A L O N Z O

Why are there Researchers? Or: what is the point of the work that I do? When I was in grad school and for the first part of my postdoc, I would almost proudly disclaim practical applications of the mathematics research I do. ...

This week, I ponder the question: what is the point of the work I do? If I do say so myself, I’m unusually clear-sighted about the point of (my) work. The existential angst is obviously present but manages not to overwhelm the essay 😁

read.alonzo.zip/why-are-ther...

僕、日本語能力試験N3に合格したじゃん！！

On Human Touch Seven hours at the Chicago ICE Field Office

Extremely back on my "wake up babe, new @olivalejandra.bsky.social just dropped"!!

David Foster Wallace talks about the "this is water" of living a life made up of days. This really spoke to me about the process of making those days and ideals meet in reality.

open.substack.com/pub/ojosdesa...

what’s that nicki minaj lyric?

I am not a prompter / I’m training data ?

so far ahead these bums is laggin?

How to Try Learning Japanese Or: what I'm trying and have tried, anyway. I think I was in middle school when I decided that I wanted to learn Japanese. I think the draw was some combination of anime (also Pokémon), sushi, a sens...

The weeby nerdery will continue until morale improves

read.alonzo.zip/how-to-try-l...

what a delight, shuffling into that noted Buddhist hymn of nonattachment, “I Don’t Wanna Be In Love” by Good Charlotte

I’m always thinking about this tumblr post from back in the day about garlic. it was like

you should always use more garlic than the recipe indicates, like unless the recipe is literally a recipe for “one clove of garlic”—and even then, use two.

Bookes are like Cheese, that is neuer well seasoned to euery mans tast; for one will say it is too salt, another wil say it is too fresh, a thirde will say it is to tart, another thinkes it to be too milde; one will haue it too hard, another too soft, another too tough, another too brittle, it neuer pleaseth euery mans tast; no more do Bookes.

Barnabe Rich explaining that "bookes are like cheese"

shout out to my nerds w a laptop in a gym bag

"Go to the Library!" My family has this card game, Authors. It's basically Go Fish, except that instead of asking if people have the 10 of clubs or whatever, you're asking if they have The Last of the Mohicans, for instan...

"I guess if this bit of the post has a point it's that trans women librarians are salt of the earth, tough as nails, some of the best people I know, and every library system should give them a raise and the best health insurance policies out there."

read.alonzo.zip/go-to-the-li...

honestly the theatre twink to gym rat pipeline made so much more sense to me once i realized:

the gym makes any weekday you want special by virtue of adding in a cheeky little costume change

2025 In Books and by "in books," I mean "in books that I read, almost all of which did not come out or trend in 2025". I started using The StoryGraph in 2024; I think it came recommended to me as a Goodreads alter...

read.alonzo.zip/2025-in-books/

I read 11 more books in 2025 than 2024; here's hoping I keep that upward trend for next year :)

the dalai lama: you were put on this earth to vibe
richard stallman: you were put on this earth to code
sam altman: you were put on this earth to vibecode

the time when I was most immersed in Joni Mitchell's music (1990-1995ish) was also a time when I wasn't very in touch with a lot of pain I carried but the pain was there, looking for a place to be felt, and I'd locate that place in Joni Mitchell records, specifically Blue & Court + Spark & The Hissing of Summer Lawns, and while there's certainly plenty of hurt in those records it's still kind of funny when I'll cue up "In France They Kiss on Main Street" and a body memory of beginning to give myself permission to feel something very difficult will ripple through me, and it's in a way delicious, luxuriant; and I think one error in listening is to attribute agency to the artist when this sort of connection is formed, artists are just playing in their sandboxes, but it's also nearly impossible as a listener to not holler in gratitude from the heart of this process, seeking a person or Person to whom one might express that profound gratitude, someone to whom we can say "thank you, what would I be without this," but there are two people to thank for this and it's harder to thank them than to enter into the easy recourse of icon worship, and sources vary on whether those two people are actually just one person but one of them is God and the other one is you.

thinkin about stuff

A still from the movie Airplane (1980) featuring Leslie Nielsen and Robert Hays. The caption reads “He hath indeed borne our griefs. And don’t call me Shirley.”

For the Handel/ZAZ fans out there

the word for "taboo word" in Japanese being 禁句 (きんく, "kinku", basically as close to "kink" as you can come in Japanese morphology) is either an incredible coincidence or a sign of a much deeper conspiracy

Surely! He Hath Borne our Griefs I just clocked that like "Panic" or "Godspeed", "Surely" is two syllables long and takes to a cheeky little exclamation point like a duck to water. I was wasting a man's time the other day and mentio...

I am trying out this whole "you can just write things" thing

read.alonzo.zip/surely-he-ha...

a photo of my lap, where i have two Blackwing pencils and a sharpener balanced in my palm.

being a lil extra with my 鉛筆 game for the 日本語能力試験 😁

(also hi hello we briefly knew each other in a life for me long gone and now both of us must teach at Rutgers sometimes? and I must have walked by you in or near Kinokuniya just last week? maybe I’ll try and say hello next time 😂)

I think about this beautiful idea (a day-long “zine residency” that’s just people yoyo-ing like Thomas Pynchon’s schlemihl Benny Profane on the subway) more and more … maybe we need another one!

www.shelf-awareness.com/issue.html?i...

can you imagine a world where the back half of the 21st century is “the information superhighway goes the way of Amtrak”

… i passed my 日本語能力試験N3 practice test!?!?

rolling up to the gym dressed all “nice for work” is surprisingly goated? i’m walking in like oh shit, i’m the CFO of this here Planet Fitness

sorry for stravaposting but come to my gig :)

i'd been confused about why journalling feels frequently pretty tough still, since that's not really how i hear about it. but i realized:

i am a trusty grill in a busy restaurant. in order to function well at high volume, it is necessary to scrape up the grease often. this is journalling for me.

today the woman at the Japanese bookstore asked the folks ahead of me—who were there for the first time—if they wanted a membership. I've been there about once a week for more than a month, but I guess after they turned her down she was less inclined to try on me xD

DeKalb Ave late at night on a weekend is so dangerous you guys. I’m out here thinking I dodged a bullet bc I let the D train go by waiting for a Q only to realize I boarded an N and hafta walk through the park, smh

so when people call an activity meditative, how often do you think they mean “it gives you an opportunity to confront and exorcise the demons wrapped around yr soul”?

thank you :))

a photo of Robbie side by side with an image of Kiyotaka Ayanokoji. Robbie’s outfit and pose are chosen to closely match Ayanokoji’s; he is wearing a school uniform with a burgundy blazer, green slacks, dress shoes, with a lightly disheveled white shirt and black tie. He is standing, looking down towards the camera with one hand in his pocket and the other behind his head, elbow angled skyward.

happy halloween :)
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