This is my favorite Mike Davis book and that chapter absolutely goes hard

may not like it but this is what peak performance looks like, etc

happy thursday

thank god I only saw this after working hours

many things about 2026 are ... say, less than optimal but it is truly a silver age for those of us who still used RSS after google reader died

SANSHIRO SUGATA academy museum

time for some light east asian co-prosperity sphere propaganda

5. Finding Needles in Haystacks AI in fraud detection and compliance

loved this on doing fraud detection using various ML methods, plus, uh, Caravaggio

arpitrage.substack.com/p/finding-ne...

28) OPUS (Garreth Gore) - this history of opus dei is absolutely wild, basically a hidden Scientology inside the catholic church. some stuff on US opus dei but the international stuff is much stronger. absolutely wild financial journalist thread to global conspiracy

just a Friday reminder of some of California’s finest bike infrastructure

The Most Delicious Tomato and How It Transformed A Sicilian Village This is a personal story to me. Pachino, Sicily, is the place my ancestors came from. It is also the home of a legendary tomato. Here's the story, and it might surprise you.

for the tomatoheads paxculinaria.substack.com/p/the-most-d...

looking good, Owens

Map of San Diego City boundaries

TIL the city of San Diego has a all-marine strip of territory in order to connect the southern part of the city / US border to the remainder

"We built 6 Hoover Dams worth of batteries in five years" is a really cool story that we need to shout from the hills.

steak night feat garden green garlic chimichurri, schmaltz potatoes, grilled pea shoots with crispy green garlic and garden salad

Throwing in on this if possible

27) DAUGHTER OF THE BAMBOO GROVE (Barbara Demick) - all of her books are worth reading, but this is Demick's most intimate portrait of a family, and extremely gripping and heartbreaking at the same time

End of LA visitation season (Jan-Mar)

Habits hard to break

back at it

26) CALIFORNIA BURNING (Katherine Blunt) - a great accounting of PG&E’s troubled origins and recent double bankruptcy history. Worth a read for all California policymakers

Zeeker luxury minivan

I’m very skeptical of Kei cars doing numbers in the US but the EV luxury minivan that doesn’t look like a minivan would do numbers (Zeekr Mix pictured)

25) CUISINE AND EMPIRE (Rachel Laudan) - this ruled. A sweeping global history of food and politics, and how our modern food ways were shaped year after year

Hell yeah

24) THE DEAN OF SHANDONG - I hated this, book failed at all the basic premises, and is a memoir of somebody who made a lot of poor choices and doesn’t come clean on them.

23) THE GREAT RECLAMATION by Rachel Heng - pulls off the rare feat of being a historical fiction romance novel that doubles as Lee Kuan Yew propaganda, but enjoyed this as a holiday read

wow have literally done this exact move in this exact circumstance…. Hopefully you can spot a few of the bike commuters out on the airside

Extremely fitting for this to happen when I’m in Singapore.

Singapore City Gallery / Urban Redevelopment Authority museum

My last trip had been 2016, far too long given how relatively easy it is from LA. Got a few more days there on the back leg of the trip

Also love how they show under construction and planned works