I learned about the announcement via Discord at about 20,000 feet (Southwest's Wi-Fi could use some help).

But of course I couldn't really do much in terms of looking up tributes when I was getting throughput akin to 14.4K speeds (ask your parents).

Thankfully, some 50 feet above ground level at Sky Harbor over the south runway, I have something new to worry about: a sudden 10,000-foot climb. Not the sort you do on a normal takeoff, but rather the sort where the engines start making noises you simply don't hear on a passenger flight. No one was alarmed, but we talked with our neighbours about how usually a descent onto a runway ends with a landing.

The pilot, and I think rightly so, gave us about 10 minutes of circling completely around the airport (once again giving us an approach out of the east guaranteed to provide a long taxi back to Terminal 4) before coming on the intercom to let us know that a takeoff had stalled on the runway, and as such, the option other than pitching the fuck up (not his exact words) was hitting a stationary object directly in our path. (This was at roughly 1405 MST^[this is correct for Oct. 29; most of Arizona does not observe daylight saving time, and I first changed a clock when I was 18 in college], and I'll be curious to see if a near miss is reported on.)

You might be thinking, OK: So an actor died and you didn't. And that's fair as far as I've gotten in my day.

I'm a bit out of sorts when I finally meet up with my mom, who'd arrived from New Mexico nearly two hours earlier. I've not been able to vape for at this point six hours, and learning you narrowly avoided being a statistic gets the ol' adrenaline going.

PHX now has a "Sky Train" that takes one to the rental-car area, which we had to board, and my mom at this point needed a wheelchair for this odyssey. This of course means it's best if I drive.

Well, the entire fucking airport has been reconfigured in terms of traffic since last I actually drove in Phoenix. Being in a rental, one has to be careful, but this is not a city where driving defensively is rewarded. My mom of course is telling me that I needed to take this exit or that one, "turn here" ... that sort of thing.

I got us to the hotel at least a half hour earlier than her routing would have led to. But that's what happens when you apply 1990 routing to a 2026 layout.

I headed to Fry's (it's a grocery store here; fun fact: The Fry's grocery store is related to the defunct electronics retailer, hence it starting out as outpost.com) to pick up water and a six pack (my adrenaline was not going back to baseline), and cracked one open as we discussed plans for the afternoon.

It should be mentioned here that we are here to spread my dad's ashes, nearly a year since he died.

She wanted to scout out the entrances to trails on Mummy Mountain that used to start across the street from our house but have long since been replaced by multimillion-dollar homes. I'm pretty sure we found one that still makes sense up a road you only know exists if you grew up hiking there, but we're not going to be able to make it to the spot that would have made the most sense.

At this point, we've lost light and are ready for dinner. New issue: Everywhere that existed in the '90s no longer does. I head up Scottsdale to Shea, expecting a Macaroni Grill just before the intersection, but it's gone. So, I head into the shopping center with the Safeway we started going to after the one on Camelback shut down.

I did point out that my phone suggested Ruth's Chris a couple of miles back, but that was a nonstarter. Neither of us was dressed correctly.

So I pull through what seems like a gateway to nothing. "This will get us over the the Harkins side." And on that side we find a wonderful Italian place. Quick, friendly service, fantastic mango hefeweizen. We dine al fresco despite my mom's misgivings that it will get too cold ... in Phoenix ... in October ... by 7 p.m., she does indeed secure a table outdoors while I park the car after dropping her off. (Yep, that's now my parent, not my grandparent.)

Much has gone through my mind in the 49 weeks and some change since Pop's death. It was kinda nice to be able to leave it at back of mind in the ensuing time, but that's not why we're here just now.

All things end. Not just all good things.

But between the news about Stewart, my reason for being in Scottsdale in the first place and having my first brush with mortality that wasn't my own fault, I decided the heavy conversations need to come first. Because my mom won't live forever, either, and she's now needing to be dropped off at a restaurant, so that's a bit of an indicator that if you want to actually have the talks you need to, best to do that while the opportunity is available.

I eased in. She had a lightbulb moment when I mentioned, "Haven't you ever noticed that I tend to say things from TNG in standard conversation? No kid says 'avail yourself,' and my cadence in terms of when to use contractions and when to skip them stems directly from the writers of Star Trek."

Murmur of agreement.

"So, then, why is it that you and Pop did everything to avoid accepting neurodivergence as part of my issues growing up?"

Now she's confused.

"OK, as an example, dropping out of UW" -- mind you, I'm saying this wearing the sweatshirt I got from the bookstore on my 1996 campus visit -- "because I was so infuriated by having to write 'Hello, World' despite over a decade in programming that I decided the entire system was broken."

Here, there's a bit of recognition.

I mention that over the past few years, as I've entwined myself further and further into the burner community, the recurring motif is "how is it that no one told you that you were on the spectrum?"

"Something I've seen reading about ASD that pops up with some regularity is 'justice sensitivity.' Now consider how I ended up in journalism. Not because I wanted to be a journalist, but I had to call out incorrect framing, leading to a terrible first column that then got edited to make me sound racist, and the cherry on top of that was the art that ran with it. A normal person does not vow to take over the entire section because the initial problem has now been compounded. But once I had a goal, I was laser focused."

"Well, back then, we knew you were smart, and awkward, but no one really talked about autism. It was reserved for kids who couldn't function."

"Remember how I refused shoes with laces after learning about Velcro?"

"Oh, yeah, you hated those laces."

"Because they were unnecessarily complex."

A beat.

"We really didn't know what to do with you. We tried to keep you interested in things, but we both failed in a lot of ways."

From here, it goes into details about both my parents' upbringings that I knew about but hadn't before heard distilled.

The reasonable takeaway is now I'm a lot less stressed about the next five days. I may not like all the places we go, but availing myself of the opportunity to have the conversation I couldn't with Pop seems prudent.

And I suspect Jean-Luc Picard would agree.

We've been trying to make things work, and some days it feels easier than others. But lately, it feels almost impossible. The constant misunderstandings, the short tempers, the emotional exhaustion, it all starts to take a toll. We're both trying, yet somehow we keep finding ourselves in the same place, feeling drained and disconnected. How do you make things work when even trying starts to feel exhausting?

I wrote about some formative years in my life where I found success... then had to start over.

I was laid off at my then-local paper in August 2014, which I'd known was coming because I was only hired knowing the copy desk was being centralized later that year. There was no plan to come down here.

I got unemployment, but a third of newspaper wages only goes so far.

After several months of attempting to find work locally, I reached out to the director in Texas who'd offered to immediately hire me when centralization hit but offered an insulting pay cut.

By April, I was worn down enough to reach out again. He was willing to negotiate only an 18% pay cut, but that's still a lot better than zero dollars, and the household wasn't functioning.

My ex and I bonded over being equally manipulative back in 2009, so I get the U-Haul and announce I'm moving to Texas.

It worked.

Simply saying I was going to wouldn't have. She had the only vehicle at the time, so "moving in what?" would have been a valid initial question.

But this was not my goal. She'd already said in August that Texas was not an option. And so I stayed in rural Oregon, interviewing for media-adjacent jobs ... school PIO, tech at a TV station ... but the UI benefits run out at a certain point, and if you have one "can you start tomorrow?" up your sleeve, that's the only remaining option.

In terms of manipulative things I've done in life, this likely ranks as a 7/10 short-term, 10/10 long term. But I saw the options as being homeless (again) or an unpleasant move -- I'd explicitly forbidden Texas my entire career (I may have been able to start my career a few months earlier had I been willing to move to San Angelo in 2001), so this was practical, not a goal.

She has to have known at some level that it was a farce. Not the job, but the U-Haul. I'd packed nothing up, and there was no discussion of division of particle board. In no universe am I getting out of there in a day.

However, this brings her to the table with a sharper sense of reality in about an hour. I think that whole charade ran me $30 all-in.

And later that day, I call the director and say I need to push my start date back by a couple of weeks. Then we start planning the move properly.

Perhaps not as properly as hoped. I arrived here by train on Memorial Day 2015, and flooding meant I had to get off the train at an ungodly hour without sleep to get on a bus for the final leg.

Not that the trip was any easier for her. She lost her stuffed animal in a hotel and nearly got arrested in Nevada for her wedding collar (it's apparently a deadly weapon).

Some days just don't end up how one expects.

Around 9 p.m., I got a text from my ex-wife (she's back, everyone! 🎉) trying to guilt me into coming to see her. As my financial situation has not recently improved, I explained this was not in the budget.

The usual "whatever" sort of gaslighting ensues. After rent (which includes all utilities), I have $500 a month for everything else; $70 on a round-trip Lyft is not a rounding error. So it's not like I could totally afford it but was grasping for an excuse.

Somehow, after I'm just not putting up with her bullshit for long enough, she asks for my address. And then informs me that she's on her way.

So, a couple of things here: I'm renting a room from a family. They've heard of her, of course, but in the abstract. As such, I need to explain that unexpected plans are already in motion, and would they mind too terribly much if she arrives at an odd hour?

She did have one mitigation plan for this: she brought weed. And while I have no idea what the reaction to her was, I can't imagine that hurt as a peace offering.

A new problem arises: I do not have beer for two. This quickly becomes a nonissue as Ra invites her on a beer run (meaning my ex-wife and my landlord had plenty to time to talk about me as a common reference point, should they so choose).

Worth noting here is this is the first time since the divorce 10 years ago later this week that she has unilaterally paid for everything to see me. When we started interacting again last fall, we'd split transportation costs.

So, everyone's stoned, there's beer aplenty, and, well, we retire to my room. Her collar is somehow just as spiky as when I got it in 2011, but I no longer have the proper callouses in my neck, so I definitely noticed.

The takeaway I have from what otherwise feels like a disjointed evening is that community is important -- I'm doing far better than I was in my van, as she pointed out -- real connection is still necessary.

By about 1:30 a.m., she decides it's time to head home, having met her quota of orgasms. She ends up fighting with apps to get a ride home for 15 minutes while I'm pressed against her flesh.

I should explain the fridge situation.

The things that came with this new build (as of six years ago) tend to suck. So, there's this really nice built-in fridge. But it doesn't work. There's a second fridge in the kitchen that does.

It's also full of food, cold and lit, so I'm not sure what indicators led her to place cold beer in a thick ambient box, but here we are.

At any rate, I wake up this morning to several texts from her. The first reminds me that there's "shitty beer in the warm fridge." Honestly, likely a good reminder, as the night was a bit of a blur.

From there, the tenor changes: "Thank you for your hand and body and tongue and just freaking with my 'me' tonight."

When I ordered a beer delivery today, I was surprised to see my Koozie on Ra's car from when my ex's Lyft arrived. The beer was nearly full, so I dumped it out while the driver got out of her car.

The next text was "invasively uninvited or not, I needed you tonight."

"... and then I already sickly miss you FUCK."

When I say we aren't done, it's not some romantic notion that maybe we could reconnect. The problem was disconnection. Her body still feels like part of mine.

Oh, and she accidentally left a sweater here.

Seriously, that whole thing is a pastiche of things I've seen in other movies.

Reddits moneitized enshitification has finally caused me to use a blocking script to prevent me from even opening their site. They have made browsing impossible outside of their logged in ecosphere. Old.reddit requires a login now. At least for me if I fell into the A/B testing that forced it.

It's tragic. So many niche topics, resources, etc. exist there. Now locked behind the equivilant of a digital border wall. I'm not sure why it bothers me so much. Perhaps the closure of another more familiar space. Perhaps nostalgia for the old reddit. Or perhaps just another example of greed and tech bros taking away and wrecking a digital third space. Perhaps I should have called it when many others did when Spez took over and the process all started.

Alas, poor woodworking, specialty coffee, DMAcademy. Good bye and good night.

Later today (July 27 2026) 2:pm nsw time the government will issue what is called aus alert which means every phone in Australia will have an alarm at the exact same time. If you are someone that uses a safety phone it is best to turn it off for 24 hours. I would also recommend avoiding traffic or any situation that could cause danger to the governments poorly planned aus alert.

Lest anyone think renting a room goes poorly, that's not the case. It's the high point of the month, really. Air conditioning, indoor plumbing, (some) free food, friends to hang out with on occasion ... life should be looking up.

And yet, it's been days since I answered my phone. Reading the news is not terribly enjoyable, as, until recently, a fact known to be true today will also be true tomorrow. (As such, it's not just that the news is bad [which it most certainly is]; it's that it's often delivered poorly, and as someone who spent a couple of decades in newsrooms, I feel qualified to make that assessment damn near objectively.)

With Colbert gone, I watch John Oliver as well as the A Closer Look segments from Seth Meyers. So, maybe three segments a week total, and Meyers is still on vacation.

I watched the reboot of Scrubs, which was enjoyable, but for fuck's sake, it's on streaming. Nine episodes at 22 minutes a pop, yielding three hours, 18 minutes of total runtime for the season.

Over on the nonnews side of YouTube, Dosh Doshington (not his real name, shockingly) has been streaming a Nullius playthrough of Factorio, but is taking an extended break to condense the 80 hours so far into an hourlong episode

And yes, I watched all 80 hours, having caught it the day he started, but I can't possibly see starting from the beginning now, as 17 episodes averaging 4 hours and change is a commitment. Hopefully, I'll happen upon the first episode when he gets back into it.

That said, I really can't stand the whole parasocial streaming environment. Having people send money just so Mr. Doshington responds for five seconds breaks the rhythm, and I don't really care about things unrelated for Factorio when I'm watching to hear about Factorio.

The inflation situation continues to worsen. One of my little pleasures has been beef jerky, but that went up by a buck to $4.25 in the past week. Another is ice cream, which is now $7.59 for a half-gallon of the HEB brand, so ... generic (but their house brand is usually better than brand name across the board). Still, my $50 weekly food budget goes less and less far.

I'm not going to explore town in a class 5 commercial vehicle, so I've literally not left the property since moving in three weeks ago. And walking in this heat is a nonstarter.

Until a couple of weeks ago, I'd been using LLMs to get literary analysis, but having gotten through my backcatalogue, that's also fallen by the wayside. I did use ChatGPT last week for the dictation function to remember a dream as soon as I woke up that would otherwise be lost to the aether, but I have about as much interest in talking to a computer as a conversation as exploring the innards of an active woodchipper.

I used to be able to wile away my days on the web, but now I struggle to find anything that keeps my interest. It's not that my YouTube subscriptions have gotten worse; I'm just sick of gestures broadly analysis, given that a story about today's Iran or Independence Day snafus just isn't entertaining anymore.

The serendipity of the web seems totally relegated to history. My meals consist of salads and sandwiches -- almost always the same of each. And as I have my groceries delivered, I have to wait until I've run out of variety to justify the fees. At least where I parked in Austin, I could get a stick of string cheese at 7-Eleven when I got a wild hair, but here ... what I have is what I have, and also no trips to the brewery or hanging out at Church Night, which was great as someone who lived an eight-minute walk away, but it's about an hour each way by car now.

Psychologically, daily life is scarcely different from my van lifestyle. I'm usually on my laptop on my bed. Sometimes, I'll watch a movie or through on a random TNG episode, but new series that interest me and can take up the better part of a day are few and far between. I'm not even excited about Strange New Worlds starting a new season in July, given the quality decline in the last season, whenever the hell that even "aired."

Inspired by the Factorio series, I've logged another 50 hours of gameplay on a non-Nullius modpack that I'm enjoying because I'm exploring optimization in a very complex sandbox. But there's nothing to really show for it, compared with projects that yield tangible results.

I've struggled with depression since adolescence, and this is something completely different. Not hopelessness or despair, just a sense that there should be something more to life than renting a room at nearly 47. The commune plan is still on the table, but many things I have no control over need to happen before the becomes a concrete path forward.

I don't even enjoy drinking a beer anymore. Could be I was spoiled by living closer to Austin Beerworks than anyone else with an enclosed space, but it could also be an inability to justify paying $12 for a six-pack of middling IPAs.

For a couple of years, I had hopes of what life would be like when my van experience came to an end, and instead, it's just the same old thing, day in and day out. I have to check my phone in the morning to find out what day of the week it is.

And then, running out of internet after a half-hour and firing up Factorio.

it's been while, and i have been very busy with political work, but things are now returning to normal

I'm back in the van for now, so I'm not updating my profile yet, but I returned from Temple this afternoon after a week in the room I'll be renting.

To call this a stepping stone to the idea of the eventual commune hits the nail on the head. It's a multigenerational home where if something needs to be done, people just do it. And cook.

In fact, we were talking about placement for planned raised beds this afternoon (against the fence, but which part?) after the grandmother mentioned wanting to get a really nice picnic table.

I'm aware that I'm going to start tying myself into knots if I don't set the stage with characters:

• R - the woman I met through the burner community with whom I started interacting more because she commissioned me to write the copy for a GoFundMe for a queer activist who'd suffered a stroke and two brain hemorrhages. She's an elder, I suppose, in the Temple Pride organization.

• S - her husband. Generally speaking, when you meet someone, you expect roughly the same intellectual level, and R is not dumb by any stretch (she just has different interests and activities), but not ... oh, shit, how did one cigarette turn into an hour and a half covering current monetary policy, philosophy and the Late Bronze Age Collapse? He is an anarchist, which he describes by two tenets: Don't tell me what to do, and don't hurt anyone. He's cool with anyone who can actually live by that. He's also really funny and pulls all sort of obscure references that I generally get. We watch a lot of the same YouTube channels.

• K - R's mom. She's the cool grandma who tiptoes up to the line of swearing but never crosses it, even when she spills a full cup of coffee into a Rubbermaid tote with a vented lid (the tote was full of empty coffee cans upon inspection, and we were all racing to make the obvious "guess it wanted to go home" joke first).

• O and N - R and S' kids. For obvious reasons, I'm not going to say anything about them.

The plan was this: R and S, having hosted me a couple of times when I was working on Mike's story, had a room available they'd be willing to rent to me. I suggested I Lyft up and back and spend a week there so everyone could test the waters before we jump into something more permanent.

It's not that there were any red flags; I've just been living alone since 2019 and haven't had kids in my living space since 2016, so I wanted as much for me as for them to know this would work as a housemate situation where the only data points were "let's entertain a friend for the weekend."

The first couple of days, I was honestly spent. It took until day three for me to have the energy to take a shower. After months of warmer-than-average temperatures, my body just said "lie down and shut up" when faced with adequate climate control.

I spent most of the time in my room, with a somewhat erratic sleep schedule. I'd come downstairs from time to time, and engage if one or both were there (or when it was just K), but my energy level just wasn't there.

And so it was Day 4 that when I walked into the garage where S was smoking a cigarette that he said, "Hey, I want to talk with you" in a friendly tone.

"I've noticed you don't come out of your room much. Are you uncomfortable?"

"Nah, I just ... well, you know, you have your life, your family ... I don't want to be in the way. I've never gone from 'hey, we're friends' to 'I'm trialling being your tenant.'"

He laughed.

"Dude. If we need to talk about something and don't want you around, we're not going to do it in the kitchen. Your presence is not intrusive."

Things softened tremendously from here. I think S told R that I was worried about overstepping, because she starting texting me when she was making food so I could join them.

Yesterday, I went to visit in the garage, and he was like, "so, R says the plan was for you to leave tomorrow. I don't care if you stay another couple of days. What's your take?"

I stumbled over myself a bit because, well, after so many failures over the past year and a half, this felt so ideal that I didn't really want to say anything to fuck it up.

So I said, "well, I feel really comfortable here. Y'all are the sorts of people I feel like myself around."

He didn't say anything like "so, it's settled." Just "yeah, we like your [vibe]*."

Because of the unusual funding schedule I get, I asked if I could break rent into the first and 15th. R handles the funds, and she was fine with that. "Let's just say it's free until the 15th, then, whenever you get back."

I still have the key to my room, and my dirty laundry is there if they care to air it. S told me R would likely go into the room to see if all was well (it was not with the prior tenant) in my absence, and as I'm not paying rent yet, I see no reason that's unreasonable.

It helps that I pretty much sat on a bed for a week and precious little else.

Actually, that's not true. Yesterday, R got home and walked into the garage where S and I were chatting about something ... maybe that was the conversation about an Assyrian library that was torched to destroy it, but as they were still using clay tablets, all the aggrieved managed to do was make a makeshift kiln and preserve the tablets for millennia.

She asked S whether he could help unload "a shitload" of wood from her SUV. He's had some back issues, and it wasn't a good day. So I volunteered.

Now, I have some back issues, and a heavy piece of pecan -- with bark -- hit my Achilles. I had to nope out pretty quickly after the shock wore off.

I'm not going to break down the exact amounts, but given that I can discontinue my internet account and no longer need to retain auto insurance once I get where I'm going some 60 miles away and my food will be covered unless I want to buy something special for myself, this actually looks like a net positive in terms of cashflow.

I was headed to the washroom that's in a alcove between my room and K's as she stepped out. I told her she was welcome to take the washroom first, and she told me she was headed downstairs to start on a chicken, broccoli and artichoke fettucine alfredo.

"Do you have a minute, or is it urgent?" she asked.

"I've got a minute."

"Well, I just wanted to tell you how much we all like how you fit in here. This is what we've been hoping for for a while. There'll be plenty of food in an hour or so."

It kinda sounds cultish, but like, these are my people. And we're able to be honest with each other about such things.

I was already timing my Lyft, so I thanked her and said I'll look forward to it the next time she makes it.

R was already off for a Pride event, so I said goodbye to S and K, knowing I was getting in the car to drive to Austin for the last time as a resident, 11 years and 9 days after arriving.

I thought my time here would provide more opportunities for my family under the status quo corporate bullshit. It turns out, the plan was total demolition and rebuilding.

Perhaps coincidentally, I was born in Phoenix.

• it wasn't this word, but I don't remember what it was

And it was: Are there any spaces in town where I could work on building out my van?

A user directed me to Asmbly, and the night I was there for the orientation, a guy in a van with a tree-frog decal was hanging out in the parking lot. We didn't talk that night.

As it happens, he was (/is?) the leader of the vanbuild community at the space. We first started talking four weeks later, when the next event was scheduled.

He's coming by this evening with my new fridge. It's going to be nice to be able to buy perishables again.

Which is cool and all, but far more happened than that.

He's a burner. So after several months, he invited me to join him at the warehouse (he's also let me crash in his garage several times to avoid temperature extremes) for a workshop on safely using flamethrowers.

I'm pretty certain Naked Fireman led the course, but I'd not get to know him for over a year. On Wednesday, I was hanging out with him, his daughter and his granddaughter, with a pipe being passed around.

I knew a bit about Burning Man, mostly because an intern at the paper in 2005 was a burner. Amusingly enough, he reached out to my then-girlfriend online, talking about how he didn't know how the paper had done copyediting without having him on staff.

You might think this would be an issue, but it's a city of 20,000, so at some point, you're going to face that issue.

Instead, I called him up and invited him out to a bar. We shot some pool, and I casually mentioned that I'd appreciate him not trying to hit on my girlfriend, and also -- fuck you for saying I don't know how to edit.

I didn't bring it into the newsroom. He was really good, and this was a personal issue that he had no issues respecting..

We last hung out when he was in town for the eclipse last year. Part of his polycule came down from Utah for it.

20 years after first hearing about the burner scene ...

It appears I'm going to attempt commune life. Now, this doesn't inherently follow from my physical involvement, but rather posting -- again -- on Reddit, asking what the local Discord was for the local scene after my first burn.

It was crickets for months. And then one day, a guy responded to me with a link. Somehow, I ended up at his house, and we talked Street Medics, which he runs locally, and well as general stuff. This was the night of the Los Angeles ICE protests, and I learned a lot about how people handle these situations.

I even got to try out a gas mask. As one does.

The next day, I'm back in my van, and I've been elevated to an admin on Discord -- something I suspect most of you know is really one step above my paygrade. It didn't take long to be booted down to standard user, but even less time to split the baby and make me a mod.

As a result, I met new people through the server in addition to the weekly event. And I started talking with another mod ... I don't even remember how we moved to DMs.

They just had a boarder leave, and as such, they have an open room they've offered to rent to me. We're just going to try it for a week before committing to something longer term.

The commune has yet to start up -- indeed, they're still looking for land (I get along famously with her husband, who is oddly not a burner himself), and they need to sell their house first.

They're chill people who share my values.

But seriously, who would have thought being priced out of fixed housing would cause gestures broadly all this?