week 4-5 (1/18/2026 - 1/31/2026)
The past two weeks I was down from a cold caught right before the MLK day, where a day-trip to Mount Snow in Vermont for skiing worsened the sickness while getting stuck in the Sunday snowstorm
Reads
Book The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan demonstrates how people and domesticated plants have formed a similarly reciprocal relationship. Apple, Tulip, Marijuana, and Potato tell the stories of four fundamental human desires -- sweetness, beauty, intoxication, and control.
I think there is no harvest more satisfying than the harvest of potatoes. I love the moment when the spade turns over the curst of black soil for the first time since spring and the chino-colored lumps tumble out onto the fresh dirt...
Not that any given spud is ever such a paragon of form. No two of them ever alike, most potatoes are odd, misshapen, asymmetrical things, their shapes determined as much by the accidents of adjacent rocks and soil as by any genetic instruction followed to the letter. Maybe this is why we like to give our chthonic spuds such sunny and Apollonian forms, slicing them into translucent chips and geometrical fries. Yet compared to the undifferentiated night in which they grow, the bright potatoes feel in the hand like form incarnate.
Watch
Since starting to learn skiing, Candide Thovex Youtube Channel was a great place for imagination of skiing, where it could take I to...
There is no better way than spending time on binging TV shows while sickness. I have not watched any fantasy C-drama for decade. Somehow, I managed to finish 36 episodes of Shine on Me... (available on Netflix now) Besides of the eye-catching protagonists, it touches briefly the progress of Photovoltaics (PV) industry evolution with background setting in the region of my hometown.
Listen
Kilian is not an unfamiliar name to me. Last year I followed his project "State of Elevation" to summit 72 14er peaks in lower 48 in a month by foot and by bike. Last week, in an interview of NYTimes (despite the unqualified interviewer) he talked about the experience.