The rocks are in a different configuration, but that has always been true. There are still rocks. And there are still waves, and still sand. The creatures that are here have been here since long before I came on this shore. Crabs and clams and sea palms all cling to the rocks. Damp cold sand clings to my hands and feet, getting between my fingers and toes. Barnacles and anemones and starfish hold hard in the surf, beaten by the waves yet they persist as the tides rise and fall. The crawlies, the crabs and chitons, the starfish too, they are all moving to where the churn is. The stayers stay put. They move in a different way, generation after generation. The cold air and water, the relentless waves, all push me from staying here too long.

We’ve had a couple of days of great sunsets. Unfortunately it came with a side of major humidity and high temperatures. Monsoonal moisture, so says the weather guy. I dunno, some great sunsets might be worth the price. 😁

• grab bag vol. 9 — Updated the RSS template for photo gallery pages to only show the pictures once, with their captions if they have them, and look more coherent in the feed.

Recent Comments

• balm — Ali: “They really effed this one up. I am going to write to them with a tone of absolute disgust!”

The Coyote peak radio tower, our destination, is at the top of a steep walk from the park parking lot. It’s a relatively straight shot, only one switchback and a twist around the top of the hill. The bend back happens as we transit the gate and pass under the power line. The tower rises three sided and so many triangles; it is dotted with dozens of reflector dishes and studded with so many stubby cellular spikes. The tower complex is not only the tower, but a couple of buildings and it’s got a large tank too, bigger than either of them, maybe 5000 gallons. The building’s HVAC systems hum audibly above the wind and nearby trees rush and murmur in the streaming air. The tower itself is silent.

Bright wet sand, slowly eroding rocks, and the waves crashing over all of it, always coming in and going out. Sometimes the sea is higher, and sometimes it’s lower, but in the colder months the waves are bigger and usually they’re smaller in the warmer. The water is always about the same cold fresh temperature, crisp and sharp and salty. The sand shifts and moves, traveling with the cold water down the shore, piled higher here and then there. That cold water brings fresh nutrients for the life that clings to the rocks, out there among the waves. Sea palm and barnacle, crab and clam. The mussels and the starfish, all the sea creatures have been here and toss in the tumult of the waves, mostly unseen yet found long ago. The rocks and the sand change every day, but the shore is still the same home, still the place to be.

Hoping this works for catching the fireworks tonight. The wind should be light; I hope my bag doesn’t blow away. I should have weighted it with something, at least the battery pack.

Related photographers:

1. The Colossal article on Sara Flores, who is an artist that makes very beautiful and geometric art. I reminds me a lot of the plotter art that I love. I have several other tabs, including a piece of hers at the de Young. I hope it’s on display.
   
2. Nick Carr’s absolutely smashing photos of inside a decommissioned nuclear power plant on Long Island. This is a deep post, with so much deepness in its depths. It’s too deep, tbh. I want more of this. I used to follow his ScoutingNY blog back in the day. Glad to see that Nick is still posting, sometimes.
   

   

3. The last one is a writeup of making a virtual reel-to-reel tape player. It does play; you can click it and it makes a great clicky sound and it plays the indicated piece. Dunstan Orchard is a designer professionally, and his wife is a field-recordist. It’s just so crisp and sharp, and these old tools are nostalgic and clicky. Fun!
   

Have a great Fourth of July weekend!

The offshore platform is just there, day and night. Lit, dark, and dusk, it is a permanent presence from an earlier strata. It could go on to outlast us all against the sea; a still anchor, untended and disused. And unreachable by us on the shore. Like a beacon of foreign industry, it’s always there, will be on the horizon doing it’s unknowable things, making it’s unbelievable produce.

1. Watering plants during the day, particularly the leaves, will not burn them. There has been a lot of word play on the definition of the word “burn” for this one, but no, water will not cause a fire, and nor will it scorch the leaves. Water away, water with abandon, but wait, water is precious here in California and there are smarter ways to do it, so water with care.
2. All carbonated water is fake manufactured. I was profoundly disappointed to learn recently that my favorite beverage, fizzy water (aka sparkling), is a lie. I’m not sure where I acquired this fact, probably from the label on the bottle, but there is apparently very little natural water that is actually bubbly and bottled just is it comes out of the ground with the bubbles still in it and sent to us all over the world. Sometimes, not even the water is real. I still like do drink it though.¹
3. There is no convention for the symbolism of statue horse foot placement. I had asked “are there eras when the arrangement of the horse feet meant one thing but then changed to mean something else centuries later?” But it turns out there really isn’t a convention at all. I had not anchored much of my world view to this fact so it went out with a whatever and I’ll try (not very hard) to remember this so the next time it comes up in a decade or two I can do something about it. It may have even come up before and been knocked down a decade or more ago. I don’t remember, to be honest.

Some of these myths are harmless (carbonated water) or really harmless (horse statues? seriously?). Like Sherlock Holmes said, “Now that I do know it, I shall do my best to forget it.” Knowing about watering your plants can have a practical impact. I wish parsing which facts where facts and which were bogus was easier. Our brains just don’t seem to distinguish well between them. They’re all just ideas it believes about the world to the brain. Beliefs are funny things.

I read Total Eclipse¹ by Dillard. In the same way that the moth essay does, it hits like a hammer. You can find it in Teaching a Stone to Talk, and online too (but I don’t think you’re supposed to).² This time I wasn’t reading to count similes; I was looking for permission and instruction on how to revisit the subject and not explain what it means.³ The essay has four numbered sections, a move I don’t think I’ve seen done before. It also has subsections in the sections, the groups of paragraphs with double line breaks between them. Each subsection is either about the eclipse or something else, either a scene from the two day trip or some mental imagery inspired by the scene, a personal experience.

The new field recorder (iOS) app Fields by Audiothing looks like a step up from Kymatica’s AudioShare. I’ll let you know how it turns out, with samples. Of course, you can always just use the built in voice memos app, that’s good too!

I also learned that, with enough reverb applied, it can do a pretty great rendition of that famous Bach piece (which I do happen to love). Enjoy!

I remember, in college, going to the Fred Meyer and buying a bunch of classical music including a best of Bach CD and some other standards like Beethoven and Mozart. It was for studying and focus and having something to play on my new bookshelf stereo. The inspiration was surely a set of tapes that my friend,¹ Gianfranco, made and gave me in the year or two prior when I visited him in Italy. I got a whole stack of classical music. I still have those tapes.²

Open tabs

There are only a couple of tabs open in my browser that are worth mentioning.

1. Researchers discovered that we humans prefer to walk to the left, period full-stop. Man, I love it when some new physics is discovered.
2. I have a couple of photographers open Brendon Burton and John Thomson (via KDO). I’m intrigued by both, but for different reasons.

Ideas

I had a couple of random ideas this week.

Your phones don’t register clicks. I click things two, three times, nothing happens. I see the ui register that it’s been touched, the color changes in your Liquid Glass UI, but still nothing happens. So I click again, again. From your perspective, I’m sure there is a good reason for this. But from mine, your stuff is just broke.

1. What is the source of the infrasonic rumble? You may or may not know that I have a hobby of making field recordings, especially long playing ones. This one, from Quicksilver-Almaden park, is especially boring (which is ideal), and if I remember correctly I tried to mitigate the low frequencies with a high-pass filter, yet the lowest frequencies are still there. At the time I recorded that one, I thought it was “just San Jose” off in the distance. But in the Butano posts, I mention that there is a noticeable low frequency “rumble in the distance”. Maybe it’s two different sources, waves crashing on the coast for one and city noise for the other. I do not know.

   ]]>Tags: #rss-club #dispatches #learning

   Hello once again RSS Clubbers, and welcome email subscribers! This week I am sharing a few open questions that I have pondered lately. Please enjoy this week’s grab bag, another peek behind the curtain.

   1. What is the source of the infrasonic rumble? You may or may not know that I have a hobby of making field recordings, especially long playing ones. This one, from Quicksilver-Almaden park, is especially boring (which is ideal), and if I remember correctly I tried to mitigate the low frequencies with a high-pass filter, yet the lowest frequencies are still there. At the time I recorded that one, I thought it was “just San Jose” off in the distance. But in the Butano posts, I mention that there is a noticeable low frequency “rumble in the distance”. Maybe it’s two different sources, waves crashing on the coast for one and city noise for the other. I do not know.

   2. Does Virginia Woolf always use so many new-to-me words? Is this unique to her or is it a historical remove thing (i.e. has the common vocabulary diverged in the ~100 years between me-the-reader and her-the-author)? Last week I read The Death of the Moth. Jeff pointed out that there were quite a few unusual words. I had noticed this in the reading and simply moved on, but it is worth pondering a bit more. In the first paragraph alone, I counted four unfamiliar words: benignant¹, share², down³, and vociferation⁴. There are only five paragraphs in the whole piece. Is this normal? I love it!⁵ I should read more Woolf to find out. Luckily there are two other essays in my edition of The Norton Reader, so I can get some signal with minimal effort or investment.

   3. Is the fork the most likely object in the dishwasher to hurt you? The only time I have been injured while unloading the dishwasher was by jamming a fork under my fingernail because I didn’t see its edge-on appearance. Like Abbott’s Triangles,⁶ forks disappear when viewed from certain directions. Knives are another leading candidate for injury-causers, even butter and table knives can cut you. But, forks go up and knives go down in the dishwasher’s silverware rack thing, so knives are in the safe direction. I was not being as careful as usual that day; it hurt! How common is this injury? Is something else more likely to send you searching for a bandaid, and we just don’t put that thing in out dishwasher? Who keeps this sort of statistics?

   4. I observe that traffic seems to slow down significantly on Fridays and Sundays. Is traffic really slower on those days? Everyone sure takes their time around the SFBA when getting from point A to point B, especially on the freeways. On the other hand, it’s probably just me, I’m the one still in a hurry, just 5% more than everyone else. Do you see this in your neck of the woods? What’s the reason, what is driving this phenomenon?

   

   ---

   1. Two things: I am linking to Websters 1913 dictionary because a) it’s a good dictionary, b) it’s public domain, c) the website doesn’t have ads, d) it’s got an easy to remember url websters1913.com, and e) it’s contemporary to Woolf. Second, I was able to guess approximately the meanings of some of these words from context or familiarity with alternate suffixes on the same root,⁷ others I had to puzzle out, and yet more I simply moved on and triangulated back to them later in the piece. I think it was good for my brain. ↩︎

   2. I had always interpreted “plough share” to mean something about a portion of land. And to mean the blade of the plough. Woolf uses “share” here bare, without directly referring to the plough. That’s plow in Americanish, I think. I interpretted Woolf’s usage to mean that second one, but it could also mean the row that has been freshly cut by the plough. ↩︎

   3. The phrase Woolf uses is “…and the down beyond…”. Does she mean the hills on the other side of the fields? Does she mean the “way out there beyond the land I can see before me”? I’m pretty sure the former, maybe it was a common usage in rural England. Because the imagery in the paragraph surrounding this is very diverse and vivid I was even considering feathers for a moment. I settled on hills, like how Tolkien uses it. ↩︎

   4. This is obviously just a different suffix on “vociferous”. Yet I had never seen it before. Neither had Jeff. ↩︎

   5. I am a dictionary nerd. I have, like, so many dang dictionaries. ↩︎

   6. I am unsure of the political correctness / cancelled status / et cetera of the Flatland book. It is a satire written in the 1800s. I neither vouch for or against it, it is a historical document that has some interesting geometrical analogies and thought experiments. That is all. ↩︎

   7. Such as: benignant is obviously related to benign, and vociferation is obviously related to vociferous. But I am getting ahead of myself and possibly you too. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/new-foods/Thu, 28 May 2026 19:47:37 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/new-foods/Yesterday I noticed a pattern, or trend, or well, something. My first “new foods” in the last year. They’re not all actually new foods, only one was that.

   First up: cottage cheese. I added this into my diet last fall. I made it palatable by adding grapes, cinnamon, maple syrup, or strawberry jam. Eventually I decided it was fine and not a struggle to consume and I could just add a minimum of maple syrup. If I had to, I would eat it plain. Kinda boring, but whatever.

   ]]>Tags: #food #dispatches

   Yesterday I noticed a pattern, or trend, or well, something. My first “new foods” in the last year. They’re not all actually new foods, only one was that.

   First up: cottage cheese. I added this into my diet last fall. I made it palatable by adding grapes, cinnamon, maple syrup, or strawberry jam. Eventually I decided it was fine and not a struggle to consume and I could just add a minimum of maple syrup. If I had to, I would eat it plain. Kinda boring, but whatever.

   The second one, the truly novel one, was caviar. I forget which kind it was, err, kinds because there were several. I didn’t seek this out, an opportunity presented itself a couple of months ago, and I was with good people who weren’t going to judge or pressure so I took a chance on it. Honestly, this one had been overhyped, it was really a non-event. Neither good nor bad, just an additional flavor to add to things, I guess. Confession: it was only a little and it was, ahem, they were not the strongest types. I had them with some steak, I had them by themselves, I had them on those little pancakes (blinis) and sour cream and chives or shallots. All the usual ways, or so I am told. I would do it again, but I’m not chomping at the bit for it. I wonder how much of the appeal of caviar is it as a food and how much of it is a symbolic eating money.

   I’ve saved the best for last, and it’s a personal one, because it’s one I feel even more strongly, more viscerally. I did, anyway. Yesterday I got some salad at work, and after sitting down to eat I found a food that has been on my verboten list for basically my whole life. There, amongst the romaine lettuce and semi-dried corn kernels, tucked in there and semi-hidden, there was a slice of hard boiled egg. I have found that eggs can be eaten one way and one way only: scrambled. I did manage to survive a bowl of hard boiled egg soup (I swear it was but I can’t find a picture); I may not have eaten a lot, but I didn’t eat none either. And there was another time, in the mid-to-late nineties when a little old French grandma in Chambéry prepared a sunnyside up egg in a ceramic crock dish with bacon and served it to me and I had to eat it or be rude and, frankly it was basically perfect and I still remember how that egg and bacon tastes today but when I see any other sunnyside up egg cooked like that it just doesn’t look to be up to the standard and I don’t know what magic she did but these other eggs just don’t have it. Anyway, yesterday, when confronted by this particular devil food, I found that it had little power over me. I could eat that. So I proceeded to eat other parts of my meal as normal and checked in a minute or two later to see if I had found my sense of revulsion, but I had not. I circled back again and decided that maybe today is the day. And it was, yesterday was the day. I would eat another sixth of a hard boiled egg again sometime if the opportunity presents itself. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, I’m not seeking these other egg preparations out.

   So, what is going on here? I mean, the cottage cheese is for the gainz, for the protein, for the gym. And the caviar was just a random fluke. Coulda happened to anybody. But the hard boiled egg? I wasn’t looking for that one. Yesterday, with that egg, I was alone. I could have kept to the same old habits and not eaten that and not told anyone and no one would know. Either way, eaten it or not eaten it, no one needs to know this.

   What is next, seafood? I don’t think I’m ready for that.

   

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/machines/Wed, 27 May 2026 20:31:49 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/machines/<p>The neighbors are having work done. Their driveway is gone and so is most of their front yard. I&rsquo;m pleasantly surprised at how relatively quiet the machines have been. But there is only so much that can be done about busting up cement thirty feet away. So, there was some shaking and rattling and banging of the blocks as they fell into the back of a dump truck parked and idling in front of, well, almost my house. So, mostly quiet.</p>Tags: #moods #dispatches #attention · *duration:24h

   The neighbors are having work done. Their driveway is gone and so is most of their front yard. I’m pleasantly surprised at how relatively quiet the machines have been. But there is only so much that can be done about busting up cement thirty feet away. So, there was some shaking and rattling and banging of the blocks as they fell into the back of a dump truck parked and idling in front of, well, almost my house. So, mostly quiet.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/acid/Tue, 26 May 2026 20:19:15 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/acid/

   I was out for a run when I spotted this one at the end of the trail where I turn around to double back and where the water goes underground and out to who-knows-where¹ so I made a quick audio note to myself to commit to coming back out here with a tripod and my real camera and taking a picture of it before it gets painted over by the city infra folks. This is that picture. The thing about this graffito is that it’s possibly the most intricate one I’ve seen in my neighborhood. There are some up the way, by the 87/85 interchange that change a lot, are a lot bigger, and are possibly more “art.” But along this canal, I’ve not seen anything this ambitious before. It was a little harder to get to than I expected; the gate I had slipped through last time has been tightened up a bit, so I had to climb over it this time. Just thought I’d share something I noticed this weekend.

   ]]>Tags: #photos #attention #dispatches #art

   

   I was out for a run when I spotted this one at the end of the trail where I turn around to double back and where the water goes underground and out to who-knows-where¹ so I made a quick audio note to myself to commit to coming back out here with a tripod and my real camera and taking a picture of it before it gets painted over by the city infra folks. This is that picture. The thing about this graffito is that it’s possibly the most intricate one I’ve seen in my neighborhood. There are some up the way, by the 87/85 interchange that change a lot, are a lot bigger, and are possibly more “art.” But along this canal, I’ve not seen anything this ambitious before. It was a little harder to get to than I expected; the gate I had slipped through last time has been tightened up a bit, so I had to climb over it this time. Just thought I’d share something I noticed this weekend.

   ---

   1. It goes to a lake (park) nearby. I looked it up. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/follow/Mon, 25 May 2026 21:52:38 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/follow/Club

   Join the club! By following either email or RSS you’ll be joining the RSS Club, which means something extra. Posts that don’t get listed on the site do go on the feeds. 😁

   Email

   You can keep up with areyouelectronic.com’s updates feed by email. Emails go out once per day, in the morning, and contain all the recent posts. That’s usually one (1) post, but sometimes two, or even zero, posts per daily email.

   ]]>Club

   Join the club! By following either email or RSS you’ll be joining the RSS Club, which means something extra. Posts that don’t get listed on the site do go on the feeds. 😁

   Email

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   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/chimney-tree/Mon, 25 May 2026 16:29:19 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/chimney-tree/

   The inside of the chimney tree is completely charred black, but the tree’s outside still has brown bark in a lot of places. All this damage looks still fresh; a recent¹ addition to the trail camp and barely changed in the two years since my last visit. Campers haven’t touched and eroded the surface. It’s still a perfect crystalline black; the living cellulose converted to dark carbon and trace elements. Chimney tree is the burned hollow trunk of a large old redwood, still standing upright and enterable at the base. Looking up through the center you see the dizzying clear blue sky above. The top is gone, and a substantial amount of the sides too. From the outside the trunk rises and splits, vertical unsupported cylinder arcs rising 50 feet or more. It stands, still free, amongst the green younger relatives that survived the fire. A giant parent among the youths that rise now above its former shadow. The young ones are barely taller now than the hollow stump that remains.

   ]]>Tags: #backpacking #series-butano #sketches

   

   The inside of the chimney tree is completely charred black, but the tree’s outside still has brown bark in a lot of places. All this damage looks still fresh; a recent¹ addition to the trail camp and barely changed in the two years since my last visit. Campers haven’t touched and eroded the surface. It’s still a perfect crystalline black; the living cellulose converted to dark carbon and trace elements. Chimney tree is the burned hollow trunk of a large old redwood, still standing upright and enterable at the base. Looking up through the center you see the dizzying clear blue sky above. The top is gone, and a substantial amount of the sides too. From the outside the trunk rises and splits, vertical unsupported cylinder arcs rising 50 feet or more. It stands, still free, amongst the green younger relatives that survived the fire. A giant parent among the youths that rise now above its former shadow. The young ones are barely taller now than the hollow stump that remains.

   

   

   ---

   1. The CZU complex fire was in 2020. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/brunch/Sun, 24 May 2026 17:06:51 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/brunch/My plate is sliding away from me across the table. The pressure needed to coax shredded cabbage onto my fork is simply too great for the frictionless surface of this glossy white tabletop. The cabbage isn’t cooperating. No, that’s unfair. What’s not cooperating is the fork: it’s too small for the job. It’s a beautiful object, this fork. But as a tool for moving food from plate to mouth, it’s clearly inferior to the task. I give up my frustrated attempts at eating and glance around the room. The space is beautiful: black leather chairs, white tabletops above bright gold uprights, white cuboid room, very high ceilings, black trim, large tall windows, and dark gauzy curtains.
   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #food

   My plate is sliding away from me across the table. The pressure needed to coax shredded cabbage onto my fork is simply too great for the frictionless surface of this glossy white tabletop. The cabbage isn’t cooperating. No, that’s unfair. What’s not cooperating is the fork: it’s too small for the job. It’s a beautiful object, this fork. But as a tool for moving food from plate to mouth, it’s clearly inferior to the task. I give up my frustrated attempts at eating and glance around the room. The space is beautiful: black leather chairs, white tabletops above bright gold uprights, white cuboid room, very high ceilings, black trim, large tall windows, and dark gauzy curtains.

   Ron asks the young waitress if it used to be a bank; the architectural details give it away. He wonders if the robots are where the vault used to be.¹ She doesn’t know, looks anxious and puzzled by these questions. Apparently she’s never been asked before.

   Everything in the space is beautiful. Instagram worthy. The point.

   The crepe tacos look marvelous, are perfectly plated, and have all the right ingredients. They’re not actually a hand food anymore; I watch the catastrophe unfold in real time. These are fork-and-knife tacos. Ron’s burger and fries come in boxes, fresh from the burger bot, but there is no plate with the kit. My plate is still sliding all over the place. Both Linden and Jeff’s bánh mìs, like the tacos, have been elevated. This poses severe difficulties with some foods, and bánh mìs are one. They are already engineered to perfection: the bread is just right, the type of filling and amount are precisely calibrated, and they’re wrapped to go. Giant wooden restaurant sandwich spikes will not compensate for these mechanical challenges, no matter how good the constituent parts taste. And everything tastes great when we can get it into our mouths.

   And another thing: the almost bare cubic space has a be-shaded DJ working his laptop station from the corner. There is, as usual, the ordinary restaurant din, which is already a challenge if sound isn’t carefully managed. The DJ is just pumping this reverberant space with so much more noise. There’s nothing in here to absorb it but us. The music is fine, maybe even good. I can’t tell. The problem is just too much of it. We are really struggling to hear each other, hear the staff. Sometimes hearing our own thoughts is difficult.

   Like I said, the food tastes great, everything is fresh, prepared and served with care. And it’s all so beautiful to behold. Just wish I could eat here.

   

   ---

   1. Well that sentence was weird as hell to write. Yelp has a video if you want to see. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/small-bloggers/Sat, 23 May 2026 19:29:08 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/small-bloggers/I found out yesterday that Jeff’s mom has a blog, has had a blog for 7 21 years! And Jeff wanted to connect me and mine to her and hers. This morning I got the personal intro by email, and it was just so charming and great. Both Jeff’s intro and Cathy’s reply. A connection is already connecting. It’s better to read blogs of people you know in real life, even if they’re a step removed. It jumpstarts the peek behind the curtain that sometimes takes years to see. Those little details that aren’t the main subject or theme of the long running blog.
   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #blogging

   I found out yesterday that Jeff’s mom has a blog, has had a blog for 7 21 years! And Jeff wanted to connect me and mine to her and hers. This morning I got the personal intro by email, and it was just so charming and great. Both Jeff’s intro and Cathy’s reply. A connection is already connecting. It’s better to read blogs of people you know in real life, even if they’re a step removed. It jumpstarts the peek behind the curtain that sometimes takes years to see. Those little details that aren’t the main subject or theme of the long running blog.

   Cathy’s blog is all personal updates, poetry, and pictures. So it’ll be interesting to see what turns up from the other side of the curtain. What I really like though is all of those pictures.¹ Check it out at cathysblog.org.

   How did we get here? Last night over dinner preparations Jeff and I were talking about how great small blogging is for the readers, particularly those of us using RSS readers. The posts show up, they are not too frequent, the thing is posted because the author cared enough to write it or wanted to share it. They’re in chronological order and the burden of keeping up is only as bad as your own lack of curation; you can catch up after a short gap. Small blogs are visibly not a side hustle of some kind. There’s none of that SEO nonsense. If I’ve been following someone for years and years, I’ve seen those rare glimpses of the real life happening behind the screen. It builds a genuine connection, I care about their struggles, and am glad that they persist at posting. I can see more of the whole person. Jeff and I both agreed about this. It’s just better that way, more genuine.

   The other way of running things is fine too. Running a blog like a business is just not the same thing at all. I hope we keep blogging, despite what’s being said these days about AI and Google Zero and all that. I just don’t see how the value of connecting with others can be strip mined by the LLMs and somehow captured into them. Maybe for those run-like-a-business blogs, where they are trying to sell something. But for the small bloggers that are putting out their experiences and thoughts, the value is the connection between them and the individual readers. The value lives in the people that are participating. It’s the exchange, even if it’s mostly one way, there is a connection there.² I’m looking for more of that and maybe even some bidirectional exchange.³⁴

   ---

   1. I’ve mentioned before how much I like blogs that have pictures. It will surely come up again. ↩︎

   2. It’s kind of like how Coke wants people to drink more Coke, but everyone just wants water. Water is the best. Coke is a business, looking to exchange your money for some water with extra steps, some of them not so great. I just want water most of the time, which is a direct connection to the good stuff. And water is mostly almost free, as long as we keep it that way. Well, the analogy isn’t perfected yet. ↩︎

   3. I did add all the comments backend stuff for someone besides myself, right? ↩︎

   4. These are just general small blogger sentiments. I’m not looking at anyone in particular. Really. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/video-games/Fri, 22 May 2026 17:13:30 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/video-games/It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another snapshot grab bag of random stuff. Today’s theme is what I have played, what I am playing, and what I am excited to play next. I don’t play as much as I used to, but a guy can still dream.

   If you’ve got some ideas for me, why not send me a comment?

   Currently

   Abiotic Factor - Currently long playing this one with a friend on Thursday nights. There is a lot of great and nostalgic “WTF video games?” moments and I love it.

   ]]>Tags: #rss-club #video-games #dispatches

   It’s Friday, which means it’s time for another snapshot grab bag of random stuff. Today’s theme is what I have played, what I am playing, and what I am excited to play next. I don’t play as much as I used to, but a guy can still dream.

   If you’ve got some ideas for me, why not send me a comment?

   Currently

   Abiotic Factor - Currently long playing this one with a friend on Thursday nights. There is a lot of great and nostalgic “WTF video games?” moments and I love it.

   Kingdom Come Deliverance (I and II) - I picked it up after watching Any Austin’s tour of uninteresting places. I haven’t made it out of the starting village yet, there is quite a lot of tedium it seems. But it looks like it could be a great hiking simulator!

   Completed

   Lego Voyagers - I’m glad I played through this one even though it was short. There was so much delight in the puzzles and random things that happen. So silly!

   Future

   Orbitals (yt¹) - Spotted this one a while ago. I’m a sucker for cell shaded sh*t. And it’s co-op too. Probably alternate it with AB² if it turns out to be that much fun.

   CALX (yt) - Just saw this this week. Another one with cell shading, and it looks like an extension of Sable, as others have noted. I hope it’s not janky!

   Edith Finch - Recent recommendation. I remember it from when it looked interesting at the time, but I was quite busy with things. I’m always happy to play older games.

   ---

   1. I prefer something more durable, like Wikipedia to link to for these references, but a couple of these don’t have a Wikipedia page, so I used YouTube as the durable source. ↩︎

   2. That’s Abiotic Factor. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/thanks/Fri, 22 May 2026 12:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/thanks/Your comment is queued for moderation. I’ll review it and — assuming it’s not spam — it’ll show up on the post within a day or two.

   Back to the homepage.

   ]]>Your comment is queued for moderation. I’ll review it and — assuming it’s not spam — it’ll show up on the post within a day or two.

   Back to the homepage.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/comment-bot-test/Fri, 22 May 2026 09:52:13 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/comment-bot-test/A known-safe target for end-to-end testing the serverless comment-to-PR worker. See serverless/PLAN.md for the design.

   Test submissions land here as comment-*.md files in this bundle. After T28 ships, expect this post to accumulate a small archive of test comments — leave them as a record, or scrub them periodically with git rm.

   This post is hidden from /home (it’s a dev: true scaffold), so a casual reader won’t stumble onto the test thread.

   ]]>Tags: #meta

   A known-safe target for end-to-end testing the serverless comment-to-PR worker. See serverless/PLAN.md for the design.

   Test submissions land here as comment-*.md files in this bundle. After T28 ships, expect this post to accumulate a small archive of test comments — leave them as a record, or scrub them periodically with git rm.

   This post is hidden from /home (it’s a dev: true scaffold), so a casual reader won’t stumble onto the test thread.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/monarchs/Thu, 21 May 2026 08:16:37 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/monarchs/Eleven monarch caterpillars on the neighbor’s milkweed this morning, and a dozen or so bees tending the flowers. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen caterpillars grow and disappear to somewhere. We haven’t seen any chrysalis; they’re either still invisible to us or they’ve been taken by the birds.
   ]]>Tags: #moods #nature #bioregion · *duration:24h

   Eleven monarch caterpillars on the neighbor’s milkweed this morning, and a dozen or so bees tending the flowers. Over the last couple of weeks we’ve seen caterpillars grow and disappear to somewhere. We haven’t seen any chrysalis; they’re either still invisible to us or they’ve been taken by the birds.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/moths/Wed, 20 May 2026 20:03:52 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/moths/There are almost no similes in Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth.” To be precise, there is one asimile¹ and two similes. That is not very many similes. These few similes all point into the frame, not out. None of them speak directly to the reader to explain anything that has just been described in the piece. At no point is that done. All the similes deepen the reader’s picture of the characters in the story.
   ]]>Tags: #writing #learning #dispatches

   There are almost no similes in Virginia Woolf’s “The Death of the Moth.” To be precise, there is one asimile¹ and two similes. That is not very many similes. These few similes all point into the frame, not out. None of them speak directly to the reader to explain anything that has just been described in the piece. At no point is that done. All the similes deepen the reader’s picture of the characters in the story.

   

   So that’s what I learned. To get to that I had to first read the piece for the content, read the story. I did not expect to feel so much for a bug that had died over 80 years ago.² It is exceptionally well written. I am not bothered at all that I read it approximately three times.

   I read it to try and learn something about the craft of writing. The part that I am working on right now is what I call “sketches”. My drafts tend to drift into talking to the reader about what I am trying to say. It breaks the spell. My copy of the Norton Reader puts them in the rhetorical genre called Describing.

   Woolf’s very short piece, just two facing pages, is a moving observation of herself, but universal, in the mode of description.

   ---

   1. An asimile is something I just made up. It’s short for anti-simile. A simile is of the form “x is like y”, ergo an asimile is of the form “x is not like y.” ↩︎

   2. I’m assuming here that Woolf wrote the piece in 1940 or ‘41, shortly before it was published. Also shortly before she died. I have no idea if that’s true, or if the piece is about a moth that died around the time that she wrote it and not 20 years earlier. Or if it’s even about any one particular moth that she witnessed passing at all. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/airstrip/Tue, 19 May 2026 17:19:24 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/airstrip/<p>The forest is misty at five in the morning, and the air still and quiet. The wind broke sometime late in the night and the air was now only gently drifting. I was returning from the trail camp&rsquo;s pit toilet, deciding what to do next in the dim pre-dawn gray. The edges of the trees are all softened in the pale atmosphere. Trail camp is at 1580 feet above the sea and I had expected to be in the clouds more than some of this weekend, but it had not happened until this morning, the last morning. There had been only blue skies and the tireless wind, and some thin shreds of white racing overhead, just out of reach.</p>Tags: #backpacking #sketches #photos #series-butano #places

   The forest is misty at five in the morning, and the air still and quiet. The wind broke sometime late in the night and the air was now only gently drifting. I was returning from the trail camp’s pit toilet, deciding what to do next in the dim pre-dawn gray. The edges of the trees are all softened in the pale atmosphere. Trail camp is at 1580 feet above the sea and I had expected to be in the clouds more than some of this weekend, but it had not happened until this morning, the last morning. There had been only blue skies and the tireless wind, and some thin shreds of white racing overhead, just out of reach.

   But the wind had tired of its constant 30 mph or more racing and gusting in the green tops of the blackened red giants. Now it was something much less, something rarely heard and only faintly felt.

   The low roar, the distant rumbling that had been noticeably palpable since the wind had picked up the night before last, it’s not gone. Perhaps it is not wind in the trees’ trunks. It could be waves on the coast, or maybe it’s still windy in the trees where the sound is coming from, where the wind has gone for a rest.

   

   The sun is rising. I can see the crinkles in the tent’s rain fly in the grazing dawn light, and the tiny faint dots on the pages of my notebook without the flashlight.

   Soon I will go back out, go for a walk in the misty dawn light and look, again, for the landing strip in the still air with the distant low roar. An airstrip is an improbable thing to find on the top of a ridge, in the middle of a redwood forest in the clouds, far away from everything. The map says it is there, so I will look for it.

   

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/falling-branches/Mon, 18 May 2026 18:08:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/falling-branches/

   The wind blew all night in the trees, loud swishing & shushing in the high-high branches of the ridge top redwoods. Corrie had said yesterday that there was a wind advisory for the weekend; I had not noticed it on the forecast when preparing for the backpacking trip. In the morning, Saturday morning, I woke at my usual time, early and in a tent, in the first trail camp at Butano State Park and the sound continued. The sound is really two sounds; there is also a low infrasonic rumble which is much further away.

   ]]>Tags: #backpacking #sketches #photos #series-butano #weather

   

   The wind blew all night in the trees, loud swishing & shushing in the high-high branches of the ridge top redwoods. Corrie had said yesterday that there was a wind advisory for the weekend; I had not noticed it on the forecast when preparing for the backpacking trip. In the morning, Saturday morning, I woke at my usual time, early and in a tent, in the first trail camp at Butano State Park and the sound continued. The sound is really two sounds; there is also a low infrasonic rumble which is much further away.

   There was only one time in the night that I heard a branch fall. I had been trying to fall asleep and so I spent the next hour making a big effort to avoid thinking too deeply about what falling branches might imply about my current specific location in the middle of a stand of trees over 100 feet tall with little of substance between my person and heavy things up high and wind advisories and loudly whispering trees’ tops. I was not very good at avoiding thinking about what it meant. Phrases like “he died doing what he loved” kept crossing my mind, and while it is true that I did love doing this, this was not how I had imagined it. But I heard no more branches-falling-in-the-night sounds for a long time even though the wind continued relentlessly.

   

   I somehow thought, while in my tent in the middle of the windy night, that I would be able to do some empirical science in the morning having to do with counting the newly fallen branches per square meter, and perhaps the pattern that they fell in to determine the source tree and if I should only move my tent or remove my person from the park entirely. What I failed to remember during this nighttime exercise in both actuarial warding and failed distraction was that the forest is already completely littered with fallen branches. Even without my glasses, in the dim morning light on my way to the camp pit toilet, I could not avoid noticing this fact. There is a lot of time in the forest for branches to fall.

   

   Corrie had also mentioned yesterday that this particular toilet had been rebuilt numerous times because trees keep falling on it. That observation is much more ominous now, in all this wind, surrounded by all these trees and searching for some statistical evidence to support a decision about what I should do with regard to my personal safety.

   

   Later, after the bathroom, and after not counting any branches, while I was fetching my coffee things from the metal bear box I noticed something and admitted that I had told myself a very different story about the metal twang in the branch-falling-in-the-night sound last night. My water bottle was lying on its side.

   

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/edu-week/Mon, 18 May 2026 11:51:09 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/edu-week/<p>Lots of learning going on this week. The brain is kind of filling up and getting tired already, but the trainings continue to come in hot. I&rsquo;m interested to see how this turns out by the end of the week.</p>Tags: #moods #learning #ai · *duration:6h

   Lots of learning going on this week. The brain is kind of filling up and getting tired already, but the trainings continue to come in hot. I’m interested to see how this turns out by the end of the week.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-2/Fri, 15 May 2026 16:04:35 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-2/Hello RSS Clubbers! It’s Friday again so that means I’m sharing some kind of snapshot. This week I’ll take a quick tour through my open tabs and share a few worth sharing.

   

   1. Faig Ahmed - I got to see one Ahmed’s pieces at the de Young a couple of weeks ago (above) and I thought it was pretty cool. I think this one made the internet rounds a couple of years ago, probably around 2020. This Is Colossal has some more pieces, now on display in Venice.
   2. The Neighborhoods - Kingsbridge - Just the latest installment of Rob Stephenson’s awesome work on documenting every neighborhood in NYC. Interesting details (text) throughout and you get to see what a place looks like in the ample photos. You should subscribe!
   3. Wyoming’s Nuclear Renaissance - An article I am reading about developments in the nuclear industry. I urge caution as we make progress.
   4. Kottke’s Rolodex is a(bout to be a) feed reader - Jason shared a new feature on his blog a while ago, I’m just catching up. Maybe I should become a paying subscriber so I can comment and discuss.

   Have a great weekend!

   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #links #rss-club

   Hello RSS Clubbers! It’s Friday again so that means I’m sharing some kind of snapshot. This week I’ll take a quick tour through my open tabs and share a few worth sharing.

   

   1. Faig Ahmed - I got to see one Ahmed’s pieces at the de Young a couple of weeks ago (above) and I thought it was pretty cool. I think this one made the internet rounds a couple of years ago, probably around 2020. This Is Colossal has some more pieces, now on display in Venice.
   2. The Neighborhoods - Kingsbridge - Just the latest installment of Rob Stephenson’s awesome work on documenting every neighborhood in NYC. Interesting details (text) throughout and you get to see what a place looks like in the ample photos. You should subscribe!
   3. Wyoming’s Nuclear Renaissance - An article I am reading about developments in the nuclear industry. I urge caution as we make progress.
   4. Kottke’s Rolodex is a(bout to be a) feed reader - Jason shared a new feature on his blog a while ago, I’m just catching up. Maybe I should become a paying subscriber so I can comment and discuss.

   Have a great weekend!

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/butano/Fri, 15 May 2026 08:04:09 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/butano/<p>I&rsquo;m off to spend a couple of nights in the woods with some new friends. See you when I get back!</p>Tags: #moods #backpacking #series-butano · *duration:72h

   I’m off to spend a couple of nights in the woods with some new friends. See you when I get back!

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/metis-techne/Wed, 13 May 2026 21:23:49 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/metis-techne/Chris Arnade has a blog (newsletter) called Chris Arnade Walks the World, and his beat is, well, walking and the world. Those are two topics that I am a big fan of, walking and the world. I appreciate that Chris writes his observations and includes ordinary¹ pictures of what he sees out there. Pictures are not the point of his blog, they’re just incidental. I like them. In fact, it’s the main reason I originally signed up to receive his blog in my electronic mail box.
   ]]>Tags: #Chris-Arnade #links

   Chris Arnade has a blog (newsletter) called Chris Arnade Walks the World, and his beat is, well, walking and the world. Those are two topics that I am a big fan of, walking and the world. I appreciate that Chris writes his observations and includes ordinary¹ pictures of what he sees out there. Pictures are not the point of his blog, they’re just incidental. I like them. In fact, it’s the main reason I originally signed up to receive his blog in my electronic mail box.

   • Techne is technical, scientific, and formal knowledge. It describes methods, procedures, and rules that can be systematically learned and applied. It tends to be codified, explicit, formal, standardized, top-down, abstracted, generalized, and universally applicable.
   • Metis is practical, experiential, tacit knowledge. It’s the accumulated wisdom or know-how that comes from practice or lived experience. It entails adaptability and the ability to respond intuitively in context. It tends to be local, situational, informal, decentralized.

   Those pictures usually come with a lot of words, like a lot a lot of words but not as many as Scott Alexander. The quote above, it comes from the footnotes of the linkpost,² and its origin is right near the beginning. I agree³ with this observation, both formal and experiential learning are necessary to understand. Neither alone is good enough.

   

   ---

   1. This is a compliment of his subject matter. He takes document pictures of regular things. ↩︎

   2. Man, something about a good footnote. Chris’s post has eleven! There’s even a picture! ↩︎

   3. I don’t think I agree with all the things that Chris concludes or steers toward. But I am mostly there for the pictures and pick up some words here and there too. I do appreciate that he write carefully and I can understand his points well enough to disagree if that is what I do. Keep writing, Chris. And taking pictures. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/comments/Tue, 12 May 2026 21:13:01 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/comments/Update: just use the “comments” form at the bottom of any post (and most pages) to leave a comment!

   

   ---

   I added comments to this blog! I’m super excited about this, but there is a catch.

   ]]>Tags: #blogging #meta

   Update: just use the “comments” form at the bottom of any post (and most pages) to leave a comment!

   

   ---

   I added comments to this blog! I’m super excited about this, but there is a catch.

   

   So the catch is that you gotta email me. Or text me, that’s fine too. I’ve made it easy, there is a link on every post at the bottom in the comments section. Just click it and write your comment to me in the pre-filled email. We can have a conversation or just get your comment up here.

   

   The comment will appear at the bottom of the post, uh, after I manually add it to the post. So, there will probably be a delay, up to days.¹ If things get out of hand I’ll explore other options.

   The comments page has the most recent comments. You can get to it in the site nav up there, top right. There is also an rss feed, if you want to keep up.² There aren’t many and I don’t expect many.³

   This is cool! Thanks, Jeff, you get the credit for motivating me to add this feature.

   ---

   1. I am a fan of slow things. Some things are worth the wait. ↩︎

   2. Some (most?) comments are just going to be me, adding something extra to a post. ↩︎

   3. I’m very open to being surprised. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/options/Tue, 12 May 2026 07:15:25 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/options/The advice is that you want more options, keep your options open and collect more of them, and that’s the way to succeed in a highly uncertain situation. One aspect of really having an option is to understand that option. Writing a thing isn’t the same as knowing the costs and gains of doing it.

   In my personal framework for possessing lots of options there are three levels and a few more steps.

   ]]>Tags: #critiques #essays

   The advice is that you want more options, keep your options open and collect more of them, and that’s the way to succeed in a highly uncertain situation. One aspect of really having an option is to understand that option. Writing a thing isn’t the same as knowing the costs and gains of doing it.

   In my personal framework for possessing lots of options there are three levels and a few more steps.

   • On Level 1 the option exists and is within your adjacent possible whether you know it or not. This is just a long way of saying that you always have options whether you know it or not. That’s comforting, in a way.
   • At Level 2 you are aware that the option is there; it’s on a list somewhere because you’ve identified and named it. It can be the first one, lists gotta start somehow.
   • To obtain Level 3 you’ve explored the option and have enough understanding of what it takes to use it. Maybe you’ve rejected it in favor of a better one, but it’s still kicking around. This is what makes the option yours.

   Repeat that conveyor belt and store the output. Now you’ve got some things that you could do. Think about them and consider how to use them in your current context. Rank them relative to each other. You’re probably in “I know my options” territory now.

   Doesn’t hurt to step back and revisit the situation, make sure you haven’t missed anything or not thought about it from all the angles. It might not be actually all your options, but with effort it can be a good approximation.

   I think it’s really important to keep the lower ranked options around, but relegated and out of the way. Consult that list of ideas from time to time. Some old discarded idea might be a great idea when new certainty has presented itself amidst all that uncertainty. Having this store of unforgotten ideas is a resource, a stockpile, even generative when you need it to be. You’ve engaged with these options already and thought, practically, how they work in a particular context. That’s a lot of thinking, don’t throw it away!

   One additional note. Some people can effectively do this entirely in their head. I am not one of them and it doesn’t matter. What matters is making an options factory. If you need a tool, a notebook, a PKM software, whatever, who cares. This is only an implementation detail. Make it work for you, however you do it.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/garden-eng/Mon, 11 May 2026 13:17:32 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/garden-eng/

   You might think allotment people are only green-fingered, but I think they’re a bit tin-fingered as well.

   Giles Turnbull has a website on the internet and sometimes he posts pictures. The other day he had a nice post of observations and pictures from allotments. I’m not exactly sure of the translation misalignment, but it looks to be about the same thing as what I would call a community garden here in Northern California. Giles is also a well known internet person and that stuff is good too.¹

   ]]>Tags: #links #replies #gardening #Giles-Turnbull #photos

   You might think allotment people are only green-fingered, but I think they’re a bit tin-fingered as well.

   Giles Turnbull has a website on the internet and sometimes he posts pictures. The other day he had a nice post of observations and pictures from allotments. I’m not exactly sure of the translation misalignment, but it looks to be about the same thing as what I would call a community garden here in Northern California. Giles is also a well known internet person and that stuff is good too.¹

   

   So I had a look around the community garden where my wife has a plot and made a few pictures. This survey is only a quarter of the plots. We’re much later in the growing season than Giles’ area, but the plants haven’t blocked things up that much yet.

   

   

   

   I suspect Giles is making a bit of a joke by calling it “engineering” and I don’t mind that at all. Properly, this is jury rigging, though “vernacular” could conceivably be stretched to include this sort of improvised construction. That led me to jugaad and I love it, so much invention and freedom and creativity! We need more of this. Well, I do.

   

   

   It’s a little hard to see in this next one but that is a writing desk there in the middle. I like to imagine it is getting good use early every morning, supporting an intrepid author putting in the work. The plants encroach a little more every morning and have to be shoo’d off the writing area now and then, the rascals.

   

   As I was wrapping up I noticed this tool had been assembled from some left over parts too. Or maybe it’s a “proper”² tool that I just haven’t had the pleasure of yet.

   

   I too believe that I will post some updates now and again as I scout more of the plots and see what else I see. There is still the other three quarters of the plots, just in this one community garden. Send your observations to Giles, or me too. Vernacular engineering is fun!

   ---

   1. I’m mostly there for the pictures, I’m a sucker for good pictures of regular stuff. ↩︎

   2. “Proper”, heh, all this stuff is in some way made up to begin with. It might get refined over years, generations, or eons, but let’s not forget where it all came from. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/change-the-channel/Sun, 10 May 2026 20:48:31 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/change-the-channel/The trends today that feel forced and presented and manipulative and really only there for some reason other than because people want them, the selected shouting and distilled intensity, it’s all exhausting. Can people just be normal for a minute? The algorithm that concentrates anything it comes near has leaked out and it is unsustainable that everything everywhere is infected. It’s gone meta, the optimization of itself has become so much that it is becoming visible and annoying too. Not only has the subject been optimized for attention, the Jackass antics of stupid stunts like pushing a shopping cart into the curb for a dumb crash video¹ have been completely amped up to crashing a train into a giant hole,² but every other aspect of the production around the idiotic stunt has been iterated, focus grouped, a/b’ed, and maximized to the nth degree. And this is old news.
   ]]>Tags: #attention #platforms #critiques

   The trends today that feel forced and presented and manipulative and really only there for some reason other than because people want them, the selected shouting and distilled intensity, it’s all exhausting. Can people just be normal for a minute? The algorithm that concentrates anything it comes near has leaked out and it is unsustainable that everything everywhere is infected. It’s gone meta, the optimization of itself has become so much that it is becoming visible and annoying too. Not only has the subject been optimized for attention, the Jackass antics of stupid stunts like pushing a shopping cart into the curb for a dumb crash video¹ have been completely amped up to crashing a train into a giant hole,² but every other aspect of the production around the idiotic stunt has been iterated, focus grouped, a/b’ed, and maximized to the nth degree. And this is old news.

   In a way it is a kind of democratization. These tools and techniques used to be limited to professional commercial firms that had the money, the knowhow, the motivation, and the interest to bother. It was annoying then. Now everyone can use them, everyone is a brand. All the tutorials are on the internet there for anyone to try. Platforms added the ability to apply the methods and now this crap is everywhere. And that enabling of more people to try is great. What’s not great is that the rest of us have to suffer through an endless feast of slop. Even top tier content is polluted with this accelerationist intensity.

   This culture, the culture of intensity, is overdone. And it is all a scam, a way to get something out of the people that they wouldn’t otherwise bother about. Attention scams, financial scams, movement scams. And it’s the easiest one in the world to escape from because all you have to do is engage less with the intensity, and with less intensity. Choose to do something else. Look away from the feed, look outside, look at a picture, anything. I choose something else.

   This one pathway to attention, the make it as much of itself³ as possible way, as much anger or awful, it is not the only way. Much of the best art and craft things are dialed back a little. They can be subtle and inspire, or edited to relax and bring peace. Well crafted things can be developed to be something else, something original and genuine and intensely personal, and so universal. Just change the channel.

   ---

   1. I should look this up and re-watch it. I bet it’s so slow and tame and boring compared to today’s versions. Yup it’s dumb. To be fair, I thought it was dumb in the 90s too. ↩︎

   2. I mean this one, which I have not watched. The waste of it offends me. I am not made for the internet. ↩︎

   3. Can you intensify a tortilla? What is the most intense form of that form? ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/emoji-ligatures/Fri, 08 May 2026 18:03:15 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/emoji-ligatures/So I thought I would write a post about emoji ligatures and the zero width joiner and how it’s cool that you can use emoji shortcodes plus the html ‍ character to do this yourself.

   Or you can just use the keyboard picker to do it. 😶‍🌫️

   ]]>Tags: #design #code #references

   So I thought I would write a post about emoji ligatures and the zero width joiner and how it’s cool that you can use emoji shortcodes plus the html ‍ character to do this yourself.

   Or you can just use the keyboard picker to do it. 😶‍🌫️

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/hey-there/Thu, 07 May 2026 17:54:50 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/hey-there/Just wanted to say hi!

   👋

   I added a nifty feature that adds a mood to the site title. And it’ll expire after a time, so it’s temporary. That little icon is a link to the post which is otherwise not rendered on the home page. It does go out in the rss feed.

   Cheers!

   ]]>Tags: #moods #meta #design · *duration:24h

   Just wanted to say hi!

   👋

   I added a nifty feature that adds a mood to the site title. And it’ll expire after a time, so it’s temporary. That little icon is a link to the post which is otherwise not rendered on the home page. It does go out in the rss feed.

   Cheers!

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/wander/Tue, 05 May 2026 20:50:40 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/wander/I’ve been reading Dan Flag’s¹ newsletters for a while, I started for the pictures. I think it used to have another name, maybe it was Wandering NYC. Anyway, Dan has a good post about getting into the wandering mindset, with a few guidelines. I like it.
   1. “Weird decisions lead to weird, interesting situations.” Love it. Be open to doing something different. I call it following the energy.
   2. Go places out on a limb / go places that give you peace.
   3. Keep your peepers peeled: “Sensitivity to subtlety is the road to wisdom.”

   Good stuff. More good stuff in the post.

   ]]>Tags: #links #walking

   I’ve been reading Dan Flag’s¹ newsletters for a while, I started for the pictures. I think it used to have another name, maybe it was Wandering NYC. Anyway, Dan has a good post about getting into the wandering mindset, with a few guidelines. I like it.

   1. “Weird decisions lead to weird, interesting situations.” Love it. Be open to doing something different. I call it following the energy.
   2. Go places out on a limb / go places that give you peace.
   3. Keep your peepers peeled: “Sensitivity to subtlety is the road to wisdom.”

   Good stuff. More good stuff in the post.

   Just wander an hour or two a week…

   ---

   1. It’s a pseudonym. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-1/Mon, 04 May 2026 20:06:31 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/grab-bag-vol-1/Welcome to the first real volume of RSS Club! It’s just some random things.
   1. Ali and I are watching Néro the Assassin which is kind of fun. It’s French, but you can’t watch it in French, only in English audio and all the other languages closed caption. Or, well, I didn’t check all the other languages, just the French which is only closed captions. It’s only available in English audio. Fun fact: they did AI assisted mouth dubbing which fine, I guess. It’s a little uncanny. I’d rather watch it in French with subtitles. It’s pretty bad actually, if you stare at it.
   2. Leg day today was especially intense. Probably because I was late; I think I mis-noted the time of the appointment. Or it was just the scheduled workout since it’s basically the same thing Ali did last week.
   3. I was hoping to find some good photos of the interior user interfaces, buttons, labels, switches, that kind of thing from the Artemis II capsule. No such luck yet. There is a massive new trove on the GAE, 12k pictures (via Kottke, which I guess was via Damn Interesting and via PetaPixel before that, phew!). But I haven’t found any yet of the switches. Let me know if you do. This one is pretty cool, and so it this one, but you can’t see the controls or labels very well. No luck on the time ordered page either (via pxlnv).
   4. I recently switched to FeedBin after a couple of years of using MiniFlux after a couple of years of using the local fetcher in ReadKit. The vintage ip address range is supposed to have better luck at fetching some feeds that have been perpetually rejected. Yes, I do have some old feeds that I have carried over several times since the good old days of Google Reader. I think they’re that old. I don’t really know. Anyway, nothing is as good as that, and no, big-G, you can never bring it back, I wouldn’t trust it. I bumped into this service on the tour through alternatives; I haven’t really been able to figure out why they’re making a pitch to businesses for a feed reader, or something.
   ]]>Tags: #rss-club #dispatches #ai

   Welcome to the first real volume of RSS Club! It’s just some random things.

   1. Ali and I are watching Néro the Assassin which is kind of fun. It’s French, but you can’t watch it in French, only in English audio and all the other languages closed caption. Or, well, I didn’t check all the other languages, just the French which is only closed captions. It’s only available in English audio. Fun fact: they did AI assisted mouth dubbing which fine, I guess. It’s a little uncanny. I’d rather watch it in French with subtitles. It’s pretty bad actually, if you stare at it.
   2. Leg day today was especially intense. Probably because I was late; I think I mis-noted the time of the appointment. Or it was just the scheduled workout since it’s basically the same thing Ali did last week.
   3. I was hoping to find some good photos of the interior user interfaces, buttons, labels, switches, that kind of thing from the Artemis II capsule. No such luck yet. There is a massive new trove on the GAE, 12k pictures (via Kottke, which I guess was via Damn Interesting and via PetaPixel before that, phew!). But I haven’t found any yet of the switches. Let me know if you do. This one is pretty cool, and so it this one, but you can’t see the controls or labels very well. No luck on the time ordered page either (via pxlnv).
   4. I recently switched to FeedBin after a couple of years of using MiniFlux after a couple of years of using the local fetcher in ReadKit. The vintage ip address range is supposed to have better luck at fetching some feeds that have been perpetually rejected. Yes, I do have some old feeds that I have carried over several times since the good old days of Google Reader. I think they’re that old. I don’t really know. Anyway, nothing is as good as that, and no, big-G, you can never bring it back, I wouldn’t trust it. I bumped into this service on the tour through alternatives; I haven’t really been able to figure out why they’re making a pitch to businesses for a feed reader, or something.
   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/madera/Sun, 03 May 2026 20:31:21 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/madera/This place is a hotel restaurant at the end of Menlo Park on Sand Hill road, past SLAC but before 280. Could it be the local spot for the ultra wealthy that live in the hills past the freeway, up in La Honda or wherever? Hotel restaurant is sometimes a bad word, but this one used to be the spot back in the day. I’m unclear which day that was. It wasn’t yet built when the dot com boom was on. The other tech boom has been a sort of continuous series mini-booms and busts all happening in parallel. The AI boom is on right now, but so is the AI employment bust. It’s all very confusing and stressful.
   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #food #places

   This place is a hotel restaurant at the end of Menlo Park on Sand Hill road, past SLAC but before 280. Could it be the local spot for the ultra wealthy that live in the hills past the freeway, up in La Honda or wherever? Hotel restaurant is sometimes a bad word, but this one used to be the spot back in the day. I’m unclear which day that was. It wasn’t yet built when the dot com boom was on. The other tech boom has been a sort of continuous series mini-booms and busts all happening in parallel. The AI boom is on right now, but so is the AI employment bust. It’s all very confusing and stressful.

   But at Madera there is no stress. It is a place that has the right amount of space between the tables, is not too bright or too dim, is quiet for conversation and your own voices are absorbed into the special air they use so your party doesn’t disturb any other party, or vice versa. I don’t know how they do it, but I wish more restaurants would stage this way. Not all, of course, but being able to hear each other is a nice experience.

   I haven’t yet mentioned the view. How do I capture this, because it is not a postcard view. I would assume that the spectacular feature is the marine layer clouds falling over the crest of the hills, something that happens quite often and is always a delight. Well, it wasn’t on today. Perhaps Madera was saving a little for bigger guests. We just got a normal cloud layer, even diffuse light on the green oaks and ridge lines and a bit of freeway poking around one corner behind the pool. It is a view that I enjoy and I am pleased to have been seated near the large windows and facing them so I could look out and savor those hills and ridges and trees, even if they didn’t include any spectacular falling clouds in evening light. Maybe next time, maybe I can be on the lookout. We were there for brunch.

   I am glad to say that the food was every bit as carefully selected and prepared as the atmosphere. Lemons were bright, greens were perfectly crisp and fresh, vegetables each a piece of art, and all the entrees were just so. This is dependable quality, reliable luxury. The people back there preparing this stuff are perfectionists and notice the details and address them. They probably use tweezers. They are craftsmen- people, crafts-people, and highly skilled technicians of food. An overseer is directing this orchestra, the menu was very coherent, none of the dishes were present only to fill a hole. I can see why it’s not the spot right now, but also, please, for the hope of letting us keep some nice things, do not throw out this gem. Everything was delicious and perfect and to me worth every penny. I would go again anytime I wanted that experience. It ranks with Dio Deka, another house of perfected food that I have experienced lately. I cannot imagine ever being disappointed by either. Nor would I go there to be surprised or wowed or shown something new. You go to a place like this because you know exactly what you are going to get and it is going to be as perfect as possible because all imperfections have been either edited out or that thing is just not possible to serve right now so it will not be offered. The gluten-free Lemon and Ricotta pancakes were absolutely worth every bite and they are also among the least “California” dishes on the menu. The avocado toast was a work of art, a living still life, right down to the jammy egg on top. The artichoke hummus was so amazing that I couldn’t resist the drop of oil that had fallen on the table because the lemon infused-ness was that good. The mixed vegetables looked like something out of a painting and the green goddess dressing was bright and tangy and frankly a small revelation that such things are still made with such attention and care in today’s world.

   I haven’t mentioned the staff. They were excellent. And invisible. There to do their job, all elegantly poised and perfectly dressed and immaculate. Frankly a bit of the Edwardian house staff about them, a little upstairs/downstairs in the air. I’m not sure how that would have arrived here on the western end of the world, but I swear I felt it. Must have come with the clientele. It did take a few minutes longer than we thought it should to get some extra slices of bread for the remaining hummus. I assume they needed to bake and slice it and butter it at just the right temperature and the baker was refusing to rush the cooling period, that bread would be perfecto when it reached the table or there would be blood on the kitchen floor. That we even asked for it probably betrayed that we’re not that clientele. Who knows.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/palo-alto/Sat, 02 May 2026 20:19:10 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/palo-alto/I haven’t been on University Ave in possibly eight, maybe nine, years. Not since before the pandemic. It’s changed. It’s the same.

   There are rich people. I mean really rich people. There are normal folks. There are homeless and beggars and buskers and panhandlers. There are people that are probably high, but who can really say. Maybe they’re just high on life. Or they don’t feel like wearing a shirt. What I am saying is that the people watching is good.

   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #photos #walking #places

   I haven’t been on University Ave in possibly eight, maybe nine, years. Not since before the pandemic. It’s changed. It’s the same.

   There are rich people. I mean really rich people. There are normal folks. There are homeless and beggars and buskers and panhandlers. There are people that are probably high, but who can really say. Maybe they’re just high on life. Or they don’t feel like wearing a shirt. What I am saying is that the people watching is good.

   

   The CVS in Palo Alto has timed safes and doesn’t stock promethazine with Codeine anymore. At The RealReal, the security guard has to press a button to unlock and open the door for every customer. To let them in. And to let them out. Maybe the streets of Palo Alto are just like that now.

   We walked down University Ave and got a juice at Joe’s. Mostly just to use the bathroom, but also to get a juice. The accent pink is an off-Pepto. That’s a weird choice for a cafe.

   We walked back up and contemplated moving our cars. The signs seemed to say we didn’t need to, but they were a lot of words. Jeff told the story of the signs around the Smithsonian. How they were easily misunderstood by tourists, and lots of cars are towed every day at 3pm. He’d been lucky and seen the line of tow trucks on their daily mission. Palo Alto doesn’t seem like that kind of place, but I don’t know. We left the cars where they were. They were there when we came back later.

   We kept walking up, looking for our dinner, and passed another Joe’s. A different Joe’s. I’m sure of it. Seems odd to put two Joe & The Juice bars within a couple of blocks of each other. Maybe a questionable pink isn’t their only problem. Maybe I’m hungry. Then again, I’ve seen the Starbucks diagonally across the intersection from each other. So, again, I don’t know.

   

   Beeple has been by recently. That’s cool, I’m curious. It’s an ad. Coulda been some secret and cool art piece. You can go to his retrospective show, if that’s your thing.

   You know what the standout at dinner was? The elevator. Darkest elevator I’ve been in. The best mood lighting I’ve ever seen. Who could resist it? Goes between two floors, a short trip, and has a disconcerting jolt when it goes down. Unaccountable how it got there, got in this restaurant. The chicken was quite good too. But that elevator. Probably worth a detour if you are into it.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/art-of-the-americas/Fri, 01 May 2026 17:48:40 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/art-of-the-americas/I liked the Arts of the Americas exhibit of older and new indigenous work. The extractive colonialism moved me; I didn’t take any pictures. It felt disrespectful. I don’t know how well the museum addressed this.

   The Teotihuacan mural pieces from the elite’s compound were cool, but they had been brutally hammered out of the wall. They were literal fragments. Dated to the 3rd-8th century, I guess, found in situ centuries later by some European or a looter seeking sellable wares. Like a rich person said “I want” and pointed and it was taken. No regard for the surrounding stuff.

   ]]>Tags: #art #dispatches

   I liked the Arts of the Americas exhibit of older and new indigenous work. The extractive colonialism moved me; I didn’t take any pictures. It felt disrespectful. I don’t know how well the museum addressed this.

   The Teotihuacan mural pieces from the elite’s compound were cool, but they had been brutally hammered out of the wall. They were literal fragments. Dated to the 3rd-8th century, I guess, found in situ centuries later by some European or a looter seeking sellable wares. Like a rich person said “I want” and pointed and it was taken. No regard for the surrounding stuff.

   I have no idea if that’s how it happened. The museum didn’t have any provenance written there that I saw. No story of how these beautiful things got here and when, or if, respect re-entered the story. They were in a somber room, darkened and set off; the museum manipulating the viewers emotions, or legit care, I don’t know.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/power-cut/Thu, 30 Apr 2026 08:53:44 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/power-cut/The power went out for a few hours yesterday afternoon.¹ The alerts said that a “third party” had caused damage to the equipment. I find it strange that a power outage isn’t an unwelcome interruption, it’s a moment of enforced respite from a relentless wfh grind. In our neighborhood the cell service is a poor substitute when the power goes out. I don’t know if this is a universal experience as everyone switches from their wifi to LTE or 5G. Another neighbor complained that their AT&T cell service was not helpful either. We have Verizon. It meant that from 2 pm to 5 pm both Ali and I couldn’t work. We sat on the porch to get a better signal and felt the first drops of rain from the promised storm and played mobile games while updating colleagues that we were out of commission for a while. When that was done, we read books printed on actual paper. The rain never really started, at least not until hours later. A few drops fell now and then as the clouds thickened and the light dimmed. It got harder to read. I moved to a chair by the window to see better. By 4:30, I had decided a nap would be a good use of my time. Just before 5 the power came back on, the dishwasher resumed from where it had left off, and the refrigerator began again to make its soothing whirring sounds.² This “third party” had given my wife and I a break from busy and stressful days. We were bored, read a book, and had a quick nap.
   ]]>Tags: #dispatches #unplug #wfh

   The power went out for a few hours yesterday afternoon.¹ The alerts said that a “third party” had caused damage to the equipment. I find it strange that a power outage isn’t an unwelcome interruption, it’s a moment of enforced respite from a relentless wfh grind. In our neighborhood the cell service is a poor substitute when the power goes out. I don’t know if this is a universal experience as everyone switches from their wifi to LTE or 5G. Another neighbor complained that their AT&T cell service was not helpful either. We have Verizon. It meant that from 2 pm to 5 pm both Ali and I couldn’t work. We sat on the porch to get a better signal and felt the first drops of rain from the promised storm and played mobile games while updating colleagues that we were out of commission for a while. When that was done, we read books printed on actual paper. The rain never really started, at least not until hours later. A few drops fell now and then as the clouds thickened and the light dimmed. It got harder to read. I moved to a chair by the window to see better. By 4:30, I had decided a nap would be a good use of my time. Just before 5 the power came back on, the dishwasher resumed from where it had left off, and the refrigerator began again to make its soothing whirring sounds.² This “third party” had given my wife and I a break from busy and stressful days. We were bored, read a book, and had a quick nap.

   ---

   1. This was a couple of weeks ago, on the 20th of April. ↩︎

   2. Soothing to me, grating to Ali. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/yaml-multiline/Wed, 29 Apr 2026 16:36:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/yaml-multiline/

   Wolfgang Faust is doing us all a service by paying for the url and maintaining this repository. Now we have an easy reference for how to make longer strings in yaml, and when to use | (keep the newlines) or > (replace with space) in the results.

   ]]>Tags: #references #links #single-page-sites #code

   

   Wolfgang Faust is doing us all a service by paying for the url and maintaining this repository. Now we have an easy reference for how to make longer strings in yaml, and when to use | (keep the newlines) or > (replace with space) in the results.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/scheduled/Tue, 28 Apr 2026 22:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/scheduled/<p>This is a post I wrote the night before to test out and verify that scheduling posts works.</p> <p>The rest of this post is intentionally blank.</p>Tags: #meta

   This is a post I wrote the night before to test out and verify that scheduling posts works.

   The rest of this post is intentionally blank.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/ipad/Tue, 28 Apr 2026 14:01:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/ipad/My primary personal compute device is a 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard attached. I will buy another setup just like this one when I have to. I have the Pencil too, but it gets very little use. And yet I expect to buy another one of them too when the time comes. It’s great for when you need precision inputs.

   

   Why don’t I use a laptop?

   ]]>Tags: #uses #tools #essays #writing

   My primary personal compute device is a 2021 12.9-inch iPad Pro with the Magic Keyboard attached. I will buy another setup just like this one when I have to. I have the Pencil too, but it gets very little use. And yet I expect to buy another one of them too when the time comes. It’s great for when you need precision inputs.

   

   Why don’t I use a laptop?

   I like the limits. You can’t do everything on it, and there are some things that are harder to do. That friction gives me a chance to consider if it’s something that I really want to be doing at that moment.

   The singular focus design intent of the OS is a nice nudge to try and do only one thing at a time. I’m not saying it works perfectly, but I think it does vector in that direction.

   The form factor is nice. Had it been still available I might have gotten an 11-inch Air. I guess I could get a Neo, but now a laptop feels too much like work. The iPad feels less earnest than a laptop, more playful. Serious enough to get some work done but not all business. I hope that’s not paper thin marketing but some real effect.

   I guess I’m saying that I would rather use the least compute I can get away with to get done what needs doing. And because the iPad has more evident limits, choosing other options feels more real and present too. Options like paper, or talking to people, or getting outside.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/carts/Mon, 27 Apr 2026 21:44:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/carts/

   The lighting was particularly nice on this sign, well balanced with the setting sunlit background. I imagine it’s been here for decades, it has an 80s vibe going on. Just thought I’d share it.

   ]]>Tags: #photos #art

   

   The lighting was particularly nice on this sign, well balanced with the setting sunlit background. I imagine it’s been here for decades, it has an 80s vibe going on. Just thought I’d share it.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/tag-right/Mon, 27 Apr 2026 11:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/tag-right/I’ve learned that there are a couple of rules for doing tags well in blogging. The purpose of tagging is to naturally group things together over time. Patterns may emerge, cross talk, or just juxtaposition.

   Using fewer tags is better because more related things will accumulate in those tags. So, keep the list of tags small, approximately 100 in total, plus or minus 50. A consistent vocabulary is better, rather than having lots of tags that only refer to one thing.

   ]]>Tags: #blogging #meta #references

   I’ve learned that there are a couple of rules for doing tags well in blogging. The purpose of tagging is to naturally group things together over time. Patterns may emerge, cross talk, or just juxtaposition.

   Using fewer tags is better because more related things will accumulate in those tags. So, keep the list of tags small, approximately 100 in total, plus or minus 50. A consistent vocabulary is better, rather than having lots of tags that only refer to one thing.

   Apply a few tags to each item. No more than five, and [P]robably more than one. Five is a good soft target upper limit. If a post wants more than five tags, check that a) the dimension (below) aren’t getting overloaded, and b) that all the tags are earned and doing work. It’s okay to go over the limit if the tags are doing real work.

   A complication is that there are a few different dimensions that are needed for effective covering the bases. I’ve heard this called “faceted tagging.” It is not at all necessary to fill all facets; many only apply in specific situations.

   Dimension	Purpose	Example
   TOPIC	What is it about?	#ambient #ai #rss-club
   TYPE (faka1 FORMAT)	What is it?	#albums #references
   CONTEXT	What is it for?	#shopping #blogging
   QUALITY (faka AFFECT)	What is it doing?	#relaxing
   STATUS (faka ACTION)	What is next?	#to-listen #to-try
   DISTRIBUTION	What is the channel?	#moods #rss-club

   Expanding a bit more on each of these that can be confusing:

   • TYPE is descriptive of the contents of the post. It can be about what I wrote, or if it’s a linkpost then the tag may apply also to the destination source.
   • QUALITY is intended to track what the post or source does, and it’s intended to reflect feelings or attitudes.
   • DISTRIBUTION can also be used for series, like #series-butano.

   Stick to some basic rules: decide always to use singular or plural; always-hyphenate-words; lower case generally except for proper nouns where it matters; one term per concept, which means usually being reductive or going for the broadest choice.

   Anneal your tags. I mean fix errors when you notice them later. Normalize them to keep moving toward that smallest useful set of tags.

   Finally, tags are not notes. Don’t use them to store descriptions or thoughts or reminders. They are too short for that, it won’t work.

   ---

   1. faka = “formerly also known as”. I just made it up. ↩︎

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/stacked-test/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 16:57:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/stacked-test/Simon Willison is famous for his pelican on a bicycle test. A user on twitter going by @scottjla took it to another level:

   

   I just want to point out that the astronaut is a gorilla.

   ]]>Tags: #Simon-Willison #ai #links

   Simon Willison is famous for his pelican on a bicycle test. A user on twitter going by @scottjla took it to another level:

   

   I just want to point out that the astronaut is a gorilla.

   [edit] And the horse has incisors. Horses, being herbivores, do not have teeth for ripping flesh. Imagine that world.

   The intensity of this image is palpable. I’m still figuring out what to do with that.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/contact/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 14:35:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/contact/You can email me at justin@areyouelectronic.com any time you want to. I’d love to hear from you!

   Or!

   Or, use the comment form at the bottom of any post!

   Or!

   Or, use the “just email me about it” link at the bottom of any page to send me your thoughts about any page or post with some relevant details pre-populated in the email.

   ]]>You can email me at justin@areyouelectronic.com any time you want to. I’d love to hear from you!

   Or!

   Or, use the comment form at the bottom of any post!

   Or!

   Or, use the “just email me about it” link at the bottom of any page to send me your thoughts about any page or post with some relevant details pre-populated in the email.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/now-v1/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 11:03:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/now-v1/What am I up to these days?

   Gymin’ it. I have run for a long time, but now I’m getting into the church of iron. I’m as surprised as you are. It turns out that if you find the right people to do things with, you’ll do a lot of things you didn’t think that you would! Like pick things up and putting them back down again, over and over. Consequently I am also eating with much more awareness and intention, or “healthy”. I’ve passed the 6 month mark on this and see no likely changes here. It’s a lifestyle update. The downside is that my pizza frequency has dropped quite a bit. More on that below.

   ]]>Tags: #now

   What am I up to these days?

   Gymin’ it. I have run for a long time, but now I’m getting into the church of iron. I’m as surprised as you are. It turns out that if you find the right people to do things with, you’ll do a lot of things you didn’t think that you would! Like pick things up and putting them back down again, over and over. Consequently I am also eating with much more awareness and intention, or “healthy”. I’ve passed the 6 month mark on this and see no likely changes here. It’s a lifestyle update. The downside is that my pizza frequency has dropped quite a bit. More on that below.

   Dressin’. I am at the beginning of trying to dress more intentionally. This is not so easy. Developing taste is hard. I’m taking the same attitude as I did about the gym and eating: it’s going to take time and experiments and resilience and patience. I’m here for it.

   Backpacking. My restorative. Get out and touch grass. Offline. All that. Favorite spots include whatever is close and Death Valley.

   Field Recording. I like to record things and upload them to YouTube. I don’t do it often enough. My jam is super long play ambient recordings. Like overnight or even a full continuous 24 hours. It’s a document of a place, slow TV style.

   Photography. Similar to above, I take a document-as-record approach to photography. Street, New Topographics, that sort of thing. See the #photos.

   Pizza. I continue to make pizza as I have done for almost 30 years now. I am old. In my defense, I started pizza-ing young. Frequency has decreased as I have been having macro goals for the gainz. But I will not be deleting this entirely from my activities.

   Writing. Daily morning pages. Second passes to get essays going. It’s a work in progress. Posting things here and at my other site.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/scott-on-blogging/Sun, 26 Apr 2026 09:58:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/scott-on-blogging/Scott Alexander, in my opinion, always always writes too many words. But he’s also a better writer and thinker than I am. His style usually doesn’t work for me, but it is inarguably successful in the rationalist crowd. I am curious about those folks, even if I am also skeptical and think they take some things, some things, most things? too far. The rationalists do have their uses though.

   This particular post is one that I cannot refuse, but even with the succulent topic of blogging right, he still has too many words for me. For your benefit, and future me too, I pull out some of the good bits.

   ]]>Tags: #blogging #writing #references #Scott-Alexander #links

   Scott Alexander, in my opinion, always always writes too many words. But he’s also a better writer and thinker than I am. His style usually doesn’t work for me, but it is inarguably successful in the rationalist crowd. I am curious about those folks, even if I am also skeptical and think they take some things, some things, most things? too far. The rationalists do have their uses though.

   This particular post is one that I cannot refuse, but even with the succulent topic of blogging right, he still has too many words for me. For your benefit, and future me too, I pull out some of the good bits.

   Some Good Bits

   The English language hates the slightest whiff of dishonesty, even levels so small you wouldn’t naturally notice them yourself. It punishes you by making your writing worse.

   Do less cliches, even if sometimes you have to commit linguistically barbarous acts. Those can be fun too, if used judiciously.

   You contribute to the blogosphere by injecting first-level facts about the world, or second-level primary sources by experts who have gotten the first-level facts. You draw down those contributions by playing too many games of telephone with popular topics that you got from the blogosphere itself.

   Just say the thing you want to say

   There are lots of other good bits in there too, so I suggest you read it.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/about-vol-i/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 18:36:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/about-vol-i/It’s me again, Justin, starting another writing experiment. The goal is to be less sprawling, more vulnerable, less perfection gated. More frequent and atomic.

   Why? Because I think writing is thinking and I think that is important. Taking some vague feeling and putting it on a piece of paper where you can see it, that’s useful. Seeing what you see there, and if it’s saying what you meant to say, that’s still not easy. Putting it out there, for me, is still a challenge. So this is practice, practice, practice. I believe that quantity is the best way of building quality; gotta have experience to develop taste.

   ]]>Tags: #about #meta

   It’s me again, Justin, starting another writing experiment. The goal is to be less sprawling, more vulnerable, less perfection gated. More frequent and atomic.

   Why? Because I think writing is thinking and I think that is important. Taking some vague feeling and putting it on a piece of paper where you can see it, that’s useful. Seeing what you see there, and if it’s saying what you meant to say, that’s still not easy. Putting it out there, for me, is still a challenge. So this is practice, practice, practice. I believe that quantity is the best way of building quality; gotta have experience to develop taste.

   AI Policy

   I will not use AI to write any words on this blog. All the words are my own and I stand by them.

   The first three posts are test posts written by Claude while standing up this site. I have clearly labeled them as such.

   Professionally I cannot avoid using AI; I will also make use of it here on the technical side. I plan to write about that too, but not about the tech. I may write about the experience of experiencing that, since we’re all experiencing it to some degree or another and I think I have something to add there.

   RSS

   There is an RSS feed. I recommend keeping up with me that way. RSS if fun!

   If email is more your thing, use the follow link and sign up to receive new posts by email.

   ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/link-like-simon/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 17:13:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/link-like-simon/Simon Willison asked for it,¹ and I think it is a good low effort way to share what’s interesting, useful, or just cool. He had some suggestions which I want to pull out here too (but I’m paraphrasing):
   1. Include the names of the people who created the content.
   2. Try to add something extra.
   3. Be liberal with quotations.
   4. If the original author(s) read my post, they should feel good about it.
   5. I’m also trying to prove that I read the original post.
   6. I might include screenshots too.

   ---

   1. I missed the opportunity to title this post “simon says”. Oh well. ↩︎

      ]]>Tags: #links #blogging #references #Simon-Willison

      Simon Willison asked for it,¹ and I think it is a good low effort way to share what’s interesting, useful, or just cool. He had some suggestions which I want to pull out here too (but I’m paraphrasing):

      1. Include the names of the people who created the content.
      2. Try to add something extra.
      3. Be liberal with quotations.
      4. If the original author(s) read my post, they should feel good about it.
      5. I’m also trying to prove that I read the original post.
      6. I might include screenshots too.

      ---

      1. I missed the opportunity to title this post “simon says”. Oh well. ↩︎

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/rss-club/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 16:27:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/rss-club/I’m joining RSS Club because I’ve loved RSS feeds since before Google killed the Reader. Follow the feed to get more “secret” posts!
      ]]>Tags: #rss-club #blogging #meta

      I’m joining RSS Club because I’ve loved RSS feeds since before Google killed the Reader. Follow the feed to get more “secret” posts!

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/style-test/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 09:26:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/style-test/Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.
      ƈ or ± don't leave a comment here

      Leave it all the say down at the bottom. This box is just for style testing.

      

      publish time:

      section heading 😶‍🌫️ / 😶‍🌫️

      Lorem Ipsum Dolet etc.

      ]]>Tags: #design #meta

      Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ƈ or ± don't leave a comment here

      Leave it all the say down at the bottom. This box is just for style testing.

      

      publish time:

      section heading 😶‍🌫️ / 😶‍🌫️

      Lorem Ipsum Dolet etc.

      • a 😶
      • b 🌫
      • c ️
        • it’s a deeper bullet
          • and another deeper bullet
            • I can’t imagine I would go this deep.
            • I can’t imagine I would go this deep.
            • I can’t imagine I would go this deep.
        • it’s a deeper bullet
      • 😄

      This has a footnote¹. ❤️ 🙂‍↕️ ← uses zwj to do the emoji ligatures.

      1. a numbered list
      2. with a second number

      And what about the cross product?

      1. a quoted list
      2. with more than one element.

      Doing a lot of lists here today.

      It’s a table

      Katakana	phonetic
      ジャスティン	Jasutin
      ジャスティンさん	Jasutin-san
      ジャス	Jasu
      ジャスさん	Jasu-san
      ジャス君	Jasu-kun
      ———–	———-
      アレッサンドラ	Aresusandora
      アレッサンドラ様	Arasshando-sama
      アレッサンドラさん	Areddasando ra-san

      The Longest Paragraph

      What follows is intended to be a very long paragraph.

      Here It Is

      

      This paragraph is going to be so long. Like, really, it is so long that you could stack two of them and reach the moon. There is also an image in this paragraph. It’s right there. I don’t know what you want from me. Other than so much more text that my eyes might start to bleed and the sun will stop shining and all the paper in the world will be used up and there just isn’t any more ink left to print on it anyway because we used it all up on earlier words and then we ran out of air because of the heat death of the universe which really sucked because the paragraph was still going on and so was this sentence which no one told was never going to ever get around to wrapping up or finishing or ending or anything and that is a bummer. But it did finally end, which is nice. Ok so the paragraph isn’t going to end up being really all that long after all. Hopefully it’s long enough for the picture to be sitting on some text. Let’s see how it looks.

      Floating Info Box (single paragraph)

      A short aside attached with {.float-right .aside} on the line after a paragraph becomes a one-paragraph info box.

      Here is the main prose that the info box should sit alongside. It needs to be long enough to wrap around the floated aside, so I am going to keep typing for a while. The aside is narrower than the column and tinted muted-grey with a left rule, the same way the blockquote style works elsewhere on the site. If the prose runs out before the aside does, the next heading will clear the float rather than collide with it. A few more sentences for good measure: the cat sat on the mat; the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men.

      Floating Info Box (multi-paragraph div)

      First paragraph in the info box. It can run for a sentence or two on its own.

      Second paragraph in the info box. The blank lines around the <div> tags let markdown render inside, so paragraphs, lists, and inline emphasis all work in here.

      Here is more main prose for the multi-paragraph case. The wrapping div lets the info box hold more than one paragraph, which is the only thing the single-attribute form cannot do. I’ll keep typing to give the float enough vertical space to actually wrap. The cat sat on the mat; the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain; all the king’s horses and all the king’s men. One more sentence so the prose comfortably out-runs the aside and we can see the clean break at the next heading.

      Audio

      ---

      1. a footnote. In fact, it’s a very long footnote that has lots and lots of text. So much text that it’s going to be multiple paragraphs and I want to know what that is going to look like.

         This is a new paragraph in the footnote. Or is it? ↩︎

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/hello/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/hello/Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      This is the first post on this blog.

      It’s mostly a writing experiment. Expect short notes, the occasional longer piece, and very little else. The styling is intentionally close to raw markdown: monospace, narrow column, a horizontal rule between sections, and not much chrome.

      If you’re seeing this, the site is up.

      ]]>Tags: #meta

      Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      This is the first post on this blog.

      It’s mostly a writing experiment. Expect short notes, the occasional longer piece, and very little else. The styling is intentionally close to raw markdown: monospace, narrow column, a horizontal rule between sections, and not much chrome.

      If you’re seeing this, the site is up.

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/on-monospace/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/on-monospace/Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      Most prose on the web uses proportional fonts because that’s what books do. But a blog isn’t a book. The unit of writing is the paragraph, not the page, and reading speed is gated more by the screen than by the typeface.

      Monospace flips a few small things in your favor:

      ]]>Tags: #design #writing

      Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      Most prose on the web uses proportional fonts because that’s what books do. But a blog isn’t a book. The unit of writing is the paragraph, not the page, and reading speed is gated more by the screen than by the typeface.

      Monospace flips a few small things in your favor:

      • The column has a natural width — about 80 characters — that you don’t have to think about.
      • Inline code doesn’t visually shift the line.
      • The text looks like a draft, which lowers the stakes of publishing.

      The downside is that long-form prose can feel relentless. So far the trade seems fine for short posts.

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/why-hugo/Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 -0700justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/posts/2026/why-hugo/Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      A short list of why this site is built with Hugo:

      1. One binary, no runtime. Builds in milliseconds.
      2. Tags are a built-in taxonomy. No plugin needed.
      3. The templates are ugly but small, which is fine for a site this minimal.

      Search is provided by Pagefind, which runs after the Hugo build and generates a static index. No server, no Algolia, no Lunr shoved into the page.

      ]]>Tags: #meta #tools

      Sorry rss club folks, I’m abusing the club a bit for this “under construction” test post.

      ! AI Written Test Post !

      A short list of why this site is built with Hugo:

      1. One binary, no runtime. Builds in milliseconds.
      2. Tags are a built-in taxonomy. No plugin needed.
      3. The templates are ugly but small, which is fine for a site this minimal.

      Search is provided by Pagefind, which runs after the Hugo build and generates a static index. No server, no Algolia, no Lunr shoved into the page.

      ]]>https://www.areyouelectronic.com/about/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/about/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/comments/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/comments/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/digest/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/digest/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/now/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/now/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/photos/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/photos/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/search/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/search/https://www.areyouelectronic.com/updates/Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000justin@areyouelectronic.com (Justin Garofoli)https://www.areyouelectronic.com/updates/