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Homework from Larry

It’s a beautiful, premature spring day today. Mid-50s in the sun, and might even reach 60F tomorrow before it drops back down for a bit.

B and I picked up some cupcakes from Ladybird and I stopped to feed him on the bench outside. An older guy was sat on the neighboring bench reading Right-Wing Critics of American Conservatism by George Hawley, but mainly holding court. He asked me B’s name, and we got talking about books and movies. Larry gave me some homework:

  1. Listen to the Octavia E. Butler interview on Krista Tippett’s On Being podcast. This is a tough one… I had a look for it but couldn’t find it. Perhaps he meant the episode with Anthea Butler and Arlene Sánchez-Walsh on Sister Aimee? I don’t think so though since he said the interviewee was talking about spirituality and sci-fi. I scanned through all of the episodes before Butler’s DOD and didn’t find anything. Perhaps it was a different radio show? I’ll have to ask if I run in to him again.
  2. Watch Worlds of Ursula K. Le Guin, a PBS documentary presented by American Masters. You need a membership to watch it, but there are some short clips on YouTube as well.
  3. Watch The Hustler, a 1961 film with Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, and Piper Laurie.
  4. Watch Days of Wine and Roses, a 1958 episode of Playhouse 90 on CBS with Cliff Robertson and Piper Laurie. He said it is on YouTube but unfortunately I can’t find it. Perhaps it was taken down. He also recommended the film from 1962 with Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick.
  5. Read A Clockwork Orange, the film isn’t enough. Anthony Burgess was his teacher.
  6. Check out Thomas Nast’s editorial cartoons.
  7. Check out Alice Neel’s portraits. He mentioned a retrospective at the Whitney that made a huge impression on him, when I look for it online it looks like that was back in 1974. Looking at her paintings now online, I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of her before. Shame to have missed her retrospective at The Met last summer but c’est la vie, we weren’t in Brooklyn yet.

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10 years ago

10 years ago, we celebrated with nearby friends and family on the second coldest day of the year. ❤️ The Barbican is still standing, of course. The Dolphin may or may not be… I’m not sure if the pandemic was kind to it. Troia is long gone. A lot has changed, but the most important stuff hasn’t.

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DIY sea salt spray for hair

Growing up, my hair always looked best after swimming in the Pacific or using the original John Frieda Beach Blonde sea spray. I’ve tried a ton of other sea salt sprays since then, none of them are as good. The smell is too strong or weird 99% of the time, they often don’t give quite the right effect, or are stupid expensive.

I tried the DIY version below and haven’t looked back.

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In a 3oz spray bottle, combine 60g warm water and 8g Maldon salt. Shake until the salt is fully dissolved. Then add 5g squalane oil and 15g aloe vera gel, and shake again. Shake to combine before each use.

If you want to make a bigger bottle, combine 68% warm water, 9% sea salt, 6% oil, and 17% aloe vera. Different hair types may require more or less oil.

See notes below for alternative ingredients, but note that you may need to adjust the ratios if you use substitutions. For example hair gel will behave differently than aloe vera.

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If you don’t have Maldon salt, you could use kosher or epsom salts. In fact, there’s a lot of epsom salt in the John Frieda version. I use Maldon since it is actually sea salt, and I already have it on hand for cooking.

If you don’t have squalane oil, you’ll have to find another lightweight oil with little-to-no smell. Don’t use coconut oil, it will clog the spray mechanism. Speaking from experience, don’t use olive oil unless you want to smell like a cheap garden salad. I use squalane since I already use it on my face.

If you don’t have aloe vera… maybe you could try some sort of lightweight hair gel? I’d use less though, and be wary of clogging the spray mechanism.

Also, note that not all aloe vera gels are the same. You want something with a high aloe vera content, and you have to check the ingredients list for that. Avoid products with alcohol, and anything that professes to be more than 99% aloe vera. It’s impossible for something to be 100% aloe vera unless you made it yourself from aloe leaves, any product you buy in a tube has to have other chemicals to make it shelf-stable.

For the smellies, sometimes I replace a bit of the water with orange flower water. Could also use a few drops of essential oil, though I haven’t done this yet. I’d love to get close to the original John Frieda eventually… Something like piña coladas and sunscreen.

Edit 7 April 2022: Changed recipe from original (60g warm water, 10g Malon salt, 15g squalane oil, 5g aloe vera gel), it previously didn’t have enough hold and was too oily+salty. Also added substitution suggestions.

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A few more grays

An abrupt, hilariously stereotypical physical change over the past six months or so: the major uptick in gray hairs since B was born. I’ve been plucking them. Honestly, I’m not that bothered by them, at least not yet. I’m not removing them because I’m worried about going gray, it will be a while before that happens in all likelihood. (The lady doth protest too much?)

It’s just… satisfying, I think. My hair is dark, identifying and removing this silvery thread to restore the even brown gives a tiny bit of pleasure. But now I’ve got these random, short gray hairs poking out here and there. Probably time to stop.

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“I’m using a kind of primitive hypertext”

I generally have four or five books open around the house — I live alone; I can do this — and they are not books on the same subject. They don’t relate to each other in any particular way, and the ideas they present bounce off one another. And I like this effect. I also listen to audio-books, and I’ll go out for my morning walk with tapes from two very different audio-books, and let those ideas bounce off each other, simmer, reproduce in some odd way, so that I come up with ideas that I might not have come up with if I had simply stuck to one book until I was done with it and then gone and picked up another.

So, I guess, in that way, I’m using a kind of primitive hypertext.

Octavia E. Butler

Quote introduced to me in a convo with LS. Also shared by Édouard U. in his essay “On building knowledge networks” as published in the book How do you use the internet mindfully?.

It’s originally from a discussion between Octavia E. Butler and others at MIT on 19 February 1998. Topics included: The Value of Literacy; The Future of Literacy; Reading Hypertext; The Age of Misinformation; Who Controls the Web; Race, Cyberspace and Equality; Science Fiction and the Black Community; and The Ghetoization of Science Fiction. See also Butler’s introduction to this discussion, “‘Devil Girl From Mars’: Why I Write Science Fiction”.

I finally started reading Lilith’s Brood about a month ago, got started on the second book recently.

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First snow

Black and white illustration of people dancing

Last Friday, it snowed properly for the first time. At least the first time this year, the first time since we moved to Brooklyn, and the first time ever for B. He’s still too little to make much of it, but it was fun taking him in to Prospect Park to stomp around a little, and to see the sledding and cross country skiers.

By the next day, the snow piled up on our neighbor’s wooden arbor had melted in to these swirling shapes, it looked like people dancing.

The snow’s gone for the most part, now it’s just frozen mud and slush puddles.

The holidays were more lonely than we had planned, but we got to have Christmas dinner with a new neighbor/friend. That was unexpected, and special, especially considering the circumstances.

B’s still out of daycare because of Omicron. It’s wonderful to spend all this time with him, but in terms of the personal and work plans I had for 2022, it’s pretty stressful.

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More plans cancelled

We were supposed to go to the UK for Christmas so that B could meet his Nana and Grandad, his Great-grandma, his auntie and uncle and cousins. So that he could meet Billy and Rae, and our friends. So that we could go for walks on the moor and sit by the fire and visit the Stanza Stones and cook with family.

We’ve had to cancel it, with the new variant.

When will this end? I’m so tired.

At least B has no idea what’s going on.

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Cutting out the noise

in general I look at things now like “is this something I like or enjoy” “does this affect me in any way” “can I do something about this.” if 1 is false, and either 2 or 3 is false, I literally do not care. this excludes almost everything most people on here talk about

A private account I follow on Twitter put this out in the world, it is such a simple and useful framework for cutting down the noise. Not just on Twitter, anywhere. It’s so easy to get stressed / outraged / cynical / tired etc when there is so much to keep up with. Ignore it, keep the good vibes.