Diffusion Bee is the easiest way to run Stable Diffusion locally on your M1 Mac. Comes with a one-click installer. No dependencies or technical knowledge needed.

Runs locally on your computer no data is sent to the cloud (other than request to download the weights and checking for software updates).

Stable Diffusion is the hot new AI image generator that you can download and run on your own computer. It’s been a bit tricky to get running on Apple Silicon Macs, because (among other factors) the Python situation is complex. Diffusion Bee makes it as easy as downloading a disk image and copying an app to your Applications folder.

Be warned if?—?like me?—?you have a busy week ahead. These AI image generators can be a real time sink.

As a critical deadline for SPAC Digital World Acquisition Group's planned merger with failed insurrectionist Donald J. Trump's Trump Media and Technology Group approaches, the acquisition corp's shareholders don't seem willing to continue. Also, recently in the news, TMTG can't pay its bills. — Read the rest

Enlarge / The 2021 16-inch MacBook Pro. (credit: Samuel Axon)

A recently released beta version of Dropbox's app for macOS has added support for Apple Silicon in the current MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, 24-inch iMac, and Mac Mini. The release is the first step toward fulfilling the company's promise to offer native support for M1-based Macs.

Apple debuted its M1 silicon in 2020. Until now, Dropbox did not offer a native version of its file-hosting service for computers using Apple's chips, frustrating some professional users who rely on and pay for the program for work.

Without the beta, M1 users are required to use Rosetta 2, software that translates apps with x86_64 instructions for Apple's Arm-based silicon, in order to use the Dropbox app. Running Rosetta 2, however, can generally affect battery life, memory, and performance. For most users, Rosetta 2 is a sufficient solution for running Intel-based applications. And it's possible that some lesser-known apps will never be transitioned to M1 systems at all.

Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

There are two problems, as I see it, with these year-end compilations. The first is that they’re generally considered the province solely of professional critics. Why not complement “official” best-of lists with those of your friends? Ask them what they loved this year, or have them compile their favorite works of all time. From the introduction to the 2021 NYT Top 10 list.

I’m writing this with two days left in 2021 and about 200 pages left to read in my 75th book. If I finish, I finish; if I don’t, I don’t. It’s been a good reading year. My goal was only 48 books and I whizzed by that. I tended to spend a lot more time reading than watching anything on Netflix or Prime. Not sure if that will be a continuing trend or not.

Spurred by the comments from the NYT, I’m listing my favorite books of the year. I’ve excluded the regulars I read like Harry Bosch, Jack Reacher, and Gabriel Allon. The books listed tend to be original works. I read both fiction and nonfiction, with the non-fiction being often more impactful than the fiction. I deliberately this year tried reading authors new to me (or in the case of James Lee Burke, not read for many years) since last year I re-read a lot of books.

Here we go - with a short description…

1. Wolf Kill by Cary Griffith. Rewrite of the original Sam Rivers mystery set in northern MN. Read a lot of MN authors this year.

2. Hench by Natalie Zina Walschots. Extremely interesting and readable take on the world of superheroes and supervillains. 

3. A Private Cathedral by James Lee Burke. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Burkes gritty poetic style and the ambiance of Louisiana. 

4. The Stoic Challenge by William B Irvine. An “advice” book that I continue to think about with strategies I actually use. Recommended by a friend.

5. Patron Saints of Nothing by Randy Ribay. Set in the Manilla, a heartfelt family tale dealing with poverty and drug use. 

6. The River at Night by Erica Ferencik. This is a retelling of Deliverance with a female cast set in northern Maine. 

7. The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. Great narrator on the autism scale, building personal empathy for “neurological divergence.”

8. A Libertarian Walks into a Bear by Matthew Hongoltz-Hetling. Great, humorous commentary on anti-government communities when faced with problems that need governmental action.

9. Why We’re Polarized by Ezra Klein. Listening to this explanation helped me understand the political division tearing the country apart.

10. Winter Counts by David Heska Wanbli Weiden. Set on a Native American reservation, good cultural descriptions along with they mystery. 

I’m not sure what my reading “theme” will be for next year, but I have 32 titles already on my want-to-read list, including some re-reads. Seems like I learn of a new title of interest every week so I doubt I’ll run low on stuff to read anytime soon.

What titles made your best of ‘21 list? Top 2 or top 200, please share!

What with Covid and being semi-retired, I had plenty of reading time in 2021. In particular, I got to the final volumes of multiple long-running literary franchises. (Some of those final volumes had been published years before.) I think that every series listed here is a good investment of your time. Two warnings: It’s mostly pretty mainstream, and kind of sci-fi heavy. Quick table of contents: Broken Earth, The Expanse, Merchant Princes/Empire Games, Neapolitan Novels, The Sandman, Sandman Slim, Trickster Trilogy.

I offer links for each work: Amazon, because it’s convenient and if you follow these it might help sell panties and thus get my family free books, and Alibris, because they seem to be about helping independent booksellers (although their ownership is opaque).

Now, in alphabetical order…

Broken Earth

Premise: On a planet plagued by destructive seismic activity, some people can control earthquakes with their minds; they are feared and persecuted. We follow the adventures of three such women in a time of high crisis.

Each volume of this trilogy won N.K. Jemisin the Hugo award for the year it was published. What’s great about it is the complexity and believability of the characters, and the immersive intensity of the action; once you start reading you can’t stop.

What’s not so great (for me anyhow) was the slightly shaky world-building, my suspension of disbelief wavered every so often. Put any internal knowledge of physics on the back shelf and you’ll have fun reading these.

Best among these at: Taking you to really weird and intense places and leaving you with a strong impression of what it felt and smelled like to be there.

Amazon, Alibris.

The Expanse

Premise: Human civilization has spread across the Solar System and is beset by empire-building and colonialism. On an asteroid, an alien artifact is discovered, with momentous consequences; plenty enough for nine books and six TV seasons. We follow the adventures of a half-dozen or so lead characters and their doughty spacecraft, the Rocinante.

I mean, either you like Space Opera or you don’t. If you do, you’ll really like the work of James S.A. Corey, the pen name of Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck. Also, the TV series (its final season just shipping as I write this) is really very good.

The biggest criticism I can offer is that there’s a little too much talk about what the characters are thinking and feeling, could have been shown not told.

Best among these at: Clever plot construction, space battles.

Amazon, Alibris.

Merchant Princes/Empire Games

Premise: Our Earth has multiple timelines, similar to each other but different in interesting ways; certain people (and eventually, machines) are able to move between them.

There are a whole lot of books here! After writing the first few, author Charles Stross anthologized and reorganized a bit, so you have to do a bit of work figuring out what to buy to move from one end to the other. I’m a little surprised nobody’s taken this to TV yet, there are loads of juicy parts for good actors.

The thing about Stross is that he wants the audience to have a good time, and you get the sense that he’s having fun too. So at no point is there a feeling that anything’s taking itself too seriously. Loads of amusing characters and surprising situations and clever twists of fate.

Best among these at: Being convincingly set in the current real world, plus amusing variations. Also, nuclear explosions. Lots of nuclear explosions!

Merchant Princes Amazon, Alibris.

Empire Games Amazon, Alibris.

Neapolitan Novels

Premise: Two women grow up in a seedy part of Naples, then each makes a lot of bad choices as they move through their twentieth-century Italian/European lives.

Author Elena Ferrante is pseudonymous, although there has been a journalistic exposé which convincingly claims to have identified her.

Now, a confession: I haven’t actually finished the final book in the quartet, The Lost Child, because I got so mad at one of the characters (did I mention bad choices?) that I would have thrown the book across the room except for it was a Kindle. I actually think this is a symptom of it being a really good book. And I will go back and finish it.

The quality of the writing (and necessarily the translation) just can’t be praised too highly. This is beautiful, beautiful, stuff. The texture of life is examined and unwoven with a precision and intensity that I have never encountered anywhere else. Every page of the narrative is totally convincing: Yes, these people were in these situations and did these things and felt those things. The situations, growing as they do out of working-class bad-neighborhood society, are as exotic to most educated readers as any outer-space battle; except for being real.

There’s a minor geek-interest side-plot: One of the protagonists works her way out poverty via the IBM System/3, an important 1970’s piece of computer history.

Best among these at: Raw emotional intensity without loss of realism.

Amazon, Alibris.

The Sandman

Premise: Morpheus, or Dream, is one of the seven Endless, along with Destiny, Death, Desire, Despair, Delirium (formerly Delight), and Destruction (also known as ‘The Prodigal’). Dream is a complex character, not terribly admirable. Any attempt to say more is going either to be inadequate or require ten thousand words to get started up.

These graphic novels, written by Neil Gaiman and illustrated by a legion of wonderful artists, were published between 1989 and 1996. I’m really not big on graphic novels but I read Season of Mists on paper once many years ago; at the time, it didn’t change my mind about comic books. After buying a Samsung S7+ with a large and fabulous screen, on impulse I bought the whole 12-volume omnibus.

I just can’t say enough good things about the Kindle presentation of The Sandman on a big bright tablet; it was maybe the most intense reading experience I’ve had in years. It took me three months to get through this, and while it’s long, one reason was that sometimes I just needed a rest.

Among other things, the Kindle app helps deal with fanciful/explosive full-page compositions by gliding through the dialog bubbles one at a time in the right order. Not being a native comic-book citizen, I found this terrifically helpful.

Anyhow, the writing is fabulous, distinguished by its high velocity: You move from one frame to the next and realize that a whole lot of stuff must have happened and Gaiman hasn’t bothered to fill in the details because there’s enough there to deduce them. I admire this; and anyhow, the books are plenty long enough.

One small criticism of the big omnibus edition is the self-indulgent front and back matter for each volume, with fulsome praise from a panoply of famous names. No value is added and I just paged through them after the first couple.

Um, trigger warnings. I mean, all the trigger warnings, there is some extremely dark, brutal, awful stuff in here; I also took a reading break one week when I was having a tough time and just didn’t need the blackness.

I wonder if I now like graphic novels? Or perhaps this is entirely sui generis.

Best among these at: Making utterly strange and phantasmagorical scenarios believable. Delighting the eyes.

Amazon, Alibris.

Sandman Slim

Premise: James Stark returns to Earth after a decade in Hell. He is a monster who kills monsters. And, it turns out, something of a sensitive new-age guy when he’s not. Love, romance, and extreme violence.

This is author Richard Kadrey’s only real hit. The twelfth novel, which just came out, is advertised as the last, so we’ll see what he can do next. This series, to be honest, is perhaps less ambitious than some of the others here but it’s fun and you can’t spend all your time reading Ferrante, can you?

Stark is a really fine piece of character creation, and not the only one in this series, there are loads of interesting people and supernatural creatures, well-distributed across gender and other demographic divisions. Also, Kadrey has a major talent for dialogue; I’m not saying Elmore Leonard, but it’s not crazy to mention them in the same sentence.

And there’s action, lots of extremely violent action, in which many terribly undesirable creatures come to bad, messy ends, and then also other players of whom the reader will have grown fond. But in these books, you can after all come back from Hell and various other afterlife scenarios.

The world-building is necessarily somewhat theological and frankly ridiculous, but once you stop taking it seriously that’s not a problem.

For supernatural thrillers, these are nicely grounded, specifically in Los Angeles and its reflection in Hell. Just a taste: Stark is having a conversation with Lucifer (yes, that Lucifer) walking around in LA, and they stop for huge sloppy greasy burritos from a food truck. Lucifer is wearing a beautiful white linen suit and manages to eat the whole burrito with absolutely no food stains. Now that’s devilish.

Best among these at: Snappy dialogue.

Amazon, Alibris.

The Trickster

Jared is an indigenous high-school student in Kitimat, BC who’s got problems with family and addiction and school, despite his successful weed-cookie business. His mother is a real piece of his work and his father… well, there’s the story, his father is probably a Trickster, a powerful and malevolent supernatural creature with so many children they have to self-organize on Facebook. Jared eventually ends up in Vancouver at community college, making donuts for money and pursuing a struggle with unnatural enemies that builds to an apocalyptic climax.

Author Eden Robinson is, like Jared, from Kitimat and indigenous. She claims she was trying to write a “trashy reservation romance” but it got out of control and became three pretty big thick novels full of teen angst and magical violence.

There was a CBC-TV series that managed to deliver a lot of the Trickster flavor while wandering way away from the books’ plot-lines. I enjoyed it but it has apparently fallen apart after just one season partly because the director’s claims of indigenous heritage came into question.

This delivers you-are-there flavor for a lot of places that nobody will ever go and is bulging with lovable personalities. Most people are kind and decent, some are monstrous, and Ms Robinson has fun with both flavors. An entirely entertaining read end-to-end, often hysterically coffee-snorting funny. And also with plenty to teach about our indigenous people and the realities they face.

At this point, it may be a little surprising when I say that I enjoyed this series more than any of the others here. Granted, it’s possibly because it takes place partly in my home-town. But these are outstanding books.

Best among these at: Taking you to interesting real places that you’ve never been, and imaginary ones too. Making you laugh so hard the other people in the room will want to know if you’re OK.

Amazon, Alibris.

Next Sunday is Fathers’ Day. Mail in your secrets today.

PostSecret
28241 Crown Valley Pkwy
#F224
Laguna Niguel, CA
92677-4442

~~~

A year ago I asked PostSecret followers on facebook for once-in-a-lifetime questions to ask my dad for an unforgettable interview. Over 700 replies with more than 1,000 questions came back.

This was my original post:

I was thrilled with all the thoughtful questions shared with me, from the delightful to the profound. I read all of them and picked 25 to ask my dad. At a family dinner the night before our day of tandem paragliding, as an experiment, I peppered three into our conversation. . . it didn’t go well.

Like many families, ours was far from perfect, with divorce and estrangement being a part of it. So when other family members began responding to some of my father’s answers, long-buried feelings and some judgement turned the interview sour. Because of that learning experience, I changed some of my questions and gained three insights about interviewing parents.

• Avoid questions about regrets or mistakes and start with questions that include the word “favorite”, like, What’s your favorite decade and why?
• Keep the questions open-ended and let answers lead to other answers. Aim for a flowing conversation, not an interview.
• Really listen.

On the two hour drive to the gliderport the next day, it was just my father and me in the car. I told him how much it meant to me to go through these questions and get to know him better. He was game so I cautiously started. He passed on some of the questions, but then really began to share a lot with me, including a secret. He even started asking me some of the same questions too! The spirit in the car was supportive and generous, with some heartfelt laughs as we used questions as prompts for our once-in-a-lifetime conversation.

Even though we were unable to do any gliding because of wind conditions, I’ll never forget that day and the new appreciation I had for me father. I can’t reveal the secret he told me but another part of our conversation shocked me. I asked this gentle and caring man, what is the most common misconception people have about you? He said. When I was ten-years-old, my mom spanked me for the last time. I don’t think you know how stubborn I was then but you do know how stern your Grandmother could be. I remember through my tears and pain looking at my mother and saying, with spite, I like getting spanked!

Thanks to everyone who contributed questions to my original post and I invite you all to use these questions to get to know your fathers (or mothers) better. If you do, leave a message on the PostSecret facebook page about your experience. I will repost them on Father’s Day.

Here are the 25 questions that guided our conversation with some additional resources at the bottom.

~~~

Can you tell me about your best friend when you were a kid and one of your adventures.

What is the oldest story you know about our ancestors?

Is there something about me that you have always wanted to know but have never asked?

Can you describe a favorite memory about a family member?

If this was to be our very last conversation, is there anything you would want to say to me?

Do you have a favorite snack, song, television show, recipe, comedy?

What is your first memory?

What event in your life changed you the most?

Did you ever get into trouble as a kid? What happened?

If there was a biography of you, how would you want to be described?

What choice are you thankful that you did not make?

What is the best advice you remember from your father?

Is there anything you wish you had said to someone but didn’t have the chance?

Can you teach me something?

What is something you would like me to ask you?”

What do you wish you would have spent less time worrying about?

What is something you deliberately did not tell me as a child and why?

What is the best part of your day? What makes you feel most alive?

What is the last thing you changed your mind about?

What things helped you get through a difficult time in your life?

Over the course of your life what trip or place was most special? Why?

What would you like to re-experience again because you did not appreciate it enough the first time?

Can you tell me something about yourself that I don’t know that you think would surprise, shock or delight me?

What habits served you the most through life?

What is the best mistake you have made, and why?

What do you hope my siblings and I have learned from you?

How are you doing right now? Is there anything on your mind right now that you’d like to talk about?

~~~

(When my father visits again, I’ll be sure to have his favorite comedy and snack ready.)

~~~

Discover hundreds more questions on the PostSecret facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/postsecret

Find further inspiration and more ideas at StoryCorp.
https://storycorps.org/

follow up how why and dont be afraid to say can you help me understand that more?

(Via Jason Fried.)

Welcome to the June 2021 issue of Long Links, in which I curate long-form works that I enjoyed last month. Even if you think all these look interesting, you probably don’t have time to read them assuming you have a job, which I don’t. My hope is that one or two will reward your attention.

Has an Old Soviet Mystery at Last Been Solved??—?they’re talking about the Dyatlov Pass incident, which has provided fuel for mystery-lovers and conspiracy nuts for a half-century now. If you’ve not heard the Dyatlov story you might want to read this anyhow because it’s colorful and fearful. If you have, then you definitely want to dive into this one because I’m pretty well convinced they’ve figured it out.

Chipotle Is a Criminal Enterprise Built on Exploitation. Tl;dr: New York is suing Chipotle’s ass, looking for a half-billion dollars in penalties for wage theft. Even by the low standards of 21st-century capitalism, Chipotle seems like a terrible citizen of the world. Don’t eat there.

Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?. Among the many reasons Covid-19 is interesting (aside from “Will it kill me?”) is as a case study of how science accumulates data, draws conclusions, and communicates them. The specific story is the move from the spring-2020 narrative of “Wash your hands, masks are irrelevant” to 2021’s “Indoor aerosol-based transmission is dominant, so let’s worry about that.” The earlier narrative probably cost us huge numbers of human lives. Nobody suspects anyone of evil motives, but it’s clearly a problem worth thinking about when the official narrative is so slow to update. Masterfully told by Zeynep Tufekci, a sociologist who has become one of the best commentators on Covid public-health issues.

Although I grew up in the Middle East, I’m reluctant to write about it because there’s lots of atrocities to denounce but no good guys to praise. The people who wrote the following are more courageous than I am. The central controversy is, of course, over whether the “Two-state solution” is still possible and if not, what then? Everyone agrees on one thing: The current offical “peace process” is dead and rotting stinkily. The Old Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Is Dead?—?Long Live the Emerging Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is from Nathan J. Brown at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; it writes off two-states, acknowledges that one-state is unlikely too, and offers tentative ideas about ways forward.

A Liberal Zionist’s Move to the Left on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict is about Peter Beinart, a long-time lion of intellectual Judaism. He is a rigorous thinker and that rigor has forced him into a two-states-is-dead position. Now he’s arguing for the Palestinian Right of Return; just thinking this probably puts him at grave risk of assassination. This is a big long piece and although I’ve watched the Mideast closely for decades, I felt I’d learned useful things.

Gorshem Gorenberg has for a long time one of my favorite Israeli voices; sentimental but clear-eyed and really smart. His latest big piece is Israelis and Palestinians can’t go on like this. Weep for us. It’s a profoundly pessimistic piece about how Israel got into its current mindset, which is very hard for people who don’t live there to understand. Such strong writing.

Let’s talk about some cheerful stuff, in particular about recent progress on the climate emergency. Everyone’s already written about Big Oil’s defeats in the courts and boardrooms. So here’s J.P. Morgan’s Energy Outlook.. It’s huge and I haven’t read all of it, but it feels to me like a nice comprehensive summary of the current state of play. The investment community, of course, is trying to figure out how to make money in a post-fossil-fuels world. I wish them the best of luck and if you’re one of them, you should read this.

Staying with the climate emergency, check out Separating Hype from Hydrogen – Part Two: The Demand Side. Anyone who cares about this stuff has to be wondering if a hypothetical Hydrogen Economy is a significant part of our path forward. The question is a little hard to answer because for some reason hydrogen has attracted a cohort of pitchman who want to tell you it’s the best solution for everything. A close clear-eyed look suggests that yes, there is a role for hydrogen, but it’s less important than the enthusiasts want you to think. The conclusions are helpfully pictured in this slide.

More good news from Germany; the courts are starting to kick ass. Germany’s more ambitious climate goals pressure industry to clean up has the details.

Let’s talk about my favorite nontechnical hobby, photography. Hmm, all these pieces are from DPReview. Let’s start with New York Times unveils prototype system aimed at inspiring confidence in photojournalism. I may have mentioned the Content Authenticity Initiative before. On the Internet we say “Pictures or it didn’t happen!” but we should be worrying about “Pictures and it didn’t happen!”. Because photos and video are way too easy to manipulate these days. The Initiative, whose key launch partner was Adobe if I’m reading the history right, tries to use digital signatures to establish a provenance chain from a photographer to the graphic you see on your screen. I’m delighted this is happening, and optimistic that this description will raise consciousnesses about what’s possible these days with modern security technology. No, blockchain is not involved.

Enthusiast photographers tend to obsess about lenses, and one of the standard lenses almost every such person loves is a fast 50mm prime lens, a “nifty fifty”. They make the people you’re taking pictures of look better and have also traditionally also had the virtues of being cheap and simple. No longer. Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated? explains.

Finally, it’s all in the photographer’s wrist. The Best & Worst Ways To Hold Your Camera is a YouTube full of exciting wrist action.

Hey, let’s do politics. These days, my feelings are that occasionally laughing at US “conservatives” is essential therapy, otherwise you might do something crazy, albeit not as crazy as what they’re doing. The G.O.P. Won It All in Texas. Then It Turned on Itself has details. Your eyes will roll.

David Shor, a Democratic-party strategist and number-cruncher impresses me more with everything he produces. For example David Shor on Why Trump Was Good for the GOP and How Dems Can Win in 2022 is a long interview with him, to which I say “Wow”.

Only one science/engineering entry this month. I am delighted every time I discover some obvious part of the human experience for which science doesn’t have a good explanation. We can all use the humility. For example: No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay in the Air.

Stepping across the Pacific, here’s Tired of Running in Place, Young Chinese ‘Lie Down’. Now watch out, this is from Sixth Tone, which is out of Shanghai and thus indirectly an organ of China’s ethnofascist autocracy. Having said that, they regularly manage to be interesting.

Ending the Long Links on a musical note, let me recommend Brent Morrison's Rockin’ Blues Show; an Internet Radio show and exactly what it says. Everybody’s life can benefit from rockin’ blues. And now for something completely different: Lebanese Music From A Millionaires' Playground is a production from 1962, featuring Fairuz, Lebanon’s musical queen, who in writing this I discovered is still living. Her voice has always touched my heart. Finally, something to ease your troubled mind: Holly Bowling, live on a Colorado mountaintop. She’s a pianist with (to me) a Keith Jarrett influence (not a bad thing) whose music is mostly sourced from songs, by the Grateful Dead and Phish. From those songs as performed live, of course.

Hang in there, everyone.

A good friend is one of the judges for the Minnesota Book Award "Genre Fiction" category this year. (He himself is a past honoree.) I am not exactly sure what all his responsibilities are, but I know he has to at least read all four of the nominees. It may take him awhile since he moves his lips when he reads. Happily though, he suggested I read them as well. I did, and here are my short reviews.

____________________________

The Deep, Deep Snow by Brian Freeman

A very good mystery set in a remote small town in either Minnesota or Wisconsin. The narrator, a deputy sheriff, attempts to discover how and why a boy has disappeared, leaving only his bicycle by the roadside. (Shades of Jacob Wetterling.) The disappearance remains a mystery for 10 years until another clue is discovered. The book has unusual depth for a mystery novel - a mysterious adoption of an abandoned child, older adults in stages of dementia, and complex relationships among the members of the small community. Highly engaging read in which I actually cared about the characters. Bought a copy for my mom. 

From the Grave: A MacKenzie Novel by Dave Housewright

While I enjoyed this book (especially the references to Twin Cities locations and restaurants), I was disappointed that the plot revolved around supernatural happenings that were never resolved by non-supernatural explanations. This is the first McKenzie novel I have read in the series and I wish I could say I liked the protagonist more but he seemed, well, a bit bland and insensitive to me. Fast, entertaining read.

Get Idiota by Nate Granzow

Very funny (silly, actually) fast paced read. Being immature myself, I did enjoy the immature humor. Plot revolves around two simpletons trying to escape a deranged Mexican drug lord and his sexy assassin with an old truck full of marijuana and an emu, encountering a village of sex-crazed Amazons along the way. Improbable situations and broad, nutty characters might make this a good movie, but I am not sure it has the gravitas to be given a Minnesota Book Award.  Oh, neither the characters nor setting had anything to do with Minnesota.

Things We Didn't Say by Amy Lynn Green

I was not prepared to like this book. I usually prefer male authors of historical fiction, straight narrative rather than epistolary style, and less religion. But this book was extremely well researched, brilliantly written, and so relevant to today's atmosphere of xenophobia that it really kept me reading - and thinking. The female protagonist is articulate and assertive (to the dismay of much of her small town) and the other characters fully-drawn. Interesting details on WWII POW camps in Minnesota that I had not given much thought to previously. A bit heavy on the prayer and such, but enjoyed it so much I bought a copy of this title for my mother too.

____________________________

So there you are. You can probably tell from my reviews how I would rank them were I a contest judge. Knowing these books were all submitted for recognition of being the best in their category, I perhaps read them with a bit more critical eye. And I had to ask myself - what exactly makes a high quality book? For me, it revolves around readability, uniqueness, and especially, characters about whom one cares. And a little sex and violence plus a murder or two, never hurt.

I may make reading the genre fiction entries of the MBA an annual event!

Hush is a throwback to the days when good clever people made good clever things, polished them to perfection simply because they care, and just shared them with the world. Hush is free of charge, open source, specifically written for Safari (using SwiftUI), and it is very small and lightweight. It’s also completely private?—?everything Hush does, it does on your device and it doesn’t ask for permission to see what you’re doing on the web. And it’s super-simple: just download from the App Store and enable it in Safari’s preferences on Mac or Settings ? Safari ? Content Blockers on iOS.^*

I’d recommend Hush to anyone who uses Safari, and I thank Arvidsson for making it.

* The one and only catch: Hush requires MacOS 11 Big Sur and iOS 14 or later. Honestly, though, I recommend both of those to everyone, too.

I’ve been struggling to find a way to properly memorialize Alex Trebek and have come to the conclusion that it is actually impossible. With most celebrities we merely enjoy their work and the sporadic joy it brings to our lives. Alex Trebek, on the other hand, was far more than just his work—he was part of the fabric…

Read more...

This is the fifth “Long Links” episode, a monthly curation of good long-form essays from around the Internet that nobody who (unlike me) has an actual job has time to read all of. A glance through this might turn up one or two pieces that would reward even a busy person’s time.

[Geeks only.] Microservices — architecture nihilism in minimalism’s clothes, by Vasco Figueira, comes with a provocative title and really a whole lot of different angles on the problem. I certainly don’t agree with all of his conclusions, but some of the angles are new to me and I suspect would be to others as well. At AWS it’s sort of written in the stars that all of the services have microservices inside: control plane vs data plane, stateless vs stateful, serverless vs serverful, etc. Good stuff.

The Niskanen Center presents itself as the natural home of that highly-endangered species, the American centrist. Faster Growth, Fairer Growth, their manifesto, is really long, verging on book-length?—?no, even I haven’t read all of it. The parts I have read are sensible, logical, and sound to me like what rational Republicans would probably say (there aren’t any of those, current Republicans are just the embodiment of Trump, no more and no less). Obviously, I would come down considerably to the left of this viewpoint?—?for example, there’s nothing about applying criminal sanctions to business miscreants, nor about directly strengthening working-class power. On top of which, I don’t believe that GDP growth is the best, or even a very useful, measure of the goodness of an economy. But still, if the Republicans ever manage to get clear of the Trump toxins, these are the pathways they should be investigating.

And now for something completely different: Grapefruit Is One of the Weirdest Fruits on the Planet. There’s lots to learn about the citrus-fruit family tree, where the name “grapefruit” came from, and the bizarre way this delicious package of flavor interacts with your digestive system and (potentially dangerously) with whatever prescription you might be on.

Yanis Varoufakis was a wildly controversial Greek Minister of Finance, when Greece started digging out from its entirely-insupportable public-debt load. He tried defying the European financial establishment and got squashed like a bug. He’s an interesting guy, and Capitalism isn’t working. Here’s an alternative is an interesting piece. Here are the first two paragraphs:

When Margaret Thatcher coined “Tina” – her 1980s dictum that “There is no alternative” – I was incensed because, deep down, I felt she had a point: the left had neither a credible nor a desirable alternative to capitalism.

Leftists excel at pinpointing what is wrong with capitalism. We wax lyrical about the possibility of some “other” world in which one contributes according to one’s capacities and obtains according to one’s needs. But, when pushed to describe a fully fledged alternative to contemporary capitalism, for many decades we have oscillated between the ugly (a Soviet-like barracks socialism) and the tired (a social democracy that financialised globalisation has rendered infeasible).

That certainly grabbed my attention. This piece doesn’t actually lay out his alternative, it lays out a few very interesting highlights, and plugs his book Another Now. Which worked; it’s now in my to-read queue.

Back in 2018, Benedict Evans asked Is Tesla disruptive?, a question which is increasingly material as Tesla’s valuation balloons to increasingly intergalactic levels. His answer is mostly in the negative. I find this easy to believe, because I drive a modern electric car (a Jaguar I-Pace) which shipped in late 2018 and which I wouldn’t trade for any currently-shipping Tesla. So maybe I’m prejudiced. But I sure wouldn’t be buying any Tesla shares right now.

You’ll be reading this right around the week of the 2020 American election. Suppose it pans out as the election modelers predict, with a well-deserved defeat for Trump specifically and Republicans in general. A question then arises, captured nicely in the title of Brian Beutler’s recent piece on Crooked (a site I haven’t previously encountered): What to Do About GOP Bad Faith After Trump. A large proportion of viewers of US politics have come to conclusion that current American conservatism is without truth, without honor, and without decency, and if there is any concern for justice, must be made to pay a price. Beutler doesn’t offer a lot of what-to-do specifics, he simply makes the case that a possible future Democratic majority should stop treating Republicans as good-faith adversaries or decent people, because they are neither.

Just because you can’t pretend that 2020 Republicans as principled or intelligent conservatives doesn’t mean that such things can’t exist. Government Of, By, and For the Elite is a discussion between J.D. Vance and Chris Arnade. Arnade’s politics don’t fall into any neat bucket but Vance is definitely conservative, and while he does suck at the teat of the right-wing noise machine, is not self-evidently corrupt and malevolent. I’m not going to try to summarize their discussion but here’s a nice out-take from Vance, describing the whole US political establishment as “a uni-party that governs culturally a little bit to the left of the American people and economically very much to the right of the American people.”

Now let’s take a quick hop across the Pacific for Victor H. Mair’s How to Forget Your Mother Tongue and Remember Your National Language, which is mostly about the fact that Taiwanese, spoken at home by many in that nation, has no written form. While I’m not equipped to understand many of his points about Han ideographics, I am interested in the intersection between language and culture and I think this would be interesting to most who share those interests. Being Putonghua-literate would increase the chances of finding this fascinating.

As a long-time skeptic concerning Bitcoin in particular and blockchain in general, I always like a good anti-blockchain rant, because, to my amazement, there still seem to be people out there who see it as The Future Of Everything. Jesse Frederik’s Blockchain, the amazing solution for almost nothing is a useful refresher course on the claims of the blockchainers and why they’re almost certainly wrong. On top of which, it’s readable and entertaining.

Back to the Niskanen center, where we find Philip K. Verleger’s The Energy Transition: How Fast?, which dives deep on a single argument advanced by defenders of the high-carbon status quo in the energy economy: That the transition to renewables is going to be slow because of the heavy existing investments in fossil-fuel infrastructure. This argument is ridiculous (uh, “sunk costs”, anyone?) and Verleger dunks on it in elegant, evidence-based style.

One of the central problems of our era is the profusion of falsehood, with the Internet serving as a global-scale lie amplifier. I think anything that promises to mitigate this awfulness, even a little bit, deserves serious attention. Amy Yee’s To Recognize Misinformation in Media, Teach a Generation While It’s Young makes a strong case that spotting lies is a skill that can be taught to young people. Let’s do that! She links to Exploring Media Literacy Education as a Tool for Mitigating Truth Decay, a useful RAND report on the subject.

From back in July in New York magazine, David Shor’s Unified Theory of American Politics is a hell of a read. Mr Shor has a whole lot of smart things to say about how American voters vote and what, specifically, the Democratic party should be and do.

Wired addresses another subject close to my heart in Ad Tech Could Be the Next Internet Bubble. Subtitle: “The scariest thing about microtargeted ads is that they just don’t work.” If you care at all about the Internet economy, that should be enough to grab 100% of your attention. The article focuses on a book by Tim Hwang, Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet (Amazon affiliate link, feel free to buy elsewhere). Think I’m gonna have to read that.

Let’s finish on an upbeat note. Stephen O’Grady is a really smart industry analyst, whose analysis work seems to have followed me around over the years, which is to say the stuff he’s mostly written about at any one time seemed to be the area I was working in. I’ve hoisted a few beers with him and enjoyed a lot of his writing. Much to everyone’s surprise, he has now published This is the Way, fifty pieces of advice on what a good life is and how to live it. It’s exquisite. Go read it.

This is a recommendation for 2½ books and a just-launched TV series, and for the books’ author, Eden Robinson. As a consequence of watching the TV pilot I’m now re-reading the books, which is strong testimony. While this is pretty Canadian stuff, I think the story of a disadvantaged and hard-pressed young aboriginal person, lost in strange spaces, would resonate in plenty of other landscapes. Anyhow, it’s dark and entertaining, with sex and drugs and rock ’n’ roll and supernatural creatures you would not want to meet on a dark night. These are page-turners, keep-you-up-too-late stuff.

The books are Son of a Trickster (2017), Trickster Drift (2018), and the “½” is because the third book, The Trickster Returns, isn’t out till next spring. But boy will I ever snap it up.

The TV series is on CBC (Canadian public TV); here’s a pointer which I’m not 100% sure will work outside Canada. If it does, the shows are free but there are ads. I thought S1E1 captured the spirit of the books perfectly and I’ll be spudding out. Sorry, it’s real actual TV so you’d have to wait a few months to binge it.

Our hero is Jared, a Native high-schooler whose family is deeply, spectacularly dysfunctional.

Drugs, violence, you name it, all the usual marks are checked. The locus of chaos at Jared’s place is his mother, who’s all about trashy men and bad drugs, with a casual attitude toward rent, utility bills, and education. Granted the difficulties she’s sort of lovable, and definitely to be feared not pitied. Jared’s Dad (not situated locally)?is a wastrel of a different flavor.

The thing about Jared is he takes care of people, whether or not they deserve it; it seems he can’t help it, it’s just who he is.

Which means Jared has a high-stress life. It helps that he’s bright and well-organized and actually makes enough money to keep the family afloat. (Not legally, but still.) He’s got his own substance-abuse issues and suffers from typically-toxic high-school culture.

Now mix in the Trickster of the title, not a natural creature at all, except sometimes a raven; there are strong roots here in our Pacific-Northwest Native story culture. Trickster has a name: Wee’git.

The supernatural bulges through the surface of reality in horrifyingly believable ways; its inhabitants are not cuddly and not friendly and are apt to bite off pieces of human anatomy, given a chance. The first book is set in a mid-coastal town and the second mostly in Vancouver, my hometown, which I disclose because it may have contributed to my being completely taken with these stories.

It seems very unlikely that the TV series will achieve the full dark craziness of the books, but early indications are positive. The actors playing Jared his his mother are razor-sharp.

Hmm, I seem to have got way down here without talking about the underlying social issues. Canada has systemic racism just like everywhere else. In particular there’s no getting away from the fact that Canada is substantially built on stolen land. The abuse of our indigenous people has been explicit and multigenerational and brutal. So, unsurprisingly, a lot of them are really hurting. These stories inhabit that reality and show you things you can’t unsee, with awesome clarity but without ever giving you a feeling that you’re being lectured. A lot more Canadians would benefit from learning the truths on display on these pages.

Oh, and a word about the author. She has a couple of other books which I plan to read, and when you hear her on the radio or YouTube or whatever, she’s a scream, with a big laugh and an endless line of good-humored stories about Native life and writer’s issues and, well, everything. I think she’d be a delight to hang out with

[Disclosure: The buy-this-book links above are Amazon Associate tagged and if you follow them I might make a buck.]

Having recently quit my job, I have more spare time than I used to. A surprising amount of it has been dedicated to reading longer-form articles, mostly about politics and society, but only mostly. I miss my job but I sure have enjoyed the chance to stretch out my mind in new directions. There are plenty of things in the world that need more than a thousand words to talk about. Anyhow, here is a set of lightly-annotated links that people who still have jobs almost certainly won’t have time to read all of. But maybe one or two will add flavor to your life.

Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine, by Peter Beinart, assumes the death of the two-state option for Israel/Palestine, and takes its time arguing for the only plausible long-term alternative: Some sort of unitary state in which the citizens are equal whatever their religious heritage, be that state multinational, federal, or contonal. Deep, important, stuff.

Tuning for beginners and (especially) Extra stuff on tunings by, uh, I’m not sure who actually, delivers a horribly-typeset crash course on the mathematics of music. Pretty fun for the (quite a lot of) people who are interested by both.

Trivium is the link-blog of Leah Neukirchen, “Just another random shark-hugging girl”, which gleefully pokes around the deepest, darkest, dustiest corners of software tech.

Battery energy storage is getting cheaper, but how much deployment is too much? by Herman K. Trabish, is an exemplar of my growing fascination with energy economics. In particular storage. The path to an all-reenewables energy ecosystem is pretty straightforwardly visible, except for storage infrastructure. This helps.

In the Covid-19 Economy, You Can Have a Kid or a Job. You Can’t Have Both. Ouch; maybe the most important thing written about the current plague that doesn’t actually instruct on how to save myriads of lives. Covid is shining a harsh, harsh light on lots of things we’ve been ignoring but shouldn’t have.

Richard Rorty’s prescient warnings for the American left. Sean Illing in Vox walks through Rorty’s taxonomy of American progressivism. There’s lots for almost anyone to disagree with here, but the Left needs to think about how it thinks about culture and class and, you know, get its freaking story straight. I think this might be helpful.

What About the Rotten Culture of the Rich? is by Chris Arnade, the guy who wrote the book about the American underclass, as interviewed in the Macdonaldses of the flyover zones. He’s hard to classify politically, and the points here about the moral bankruptcy, and damaging effects, of ruling-class behavior, have been made elsewhere. But they’re made very well here.

End the Globalization Gravy Train is by J.D. Vance. I’m pretty far out left but have mental space for intelligent conservatism (see here), and this is that. I was impressed.

When a tyranny falls, maybe justice will be applied to its collaborators. In History Will Judge the Complicit, Anne Applebaum takes a very indirect route to considering how this might apply after November 2020.

It was gold, by Patricia Lockwood, is about Joan Didion. You might not know who Ms Didion is and still enjoy this, because Ms Lockwood is a fabulous writer; certain sentences should be framed in gold and hung in major galleries and museums. She had a book in one of the recent Booker long or short lists, which is on my must-read list.

But I have been rediscovering the joy of documentaries, thanks in part to a clickbait article from Mashable "The 17 best documentaries on YouTube." I'm about half through the list and every film so far has been worth my time, but I will comment on a few.

• By far the best and most important, IMHO, is 13th, a compelling essay on the history and impact of systemic racism in the United States. This is a must-watch for every American.
• Based on the work of Noam Chomsky, Requium for the American Dream is stunning description of wealth concentration in the U.S. This economic inequity is directly tied to a lot of social problems.
• Put on a little weight over the pandemic? Then watch Fed Up which details how the sugar industry and its lobbying efforts have basically created today's obesity epidemic. You will never look at the supermarket shelves the same way again.
• Living on One Dollar tells the story of four U.S. college kids who move to a village in Guatemala and subsist on the average income. When you kid complains about not having the latest video game, show them this one.
• David Attenborough's Our Planet is a must watch for any nature lover. I am always astounded by the photography and this documentary adds persuasive information about environmental concerns.

I've also been looking back over my DVD collection and have lined these up to re-watch: 

• The Life of Birds (another David Attenborough)
• Sister Wendy's Story of Painting
• Walking with Dinosaurs (Grandsons' favorite for many years)

Why just be entertained when you can be both entertained and informed. Give documentaries a try.

Your favs?

Quick launch summary 

Getting started 

• Admins: You can add group-based controls to LDAP clients you have already configured, as well as any new clients you set up. Use our Help Center to learn more about how to add and connect new LDAP clients and configure access permissions for LDAP clients. 
• End users: No end user impact. 

Rollout pace 

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 9, 2020 

Availability 

• G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and Cloud Identity Premium customers 
• Not available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G Suite for Nonprofits, and Cloud Identity Free customers 

Resources 

• G Suite Admin Help: Add and connect new LDAP clients 
• G Suite Admin Help: Configure access permissions for LDAP clients

What’s changing 

Who’s impacted 

Why it’s important 

• Tap a Titan Security Key (all of which have built-in NFC) on the back of your iPhone. 
• Use any USB security key directly on an iOS device that has a USB port (such as an iPad Pro) or via an Apple Lightning to USB camera adapter on any other device. 
• Use Bluetooth security keys or your phone’s built-in security key on any iOS device via the Google Smart Lock app. 

Getting started 

• Admins: This feature will be available for all users by default. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to protect your business with 2-Step Verification and how the Advanced Protection Program can help protect your users. 
• End users: This feature will be OFF by default. To turn it on, add your Google Account to your iOS device at Settings > Passwords & Accounts, or install the Google app and sign in. Visit the Help Center to learn more about how to use a security key for 2-Step Verification and get stronger account security with the Advanced Protection Program. 

Rollout pace 

• Rapid and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on June 3, 2020 

Availability 

• Available to all G Suite and Cloud Identity customers, as well as users with personal Google Accounts 

Resources 

• Security Blog: Making the Advanced Protection Program and Titan Security Keys easier to use on Apple iOS devices 
• G Suite Admin Help: Protect users with the Advanced Protection Program 
• Google Help: Use a security key for 2-Step Verification
• Advanced Protection Program: g.co/advancedprotection

George Floyd's murder (and murder-porn video) was one of the catalysts for these protests. But let's be clear: Sooner or later, this was going to happen. Things are not okay in America. America's continuing issue with race, inequality, and the routine acceptance of the mistreatment of black people and other people of color came to a head in the last couple of days.

Then, we had Amy Cooper in New York City calling the police on Christian Cooper unecessarily during a normal incident that plays out all the time – annoying people with their dogs off leash. That one call could have resulted in Christian Cooper's death.

In this episode of Michelle is Money Hungry, I'm going to get candid about race in America, money and opportunity, and what's next.

This is a very difficult show for me to do because I have so many thoughts racing through my mind. The goal of this episode is to give a better perspective of what people are angry about and to leave with ideas of how we collective can do better. And, honestly, I have to say something about this. And just so you know, this is not the first time that I've talked about race and wealth in America on my website and podcast. (But it's the first time J.D. has shared my work here at Get Rich Slowly.)

J.D.'s note: I'm not a podcast listener, but I listened to this episode. I liked it enough to ask Michelle if I could re-run everything here at GRS. I'm grateful that she agreed. The text here is, essentially, Michelle's outline so it might seem rough at times. I encourage you — if you have the time — to listen to the podcast instead. If you'd rather read/listen at Michelle's site, here's the original.

This is Winning?

We are not “winning” in the US and haven't been for many years. The fact of the matter is America, at its core, is dysfunctional and its dysfunction is currently on display.

America is an incredibly wealthy country.

It's considered a land of great opportunity and compared to other countries this is the case. We just had a private company launch US based astronauts into space via SpaceX run by an immigrant But, with all of that wealth we also have a huge problem with wealth distribution. Schools are unequal. There's a lack of access to affordable health care. There's a constant threat of danger due to gun-related violence. Access to good paying jobs is decreasing as business move manufacturing off-shore/

Americans also focus on the individual vs. the collective and that affects everything related to creating policies for citizens. Then, add racism to the mix and you get a dangerous mix.

I'd like to paraphrase a couple of things that I've heard several times during the past week about the George Floyd protests.

• “Why are people looting? They're tearing up businesses and their own town. Why can't they protest without damaging property? Why can't the protestors do it differently?”
• “George Floyd is just 1 man, I get that this was horrible but to riot and burn down your town for one person makes no sense”

Protest as a verb: To express an objection to what someone has said or done (via the online dictionary)

I would like to point out three really important things to consider.

First, Colin Kaepernick quietly protested by kneeling for years to protest black people getting shot by the police. He lost his livelihood, was ridiculed, and was blacklisted from a career that he could still have right now. He didn't shout, he didn't break anything, he just took the knee. And, he was told that he was protesting the wrong way. Which ironically people making the comment “why riot?” should be catching themselves on. I tend wonder did you also say that he was protesting the wrong way too.

Second, it's 2020. There's video FOR EVERYTHING. While there are protestors looting, there are also groups of white people who seem organized tearing up buildings during protests. Leading other participants to ask them what the hell are they doing. In fact, that even happened here in Denver where a George Floyd demonstrator called out an Antifa asshole who was defacing a statue in front of the State Capital.

Third, why were people more concerned about the treatment of the DOG in the Amy Cooper video vs. the fact that Christian Cooper, US Citizen and a human being, could have been killed due to her actions. In case you're like who's Amy? She's the chick who called the police on Christian Cooper, the black birder in NYC.

Fourth, if the public at large values dogs and buildings more than my black life that's something we need to reflect on.

It's NOT Just about George Floyd

The protests aren't just about the murder of George Floyd. The murder was the catalyst for something that has been coming for awhile. People just weren't paying attention. The protests are about the following:

• The ongoing acceptance of black people being murdered by the police (and other people) ON CAMERA and getting away with it is bullshit. And, we're not going to take this anymore.
• Black people accounted for 31% of police killing victims in 2012, even though they made up just 13% of the US population.
• Lack of opportunity in a land of plenty.
• Deepening poverty.
• The almost daily rhetoric and actions taken by the current administration to systematically eliminate people's rights.

Basically, people are fed up with everything.

The Coronavirus

Added to this anger, is the anger associated with the Coronavirus response. It has not escaped my attention that the moment the talking points were that black/brown/and old people were the individuals most likely to die from the virus the conversation about it changed.

It felt like people were willing to sacrifice me and mine so that they could get hair cuts. That's just shitty. I work for myself from home. But many people of color work in roles that require constant interaction with people, increasing the likelihood of being exposed to the Coronavirus. But, those are also the jobs that people have lost because sporting events/restaurants/and retail won't rebound for years.

Forty million people have lost their jobs and over 100,000 have lost their lives. As I watched the protests several questions came to mind about the people who were protesting.

• Who knew someone who had suffered at the hands of the police?
• Who had lost a job because of the virus and they had nothing else to lose?
• Who knew someone who had died because of the virus or gotten sick with lifelong physical and financial reprecussions?
• Who had experienced being roadblocked professionally because of the color of their skin?
• Who in the crowd has health insurance? Definitely not the 40 million people who have lost their jobs

I wasn't just looking at the screen and seeing people that I didn't know and couldn't feel empathy for. I got it. I 100% get their anger because I share and I want to share a glimpse into my experience being black in America. I will also share some other people's experiences as well.

Check Your Privilege

Every year, I have at least a minimum of two incidents of white women clutching their purses when I walk by. Even when I have a giant purse on my shoulder. I've had people ignore me when I'm talking to them – blatantly. I've been roadblocked for promotions and told by the directors of the program that I worked for that they didn't feel comfortable with me representing the program abroad. I've been followed in grocery and clothing stores. I've been referenced as the angry black woman I've been called the n-word.

I have a file with all details related to my ability to vote and I am obsessive about this. Why? Because a key part of the act was invalidated in 2013, because jurisdictions are trying to levy poll taxes in order to be eligible to vote (looking at you Florida) and because of how fearful people are to allow fair and equal access to vote and how hard they work to surpress your vote. Which should tell those of you who don't vote often how important your right to vote is.

I would like to get married and have two little boys who look like their dad. But, I'm afraid of having little boys that other people feel free to: harass and kill.

Depending on the situation I'm uncomfortable when the police are around and hate it when they drive near me when I'm driving. The last thing I want to deal with is any interaction with the police.

I was sitting on a coffee shop patio with headphones on having a conversation with my mastermind group two weeks ago. There were other people on the patio talking as well. An older white woman reprimanded me for talking too loud. Don't worry, I shut it down. But my friends Sandy Smith and Elle Martinez saw the whole thing. We were on a Zoom call.

I worry about my black male relatives, male friends, and their male kids.

It is a normal thing for people of color to have a conversation with their children telling them that the police likely not protect them and more likely hurt or kill them because they are a threat.

My experience is nothing compared to what my other friends and family members have dealt with. Why is it that my full equality as a United State's citizen is perceived as a threat to your equality? It makes no sense.

America will never be as great a country as it could be as long as the following remains true:

• The lack of willingness to have candid and painful conversations about race and inequality. Our unwillingness to have these conversations keep us from truly knowing one another.
• The continuing growth in the divide between the haves and have nots
• Lack of access to quality health care
• Lack of access to fair and equal ways to vote.
• We accept unequal treatment of citizens by people in positions of authority
• Those who benefit from a position of power don't stand up for what's right.

Another person's success doesn't endanger you. It benefits you. I live in a nice neighborhood. During the Coronavirus outbreak (which is still happening) I would walk around the neighborhood. No one looked stressed. I would see people exercising, riding their bikes, and spending time with their kids.

Most of the people in my neighborhood work white collar jobs and — let's be candid — are white. They were having a very different experience of the Coronavirus situation than other people that I know.

They were still getting paid to work or were able to work from home. They had some resources available to them that insured that they would be able to take care of their personal expenses. Maybe not indefinitely, but for awhile. I heard or saw conversations about purchasing properties now because now would be a great time to do so. People had access to the internet and could continue to educate their kids via online learning, take fitness classes, and order food and clothing instead of going into grocery stores.

I include myself in these observations. I have these privileges too. As I improve my life, I can't lose sight of how important it is to help other people along the way.
There is a reason why I am so passionate about sharing personal finance content and how people can empower themselves making money selling what they already know.What is my success if other people are suffering?

What We Can Do

There is a lot that we can do to better the situation.

• When your friends of color tell you that they feel like something is racist or are sharing an experience that was painful or scary for them-listen. Don't tell them how they should feel or how they should have reacted. It's insulting. Just listen. In fact regardless of the issue active listening is an important skill to develop.
• Become self-aware, we all have our prejudiced or even racist thoughts regardless of color. Becoming self-aware of these biases helps us to manage them before they adversely affect someone else.
• People of color, some of your White friends might be struggling with how to have these conversations and genuinely want to be a part of the solution. (J.D., for instance.) Give them some grace as they make mistakes during the process. But, speak up so they don't make them again. I've had some incredibly candid conversations with my white friends throughout the course of our friendships. I've had to because I was unwilling to let things slide by.

And remember, actions matter more than words — and so does your inaction.

What you do when I'm not in the room when people are making jokes and comments says a lot about YOU. When people make shitty comments online-people that you know, what will you do? Will you say nothing and be complicit because it's hard to stand up for people who aren't in the room?

Basically, will you take the easy way out or do the heavy lifting which is hard. Which means you may lose friends and family.

Be patient with one another. This is a lifetime of conversations. Connect people with opportunities that will grow their income and livelihoods. Become a personal and professional mentor. If you're a cop, get rid of the racists who've embedded themselves into the force and embrace community policing which works. Write testimonials (or better record video testimonials) for a product/good/or service that a POC friend has. That POC friend could do the same.

What Has Encouraged Me

Here's what has given me encouragement and hope recently:

• The line of white women who used their privilege and stood in front of black protestors so that they wouldn't be harmed by the police.
• The police who marched with protestors. This happened in a number of cities.
• The black men who protected a police officer who got separated from his crew.
• The Denver protester who was filmed calling out a person who was defacing the statue in front of the Colorado State Capital.
• The often painful conversations and revelations that have been shared. We can't keep these things to ourselves.
• The actions that people have taken. Speaking up, shutting things down, and being all in.
• The love that has been sent my way from my friends of all colors who have checked on me and that I've checked on during this time. I've chosen well.

Figure out the answer to the following question “How does someone else doing well affect me?” There are a lot of people expending a lot of energy keeping people down. So you have to wonder why they fear people being equal or doing well.

Thank you for listening to the show, and I hope that you and yours are safe and well during these difficult times.

Pan pizza is the best pizza you can make in a typical home oven. It’s also a style that’s tricky to find in restaurants (though it’s becoming more popular.) That means you should make it, and I’m here to help. This is my simple, flexible, delicious recipe.

(Before we begin, have you seen my thin-style pizza recipe? It’s a good idea to read it even if you’re here primarily for the pan pie.)

Neven’s Pan Pizza

Servings: one 9 x 13” (or 10 x 14”) pizza
Time: 3.5 hours (mix and proof) + 1 to 3 days (fridge-ferment) + 6 hours (final proof) + 25 to 40 minutes (shape, top, and bake)

INGREDIENTS:

• 175 g all-purpose flour
• 75 g high-gluten or bread flour (or all-purpose flour)
• 5 g (2%) salt
  
• 50 g (20%) ripe sourdough starter, fed and doubled and ready
  
• 200 g (80%) water
  
• ~2 tbsp olive oil

DIRECTIONS:

Put all the dry ingredients into the bowl of a stand mixer outfitted with the dough hook and stir with a spatula to combine. Add the starter and about 2/3 of the water. Start the mixer on low speed and mix for 1 minute; add the rest of the water, and mix for 4 more minutes. Switch to medium speed and mix for another 5 minutes. If at any point the dough threatens to crawl out of the bowl, stop the mixer and scrape the mess back down into the bowl. The dough will be wet and sticky—not to worry, that’s what 80% hydration looks like.

Scoop the dough out into a new bowl (wider, shallowe, preferably non-metal.) Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let the dough rest in a warm spot for 3 hours. (70–74°F? An oven that was on for two minutes before being turned off is a good environment.) Every 30 minutes or so, fold the dough—just go around the edge of the dough with a flexible spatula and fold the outside in, like a scared starfish. You’re just trying to redistribute the dough to make it nice and smooth.

Grab a 9x13 nonstick sheet pan, with sides at least 1.5? tall. (See below for a list of my preferred equipment.) Pour in 1.5 tbsp olive oil—about two glugs—and spread it around. (If your pan is truly nonstick, you don’t have to be thorough here; if it’s not, cover every damn millimeter with oil. Not a lot of oil, just complete coverage.) After the 3 hours have passed, move the dough into the pan. Gently scrape it into the middle of the pan, then flip the dough over so both sides are oiled. Flatten it just a tad and leave it alone. It won’t come close to filling the pan, and that’s ok. Now’s the time for it to go to sleep in the cold: cover your pan tightly and move it to a fridge shelf for 1-3 days.

6 hours before baking, remove the pan from the fridge and set it on the counter.  Feel free to sneak a peak at the dough: it looks about the same, yeah? Now watch it spread out and blow small bubbles in the coming hours, especially if you give it a nice, warm environment again. 

Preheat your oven at 500ºF for at least half an hour, with your rack somewhere around the lower middle; all ovens vary, so adjust as needed after you see your finished pie’s top and bottom bakes.

To stretch the dough: uncover the pan and oil your fingers with the olive oil pooled in the corners. Now gently dimple the dough and watch for bubbles—cool, yeah? Spread it softly from the middle, grabbing the dough corners and lifting them into the pan corners if needed. Your dough will be very soft and may seem uneven, but don’t sweat it; just patch any holes without massaging the dough too much. 

Topping time! Please place on your pizza whatever you like. Pan pies generally work better with cheese on the bottom. Also, try not to overtop it because that fluffy, fluffy dough needs to be able to rise—too much weight on top will prevent it from doing so. Remember that you can add a lot of stuff after baking—including tomato sauce!

So, line the dough with cheese. My preference is to use sliced mozzarella or provolone, though shredded or cubed will also work. Add extra cheese into the corners of the pan, so it bakes up into an irresistible cheese crust. Spoon cooked tomato sauce on top (in a hip diagonal pattern if you want to look fashionable on Instagram) and add any other toppings.

Bake for 12-16 minutes, rotating half way through. Watch the pie carefully in the last few minutes. Oh, did I mention—crank your vent hood because the cheese will burn and smoke, beautifully so.

When your pizza looks good enough to elope and start a new life in Mexico with, pull it out using decent oven mitts. Give it a minute to come to its senses, then go around the rim with a thin, non-scratchy tool—like a plastic knife or a small spatula—to release the cheese and sauce from the pan. It shouldn’t be much of a struggle if you used a good pan. Now dexterously slip an offset spatula or a burger flipper under one (narrow) side of the pizza and transfer it to a cooling rack.

If you’re feeling particularly naughty, shower the finished pie with finely grated parmesan cheese. I won’t tell anyone.

Give your pizza 5 minutes to rest—ok, ok, you have my permission to cut it after 2 minutes. Move to a cutting board and have at it with a large, sharp knife. 

- - - END OF RECIPE - - -
- - -  ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND ANECDOTES BELOW - - -

Just a reminder that my thin-style pizza recipe has more info about technique and ingredients and such, and I’m not going to repeat it all here like an aging musician running out of inspiration and covering their heyday hits to pander to the old fans.

Questions? Comments?

I don’t even have a sourdough, man.

It’s like, month three of quarantine—what have you been doing with your time?

Alright, alright. 

Neven’s Pan Pizza for Non-sourdough Folks Who Nevertheless Deserve Our Love and Respect

Servings: one 9 x 13 (or 10 x 14) pizza
Time: 3.5 hours (mix and proof) + 1 day (fridge-ferment) + 2 hours (final proof) + 25 to 40 minutes (shape, top, and bake)

INGREDIENTS:

• 175 g all-purpose flour
• 75 g high-gluten or bread flour (or all-purpose flour)
• 5 g (2%) salt
  
• 3 g (~1%) instant yeast (half a package thingy)
  
• 200 g (80%) water
  

DIRECTIONS:

Stir all the dry ingredients well in a large bowl, then add the yeast and water and stir again, using a silicone or wood spatula. When it starts coming together, pour in the olive oil and work it in. No need to get it smooth; just mix until there’s no dry flour on the bottom. Cover tightly with plastic wrap.

Every 30 minutes in the next 2 hours, fold it: slide the spatula under one side and fold it over toward the middle. Do 4-6 folds like this in one session. No need to be picky about the 30-minute timing, just shoot for 2-4 fold sessions in the first few hours of proofing, to distribute everything well.

Cover and leave out at room temperature for 12-18 hours. Just go to bed, don’t worry about it. You’ve worked hard all day.

The next day, the dough should look huge and bubbly. Does it? Oh, good. Now proceed with the above recipe from the pan-oiling step: move it to a pan, give it 1-2 hours to relax, stretch it, etc.

But I don’t have a stand mixer.

(I couldn’t find a gif of Donald Pleasance in Wake in Fright (1971) so this still image will have to do.)

Look, it’s fine. Read the above no-sourdough steps. No mixer needed. You can just do that, even when using sourdough—maybe halve the amount of sourdough starter. (It’s potent stuff.)

And now, a chaser for that hot hot image above.

Shop Talk

My attorneys have advised me to disclose that the links below include my referral code, which will make me even filthier rich than I am currently. (How rich am I? I make my own pizza, that’s how rich.)

• LloydPans Detroit Style Pizza Pan. These are just tremendous—wonderfully made, perfectly nonstick, stackable. Ideal for pan pizza, focaccia, and many other bakes.
  
• Detroit Style Pizza Pan Lid. Not at all required, but if you get serious about this pan pizza business, the lids are great because they’re reusable and they let you stack several pans in the fridge. (Note that you can bake two of these pizzas side by side in a typical oven. That’s what I do. Yes, it’s because I eat one whole pizza myself.)
• Cooling rack. I can’t stress enough the importance of cooling and resting your pizza—thin or thick, before it’s had a chance to release all that steam, it’s still kind of a wet mess of a casserole. 

The End

I realize some folks still think that thin vs. thick is an interesting pizza debate to be having in the 2020s, but I hope they can move on and get into all the pizza styles out there. Pan pies are so good. See for yourself.

Image: YouTube

Rather than rehash the fight over online file-sharing here, I thought I’d put together a list of legit SF/F reading and listening material for folks to explore and enjoy. I put out a call to authors on Twitter, asking for links. The response was both gratifying and a little overwhelming.

The British Science Fiction Association is doing something similar here.

Online Magazines

• Apex
• Apparition Literary Magazine
• The Arcanist
• Beneath Ceaseless Skies
• Clarkesworld
• Curious Fictions
• Daily Science Fiction
• Fireside
• Future SF
• GlitterShip
• InterGalactic Medicine Show
• Lightspeed
• Micro SF/F
• Nightmare
• Strange Horizons
• Tor.com
• Uncanny

Podcasts

• Escape Pod
• LeVar Burton Reads
• The Once and Future Nerd
• Podcastle
• Pseudopod
• StarShipSofa
• Welcome to Night Vale

Free Fiction from Authors

• Bellet, Annie – Short stories
• Berthiaume, Heidi – Microfiction stories
• Bisson, Simon – Hummingbird Futures, short story collection
• Blake, Polenth – Patchwork, short fiction collection. “Includes superheroes, space bees and moon mushrooms.“
• Bonesteel, Elizabeth – Survival Tactics, short story collection
• Buhlert, Cora – Twitter links to Evacuation Order (space opera) and several other stories
• Cohen, LJ – Derelict. “When Ro tinkers with a broken ship, she doesn’t count on waking its traumatized AI.“
• Connolly, Harry – A Key, an Egg, an Unfortunate Remark, “my pacifist urban fantasy w/ a sixty-five year old protagonist who’s a mix of Gandalf and Auntie Mame.”
• Cox, Stephen – Short fiction, various genres
• Crawford, Richard S. – “Burying Uncle Albert,” short story about “a family dealing with dark deeds, a hidden past, and zombies.”
• Danley, Kate – “snarky, badass urban fantasy“
• de Bodard, Aliette – The Dragon That Flew Out of the Sun, “anthology of my Xuya space opera stories, inspired by Vietnamese culture“
• Dixon, Buzz – Free flash fiction every Tuesday
• Downes, Sarah – Long Live the Tidal King, a parallel timeline novella around a manuscript on the life of King Cnut and the two men who authored it. (Free through 4/3.)
• Duane, Diane and Morwood, Peter – Freebies at Ebooks Direct
• Ermakova, Marina – Terrestrial Magic, “urban fantasy set in a post-apocalyptic Italy, where a scientist researches legendary animals and dodges assassination attempts“
• Eudaly, Rhonda – Posts flash fiction on Fridays
• Frasier, A. W. – Watcher, “about a genderfluid god and a Watcher going on ridiculous adventures and falling in love“
• Hamill, E. M. – Dalí, a space opera/spy adventure, free until 3/31
• Handley, Rachel – Twitter link to short story “Possible Worlds”
• Hawkins, Jaq – The Goblin Trilogy (click author link on Smashwords for more)
• Haynes, Simon – Peace Force: light SF adventure (Harriet Walsh Book 1), free on Amazon for the next 2-3 days.
• Heartfield, Kate – Twitter thread with links to free fiction
• Higginbotham-Hogue, Nicole – Don’t Tell Me Twice
• Hines, Jim C. – My free stuff is linked from the right sidebar of my website.
• Hutchinson, Dave – Now Wash Your Hands, a “collection of some old bits and pieces.“
• Irvine, Alex – Short fiction
• Johanneson, Patrick – Short fiction
• Klein, Karen C. – Torin’s Legacy, “a magical adventure book. Impish apprentices, magical malfunctions and grumpy wizards included.“
• Kwak, Jessie – Negative Return, “a sf heist along the lines of Firefly with some Godfather mixed in for good fun.“
• Lawless, J. R. H. – Short stories at Curious Fictions
• Lee, Fonda – Stories and excerpts at Curious Fictions
• Logan, Michael – Wannabes, “a satire about music, demons, reality TV and God forming a rock band with departed idols”
• Lord, Karen – Twitter thread with links to free fiction and nonfiction
• Lyman, Paige – Two short SF stories
• Marmell, Ari – Strange New Words (short fiction collection)
• McColley, John A. – Short stories
• McDonald, Sam – Twitter thread with links to free poetry, nonfiction
• McGuire, Seanan – October Daye short stories. (Site also has Incryptid short stories.)
• McKenna, Juliet E. – “The Wizard’s Coming”
• McSweeny, Madison – “The Beast and the Hummingbird” (short story). “A young girl becomes judge, jury, and possibly executioner in an otherworldly trial, after stumbling upon a monster chained up in the woods.“
• Meikle, William – Free stories and samplers
• Moore, Tanya – Free stories
• Novakova, Julie – Dreams from Beyond, anthology of Czech translated SF
• Novy, Rick – Short stories
• O’Connacht, Lynn E. – Sea Foam and Silence: The Complete Collection – “hopeful, low stakes SFF short stories and a soft queer verse novel retelling of The Little Mermaid”
• Phoenix Fiction Writers – Free books from their member authors
• Powell, Gareth L. – “Downdraught” (Novella)
• Quackenbush, Thomm – Stories and sample chapters, “most of which are new weird, contemporary fantasy, horror, or science fiction.”
• Rempt, Irina – “Two fantasy books set in the same world“
• Samphire, Patrick – Twitter thread with links to free short stories
• Slinde, Andrew – short and flash SFF
• Swendson, Shanna – Spindled, serialized YA fairy tale riff
• Tearmann, O. E. – The Hands We’re Given, “hopeful spec-fic audio-book here: a fight for freedom in the future America. Sex, drones, rock and roll!“
• Thomas, Llinos Cathryn – F/F romance novellas
• Thompson, Tade – Household Gods and Other Narrative Offences (a collection of seven stories)
• Trent, Tiffany – “The Bargain” – Fey King who undergoes a career change
• Underwood, Michael R. – Genrenauts: The Data Disruption, “a novelette about dimensional travelers trying to help a group of cyberpunk mercenaries rescue their missing hacker.”
• Voss, C. A. – Genesis. “It’s like Independence Day meets Jurassic Park with a touch of Armageddon.“
• Watts, Peter – novels and short fiction
• Wendig, Chuck – the Mookie Pearl duology. “Urban fantasy about a dude who works the literal intersection between the criminal underworld and the actual-literal-monstery-underworld.”
• Willis, Matthew – “Ascent,” a “multigenerational saga of a family’s relationship with a mountain“
• Wolfe, Alexandra – Free fiction and excerpts
• Ybabez, Gillian – Short stories

Other

• African Speculative Fiction Society – More than 1000 SF stories by African authors
• AO3 – Hugo award-winning website hosting more than five million fanfiction works
• Baen’s Free Library
• BSFA Vector Reading Series
• Coyle, T. Thorn – video reading of “The Ice Cream Van: a Faery Story“
• Decameron Project – provides a new short story by a different author every day
• Hines, Jim C. – YouTube has a reading of “A Game of Goblins,” with more coming soon.
• Huggins, G. Scott – YouTube reading of “In the Employee Manual of Madness”
• Jones, Russell – “a free scifi poetry and prose reading from me”
• Mikalatos, Matt – Daily video readings of YA fantasy novel The Crescent Stone
• Project Gutenberg – 60,000+ public domain and creative copyright licensed works.
• Sava, Scott Christian – Twitter thread of kids comics
• Smashwords: Authors Give Back – Free books, filterable by genre
• Storer, Alex – The Art of a Changed World, “explores my cover art for Alice Sabo’s work and celebrates creative collaboration in the age of self publishing.“
• Valente, Catherynne – YouTube readings from The Orphan’s Tales
• VanPelt, Jim – YouTube readings
• Vibbert, Marie – Virtual readings
• Wallace, Andrew – Reading 20 minutes/day from his novel Celebrity Werewolf

I’ll update as I’m able, but this ought to keep y’all busy for at least a few weeks of social isolation!

Filmmaker Gary Hustwit is streaming his documentaries free worldwide during the global COVID crisis. Each week we’ll be posting another film here. We hope you enjoy them, and please stay strong.

March 17 to 24: Helvetica?—?a feature-length documentary about typography, graphic design and global visual culture. It looks at the proliferation of one typeface as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives.

If you haven’t seen Helvetica, or haven’t seen it in a while, it’s just so good.

I supervised others for about 41 years. First as a library media specialist working with library paras and then as a technology director overseeing the work of a diverse and growing bunch of technicians, coordinators, and clerical staff. I’ve personally had good and bad supervisors and have learned from both. Having done some reflection, here are some of things you should know about me if I were your boss...

1. I hate to supervise. My long held belief is that the secret of successful supervision is to hire people who don’t need supervision. I don’t like being micromanaged nor do I want to have to micromanage others.

2. I want people aligned to a simple mission. When you work in my department and anyone asks you what your job is I hope you say “Educating children.” I don’t care if you are a network manager, accounts receivable clerk, media specialist, or tech integration specialist. Your primary job, the basis of all decisions you make, is simple - what's best as it applies to educating kids.

3. I am not a mind reader. I don’t do subtle. I don’t get hints, looks, or attitudes. You have a problem with me, a coworker, a decision, or a situation, you have to tell me. I will absolutely respect you for your honesty.

4. I'd rather steer you than spur you. I love ideas and new approaches to getting things done. Take initiatives. Suggest policies and new approaches. Seth Godin writes: "It's the boss's job to continually ask, ‘is this the most daring vision of your work?’“I have to try to remember that as well.

5. I believe in families first. Your children will only play t-ball for so many years. Your mom may really need you as she ages. Your husband may require a ride to work. I get that. Honor being a parent, a son/daughter, or a spouse. You only get one chance really to be a good family member.

6. Never put in unpaid overtime. ‘Nuf said. I believe in flexibility and measuring outputs not inputs. It’s never about how long you spend working, it’s about how much you accomplish.

7. The only thing I like better than a compliment is a compliment about someone in my department. Any department I run should be noted for its friendliness and communication skills. We can’t always fix problems but we can always let people know we’ve heard their problems and are trying.

8. Formal evaluations are bullshit. I will do my best to give you feedback on a continuous basis. (And I know I never say thank you or recognize the efforts of others enough.) Let’s figure out together how to turn the formal evals into some kind goal setting plan that actually might make sense.

9. No surprises. I want to know the good stuff that’s happening as well as potential problems. We will meet regularly to share, but if something comes up, let me know. I don’t like looking clueless. And no end runs - you regularly go to my boss instead of me with a problem, don’t ever ask me for a recommendation.

10. We are interdependent. If we focus on making each other successful, we will all thrive and feel satisfaction. The thing I love most about being a supervisor is being asked for help and being able to give it. I will make sure your voice is heard by my boss and will do my best to get you the necessary resources for you to be successful. All I want in return is that you make me look good. Is that too much to ask?

11. Make me the bad guy. If somebody gets on you about a policy you didn’t make, don’t take any abuse. Just send them to me. I believe disagreement is a healthy thing in an organization, but I also believe in professionalism.

12. Happy workers are good workers. I’ve worked for assholes and I’ve worked for decent human beings. I don’t just believe happy people are more productive, I believe workers can’t be productive at all unless they are happy. I want everyone looking forward to work every day.

Reading this might make you think I was a pushover. You’d be wrong. I had high expectations of the people in my department. 

Original post August 7, 2014

This was my original post:

I was thrilled with all the thoughtful questions you shared with me, from the delightful to the profound. I read all of them and picked 25 to ask my dad. At a family dinner the night before our day of tandem paragliding, as an experiment, I peppered three into our conversation. . . it didn’t go well.

Like many families, ours was far from perfect, with divorce and estrangement being a part of it. So when other family members began responding to some of my father’s answers, long-buried feelings and some judgement turned the interview sour. Because of that learning experience, I changed some of my questions and gained three insights for when I would try again the next day.

• Avoid questions about regrets or mistakes and start with questions that include the word “favorite”, like, What’s your favorite decade and why?
• Keep the questions open-ended and let answers lead to other answers. Aim for a flowing conversation, not an interview.
• Really listen.

On the two hour drive to the Gliderport the next day, it was just my father and me in the car. I told him how much it meant to me to go through these questions and get to know him better. He was game so I cautiously started. He passed on some of the questions, but then really began to share a lot with me, including a secret. He even started asking me some of the same questions too! The spirit in the car was supportive and generous, with some heartfelt laughs as we used questions as prompts for our once-in-a-lifetime conversation.

Even though we were unable to do any gliding because of wind conditions, I’ll never forget that day and the new appreciation I have for me father. I can’t reveal the secret he told me but another part of our conversation shocked me. I asked this gentle and caring man, what is the most common misconception people have about you? He said. When I was ten-years-old, my mom spanked me for the last time. I don’t think you know how stubborn I was then but you do know how stern your Grandmother could be. I remember through my tears and pain looking at my mother and saying, with spite, “I like getting spanked”!

Thanks to everyone who contributed questions to my original post and I invite you all to use these questions to get to know your fathers (or mothers) better. If you do, leave a message on the PostSecret facebook page about your experience. I will repost them on Father’s Day.

Here are the 25 questions that guided our conversation with some additional resources at the bottom.

~~~

Can you tell me about your best friend when you were a kid and one of your adventures.

What is the oldest story you know about our ancestors?

Is there something about me that you have always wanted to know but have never asked?

Can you describe a favorite memory about a family member?

If this was to be our very last conversation, is there anything you would want to say to me?

Do you have a favorite snack, song, television show, recipe, comedy?

What is your first memory?

Did you ever get into trouble as a kid? What happened?

If there was a biography of you, how would you want to be described?

What choice are you thankful that you did not make?

What is the best advice you remember from your father?

Is there anything you wish you had said to someone but didn’t have the chance?

Can you teach me something?

What is something you would like me to ask you?”

What do you wish you would have spent less time worrying about?

What is something you deliberately did not tell me as a child and why?

What is the best part of your day? What makes you feel most alive?

What is the last thing you changed your mind about?

What things helped you get through a difficult time in your life?

Over the course of your life what trip or place was most special? Why?

What would you like to re-experience again because you did not appreciate it enough the first time?

Can you tell me something about yourself that I don’t know that you think would surprise, shock or delight me?

What habits served you the most through life?

What is the best mistake you have made, and why?

What do you hope my siblings and I have learned from you?

How are you doing right now? Is there anything on your mind right now that you’d like to talk about?

~~~

(When my father visits again, I’ll be sure to have his favorite comedy and snack ready.)

~~~

Discover hundreds more questions on the PostSecret facebook page.
https://www.facebook.com/postsecret

Find further inspiration and more ideas at StoryCorp.
https://storycorps.org/