I like French, comics, books, podcasts, (board and roleplaying) games, biking, and trains. I try to stay organized and in good (physical and mental) shape.
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microblogvember and the surprising joy of random words
Recently, I was listening to a podcast episode that was touching on deconstruction. It was chiefly concerned with the term as it’s used in religious contexts, but to do so, it was going back to its intellectual roots, with Jacques Derrida and Ferdinand de Saussure. As the host, Jared Byas, summarized the ideas of deconstruction:
we can’t ever escape language and the meaning of language depends on other parts of that language. Ugh! It’s so frustrating. In other words, all language is a metaphor, or it’s a symbol that stands in for other language. When I say “bike,” there’s a sense in which that’s a shorthand for that thing over there with the two wheels and the handlebar. The problem, of course, is that when I say that, that’s also words. So when I say “wheels,” we could say that’s a shorthand for the round thing with the spokes and the rubber on the outside. And then we can say, “spokes” that’s shorthand for, on and on, and on, right, you get the point.
🔗 linkblog: Disney+ Releases Complete Version of The Muppet Christmas Carol'
Yessssss! I grew up watching the version with this song and was really confused when I watched it with my kid and the song was missing.
kebab and baklava in Colmar
A few months ago, my father-in-law and two of my brothers-in-law visited Turkey for a week and had a great time. They brought us home an enormous box of Turkish baklava as an edible souvenir, and I spent a lot of September nibbling away at that. It was delicious, and I was really grateful for the gift.
At some point near the end of the box, all of that baklava brought back a memory that I hadn’t thought about for quite some time. Between 2007 and 2009, I served as a Latter-day Saint missionary in eastern France and French-speaking Switzerland. Even though I’m no longer a practicing Latter-day Saint, I have a lot of fond memories of those two years, and this one involves baklava!
🔗 linkblog: Lego to discontinue Mindstorms robot line after a 24-year run | Ars Technica'
Noooo! I was just blogging about wanting to get into this once my kid’s a bit older!
🔗 linkblog: Public Transportation – Design Goodiness'
Enilda is great, and I appreciate her thoughts here.
🔗 linkblog: Watch how Peter Howell helped remix the 80s Doctor Who theme'
I love this theme tune, so this video was a delight to watch.
actual play podcasts worth relistening to
Over the past few days, I’ve been relistening to the One Shot podcast’s October 2018 Kids on Bikes episodes (which starts here). There’s so much to love about this six-episode series. I remembered enjoying the characters and the players, but it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered the perfect moment where one player describes the biblical Jacob as “history’s best angel fighter” and summons him to help a science teacher fight off a terrifying seraphim (which I promise makes sense in context).
non-appearance on 'The Unlistenable Podcast'
A few weeks ago, I sat down with Lexi Lishinski, a good friend from grad school, to appear on an episode of her podcast The Unlistenable Podcast. To quote the About page for the podcast:
It’s not called that because it has dreadful audio quality, although that may be true. It’s called that because you can’t listen to it, because I’m not going to release the episodes. This solves literally every issue that ever stopped me from recording a podcast.