The All-Night Pavilion · the arcana
Those That Resemble Flies From a Distance
25 scrolls filed under this arcanum
2026
- I don’t once ever regret being weird in public. I perpetually regret not being weird or not-being-weird in public.
- Every game and sport occupies a position in two-dimensional silly–serious space: one axis encodes how serious the game is, the other how seriously its adherents take it. Golf? Silly. Archery? Serious. …
- The following is lifted directly from Zvi Mowshowitz with only light formatting changes because I think it’s Important, Valuable, and Good. It is also buried deep in a blog post that many people would …
- I thought I was sad, but actually my music tanks were just low.
- an illumination
- I could (and probably should,) write a whole dissertation on the mahjong scene in Crazy Rich Asians.
- Some Thoughts on AI
- I Shouldn’t Start a MUD
2025
- Not everything has to be immediate or predictable. Defend slowness when it serves a purpose, silence when it speaks and difference when evocative. Beauty is not just a means of escape; it is, above …
- “We like imperfection in others, but expect perfection in ourselves.” — Sarah Renae Clark
- Minimum Wage
- One sentence on each place in Europe that I’ve been, in order of preference. 🇳🇴 Oslo, Norway Perfection. 🇳🇴 Kristiansand, Norway Feels like walking through a storybook about mice that run a bookstore. …
- Oslo
- Not gonna lie, when I find someone who’s weirder than me in the ways I want to be weird I get a little jealous but like in a crush-y way? Like let’s be friends, but also enemies. Frenemies. I will …
- Operating at the very top of the game, for any value of game, necessitates a single-minded devotion to the exclusion of all other interests or hobbies. The reason most of the people who are the best …
- Me: “You’re Darmok, I’m Jalad, and together we are at Tanagra.” Ash: “What? Oh, Star Wars.”
- As far as I can tell this is Alton Brown’s journey: “No pasta.” Live and Let Diet, Good Eats S13:E13 “No white foods.” To the media at some point? I can’t find a direct reference, but AB mentions …
2024
- I spent most of last night talking with a dear friend about community and connection in the current age of the Internet. We met, what feels like a hundred years ago, on IRC. I’ve sat here, staring at …
- The way I make sense of the world is to talk about it, at length, with anyone who’ll listen. Which frequently means the people closest to me are stuck listening to me as I work out any complicated …
- “Is this a problem you have to solve, or can the world solve it for you later?” — Adam Savage
- In competitive video games you should expect a 50% win rate. About half the time the other team will be better than you, half the time they won’t. You’re operating at the razor’s edge of your skill …
- Language is hard. Communication is harder. When someone receives a communication, they interpret it through their own understanding and world view and the message that’s ultimately received may bear …
- I’m about to say something you might find shocking, so before I do I want to make two things clear: This isn’t a complaint post. The purpose is not to vent. I actually consider this a positive and …
2023
- Watching A Goofy Movie as a kid: it’s about a parent learning to understand his son. Watching A Goofy Movie now: it’s about a family learning to understand each other.
- My dream used to be to have no clocks in the house. To be fully untethered from needing to know what time it was. Probably achievable up to a point. Now that I’ve got all these mechanical clocks I …