earthy sweetness, beets. red. root-like and sweet.
grind
it’s the last few beans of this delicious,
juicy bag of guatemala beans from
parable coffee co, roasted on 2026-02-16,
so it’s going to be a bit of a stronger cup;
measured 16.8 g beans plus a few spares
reset the grind to the timemore’s 1.8.3.
with the spares, ended up with 17.2 g
grounds, so target pour is 275.2 g
purified water, ended up with 265.5 g
water. immersion time was 3:09 with
the typical one minute draw-down. much
longer than normal; was writing and let it go.
grounds sniff
let it go
first starbursts: pockets
unlatching these
ears into
resonant ‘istening,
a priori pings of
super sensational
verification
of injected consciousness,
plants with caffeine
know that other lifes
look at them.
it’s their song, singing,
slow, slow down
slow way way down
until vim is seen
across the frames,
[not in the chains
of causal blinks, but]
in aeons, bound
together in tethers,
of co-creation
splitting kindling with the hatchet, inside the dry wood
grind
316.6 g purified water heated
opened a new gallon of purified water
how long does a gallon last ?
no leftover grounds, so +0.1 g;
16.1 g guatemala beans
3 sprite, 4 water r.d.t
1.8.3 timemore grind
16.4 grounds poured in, how … ?
pulled 0.4 g grounds into spare cup
16.0 g net grounds
groundsniff
brew
256.1 g purified water poured
by 1’10, vigorous first 175 g
with gooseneck spout, remainder
a gentle spiral clockwise in
from hario rim, making the
surface smooth.
0’00”-2’45” immersion time
2’45”-4’00” drawdown
listen
benge’s 1996 album,
beautiful electronic music:
aleatoric lyricism
inside the geodesic
machine of sparkling facets
and blinking
counterparts
taste
first sip’s salt rim
smacked the deep
fist of breath, an
acidity of halo’s kiss
pulsing, reflection of
the teeth. in the dark
surface, the grid of
lamplight wiggles, brown-
-ian emotions, nascent
flecks of day,
emergence and
dissolution in
grace as tuples
without guarantee
or mutual
entanglement.
with emily sprague,
in a moment of cloud time
again, better
to concentrate
soundness of mind,
to nuzzle a phonon
and wait @ the gate
before vast, soniferous
fields, asking air
to let into
to admit a spirit
of inquiry
to unlatch the entrance
below a spring storm
horizon wall
so the memories
can wander in
and graze below
a single, quiet clap
of lightning
taste
satisfying, rich.
must admit
the guatemala
is easier
brew than finca.
16 g guatemala beans
1.8.3 on timemore
16.0 g guatemala grounds
sniff
of the grounds:
that tracks! rich, earthy, subtle.
brew
overpoured 25 g; 281.8 g
purified water. staring at
the maestri house timer instead of the scale
compensated by using a
longer immersion of 3 min
(normal is 2’50”)
listen
yesterday’s log
anticipated the rite
of spring, but morning
drizzle needs emily sprague
to fog the lens a bit, get the
eardrum wet, to hear the patter
of time, not the pulse but the vibrating hum
especially after begonia’s brash score is
still unfinished after last night’s viewing. hard
to watch but still the kernel of its problem rings
out: what can be said to one whose reality is bent
in the wormhole of trauma?
converse
who predicted the energy
blocade at the strait of
hormuz, and what is iran’s
strategy? revenge, rage, or
sticking it to the man?
taste
a bit diluted; expected
at same, sweet hint
still delicious, sip-
ped from lidless no dams mug
yesterday, learned the term “llm psychosis” from andrej karpathy
guatemala bag
getting lower.
even so
can’t yet hear
beans as rattling,
so the feeling of plenty
remains.
mostly reproduced yesterday’s
delicious cup.
sniff
of the grounds, fresh from the catchment:
smooth, rich.
satisfying.
converse
engineering teams
token leaderboards
chloe zhao’s symbolic
fluency; deep aftereffect
of hamnet
brew
overpoured by 2.1 g
2’45” immersion time.
listen
stravinsky,
suite from firebird,
played by l.a. phil.
some parts,
iv. infernal dance of king katschei,
bring to mind the spring rites.
haven’t listened to those
in ages;
tomorrow?
on the doac podcast,
guests leave a q for
the next, a type of
recursive inquisition.
maybe these logs should
set up the anticipation
of listening.
love the term philharmonic:
the love of joining,
of fitting together,
of orderly arrangements.
310.5 g purified water heated
16.1 g guatemala beans
1.8.1 grind setting
15.9 g grounds + 0.1 g catchup
2’45” reference immersion
time from mar 16 used
259.1 g purified water poured
by 1’30”
patagonia / no dams mug used for
the full cycle.
context
listening to jasmine sun
mar 20 hard fork podcast
how she uses claude
as a writing editor,
don’t normally listen
to podcasts during
coffee time, but
this was thought
provoking
“I feel like I really cracked this over the last couple months… if I make Claude into an editor that is not just trying to grade and give feedback on my work against some genericized standard of what good writing is, but actually against my personal aspirations for writing, it can give feedback that I find much, much more helpful.
I fed Claude my entire Substack archive of the writing that I’ve previously done … I also personally write retro notes to myself after everything I publish… just a few bullet points about what was good and bad. … I wanted it to learn my taste—what I aspire to be, where I see myself falling short, what I’m proud of.
From those things, plus a bit more about my audience and goals, we co-developed a rubric… [and] it would ask things like: does this take advantage of your ‘insider anthropologist’ position? Or it would notice patterns in my writing, like moving between registers or blending policy and personal scenes.
Then I split it into phases—ideation, structure, prose, fact-checking—and told Claude: your job is to evaluate my drafts based on this criteria, not to do the writing for me, and to prompt better thinking out of me.
So when I give it a draft, it might say things like: your conclusion is just a summary, and that’s boring. In a previous piece you ended on a scene—why not try that here? And instead of inventing the scene, it asks me questions: what were you thinking in that moment? what did you feel? can you recall a specific conversation?
That kind of feedback I actually found incredibly useful… it’s about me becoming the best version of myself as a writer, with Claude pushing me to do that.”
compelling. this morning, used cursor-agent cli
to be a terminal / cli coach. similarly,
had to make it clear what the goals were.
alignment must be intentional.
so many discourses about ai
revolve around foreclosure
on creative ways
to use a reflective
partner.
taste
rich, delicious with
the lid off, first sips
satisfy, wouldn’t change
a thing
16.0 g Guatemala beans, grind 1.8.1 on Timemore.
By 1’28” poured in 256.4 g purified water;
pouring technique mostly rim walking the switch.
Immersion 1’50”, total brew time 3’55”.
groundsniff
during brew
n.p.r. prep for the oscars
charging the maestri house scale
tasting
first sip: sweet
return: bright bitter
edge. delicious.
full-bodied.
working on companion-
ship
listening
Poulenc’s Trois pièces, op. 48, played by André Previn.
dreamy…
found a surplus of grounds
in the grinder catchment
displaced them to china cup,
measured 1.7g
then set aside.
then measured 15.9 fresh grounds into
the hario switch, using a spoon to top it
up to 16.0 g. this new technique,
what’s a good name for it?
spare grounds cupping?
observe
listen
william kapell, piano, on album
here is schumann’s 3 romanzen, op. 28: 2. einfach. played this
as a teen, but not like this, with kapel’s
adult respect and long lines.
it is so important to study music in youth
then return later.
a strange thing that happens to aging
pianists, when fingers have traversed
enough keys to forget whether familiarity
means having played
a piece.
when 14, could play every piece ever learned.
a decade later, no longer the case.
now, it’s not clear
what was even played
mostly, the fingers know
by twitching.
Jetsun Mila Pt. 1
connected through great earbuds
to spooky actions
at a distance, spinal tingles
vibrating 💀
buzzing ☕️
growls @ 30’ from the deep
36’ has a frensel lens.
lighthouses had a “characteristic” -
a unique flash pattern that
identified it in the dark.
consider
homonymic cousins
veil - a covering, something that hides, she veiled her disappointment
vale - a valley, she noted the snow in the vale
vail - to lower or remove in respect, she vailed her bonnet
taste
took a while to enter the cup.
it’s like the flagpole, still.
a call from a bird around the crag.
two heaps of silence.
listen
continued to pt2.
3’ over tones gentle hummingwarble
taste
now it’s cooler than before, yet
the patagonia mug still cradles
some heat.
measured the bags of both finca and guatemala this morning.
guatemala had more, so that won the slot at 16.1 g.
spilled beans while starting the RDT sequence.
picked them up, then 15.7 g beans remained. looked all around,
couldn’t find stragglers, so topped it back up to 16.1 g.
then immersed the dose in water, shook it up, and ground at 1.8.1
on the timemore, same as yesterday.
groundsniff
gave unicorn a sniff after the immersion. rich smell.
a dewy morning —🦄
for a moment, we wondered whether the brew cycle had begun
just by having too much moisture inside the grinder.
for a moment, unicorn heard the coffee grounds talking.
blink, blink. nope.
grounds weighed 16.3 g, overshooting because of the added moisture.
left a good chunk waiting in the catchment for tomorrow.
observe
it will be spring today.
listen
éliane radigue, carol robinson, julia eckhardt, rhodri davies. Occam Ocean 1.
↑ a little map of guatemala
for this morning’s wake-up meditation
in life, as in engineering, seek the source.
of course, this doesn’t do anything to help one
visualize the incredible reticulation of the huehuetenango mountains.
consider google maps on terrain mode here. looks like aluminum
foil that’s been crunched up into a ball
then expanded again because there are so many
mountains in the region.
makes the blood boil for hiking and adventure.
on npr: a bit of talk about prediction markets;
bets on kalshi and polymarkets related to iran
war.
drank some very fizzy water with apple cider vinegar
and potassium electrolytes.
brew
heated 311 g purified water.
didn’t try to change anything for today’s cup; followed
rin’s suggestions from friday:
a bit coarser grind on the timemore at 1.8.1,
and a +15” longer immersion for a total of 2’45” for 3’45”
brew time.
weighed 16.1 g guatemala beans.
grounds first came out at 15.9 g, so one more bean went through the grinder to land at 16.0 g total.
poured 256.1 g purified water.
easy immersion release at 2:45, holding the same increase of +15 seconds from the baseline.
groundsniff
“mythical purple embers and ash” —🦄
observe
the handwritten board includes a sketched map of the guatemala coffee region,
set against southern mexico, belize, honduras, and the yucatan.
it turns the cup into a small geography lesson before sunrise.
listen
columbia masterworks issue ML 2196.
Bach: Concerto in D Minor for Three Pianos and Strings /
Bach: French Suite No. 6 in E Major.
performers:
robert, gaby, and jean casadesus on pianos,
with the philharmonic-symphony orchestra of new york,
conducted by dimitri mitropoulos.
the french suite performance
credited to robert casadesus, piano.
listened to it twice through.
while normally, don’t prefer it when
earbuds pop and hiss, but for this album,
when it was finished, a little sonic pop
gave me the sense of an needle
returning to its anchor after playing
an LP
taste
deliciosity of guatemala’s sweetness.
presence, richness.
what is the difference between
the taste of cocoa and the taste
of chocolate ? what an art, to
craft these descriptions. it’s
a type of poetry.
grandma’s apple butter is, remarkably
detectable in this cup. similar acidity.
though, less cinnamon and allspice than
in the memory, more like
the preparatory roasted apple pulp,
pressed through the massive sieve
of the chinois:
of course, it’s an echo of a reflection.
or a reflection of an echo.
round acid at the edges of the mouth …
reminded of finca’s sweet valence.
