idk it's random (pt. 4)

comments 💬

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Without further ado, some comments from human I love (hils).

No comments this week!

update life 📈 

• Saffron was so good what the heck. Detroit, goated food city.

  

• Art, art, art! Multi-colored tings, things that play with light, and beautifully drawn/painted fluffy baby Jesus’ everywhere! Check out the Detroit Institute of Art!

  
  

  I love a natural interplay with light!

• Oh no, he made Mazariners again? Gosh. Next on the list, Tiramisu and Semlor!

  

• Detroit-style pizza is better than New York and Chicago pizza. Fight me 🙂. Crust is unmatched.

• Yeonju, you’re one of my favorite people in this whole world. Talking to you makes me very happy

  

• Slept for long-time. On Sunday. On Monday. And on Tuesday.

• Tokyo Revengers - Something about a time-travel story gone biker gang is very anime. It was very fun! I look forward to Season 4 later this year. No more after that though, pl0x.

• Note to all my co-workers. Rob was yapping with me for 3 hours, get him. Why isn’t big boss doing work? But really my first day back in the office was quite pleasant, and I enjoyed catching up with him in person.

• Game night!!! Complete with flat savage roasts, a walk through the PARKS, and EMERGENCY cookiessss.

• I kept saying I missed having planties. Well, well, well - am I someone to simply complain about missing something? I think not. Meet Jasmine, my jade plant. Don’t mix it up. Thank you Yeonju for giving me a prop!

  

• Finally using a birthday present from last year, this is Cha Cha ChIce Spice. Thanks Andy and Isa!

  

  You may notice that Ice Spice is superglued back together. She was injured in my move.

• Chatting it up with Luna at Petee’s for an hour or two!

• Chi you may notice a startling amount of desserts in here. I somehow am hitting my calorie goal for 75 soft. I might be cheating on the desserts part 🙃 

write 🖋️ 

being a regular

There’s a platonic dream that I had growing up. I wanted to be that guy at the coffee shop working on my laptop that said what’s up to everyone who walked in. Not randomly, but because I knew them.

It’s a dream that was inspired by TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, Friends, and Cheers. They all represented third spaces where the cast was a regular presence. The bar or the coffee shop was an extension of their living room.

Seems easy enough to do in New York right? Small apartments, lots of coffee shops, and plenty of laptops.

The struggle is that there’s lots of places. There’s always somewhere new to try, it can be hard to settle down and go to one. Sometimes you just don’t want to talk to anyone. That laptop that was part of the dream - is often an instrument of productivity, not just a prop.

A fair portion of you already know this, but being a regular is awesome. Knowing someone who works at a place, makes the place feel warm and fuzzy. It’s fully within your power to show up to a place over and over, say hi when it isn’t busy, and bring by some food or good vibes.

I’ve found a half dozen homes in New York that don’t exist within the walls of an apartment building. There’s nothing quite like having somewhere to pop into a place where everyone knows your name.

break ice ⛏️ 

icebreaker:
How do you like being cared for?

my reply:
Just notice and let me know. That’s how I like to show love too!

words 🗣️ 

Grey bird, grey moon
Grey sky, grey light
Grey, everything grey
Grey heart
Grey Keys, grey diamonds
Grey out, grey, everything grey 

read 📖: I think I’ll do some PR for my boss

No, no I am not being threatened or rewarded for this post. Rob doesn’t know I’m writing this. If you see this JP Morgan - I promise I am alive and well.

Let me tell you a little story. I was looking for a job back in 2023 and I ran into a LinkedIn post from an old coworker from my very first project. She was putting together a team of people who knew AWS in-and-out. Preferably a team of likable and assertive people. Things didn’t quite work out, but she said, “I’m going to make sure I find you something.”

A week later I hop into a 30-minute call with someone. It was supposed to be 30 minutes, but it was closer to 75. Later I get a message from that someone on LinkedIn, “I look forward to working with you.”

That was my now boss.

It was the beginning of a combo that could and has talked for many hours, often at the expense of work. It was the beginning of a combo that sometimes needs to stagger leaving the office so it doesn’t end up locked in conversation. We yap; often about how to live a good life, but also about the soft drink market, math, AI, a number of other random things, and sometimes even work.

He’s working on a project that’s still in formation, where he explores if there’s a way to use AI to help our lives while still engaging our brains. It’ll probably change over time, but he makes cool things and I wanted to shout it out.

Check out AI for Poets ➡️ https://aiforpoets.substack.com/p/welcome-to-ai-for-poets?r=qn5e

listen 🎧️: crying is too easy as an adult

I broke down in tears last year when my friend off-handedly said, “I’m so proud of you - you’re doing it.” Something about hitting the late 20s (yes I accept it, I’m in my late 20s. Also, I’m 27? I thought I was 28. Nice!) has made me more prone to cry at heartfelt messages, videos of people coming back from war, and at mushy things in general.

Back in high school, I would spend my winter breaks playing games with this group of people from Texas. One of them was really into grime, a genre of UK music. He made me a google doc, an ultimate guide to this genre. It introduced and eventually helped me build a deep love for grime, garage house, and eventually drill music. My favorites of the bunch: Krept & Konan.

Here’s a song, that’s not a song, of all of their supporters sharing their sentiments. Yeah I teared up a lil bit.

じゃあまた (see you),