Heading Home Alone

Hola Homies. I write to you midflight, returning to one adopted home (Oakland) from another (Chicago) and feeling all kinds of wistful and tired but also hopeful and excited. Bringing my older son to art school was like traveling back in time. Chicago had its gray days this week but it also put forward its best - blue skies, moderate temps, clean streets, loud sirens, delicious food, street art, people from everywhere on the planet. I started adulthood in Chicago 33 years ago. A few years before that, my dad moved to Chicago to fully come out (somehow even more out than he’d been in Fort Wayne, Indiana) and truly live on his own terms. Now my son gets to figure out who he is and what he wants to build in this world, and Chicago is one of the best places to do that.

Before Liam left, though, he had a few pieces of art accepted for publication in Pyles Mag. You can pre-order the magazine here.

In other family news, fans of Chef Carl Dooley will be happy to see that he remains on the NYT’s 25 Best Restaurants in Boston and you can read his villain origin story in the Boothbay Register: Carl Dooley cooks: A culinary coming of age o Juniper Point. Meanwhile fans of Brook Dooley can follow his current trial with daily updates from the Palo Alto Daily Post, which has assigned a reporter to give live updates about Sheriff Christina Corpus’s dismissal appeal. Between the Register and the PADP, there is a lot of great local journalism being done out there, at least about the Dooley brothers.

Last week, I mentioned that I thought that there was growing interest in products and services that thwarted or skirted AI or the surveillance state, and yesterday I cam across some helpful advice on how to stop getting AI results every time you use google. How to Turn Off Google AI Overview and Set "Web" as Default. Quelle useful. More of this, please.

Another phenomenon I want to flag: Since Trump’s election, people have been talking about how to build community in new ways that centers art and fellowship and transforming society, and I think those communities are starting to find their places. I mean, literal spaces for people to meet and share and do art and learn. I recently joined The Local Economy, a new community space set to open near me in October. Bathers Library is another community space in Oakland that hosts events, sells artist games, publishes stuff. The New Parkway Theater has been offering free events and second run movies (not free) for years. These kind of spaces might be fleeting and temporary or make a lasting difference, but in any case are necessary. I am really inspired by these spaces; they make me want to create something new and different too.

I promised myself that I wouldn’t make any major decisions about my life until after the kids had moved out of Oakland and I had some time to ponder what it is I want to do next with my life. Since I am literally just hours past that, now isn’t the time for those decisions, but I am going to spend a lot of time thinking about that in the coming weeks.

Or maybe I’ll just spend a lot of time playing games online. Here’s another one: Raddle. It’s really smart. I can’t even explain how it works but it’s fun.