Ohio. The moon is full, and the weather remains strangely warm in the Middle West. Meanwhile at a climate conference in Egypt, the head of the United Nations said, “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator.” Here in America, we’re bracing for another degrading election between the toothless and vicious. We lost Mimi Parker from Low yesterday.

This afternoon, I idled behind a white Honda with a crumpled fender and a bloody palm print on the trunk. A decal said HELP in a horror movie font. What is the psychological profile of someone who decorates their car this way? Perhaps they’re a beloved prankster and a big hit at parties. Maybe they’ll wind up on the evening news someday.

I’ve started reading William Gibson’s The Peripheral between bouts of Graeber + Wengrow’s Dawn of Everything, which is helping me think about fiction—sort of like how Bertrand Russell‘s analysis of Catholic Scholasticism reads like the best sci-fi.