# Week Notes - August 9


Somehow, nothing noteworthy happened this week (maybe that's not a bad thing in
2020). Instead, here are some longer-term things I've been thinking about and
doing:

## Recently: Cooking

I've been doing a lot less baking recently. Since it's been so hot, the idea of
heating up my living space even more with an oven is rather unappealing. I've
still made banana bread a couple times and a quiche or two, but I've otherwise
been taking a break. It's ice cream season, anyways. 🍦🍨

_Cooking_ in the summer is a lot of fun though, with so much great produce being
in season. We've been hauling in tons of fresh herbs, tomatoes, leafy greens,
and stone fruit. Washington's summer always brings an abundance of cherries and
peaches. So, I've been making gazpacho, salads, and falafel as well as grilling
copious amounts of vegetables. It's unlikely that we'll be able to travel this
year, so I've been trying to inject some novelty in my life by way of food. So
far, it's been successful!

I got this idea (or at least, the mindset for it) from a tweet from Simon
Willison:



We've been limiting the number of times we go grocery shopping, so I haven't
been able to implement the "international supermarket as novelty" idea, but we
have been getting a weekly
[CSA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community-supported_agriculture) box that
has provided us with some exotic ingredients to cook with.

## Recently: Reading

-   **How to Be an Antiracist** (Ibram X. Kendi) was as good as everyone says it
    is. Of course, no book can completely cover all the issues surrounding race
    in the US, but this book laid out a great framework for thinking about
    racism in the 21st century. I especially liked Kendi's reclamation of
    "racist" as a descriptive term. Calling an action "racist" is not a slander
    against the person, it is a description of how their action was unjustly
    prejudiced along some axis of race. This does not let anyone off the hook
    for hurtful actions, but allows a more frank discussion.
-   **Heart of Darkness** (Joseph Conrad) was pretty awful. I think I completely
    missed what this book was trying to do, because I really disliked all of it.
    I chose to read _Heart of Darkness_ because some other English classes in my
    high school had read it (but my teacher chose for us to read something
    else). I'm quite glad I didn't have to spend much time reflecting on this
    plot.
-   **Caliban's War** (James S.A. Corey) was a great followup to **Leviathan
    Awakes**. Both books are part of Corey's "The Expanse" series, which has a
    [TV adaptation](<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expanse_(TV_series)>) of
    the same name. Corey does a lot of great world building in both books, which
    continues to pay off. While I think _Leviathan Awakes_ was a better
    self-contained story, _Caliban's War_ sets up the third book really well,
    and I'm excited to continue with the series.

## Minor Blog Design Update

I changed the way that tags are displayed and added a "Related Posts" footer to
each post on this blog. Right now, the suggestions are generated by Hugo's
[related content](https://gohugo.io/content-management/related/) feature, but
I'm thinking of adding a way to override it if I want to link to specific
 posts.

I've also slowly been making some minor design changes, like the way that `<hr>`
elements are displayed. Now they're "dashed" and a bit thicker. I'm still a
relative novice when it comes to CSS, so this has been a fun bike shed.

![New Post Footer](https://benjamincongdon.me/blog/2020/08/10/Week-Notes-August-9/footer.png)

## Assorted Links

-   ["We Quit Our Jobs to Build a Cabin — Everything Went Wrong"](https://www.outsideonline.com/2415766/friends-diy-cabin-build-washington) -
    Wow, this was an entertaining read. I'm not sure what the takeaway is,
    because although they admit "everything went wrong", they're going on to
    build more cabins? In any event, there's something powerful about stories
    like these, and the sense of satisfaction one gets from building something
    with one's own hands.
-   [Reasons for COVID-19 Optimism on T-Cells and Herd Immunity](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/08/reasons-for-covid-19-optimism-on-t-cells-and-herd-immunity.html) -
    A cautiously optimistic article about the possibility of lower-threshold
    herd immunity, due to preexisting partial immunity given by exposure to
    viruses like the common cold.