, cargo and passengers traverse the globe in a civilised fashion, and then dock elegantly at the mooring towers on top of Art Deco skyscrapers.

The euphonious voice of Roman Mars is not the only one remarking that zeppelins are a quick and easy way to indicate that you are in a world that is not quite ours.… Read more

Grad School at 40

Grad School at 40

OK, technically I recently turned 39. But 40 sounds so much older, doesn’t it? It definitely sounded ancient to me when I graduated for the first time a million years ago at the ripe young age of 21. I do remember seeing a few “nontraditional” students in my classes back then. There was the nice older woman with my grandma’s haircut who sat next to me in history, and the tall Sikh man in philosophy with the salt and pepper beard. People who were obviously in a different stage of life from the rest of us. Now, unaccountably, I am about to become one of those people.… Read more

A Long-Held Dream

A Long-Held Dream

Eighteen years ago I graduated from university. I had been thinking about grad school for years already by then, but looking back I realise I never considered it a real option for me. My parents had been fully supportive of me getting a bachelor’s degree, but as devout, traditional Mormons, their script for their oldest daughter after university continued in a fixed path towards mission, marriage and motherhood. Not all Mormons uniformly believe this way (and some are much more extreme, as Tara Westover recounts in her riveting memoir, Educated), but my parents did, and for them it was core to their faith.… Read more