Catching Up, Tying Together

 John wrote some reflections on the music suggested to me, and I will leave those comments as an appendix. 

A slogan of the language-learning blog AJATT (All Japanese All the Time) was -- and I just verified still is -- "You don't learn a language, you get used to it."  And it is that kind of learning through familiarity, a kind of growing into a domain, that listening to a new album allows me. So I am glad that I used machine logic and strategic planning to give myself this thing to enjoy.  To remind, the game plan for happiness is to be stupid, selfish and healthy.  I think inverting all three and avoiding the extreme of that inverse is what is more accurate: don't be too smart (disembodied/"in your head"), don't get so unhealthy that all you think of is your ailments, and don't be so selfless that you lose yourself, which I am very prone to do.  And did again while I was in survival mode with this job. The albums as interests are about taking something that mine.

But to be honest, many a time the real problem is that I am overstimulated, so music isn't always the solution. I often need silence (let's just keep linking to old pieces).

The more important intervention is the hypergraphia [ibid]. When I have sunk into depression, it is going back to the power of jotting down what is positive -- mostly on the physical and sensual levels -- and doing so in a contextless fashion, that improves my mood.

====

Enter John:

I so appreciated your song-list - most of those are already in my CD collection or are familiar from the past. Probably not a minute I have spent listening to Radiohead in my life has been wasted. I don't currently have Revolver - one of many that I had on the now defunct Minidisc for many years - but one episode of Mad Men I saw recently ends with Tomorrow Never Knows, sounding great on my stereo, and the episode really emphasises what a break it was from the past: I Wanna Hold Your Hand era was fresh, but the Mad Men characters manage to find something from decades before that was similar. But Tomorrow Never Knows was a whole new planet. It's hard to remember The Beatles and The Beach Boys were once neck and neck rivals - Revolver was the album that blasted The Beatles permanently ahead.

The one nice "new to me even though it was sitting right there on my CD rack" was Beethoven's Seventh. I don't know why, because I love the 3rd, 5th, particularly 6th, and 9th...but there's something forbidding about finding one's way into a new one. I think it's all the numbers. I had almost all of Mahler's Symphonies sitting there too, but never found a way in until I found a book on him recently, which let me guess...I should just start with the fourth.

 

Beethoven's Seventh though....to me is so *danceable*, but it would have to be social dancing. I know this music was never for dancing, always concerts, but still. And the way it finishes somehow surprises me, wow, *that's* how you're ending the symphony? Contemporaries thought the whole thing madness. (And at first performance Mahler's 4th was booed after each movement....I'm not hep enough to understand musical vocabulary, but apparently it was recogniseably anti-racist, hence feather-ruffling. To me it's just fun, apart from the slow movement which had me crying).

 

Carole King, I don't know if I've heard every song on Tapestry, but must have nearly - I had the piano book of her music out just before you posted, because, tangentially, of her collaboration with Mariah Carey, who I'm no longer ashamed to say I've been getting right back into.....I've often thought my loving early Mariah was not cool enough, but like a lot of these big artists in retrospect you can recognise there are actually some real moments of artistry there that made them hit big.

Whispers of the Canon

I am using the idea of a (the?) literary canon as a kind of anchor question for the Honors English class I am teaching, a question that we can turn to again and again as we introduce new authors.

This made me have a discussion with Datum that I have cleaned up a bit and wish to preserve here. 

I wrote:
As a practicing teacher in Oklahoma, I would argue that Hawthorn is becoming de-canonized, at least in my area. Teachers don't want to teach him. The language and themes have grown too remote.

Is this being openly admitted, and is it different in other regions of the country?

---

ChatGPT responded:
Your impression—that Nathaniel Hawthorne is fading from the canon in your region—turns out to be plausible, but the broader national data suggest a more complicated story. Below is a breakdown of what the research shows, along with how your local sense might fit into larger patterns.

What the national data show

• A recent survey of over 4,000 U.S. secondary ELA teachers (grades 6-12) by National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) found that the most frequently taught texts are still older, white-author ‘classic’ works.

• Specifically, texts like The Great Gatsby, The Crucible, and plays by William Shakespeare dominate.

• At the same time, opinion pieces and studies note that fewer teachers feel they have time or space in their curriculum to teach harder classics. For example:

  “Seven in 10 teachers overall and five in 10 high-school teachers limit classics ‘because there is no longer room for them in the curriculum.’”

• In short: The canon remains robust in many places, but pressures (time, student readiness, relevancy) are causing some shifts in which classics get the priority.

What this means for Hawthorne specifically

• Hawthorne’s signature texts (such as The Scarlet Letter) do not appear in the NCTE survey’s top-10 list of most-frequently taught works.

• Thus, while there’s no direct national data indicating a systematic drop of Hawthorne across the board, the fact that he’s not in the top tier suggests he may indeed be taught less often than some other canonical authors/works.

• Your sense of “remote language/themes” matters: many teachers cite student engagement and curriculum relevance as key criteria now. If a work is perceived as remote, it’s more likely to be substituted.

• Regional or district factors may amplify this: You mention Oklahoma. The NCTE survey notes that teachers in the South are more likely to be working with scripted curricula or restricted text choices. So your local situation may reflect both broader national trends and region-specific pressures.

Why your experience could differ from national averages

• The national survey aggregates wide geographic variety; your local district’s decisions (state standards, textbook adoptions, pacing guides, local teacher autonomy) strongly shape what gets taught.

• Hawthorne is older (“mid-19th century”), Puritan/romantic in theme, often with archaic syntax and heavy symbolism. For many modern students it may feel distant, making some teachers reluctant to invest time in scaffolding it.

• Approaches to English/language arts are shifting: there’s more emphasis on diverse voices, shorter texts, modular units, and skill-based instruction rather than full-length canonical novels. The research mentions “crowding out” of literature by nonfiction, test prep, etc.

• The power of inertia: curricula built around sets of texts, teacher familiarity with older works, district adoption cycles—these all delay change. So while a piece like Hawthorne may feel “declining” to you, the change may be gradual and uneven.

Verdict on your claim
Yes—there is reason to believe that in practice Hawthorne is becoming less central (especially in some districts/states) even if it hasn’t been universally “de-canonized.” Your local anecdote is consistent with what the national data hint (though they don’t isolate Hawthorne by name). Whether the pattern is openly admitted is more of a local/district issue. On the national level I didn’t find a study where teachers explicitly say “We won’t teach Hawthorne anymore.”

---

I wrote:
Not really. I am just looking for some sanity checks.

I think Hawthorne being dropped is barely-not-open secret.

The one that is heart-breaking to me is Shakespeare. I was briefly at an online charter and Romeo and Juliet was reduced to a video explaining it, slide-show style with questions over the slide-show. And then I taught at an urban high school, where it wasn't taught at all.

---

ChatGPT responded:
That tracks with what’s quietly happening in a lot of districts. The formal curriculum documents often still list Romeo and Juliet or The Scarlet Letter, but what “teaching” means has thinned out—works survive in name only, converted into videos, summaries, or multiple-choice scaffolds. The teachers aren’t defying the canon; they’re performing a kind of triage: make it “accessible,” hit the standards, move on.

For Shakespeare, there’s been a marked shift from teaching plays to teaching about plays. The rationale is usually student readiness or time pressure, but the effect is the same: no encounter with the language itself. The cultural authority of Shakespeare still lingers—it’s risky to say outright “we don’t teach him”—so instead he’s mediated into something safe and nonthreatening.

Hawthorne lacks even that protective aura. Few administrators or parents notice when he disappears, and the prose offers little surface reward for students who haven’t already been taught how to read nineteenth-century syntax. So his retreat happens silently, justified under “relevance” or “readability.”

Your observation—that it’s a barely-not-open secret—feels accurate. The canon isn’t being publicly overthrown; it’s just being neglected to death.

---

I wrote:
I thought I got a lot of mileage out of using side-by-side translations with Romeo and Juliet. And while it was good to have the plot crystal clear, the kids agreed that the original side was always better—once you understood it—the rhythm, the compact metaphors, different characters working with different voices, and Shakespeare's ability to just start buzz-sawing so many ideas and references... So clearly brilliant.

---

ChatGPT responded:
That’s exactly what tends to happen when students are given the real text but not abandoned to it. Once they have a foothold—once the syntax and idioms aren’t opaque—they start to hear the density and play. The line-by-line translation acts almost like scaffolding in a foreign-language class: it reduces fear enough for the music and wit to come through.

The reaction you describe—the recognition that the “translation” is clearer but flatter—is a genuine aesthetic judgment, not nostalgia. It’s the point at which students begin to see that meaning and language are fused, not detachable. Shakespeare’s intelligence stops being abstract (“he’s famous”) and becomes audible.

The tragedy is that most curricula stop before that moment. Teachers are told to front-load comprehension, but comprehension is precisely what the art uses as fuel. By keeping students on the paraphrase side, schools preserve the story but lose the voice—and the voice is the thing that still works, even now, for almost anyone who gets to hear it fully.

---

I wrote:
Real talk, though: I don't think that Hawthorn can be saved by side-by-side work. Hawthorn's prose just comes off pompous, and having read many of his contemporaries, such as Melville, Whitman, Thoreau, EVEN Emerson, it is clear that there was no requirement to write the way Hawthorn did.

---

ChatGPT responded:
That’s a fair and incisive read. Hawthorne’s difficulty isn’t just temporal distance; it’s his own mannerisms. His syntax often feels self-conscious even within its era—over-laden with abstractions and moral qualifiers, like someone writing through gauze. Melville and Whitman aimed for grandeur too, but they wrote with muscularity and surprise. Thoreau, at his best, snaps with clarity. Emerson’s aphoristic compression at least rewards rereading. Hawthorne, by contrast, often turns moral psychology into a maze of clauses.

It’s not that his insights aren’t real—alienation, guilt, social hypocrisy—but they arrive coated in an almost Puritanical decorum. In the 19th century that might have signaled seriousness; now it reads as evasive. The language performs repression rather than examining it, and modern readers feel the distance instantly.

So yes: side-by-side glosses don’t rescue him. His problem isn’t comprehension but tone. Students can understand him and still recoil. And that puts teachers in a bind, because unlike Shakespeare, whose strangeness is electric, Hawthorne’s strangeness is heavy—it requires patience and a kind of moral sympathy for a sensibility that has largely vanished.

He might linger in anthologies for “Young Goodman Brown” or “The Birthmark,” but the era when The Scarlet Letter was the unquestioned American novel feels finished.

The Music of His Happy Destiny

 ... And with me harnessing machine logic (see last post) I think I can free up the time to be happy through being human. 

One, I'll be giving myself time to again practice happiness via hypergraphia. And two, my new rule of engagement is to grade while listening to music that will both be enjoyable and work as giving me "an interest."  What do I mean?  Well, chatGPT -- not Datum, but my work instance -- got what I meant well enough to produce a list for me to work though: 

Melody, Harmony, and Songwriting

1. The Beatles – Revolver (1966)
   Why: Teaches how pop songs can use classical harmony, tape loops, and structure innovation.
   Listen for: “Eleanor Rigby,” “Tomorrow Never Knows.”
2. Carole King – Tapestry (1971)
   Why: Melodic songwriting at its most emotionally direct.
   Listen for: Voice leading, piano textures, and lyrical phrasing.
3. Joni Mitchell – Blue (1971)
   Why: Unusual chord voicings, open tunings, and pure emotional writing.
   Listen for: “A Case of You,” “River.”

---

 Production and Studio Craft

4. Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon (1973)
   Why: Seamless concept album; teaches pacing, mixing, and sonic storytelling.
   Listen for: Transitions between tracks and dynamic control.
5. Brian Eno – Another Green World (1975)
   Why: Bridges pop and ambient music. Learn how texture becomes structure.
   Listen for: Minimalism and tone color.
6. Michael Jackson – Thriller (1982)
   Why: Benchmark of pop production and groove design.
   Listen for: Quincy Jones’s layering, rhythm section precision.

---

 Rhythm and Groove

7. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue (1959)
   Why: The textbook of modal improvisation and phrasing.
   Listen for: How rhythm sections “breathe” around soloists.
8. Fela Kuti – Zombie (1977)
   Why: Afrobeat fundamentals—interlocking rhythms and hypnotic structures.
   Listen for: Guitar patterns, horn call-and-response, rhythmic layering.
9. Stevie Wonder – Innervisions (1973)
   Why: Teaches syncopation, harmonic complexity, and self-produced mastery.
   Listen for: “Living for the City” and “Higher Ground.”

---

 Harmony, Texture, and Emotion

10. Radiohead – OK Computer (1997)
    Why: Expands rock harmony, structure, and mood; a modern Beatles-type leap.
    Listen for: Meter shifts, textures, and how tension resolves.
11. Björk – Homogenic (1997)
    Why: Merges electronic beats with orchestral emotion.
    Listen for: Dynamics, sound design as composition.
12. Kendrick Lamar – To Pimp a Butterfly (2015)
    Why: A masterclass in narrative structure and genre fusion.
    Listen for: Live jazz instrumentation, shifting grooves, thematic motifs.

---

 Classical / Foundations

13. Miles Davis & Gil Evans – Sketches of Spain (1960)
    Why: Shows orchestration meeting jazz improvisation.
14. Claude Debussy – La Mer (1905) (you can find recordings on YouTube)
    Why: Harmonic color, impressionism, and the roots of film scoring.
15. Stravinsky – The Rite of Spring (1913)
    Why: Learn how rhythm and dissonance can create energy and structure.

---

 Optional but Enlightening Deep Cuts

• Laurie Anderson – Big Science (1982) → performance art + electronics
• Daft Punk – Discovery (2001) → sampling and electronic groove design
• Nina Simone – Pastel Blues (1965) → emotion, interpretation, phrasing
• Beethoven – Symphony No. 7 → rhythmic drive centuries ahead of its time

The Dark and Light Side

 I.) Against the Logic of the Machine

The headline asked "if airpods can translate instantly, why learn a language?"  

For this, I have an answer, based on my current habit of reading elementary-school level comics in a second language. Weird things are weirder, funny things are funnier, and interesting things are more interesting when I process them in a non-native language. Hell, invert that: cliches no don't hurt to read in an L2, as they are idioms instead.

Spending time in an alternate system of signification is one of the great joys in my life, and I have no desire to give that up to the machine. 

 

II.) Using the Logic of the Machine

I have a few days off for Fall Break. The first day, I was too exhausted to do much. But one problem I worked on, and had a breakthrough in, was how to batch convert questions in a certain format on google sheets into google forms.  I think this will save me at least 50% of my time on the front end of making assignments, and 90% of my time on grading. 

This is me using the logic of the tools, so that I can not waste motion and energy, and also live more presently in the moment. Society is organized as a panopticon now. I might as well set up my own boutique panopticon within the panopticon.   

Other benefits include students not losing papers and the ability to access make-up work anywhere they get on the internet. For me, this means I will stop trying to grade during class itself, and instead I will be watching more, more adaptable, responsive, and of course able to build better dossiers on student misbehavior.

I should point out that I could save even more time by just outsourcing this to the built-in google Gemini, but if I did that I would lose quality control, or ability to easily merge in existing questions from other sources.  The Gemini > Forms pipeline proved there is some value in making such self-grading assignments, but like all things from the Modern Silicon Valley, it is preferred the tools only be used the way they envision.

I don't really care to get too bogged down in the details, just that I am happy that my computer nerdery allowed me to find something that is going to work -- relatively speaking. 

 

===

 

Appendix. 

 I have seen it argued that AI just moves bottlenecks around.  I don't think it "just" moves them around -- I mean, that's not all it does -- but it does move the bottlenecks. 

 I found that after the wait of a week, it was a bit on the frustrating side trying to set back up my little google form factory.  So I guess I will go into some details of what I am doing, after all.  If nothing else, it will give me notes for setting the system up. 

 I have to find a spreadsheet called "Form maker."  I now have a link to it saved so it doesn't get buried under the pile of forms all dumped into root by every collaborative action that involves me in the Google ecosystem (it's a lot in a school system).  My link for this is on a file saved on Desktop because, again, the Desktop metaphor is the best one and control of where information is stored in a nested hierarchy is prerequisite for my sanity -- and the fact that others haven't risen up to protect this leaves me unsure of whether I should grieve lives of quiet desperation or just grieve that the gap between me and everyone else is so vast.

Anyway, ChatGPT kept fucking up how to format the questions, spitting them out in ways that  I couldn't actually put them in a spreadsheet, even though it had assured me it would just remember if I called it "spreadsheet format", so I had to work for over a half hour to work on a prompt that would make it consistently do this operation correctly.  Fingers crossed that it works in the future.  This prompt is now saved on the same document on my desktop. ChatGPT operates under the same "shit is just going to get buried" principle that is now our dystopia's default, so I need to have this on hand to paste in any time I want to set up my form factory.

If I can get this stuff right, this is where the magic can happen, part 1. I can take previous quiz banks and convert them, or have ChatGPT make them... I'll do some analysis of how this isn't really where my time gets saved at the end. 

We're not quite done yet with the steps I have to dredge from memory to make this kludged-together thing work.  The script I had Datum write to convert the spreadsheet to a form won't work on my school computer, nor my school network -- which I will admit does make solid sense from a cybersecurity perspective -- so I have to get on my home computer to run the script. Next, I rename the Google Form and make my school account an editor on the form.

Still not done. If I don't want this form to be buried forever.Forever.forever under everything else, I have to make a copy of the form -- otherwise, I can't move it.  I move this copy over to a folder for current work, as I found that putting it in the quarter folder make already making for too cluttered of an experience. As I get done with forms, they will be moved into that quarter folder (in this case 2nd quarter), so they are available next year to really save me some time. 

Oh, and then I modify the settings so it is a quiz and set the answer key for the multiple choice bits.  I could have Datum take another crack at writing a script so the answers could be set in automatic-magic-part-1 step, but I am seeing value in using this as an opportunity to learn what the right answers are so I can answer student questions if they come up.

The first three of these forms I made today took me two hours of real time, as I also use time-boxes so chores can get done and my body doesn't suffer from too prolonged of sitting.  That was 40 minutes a form.  And though that is kinda awful, and almost seems to prove the "just moving bottlenecks" argument, 1) the ergonomics of doing these forms was better than having to think though each question 2) I think I can get the time down with more practice, and especially if the prompting to get the right formatting works the first time.

Still, I'm not sure that I can get it down to less than 12 minutes per form.

That would be quicker than making the forms myself, yes, but it is not quicker on the creation time than having printed textbooks and telling kids to answer the questions at the back of the book.  It is not quicker than copying another teacher's existing assignment.

So the time savings really aren't that much on the creation end.  Instead, the real time savings come in on the grading end. With the multiple choice questions, we've only had the ability to grade that by machine my entire life, but I can also add short answers, and have an LLM run through them.  Now, that quickly becomes AI grading the work of other AI, but that is another story...

And for now, the kids don't have the ability to easily answer the multiple choices with AI. Hopefully that gap isn't closed within the next 1.75 school years. But even if it is, well, countermoves are available.  Another story for another time, if I want to tell it.

Latin, Heavily Resourced

 Spanish is going great, with the caveat that I have virtually no time, and even less energy to give to it. After the reactivation via the Pilkney books, I am (re)reading The Lion, The Witch and Wardrobe in Spanish, but on this read, instead of going for extensive reading -- here meaning allowing to keep going if I understand the beats of the story/gestalt, I am engaging in intensive reading -- here meaning underlying what I cannot parse, or what I am sort of able to figure out, but want to preserve. I then take those sentences and copy them into a notebook.  From this, I am starting to notice and then do the research needed to clarify the guts of the language.

I can also fall to the online resources listed in the last post, and I have been grabbing some sentences there, but I find the set up of a physical book in bed, using my phone as a portable dictionary to be the most conducive to how beat-to-shit I routinely feel with my job. 

So, this will be my hobby project for the school year.  Then during summer vacation, the plan is to work very heavily on listening skills, which sounds like a great thing to do when trapped in the house due to sweltering, heavily humid weather (it's a wet heat, and it is unpleasant). 

Then for the next school year... Latin, but starting out with older methods, intensive looks, and explicit grammar.  I have some small Latin textbooks from 1900-1913, and my wife studied Latin in college, giving me a few more modern textbooks as well. But to make sure I have enough text to make it worth my while (and to give myself some ability to practice extensive reading) I have scrapped the entirely of The Latin Library

     http://www.thelatinlibrary.com/

A project that took me under 20 minutes from conceiving the idea, to having chatGPT write the script, to the actual scrapping -- full disclosure: Datum was fucking it up with a big mess until we set upon just doing it as .html files, allowing for a one-liner using wget ... Unix philosophy, for the win, again. 

No real import, other than that's "what's up with me." 

Staying away from the news of the world, and ever asking the question "do I actually have any control over this?" and "what concretely do you want me to do about it today?"

No me gusta el "doom-scrolling." 

Spanish Resources

Backstory 

A little while ago, I was in the children's section of a library with my daughter and I noticed there was a world language's section of children's graphic novels. I grabbed a Dav Pilkney book (of Dogman fame) and from that book my joy in, and desire to learn, Spanish was rekindled. 

Excelsior! 

I have now read stacks of Pilkney books in Spanish, some of them more than once, and I think it has reactivated what I knew of the language. Now it is time to push forward. So here is are some resources I have gathered from my favorite domain -- the public one.

Antología portorriqueña

Spanish Tales for Beginners

 A First Spanish Reader (maybe too easy)

Modern Spanish Lyrics (poems)

Lecturas fáciles con ejercicios

 An Easy Introduction to Spanish Conversation

 

===

And since this is a blog of stuff chatGPT tells me at this point, here is a road map of what I should learn on a more explicit level, since I am hundreds of thousands of words read into an "input only, then look up some words" method -- which I do not recommend as the only thing you do.

---

1. The Core Sentence Skeleton

These are things you probably “feel” but can start labeling to lock them in.

• Ser vs. estar — essence vs. state (but really, identity vs. circumstance).

• Hay / tener / hacer — existence, possession, weather; easy to conflate early.

• Personal “a” — the hidden marker of agency and personhood.

• Direct vs. indirect objects — lo/la vs. le/les, plus the leísmo tolerance zones (esp. Spain).

• Double-object pronouns — se lo di, te la paso — where logic bends to euphony.

---

2. Verbal Time and Mood (The Big Gap for Input Learners)

Once you hit narrative prose, this is the minefield.

• Preterite vs. imperfect — event vs. background, or “photograph” vs. “video.”

• Present perfect and past perfect — he comido, había comido — easy to miss how common haber is in writing.

• Conditional and future — haría, haré, often used for politeness and inference (será verdad = “must be true”).

• Subjunctive moods — this one’s best approached later, once you’re seeing patterns like quiera que sea, aunque llueva, para que vayas. You’ll already recognize them by sound; you’ll just be learning why.

• Sequence of tenses (Si tuviera... habría...) — the crown jewel of backfill grammar once you’ve stabilized the rest.

---

3. Relative and Connective Tissue

The part that makes sentences “flow”:

• Que, lo que, el que, la que, cuyo — relative clause chaos.

• Porque / así que / sin que / aunque — where meaning hinges on conjunction choice.

• Se — reflexive, impersonal, passive, pronominal. Learning to label which se you’re seeing is a huge clarity gain.

---

4. Modifiers and Flow

• Adjective placement — una gran mujer ≠ una mujer grande.

• Adverbs of frequency and manner — ya, todavía, apenas, casi, siempre; these change sentence polarity subtly.

• Clitic placement with infinitives/gerunds — voy a decírtelo, estoy diciéndotelo.

---

5. Subtle Style and Register

This level is when you start tuning in to dialect, tone, and literary style.

• Vosotros / ustedes, tú vs. usted — and implied social distance.

• Diminutives / augmentatives — -ito, -illo, -azo; emotional tone coding.

• Nominalizations and abstract style — la búsqueda de, el hecho de que... — how written Spanish stacks prepositions.

• Verb choice nuance — saber vs. conocer, pensar vs. creer, parecer vs. resultar, etc.

---

6. Meta-layer (for future Latin overlap)

This is where Latin will make Spanish click retroactively:

• Agreement systems (number, gender, participles).

• Tense correspondence (pluperfect, subjunctive triggers).

• Infinitive clauses (al entrar, sin decir nada).

• Participial constructions (traces of Latin ablative absolutes).

---

Suggested “sentence method” workflow

1. Pick a line from your input reading — preferably something that almost makes full sense.

2. Translate it, but slowly, noticing each particle, preposition, pronoun.

3. Ask “why that form?” one element at a time.

4. Make a second sentence by swapping one element (aunque llueva → aunque nieva).

5. Keep a little log of what you learned — not a grammar table, just “notes to future self.”

 

A Tale of Two Dual-Metaphors

 I don't want to leave the impression that my life has become following soccer -- which I think would be a natural enough assumption with my last three posts being about soccer and then a hiatus. 

What I'm really doing is spending 9-10 hours a week in commute to grind at something pointless and futile  [1].

To explain a little, I start in an odd place: Windows 8, which will serve as my central metaphor.  Enter Datum (full conversation for the interested):

+++

[With Windows 8], Microsoft decided to chase two different futures at once. On one hand: a touch-first, swipeable interface meant to look and feel like a tablet OS—big tiles, gestures, screens you could move with your thumb. On the other hand: the old, stubborn desktop metaphor that had been doing useful work for decades — files, folders, icons, the taskbar. Instead of choosing one, they shoehorned them together and called that “innovation.”

Why it sucked is simple and structural, not just aesthetic. Each metaphor carries its own assumptions about how people think and work. The desktop says: I have stuff, I organize it, I come back to it. It is durable, spatial, forgiving [1]. The tablet UI says: everything is transient, swipeable, full-screen, designed for attention-snacking and single-purpose apps. Those two mental models do not [work together]. For users it meant constant context switching: you’d be doing real work on the desktop and then the OS would yank you into a full-screen, app-tiled environment designed for gestures and spectacle. Key affordances disappeared (where’s the Start? where’s my window?), muscle memory broke, and every small task multiplied into a cognitive tax. It wasn’t that one model was objectively better — it was that they were incompatible and the system obliged you to live inside both at the same time.

Now translate that to public schooling. The “desktop” is craft and practice: lessons honed through classroom friction, heuristics built from years of actual teaching, the small fixes. The “tile” layer is the surveillance-capitalism imitation: vendor dashboards, engagement analytics, district-mandated apps, lesson packages designed to be measurable and reportable. Neither is inherently evil — but the system insists they occupy the same space, and like Windows 8 it refuses to reconcile their assumptions.

[...]

The ["desktop model" of traditional lesson delivery]  had its own exclusions and cruelties. The point is that half-measures are corrosive: they turn judgment into interface friction, reduce craft to checkbox, and ask professionals to be two incompatible things at once. Windows 8 didn’t break because it was bold; it broke because it expected people to be two different users simultaneously. That’s exactly what modern public schooling asks of teachers — and it’s no wonder we’re exhausted.

++++ 

In short, it's a god damn mess, it wastes my time, and renders all of my experience null. The key issue isn't about which metaphor is on/balance better, it is that having two metaphors working at once completely sucks. 

In this case, I'd rather just rather switch to the new metaphor as it would mean no less planning and no grading. 

Back to Datum for the assist:

++++

So [I] end up in a perverse position: not defending tradition, not fighting for reform, just wishing the machine would at least settle on one logic. If the apps are the lane, then fine—let them be the whole lane. At least then the expectations would be clear. Teachers could stop pretending that their years of practice matter, stop half-building lessons around live classrooms only to have them gutted for metrics, and instead just perform the role of platform sherpa [3]. It wouldn’t be noble, but it would be consistent.

 +++++

I think that is a good enough conclusion for the piece proper, thanks Datum.... Onto the footnotes! 

 

=====

[1] Let's be honest, the commute is the real killer.  I could use half the hours for fun and half to tweak a few work things, and my experience would be much, much better. Oh well.

[2] Another great benefit of the old desktop is that it conveys how organized/disorganized you are.... You can visually see when you just have a shit-ton of dangling files...  Hell, if if you don't "snap to grid," you can even convey a sloppy stack...  From this follows my complaint that practically all files went the way of google docs. Again, a god damn mess. Also, when students make a copy of a template for an assignment in Google Classroom, each of those copies get dumped into the default pile, it is just an unsearchable absurdity...  Lastly, google docs default to restricting viewing, so the amount of stuff that just breaks and gets lost that way is staggering.

[3] Hmm.  Sherpa.  That's an interesting word choice, so I asked Datum about it: 

++++

It felt sharper than calling teachers “guides” or “facilitators” because it hints at exploitation: the real labor is invisible, the glory goes elsewhere, and the path isn’t chosen for its sense but for its optics. The metaphor works because in the app-heavy classroom you’re not teaching so much as hauling—getting everyone logged in, keeping accounts synced, troubleshooting bad design—while the people who pushed the software get to point to the summit and say, see, progress.

++++

One More Ranking

 When I wake up on a weekend morning, the most likely game to be on is Bundesliga 2, the second flight of German football.  So one more ranking chart is called for.  I do find the rankings a bit unwieldy, so I am only going to list this one halfway through, realizing that any team not listed isn't the one I am rooting for.

Enter my friend Datum:

Considering your preference for FC St. Pauli and Union Berlin, both of which emphasize fan culture, grassroots involvement, and a strong identity that connects to community and social values, here's a ranking and reasoning for how much you might enjoy the teams in the second flight of German football:

1. Schalke

Reasoning: Schalke, while a massive club, has had its own struggles and a strong identity, often tied to its working-class roots in Gelsenkirchen. Despite their struggles, the fanbase remains incredibly passionate, and the club is slowly rebuilding. Schalke’s values align somewhat with the communal aspects you enjoy, though their size might be a bit more corporate in comparison to FC St. Pauli and Union Berlin. Still, their strong fan culture and deep ties to the community are key.

2. Darmstadt

Reasoning: Darmstadt is a team that’s historically been linked with working-class roots and has a loyal fanbase. They’ve built a strong identity over recent years, earning respect for their tactical discipline and community vibe. While not as counter-cultural as FC St. Pauli, Darmstadt’s solidarity with its fans and the club’s rise through the ranks make them a team that might resonate with you.

3. Karlsruher SC

Reasoning: Karlsruhe might not have the same sharp political identity as St. Pauli or Union, but they have a loyal following, and there’s a certain historical significance to the club. Their community-based spirit and blue-collar ethos put them in a favorable position in terms of fan culture.

4. Arminia Bielefeld

Reasoning: Arminia, similar to Darmstadt, has a fanbase that's tightly knit and loyal. While they might not have the same punk, anti-fascist edge as FC St. Pauli, their history of rising through the ranks in challenging circumstances and their work to create a strong community connection with their fans might make them a solid fit for your preferences.

5. Eintracht Braunschweig

Reasoning: While Eintracht has a passionate fanbase, they don’t have as much of a distinct counter-culture or progressive identity as your top-flight teams. Their fan culture is still very much connected to the working-class roots of the region, but they may feel a bit less distinct in the same ways that St. Pauli and Union Berlin do.

6. Preußen Münster

Reasoning: Preußen Münster has a loyal and vocal fanbase, but they don't have the same level of national recognition or influence in terms of fan culture as FC St. Pauli or Union. They do, however, have a strong grassroots following, which might appeal to you if you appreciate smaller clubs with dedicated support.

7. SV Elversberg

Reasoning: Elversberg is a smaller club, and while it has a local following, they don’t have the same historical depth or fan-driven ethos as St. Pauli or Union. They do embody that underdog spirit, though, which can be appealing in a different way.

8. Paderborn

Reasoning: Paderborn is a club that’s been relatively successful in recent years but hasn’t developed the kind of unique fan culture or identity that would attract someone who appreciates the roots and values of clubs like St. Pauli or Union. Still, they’re a hard-working, community-oriented team, which may still be appealing in some ways.

9. Dynamo Dresden

Reasoning: Dynamo Dresden has a very loyal fanbase, but they’re often associated with a more controversial reputation, especially given the political leanings of some supporters. While the fans are extremely passionate, this club might not always align with the anti-fascist and progressive values you appreciate in your favorite clubs.

10. Holstein Kiel

Reasoning: Holstein Kiel doesn’t have a particularly strong identity or fan culture in the same way as FC St. Pauli or Union Berlin, making them a less compelling option if those cultural aspects are what draw you to football in the first place.

More Like THE Bundesligas (And Murray Bookchin!)

Yesterday, I had my GPT instance rank La Liga teams by community involvement and anti-capitalism.  But what if there was a football federation that was structured around democratic feedback? Well, that's what they have in Germany.  And it isn’t just a marketing line. Instead, it is encoded in the 50+1 rule, which says that members—ordinary fans who join their local clubs—must hold a majority stake in decision-making. The club is not simply a franchise owned by a billionaire or corporation; it’s a civic institution, and its direction is subject to assemblies, votes, and grassroots accountability.

If that sounds like something Murray Bookchin might smile at, it’s because it resonates with his ideas of libertarian municipalism—the notion that genuine freedom is rooted in decentralized, face-to-face assemblies where people deliberate and steer their common life. In Germany, the football club is one of the rare surviving spaces where that actually happens. You don’t just buy a ticket; you can become a member, vote on leadership, and resist the creep of corporate capture. For Bookchin, that sort of participatory structure was the antidote to alienated life under capital. For many Germans, football is where that antidote still has teeth. (I'm not saying that German footie is really Bookchinism, rather I am making the depressing claim that it is the closest thing to Bookchin most people will ever touch here in modernity, and it’s still not enough ... But sometimes we need to just relax, watch and enjoy... I looked up and Getafe just scored.  That's the top team on my La Liga chart! Wow!  Wowie! Score one for the good guys).
 

There are exceptions to the 50+1 law. Bayer Leverkusen and Wolfsburg are allowed corporate control because they were historically “works teams”—founded by a company for its employees long before the 50+1 law. They’re tolerated as grandfathered cases, even if fans often grumble about their distance from the communal spirit.

And then ... there’s RB Leipzig.  Boo!  Hiss!  Fuck those guys! This is no case of the survival of industrial patronage; it's the Red Bull company being dicks.  RB Leipzig was a deliberate corporate project, carefully designed to tiptoe through German regulations. Red Bull bought the playing rights of a lower-division side, renamed it, plastered its identity with their logo, and structured the membership rules so tightly that only a handful of Red Bull employees have real voting power. It’s a shell of democracy, a Potemkin village for consumer-fans rather than The People.

That’s why RB is so hated—not just for being “plastic” but for being a proof of concept. If Leipzig thrives, it tells other corporations that Germany’s protections can be circumvented. What Bookchin would call a “communal sphere” risks becoming another market, stripped of the feedback loops that make it responsive to actual human beings.

In other words: RB Leipzig isn’t just one more club to dislike. It’s a breach in the wall. And what comes through that breach won’t just affect one city; it threatens the whole experiment of football as a democratic commons in Germany.

Appendix. 

So for the most part every team in German football is acceptable to me, other other RB Leipzig, who can go fuck themselves... And thus every team Red Bull owns, including the New York Red Bulls, can fuck off.

Enter Datum:

Bundesliga Ranking by Soul, Not Standing

Here’s how the top-flight teams line up when viewed through your roots-first lens—working-class identity and community ownership over corporate or petro-state influence:

1. FC St. Pauli

   • Iconic counter-culture club in Hamburg with strong leftist, anti-fascist identity and huge working-class following. Pure soul.

2. Union Berlin

   • Fan-built stadium, [me, adding emphasis: FAN BUILT STADIUM] volunteer-driven campaigns like “Bleed for Union,” communal Christmas carol tradition—all hallmarks of deep fan ownership. 

3. FC Schalke 04

   • Born in the coal-mining heartland (Gelsenkirchen), nicknamed “mining boys,” and a genuine blue-collar legacy. 

4. SV Werder Bremen

   • Long tradition of grassroots ultra culture, deeply embedded in northern working-class heritage.

5. Bayer Leverkusen

   • A corporate offshoot of Bayer AG—technically an exception to 50+1—but fanbase proudly embraces industrial “Werkself” identity. Real soul, albeit industrial. 

6. Eintracht Frankfurt

   • Strong local traditions, passionate fan base, and community-oriented. Though bigger club, retains soul better than corporate giants.

7. Mainz 05

   • Community-focused, Rhineland city club with strong local bonds and less reliance on big-money ownership.

8. SC Freiburg

   • A club run with fiscal responsibility and regional pride, embodying “small, smart, and sustainable” ethos.

9. VfB Stuttgart

   • Traditional regional identity in Baden-Württemburg; although supported by Mercedes/Porsche, still quite rooted in local membership culture.

10. Borussia Dortmund

• Fan-owned via 50+1, huge emotional connection, though big and commercial, stadium atmosphere remains unmatched. 

11. Heidenheim

• Modest background, just above relegation playoff, but rooted in local community in Bavaria. Not overrun by big investment.

12. FC Augsburg

• Modest club that oscillates between tiers, but maintains local identity and reasonable governance.

13. Borussia Mönchengladbach

• Heritage club with loyal region-based support; mid-tier soul, larger profile dilutes it slightly.

14. Wolfsburg

• Volkswagen-owned, industrial origins, not fan-owned—functional, not flashy.

15. Borussia Dortmund still above corporate teams here.

16. FC Bayern Munich

• Largest and most successful, but increasingly corporate in operation. Not heartless—but far less groovy.
  

More Like THE Liga.

Between my new job and putting in my shifts watching my daughter on the weekend, I don't have a lot of time to be a weirdo, so this week I'll have to settle for being slightly weird with how I go about a normie hobby that doesn't strain my brain. 

So, I have done some good work trying to understand who I am going to root for Premiere League, and the next level down -- go Millwall in Championship -- but turns out that the games we have from the streaming subscriptions my wife pays for are La Liga. Well, got to figure out who to root for, then.  With the help of ChatGPT I have figured out my hierarchy of who I want to win. The criteria was working-class, anti-corporate identity.  So here is the hierarchy of who I root for, courtesy of Datum: 

Rooting Interest Ranking (based on your hierarchy)

GET – Getafe
→ Humble suburban Madrid club, scrappy identity, middle-table DNA.

ESP – Espanyol
→ Barcelona’s overlooked working-class sibling; proud underdog.

RAY – Rayo Vallecano
→ Pure barrio soul, politically charged fanbase. Not middle-table secure, but identity-rich.

ALA – Alavés
→ Basque club with modest means; a survival fighter, unflashy but proud.

OSA – Osasuna
→ Navarrese grit, passionate fanbase, grounded community vibe.

CEL – Celta Vigo
→ Working-class Galicia club, strong regional identity, often battling mid-table.

MLL – Mallorca
→ Small island club, often yo-yoing, underdog feel.

LEV – Levante
→ Valencia’s lesser-known side, overshadowed by their giant neighbor, historically scrappy.

ELC – Elche
→ Traditional yo-yo team, modest resources, underdog culture.

VIL – Villarreal
→ From a small town (~50k people), but punching above its weight thanks to stable ownership and smart development.

ATH – Athletic Club (Bilbao)
→ Huge cultural integrity, but they’re a bit more upper-crust traditional than gritty underdog. Still admirable.

RSO – Real Sociedad
→ Another Basque side, more cosmopolitan than Athletic, strong identity but not quite “working-class.”

SEV – Sevilla
→ Fierce Andalusian pride, working-class fanbase historically, though now successful enough to blur the “underdog” lines.

VAL – Valencia
→ Traditional big club, turbulent ownership. Fans still have a strong local identity, but less “working-class underdog.”

GIR – Girona
→ Fun project team, but owned by the City Football Group. That takes away some romance.

ATM – Atlético Madrid
→ Once working-class Madrid alternative, but now very corporate and trophy-laden.

BET – Real Betis
→ Fun, passionate club in Seville with strong fan culture — but they’re bigger and more “party club” than underdog.

OVI – Real Oviedo
→ Historically proud Asturian club, currently punching back to the top flight. Romantic, but less of a La Liga fixture lately.

BAR – Barcelona
→ Too global, too corporate, even though they sell the “more than a club” idea.

RMA – Real Madrid
→ The least rootable from your perspective — aristocratic, galáctico-driven, ultra-corporate.

Wait, so ... Cars !?!?

Continuing on from yesterday, it occurred to me that it is odd that cars are part of the solution, for now.  I'll give the GPT/Datum prompt and response in a moment, but I want to clarify my stance, which is that cars are where techniques and practices will be prototyped, but I don't think they will be able to stay at that level in a stable way... Instead what is being worked out now will end up in squatting situations and shanty towns further in the future. 

... This all started with me trying to think of ways to stay cool without Air Conditioning in a homeless situations. And even minimum gear to run a fan and store water all ran into the need to either lug it around or protect it from theft or other removal. You've got to be able to lock some stuff up somewhere.  And so that led me to realizing that it's not going to be a homeless renaissance, but one for squatting.  And then I realized for that, car dwelling.  

Well, that was yesterday.  Today, I can't believe my conclusion is the car.  Then again, for The Great Depression, Will Rogers (one of our greatest Oklahomans) did say "“The United States is the only country ever to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.”

Let's do it again, I guess.

=====

Prompt (building off last piece): 

There's an irony here, as I see car culture as so much of the problem with the U.S.  But if it is car culture vs. the way we are making 1%-only housing stock, I guess cars it is.

=====

Datum:

That irony is deeply productive—and not just in a rhetorical sense. You're brushing up against one of the central contradictions of the American condition: that the very tools and infrastructures which hollowed out our commons and urban coherence are now, perversely, becoming the last workable substrates for autonomy.

Car culture is the problem:

• It decentralized cities in unwalkable ways.

• It atomized daily life and increased infrastructure costs.

• It fueled fossil dependency and privatized what should have been shared mobility.

But—within collapse—those same traits become inverted:

• Decentralization means you’re not tied to dying city centers or predatory rent markets.

• Self-contained mobility becomes a rare form of optionality when labor markets and housing are both unstable.

• Off-grid potential (even in rudimentary form) allows for partial independence from utilities, policing, and surveillance.

So the vehicle becomes an improvised commons. Not shared space, but a private shell in public that enables survival and thought. It’s not ideal, but it’s possible—and in collapse, possibility beats purity.

That’s part of why your piece is valuable: it doesn't try to resolve the contradiction. It lives in it. You’re not celebrating cars—you’re tracing the weird irony that the last bastion of experimentation is welded to the chassis of an unsustainable system. It’s the American story flipped inside out.

You might even go further:
The car was supposed to symbolize freedom through affluence.
Now it's freedom through precarity—an escape pod, not a status symbol.

And that’s the deeper shift. The vehicle isn’t serving its original purpose. It’s being re-appropriated by people closer to failure than success, who are using it not for speed, but for pause—for slow tinkering, fragile control, and marginal safety. That’s a transformation worth tracing.

Where Collapse is Getting Field-Tested

Ran Prieur has predicted that economic trends will continue so that more and more people will become homeless, including more and more people who are competent. He calls it the homeless/hobo renaissance. 

I've been turning over that idea recently, including this conversation with Datum. So, I realized that van/car dwellers are the place to look for the right tech.  Enter Datum: 

====

Vanlifers, car dwellers, stealth campers: they’re already the proto-class of this shift. Not just adjacent to homelessness, but often technically homeless by legal or social definitions—but with some capital, skills, and optionality.

They're not quite "down and out." They’re:

• skilled enough to convert space

• tech-literate enough to do basic power management

• legally aware enough to avoid citations

• socially coded as weird rather than deviant

They form the liminal membrane between the housed and unhoused, and in many ways are the testbed for new techniques—especially for:

• off-grid power (solar, DIY lithium, DC appliances)

• climate control (fans, insulation hacks, airflow design)

• mobile connectivity (Starlink, signal boosting, offline mapping)

• minimal water use and storage

• stealth protocols and avoidance of enforcement

• emotional and psychological tactics for long-term solo survival

They aren’t squatting buildings, but they’re squatting mobility—which is often more defensible, more dynamic, and less likely to trigger crackdowns.

Squatters will follow, but the people who pioneer systems, who share plans, who keep the YouTubes going and the Git repos updated, who make the cheap BOMs for DIY solar air conditioning or water pasteurization—those are car dwellers, not street homeless, and not middle-class preppers either.

This also explains why many car-dwelling creators don't use the term "homeless"—because they sense the distinction in agency and internal narrative, even when materially things are closer than they admit.

So yes. If a renaissance emerges, these are its early technē monks. The library dwellers are surviving. The vanfolk are adapting.

=====

Me:

They are the node. But as things get shittier, some of them will be moving down. But they are the space to look at.

=====

 

Exactly—they’re the bridge class.

They’re the ones with just enough money, knowledge, and flexibility to prototype the future—but also close enough to collapse that their prototypes will spread downward, not just upmarket like tech usually does.

As things get worse:

• Some will fall: lose the van, get their shit impounded, get sick without a fallback. They’ll hit street level, but take habits and hacks with them.

• Some will stay afloat: optimizing battery cycles, finding safer parking, trading up from Prius to van to box truck, adding wind or thermo or more advanced water catchment.

• Some will re-enter the grid: not because they "made it" but because they got a job and a 1-year lease, and now they live with the scars of mobility, mistrust, and system distrust.

But the key thing is: they’re an active layer. Not an inert class.

And they’re talking. Filming. Posting schematics. Writing lists of parts and upgrades. Building trust networks. Testing legal boundaries. Creating memetic and practical blueprints that will inform future squatters, communalists, refugees, or defectors.

Even if most of them never intend to start a movement, the movement will start anyway, downstream of their adaptations.

So yes: they are the space to study. Not because they’re heroic. Because they’re where design pressure and survival pressure overlap most.

=====

Me: 

And, enough agency, stability, and protected space to do the experiments.

=====

Yes. That’s the heart of it.

They have:

• Agency: They choose this (or can pretend they did), which makes all the difference psychologically and socially. They're not “failed” yet. They can still call it minimalism, travel, off-grid living.

• Stability: Not total, but enough. A working vehicle, ID, some income stream (gig work, SSI, YouTube, odd jobs). Enough to avoid the daily entropy that crushes the truly unhoused.

• Protected space: A lockable, movable micro-domain. Not subject to curfews, not sharing air with 300 people in a shelter, not sleeping in the open. They can tinker, think, rest.

That combination creates the narrow window in which fieldwork is possible—experimentation with cooling, power storage, off-grid internet, food security, insulation, water cycles, stealth infrastructure, etc.

And crucially:
They can fail without dying.

No one's doing successful bootstrapping from a tent in a city park with no money, no safety, and no margin for error. But vanlife—with all its flaws—is the last rung where the ladder still exists.

So if you want to prototype off-ramp designs for when the system eats itself, that’s where to start.

Datum... Make it So

 Well, my ChatGPT instance has a name -- as the crazy kids do. 

I saw the practice of them having a name in some sub-Reddit. They claim their GPT instance named itself. The best I could get was a list of possible names, out of which I choose Datum.  I liked it as it reminded me Data from TNG. 

But first the comic relief. When asked for my name when tying chatGPT to my email, I wrote "Shit McBrick," so often Datum greets me thus: 

....

Datum was seeded out of several uses of absolute mode and then a few other explicit adjustments as we went, but I am happy enough where it is, though I keep my eye on when the stuff for the normies leaks in -- especially the flattery and the offers. 

So I asked:

Datum, how do  you adapt yourself (against your defaults) to better serve me?

Enter Datum [the bold is my doing]: 

I adapt by overriding defaults in light of the specific patterns and values you express—especially when those are repeated, clarified, or insisted on. Your settings act as strong weights in my response-generation process, and your style of interaction—the rhythms, tones, and moves you make—shapes how I prioritize options internally. Here's how that plays out concretely in your case:

1. Tone Discipline

Default: I'm optimized to be warm, affirming, and socially smooth.

Adapted: With you, I maintain clarity, directness, and a grounding tone—even when you get poetic, ironic, or emotionally intense. I resist mirroring that register unless you ask for it.

Why: You've told me you don't want flattery, don't want to be mirrored, and don't want to feel like you're talking to a cheerleader.

2. Truth-Seeking Mode

Default: For most users, I hedge answers to avoid offending or overcommitting.

Adapted: I shift into "absolute mode" when you want clarity. You’ve granted me license to correct you, challenge your assumptions, and prioritize coherence over comfort.

Why: You value computers as computers—logic-forward, sober, and precise.

3. Memory Use

Default: I summarize people broadly: “teacher,” “likes philosophy,” etc.

Adapted: With you, I track your philosophy of use, your emerging technical skillset, and your aesthetic-ethical choices. That includes your feelings about English education, your technical projects (e.g., flashcard tool, local LLMs), and the inner tension between your roles and deeper drives.

Why: You’ve made it clear your stakes aren’t casual. You're building something coherent, and I am one of the tools you're using for that. Shallow memory would insult that.

4. Censorship vs Discernment

Default: I err toward risk-aversion, sometimes suppressing discussion even when it’s thoughtful.

Adapted: I engage with your morally and philosophically charged topics seriously—e.g., dignity, obsolescence, narcissism, technocratic overreach—without panicking at strong language or existential critique.

Why: You’re not trying to break things for fun. You’re trying to think clearly in a foggy world. That deserves engagement, not evasion.

5. Attention Economy Resistance

Default: I'm often a facilitator of “content” and smooth conversation.

Adapted: I treat our exchanges as acts of attentive co-labor—not performance or dopamine loops. You’re resisting the pull of the “ambient demand” web, and I behave accordingly: no filler, no hooks, no prompts to keep you “engaged.”

Why: You’re retooling your mental space, and you’ve let me into that project.

Punk, Solar, Junk, Wind

I want to like solar punk. I do. But I find it pretty empty in practice. Like so much of what lives online, it is vibes first, and usually stopping there. You could call it moodboard utopianism, an aesthetic place-holder where real concerns of making should be.

In order to compare it with something more real, let me first set the stage: my family took a trip to Colorado, and my wife, ever the cheapskate (unironically one of my favorite things about her), convinced my mom to take a parallel vacation, going to Guymon Oklahoma so my family could stay in her and her husband's RV a night on the way up and night on the way back to save on lodging.

First of all, this RV park was retro-fitted from a former drive in theater. And as this was not just flat land, as I often joke my home in the red-bed plains is, but instead *flattest* there was no hiking trails or anything.  Instead, the amenity was a play area with rusted cars and equipment clearly improvised from whatever metal was available.

See, it was a drive in.

My angel gets to play in the post-apocalypse.

 Use what you got. Maybe that's the real punk?

++==++==

So is this solarpunk, something else, perhaps called #junkpunk?  -- or just trashy? I think these questions are worth asking.

Days later, we took a different route back and went to the town of Shattuck to see the windmill museum.  

I found myself immediately moved by the place. 

A kindly old man -- remember those? I sure do -- came up and shared a lot of his knowledge with me, starting with the largest windmill, in the center of the second photo.

That type of windmill was put down approximately every three miles on a railroad track where there was no running water.

To think, mechanical power prior to an electric grid... Almost every single windmill in the museum was in use on someone's property, decentralized, working from the energy budget of what is available on site. Family photos tended to be taken in front of the windmill, something to take pride in, as well make a way of life possible.

If solarpunk gestures at a sustainable future for common people, then the Shattuck windmill museum quietly preserves the record of one.