When building Guesswork, a logic programming library for Elixir, I ran into an interesting problem: supporting both logical And as well as infinite streams of possibilities. To give an example, the statement ‘Let A be some positive number, and let B be some factorial of A’, has both an infinite stream of values (A could be 1, 2, 3, etc.) and a logical conjunction; it cannot be represented without both.

Baseball broadcasters spend surprisingly little time talking about the game in front of them. This is not to say they are doing the same thing as Liebling who would start with the boxing and then wander out into the city; they are very focused on the topic of ’the game’. Just not necessarily this game. They talk about stats: percentage of fastballs, bases stolen, how many beards on the field. They tell old baseball stories: who stole whose bat or how someone ended up at this or that club. Then they slip in jokes about their families when they are certain no one could call them on it (at least in real time).

Recently, I came up with a new way to cook pork chops. I like simple food. There is indulgence in the flavor of the meat and the beauty of the vegetables. Ever since I first learned to cook my favorite meal has been steak with mushrooms and onions. Don’t let the simplicity fool you, it is hard to get right. The steak alone can be difficult. Despite all the rules and tables, there is no cut-and-dry rule for how long or how hot to cook steak. All you really have is the moment you push the fork into the meat and either it is done, or it is not, or the meat is ruined.

‘Chushingura’ is on Jefferson Airplane’s fourth studio album, Crown of Creation. It has no words and is only a minute and seventeen seconds long. The song is also supposed to make your skin crawl.

The work of freaking out the listener, or at least putting them off balance, starts in the proceeding song. ‘Share a Little Joke’ starts slow and for most of the song stays slow, but right at the end, after lyrics the are done, it speeds up. When music speeds up, your body can’t help it, your heart rate speeds up. When your heart rate speeds up, you can’t help it, you feel just a little rush of that flight or fight response— your lizard brain reaches up into that mammal gray matter and demands to be heard. And this is the state of mind Jefferson Airplane seems to want you in when ‘Chusingura’ begins—just a little bit primal.

The martini is a precision drink. Making a martini is not an art, it is a science. The ratios need to be exact, the pieces carefully selected, and the way in which everything is combined repeatedly tested.

I know this because for a very long time I did not appreciate it. I have always been fond of gin. At first it tasted like summer to me, because growing up, my parents had gin and tonics when it was warm and they could sit out on the porch. But this is not the true essence of gin and instead I have learned to recognize in it the smell of pine trees. This is why the liquor taste should be so strong—like fresh air, that first sip of strong alcohol pulls us into the present and reminds us that we are in the here and now.

I have always been fascinated by superheroes, not just the heroes themselves (though I love them too, Doctor Strange is clearly the best), but the way in which they are created and how they are written. There is always an uncomfortable custody agreement between writers and readers. The writer may give birth to the character, but they only continue to live because the reader provides a mental space for the character to live and thrive.

I grew up in a house filled with art. Not like a museum filled with priceless masterpieces and not like a mansion with its history staring down from the walls— instead it was prints mostly, small images behind the dinner table or hanging in the living room. Everything exactly in its place. I hardly noticed them when I was growing up; it was just there like the table, and the chairs, and the cats.

I once tried to explain the argument behind Schrodinger’s cat to my mother. She was trying to write a poem and hoped that the metaphor would work, but disliked the idea that something could be both true and untrue. I flipped a coin and as it spun through the air I asked if it was heads or tails. Sadly, even that careful exhibition of probabilities failed to hit the mark; my mother believes that things are or are not. The coin is not heads till it hits the ground.

After over two years with a gas stove I found myself using an electric stove and the first thing I did was burn a piece of chicken. We understand fire. It lashes out of its hearth violently with vivid colors saying to everything around it, “Don’t touch me, I’m bad.” But electric stoves are, like many things powered by lines and towers, harder to read. They wait, but also radiate heat and refuse to turn off.