Folia Vitrae

scale

2026-05-08T00:00:00+00:00

Are we small or big or medium? Maybe we are exactly between subatomic and universal, maybe its logarithmic and we are still somehow in the middle.</p>

suffering

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

The buddhist idea of an axle not placed exactly in the middle of a wheel. This is funny because that would be uncomfortable but so are ill fitting socks and yet buddhism says that also dying and all your loved ones dying fall under this same descriptor.</p>

sources</h3>

seams</a> — society</li>
mirror</a> — self</li>
clouds</a> — nature</li> </ul>

clouds

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Clouds. We can't hold them or touch them and they're not as soft and cottony as they look.</p>

mirror

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

(coming soon)</em></p>

seams

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

The seams of underwear and socks are on the inside so that we don't see them. This is not comfortable. Though it also protects them from becoming broken.</p>

anglicisms

2026-05-07T00:00:00+00:00

Swiss french:</p>

"after work"</li>
online</li>
internet</li>
lunch</li>
weekend</li>
full, as in "full calver/chaos, full send"</li>
bus camping</li>
burnout</li>
no big deal</li>
red flag</li>
what the fuck</li> </ul>

Reflection on Generative AI Poems 2012-2014

2023-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

These writing samples are not strictly academic in nature but reflect over a decade of applied generative AI in creative processes. The following three poems used original python software developed during my undergraduate cognitive science studies at the University of California. The unpublished software, named “Words Masher,' implemented extremely rudimentary neural networks and markov chains trained on specific corpuses of literature sanitized and labeled by hand to produce text output. In each instance a single (most often randomly generated) word acted as a prompt and output length was set beforehand. The input was generated with a command that resembled: “x.generate_sentence("do", 24)”. The raw output was many pages of largely unformatted and probabilistically generated text used as creative inspiration, requiring extensive editing and license to produce cohesive poetry. Human editing acted as a sieve for novel imagery and required much more deletion than augmentation. The process depended heavily on “textual-pareidolia,” or creative pattern finding in the uninspired output. The pieces were produced between 2012 and 2013 and published in two printed Los Angeles art magazines in 2014 (with no AI attribution, an oversight). These poems are representative of a body of work published online and in print between 2010 and 2018.</p>
Pseudepigrapha</h3>
The first sample was produced by a model trained on a corpus of five books, weighted most heavily on a translation of “Fragments” by Heraclitus and to a lesser extent on poetry by Philip Larkin and three other unrecorded texts. While even the final version requires some creative interpretation on behalf of the reader, it evokes some clearly human angst related to mortality, ignorance, and self-determination. It is regretful that I no longer have any examples of the raw output with which to compare the final draft. I do however have a small piece that was clearly edited but that did not make it into the final draft; I believe in retrospect the passage was omitted because it did not fit the pared down theme of the final poem and thus lacked lucidity. The omitted sample follows the poem below. </code></pre> All things come unto a beardless lad, tripping: it is the end always beginning again. This unseen harmony is the law. Men act as if there were none, exclaiming "We are the Law!" This belief prevails as dreams do in sleep, every grown man a liar. Few know day from darkness, but death is wisdom’s shifted night, and Nature provides for all. It awakens our awareness. Generations flow like blood; the limit of all sacrifice ends in the sea of thought. So deep are the waters and yet we bathe in mud. Knowing this is the greatest difficulty. It is all we are to expose it. One day we may learn from the few and good; but corpses are taught in periods of a thousand years. This world consists of Good and it's opposite in tension, like beasts. We treat this war as if it were a season but living this way is sickness. The king knows this, and will not overstep his fate. Man is a prince who must learn to live as a king. This truth is more than ears witness; our senses estrange us. False thoughts’ draught drips desire and pursues us into wine washed slumber. The man who knows this finds one thing above all: we are that which we think we are. The prize of the gods is hunger and eternity an unexpected feast; man decides his portions and pays with raving lips. But even fish can be parched. The people must admit, therefore, that they are bad and asleep; weariness the same for young and old. Do not expect the whole width of time; demand to seek fresh water now. The sun has heard it all, our shameful phallic hymn, and so dives into the night. The earth listens only to the moon. </code></pre> Excised Passage from Pseudepigrapha</p> Wisdom is an ever-living fire, and the wise purify themselves with many flames. The fool is not want of belief, for divine law prevails inasmuch as we are fair and willing. God is quick to convict. The fool is said to have the most beautiful of men's want for the same rivers. The science and principles of poets pass away through strife, only a soul's own walls will suffice. You cannot purify yourself with human opinions. Men feel sated by a child's knowledge. A bad witness to the one is called a beast.There is no greater sacrifice than to wash the feet of a child, and set it on a cleaner path. </code></pre> Oblito Mori</h2> This poem is much sparser but demonstrates the utilization of generative AI in a more constrained way. The final product consists of a primitive and fragmentary acrostic poem with the theme of death which I read at the funeral of my grandfather. It is no longer possible to determine the texts on which it was trained as they are no longer cataloged, though if memory serves me it was not as heavily weighted toward any specific text and was likely trained primarily on a large dictionary of English words. The programmed constraints demanded output be short, start with a given letter, and be biased to contain the same letter within the subsequent words. Much discretion was then used to reformat the output. </code></pre> All buzz Birth chord plucked Christcrossd vibration cacophony Death harmony Enough ever fools fancy Façades fragment Moon reflect Nowhere Oblito mori Pulled Resonant bodies Stirred shimmering static Tears rise fall Untuning </code></pre> Maat</h2> This final poem is also missing a definite catalog of training corpora, though I know it was trained on English translations of Egyptian morality primary sources. The title is the name of an Egyptian embodiment of the moral and ethical principles which every citizen was expected to adhere to. </code></pre> Bring before your eyes the good laid up, Maat: the whole overlay of culture depends on an elaborate system for the communication of emotional bias. True symbols prevent infection. Coloration concealed, and with impersonal irreverence toward precepts, pursue the wind. [but do not eat the heart] Carefully planned desires, and the stable sameness of known and familiar acts on one's entire organism make what is high immediate; one damn thing after another. Comforted and strengthened, go forward. The scoffers and critics make you look good. </code></pre> Conclusion</h2> Since publishing these works I have continued to apply generative AI to the creative process in multiple media. My most time intensive project used GPT-2 trained on hundreds of translations and transliterations of the Tao Te Ching to produce another. This project made it to the front page of Hacker News via Gwern's site. The draft remains unpublished and currently consists of hundreds of pages of raw output and dozens of pages of output in various stages of editing. The landscape of generative AI writing has changed dramatically since I first experimented with it, and future publications on my part would require much stricter analysis and reference to training data. It is also apparent that some of the context window lengths may have been too large, and some of the models overfit to the training data, as there are a number of phrases which are plagiarized from corpus text. I regret not documenting my early work more rigorously as it may have been more justifiable as research than poetry. To this day I sincerely believe artificial intelligence can illuminate and inform human philosophy. </code></pre>


cords
2023-12-20T00:00:00+00:00
Reflection on Generative AI Poems 2012-2014</a></p>


Advertisements
2022-09-14T00:00:00+00:00
Our mendal bandwidth is stolen through the use of pervasive advertisement, well beyond the hypothetical benefit that might come from it. Mental exhaustion makes it difficult to make decisions, and I believe advertisers know this and knowingly try to weaken  consciousness, which obviously has reprecussions outside of your buying habits, and conceivably could affect your ability to make good decisions in many domains of your life, including health.^^1, 2^^</p>
For this reason I think it is fundamental for general success to minimize interaction with advertisements. The use of adblockers on computers is important until advertisements are removed organically, and advertisments should be outlawed in public places, including on clothing. It is extremeley difficult for me to imagine a downside to this approach, except that, at a glance, I won't be able to tell what brand the shoes of a stranger on the street is wearing.</p>
If you want advertisements, we should act as our own personal "cookie," recording our browsing habits, and then, for example, if we wanted to be advertised to about what shoes we like, we could choose to share some of our browsing habits related to shoes, and then go specifically to a billboard site that would use the information we shared to give us deals/recommendations/encouragement. In this way advertisers wouldn't get wholesale access to our browsing information and personal information (as the current model supports), and we only get ads when we go looking for them, not in the middle of a life-altering historical news article.</p>
Additionally, there might be some legal/technical mechanism to limit how much companies can spend on advertising, so that crappy brands can't just pay for your eyes, but after some ceiling is met on advertising budget, more important factors like reviews, quality, etc come in to play, all aspects of a product much more important than the advertising budget of the parent company in the outcome of whether we should buy a product or not.</p>
This actually now is beginning to sound like part of a larger move to make mindless consumption illegal, which we should do for our mental and emotional wellbeing, as well as for the sake of waste and the future of the planet. Right now only one party is being catered to, the corporations hoping to make money. Why would we optimize our entire global civilization around them?</p>
1 Citation about how tired people do more drugs or something.</p>
2 Anecdote about how hard it is to exercise when you are mentally exhausted.</p>


Attention Span Attacks
2022-09-14T00:00:00+00:00
Outline</h2>

Assumption one:

Media (especialy "popular" media) takes advantage of neurochemistry by producing extra-ordinarily "engaging" content, utilizing themes like  "larger-than-life" emotions, imagery, sounds/music, sex appeal, exageratd action/events, etc.</li>
</ul>
</li>
Assumption two:

"Social media" takes these same physiologically engaging contents but does away with extended continuity and narrative, packing "over-the-top" emotions, imagery, sex appeal, sounds and activities into extremely short clips.</li>
</ul>
</li>
Assumption three:

This media trend is more habit-forming than many other types of media.</li>
</ul>
</li>
Assumption four:

Continued interaction with this media format can actively diminish ones attention span.</li>
</ul>
</li>
Question one:

Could this trend (especially taken to the extreme ^^1^^) be used to purposefully damage/shorten a persons attention span?</li>
</ul>
</li>
Question two:

Is this trend already being used maliciously as a form of attack on an individuals/populations cognition with negative health/economic repercussions?</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Hacking/gamifying the release of chemicals of engagement/arousal/pleasure is the purpose of all media. Even a boring picture of the past is attempting to manipulate your consciousness. Art and "entertainment media" can be fun/engaging. Much of the time, there is nothing complex or nefarious going on, things that are funny, sexy, exciting are entertaining to consume. In other instances individuals/corporations want more views for economic reasons, and so utilize these themes because this is what people will watch more of, "paying" with their time and actual money.</p>
This alone could be problematic in the same way that restaurant food, and especially processed food is more physiologically exciting than regular food. The engaging nature of these types of things can lead to overconsumption, addiction and negative health effects.</p>
I have noticed an uptick in a disturbing trend of dual-panel/picture-in-picture multi-video content, especially aimed at kids. These are videos, common on tiktok, that have simultaneous unrelated videos (usually two above/below one another) playing, sometimes with unrelated audio on top of this. For example, there may be two moving frames on screen at once, one showing video game play-through, the other showing "satisfying" [an entire genre of video] pleasing videos of food prep or playing with toys, or just as often funny videos (like slapstick) or extreme sports. I have not studied the genre enough to know if there is a formula, other than that there are two videos simultaneously playing on screen at a time, and they are almost always completely unrelated thematically.</p>
It was not obvious to me at first why this format of media would even exist. On tiktok videos are already less than a minute long, so craming two videos at once into the already</p>
I've noticed children watching these videos, and while one response might be to imagine that this format is catering to the sh [is it for kids attention spans, or is it gaming the dopamine response]</p>
[Is it an explicit attack or just a naive hack to get views. tik tok controversy about use in military, making it illegal, connections to nation state]</p>
[Does the intention matter if it is damaging attention spans, one of the most fundamental tools of human cognition, if not the singular aspect reqired for consciousness?...]</p>
[Finally, is it actually damaging attention spans? Maybe I am like Aristotle decrying paper. If not, then does it matter ,is it just a fad? If it is, is it reversible? Should it be made illegal? If it is just naive gaming of viewership stats, could it be weaponized?]</p>


shards
2022-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

The sky was a punctured lung/spilled bowl of soup exhaling/spilling clotted phlegm/dumplings and trailing pools of plum wine.</li>
The water so clear and the sky so blue on the shadowed side of the mountain it looked like a stream of oil across the trail.</li>
The trail looked like the barren assaulted line left by atrawling boat on the bottom of the sea, like it left its anchor down and started dragging accidentally dredging. The fallen trees like the massive corpses of whales decomposing in place.</li>
The only whITE noise was the river, and it liessened as the season grew, the white noise ofroads only increased. There were no straight lines of concrete or steel or electrical transmission lines to interrupt the spectacle of nature, just some tent cordage hugging the ground, and after dark a string of beaded satellites alight for a just a few degrees of sky before slipping out of visibunity at some unintuitive orthogonality between our eyes and the sun, like theyd fallen between invisible cracks in the sky.</li>
Snapping popping flying grasshoppers as erratic in their arcing as firecrackers</li>
If you want to picture the big bang perfectly simply imagine all of the potential and realized energy ever throughout the history of the universe: all of the energy to propel granite peaks into the sky, to wash landscapes in wind for millions of years, all the billions of years of sunshine of each and every star, all the growing and consuming of every insect, all of the rapids running for milleniia in unknown creeks, every drill bit and elevator. All of this energy summed until the end of the universe is the energy expressed at once in the big bang.</li>
pink seaweed</li>
Treading on the Tail of October</li>
</ul>
<<<
Leaning over to smell</p>
the rose the exact same gradient of colors</p>
as the spider suspended between the leaves</p>
as the sun deeply subdued by miles of smoke
<<<</p>

Even the wildflowers are wilder in the wilderness.</li>
The wilderness did not want man: every season it destroyed the roads.</li>
Wildflowers clinging to the sheer rockwall above the ocean.</li>
</ul>


Tools
2022-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

go download uBlock Origin plugin for your browser.</li>
</ul>


Algarve Litoral
2022-06-21T00:00:00+00:00
Day 1: Quarteira to Albufeira 19/6/22</h2>
the woman managing my stay this evening asked me why i was walking so much of the portuguese coast. i told her, "tenho tempo e gosto caminhar". i have time and i like to walk. Its beginning provoked a surreal familiarity. Long wide beaches, though the ones here are natural and the unsheltered people are invisible; eucalyptus, anise, juniper, ice plant, dessicated detritus, low inland hills, gulls, jetties and boardwalks. Hot, dry air and limitless water. a man asked me how long i'd been living in portugal. Another didn't believe me when i said "não falho portugués". I met another doing my same hike the opposite direction. The promenades and sidewalks and even people's backyards are paved in mottled marble.</p>
on a narrow st curve away from the beach one of these mosaic pathways leaned from the road into a misplaced forest. not knowing if i was meant to turn or follow, i asked myself "isso é para mim?" Was this path was for me? up the low stone steps were the shaded remains of a building foundation and a carpet of untrod pine needles.</p>
Dia 2: Albufeira to Armaçao de Pera</h2>
20/6/22</p>
i walk because it's difficult and highly enjoyable. things that are pleasurable and easy are often not good for you. things that are difficult and no fun  are chores.  Distance demands naive balance. everything must sit right in my bag; not too heavy on either side, top or bottom. relentlessly mindful consumption; no gram for granted.  The vitality of water is as apparent as its weight. It is the heaviest thing i carry. How much do i need? I do not need more than i can bear. A few hundred km of distant vistas to make up for as many hours in front of a screen. Burned/Earned calories.</p>
Hang drying clothes is very punk</a>. The entire solar system producing nice warm wind whether you need it or not at no extra cost.</p>
Yesterday the key to my room was four sided, a grooved cross. Today it was four digits. I thought columbus was portuguese.</p>
Dia 3: Armacao de Pera para Cavoeiro</h2>
A cup of sunshine named Carvalho:  deep passages worn (like a necklace) by time in soft sandstone.  Alcoves, recesses, hanging valleys, abysses. The missing spaces the attraction.</p>
Dia 4: Carvoeira to Alvor</h2>
Why do distant things appear to move more slowly? Hazy, static and  stacked between atlantic grey clouds and the atlantic itself, cliffs tiaraed in the whitewash of an entire city forced my breath to stop as I mistook them for the whitecaps of apocalyptic, roiling waves.</p>
Temporarily adorned in the costume of custom and fences and walls, the cliffs belong to the sea. Property rights depend on what is left.</p>
Suspended above water in between the shoulders of dunes I looked out at the sea just in time to see a beach umbrella, propelled by the wind, tumble all the way across my frame, chased by a person who would never catch it. Perfect mise en scene.</p>
Dia 5: Alvor to Lagos</h2>
06/23/22
Walked 5km of train track, some of it in the rain, some of it between oyster aquaculture, all of it across wetlands.</p>
Dia 6: Lagos</h2>
06/24/22
The german bakery here makes the best pasteis de nata (less sweet than traditional). I met Miguel, reigning champion of European skimboarding, at the burger restaurant where he works. We spoke through the small delivery pickup window, and a handful of people walked by to say hello to him, he is a local celebrity. I met three guys from Seville, and want to visit now more than ever, nearby Cadiz is one of the stops on the World Skim Tour. Apparently it took 200 years for the Spanish to retake the south  of Spain from the Muslims, but it only took the Muslims one year to take it all over. Seville was the last to be reconquered, and apparently the architecture reflects it.</p>
The first slave market in Europe was in Lagos. Most of the slaves went to the Americas, where the anonymous fruits of their labors were sent back to Europe. The docent at the museum told me that there are many times more slaves indentured today than even the height of the historical European slave trade. Ten percent of the slaves today are children. The fruits of their anonymous labor in cobalt mines utilized so that we can have lithium batteries.</p>
Dia 7: Lagos to Salema</h2>
06/25/22
It is both legal and possible to walk 70 miles and arrive to a small beautiful beach with no appointment or reservation and then walk into the beachfront market and buy a bottle of wine, a bottle of sparkling water (agua com gas), a peach, an apricot and a sack of ice. For about $10. And then it is surprisingly easy to find a sandy cave on the beach all to yourself. And no one will tell me to leave. I could stay here all night and i'm considering it. I arrived at about three over the spine of an enormous sunbathing precipice and i can just sit here on the beach for hours and hours reading prose or portuguese poetry and there is no check or balance. The only crime is i have more ice than wine.</p>
The 5 year old german boy (salema is apparently almost exclusively a german retreat) sat in place for an hour mumbling to himself, one tiny fingertip absentmindedly spinning the wheel of an even tinier plastic tractor in his lap, the other 99.9999% of him in absolutely engaged with his imagination. The beach a kind medium for the most central act of humanity. Mindful mindless entirely enraptured in the act of being whatever it is a person is. So long as one at a time can manage this at any given moment, humanity continues to deserve the excruciating privilege.</p>
The same grapefruit flesh colored fish i'm eating, flayed and grilled, appears, whole and heavy, from the alley behind my left ear in a plastic bin carried by two grown men into the kitchen across the alley of the restaurant where i am eating.</p>
how can the cliffs appear so static when there's evidence of violent crashing all over the place. people content to lie at the base of these looming faces in the shade of a massive shear that is guaranteed to one day tumble.</p>
waking briefly at four in the morning on the beach, blanketed in the milky way, my binoculars handy i pulled them out to get a better look at one of the planets and the moment i pulled them to eyes i see a shooting star. the little waves crashing on the sand do not sound like they contain any moisture at all to me, they sound like when the material at the end of a match head is initially consumed in the chemical reaction of fire starting or like a sputtering gas leak too near a spark that requires some highly corrosive expanding foam to be shot at it out of a cannon from a coast guard boat nearby. an image of a nineteen fifties cellophane gift bag getting too close someone's cigarette instantly disappearing into heat. but each wave has it's own timbre and tone some are deeper and shorter some longer higher pitched and as my eyes zig zag across the sky from one star to the next some of them falling stars i imagine the when i focus on any one of them i am hearing the violent energy of their fission combustion however many light years away. peering down the coastline i see a number of collaborative lighthouses of different receding sizes. in my mind i hear them burning like torches.</p>
Dia 8: Salema to Sagres
06/26/22
I didn't write anything, and I remember nothing. shame.</p>
Dia 9</p>


Portugal 22
2022-06-19T00:00:00+00:00
Preface</h1>
My sister says  to say "Tudo joia (everything jewels) and Tudo beleza (everything beauty) and Tudo Rolando (everything rolling)"</em></p>
Part 1:</h1>
Algarve Litoral</a></h1>
Part 2:</h1>
Rota Vicentina</h1>


Material Sponsors
2022-06-19T00:00:00+00:00
My disdain for OBEY</a> knows no bounds, and I outright think they should be illegal, or at least 100% opt-in, both digitally and plastered around the physical world. I specifically only wear clothes/accessories with no branding, because I respect other people's cognitive bandwidth too much. That said, there are a couple of brands I have been using for years now that are the best in their class based on my extensive research, and we have built up a relationship over time where they scratch my back if I scratch theirs. This saves me money, and because I do not recommend, nor would I ever accept sponsorship from, any brand that is not the best version of its type, I don't feel so bad sharing these brands. If you don't want to be marketed to directly, stop reading now.</p>
Sunglasses</h2>
ROAV Eyewear</a> are sincerely worth checking out. They are ultralight, folding sunglasses with no screws, and polarized lenses. There is no competition to them in my opinion, they pack up so small and light and offer great eye protection. They also are quick to replace broken glasses which I have done a number of times, no questions asked. Use the code HARV to save some money when you buy some.</p>
Sandals</h2>
Adventure sandals are a thing and my favorite way to get around. I have tried almost all of the brands and have settled on Earthrunners</a> as my favorite. They look like roman sandals, perfect for roaming around the Mediterranean, and stay put on your feet wet or dry, running or walking or hanging. It took me a while to convert to the between-the-toe variety of sandals, I always thought they would rub, but it turns out they are significantly more secure than the across the toe fasteners and thus cause less rubbing, while also giving your feet more room. Your feet get dirty if you hike in these, but they won't sweat so much or get so stinky, and you can walk right across a river in them and keep hiking without changing shoes. I highly recommend them. Use code HARV to get a discount when you buy.</p>
Shirts/Shorts/Pants</h2>
If, like me, you have been overwhelmed and burnt out researching all of the crazy tech pants and shirts for hiking and travelling and looking semi-professional while you do it, allow me to put you out of your misery. Wool&Prince</a> makes wool/nylon blend pants and shorts with reinforcements in the right places, and light 100% wool dress shirts that are perfect for hiking in. They also make dresses at Wool&</a>, and I am waiting them to make a super lightweight nylon/wool skirt so I can upgrade mine. Tell them HARV sent you via email before you order for a discount code.</p>
Vests</h2>
Vests are where it's at, and I recently became enamoured with the wool ones with tons of pockets by Ritter</a>. Email them beforehand and tell them HARV sent you for a discount. They also do 25% off sales a few times a year.</p>


Love
2022-06-10T00:00:00+00:00
Breakups</h1>
A long time friend of mine is going through a breakup and asked me recently "have you been through a bad heartbreak? when will it end?" I responded over text, but having just passed the year mark on a deeply painful breakup, I figured my advice is worth writing down in case I need to refresh my memory in the future.</p>
"Yes, just emerging from heatbreak. I was with her for two years and it took me at laest 6 months to not be sad. Nothing changed and nothing changed until all of a sudden I was feeling better and now I feel happy again, one year later. But there's nothing to do but let time wash over you. Just the worst. Can take months but the intense stuff probably not many months [after my friend explained her acute physical responses to relationship memories]. It's like shaking an addiction, something that made your brain squirt dopamine on command; it's physically ingrained. Just have to drink water and detox and go through withdrawal. [She explained that this was her first time being in love]. Phew, is going to be rought for a while then. One of the key components of the human experience though, so congratulations. Not everybody gets to feel this alive. You're doing it. You will feel better eventually. Doesn't help to know but worth knowing anyway. Keep exercising. The only thing worse than a breakup is being fat as hell a year later. Adds insult to injury. Don't try to replace the fix you got from him with drugs or someone else. The experience is valuable in and of itself. It will make all your future love infinitely better. Because next time you do it you'll know what you're getting into and it will all be more meaningful. But that doesn't help you now, just know that as busted as you feel you're growing and growing and growing and not shrinking or breaking. Write a lot, it's so great to read what you were feeling and thinking later. Easy to forget. But don't dwell, there's no good in wallowing. Don't look at old pictures and read old stuff. There are no shortcuts. I made some of my favorite songs after one hard breakup."</p>


Gear
2022-06-05T00:00:00+00:00
For better or worse I am a bit of a gearhead. My philosophy previously was to buy used and as cheap as possible since, for better or worse. gear is often a consumable given a long enough time frame. Eventually, as I saved more money my philosophy changed a bit. The most expensive, ultralight everything used to be anathema to me, but given how important being in the outdoors is to me, high quality, light, comfortable and clever gear allows me to spend more time outside. So, for better or worse. now I am all about high tech, ultralight gear, which I rationalize additionally because it is a situated soundly on the minimalism spectrum. Good gear often means less gear.</p>
Outdoors</h1>
Backpack</h2>
There are a lot of good backpacks out there. If you can afford it, I highly recommend supporting a, ideally local, small cottage-brand that makes their stuff in small batches by hand. You can browse a large selection of these brands at Garage Grown Gear</a>.</p>
A pack I have used and is very lightweight, pretty comfortable, and easier to get is the REI Flash (I have used practically everything from the REI Flash line, including their tents and sleeping bags). The REI Flash stuff is easy to get, not too expensive, and well into ultralight territory, and they have a great return policy.</p>
However, if easy access to in-stock items of relatively low cost are your main requirements, better than an REI Flash pack is a Gossamer Gear</a> bag. I used their Gorilla bag on a number of hikes, which has plenty of space if your other gear is small/lightweight, and their Mariposa bag is great if you want more room. I am a big advocate of smaller bags however, so Gorilla would be my choice. The Gossame Gear bags are maybe the most comfortable I have ever worn, are very lightweight, and cheaper than practically anything else in the arena.</p>
The bag I have personally decided upon is from ZPacks</a>, and is called the Arc Air in ROBIC. Despite my having never used a bag greater than 50L, for .2oz more I went with the 60L. I think it is slightly less compact against my back however, and I am not sure I would go with the larger size next time. The ROBIC material is more abrasion resistant than the DCF version, although for most of my other gear I usually opt for DCF.</p>
The ZPacks bags have one major advantage over other bags on top of being significantly lighter than any competition: the frame is slightly arched away from your body, allowing airflow that is practically nonexistant in any other bag I have worn. I am looking forward to using this to great effect this summer in Portugal, where I will be able to hike with no shirt and maximum airflow in the hot Mediterranean summer.</p>


Solarpunk
2022-05-30T00:00:00+00:00
The exact definition of solarpunk I don't think is codified, but to me it means using technology to bring us closer and more in line with nature, instead of alienating us from it. It means embracing high technology at the same time as embracing the natural world. It is about mindful consumption, efficiency, minimalism in the way hang drying your clothes is minimal compared to a rumbling mechanical dryer.</p>
It is "punk" because it is an active protest of the status quo.</p>
See More</h2>

Sunbeam City</a></li>
</ul>


Sponsors
2022-05-25T00:00:00+00:00
i am hoping that my long distance hikes  can be "sponsored" by non-profits in order to use my  adventures to raise awareness for causes and organizations I believe in.</p>
Please donate to GiveWell</a> and type HARV in the available field. I dont get any of money but it helps us keep track of any success. GiveWell has  an impressive team of researchers working diligently to determine the most effective use of any and all donations one could give anywhere. their picks have proven results in the real world, both short and long term. They are a key organization in the "effective altruism" movement.</p>
Please also consider donating to FairPlay</a> and mention "HW" when you do.  they do important government lobbying to protect children from advertising. in all kinds of media, and even in educational software, corporations are taking advantage of young eyes to brainwash them and it is  unconscionable.</p>
Upcoming Fundraising</h1>
Portugal 22</a></h3>
My current fundraising is attached to a 300km hike from Faro, Portugal to Lisbon (with a possible extension to Porto). For more information and to get involved, click the link above.</p>
Enchanted Valley 22</h3>
This is a shorter, 50 mile loop in the Olympic Peninsula in August of 2022.</p>
Past Fundraising</h1>
Material Sponsors</a></h1>


Encrypted Fragment
2022-05-24T00:00:00+00:00
THIS TEXT HAS BEEN ENCRYPTED. THIS IS TO DISSUADE SEO AND MINIMIZE CRAWLING/ARCHIVING WITHOUT PERMISSION. TO REQUEST ACCESS PLEASE CONTACT ME ON MASTODON OR VIA EMAIL.</p>


Bios
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
I am a hardcore solarpunk</a>, body surfer, backpacker and open source advocate. I am also a science fiction author and long time vipassana meditator. Poet laureate of Cascadia. Matocante Native American. Fifth gen CA, fifteenth gen US.</p>
Favorite Smells</h2>

Hot, dry pine needles in the sun.</li>
Seafoam</li>
Hot, sun soaked blackberries/vines</li>
</ul>
Fav Sounds</h2>

the subtlest water gurgles</li>
mourning doves</li>
mocking birds</li>
birds et al</li>
</ul>
Favorite words</h2>

tremble</li>
timbre</li>
tryst</li>
spindrift</li>
beachcomb/ing/er</li>
solstice</li>
liminal</li>
luar</li>
littoral</li>
ampersand</li>
aporia</li>
ambergris</li>
equipoise

volition

volitional equipoise</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
Gear</a></h1>
Different tools for different jobs.</p>


Grey Area
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
This is where I organize my thoughts relating to consciousness, uncertainty and mind. I like cognitive science.</p>
Cog Sec</h2>


Cognitive Security*</p>
</li>

Attention Span Attacks</a></p>
</li>

Advertisements</a></p>
</li>
</ul>


Hollow Scene
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
This is the section where I write make note of some of the real bummers of the anthropocene. In no particular order, sometimes with commentary varying from whiny to productive.</p>
dis ease</h3>

the window seated who do not peer</a></li>
fake books</a></li>
cold air</a></li>
prion disease</a></li>
planetary boundaries</a></li>
</ul>


Slowest Known Time
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
There is a concept in some sports called "Fastest Known Time" where an athlete takes a known route and completes the entirety of it in the fastest time recorded publically. Often, as in the case of the PCT, this reuqires support teams, planning, extensive resources, and money. In some cases it is simply a human being doing something faster through sheer physcical ability, but often these days it has more to do with outside support and privilige to take something and optimize it beyond its normal constraints.</p>
The opposite of this would also require extensive privilege and resources, but toward another extreme. The "Slowest Known Time," which my father coined in 2021, would be to take a known route with an average/fastest known time, and then try to do it as slowly as possible. This could mean walking a trail extremeley slowly for example, and camping out more often and taking as much time as you can to complete it.</p>
I have not set any official SKTimes yet, but someday I would like to take some beautiful routes, and take my sweet time on it, writing all the way.</p>


cold air
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
The sensation of cold air toward my ankles on a warm day. Undeserving of conditioned air.</p>


fake books
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Fake books.</p>


planetary boundaries
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Planetary boundaries</a>.</p>


prion disease
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Prion disease.</p>


the window seated who do not peer
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
The window seated who do not peer.</p>


Brainstorms
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Ocassionally ideas float up that I write down:</p>
Startup Ideas</h1>


Confusion Restaurant</p>

This is already unironically a thing, dramatically different cuisines mashed together. Take this up a notch and make it even more confused.</li>
</ul>
</li>

Partially Vegetarian food</p>

They say that minimzing our meat intake would significantly help the environment in multiple ways, but people don't want to quit meat.</li>
Make sausages, bergers, etc that are partially meat and partially vegetarian, like soy or other replacements.

This would be cheaper than pure meat if done right, as these veggie fillers were already there, now we are just increasing their portion.</li>
</ul>
</li>
Call the Brand: Sum

Greater than the sum of it's parts.</li>
Want Sum? Get sum!</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
</li>

Uber but for home printers. Maybe more like airbnd for yourmpersonal printer. Goodbye print shops.</p>
</li>

Airbnb just for a shower or to cook a meal.</p>
</li>

Airbnb but let me borrow a sweater.</p>
</li>

Uber but for porsonal bike share.</p>
</li>

Airbnb but for cook me a meal at your house.</p>
</li>
</ul>


Puns
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
English Puns</h1>
Spoonerisms</a></h2>
Cross-linguistic puns</h2>

Agape (english/greek)</li>
</ul>


Spoonerisms
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Spoonerisms involve taking a phrase and switching the first letters/sounds in the words. This can be done inside a single word by switching two sounds in the word to produce a new word, most commonly with two words by switching the first phoneme of each word with that of the other, or on long strings of words by switching beginning word sounds of given words.</p>
If you have any good spoonerisms that aren't already recorded elsewhere, please send them to spoo at hw dot gy.</p>
Below are some spoonerisms that came to me or my friends over the years. The list is not exhaustive, and in no particular order, and not necessarily polite.</p>

Knock wood

Walk nude</li>
</ul>
</li>
Lend me the sink

Send me the link</li>
</ul>
</li>
Running shape

shunning rape</li>
</ul>
</li>
Got shunned

shotgunned</li>
</ul>
</li>
Sold cokes

cold soaks</li>
</ul>
</li>
bird watch

word botch</li>
</ul>
</li>
sucking fanned</li>
</ul>
Not really spoonerisms, possibly Puns</a></h2>

Data day</li>
</ul>


Help Yourself to Seconds
2022-05-23T00:00:00+00:00
Notes, updated 5/23/22
These are AI dictated, so they need to be edited to make sense.</p>
Premise: indecisive person ordering at a fancy restaurant is overwhelmed by the menu options. After drawn out in decisive minutes, the paper menu lengthens I half an inch in her hands she doesn’t notice the first comment about how that item looked in better she has no how she missed the first time she’s about to choose when she realizes Albert I had so and so last week maybe I should get this one she says it gets added this time she’s slightly aware that’s interesting I didn’t see this it’s exact same as the last item minus that ingredient I said I had already had or I was indecisive that. As she’s reading it another item gets added this time missing another ingredient yourself that’s so-and-so, I really should be vegan instantly same item vegan appears what but that but the protein, 75 more items. Did you DJ the menu pushes off the table and through her fingertips like a sheet of paper and a typewriter being let out now she’s astonished and so is your partner the waiter is still aloof.</p>
Wrecked within decision and then you become to scroll somehow naïve to the mystic Aliti of the situation she’s instead more overwhelmed every item looks better than the last the scroll grows now it looks like a roll of receipt paper in a cash register almost instantly it expands again and then again the list is growing logarithmically or geometrically and now her hands are cut in the circle the ends of the scroll is it in Chinese finger trap expand again the wave of ruled paper knocking her dining partner across from her right out of his chair the waiter steps away moments later the entire restaurant is flattened all the occupants are flattened and the restaurant is packed entirely in ribbons of in decision ribbons of indecision</p>
Back up a little bit, as the scroll is expanding she’s explaining one after the other quote I’ll take the oysters know I’ll take the lasagna I’ll just have a salad now keeps going and definitely are she can’t seem to chew is getting worse and every time she says it arms get heavier she’s pinned to the table the glasses are all knocked off the bread it’s pushed away the candle is lit who’s the menu on fire spreading quickly screens from other patrons everyone’s running out even her partner even sure even the waiter but even after the words left still babbling I have a potato she’s trapped way down by the paper she burns to death drowned in ribbons of indecision</p>

Folia Vitrae

scale

suffering

sources</h3> seams</a> — society</li> mirror</a> — self</li> clouds</a> — nature</li> </ul>

clouds

mirror

seams

anglicisms

Reflection on Generative AI Poems 2012-2014

cords

Advertisements

Attention Span Attacks

shards

Tools

Algarve Litoral

Dia 5: Alvor to Lagos</h2> 06/23/22 Walked 5km of train track, some of it in the rain, some of it between oyster aquaculture, all of it across wetlands.</p>

Portugal 22

Preface</h1> My sister says to say "Tudo joia (everything jewels) and Tudo beleza (everything beauty) and Tudo Rolando (everything rolling)"</em></p>

Part 2:</h1>

Rota Vicentina</h1>

Material Sponsors

Love

Gear

Outdoors</h1>

Solarpunk

Sponsors

Enchanted Valley 22</h3> This is a shorter, 50 mile loop in the Olympic Peninsula in August of 2022.</p>

Past Fundraising</h1>

Encrypted Fragment

Bios

Favorite Smells</h2> Hot, dry pine needles in the sun.</li> Seafoam</li>

Fav Sounds</h2> the subtlest water gurgles</li> mourning doves</li> mocking birds</li>

Favorite words</h2> tremble</li> timbre</li> tryst</li> spindrift</li> beachcomb/ing/er</li> solstice</li> liminal</li> luar</li> littoral</li> ampersand</li> aporia</li> ambergris</li>

Grey Area

Cog Sec</h2> Cognitive Security*</p> </li>

Hollow Scene

Slowest Known Time

cold air

fake books

planetary boundaries

prion disease

the window seated who do not peer

Brainstorms

Puns

English Puns</h1>

Cross-linguistic puns</h2> Agape (english/greek)</li> </ul>

Spoonerisms

Not really spoonerisms, possibly Puns</a></h2> Data day</li> </ul>

Help Yourself to Seconds

sources</h3>

seams</a> — society</li>
mirror</a> — self</li>
clouds</a> — nature</li> </ul>

Dia 5: Alvor to Lagos</h2>
06/23/22 Walked 5km of train track, some of it in the rain, some of it between oyster aquaculture, all of it across wetlands.</p>

Preface</h1>
My sister says to say "Tudo joia (everything jewels) and Tudo beleza (everything beauty) and Tudo Rolando (everything rolling)"</em></p>

Enchanted Valley 22</h3>
This is a shorter, 50 mile loop in the Olympic Peninsula in August of 2022.</p>

Cog Sec</h2>

Cognitive Security*</p> </li>

Attention Span Attacks</a></p> </li>

Advertisements</a></p> </li> </ul>

Cross-linguistic puns</h2>

Agape (english/greek)</li> </ul>

Not really spoonerisms, possibly Puns</a></h2>

Data day</li> </ul>