mufbLOG

Twin Lamps under Moon-and-Star

2026-06-30T00:00:00Z

I've spent the last few weeks getting in with the Twin Lamps, and dedicating myself to helping them free slaves and spread the message of abolition. I've joined a few raids on plantations, or otherwise helped out spreading abolitionist literature and dispatching Camonna Tong bounty hunters.

My rank in the Temple has helped me blend in and excuse my comings-and-goings across the province.

I checked in with Cauis, who directed me to continue following the thread of the Nerevarine prophecies. I still don't fully buy it, especially after being "cured" of Corpus - I still have the disease, it just doesn't show. Does this somehow prove I'm Nerevar reincarnated? It's just a trick.

But maybe the trick is what I need. The Twin Lamps leadership disagreed on strategy, but after talking with many of its ranking members, I came to agree with the Argonian ambassador, that we need to convince the Houses to abandon slavery. Slave rebellions can free individual slaves, but put them at risk just as much, and leave the overall system intact. We can do both. And to reach the Houses, maybe someone they believe is their Nerevarine can be persuasive.

As it is, the Temple faith seems to be built on lies. With the help of the last Dwemer alive, I learned the fate of the Dwemer from Kagrenac's sorcery, and with the Dissident Priest literature I've been given, see the throughline - the Tribunal appear to have used these tools to steal godhood.

Dagoth Ur grows stronger, and the fight for abolition feels to be reaching its climax. If I lean into the Nerevarine role, can I somehow favor one over the other?

Main in search of man

2026-06-10T00:00:00Z

I've been listening to that Evangelion rewatch podcast and they're hitting on the theme of loneliness and the trouble connecting to others s many of the characters display in the last third. The show had a great impact on me in 2019 for these explorations, and I'm glad to revisit them now many years later.

I've also been re-reading The Disposessed, perhaps my favorite book. The main character Shevek develops his theory of brotherhood being based on the shared experience of the inevitable personal pain in life.

When we follow Shevek after his transfer to the cawital city, he reflects on his obsessive focus on work and the social isolation this brings him. After a period of illness, he realizes "if he tried to go on alone, he would break down altogether." He quickly puts hmself out there and notes "it was surprising: people seemed to have been waiting for him They included him, invitied him as bedfellow and companion."

Were it so easy. This was hard for me to read, as I've been struggling with failure to find community and many lasting friends. When my last relationship ended, I put myself out there as fully as I could.I said ys to eveyrthing, showd up often and in full force, and admittedly had lots of fun, but it was all flashes in a pan - nothing came of it.

The same was true o my search for Jewish community. I've tried all the synaoguges, showd up consistently to one, became a presence there, volunteered as a greeter, but it was the same - brief, fleeting moments.

I got realy deflated, and honestly stopped putting in effort everywhere socially. I've beat myself up for so long, thinking there must be something wrong with me. And then I get down on myself for not doing more. Shevek feels the same, noting that as he distanced himself from the Urrasti and stopped going out: "it was not that they cut him offm he told himself; it was that - as always - he had cut himself off from them"

I talked to my rabbi about the difficulties of finding community, and how I've reall despaired, and he shared a Hasidic teaching: sometimes we knock and knock and kock, only to realize we're at a wall, and so have to walk away.

It's normal to adjust like this, after years of trying. There is a season for waxing and a season for waning. Let's see what hapens in a few years.

Back to Vvarderfell

2026-06-06T00:00:00Z

I decided not to go after the Malacath worshippers in the shrine near Uman, given my misgivings before. It definitely wasn't because the overpowered orcs inside stomped me several times, no sir-ee.

With my distrust in the Temple growing, I decided it was finally time to take up Cauis Cosades' quest and seek out the Ashlander tribe for details on the Nerevarine prophecy. I took a boat from the mainland back to Vivec City, though not before remembering that someone had whispered to me about an abolitionist society known as the Twin Lamps, and what I needed to say to join the group if I found them.

I remembered that the bookseller in the Foreign Canton was familiar with this group, so asked him pointedly about it. Luckily, he sent me to a nearby outpost, where I gave the proper passphrase, and was given my first mission: get various booksellers to distribute abolitionist literature.

The furthest town I needed to go to was near the Ashlander tribe I was looking for, so I ventured out north.

Convincing the booksellers was effortless, so I then set out along the foyadas to the remote Ashlander tribe. Once there, the ashkhan begrudgingly agreed to let me learn more about the prophecies once I had retrieved his father's bow from their tribe's burial caverns.

The caverns were pretty harrowing! After months on the mainland, I figured I'd be tough enough to take on whatever I came across, but the labyrinthean caverns were crawling with skeletal minions of varying toughness, and I barely scraped by with my armor intact. I got the bow, though, and limped out of the cave and back to the Ashlander camp.

The ashkhan was pleased, and directed me to speak to the wise woman of his tribe.

We spoke of the many Nerevarine prophecies, and how vague some of them are. She said I was not the Nerevarine, but that if I was interested in becoming so, I should follow up on the few scraps of prophecy remaining out there.

Do I want to be the Nerevarine? The notion of uniting the Dunmer, landed and nomad, to expel all outlanders sits wrong. So does confronting the Tribunal and potentially exposing them as frauds. I don't even know if they are frauds - they are certainly powerful, and the Tribunal Temple has clearly stood the test of time.

Do I want to even get further involved? I can have misgivings about the faith and its embrace of abhorrent practice, like slavery. That doesn't mean I necessarily want to directly challenge their beliefs and potentially cast down their gods. Even if I did, could I kill a god? The hubris required for such a thought makes me avoid it entirely.

I'll report back to Cauis, but perhaps will involve myself more with the abolitionist cause in the meantime.

Parashot Nasso 2026 Reflections

2026-05-26T00:00:00Z

"An essential component of cultivating a more charitable form of reading people and texts is the practice of hitlamadut, self-awareness. Here is a small but important practice for bringing greater self-awareness to your day-to-day activities this week:

Choose to learn something from the smalll acts of others, at least one time a day. This can be from the same person, or from different people.Again, the goal is not to judge anyone from their behavor, but to observe and learn from it. For example, you might choose to learn from observing the security guard at a building you frequent, or a barista at the coffee shop, or the way a neighbor or coworker or another person conducts themselves.

What can you observe in yourself as you notice them?"

Monday - A coworker had a craft and cookout day at their house on memorial day. They prepped vegan hotdogs for me and others who don't eat meat for various resons - me because I only eat kosher meat. They announced that they cooked the vegan meat sepaately and made sure it wouldn't touch anything that handled real meat. It's such a nice gesture and yet I felt embarassed.

Tuesday - I held the front door of the building open for a family, mom, dad, young daughter, and baby in a stroller. They were having a good time, and were very greatful that I held the door for them. When the young daughter ran by, she yelled at me excitedly. I smiled and stuck my tongue out.

Didn't get around to the rest of the week!

Bring the Moon home

2026-05-25T00:00:00Z

I followed the Artemis 2 mission obsessively, watching the live stream when I could, including having it on my kiosk display under my TV. When I learned they dropped 12,000+ images , I knew I wanted to see them all, and also that I would never just sit down and click around to see them. I wanted a better way to have them shown to me, without having to go out looking for them.

I realized that I could probably use my Android TV to see the images cycle through either as the TV wallpaper, or better yet, the screensaver. After digging around, experimenting, contacting developers and playing with beta versions they graciously added to accommodate me, I have figured it out! You can check my Reddit post here on how to set this up on your end. Best of all, it requires ZERO image downloads. You'll be pulling straight from the NASA photo website. I'll drop instructions below this post.

I also want to announce that I've replicated this functionality on my website, which you can find here! It's also accessible from my homepage, in the right panel, next to the moon phase wdiget. I found code on Github that sort of worked (the original photo database it drew from was hit or miss, so I corrected that), but it was limited to an admittedly great couple hundred shots. I wanted them ALL, so I just took the unique image identifiers I'd scraped from the NASA photo page, and added them manually to the photoset in the JS code. Now you can click through 12,000+ images at random straight from mufb.lol

Full set of Artemis II photos for Android TV wallpaper or screensaver

I wanted to see all of the Artemis II photos (10,000+) rotate through on my Android TV, so after scraping the static high-res image urls from NASA, I've generated a wallpaper .json file for use with Projectivy, and a .csv file for use with Aerial Views. Pick whichever option you'd like, host the relevant file somewhere, and follow the instructions below. No image download required!

Wallpaper option
- Download Projectivy Launcher and its add-on, Overflight
- Download and host this .json file somewhere (don't rely on catbox lasting forever!): https://files.catbox.moe/9df176.json
- Point to it in the Overflight Media source settings and you should be all set!
Screensaver option
- Download Aerial Views, opt-in to the beta and get the latest version.
- Download and host this .csv somewhere (don't rely on catbox lasting forever!): https://files.catbox.moe/wtlm6g.csv
- In Aerial Views settings, go to Media Sources->Custom feeds->Feed URLs, and point to the url there. Done!

Making a better facsimile

2026-05-24T00:00:00Z

At the Bible Museum, I bought a small replica of a jar they found a Dead Sea Scroll in. It was advertised as containing a replica of a Dead Sea Scroll, so for $20, was really excited for what I'd get. The clay jar itself is great, but unfortunately, the scroll included was just a glossy printout, not a real "tactile" replica. The jar was real clay, so why couldn't they spring for a better scroll replica?

The one they included was the Great Isaiah Scroll, likely for its alleged messianic content, so I wasn't too hot on keeping it anyway. I was really taken by the Ten Commandment Dead Sea Scroll (4Q41), since it differs from the accepted Deuteronomy text recounting the Ten Commandments by including text usually only found in the Exodus version. I set about looking for a way to make my own on the cheap, as I wasn't interested in paying big bucks for something I would roll up and keep inside a small clay jar on my bookshelf.

First, I need high-quality scans. Of course, these already exist, so it was just a matter of splicing together the scans into one single image.

Although I could've sprung for some fake papyrus sheets to print out on (to give it more of a scroll look), I first printed it out on office paper. My plan was to "age" the sheets with coffee grounds and tea bags.

I couldn't just use one sheet, however, as the image ended up being too small, so used an image-splicing program to split the image into separate pages I'd print out and overlay on each other. The prints came out good, but my plan of aging them didn't go as planned - the scroll image itself came out to dark on my black-and-white laser printer, so even though I thoroughly soaked the pages in tea / coffee and left them to dry on a drying rack, the brown just couldn't seep in deep enough.

Luckily, Laura had a roll of brown packing paper, and although it seemed pretty thin, I thought it could do the trick. I didn't want to run into the same issue where the scroll image darkens things too much, and after Laura asked if I could isolate the text itself, I played with the levels and contrast until the image was totally blown out, just black text on practically white background.

That did the trick! Once I got my new image and split it into multiple pages, I fed the thin sheets into the printer one by one. They were a bit thin, as I suspected, so crumbled as they went through, but that actually helped with the look I was trying to achieve. I cut the images out, taped them together, then glued them onto another sheet of packing paper for added thickness. I tried to cut out the same wear-and-tear marks on the actual scroll, crumpled it up, then laid it flat again, and voila! I'm actually really happy with how this Sunday craft came out. It rolls up real well into the clay jar, and now I have an actual facsimile of a scroll I care about.

Birthday recap

2026-05-15T00:00:00Z

Last week I turned 35, and had a pretty great birthday. Laura and I took the day off, and went to the Spy Museum, the Bible Museum, out to dinner, and then ended the night at a jazz show with a couple friends.

The Spy Museum is in the middle of L'Enfant plaza and the weather was great, so I got some pretty sweet views of several brutalist buildings separated by wide avenues that weren't packed with traffic.

The museum itself, while interesting, wasn't worth the price of entry. They have some cool displays, but eventually the museum ends up just showing you pictures instead of actual artifacts and documents. Still, though, it was a fun way to spend a couple hours.

Afterwards, we walked down to the waterfront to have a drink by the water, then walked over to the Bible Museum. After 3 pm is half-off entry, and I wasn't too hot on spending a ton of money at an explicitly evangelical place. Still, where else could I see the Dead Sea Scrolls?!

It's just fascinating to be in the presence of documents so ancient, and personally, I enjoy seeing how by this era, the canon of the Hebrew Bible was becoming set, and also how these scrolls from Qumran are evidence of how the texts still differed from the received texts we use today. I appreciate it for showing how Judaism has continuously evolved, rather than be set-in-stone from day one.

The next night, Laura and I had dinner with a few other friends. Overall a really great birthday celebration, and I'm really happy Laura and I got to spend so much time together.

Elite - Providing a Soundtrack, pt. 2

2026-05-13T00:00:00Z

The cassette has been created, and it's really fun to listen to while zooming around the galaxy, crashing into space stations, or getting mobbed by a half dozen pirates. What a frustrating game!

Here are the two albums that made the cut:

Adventures in Bitscape

Spacesounds

Elite - Providing a Soundtrack, pt. 1

2026-05-06T00:00:00Z

A rediscovery (of sorts)

A few weeks ago, I saw the following Skeet:

I immediately recognized the profile of a spaceship from Elite: Dangerous. I picked up that game a few years ago and was immediately in love. It was extremely immersive, and honestly quite relaxing to just basically play Deep Space Trucker, with occasional dogfights. So this skeet was a bit of a shock to me - I had no idea that Elite was a super old franchise!

I dug around a bit and learned it had come out way back in 1984, and it hit me: this is probably playable on my Miyoo Mini V4!

I purchased it on Facebook marketplace last fall, and haven't really spent too much time with it. I'm not really interested in story-based games, and most other retro game offerings are arcade rail shooters, only enjoyable for about five to ten minutes. A large, exploration-based game would be just what I needed to really get the most out of the Miyoo Mini.

Lo and behold, I searched the game files and there were already various Elite ports ready to go! I tried a few out, but the controls were either too finnicky, or the game itself is too bare bones. One thing I loved about Elite: Dangerous were the special cargo missions, big risk, big reward. I didn't want to just spend my whole time in-game buying food on the cheap and selling it at higher prices elsewhere.

That's when I learned that the author of one Elite Port for the Game Boy Advance had later created another, with better controls AND the special missions I was looking for: Elite AGB

No one can hear you jam in Space

I'm really having a blast with the game. I have a minor foot injury so can't go on my hour-long lunch walks at work, so instead go off to a quiet corner, sip on Diet Coke, and play Elite AGB. Here we have a minor traffic jam as I try to dock with a station for the 34345 time (I keep crashing and dying):

The thing is, the game is awfully quiet. There wasn't a soundtrack back in 1984, and AGB port's music doesn't work properly. I've been playing while listening to the fantastic FTL soundtrack and it got me thinking: I have like 30 cassettes to repurpose, why not dedicate one to creating a soundtrack to Elite? Once I learned the game had actually come out on cassette, I was committed.

It won't be too hard to do. Look at the game's original cover art:

My J-Sleeve is half done! I've spent the past few days browsing Bandcamp's space / retro / chiptune albums, and am narrowing down my options:

Adventures in Bitscape

Rymdkapsel Soundtrack

Spacesounds

I don't want anything that sounds too fanciful or playful or frenetic. Adventures in Bitscape will for sure make the cut, now to find what will go on Side B's allotted half-hour!

Parashot Behar-Bechukotai 2026 Reflections

2026-05-06T00:00:00Z

"Edgar Villanueva contrasts colonialism with indigenous thinking by saying the former (which he views negatively) relies on a worldview that sees the individual as separate from the rest of the world, while the latter (which he views positively) sees individuals as interwoven with all other beings and elements of creation. Is this your sense of 'ownership' of property, or control of things? When do you sense yourself as separate from the rest of the world (if at all), and when interwoven? Would you want to internalize Villanueva's worldview? Why or why not?

When I converted about two years ago, the parsha that week was Behar, as it was a leap year and they split the two parshas apart. I even had to give a drash immediately after the mikvah and formally converting!

I enjoyed the idea of redistributing the land, and that serving as a recognition that we do not truly "own" anything. I agree with Villanueva that ownership implies separation. It is a physical demarcation between you and others.

It brings to mind The Dispossessed, and how radical the social organization of that "ambiguous utopia" is - most, if not everything, is communal, and there is more value placed on contributing to society. There is less separation between individuals in this way. Most people are working towards sustaining and maintaining Anarres. Even still, we see how interpersonal conflict can arise thanks to the seemingly-inescapable "clashing of the wills". Yet it remains a powerful aspirational goal.

I also can't help but think of Evangelion. Maybe because I'm still listening to Waypoint Radio's 21+ hour series analysis, but the idea of AT Fields as ego boundaries keeping us from truly knowing another has fascinated me, as has the solution: dissolving that barrier and becoming one. I've always been intrigued by this idea. But that takes us too far from the scope of this parsha reflection. Maybe another time!

Valus or Velothi?

2026-05-03T00:00:00Z

I went off in search of the ice troll deep in the mountains, and really enjoyed the change of scenery:

I tracked down the ice troll, which actually wasn't too challenging to kill.

I wasn't about to make my way back on foot, so I cast Recall and was immediately before the monastery's abbot, where I reported my success and received my next task: slaying Malacath worshippers in a "nearby" Daedric ruin.

I've encountered Malacath worshippers before and they've never been outright aggressive. I honestly don't see why the Temple needs to spend its time hunting them down, much less why I should do it. Is the Temple faith really so particularist AND universalist, that it cannot exist peacefully alongside worshippers of other faiths? After all, even if the Temple considers other "deities" just powerful spirits, we see them actually manifest in the world. What sense is there in denying this violently?

Despite my misgivings, I set out to find the shrine, following the abbot's directions (southwest, near a Redoran outpost) which quickly proved terribly inadequate.

He said to head "southwest", when really, it was nearly totally "west". I didn't yet know this, though, so set out due south and overlooked a desolate, unwelcoming canyon:

A hunter had warned me away from the stronghold below, but I thought this might be the outpost, so I clambered down the cliffside to the entrance and learned it was actually the home of an unnnamed Ashlander tribe. They were welcoming enough, but this was not my destination, so I head west deeper into the badlands.

I started getting on the right track and found a signpost near a Dwemer ruin, pointing the way to Uman, the Redoran outpost.

I still got lost though, and came across a siltstrider carcass being reclaimed by the wastes/

I totally lost my way after that, backtracking a bit, and was attacked by some bandits. After dealing with them, I found their camp, and settled in for the night to try to find my way in the moring.

Come sunrise, I kept heading due west, levitating over rocks to higher perches to try to find my destination, and I finally found the small settlement of Uman at the foot of the Valus mountains, with the nearby shrine of Ald Uman indeed within sight.

After talking to the local traders, they referred to these as the Velothi mountaints, which I thought only bordered Skyrim. Apparently, the Valus Mountains are sometimes considered part of that northern mountain range! I'll head into the shrine next and see what to do with the Malacath worshippers.

On the road to St. Felms

2026-04-24T00:00:00Z

I got to Omaynis by night and had a great view of Masser

I got back on the trail of the creature I was hired to get rid of, and found it resting among the reeds. It wasn't hostile at all, and was capable of communication, but I couldn't make sense of it.

The lady who hired me told me an Orc in town might know how to talk to it, but she preferred I killed it all the same. I don't want to automatically resort to violence, so I tracked down the Orc, who gave me a primer on the kobold language.

I used the phrases he gave me to convince the kobold to leave, and got my reward from the questgiver.

That done, I headed west for the St. Felms Monastery. Along the way, I caught sight of the Valus mountains, bordering the province of Cyrodiil.

After a bit more trekking, I finally found the monastery tucked away in the cliffs. It's really quite large, and a bit of a maze. The abbot charged me with completing a war-pilgrimage in honor of St. Felms: I am to track down an ice troll in the mountains and kill it. That's for next time!

Parashot Achrei Mot-Kedoshim 2026 Reflections

2026-04-22T00:00:00Z

"The Magggid of Mezritch teaches " The children of Yisrael bring about holiness in the heavenly realms by means of their good deeds. That is, the holiness of the Divine is made transcendent through our holiness, when we do holy things in our world".

In your own words, what does this mean? does it ring true with your own experience? Why or why not?

I honestly do really connect with these kabbalistic notions of mitzvot as ways of returning divine sparks back to the source. Not only is there a greater purpose to doing good deeds, it helps give a framework for those mitzvot that do not seem inherently "ethical" - putting up a mezuzah, counting the Omer, etc. There is a greater process at work.

I can't say I fully believe that, but it does help in pushing me to do those mitzvot that aren't centered on interpersonal relationships - these are the ones between me and God, and I can give form to that relationship with these actions. Whether God "needs" these actions is not really my concern.

Phones, phones, phones

2026-04-20T00:00:00Z

I saw that the bike racks at my metro stop are being removed. I wondered why, because they are constantly full, though they recently installed some new bulky lockers you need an app to access and pay for, so I suspected that was what they were shifting towards. I wrote to them asking, and they confirmed they're being removed to make way for those lockers or other "smart racks". Why in the hell? Here's a simple technology: a piece of metal you freely attach your bike to. Now this infrastructure is being literally paywalled and the transactional infrastructure offloaded to the customer. Don't have a phone? Want to pay cash? Tough shit.

I don't know why it bothers me so much, I don't even bike, but it's so goddamn annoying the extent to which we have navigate life through a fucking phone. Want to see our menu? Scan the QR code. Want to order food? Do it on the app. I hesitate to use the word 'neoliberal', especially since we aren't talking about state structures, but it's so alienating how it feels like every social fiber is being dismantled and becoming a transaction, and it's on us to have the little device to faclitate, or we can't participate.

Temple Run End in Sight

2026-04-19T00:00:00Z

The last couple quests for the Monastery of Aralor went almost flawlessly. The first involved one of their criminal-turned-monks getting arrested by the Legion. The Monastery master sent me to persuade them to release him. I suppose the Legion doesn't look kindly on restorative justice and arrested the monk for past offenses. I never learned what that was, but in any case, set off to intercept them at a plantation not far from their final destination, where they planned to ship the monk off to jail. The irony of trying to free someone from a slave plantation was not lost on me; I usually free the slaves I find when passing through at night, but didn't have that opportunity this time. That reminds me, I need to make contact with the Twin Lamps once back on Vvardenfell.

I found the legionnaires, who told me I needed to get the local Imperial Cult priest to approve the prisoner's release.

Heading back to the nearby Imperial temple of Mara, I remembered that the priest is a Dark Elf who converted to workship the Nine Divines. I expected her to give me a hard time, but she immediately agreed, noting that the Monastery of St. Aralor does good work, and the Legion should not interfere in Temple matters this way.

I went back to the Legionnaires to deliver this verdict, and they were sufficiently chastened and recognized they shouldn't have interfered.

Back at the monastery, the elder informed me he used to be a Camonna Tong member, and while he has abandoned those ways and dedicated himself to helping others reach that path, his former colleagues still have out for him and are planning an assassination. I needed to head west to Omaynis and eliminate them at their hideout.

Omaynis is on the bank of a river, and it's a nice little place, sort of tropical, and with Dwemer ruins all around.

While looking for the cave, I was asked to track and hunt down a creature that was terrorizing the community. I immediately forgot about this in the difficult fight with the Camonna Tong enforcers,but I have to head back west for the last bit of Temple quests on the mainland, so I can tackle it then.

After dispatching the Camonna Tong members, the master of the monastery let me know there weren't any further duties for me, so I went back to Bal Foyen to get some outstanding payment from an alchemist I helped in a business dispute.

With that, I head west to the last Temple quests that Tamriel Rebuilt has to offer. I kind of hope there's an RP reason for my character to head back to Vvardenfell, where I have to start investigating the Nerevarine myths. I think the Hlan Oek quests would have been the best trigger, storywise, but let's see what's next1

Scraps of Lenin

2026-04-17T00:00:00Z

One of the joys of librarianship is when something cool and unexpected comes across your desk. Bonus if it's something old.

Yesterday a colleague handed me this tattered volume with marbled covers:

To my surprise, inside were bound several pamphlets of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, published shortly after their 1903 split into Menshevik and Bolshevik factions. The first pamphlet (which can be viewed here) greeted me with the party's motto, ripped from Marx and later to become the Soviet Union's: Workers of the World, Unite!

These were published during the period when Lenin was experimenting with his psuedonyms, so everywhere in the volume, he is N. Lenin, or Nikolai Lenin.

Best of all, we get literal scraps of Lenin's trademarked drama and cattiness. One pamphlet (which can be viewed here) with "For Party members only" at the top has an additional postscript stuck to the cover, criticizing the party's editorial board:

"The restriction on who can read this current pamphlet is being lifted because our so-called party editorial board has issued a response to it, allegedly for everyone in the Party, but in practice only address the minority and not those party members that make up the majority.

If "Iskra" [note: the RSDP's newspaper] decides not to count us as party members (while being afraid to state that directly), then we'll have no choice but to make peace with our bitter fate and make the necessary conclusions from such a decision."

Lenin would shortly after make good on his threat, and he and the Bolsheviks left to found a new newspaper, Vpered (Forward). The volume in hand had some pamphlets from this new publication:

It's always a treat when I work on something like this. It travelled 120 years to end up here, where I'll work to catalog it and others will repair it so it can be preserved for more future use.

Morrowind - Repentance

2026-04-10T00:00:00Z

Having finished all the Temple quests in Bal Foyen, I went south to the Monastery of St. Aralor, where I had previously passed through on a pilgrimage.

It was late, so I went to sleep in the living quarters. An hour later, I was awoken by a Daedroth demanding flowers. It was a daedroth I had encountered on my last quest as a Speaker of the Dead; during that ill-fated quest, the daedroth asked me for some flowers, and in exchange, helped get me home from that plane of Oblivion. I had neglected his request, so he tried to kill me, but I managed to best him, and went back to bed.

In the morning, I went for my next assignment and was tasked with dealing with a gang of bandits holed up in an ancestral tomb. One of their members had renounced his ways and now worked at the monastery. The Temple master wanted me to get their ill-gotten wealth for the Temple to put to better use.

Along the winding path to the remote tomb, I encountered some nobles from High Rock who wanted me to break into another tomb and give them a tour. As a Disciple of the Temple, this request was offensive, and so I refused.

Almost at the tomb, I was set upon by a pair of bandits. (I play with a mod that allows NPCs to heal themselves with potion and spells, so fights are more harrowing than normal). With the help of a summon, I put a quick end to them.

Finally at the tomb, I tackled the bandit gang. They were a pretty tough bunch; one of them was quite the spell-caster and I had to use a few protective spells and magic items to absorb or reflect their magic while I took my sword to them.

Once I was done, I looted their stash, and Recall'd back to the monastery, where I handed over the cash. I learned from the Temple master that the money was used to pay wages for repentant criminals; rather than have them serve jail time, they are put to work at local businesses, with the Temple subsidizing their employment. This honestly struck me as pretty progressive for Morrowind!

Shadow Stewards

2026-04-07T00:00:00Z

After several years of relentless activism in my union, as well as a couple leadership roles, I got really burnt out. To top it off, it is a big club of Personalities - of which I am definitely one! - and the micromanagement from the president was too much. I stepped back from a lot of roles except stewarding, but even this didn't save me from micromanagement, so I almost walked away from it all.

The Chief Steward convinced me to stay, and even become Steward Director for my area. The charge? Talk to stewards, coordinate them, and facilitate their training. I already do that informally, so why not? I've decided to limit my union activities to strictly representational matters, and not get involved in policy issues, so this should be doable.

First Test

Today I spoke with the Chief Steward about some of the stewards' needs. Specifically, they want more training. Training for this sort of thing can really only happen by tagging along on cases, which is how I earned my spurs. He shot this down, saying stewards should just "find cases" and that he can't arrange shadowing.

But I can! And have! I can continue to do this sort of shadow training for stewards in my area, and will just shelve this discussion. We disagree on policy, and I don't want to waste my energy trying to convince them, so I'll do it how I've alwys done things: myself

Upping my cassette game

2026-04-06T00:00:00Z

I started making my first cassettes with a cheap $20 recorder with just an aux input, mostly as a proof-of-concept, to see if I'd enjoy the project. I definitely did, and lamented the poor quality of the tapes I'd made. They sound fine with headphones, but if I wanted to listen with a sound system, I realized it was only one audio channel, which headphones automatically "converted" to stereo. I knew I'd need a more heavy-duty recorder, but so many of them are the size of receivers, and my audio console area is already pretty packed:

Cassette-receiver combos are apparently not in great supply and are frowned upon because of the complexity of repair. I needed something small yet powerful, with at least three-heads and VU meters for monitoring peaks. Even with headphones, the mixtapes I've made sometimes squeal when the sound gets too "loud". Thanks to the equipment featured on the Found Media Archive, I was pointed in the right direction: the Marantz PMD-430. the Walkman Archive concurred, so I went to eBay and tracked one down.

Remastering

It just arrived today, and I was home sick, so with the Orion fly-by playing in the background, I grabbed the mixtape I had made Laura for Valentine's Day, and got to work remastering it. The recording software I use has a handy calibration wizard, and with the new VU meters, I was able to get the sound right where it needed to be. I had to sit near the recorder, though, and fiddle with the recording volume if the meters showed the sound peaking too much, but I'm happy with the results. I hooked it up to my receiver and played it back, and we've got stereo sound and good bass, all I could really ask for.

Resuming Morrowind

2026-04-05T00:00:00Z

It's been a month and a half since I last played Morrowind. I dropped it to throw myself completely into building out this very site, or as Laura calls it, "playing html". Now that it's mostly as I want it and there are only a few big areas of content I have planned, I wanted to pick up where I left off, and it was a pretty great playthrough!

Organizing in the mines

I was tasked by the Temple in Bal Foyen to head to an egg mine outside of town, where workers had unearthed a cursed Indoril artifact. The foreman wanted to just remove it, but one worker who had tried to do so went insane and had to be restrained. The foreman refused to wait for Ordinators to show up to properly dispose of the artifact, so I had to go into union-mode: I had one-on-ones with the workers to confront their boss and get him to back off his plan of using them to remove it. A few took some convincing; one felt she didn't have the courage, the other was worried about lost pay. I convinced the one and paid the other the potential lost wages, which I see as an analogue to real world hardship funds. We marched on the boss, but he still did not relent, promising to hire scabs to remove it. I pressed him further and he claimed he was worried about all the lost profits from waiting for the Ordinators, as he was hard-pressed by his Hlaalu masters to keep digging. I paid him off too - got me thinking about how much financial support it takes to do the right thing when everything is so economically interconnected, like how nationalizing the health insurance industry would result in tons of job loss, so these folks should absolutely be given financial support and re-training to bridge the gap until they are back on their feet. Any little action could have unintended consequences, and it is possible that people resist change for good reasons.

Going to the moon!

2026-04-04T00:00:00Z

The glory of technology

Ever since the Artemis II mission launched on April 1st, I've been glued to the livestream, so much so that Laura has called it my new favorite TV show. I even set up my kiosk display to cycle through the livestream so I don't miss a beat.

It's so exciting to be able to just tune in and get these images beamed to us from over one hundred thousand miles away. I think of the Apollo 11 mission and how exciting it must've been to see the ghostly, grainy images live from the Moon; now, we'll at least get 720p! I'm just in awe not of the tech to do these live streams, but to get people around the moon and back. Just imagining how precise everything has to be.

I'm also imagining how uncomfortable it would be to use the toilet there, but at least it's now private, as compared to the Apollo missions when they had no toilet facilities and they just had to shit into bags in front of each other. Progess on all fronts.

Gym and Eva

2026-03-30T00:00:00Z

Back at the gym for my latest effort to get back in the saddle. It feels like something always comes up, mostly minor injuries lately. I know I'll never get back to the six days a week I was doing seven years ago - alternating weight lifting and cardio- but I can at the very least aim for three and build from there. It also gives me crucial podcast time, and from not hitting the gym, I have a huge backlog!

I'd meant to start listening to Waypoint's twenty hour Evangelion rewatch soon after finishing our own rewatch, but then various injuries, and here we are, a few months later. It always feels good to work out, and I tend to forget that when I don't want to actually exercise.

Anywho, I am excited to dip into this podcast. I really enjoyed showing Laura the show, and picking up on things I obviously didn't notice the first time around.

It got me thinking about how the Dead Sea Scrolls are a plot point (mainly since they had just been discovered and not yet fully deciphered, so they used it as a plot device to refer to Seele's big plan), mostly because the idea of finding all these ancient documents is fascinating to me. At one point someone left them where they were and abandoned the location. Why did they leave them? What did they take with them? This is something that's always fascinated me about archaeological finds. Was it just massive societal collapse or chaos that lead to so much being left behind? Did folks forget that was all there? I'm sure there's some idea I'm just not getting, but it is fun to think about.

Parsha Tzav 2026 Reflections

2026-03-23T00:00:00Z

Pesach

"Do you find yourself drawm more toward a notion of Shabbat as a remembrance of creation? or as a remembrance of the Exodus? How do you understand the difference between the two? If, as the Sefat Emet suggests, Passover brings a special focus to a quality of Shabbat present every week - or even in every moment - how would you describe that special focus? What is the special opportunity of Passover?"

Passover has been a bit awkward for me. Although on paper it seems like this would be the holiday for me - liberation! remember your oppression so as to not inflict it yourself! - I've never really connected with it. I do only have a couple under my belt so far, though, so I hope to turn it around year by year. I plan to do a daily Omer journal here - watch this space! - to further that aim.

That said, I have no idea how Shabbat is supposed to remind me of the Exodus, but I'll try to reflect on that as the prompt suggests: I'm more drawn to the remembrance of creation paradigm, where just as God ceased from creating, we too must take a break from changing the world and just live in it, as it is. It's also a temporal "liminal space" where, depending on your practice, one coold get further in touch with the majesty of creation and all God's miracles in the universe.

I suppose that is the link to Exodus - God bringing the Jewish people out of Egypt with outstretched hand and overt miracles.Shabbat challenges me to see the hidden hand of God and the miracles that daily attend us, which we take for granted. Perhaps I'll keep that in mind as we move into Pesach.

Leviticus

This week's prompt is one of the copouts - the parsha is dense and hard to relate to, so the author pivots to a somehwat-related topic. I see why, but I would prefer to engage with the text a bit more. Luckily, Leviticus as literature has me covered.

Douglas notes that in Leviticus, the argument seems to be in favor of local sacrificial alters, evidenced by the absolute requirement that animals slaughtered for consumption must be offered up as sacrifices first. Contrast this with Deuteronomy, where the Temle is the only sanctioned sacrificial alter, but slaughter for consumption is allowed elsehere. Douglas sees in this a way of making the meat-eater confront the fact that they are taking another life for their own nourishment, and calls on them to elevate the experience by offering the animal to the Lord.

This sort of thinking jibes with my own practice of only eating kosher meat. I cannot totally eschew meat, but I can severely limit my consumption due to the rarity of kosher meat, and when I do eat it, it has been slaughtered in a way that brings this sacrificial offering practice into our homes, in the absence of the temple.

Vayikra \\ Starting Leviticus

2026-03-21T00:00:00Z

Solo shabbat

Laura is out of town at a conference for a few days, so I mostly spent shabbat alone. I went to a new shul near work that I hadn't had the chance to visit before. It wasn't really my vibe (in a church basement, lots of English and truncated prayers), but they were nice and welcoming and I'm glad I finally checked it out.

I spent most of the day reading, and watched Godzilla (1954) again, as I'd just read the novella treatment and wanted to see how they compared.

Parsha

This week's parsha opened up the book of Leviticus. This one is famously very inaccessible to mdoern readers, but as someone who was attracted to Judaism precisely for its focus on how to be (legislated by the numerous mitzvot), I want to try to understand this particular book more. The Bible translation I'm using this year (by Robert Alter), referenced an analytical work called Leviticus as literature by Mary Douglas. I've only read about 1/3, but the basic thrust is that Leviticus is written in a style very foreign to our linear, analytic paradigm, and is more mytho-poetic. As such, it displays a different logic that we just aren't used to anymore - logic by analogy and metaphor, where things are never explicit but are (were?) tacitly understood by the contemporary audience. Basically, it uses a model of "you have to listen to me because I'm your older brother", where things are taken for granted, and the focus is more on presenting the Priestly obsession with the order of creation. After 2500 years, though, we've lost that cultural context, and are left grasping to explain precisely why say, pigs are abominable and why we cannot eat of the fat around the tail and kidneys, instead of understanding inately just what this symboilzes as a metaphor for orderly creation.

I don't have much to say beyond that, as I haven't gone deep enough in Leviticus as literature, but am excited to delve deeper. Animal sacrifice and obsession with bodily emissions is generally something I'll never deeply identify with, but these were taken very seriously by our ancestors at one point, and the valences were mostly transmuted by the rabbis into various prayers and home rituals, so I hope to take something from Douglas' analysis to bring to my daily practice.

Лауре...

2026-03-20T00:00:00Z

Laura,

Shabbat shalom!

I'm sorry I can't be there to see your presentation and support you, but I know you'll be great. Like Annie says, you know this material through and through, and that will definitely come across today (or tomorrow, if you're reading this on Friday night!).

I hope you're having a blast out west, even if there's an unprecedented heat wave. We're all holding down the fort here (Mila is patrolling with a certain level of gravitas, Muchi is asleep on the chair, Hank is on the bed forlorn, and Bobo is...somewhere), and can't wait to see you.

I love you, come home soon.

_{(click for true color!)}

Cameras & Cringe

2026-03-19T00:00:00Z

I recently got a digital camera without a screen. My phone camera is too unreliable, and in my continuing jihad against screens, I wanted something that didn't provide instant satisfaction. The barrier to entry for a film camera seems a bit steep - I have to replenish film, and find somewhere to develop them locally. A cheap digital point-and-shoot without the ability to review images on the fly seemed like the sweet spot.

I want to try to be present and live in the moment, but also be able to capture memories or cool sights. By just taking the photo and hoping for the best, I aim to do just that. Maybe it'll also teach me patience along the way. Arcade Fire famously sang "we used to wait", and in this era of instant gratification, taking dozens of photos and waiting until Friday to review them is a great way to microdose waiting.

The trouble is, I feel extremely cringe stoping to take a photo of anything. I know no one cares, and even if they did, I wouldn't know. Part of me hesitates, though, whether from not wanting to delay my commute home by the few seconds it takes to stop, arrange the shot, and take it, or perhaps some kneejerk reaction against an innocent and sincere activity - I'm doing something I enjoy, for the benefit of mostly myself.

Maybe this is also part of the chalenge, to let myself just be, without the harh inner observer weighing in too heavily.

Parsha Vayikra 2026 Reflections

2026-03-17T00:00:00Z

I'm going to start using my parsha-reflection books and use this blog for the guided question some of them have at the end.

The focus of the reflection this week was on how God dwells inside all of us, and we need to "attune" ourselves to be able to hear His voice and what he has to say.

Question for reflection:

"What do you find helps you to 'tune in' to your inner voice? What hinders you from doing so? What is one step you can take to remove a hindrance and improve your ability to listen to that voice?"

I need moments of quiet to be able to truly listen. Maybe not exactly "quiet", but I need to be truly focused on the person or thing I am trying to listen to in order to actually hear them. So I suppose it comes back to intention on my part - I not only need to find time to truly listen, but I also need to make the time to listen and give my full attention.

I know and always recognize that my desire to be doing something, often on my own, is what creates the bigest impediment to taking the time to actually listen.

Reflecting on it more, I'd say thay my will is the biggest impediment. If I don't want to do something, I simply won't, and it's often a very knee-jerk reaction. Laura has commented how quick I am to reject a suggestion, and I think it's totally related to that.

I'm trying to learn to not be so willful. A new thing I'm trying out at work is to just do whatever higher-ups want, even if it's at odds with what I think is more efficient or worthwhile. I need to focus that sort of energy inward as well, and listen to that voice of God.

The Duties of the Heart repeated ad nauseum how a wise holy person doesn't give much thought to their will, and in this way, is able to experience the will of God more easily and serve it better. I suppose that's quieting down, in a sense, though I can say for sure that I don't think I can quite get to that level. It feels like I'd just let people run roughshod over me, all to not experience the dismay of my will not winning out?

Medals and anniversaries

2026-03-16T00:00:00Z

One year of living together!

Yesterday Laura and I celebrated one year of living together. We had a lovely time at a local wine bar, trying out various wines I'll never remember the name of. My favorite wine is "red", and as long as the color is right, I honestly don't pay much attention otherwise. I'm a simple man.

We then went to a ~~dim sum~~ Shainghainese tapas (their words, not mine!) spot, and lemme tell you, their General Tso's tofu was absolutely delectable. The spice level was perfect, and the texture of the fried tofu was incredible - I've gotta try deep frying some at home.

We took a selfie with Laura's Instax mini camera, and it came out gorgeous. We're having trouble tracking down the picture we took the first night after we arrived from Arizona with the cats. Once I find that photo, I'll share the three instant pics that have defined our year of living together.

Medals galore!

Today we were under a tornado watch so I stayed home from work and continued a project I started last night for the site: recreating my Soviet pin/medal shadowbox, and cataloging the various pins and medals. I'd found info on them over the years, but it's very nice to have it all documented in one place now. Check it out here!. I still have a few more rows to add, but it is basically a carbon copy of the IRL shadowbox.

I did learn that a particular pin I have is from the Russian Federation, not the Soviet Union, and I was kinda bummed. Not to say that things of Soviet provenance are any morally better, but the goal was to have Soviet pins, not Russian, and I will very quickly look to get a replacement, which isn't the worst thing in the world.

Intro

2026-03-15T00:00:00Z

Howdy!

I finally got this thing working! It's pretty neat to be abe to just send a properly-formatted post from Notepad++ into hyperspace with some terminal commands, and even if it's finnicky, it's really fun and I can't wait to start sending off some posts in the near future.

Building this website, hunting down code snippets, and making them all work together has been a great pasttime these past few weeks.

Shabbat

Shabbat this week was lovely - went to my first musical Shabbat service at my "new" shul. I hadn't been to this sort of service before, since they're usually when my main temple has their monthly dinners, but as I flirt with the idea of "switching" shuls and am starting to go to this one more, it was a very nice first exposure. The energy was fantastic, which was much needed, given the continuing onslaught of news. Just before shutting my phone off, I saw that flights at all the airports in the DMV were grounded due to a "chemical smell" at the flight control center. It was later allegedly due to an overheated circuit board, but in the moment, I had no idea.

I've been thinking about blowback and how relatively safe and secure we are here in the states while we go abroad and sow indiscriminate destruction, and thought this might have been a small taste of some sort of comeuppance. Laura was able to bring me back and have me focus on the service, which I so appreciated. We also got the chance to see our friend Veronica, who we hadn't seen for weeks as she started a new job that doesn't give her much time on Fridays to make services like we all used to. Afterwards, Laura and I had dinner at a revamped Mexican restaurant and it was fantastic. What better shabbat meal than huevos rancheros and a tankard of michelada.

In the morning, we had our usual french toast and I read this week's parsha, finishing off the Book of Exodus. I read a bit more from 1 Samuel later in the day, and then took a nap. We watched Mr. Nobody Against Putin while we enjoyed some strawberry mocktails and cheesy poofs. I then cracked open The Jewish Annotated New Testament, freshly acquired. I started Matthew, read some of the footnotes, and then dove into some of the essays in the back on competing Jewish sects at the time, and how intra-Jewish debates in the New Testament have become so decontextualized that now, two thousand years later, they mostly read as anti-Jewish screeds. I'm pretty excited to delve into this book more, because as a convert from Catholicism, I'm so glad I can now better understand the stories I'd been taught, but with the crucial missing Jewish context. I'm really looking forward to pairing my understanding of Jewish law and history with the stories of the New Testament and learning all the background and details that elide modern readers.

Plans

Tomorrow is one year since Laura and I started living together. We're headed off to a local wine bar and then getting American Chinese takeout, which is what we had for dinner after our cross-country flight with two drugged-out cats.