2021 - Infraculture

Infraculture

Sign in Subscribe

2021

A collection of 13 posts

Co-living with friends, Part 1: Co-buying

Co-living with friends, Part 1: Co-buying

> Hello, Thank you for taking the time to consider our offer. We are four very good friends who want to make 123 Street our home, where we can start and raise our families together in a dynamic, nurturing, and intentional community. […] More than anything, the past year has truly

An Inventory of Interests (2021)

An Inventory of Interests (2021)

Introduction Earlier this year I made a visit to the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley to check out the archives of urban planner and futurist R L Meier [https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8mg7vzg/entire_text/]. His personal note to himself, An Inventory of Interests, caught my attention

My 2021 reading list

Ways of Thinking

My 2021 reading list

This year, I almost exclusively read science fiction. That's not normal for me, my go-to is non-fiction... but I've realized that there's a lot to be gained in the speculation of possibility. As Cixin Liu says in an introduction to his short stories: >

Inspiration Wallets

Cybernetics Featured

Inspiration Wallets

I’ve been trying to think of ways to incentivize more people to highlight the works, individuals, and teams that inspire them. I think that this a) creates a fun story of provenance (kind of how Wikipedia does for scientists; see below for Darwin), but also b) serves as a

Bedtime CO2 during wildfires & air pollution

Bedtime CO2 during wildfires & air pollution

Late summer in California increasingly implies preparing for wildfire smoke. By “preparing” I mean focusing on indoor air quality, and in particular: Particulate Matter 2.5 [https://www.epa.gov/pm-pollution/particulate-matter-pm-basics]. We’re instructed to seal off our windows and doors from the outside and– if able– convert our

Exploring Liu Cixin’s science fiction writing

Speculative Fiction

Exploring Liu Cixin’s science fiction writing

I’ve been trying to better understand Liu Cixin’s writing style in hopes of improving my own. (That is, his Chinese writing translated into English.) One story caught my attention on a recent Sunday afternoon, as I rummaged around my house pretending to clean while daydreaming about dinosaur technocrats.

The power of focused attention

The power of focused attention

Last month I was lucky to spend several weeks luxuriating in complexity science. Hosted by the Santa Fe Institute, the Complexity Interactive program is a virtual, part-time course focused on complex systems— equal parts lecture, discussion, group project, and mental orgy. Attendance was a gift to myself after many years

Working Backwards: Separable, Single Threaded Teams and Herbert Simon

Working Backwards [https://www.amazon.com/Working-Backwards-Insights-Stories-Secrets/dp/1250267595] by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr describes in detail the inner workings of Amazon, including the development of its best practices over a nearly 3-decade history. The chapter Organizing: Separable, Single-Threaded Leadership quickly jumped out at me. Separable teams? Where had

Maintenance is palpable

Maintenance is palpable

We moved into an “old” house this month. Built over 80 years ago, you can sense the builder’s personality in the place. Mr. B… a bridge builder with hidden desires of becoming an architect. It shows. The beams are magnificent. Our structures, spectacular. And yet, the design seems amalgam.

An ode to cavernous spaces

Ways of Thinking

An ode to cavernous spaces

Do not feel small when you enter a cavernous space. For you have just set foot into an enormous catchment basin. Be glad for the space, for the volume. But with limits. The bounds keep your ideas from escaping. When I sit in an expansive space, the molecules of my

Why focus on concrete & cement

This post is cross-posted on the Build Incentive newsletter [https://newsletter.buildincentive.com/p/why-focus-on-concrete-and-cement], a new project of mine. Why focus on embodied emissions? When I surveyed [https://www.buildincentive.com/p/welcome-to-build-incentive] the landscape of Embodied, Operational, and End-of-Life emissions in the built environment last fall, it was

From comfort to constraint

We moved our bees this spring. From the grid of an urban environment close to the freeway to a meandering hillside close to the forest. The bees were ecstatic. Almost too happy. And so two weeks into moving, they swarmed. A sign of comfort, hives will split when they feel

Willing to Learn

Willing to Learn

Earlier this 2021, Mary Catherine Bateson passed away while surrounded by her family. I never had the chance to meet Mary Catherine, MCB in my personal notes, but I had wanted to. To make a trip out to the east coast to just chat. To learn about her chapters of