Halfman-newsletter.060-2025Nov
Halfman-Newsletter.060–2025Nov
Halfman is a failed company and fake creative studio run by me, Jim, your host for this newsletter. I don’t know what this is. But I make it every damn month for you Dear Reader, because you rule and you need this. Forward it to everyone you know. It’s the holidays. Forward all the back issues as well. Feel free to reply to this and tell me something. It doesn’t even have to be good.
If you’re interested in “crushing it,” and I know many of you are, right now you may want to do one of two things: a.) Run as far as as fast as you can from this thing immediately or b.) Follow my morning routine for ultimate grind and shine productivity.
06:49 - Wake up in terror of the coming day before the damn alarm even because the universe is indeed that cold and cruel
06:57 - Lose miserably to the power of the phone and look at everything from the weather to email to try and alleviate said waking terror
07:15 - Brief respite of coffee as the brain is regrettably shaken into consciousness whilst watching dawn break and the birds in the neighbours trees begin their day of carefree existence
07:25 - Argue with everyone I live with who isn’t an adult on why they need to wake up and carefully dodge the issue of the real meaning and purpose of modern schooling
07:30 - Die a little bit more inside.
07:45 - Just please put on your goddamn coat. Please, just get it on would you. Okay now, get your shoes on. Get your shoes on. Would you just get your goddamn shoes on. Leave already would you. You’re going to be late for school. Don’t ask me to explain the implications and intrinsic value of school right now. No, you’re taking the bus today. Yes, you heard me. No. Get out.
07:50 - Dream of going to work.
That’s it. With this simple morning routine you’ll achieve untold levels of productivity. It’s like a cold plunge for the mind really.
November
Things I wrote you will read
Here is way too many words about really half baked ideas and cheap 3d in the form of Sorting Survival is Easy.
Etc.
I went to a biennial of illustrators of which I was in the first tranche two decades ago. Two decades. Man. I’m not sure which warmed my cockles more: the fact that there was interesting art to look at or the fact that people were still considering illustration a viable thing to do with their lives despite all this whole robots being able to make a perfect picture in seconds thing.
Presentation Club was beautiful. I don’t even remember what the one guy’s thing was on. That wasn’t the point. Presentations for what I believe to be presentation’s sake and some tutelage and critique by bystanders willing to help out because it’s a nice thing to do. There were technical mishaps for which foreign governments were clearly to blame, but that also didn’t matter. It was the anti-TED which I’m proud to have been to on its maiden voyage. I’ll list being at the first one along with seeing Bizmarkie in concert as a kid. Likely have it on my tombstone as well. I was there and you should be at the next one.
I got hit by a pigeon. I’m not sure how to understand that happening. There I am, large, lumbering mammal standing still and one of these things flies right into me. You hate pigeons. Yet they’re everywhere in our urban environments, shitting up a storm and laughing in our wilting faces at the fact that we no longer eat them. Lo and behold, the dovecote. The structure common throughout everywhere from the Roman world to modern day Egypt where I saw them everywhere. There they know these bastards need to be shown their place and that place is a perforated tower they fly into and have poles to rest on in side. Then some enterprising and hungry person goes in the dovecote with a big pole apparently and just whacks it around and get a couple of them as the holes they use to get in are too small to fly out of quickly. And then they make tasty dishes out of this readily available urban protein source.
Sure, it’s fully hockey season, we all know that. But more importantly, not hockey in the form of Ice Wars is happening. The formula is as follows: Take hockey fighting but take out the hockey bit. “NO STICKS. NO PUCKS. NO GOALS. JUST THE FIGHTS.” I can imagine mathematicians buried in books and tweed in august universities when not pondering topologies of space-time, trying to figure out a formula more beautifully simple than that.
The chats are coming and going with increasing frequency. What will you do when the robots come for your job? I think many of us have a white van in our future. I for one almost relish the idea, having recently power washed. I haven’t had that much personal satisfaction in ages and if you see my white van ready to power wash the hell out of something on your street, give me a toot.
I’ve been thinking. What unholy monstrosity would you get if you combined Second Life with Only Fans?
Post-modern Life is War
David Foster Wallace spoke volumes so well and so long ago about The Problem with Irony, yet he could have never foreseen how this insipid post-modern beast rears it’s apocalyptic head.
If you would have told someone in 1985 that in 2023 they would have a computer+TV+phone+everything in their pocket, they would be super excited. Then when you would go on to explain that you now have to actively try not to use it and how needy it is, they would wonder what is the point.
How to rationalise gentrification pretty well
I developed a rationalization for this inertia. By letting these neighborhoods be, I was preserving them as they were. What possible benefit could I, a transplant and a gentrifier, have brought to deepest Brooklyn? Better that I interact with these communities like a thoughtful conservationist, leaving no trace as I passed on through.
Preach
I’m supposed to stretch and hydrate and journal and… Instead I inventory the day’s probable humiliations and feel strangely fed.
(An Existential Guide to: Living the Beautiful Life)
Food does not bring us together
If you ever happen to be in a family home for dinner in Slovenia, it is not uncommon for everyone at the table to eat salad communally from the same bowl in the middle of the table. What does this mean? Likely not much beyond its less dishwashing and salad which is eaten at least daily is always around. Salad I would say has no real special place beyond it being eaten a lot. Some foreigners consider it weird, not necessarily uncomfortable, but maybe odd. Either way, this does not bring people together.
I like olives a lot. I mean a lot. I’ve eaten them with Turks who have a special place in their lives for them millions of times. I can eat shocking amounts of them easily and greedily without remorse nor shame, handfuls at a time if I have to. Never once has this led me to understand their culture better. Food doesn’t do this. Culture and conversation do. This requires lubricant, not sustenance. So skip the consumption obsession and just have some chats over drinks.
Now sit down and think really, really hard on your past. How many times have you seen someone hugging after eating some chicken together? Now compare that to how many times you see people hugging and smiling with one another after drinking a bit too much.
Amish vs. Progress
One thing it’s taken me awhile to understand is that I don’t think the Amish believe in progress, at least not as we think we understand it. I don’t think the Amish believe there is a perfect world in the future that humans alone can achieve in this world. For them it’s up to The Man Upstairs. I think that is something that drives a lot of our society, the idea there must be progress and there is a place we need to get to. Which they don’t care about, and for which they probably deserve some sort of prize.
The Moka Pot and What Doesn’t Need Progress
The point of the moka pot was that it looked like a tank. You expected a miniature boiler, which is exactly what it is. This doesn’t need improvement, yet someone had to go and reinvent it. The claim is that there is more flame coverage which requires gas, which less and less people in Europe have is one. Either way, I don’t believe this could stand on a gas burner for one second. There may be improvements but are they unnecessary. The Moka Pot was already perfect.
Substack is an internet
Is Substack so bad? There are so many good writers on it and of course they should all de-platform themselves and have Thor own damn websites, but we all know this is never going to happen. The fact is that maybe they will and maybe they won’t but one thing they are doing is publishing writing themselves without a feed and into your inbox like this present.
The Formula for modern non-fiction
I’ve always kind of known there was a formula but never seen it written out so damn well and concisely.
They follow a template: introduce a counterintuitive finding, tell three anecdotes that illustrate it, mention some studies (p < 0.05, naturally), provide a framework with a memorable acronym, conclude with actionable advice. Stretch this to 250 pages, add some graphs, and you have a bestseller. The information density is incredibly low. You’re not learning complex systems of thought; you’re learning to repeat interesting-sounding facts.
Defensive Architecture for Fun and Profit
The Deadguy song “Riot Stairs” from their seminal release “Fixation on a Coworker” sure enough has architectural precedent. Sure, that same release’s design insert was, like most of the other groundbreaking graphic design of 90’s hardcore, terribly influential in graphic design. But riot stairs appear to be an actual thing, where stairs at some universities were designed for riot control. This ‘defensive’ architecture’s intent was to make walking down stairs actually harder and grouping difficult.
Talking about defensive architecture, this castle about an hour away from me is still for sale. This is actually down in price from the 1.2mil it was a couple of years ago to 950,000 EUR.
Sure, I know what you’re thinking, it looks decently defensible Jim, but what else would you do with it if you owned that castle?
- Siege recreations by 6th graders
- Hide and seek for rich kids at top prices followed by amazing burgers
- Heavy metal. Lots and lots of heavy metal. I guess fire to go along with it.
- Halloween haunted house
- Some sort of camps for art and design but where the EU gives me money and then all these smart people make a really cool Halloween haunted house
- Top secret lab with time travel machine so I can use that castle as a base to conquer all over the place
Ends
I tried, so should you. That’s it. Thanks for sticking around.
